Last night I posted a disturbing video of soldiers teasing a Palestinian in ways I couldn't understand. Here is the Haaretz story behind it:
Channel 10 on Thursday released footage taken by
Israel Defense Forces soldiers of themselves humiliating a bound and
blindfolded Palestinian man at a West Bank checkpoint.
The footage shows the Palestinian kneeling and repeating sentences
given to him to say by the soldiers, who belong to the Golani infantry
brigade.
One of the lines is: "Golani will bring you a log to stick up your ass."
As the detainee repeats the words, the soldiers are heard laughing raucously in the background.
Later Thursday, the army issued a harsh condemnation of the troops' actions.
Israel Defense Forces soldiers of themselves humiliating a bound and
blindfolded Palestinian man at a West Bank checkpoint.
The footage shows the Palestinian kneeling and repeating sentences
given to him to say by the soldiers, who belong to the Golani infantry
brigade.
One of the lines is: "Golani will bring you a log to stick up your ass."
As the detainee repeats the words, the soldiers are heard laughing raucously in the background.
Later Thursday, the army issued a harsh condemnation of the troops' actions.
Only in Haaretz. I ask you to imagine this happening in Brooklyn with a black person–or say, Iran, with some of the small Jewish population there. Would it make our news?
Finally, reread the headline. Israeli Soliders Film Themselves… And this is no aberration. Do you understand why I say this is a crisis for Jewishness?
I attempted to post the following at Haartz:
"I'm beginning to think Israel is the anus of Mother Earth."
If you say the same thing about EVERY nation that undertakes terror or abuse of prisoners and civilians, then your anger would have a point.
Your language though is in the toilet, and should have been "censored".
Those Israeli soldiers must have served in the NYPD before immigrating to Israel.
" If you say the same thing about EVERY nation that undertakes terror or abuse of prisoners and civilians, then you anger would have a point."
If you are just angry at a specific situation, then you do not have a point, go away you Anti-Semite, and come back to criticize Israel AFTER you fixed ALL the injustices in the world but not before.
Considering the 30 billion dollar blank IOU given to Israel this year,
plus the cache of special Memorandums of Understanding, I'd say
anger is justified. Same as to American terror and abuse.
How are Jews treated in Lebanese jails, Hamas jails, Iranian jails?
The issue of fairness touches on whether one is advocating for a legal or moral principle, or ONLY a targeted rage at a vaguely defined group.
"Abuse is abuse.
It is NOT an example of civilized behavior.
It should not be acceptable policy, acceptable behavior, not enabled by indiscipline.
How others treat you, is NOT a rationale for treating others inhumanely."
From my response to the first blog posting on the same story.
Witty, as usual, you're being disingenuous. You aren't actually an idiot, so I have trouble believing that you are really convinced by your own evasions.
Isn't your insistent defense of Israel coming from more or less the same place as Phil's insistent analysis and criticism — the fact that you're both Jewish and Israel is a Jewish state? You look at the situation differently, but in part that's just because he's more honest than you are.
As for the rest of us, many of whom are not Jewish, well, as an American I am concerned about America's relations with the rest of the world, and that is affected (particularly with regard to Muslim countries) by what Israel does while receiving huge amounts of money from the USA, and how little the US says against some of the things Israel does, and how any attempt to discuss these issues openly leads to dishonest accusations of "anti-semitism" intended to simply shut down the debate and allow Israel to continue doing whatever it pleases without accountability to anyone.
Sure, terrible things are happening in other countries, but aside from America's own actions in Iraq and Afghanistan (which I oppose), for the most part the USA is not as closely associated with those things as we are with Israel and its doings. China didn't pay for the invasion of Tibet with American foreign aid money.
Craig,
The point is that the dissenting voice appears to be picking its enemies, RATHER than picking its principles.
When 911 occurred, much of the left sought to avoid a "war on terrorism". Rationally.
One of my objections to the Bush administration's use of that slogan was that it was intentionally vague, and intentionally selective, thereby giving cover for personal vendettas rather than application of any consistent and reliable principle.
I found that many on the left, adopted "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" reasoning, and sought to shut down discussion on the effects of terror.
Many ONLY condemned state terror, and either ignored or romantically sheltered factional terror, at least of their pet factions.
At the time, I wrote and spoke among greens in my region, that it represented an opportunity for the greens to take a principled, non-political stand that was consistent with the assertions of peace organizations throughout the world, of opposing ALL terror.
In that way, it would have been possible to make statements about state use of terror, that would have weight because it was a principle applied consistently.
