Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Conceptual and Theoretical Foundations
- 2 Casting the First Stone: The Israeli Legal System, Its Human Rights Critics, and Their Approaches to Young Palestinians
- 3 The Age of Governing: Young Age as a Means of Control
- 4 Boundary Governance: Amending Childhood and Separating Palestinians
- 5 Stolen Childhood: Voice, Loss, and Trauma in Human Rights Reports
- 6 Sights of Violence: Childhood in the Visual Battlefield
- 7 Infantilization and Militarism: Soldiers as Children, Children as Soldiers
- 8 Unsettling Children: Israeli Law and Settlers’ Childhood
- Index
8 - Unsettling Children: Israeli Law and Settlers’ Childhood
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Conceptual and Theoretical Foundations
- 2 Casting the First Stone: The Israeli Legal System, Its Human Rights Critics, and Their Approaches to Young Palestinians
- 3 The Age of Governing: Young Age as a Means of Control
- 4 Boundary Governance: Amending Childhood and Separating Palestinians
- 5 Stolen Childhood: Voice, Loss, and Trauma in Human Rights Reports
- 6 Sights of Violence: Childhood in the Visual Battlefield
- 7 Infantilization and Militarism: Soldiers as Children, Children as Soldiers
- 8 Unsettling Children: Israeli Law and Settlers’ Childhood
- Index
Summary
Chapter 8 delves into the legal construction of Israeli settlers’ childhood, revisiting in the process key themes and insights from the previous chapters. The greater rights and preferential treatment enjoyed by settlers aged under 18, compared with those of same-age Palestinians, are explored in this chapter, with a focus on two test cases: stone throwing by settler youth, and the question of whether to detain settlers aged under 18 separately from their elders. In the process, the chapter sheds light on the lax law enforcement on settler youth; on their lenient sentencing; on soldiers’ abuse of Palestinian victims of settler violence; on the courts’ consideration of settlers’ military service as a mitigating factor; on convictions only where Palestinian complaints are corroborated by Israeli witnesses; and on the rejection of Palestinians’ selective enforcement claims. Next, the chapter interrogates what critics have described as Israel’s childish response to the refusal of detained settler girls to disclose their ages. This dynamic offers broader lessons about age, voice, and infantilization. Finally, the chapter casts light on two central modes of representation in parliamentary debates on the impact of the Gaza pullout on young Jewish evacuees: a mental health language of trauma and loss, and visual imagery.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Problematizing Law, Rights, and Childhood in Israel/Palestine , pp. 303 - 334Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021