Israel arresting Palestinian children 'over Facebook posts'

New report details accounts of Palestinian children jailed for months without charge over Facebook posts.

2 min read

The New Arab

19 Oct, 2016

Facebook and Israel have set up "joint teams" to combat "incitement" [Anadolu]

Palestinian children are being arrested and imprisoned by Israeli authorities over Facebook posts deemed to be "incitement," a report by Defence for Children International-Palestine said Monday.

The child advocacy charity spoke to several Palestinian children who were interrogated for hours and imprisoned for months without charge under Israel's "administrative detention" law in relation to social media posts.

One child interviewed was 17-year-old Ahmed, who was arrested in August and interrogated for several hours because of a picture posted on Facebook.

"He asked for my Facebook password," Ahmed said of the officer who detained him. "I gave it to him. He logged in and said it had inciting photos."

However, this was not the first time that Ahmad had been arrested over social media posts.

"I told [the interrogator] of my arrest earlier in April 2016 for 10 days, when I was interrogated (at Shikma prison) in Ashkelon about my Facebook account. I told him I deleted everything upon my release and the account is clean. I told him to check it."

Days later, Ahmed was placed under administrative detention for half a year.

"Israeli authorities must immediately stop using administrative detention against Palestinian minors," attorney and international advocacy officer at DCIP Brad Parker, said in the report.

"Inability to file charges against children due to lack of evidence should never be grounds for holding them indefinitely without charge or trial."

According to DCIP, this is the first time that administrative detention has been used against children since 2011.

DCIP warned that 19 Palestinian children who were arrested since October 2015 are facing interrogation without the presence of a lawyer or a guardian. This is deemed to be illegal under international law.

The DCIP report's release follows Facebook and the Israeli government's agreement last month to establish "joint teams" to combat "incitement" on the website.

This move has resulted in the censoring of many Palestinian journalists and activists who are critical of Israel. Critics have also highlighted that the measure has not been used against Israeli Jews who incite hate against Palestinians.

"Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes between 500 and 700 children in military courts each year that lack fundamental fair trial rights," the report said.