A few weeks ago, a Palestinian teenager was shot and seriously injured by Israeli soldiers as he attempted to flee their custody — despite the fact that he was already handcuffed and blindfolded. Osama Hajahjeh, was among a group of Palestinian youths who were arrested for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Tuqu’.

Earlier this month Israeli troops also arrested Zein Idris, a 9-year-old Palestinian boy, at his school in the West Bank city of Hebron and held him at a nearby military base for under an hour.

A video clip, recorded by human rights campaigner Aref Jaber, shows Israeli soldiers inside the elementary school attempting to remove Zein Idris and his younger brother, 7-year-old Taim, as teachers and the school principal attempt to stop the soldiers from taking the boys.

At one point, a soldier threatens to break a teacher’s arm if he doesn’t let go of Zein. Zein was eventually taken away to an army vehicle and was held at a nearby military base for just under an hour, according to the school.

Osama and Zein are just two of the thousands of Palestinian children who have been detained, injured, or even killed by Israeli armed forces over the years for throwing rocks. “Arresting children here is becoming normal,” Jaber, the human rights activist, told CNN.

But children being detained is far from “normal.”

“The situation on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, with more than five decades of Israeli military occupation, is that of a perpetual human rights crisis with severe impact on children’s rights, who are victims of unlawful killings, arbitrary detention, and collective punishment policies such as home demolitions,” Saleh Higazi, deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, told me.

Children as young as 9 are being detained for throwing rocks

Each year approximately 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. The most common charge is stone-throwing, according to Defence for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P).

Israeli military law allows anyone 12 or older to be imprisoned. But according to Bill Van Esveld, a senior researcher for the Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, stone throwing is “also considered a ‘security’ crime under Israeli military law, which means that Palestinian kids accused of stones throwing may even be deprived of certain legal protections.”

In 2015, Israeli lawmakers pushed forward stricter penalties that directly targeted Palestinian children. Amendments to the Israeli penal code included “a 10-year sentence for throwing a stone, or other object, at traffic, without intent to cause injury, and 20 years for throwing a stone, or other object, at traffic with intent to cause injury.”

In the video posted by CNN of Idris’s arrest at school, you can hear one Israeli soldier saying, “The kid threw a stone. It doesn’t matter what age he is.”

Israel ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, which requires that children should only be deprived of their liberty as a measure of last resort, must not be unlawfully or arbitrarily detained, and must not be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

But, Higazi said, “the situation of the human rights of Palestinian children is only getting worse.”

“Impunity for gross violations of children’s rights is the norm in too many places, including in Israel and Palestine,” Van Esveld said. “The Israeli criminal justice system has imposed such severe restrictions on some Palestinian children — arrests, detentions, house raids, house arrests — that they attempted suicide.”

Mistreatment of Palestinian children as consequences for “rock-throwing” is becoming increasingly normalized

Brian K. Barber, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, a nonprofit research institute in Washington, told me rock throwing is “a display of resistance to the occupation.” “One is fed up and oppressed and humiliated, and wants to respond in some way, and that’s a natural historic form of action,” Barber said.

That holds true even when it’s done by a 9-year-old. “That’s what they know has been done by their parents and grandparents, and also it’s the only thing they have really to do to show defiance,” Barber said.

However, according to Barber, the Israeli military believes that Palestinians should not challenge them in any way. And while “rock throwing is one way that Palestinians have historically challenged the occupation and Israeli military forces,” those forces have “defined that as something unacceptable and punishable,” he said.

Israeli officials also point to numerous incidents in which Israelis have been injured or even killed by thrown rocks or car accidents caused by them to justify the harsh punishments meted out to offenders.

Rock-throwing attacks have also been carried out by ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel against the IDF, as well as by Israelis against Palestinians. However, there is a stark contrast in the treatment of those rock-throwers compared to the treatment of Palestinian rock-throwers.

While Palestinians are usually physically harmed, verbally or emotionally abused, or even killed, Israelis are typically punished in a humane way. In one example, a 20-year-old Israeli was sentenced to public service, required to pay a fine, and given eight months of probation for throwing rocks and injuring a Palestinian.

“There are other laws and practices that create a very big difference in the actual treatment by Israel of 12-year-old kids depending on whether they are Israeli or Palestinian. There is discrimination in the law, and it’s worse in practice,” Van Esveld said.

