Skip to main content

Saving Palestine’s Children Under The Arms Trade Treaty By Vacy Vlazna 24 April, 2015 Countercurrents.org

"Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP) released this month a comprehensive and heartbreaking report,OPERATION PROTECTIVE EDGE: A WAR WAGED ON GAZA’S CHILDREN. detailing,
that places that should have provided children with shelter and safety were not immune from attacks by Israeli forces. Missiles fired from Israeli drones and warplanes, artillery shelling, and shrapnel scattered by explosions killed children in their homes, on the street as they fled from attacks with their families, and as they sought shelter from the bombardment in schools. (DCIP)
The lives of Palestine’s children should be better protected since 24 December 2014, when he Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) became binding in international law requiring states to end the transfer of arms that would be used in war crimes and genocide:
Article 6: 3. A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1) or of items covered under Article 3 or Article 4, if it has knowledge at the time of authorization that the arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes as defined by international agreements to which it is a Party.
The ATT has been ratified by 66 states and 64 have signed but not ratified including the USA and Israel. Notwithstanding, Israel is a prime target for ATT sanctions. Silencing Israel’s jibber-jabber of ‘self defense, the documentary, The Lab by Israeli Yotam Feldman, reveals that 1.6 million Gazans are locked in an Israeli military laboratory where weaponry is battle-tested. Billions of international dollars from western defense departments, fuel the demand and validate Israeli atrocities;
“A key player in the military industries told me that the operational testing in Gaza of Elbit’s BMS (Battle Management System – a special internet-like system for ground forces), a huge project worth $1 billion, has allowed Elbit to raise its price in a deal signed a year later with Australia. The same goes for Rafael. The company stated openly that it would capitalize on the escalation that preceded operation Pillar of Defense..A salesman for the IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries) told me that assassinations and operations in Gaza bring about an increase of tens of percentage points in company sales”. Yotam Feldman
As a military economy, Israel has a pragmatic interest in maintaining the siege on Gaza and its occupation of Palestine,
…the Israeli economy is so much dependent on these operations. It's 20 percent of the exports. It's 150,000 families--not people--in Israel actually dependent on this industry. Feldman
To boost Israeli arms sales, Palestinian families have suffered three onslaughts of ‘systematic genocide’ wars in 6 years and are condemned to a life that is unnatural and traumatic waiting for the next Israeli weapons testing. Gaza is a cemetery for over a thousand war-slaughtered children, a sealed death camp for 800,000 maimed and traumatised surviving children waiting for the next inevitable Israeli bombardment and stark terror.
Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity must be considered in human suffering such as the tragedy of little Hamza Mus'ab Almadani, 3, of Khan Younis, Gaza.
Photo by Hassan Rabie
On 25th July 2014, Israel’s soldiers loaded and fired artillery shells that discharged hundreds of phosphorous-impregnated felt wedges that struck and burrowed through his soft three year old skin. Phosphorous continues burning until the oxygen is cut off and even then, the extreme pain and the horrific tissue damage endures.
The agonising pain and trauma turned a once happy and boisterous child, mute. Hamza can no longer speak, a common symptom of trauma among Gaza’s children terrified by Israel’s relentless and tumultuous bombardments watched on TV and distant hillsides by cheering Israelis in front-row seats.
Decent people can neither comprehend nor tolerate Israel’s war mongering against Palestinian children and their families whom Israel has hemmed in with no escape. The ’most moral army in the world’ is a vile coward - ultimately shooting innocent Palestinians like fish in a barrel - for profit.
Corporate Watch states, “85% of drones used by the Israeli military are manufactured by Elbit’ and sets out the Use of Elbit's equipment in Gaza, Elbit is Israel’s largest private arms manufacturer and is complicit in the direct targeting of children:
Israel, the world’s largest exporter of aerial drones, killed at least 164 children in drone attacks during its assault on Gaza.5 In a number of incidents, evidence suggests that Israeli forces directly targeted children. In one such case, Rawya Joudeh, 40, and four of her five children were killed by an Israeli drone-fired missile as they played together in the family’s yard in Tal al-Zatar, Jabalia refugee camp, North Gaza, on the afternoon of August 24. The children were aged between 6 and 14. (DCIP)
Elbit Systems, during Israel’s 51 day war on Gaza was occupied in protest by UK and Australian activists to bring attention to Elbit’s complicity in the monstrous destruction of Gaza.
Elbit is owned by the Federman Group. Chairman Michael Federman is also chairman of the Hebrew University which has R & D links, as do most Israeli universities, to Israel’s major arms companies, Rafael, Elbit, IMI, IAI.
For this reason alone, academic boycotts are justified.
Other Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) actions against Elbit are divestments by Aegon, a Dutch financial services organisation, by the Norwegian Pension Fund, Danksk Bank and PKA Ltd, Denmark’s largest pension fund managers, and by Första AP-Fonden, the largest of Sweden's pension funds.
Conversely, the EU deplorably bestows Elbit with,
generous, taxpayer funded, EU grants under the EU's Horizon 2020 research programme. The company benefited from involvement in 5 European projects under the Seventh Framework Programme for research and tecnological development. (Corporate Watch)
Global arms sanctions will end Israel’s profit from the death of children. Western governments have multiple import and export defence contracts with Israeli private and government arms manufacturers worth billions of dollars: Can these governments guarantee their exports have not contributed to Israel’s war crimes? No.
The Arms Trade Treaty was the centrepiece of Australia’s presidency of the Security Council. Australia’s, FM Julie Bishop, and her fellow Israelophiles, i.e. the majority of western leaders, will be challenged, by unrelenting grass roots pressure, to honour their legal obligations under the ATT..
“The Arms Trade Treaty,” Bishop told the UN, “will help stop destabilising arms flows to conflict regions and to illicit users. It will prevent human rights abusers and those who violate the laws of war from being supplied with arms.”
Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001."
Tags

