Girls younger than seven strip-searched at Israeli checkpoints

While organizations that focus on Israel-Palestine have long been aware that Israeli border officials regularly strip-search women and men, If Americans Knew appears to be the first organization that has specifically investigated the policy of strip-searching women. In the course of its investigation, If Americans Knew was astonished to learn that Israeli officials have been regularly strip-searching girls younger than seven for decades, some of them US citizens. According to interviews with women in the US, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli border officials periodically force Christian and Muslim females of all ages to remove their clothing and submit to searches. In some cases the children are then "felt" by Israeli officials. Sometimes mothers and children are strip-searched together, at other times little girls are taken from their parents and strip-searched alone. Women are required to remove sanitary napkins, sometimes with small daughters at their side. Sometimes women are searched in the presence of their young sons. All report deep feelings of humiliation. Many describe weeping at the degradation they felt. Gaza journalist Laila El-Haddad recalls of an experience when she was 12, pleading with her mother to convince the Israeli officials to allow her to keep her undershirt on. But parents are unable to shield their children, El-Haddad and others report. "They had machine guns," El-Haddad explains. "We just had to submit." El-Haddad, who holds a Masters degree in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, believes that the intention of the strip searches is to humiliate Palestinians so that they won't return to Palestine. The Israeli policy appears to target only Christian and Muslim children, and is equally applied to those with Israeli citizenship and citizenship in other countries, including the US. There are no reports of Jewish children being strip searched. New Jersey stand-up comedian Maysoon Zayid describes being strip-searched at Ben Gurion Airport when she was "seven, eight [and] nine years old" on family trips to visit her parent's original home in Palestine. On her most recent trip in July 2006, Maysoon, a US citizen, had her sanitary pad taken by officials in Ben Gurion Airport. When the search was completed, she says, the Israeli official in charge, Inbal Sharon, then refused to return her pad or allow her to get another. Zayid, who has cerebral palsy and was sitting in a wheelchair, was then forced to bleed publicly for hours while she waited for her flight. She describes sobbing uncontrollably. Israeli officials also confiscated medication that Zayid is required to take while flying. As a result, she vomited repeatedly throughout the 12-hour flight. Zayid, who founded a program for newly disabled Palestinian youths–many of them permanently disabled from attacks by Israeli forces–was so depressed by her treatment that she was determined never to return. But she says that she is already planning to return to her volunteer work in the West Bank. Israeli practices vary and seem to be applied randomly, from elderly women to small children. In some cases women are taken into a room alone and are left sitting naked for hours. At other times they are strip-searched in groups, their clothes thrown in a pile. When they are finally allowed to get dressed, they describe having to rummage through the pile, naked and barefoot, to find their own garments. While these policies largely target Palestinian and Palestinian-American women and children, other US citizens also report being subjected to strip searches by Israeli officials. St. Louis resident Hedy Epstein, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, reports being strip-searched three years ago following her participation in nonviolent protests in the West Bank. Epstein, who was 79 at the time, describes being forced to bend over for an Israeli official to search her internally. While the If Americans Knew investigation focused on practices concerning women, many interviewees reported frequent random strip-searching of males as well; including US citizens, children and the elderly. These searches appear to be illegal under numerous statutes. The Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory prohibit: "Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" and specifically emphasize: "Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor" and Article Two of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states: "No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy." Since US taxpayers give Israel over $8 million per day, the Council for the National Interest, a Washington, DC-based lobbying organization, is organizing a campaign to call on Congress to demand that Israel end these policies.