Organizations like War Child, a UK-based nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and supporting children and young people affected by war, argue that children are being detained when they should instead be receiving psychosocial support for the traumas stemming from living in conflict zones in Gaza and the West Bank.

“The need for qualified caregivers vastly outstrips the supply. Meanwhile, the reality children are living continues to create trauma,” Van Esveld said.

A study released last month by Norwegian Refugee Council on children living in the Gaza Strip found that more than two-thirds of children surveyed experience psychosocial distress because of the violent response to the Gaza protests and daily attacks they witness — or endure. Alongside this, “a worrying 54% said they had no hope for a brighter future.” The study also found that “a staggering 81% of children struggle academically due to conflict-related stress.”

According to DCI-P, 73 percent of children held in detention experienced physical violence following arrest. “These children often give ‘confessions,’ without the presence of a parent or lawyer, after being subjected by Israeli forces to verbal abuse, threats, physical and psychological violence that in some cases amounts to torture, which is absolutely prohibited under international law,” Higazi said.

The auditory and sensory violence that children are experiencing day to day, where many are harmed or detained as a form of punishment, rather than receiving psychosocial support, has led to violence becoming a normal part of the reality of their “childhoods.”

An Israeli court has ordered the expulsion of the Israel and Palestine director of Human Rights Watch, a US-based NGO that advocates for human rights, citing “his actions publicly to advance a boycott against Israel.”

Omar Shakir, a US citizen, has been given two weeks to leave the country, the AP reports.

Shakir’s case is merely the latest example of the Israeli government’s growing crackdown on activists over their advocacy of or connections to the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Last week, Omar Barghouti, a founder of the BDS movement, was attempting to fly from Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport to the US for a speaking tour when he was informed that his US visa had been revoked for unspecified “immigration reasons” — a move he decried as “ideologically and politically motivated” and the result of Israel’s “escalating repression against Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders.”

US State Department spokesperson Robert Palladino declined to provide details about Barghouti’s case citing confidentiality restrictions, but told reporters at the time that US law does not “authorize the refusal of visas based solely on political statements or views if those statements or views would be lawful in the United States, no matter how distasteful or objectionable some may find those statements or views.”

Israeli law, though, is a different story.

In 2017, the country passed a law banning any foreigner from entering the country if that individual “knowingly issues a public call for boycotting Israel.” Tuesday’s ruling against Human Rights Watch’s Shakir marks the first time that law has been applied to someone already residing in the country.

The court said Shakir “continues his actions publicly to advance a boycott against Israel … through disseminating his calls to advance boycott primarily through his Twitter account and by other means.”

In a statement, Human Rights Watch said neither the organization nor Shakir promotes boycotts of Israel, but acknowledged that both have called for companies to cease operations in West Bank settlements because they “inherently benefit from and contribute to serious violations of international humanitarian law.”

It added that the court’s ruling “threatens the ability of all Human Rights Watch staff members to access both Israel and the West Bank.”

Concerns about the suppression of pro-Palestinian activists are growing in the US and Israel

These recent events of “banning” two prominent activists because of their activism and beliefs has raised concerns about whether human rights activists who speak out against Israeli policies are having their right to free speech suppressed.

At least 27 states in the US have adopted laws to combat BDS activism, according to Palestine Legal, an independent legal advocacy organization, founded in 2012 and dedicated to supporting the movement for Palestinian rights.

Earlier this year, the US Senate passed a bill that included an anti-BDS provision. Known as Title 4, the provision would give states a legal blessing to punish companies that choose not to do business with Israel or Israeli-owned enterprises, a key demand of the BDS movement.

But while that bill has not yet become law in the US (and will likely face stiff pushback from House Democrats), Israeli law has already gone much further, as Tuesday’s action against Shakir shows.

“Israel portrays itself as the region’s only democracy, but is set to deport a rights defender over his peaceful advocacy,” Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in a statement about the Shakir ruling.

“The decision sends the chilling message that those who criticize the involvement of businesses in serious abuses in Israeli settlements risk being barred from Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank,” he continued.

And indeed, that seems to be the point. Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan, whose ministry leads anti-boycott efforts, praised the ruling. “Boycott activists need to understand that what was will no longer be,” he said.