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Gaza’s Medical Apocalypse: Numbers, Neglect, and the Farce of “Access”

  If you ever needed proof that statistics can be more damning than bombs, look at Gaza’s health crisis . Behind the headlines and hashtags lies a cascade of bodies and broken systems. We have numbers, we have reports, we have PDFs— and yet the world stares, unmoved, at the collapse. Below is your ruthless, numbers-soaked guide to the suffering —and the institutional failure—behind Gaza’s medical implosion . 1. The Health System Is Already Dead. We’re Just Counting the Corpse. According to WHO, “The Gaza Strip faces an unprecedented humanitarian crisis with rising mortality and widespread displacement.” Between 1 January and 31 August 2024 , local health authorities reported 18,900 deaths and 38,916 injuries . Women, children, and the elderly account for over 50 % of fatal casualties . More than 53 % of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were non-functional as of August 2024, and many of the partially functioning ones lacked adequate water or relied entirely on fuel generators. ...

The Ceasefire of Exhaustion: When Empires Collapse from Within

  By Malik Mukhtar — ainnbeen.blogspot.com Two years after Gaza was first set on fire , the war that began with biblical vengeance has stumbled to an exhausted ceasefire . On October 9, 2025 , Israel and Hamas — after endless carnage, famine, and rubble — have signed the first phase of a ceasefire agreement mediated in Sharm el-Sheikh . Trump called it a “ historic peace plan. ” History may call it a truce of attrition — a war that collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. What the Ceasefire Says — and What It Doesn’t Under the agreement, Israeli forces are to pull back to a designated “yellow line” within 24 hours of cabinet ratification. Hamas, in turn, will release all remaining hostages — alive or dead — within 72 hours after the withdrawal. Israel will free about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, though it made sure to exclude political figures like Marwan Barghouti , whose freedom would remind the world that Palestine still breathes. Humanitarian convoys — food,...

Delivering the Dead: How the World Watches Gaza Bleed.

  Delivering the Dead: How the World Watches Gaza Bleed “ I delivered a beheaded woman who was nine months pregnant. ” That’s not a horror-film script. That’s not medieval history. That is the testimony of an Australian medic standing in a Gaza hospital in 2025, describing what it means to “ practice medicine ” under Israeli bombardment. A nine-months-pregnant woman , decapitated , her body torn open so that the child she carried could be pulled out lifeless — and somehow this is still not enough to shake the comfortable democracies of the West into anything resembling a conscience. We should probably give the Nobel Prize for Creative Euphemism to the politicians who still call this “self-defense.” After all, there’s nothing quite as defensive as severing the head of an expectant mother and forcing foreign doctors to deliver her dead child in the rubble of what used to be a hospital . Bravo, civilization . The tragedy is not just the atrocity itself. It’s the smug perfo...

The Veil Gets Thicker: How “Democracy” Is Being Used to Suppress Solidarity.

  There’s a whisper among the ideals Europe claims to represent: freedom, human rights, assembly . But lately, those whispers are being drowned out —by batons, by laws, by arrests . Pro-Palestinian protestors are being met not with dialogue or understanding , but with the brute choreography of state power. Democracy is no longer just veiled . It is draped in shame. Recent Snapshots: When Solidarity Becomes a Crime These are not isolated incidents. These are signals. They tell us where the balance has shifted—and how. UK — The Ban, the Proscription, the Mass Arrests Palestine Action Proscribed Under Terrorism Act In July 2025 the UK government declared Palestine Action a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000 . From that moment, supporting the group—by words or peaceful symbolic action—became criminalized. 466 Arrested at Parliament Square On August 9, 2025 , some 466 people were arrested in London at Parliament Square for a protest against the Pales...

Britain’s Recognition of Palestine: A Century of Complicity in Disguise.

So we’ve reached this moment: Keir Starmer’s UK “ recognises the State of Palestine. ” Applause lines up. Speeches made. Headlines dazzled. But behind the pomp, the guns, the exports, the intelligence, the training — history rings out in mocking laughter. Because Britain has been complicit since day one. This recognition is not redemption . It’s theatre. 1. The Original Sin: Balfour Declaration Let’s go back. Because if you don’t know your history, you’ll be fooled by the future. On 2 November 1917 , Arthur James Balfour (Britain’s Foreign Secretary) wrote to Lord Rothschild, and officially declared: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object , it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine , or the rights and political sta...