We ask your Holiness to publicly call upon the government of Israel to
end its mistreatment of Palestinian children;
to respect the rights of refugees to return under international law, recognized
by the Vatican;
to end the prolonged military occupation of the West Bank including East
Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip;
and to end the punitive and illegal siege and blockade of Gaza. Of the 1.8 million
people living in Gaza, 51% are under 18 years old and 43% are under 15 years old.
We also ask your Holiness to publicly call upon all nations to address policies
toward Israel that have allowed the abuses of occupation and colonization to fester
for so many decades, and to call upon those nations to demand justice, accountability
and the implementation of international law.
As we pray, we examine our own lives for how individually and collectively we can
best contribute to ending the suffering of children in Palestine and of all children
of the world.
*****
Thursday, 06 March 2014
07:10
In anticipation of the Pope’s May visit to
the Holy Land, an Open Letter signed by over 200
bishops, clerics, members of religious orders and
theologians from several faith traditions, was
delivered today to Pope Francis. The letter asks the
Pope to speak out against the Israeli army’s program
of kidnapping, detention, and systematic abuse of
Palestinian children and to call for an end to the
occupation and colonization of Palestine.
The
letter, whose signers include over 20 bishops, cites a
recent UNICEF report that documents nighttime arrests,
blindfolding and shackling of children between 12 and
18 years of age. Based on over 400 sworn testimonies,
UNICEF concluded that the “ill-treatment of children
who come into contact with the system appears to be
widespread, systematic, and institutionalized
throughout the process.”
“With
this letter, we are raising the profile of the
well-documented systematic mistreatment of Palestinian
children,” said Rev. Don Wagner. “The Israeli
government is purposefully going after children, who
are clearly vulnerable, to deeply scare and traumatize
them.”
Wagner
is the National Program Director of Friends of
Sabeel-North America (FOSNA.org), which initiated the
letter. FOSNA supports the work of Sabeel, a
Jerusalem-based peace and justice organization founded
by Palestinian Christians.
The
letter notes that similar concerns about the
mistreatment of Palestinian children have been raised
by Save the Children, the United Nations Commission
Against Torture, Military Court Watch, Defense of
Children International, and B’Tselem, an Israeli human
rights organization.
“The
enthusiastic response to our request for signers to
the letter indicates the urgency of these concerns,”
Wagner said. “Now that the letter has been delivered,
we would like to invite people worldwide to join this
appeal to Pope Francis and raise this issue with their
media, human rights organizations, and governments
until this targeting of children and the occupation
are ended.”
The
petition to support the letter is hosted at www.endtheoccupation.org/Letter2Pope
Wagner
said that FOSNA initiated the letter in the hope that
Pope Francis would speak out for the people of
Palestine as he has boldly spoken for the poor and
oppressed elsewhere.
“During
his upcoming May visit, we want the Pope to publicly
call upon the Israeli government to end its
intentional mistreatment of Palestinian children,”
Wagner said, “as well as to end its prolonged military
occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the
Gaza Strip and its punitive and illegal blockade of
Gaza, where 51 percent of the 1.8 million residents
are under the age of 18.”
The
letter is the first step, Wagner said, in a larger
campaign to educate and mobilize faith and other
communities in an effort to end the abuse of
Palestinian children and the occupation that oppresses
them and their families.
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