Sudan’s military has overthrown the country’s longtime president, Omar al-Bashir. It’s a huge win for the hundreds of thousands of Sudanese protesters who have taken to the streets for months calling for his ouster — and for the brave women who have been a driving force in the protest movement.

Sudan’s Defense Minister Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf announced Thursday that al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s Darfur region, had been taken into military custody. While it’s unclear if the military plans to turn al-Bashir over to the ICC for prosecution, it’s pretty clear that his brutal 30-year reign has come to a definitive end.

Much of the credit for al-Bashir’s removal goes to the women who have played a prominent role in the uprising that has swept the country and who have become the faces of the largely peaceful movement to topple the regime.

Earlier this week, an iconic photo of a woman named Alaa Salah, a 22-year-old engineering and architecture student, addressing protesters from atop a car went viral.

The image, captured by local photographer Lana Haroun, shows Salah standing on a white car surrounded by a sea of people outside the presidential compound and army headquarters in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. Wrapped in layers of shimmery white fabric styled as a “toub” — a traditional Sudanese style of dress for women — and gold moon earrings, Salah towers over the crowd of protesters, her finger raised defiantly in the air.

A video of Salah leading protesters in songs and chants also went viral on social media. It shows Salah calling out, “In the name of religion, they killed us,” with the crowd responding, “Revolution!”

Her toub, and those worn by other women protesters, has become a symbol of freedom, strength, and solidarity in a country that has been suffering from a state of turmoil, oppression, and instability for decades under al-Bashir’s rule.

Salah and the thousands of other women who have been leading and participating in the protests are being referred to as “Kandaka” — the Nubian title for “queen.” They’ve become both the face of the movement to oust al-Bashir and a symbol of the struggle for women’s rights in Sudan.

Women’s rights in Sudan are abysmal. They protested in large numbers anyway.

Despite the threats that Sudanese women continually face, ranging from child marriage to domestic violence, sexual harassment, and rape, few policies have been put in place to protect women and girls in Sudan.

Sudan’s public order laws, which control women’s freedom of dress, behavior, association, and education, have led to the oppression and punishment of Sudanese women for years and enabled a patriarchal system to thrive. Girls as young as 10 years old are legally allowed to marry, and girls are frequently forced into marriages with much older men without their consent. Marital rape is also legal in the country.

Women’s rights in Sudan faced international condemnation last May when a child bride, Noura Hussein, was sentenced to death for killing her husband as he tried to rape her. However, after an online petition appealing for clemency garnered more than 1.5 million signatures, her sentence was reduced to a five-year jail sentence.

Yet despite having faced this kind of repression and exploitation for decades — or, perhaps, because of that fact — women have been at the forefront of the nationwide protests since they began in December. Reports estimate that more than 70 percent of the protesters who have gone out into the streets are women, according to the BBC.

Since images of her leading protests went viral, Salah says she has received death threats. Yet she remains undeterred: “I will not bow down. My voice can not be suppressed. Will hold Al-Bashir responsible if anything happens to me. #JusticeWillPrevail,” she wrote on Twitter, just one day before al-Bashir was removed from power.

After the military announced al-Bashir’s ouster, Sudanese women took to the streets to celebrate. Huge crowds of protesters gathered and were seen cheering amid celebratory gunfire in Khartoum on Thursday.

But not all of them are convinced this is a happy ending

Many protesters reacted with anger after Sudanese Defense Minister Ibn Auf announced in a speech Thursday that a two-year transitional government administered by the military would take over following al-Bashir’s arrest.

On Twitter, Salah accused the al-Bashir regime of “hoodwinking Sudanese civilians through a military coup” and demanded that a civilian council be put in charge of the transitional government.

Protesters also said that after Ibn Auf, a key military leader during al-Bashir’s suppression of rebels in Darfur in the early 2000s, delivered his speech, their hope had been turned to anger and disappointment as they realized he was unlikely to give al-Bashir up for prosecution by the ICC.

“They just replaced one thief with another,” Ahmad Ibrahim, a young protester sitting on the ground under the sweltering heat near the sit-in outside of the army headquarters, told the Washington Post. “We are going to keep pushing until all of our demands are met.”