The experience of the trauma of the individual, or families, and the objective evidence of the methods used, on the ground that determined if an action was terror or defense.
The local greens rejected it. They had already picked their enemy, and they weren't thinking about what would be a definition in a decade,
And, they weren't thinking in terms of "what would I/we do?". What could we propose?
So, they aren't taken seriously. (I don't speak of "we" anymore on this.)
Witty, it sounds like you're saying that you think Phil is simply against Israel no matter what it does, right or wrong — that he has picked an enemy (Israel or Zionism) rather than a principle, because he focuses on Israeli crimes and does not devote equal time to discussing genocides in Africa, the activities of the Chinese in Tibet, and so on. Is that how you see it? It seems to me that the reason for his focus is clear, as I indicated in my previous comment. If his devotion to his principles seems like opposition to Israel, maybe that's just because the situation in Israel is so outrageously offensive to those principles. I don't wish to put words in his mouth, but this is the impression his writing gives to me.
Calling Israel an anus is too kind. I prefer "hemorrhoid".
Very expensive.
For Eva Smagacz
Jews protect Palestinians in harvest of hate
Israelis cross religious divide to shelter olive farmers from settlers' attacks
By Donald Macintyre in Awarta, West Bank
Friday, 10 October 2008
In the shade of the trees where they have been picking olives all morning, in this wadi, south-east of Nablus, a Palestinian farmer, Jamal Otman Koarik, and two of his daughters share a lunch of home-baked bread, zatar, oil, courgettes and salad with three visitors. It's a bucolic scene that could have happened any time in the past century. But what makes it notable in 2008 is that the guests who have been helping Mr Koarik pick the olives are Israeli Jews: a rabbi, an anthropologist and a youth worker, Hellela Siew.
Born in Tel Aviv, Ms Siew served in the army, took a university degree, then a teacher's diploma. Thirty-six years ago, she took the tough decision to emigrate to London, telling her parents: "I won't come back until there's peace." Ms Siew, who is now 64, remains an Israeli citizen but now lives with her British husband in Hebden Bridge. She has kept to her word, except that each autumn she comes back to stay in her hometown with her relatives and spends each day of the two-month harvest season picking olives on Palestinian farmland in the West Bank.
And Ms Siew does that for a purpose. Up on the ridge above us, you can see the red roofs of Itamar, a notably hard-line Jewish settlement, and she is here to help protect the Palestinian farmers from the threat of settler violence which has so often scarred the olive harvests.
Last year, she was in a group in the South Hebron Hills confronted by settlers who fired shots from a pistol and an M16 assault rifle, despite the presence of the army and police. "Then one of the soldiers said, 'Look, one of them is coming down with a jug of water for you'. The settler emptied the jug over me. It was full of human shit."
Mr Koarik, the olive farmer, says he has no difficulty distinguishing between the settlers who fired on and burnt out his tractor during the harvest six years ago and the Jews who come to help him. "I welcome them here like they are my family," the 40-year-old says. Looking up at the settlement, Ms Siew tries to explain, as a lifelong opponent of the occupation, why she comes each year. "When there was the big demonstration against the Iraq war in England people carried banners saying 'Not in my name'. I'm trying to do something against what is being done in my name."
Ms Siew was brought here by the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights, led by Rabbi Arik Ascherman who has led a never-ending campaign to persuade the army and police to enforce the Palestinian olive growers' right to farm their land despite the settlers' attempts to stop them. RHR has made a special effort this year to maximise its volunteer numbers because of the growing incidence of settler violence against Palestinians in the past few months.
Rabbi Ascherman says that apart from one notably ugly and violent confrontation with aggressive settlers in Hebron last week, the harvest has been relatively quiet. But it has only just begun. And while the army insists that it will "strive" to ensure as normal a harvest as possible, Rabbi Ascherman is considering returning to the Supreme Court because of restrictions he says the military is still imposing on the farmers even in areas opened up under a 2006 order made by the Court.
Asked why he and his volunteers make this often risky mission each year, the US-born rabbi says "if we really believe" the Biblical text that all human beings are made in God's image, "we have got to put our money where our mouth is and be here in an active way to defend human rights". And he also cites the "dialogue of the olive groves" in which Israelis and Palestinians who "have to live and die here together" have "no choice but to communicate" if they also work together. "I think this is not only the just and right and Jewish thing to do, but it's the self-interested thing to do. We are going to survive."
SOURCE- link to independent.co.uk