Stolen Youth

[holyland]

Stolen youth

I remember that night, in my room in Ramallah.  It was cold, as usual, and I was leaning up against the radiator trying as usual to warm up before I jumped into bed because tthe heat only came on for about an hour or an hour and half at night.  And it does get cold air in the winter.  People don't think that.  It is a desert and deserts get cold at night in the winter, and it gets rainy in the winter, the only time it gets rainy.

Anyway, that night I was looking at a CD, or rather a DVD, entitled Stolen Youth.  It was the story of several children who had been imprisoned in Israeli prisons, Palestinian kids, that is.  When I say kids, I mean kids.  The kids being interviewed were 10 and 11 and 12 years old.  Still, children, and still they had spent months of their lives in Israeli prisons for such crimes as throwing rocks or being a possible danger to the State.  These were kids who had been beaten up by soldiers, deprived of food, kept away from their families and denied visits by their families for months on end.  They were kids terrified by a brutal military.

Then I got to the last story.  It was told by grandfather of a young boy, whose voice broke as he told the story, as he painfully admitted that this child had been raped while in prison.

Anyway, I finished watching the CD, and I mailed it home to myself.  Or rather to friends, and it did arrive in the States where I got back.  But of course, it had been erased, electronically.

When I went back in 2009.  I wanted to find out what had happened to this boy, among other stories.  And I did.  Several years later, he had been shot by the IDF.

For more stories like this go to:

      http://www.holylandunveiled.com