On The Minors Who Were Arresting Protesting

This is important so I'm quoting all of it at least two of the girls involved are from Shiloh):-

They're still minors - even if they are annoying girls
By Nadav Shragai

What is veteran Youth Court judge supposed to do when the defendant before him, a 15-year old, tells him outright that she does not recognize his authority as judge, scorns the robe he wears and rejects the authority and the laws of the State of Israel and of the court to try her?

Uri Ben Dor, the vice president of the Youth Court in Jerusalem, encountered this dilemma when K. appeared before him for a hearing on extending her detention. He tried to speak kindly to her, but K. told him that because he is not a rabbi and the court does not derive its authority from the laws of the Torah, but from the laws of the State of Israel, she chooses not to cooperate with him, even if that means continuation of her detention.

Ben Dor decided that the girl should remain behind bars.

However, Judge Noam Solberg decided to release from detention a girl who joined in anti-disengagement action, because he believed the maximum jail term for the crimes she was accused of - creating a public disturbance - would be no longer than the girl had already spent in jail for refusing to sign a conditional release.

S., also 15 years old, spent nearly two months in jail with serious criminals in Jerusalem's Russian Compound and in the Neveh Tirtza prison even though she could have been released conditionally shortly after her arrest. The judge before whom she appeared decided to deal with the problem in a different way and postponed the date of the next hearing for four months, on the assumption that the girl or her parents would break and choose the option of being released and so sign the conditional release. He was mistaken. The girl and her parents preferred the prison cell to recognizing the court. In the end, the Public Defender's Office appealed S.'s continuing detention and she was sent home.

In another case, in which a 14-year-old girl was charged with resisting arrest, she was released by the court under more lenient conditions, but did not agree to sign the guarantee. She, too, refused to recognize the court's authority, as it is not based on the Torah and Sanhedrin. For five weeks the girl was imprisoned in Neve Tirtza. She was released only at the conclusion of her trial, and the judge ordered her father to sign the guarantee in her name or else the father himself would be sent to jail for four months.

State of Israel vs. anonymous

All of these girls were arrested during the course of the protests against the evacuation of Gush Katif and northern Samaria in the West Bank or other right-wing protests. Sometimes they were involved in violent clashes with Arabs or the security forces. Their refusal to acknowledge the court's authority and cooperate with it very much embarrassed the judicial system, which often found itself helpless in the face of this phenomenon.

This problem led nearly all the professionals working in this field to accept the invitation of MK Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) to take part in a special Knesset discussion under the auspices of the Knesset's Child Welfare committee. Six months ago, Yachimovich asked the attorney general to release the minors from detention, "because this is a blatant violation of the rights of minors," and she also invited one of the girls who spent many weeks in jail and refused to be released conditionally, to the session of the committee she heads.

B., who spent seven weeks in jail, told the committee members that during the time of the disengagement she and her friends saw how "judges were mobilizing to suppress our demonstrations and enable the expulsion. I saw friends my age who were hit and then were accused of assaulting policemen. We saw how the Supreme Court was allowing the transfer of Jews, but prohibiting the transfer of terrorists and Palestinians.

"What I absorbed is that the entire judicial system is based on one big lie. Everything is predetermined. I realized there is no justice here, and that I would not be part of this show. The show can go on without me."

"I was in jail during the summer vacation," continues B. "For 10 days they didn't let me phone home, and I didn't see my parents except in court. I really wanted to be home, but it was much more important for me to keep my conscience clean."

Shai Nitzan, the deputy state prosecutor, said the state had never seen such a phenomenon. "People usually respect the law and are happy when keeping them in jail until the conclusion of proceedings is not requested," said Nitzan, "but this phenomenon kept changing. It started with a refusal to identify oneself. Minors said, 'We are not identifying ourselves.' Hundreds refused to identify themselves. They said 'nothing matters to us, even if we have to sit in jail.'

"The state had to decide whether to capitulate to this demand and release them without them identifying themselves and risk losing the opportunity to enforce the law in their case, or insisting on them identifying themselves. In the end, we insisted and we issued indictments, like the one issued against 'anonymous, fictitious ID number 100.'

"This was an organized phenomenon. There were organizations instructing them to act in this way in order to cause the rule of law to collapse, until they saw it wasn't working. It really was sad to see that as a result of this, there were girls who were minors who remained in detention for a number of weeks."

MK Yachimovich told Nitzan that there "is a blatant and glaring lack of policy in the judges' behavior toward the girls under arrest." "Undoubtedly the same girls really infuriate the judges when they openly announce that they don't recognize the Israeli judicial system," Yachimovich said. "Moreover, sometimes the parents are not willing to release them conditionally, because they are partners in what they see as an ideological protest. But all these things certainly are not sufficient cause to hold girls who are minors in detention for such a lengthy period."

