On July 12, three Israeli teenagers disappeared. The Israeli government and most of the media say they were “kidnapped,” although there have been no ransom demands. If they were taken by one of the five previously-unknown groups that claimed responsibility (including, apparently, a branch of the now-ubiquitous ISIS), that group would probably say that they were “captured.” Some Palestinians have described the teenagers as “soldiers” or “soldier-settlers,” or “armed settlers.” Israel denies they were soldiers (probably true, especially for the two 16-year-olds), but at least one of them lived in an illegal West Bank settlement, where carrying arms is common.However these particular teenagers have served the Israeli state and its settlement enterprise, in order to understand the motivation of whoever might have taken them, it’s worth remembering the policies that teenage Israeli soldier boys carry out on the even-younger boys of the illegally-occupied population:
At any rate, in response this disappearance/kidnapping, for the past two weeks, the Israeli government has been carrying out what its own minister describes as a “wide-reaching operation against the civilian population” of Gaza and the West Bank. In other words, as Chris Marsden points out, the Israeli governmenthas proudly announced it is engaging in a blatant form of collective punishment—a war crime, illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israeli tactics have included raiding thousands of homes (sometimes blowing their way in with explosives), abducting hundreds of people, cutting off electricity, and killing about six Palestinians so far, including a 13-year-old boy. Amnesty International and Israeli human rights groups have denounced the operation, saying that the army’s actions “raise serious concerns of unwarranted infringement on basic rights and collective punishment.”The United States, of course, blocked a statement of concern at the UN.
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