[Opinion] Children are used in propaganda to demonize Israel
[Excerpts]
There is a lengthy and concerted campaign being waged to portray Israel as a serial abuser of children’s rights. Look no further than the exchange between BBC news presenter Anjana Gadgil and former prime minister Naftali Bennett, in which Gadgil declared that “Israeli forces are happy to kill children.”
For years, a network of nongovernmental organizations, with the intent of generating international sanctions against Israel, have lobbied to have the IDF included on a blacklist of armed groups that commit grave violations of children’s rights. Along the way, the NGOs, while ignoring Palestinian abuses of children in the context of terrorism, accuse Israel of uniquely and deliberately targeting children.
Annually, the Office of the UN Secretary-General publishes a report on “Children and Armed Conflict” (CAAC), which is intended to catalogue and punish grave violations of children’s rights during armed conflicts. One of the grave violations is recruitment and use of children by armed groups, such as practiced by Palestinian terrorist organizations in Jenin, where four teenagers recently died – all combatants and members of terrorist groups.