Of particular interest were the remarks made by the head of the Internal Security Ministry's youth department, Commander Suzy Ben Baruch, who has some 30 years of experience dealing with children for the police. Ben Baruch also acknowledged "the embarrassment could not be overlooked. There was serious deliberation over what to do with them. But the moment the parents didn't bother to come and are not willing to accept a conditional release and even urge their child to remain in detention, a basis was created for declaring the minor as 'a minor in need.' That's when a welfare officer enters the picture, and then it is a serious situation." Ben Baruch says the system did "everything" to prevent a situation in which a child is removed from his parents' custody and placed with a foster family or in an institution: "Throughout the entire period of the disengagement, I ran from Ma'asiyahu Prison to Dekel Prison. Together with the juvenile parole service I walked among the girls in the jails. They all know me.

"A certain MK who heard about one of the arrested girls told me 'I'll persuade her to sign.' She went into the cell full of energy, but when she came out of there, she told me 'carry on with your work.' Very quickly she realized that she too couldn't persuade them."

A political mouthpiece

The Labor and Social Affairs Ministry district juvenile parole officer, Drora Tal, told of the difficulties in dealing with the girls detained for lengthy periods: "We were very helpless in facing them, even though we had solutions, including religious kibbutzim in the north willing to accept them. They objected to going and the idea of dragging them there by the hair didn't seem like an option to me. Some of these youths also took everything out on their parents, so even the parents were helpless when facing them. In some of these cases, the parents weren't the ones deciding, but these girls didn't come from a vacuum. They were only the political mouthpieces of others and that's not fair to them. They came from a community and people in the community can still influence the youth, for better or for worse."

In the end, no girl was removed from her parents' custody nor declared a minor in need. The welfare services did not show a readiness to take such a far-reaching step, but the threat hovered in the air constantly.

MK Yitzhak Levy (National Union-National Religious Party), who during the disengagement met often with the families of the detainees and visited them in jail, surprised the professionals at the forum when he said: "I'm not scared by the declaration of a minor as a minor in need. I think that is perfectly fine, and I'm in favor of threatening parents in this case. When the parents are threatened, maybe they will come to sign in order to release the child. I can understand parents who wage an ideological battle, but I can't understand parents who wage an ideological battle at the expense of their children and leave them in a place of risk, and in my eyes, a jail is a place of risk."

Nitzan, who received a religious-Zionist education, addressed the committee not only as the representative of the judicial system, but also as a parent. "In this story," Nitzan said, "the parents should be ashamed. I also have kids and if they were to tell me, 'leave us in jail, because it's very important for the sake of the Jewish people,' I wouldn't agree. I'm telling you that a parent who does such a thing ought to be ashamed."

Yachimovich asked to distance herself from the sweeping condemnation of the parents. "I really am not a party to this," Yachimovich clarified. "A parent who respects the ideological battle of his child and doesn't release him conditionally in order to enable him to take upon himself a punishment of ongoing detention, as in the case, for example, of conscientious objection to the occupation, is doing something legitimate. In the relationship between parents and children, the parents can decide to respect their children's struggle, including the heavy cost they must pay for it."

So, a question arises: who should now be in jail for risking the lives of minors in Sderot and other Western negev towns by not providing adequate protection?

Hint:-

In a response to the High Court of Justice, the state said yesterday there was no way to protect Sderot schoolchildren from the threat of Qassam missiles, because it would be impossible to reinforce all classrooms in the city before the start of school next fall. The state is asking the court to reject two petitions filed by Sderot residents demanding the reinforcement of all educational institutions in Sderot and environs against Qassams.

"There is no disputing that studying in the non-reinforced classrooms entails a certain security risk to students," the state argued in its response. "However, it seems that for the time being, there is no alternative. This risk is not significantly different from the risk to which students are exposed en route from home to school and back, by bus or private car, which of course are not reinforced against Qassam missiles, or from the risk to which they are exposed during the day when they are in many other places besides reinforced classrooms, such as other parts of the school, extracurricular activities, places of entertainment and various public institutions and even in their homes, many of which are within missile range and are not reinforced. The state does aspire to provide 100-percent protection to every inhabitant - and certainly to every child - but it is obvious that this goal could only be achieved in a utopian world. In reality, all the state can do is attempt to get as close as possible to that goal, within the bounds of the limitations and circumstances within which it operates. The most that the state can provide to the schoolchildren in the Gaza envelope communities is protection during most school hours, and the protection of the homerooms only."