An Israeli human rights organisation has accused the government of torturing Palestinian children after it emerged some were kept for months in outdoor cages during winter.
The Indy evidently based its claim on a report in the Jerusalem Post on Dec. 31 which was based almost entirely on a report from the NGO PCATI (Public Committee Against Torture in Israel). However, as CiF Watch noted previously, the PCATI report in question is itself based on a report at the Web site of the Israel Public Defender’s Office (PDO), where you learn the much less sensational truth: the Israel Prison Service had, on occasion, held some Israelis who were arrested – for various crimes – in outdoor holding pens (for a couple of hours) until they were transported to court in the morning. This practice has since ceased.
As CiF Watch noted in previous posts, nowhere in the PDO’s statement (which they sent to the Israel Justice Ministry) do they use the word “Palestinians,” nor the word “torture.”
(Additionally, we’ve been in communication with editors at the Jerusalem Post over their report on the Public Defender’s Office complaint, and expect a reply soon.)
While the Indy correction represents a significant improvement over the original, what remains is still extremely misleading, as it suggests that a “human rights group” (PCATI) accused Israel of “torturing” children, when the PCATI page in question does not characterize the ceased practice of keeping some prisoners in open-air cells for several hours (while in transit to court) as “torture.”
There is of course a huge difference between an unfair or abusive detention practice and the outright “torture” of prisoners, and it strains credulity to characterize what occurred at the IPS transition facility in Ramla as torture.
Though it is of course the job of such NGOs to investigate any credible allegations of such abuse, it is the job of responsible journalists to accurately characterize the specific charges being leveled, and avoid false characterizations and hyperbole which mislead readers into believing something which either is completely untrue, or which egregiously distorts a few kernels of truth to advance an entirely misleading narrative.
Finally, Withnall’s hatchet job is especially galling in light of an official editorial published by the Indy in October in which they emphatically denied charges leveled by some that they were guilty of demonizing Israel.
However, their decision to publish a sensational report with a headline falsely accusing the Israeli government of sadistically torturing Palestinian kids by holding them in outdoor cages for months during winter – among other libels they’ve published in recent months – significantly undermines their claim that they don’t engage in such reckless and libelous smears.