Yesterday, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah), released a press release titled “Adalah to Attorney General: Shocking testimonies from Palestinian children who were tortured during arrest and interrogation.” The byline of the release serves as a chilling introduction to a recent investigation’s horrific findings:

[Israeli] Investigators threatened children with beatings, isolation, torturing their fathers and raping their mothers and sisters; children were denied food for dozens of hours unless they confessed to the charges against them.

Adalah has sent an “urgent letter” to Israeli Attorney General (AG) Yehuda Weinstein, “demanding an end to the practice of physical and psychological torture and ill-treatment against Palestinian children from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) during their arrest and interrogation by Israeli security personnel,” and calling for open criminal investigations so that those responsible can face due punishment for their serious crimes.

The letter was sent on 1 June 2014. As of the writing of this present article, no response has been received (or, if a response has been received, it has not yet been made public).

In its letter, Adalah relays the findings of a recent investigation conducted by Defense for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS). The organization’s lawyers compiled 21 testimonies made by Palestinian children who had been arrested, interrogated, and tortured by Israeli authorities. In its press release, Adalah writes

The dangerous practices described in the testimonies constitute serious criminal offenses such as assault, damage, threat, sexual harassment and other unlawful activity committed by security authorities, ranging from soldiers, to GSS interrogators, and to prison wardens.

It goes without saying such practices are in blatant violation of both Israeli and international law. Adalah’s attorneys also noted that Israel is in direct violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) treaty, to which it is a signatory. The CRC dictates that authorities immediately inform the child and any relatives as to what exactly is being charged against them (Israel regularly ignores this basic, fundamental right for many Palestinians, regardless of age—even Palestinian legislators). The CRC furthermore prohibits the use of physical or physiological pressure in interrogation and explicitly “forbids children’s exposure to any type of abuse, torture, humiliation and inhuman treatment.”

To those who pay close attention to Israel’s internal affairs, this investigation may not necessarily be surprising. Just last year, in its periodic review of Israel’s child rights record, the CRC expressed “its deepest concern about the reported practice of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children arrested, prosecuted and detained by the military and the police, and about the State party’s failure to end these practices in spite of repeated concerns expressed by treaty bodies.”

The CRC corroborated much of what we will see in the following testimonies, including systematic “physical and verbal violence, humiliation, painful restraints, hooding of the head and face in a sack, threatened with death, physical violence, and sexual assault against themselves or members of their family, restricted access to toilet, food and water.” The CRC report even explained that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) used Palestinian children as human shields multiple times.

What this new investigation does offer us, however, is a more detailed picture of what many Palestinian children in occupied Palestine must go through, based on first-hand accounts of the brave young survivors themselves.

The following is a collection of points made in the children’s testimonies, as outlined in Adalah’s press release:

– The majority of arrests were made during late-hour night raids.