Sometimes it is ‘only’ the theft of goods. Namely, policemen take the
children’s goods away from them, goods paid for with money, without
returning it, without paying for it, or even handing them a form attesting
it had been confiscated. Sometimes they are the soldiers who make the
little venders stand outside in the cold and rain on a small mound next
to the checkpoint, as punishment, or they smash the goods down to the
ground, again and again, and sometimes the police picks them up in its
van and leaves them out in some faraway field, to make their way back
alone, make them learn their lesson. And sometimes it’s done with a
beating, with or without a stick. Soldiers or policemen. In the field nearby,
or inside the vans, or even with a billy-club, Like the one police officer
David Revivo used on the four children after they were hunted
down, inside the filthy staircase of the Youth Division on Shlomtzion
Street (West Jerusalem).
We lodged a complaint on behalf of the children against police officer
David Revivo with the Police Internal Investigation Department.
Not because we thought him a lone culprit, or that if David Revivo would
never harass them again, the abuse of the children and venders in general
would cease.
We lodged our complaint because we had his name. And because the children
asked us to do so, because they were so terrified of him.
Because we could not extricate them from their lives, no matter how much
we wanted to. From a faulty parenthood that sends them day in day out
morning till night, out into this menace, and from the Occupation that does
not see them as human beings. But at least, David Revivo, who in addition to
everything else uses his billy-club on them, at least he wouldn’t go on
terrifying them, we hoped together with them. In our hybris and naivete we
thought that we could remove him, at least. For after all we had all four
children and another two who were not of the same family, willing to testify
against him. To identify him as the one who took them to the Youth Division,
and beat them up with his billy-club. And how another policeman said, why
are you beating them up, a policeman they could describe if asked to.
And exact details about the abuser himself, his looks and his police van and
his partner. And we, ourselves, privileged as non-Palestinians, we too can
testify that this policeman is a liar. Or at least a potential liar. About how we
once came to the crossroads and the children told us he had just taken away
their miserable packets of chewing gum and stashed them in his trunk and
we asked him about it and he denied having done it, and then his partner at
the time, a volunteer who introduced himself by name, and didn’t know what
his partner had just said, told us that indeed, David Revivo had taken the children’s
chewing gum packets and they are right in that trunk. In other words, he had stolen
them. Contrary to what David Revivo said, himself. And all of this was on video, that
could be summoned for inquiry, as well as we ourselves.
A named policeman beat up children with his billy-club. There are witnesses. There
is opinion stating that he doesn’t tell the truth. There is a learned opinion that this
must be investigated. And the answer of the Police Internal Investigation Departm-
ent that there is nothing to be done. Because in a state where civil rights are accorded
on the basis of ethnicity, and the rights to property and health and education and
freedom of movement and work are accorded on the basis of ethnicity, even the
definition of childhood – so we learn – is based on ethnicity. Because the Occupa-
tion authorities and ruling power naturally hold hands when the “enemy”
is Palestinian. Even if it is a child. Because there is no such thing as a Palestinian
child. Only a Palestinian.
And if it’s a Palestinian, his blood is free for the taking.
And that is the whole story, of Palestinians under Occupation, and always has been,
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Translated by Tal Haran
|
