US official: Israel uses US tax funds to detain Palestinian children

The US House of Representatives member for Minnesota, Betty McCollum, has demanded that the US taxpayer money must not be used to support the Israeli occupation forces who detain Palestinian children.

The US official said in an article published by The Nation newspaper that Israel is the greatest beneficiary of the US military assistance, part of which flows to Israel's abusive detention of Palestinian children.

McCollum added that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has persisted for decades, including 50 years of Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands. To help sustain the occupation, Israel's military forces have arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned thousands of Palestinian children mostly for throwing stones.

She explained that children under the age of 12 are taken from their beds at night handcuffed and blindfolded by the Israeli soldiers to the detention centers. Under the Israeli military law, these children are denied access to lawyers during interrogation, and even younger children are regularly denied access to their parents during interrogations.

She concluded by saying, "I firmly believe that Palestinian children deserve to be treated with the same humanity, dignity, and human rights as any child anywhere including children in the US or Israel."