In recent months, hundreds of children, under the age of 18 and some as young as five years-old, have been arbitrarily arrested and detained without trial in both the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and in Bahrain.
In Bahrain, it is exclusively the majority Shia communities that are targeted by regime forces of the Saudi-backed Al Khalifa monarchy. Over the past four months, up to 100 children have been snatched from their homes without warrants, detained indefinitely, interrogated and even tortured, according to Bahraini human rights sources. Some of the children have been convicted of terrorism on the basis of forced confessions and given jail sentences of up to 15 years.
Meanwhile, a similar policy of persecuting children is extant in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Over the weekend, four children aged between five and nine years were cuffed and hauled off to unknown detention centers by Israeli soldiers. The arrests took place after Israeli military, firing stun grenades, attacked a peaceful protest, which had been attended by international observers.
This misconduct by Israeli and Bahraini state forces is a gross violation of international law. In legal terms, the unlawful detention of children in this way is tantamount to kidnapping by the state. The interrogation and mistreatment of the children in custody and their long-term incarceration further compounds the flagrant barbarity.
The conclusion is clear: this targeting of children has to have been formulated as a deliberate policy of state terrorism. No doubt the calculation of those engaged in the black arts of population control is that traumatizing young minds is an efficacious method of subjugating future generations.
But there are wider geopolitical implications from these particulars. Bear in mind that the Bahraini autocratic regime is fully supported by its Wahhabi patrons in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Indeed, at various times during the repression of the Bahraini pro-democracy uprising since February 2011, military forces from the other Persian Gulf Arab monarchies have been present in Bahrain and fully assisted in the crackdown against the Shia population.
So, while we are focusing primarily on state terrorism techniques of the Israeli and Bahraini forces here, the partnership with the Zionist regime applies to all the Persian Gulf Wahhabi monarchies ¬¬- for which Bahrain is a surrogate.
Terrorizing children as a way of attacking a target population is not the only area of common practice by the Israeli and Arab despotic regimes.
Destruction of mosques and other places of worship also connote a shared reading of counter-insurgency manuals. The irony of this is that Saudi Arabia refers to itself as "the Custodian of the Two Holy Sites of Islam."
In Bahrain, over the past two years hundreds of Shia mosques and community prayer rooms, called "Mattams," have been either bulldozed or extensively vandalized by state forces. Some of the mosques razed have included ancient sites dating back centuries.
In the occupied Palestinian lands, Israeli forces have also destroyed and desecrated mosques. The pseudo legal justification is tellingly similar to that articulated by the Bahraini regime. Both use Orwellian lexicon by claiming that the places of worship destroyed did not have official construction permits.
Another common method of repression is the indiscriminate use of toxic chemicals against civilians. In both Israeli-occupied Palestine and Bahrain, the chemicals are referred to euphemistically as "tear gas."
But in enclosed spaces, the chemicals are lethal and have resulted in deaths, birth miscarriages and long-term illnesses. The purpose of this saturation use of toxic weapons is "collective punishment" of the civilian population - a crime against humanity - for that population's audacity to have dissenting political views.
We could add more common forms of repression: the ghettoization of persecuted communities and forced deprivation. In Gaza and the West Bank, communities are cut off from farming, fishing and other forms of employment; power and sewage utilities are scuttled, and people are forced to live as exiles within their own native country.
In Bahrain, systematic deprivation against Shia communities also prevails. Construction and land reclamation projects for luxury property development that benefit the Khalifa regime have in turn destroyed traditional fishing and farming, resulting in whole communities being marginalized in poverty and squalor.
Ultimately, the objective is to dehumanize, demoralize and dispossess. And the way that such repression is applied systematically by both the Israeli and Bahraini regimes strongly indicates that there is strategic partnership between the Zionist despots in Tel Aviv and Manama, as well as Riyadh, Doha and Abu Dhabi.
This conclusion is corroborated by the fact that intelligence agencies of these regimes regularly hold clandestine meetings. Saudi Arabia's spymaster, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, is known to liaise with Israel's Mossad chief, Tamir Bardo, the most recent meeting between the two reportedly held in the Jordanian port city of Aqaba earlier this month.
Last month, Lebanon's Al Manar news service quoted Israeli Channel Two about a Persian Gulf Arab-Israeli intelligence meeting held in Tel Aviv. Those attending included, "Saudi intelligence chief, Bandar bin Sultan, National Security Advisor and Deputy Chief of Executive Council in Abu Dhabi, Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in addition to Bahrain intelligence chief, General Adel bin Khalifa Al Fadhel, who is one of the [Persian] Gulf intelligence officers with the strongest ties to Mossad."
Furthermore, Michael Oren, the outgoing Israeli ambassador to the US, made this stunning admission to the Jerusalem Post recently when the spoke of the close, growing ties between Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchies. Oren said, "In the last 64 years there has probably never been a greater confluence of interest between us and several [Persian] Gulf [Arab] states. With these [Persian] Gulf states, we have agreements on Syria, on Egypt, on the Palestinian issue. We certainly have agreements on Iran. This is one of those opportunities presented by the Arab Spring."
Apart from identifying common techniques of repression and intelligence links between these regimes, another all-important indicator of strategic alliance is that they share the same Western sponsors - Washington and London - who afford crucial political cover for these regimes to continue their crimes against humanity.
For the West, the strategic importance of these regimes is that collectively they form a bulwark against movements for democracy.
The bottom line is that the Persian Gulf Arab monarchies have now clearly emerged as strategic partners with the Israeli regime. Despite superficial differences, all are lawless regimes that are guilty of crimes against humanity and crimes against Arab and Muslims in particular. They share criminal methodology and logistics.
This fact removes any pretense by Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf Arab clients that they are somehow the rightful leaders of the Arab and Muslim people. Far from it, these despots are colluding in historic betrayal. That betrayal is not a new development. What is "new" is the visibility of it.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism.
::Union Paradise®
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