#StandWithShadi: Stop the Unlawful Kidnapping of Palestinian Children

Shadi Khoury, 16-year-old student at the Ramallah Friends School and grandson of Sabeel co-founder Samia Khouri, was kidnapped this morning from his home in Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem by Israeli occupation forces. He is being interogated without the presence of his family or legal councel.

Stop the unlawful kidnapping of Palestinian Children. Break the cycle of trauma and perpetual insecurity. #StandWithShadi

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Shadi Khoury, 16-year-old student at the Ramallah Friends School and grandson of Sabeel co-founder Samia Khouri, was kidnapped this morning from his home in Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem by Israeli occupation forces. He is being interogated without the presence of his family or legal councel.

Stop the unlawful kidnapping of Palestinian Children. Break the cycle of trauma and perpetual insecurity. #StandWithShadi

Links:

Call Your Representative (US)

image of #StandWithShadi: Stop the Unlawful Kidnapping of Palestinian Children

#StandWithShadi Canada

Shadi Khoury, 16-year-old student at the Ramallah Friends School and grandson to Sabeel co-founder Samia Khoury, was arrested this morning from his home in Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem.

Stop the unlawful kidnapping of Palestinian children. Break the cycle of trauma and perpetual insecurity.

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Samia Khoury, co-founder of the international Sabeel movement for justice in the Holy Land established by Palestinian Christians, sent the following message with regard to the violent, early-morning kidnapping of her grandson Shadi Khoury, a 16-year-old student at the Quaker Friends School in Ramallah. After reading her message, I am asking you to insist Canada demand of Israel the immediate release of Shadi Khoury, alongside all children unlawfully kidnapped, interrogated, and violently detained by Israeli occupation forces.

Samia's message is below:
_____________________________________

October 18, 2022

Dear Friends,

In the early hours of this morning the Israeli occupation forces, consisting of a troop of around 12 persons of army and secret service members, stormed my son’s house after breaking the gate at the entrance of the compound in which we all live, so as to arrest his younger son Shadi Khoury, a sixteen-year-old child, a student at the Quaker Friends School in Ramallah. They beat him until he was bleeding all over the room and along the path on the way out of the house, dragging him barefoot and blindfolded and not allowing the parents to see where the blood was coming from. Shadi was taken to the interrogation section in the police compound, called “the Russian compound.”

Shadi, a child, is being “interrogated” without the presence of his parents or a lawyer, a tactic used systematically to terrorize children into submission and to ultimately use their own words to incriminate them.

Shadi is a case among so many Palestinian children that are being harassed, tortured, and imprisoned for no reason other than being a Palestinian, seeking to live in dignity and freedom in their own country.

As an 89-year-old grandmother who has lived through the Nakba of 1948, the 1967 War, the First and Second  Intifadas, I continue to ask you my friends: “Until when will this grave injustice go on?” Because you care for human rights, and the rights of children, I am asking you to take action now and contact your parliament or congress representative, to put an end to these grave injustices especially against our children as well as our whole population living under a brutal military occupation.

Shadi should not be sleeping in a prison cell. He is a child and should be home with his family.

Samia Khoury
_______________________________________

Sadly, this story is not unique. Indeed, what is very routine is the practice of armed Israeli soldiers chasing down younger and younger children to arrest and terrorize. It is routine practice to raid houses in the early morning hours, to “map out” Palestinian homes and arrest the children they seek, blind folding and ripping them away from the security of their homes and families. What is also routine is subjecting Palestinian children to police interrogations (without either lawyers or parents present) as well as “trying" them before military courts. The trauma inflicted upon the children and the scars violently carved on their psyche for the rest of their lives is now a permanent feature of Palestinian life.

It is such practices (and not the supposed curricula of Palestinian textbooks) that create hatred and resentment and impedes the possibilities for peace and coexistence. Surely such practices are counterproductive and cannot succeed in achieving true security for the Israeli population. Surely we can get even the most ardent Zionists to see that nothing can be gained from such actions.

I urge you therefore to imagine yourself in the place and circumstances of Shadi, or of his parents and grandparents. Think of your own children or grandchildren, nieces and nephews, in his place. Imagine the terror and trauma of such an event. Now, consider the many ways in which we as a nation are complicit. What, then, can you do to help bring about an end to the unlawful, traumatic kidnapping of Palestinian children?

The campaign to end the use of military courts (“No Way To Treat a Child”) also merits our support and advocacy. We may not be able to bring peace to Israel/Palestine any time soon, but there is no reason not to end immediately the abuse of Palestinian children, actions which bring no security to Israel but cause such great anguish and sorrow to anyone who has a conscience.

Finally, I am asking you to insist Canada demand  of Israel the immediate release of Shadi Khoury, alongside all children unlawfully kidnapped, interrogated, and violently detained by Israeli occupation forces.

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