Stone Cold Justice

director: John Lyons, Janine Cohen and Sylvie Le Clezio Australia 2014, 46m

A film which has been produced by a group of Australian journalists has sparked an international outcry against Israel after it explicitly detailed Tel Aviv's use of torture against Palestinian children.

The film, titled ‘Stone Cold Justice’ documents how Palestinian children, who have been arrested and detained by Israeli forces, are subjected to physical abuse, torture and forced into false confessions and pushed into gathering intelligence on Palestinian activists. Australia's foreign minister Julie Bishop has spoken out against Israeli's use of torture stating that “I am deeply concerned by allegations of the mistreatment of Palestinian children,” Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor has described the human rights abuses documented in the film as “intolerable”. But rights groups have slammed this statement, saying that the Israelis are doing nothing to change Tel Aviv's policy to torture Palestinian children. Last year a report by the United Nations International Emergency Children's Fund or UNICEF concluded that Palestinian children are often targeted in night arrests and raids of their homes, threatened with death and subjected to physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault. The film Stone Cold Justice has sparked an international outcry about Israel's treatment of children in Israeli jails. However, rights groups have criticized Tel Aviv for not doing anything to create a policy that protects Palestinian children against arbitrary arrest and torture.