Two weeks back, publisher Mort Zuckerman wrote a piece on Huffpo called "The Story You Aren't Hearing from Israel" that began with an event he described as one of the "everyday incidents
of the ordeal confronted by people in Israel:"
Did you hear about the two policemen who stopped to help a driver stuck with a flat--and were shot to death in the head at point-blank range?
As a smart friend pointed out here in a post called "Fact-Checking Mort Zuckerman," the killings took place not in Israel, but near Jericho, the Occupied Territories. But for Zuckerman, the Occupied Territories are "Israel" and "Judea and Samaria."
Following that post, I had correspondence with Gregory Eow, who had lately returned from the Middle East. In fact, Eow was in the West Bank on the night of Zuckerman's incident. His story:
Regarding the story that Mort Zuckerman referenced, I was on that road
where the two Israeli policemen were killed about two hours after it
happened. Earlier that evening, my friend and I had crossed into Israel from Jordan at
the Jordan River Valley crossing. We got to the border around 7:00 pm
and didn't clear customs [near Beit She'an] until just after 9:00. Then we got in a taxi
for Jerusalem and our route cut right through the West Bank.
It was a
hell of an initiation. Several observations:
1) Some Israeli border guards/police do not wear uniforms. They wear cargo pants and sneakers while carrying serious machine guns slung over their shoulders. I should be clear that I'm talking about guards who work outside of the border-crossing facilities, not the workers inside of the customs facilities. I haven't been able to find more information on this phenomenon, but it was at every border area I was at, including the Jordan River Border Crossing, the Border Crossing into the West Bank south of Beit She'an, and later at the Yitzhak Rabin Crossing down at Eilat. I think this is a violation of the Geneva Conventions which say that soldiers must be in uniform. Then again, maybe these guys are classified as police. Either way, it's rather unnerving to see guys in casual clothing carrying machine guns and lurking around. I've never seen anyone else comment on this fact, but it made an impression on me.
2) Mr. Zuckerman is off-base if he's suggesting that the West Bank is just like Israel proper. At 9:00 the night of those shootings I was in Beit She'an [in Israel proper, north of the West Bank] and everything felt like California. At 10:45 or so I was in Jerusalem, and it was full of food stalls and Internet cafes, situation totally copacetic. But in between, in the West Bank, we're talking war zone. At least it was that night.
I think the shooting took
place around 8 pm - no one is exactly certain when the crime happened -
and our taxi passed through on that road sometime between 9:15-10:15.
We may not have been on the road at the exact place of the shooting,
because we had to divert a few times and I was disoriented. (We were
diverted because of the shooting.) Anyway, there was a serious military
presence out on the roads looking for the shooters. I'm not talking
about the nice-looking IDF soldiers you see in the bus station in
Jerusalem. I'm talking about battle-ready soldiers in full gear -
balaclava masks, heavy armor - stopping traffic in the middle of
nowhere with spotlights and machine guns at the ready.
When our taxi
came across one of these impromptu checkpoints, he immediately stopped.
I mean, he stopped abruptly, as if he were unnerved. The soldiers put a
spotlight on us and yelled at the driver, all the while aiming their
machine guns at us. They were standing in a shooting position. This was
not a regular checkpoint, this was not soldiers on regular patrol. I'm
talking about soldiers outfitted for combat stalking empty roads in the
dark. The scariest thing about the situation, at least for me, was that
these soldiers looked and acted afraid. When a car approached from the
other direction, the soldiers quickly turned and aimed as if to fire
upon it. I felt terrible for these guys. These were scared young men,
in the dark, in the cold, surrounded by God only knows what. Needless
to say, I was terrified. One soldier, after seeing how afraid I was and
after looking at my U.S. Passport (through the window, while he was
pointing his machine gun directly on my body ready to shoot), opened
the door to the car and said in perfect English, machine gun still
nearly pointed on me, "Don't be afraid. Two policemen have been shot and we're looking for the shooters." God bless him, he was
well-trained and could tell I was upset.
By relaying the above story I am in no way criticizing the soldiers or their behavior that night. They were completely professional. I'm arguing that the fact that the shooting affected the entire north West Bank so differently from Jerusalem, even though Jerusalem was closer to the shooting, suggests that the West Bank operates a lot differently from Israel proper. I know, basic stuff. But it should also be basic to leave the Green Line marking off the West Bank on maps for schoolchildren.
3) Driving through the West Bank at night is illustrative, because you can really make out the settlements. Israeli settlements look like prisons, with well lit up perimeter walls (though in this case to keep people out). The lights around Israeli settlements are bright white, perhaps fluorescent lighting. Palestinian towns do not have well-defined perimeters like the Israeli settlements and they give off an orange hazy glow, unlike the bright white Israeli settlements. Anyway, driving through at night you can see the Israeli settlements lit up everywhere, some small, some huge, often in the hills. They dot the entire West Bank, as you well know, but it's really distinctive to see in the dark.
Two closing points. First, for weeks afterward I kept thinking about my first night in the West Bank. I didn't think about the settlements or having a machine gun in my face, though that is what I experienced firsthand. Instead, I kept thinking about those two police officers who were murdered. You can say that the settlements ought not be in the West Bank and that Israeli policemen ought not have to guard them. In fact, I now believe both of those things. But I kept thinking about those police officers out on those roads that night. They pulled over to help what they thought was a stranded motorist and found themselves in the dark alone with their murderers. I'm having a hard time accepting that. Second, for reasons not totally spelled out in this e-mail, I really came to despise the Occupation during my travels through the West Bank. I still love Israel, or at least I still love the idea of Israel. But for now I'm going to have to let my disgust with the Occupation supersede my affections. It's the only decent option I can see.
I still love Israel, or at least I still love the idea of Israel. But for now I'm going to have to let my disgust with the Occupation supersede my affections. It's the only decent option I can see.
Phil, you find (or they come to you) some great essays. Today the most important role you can play is to illuminate the conflicts going on within Jewish opinion over Israel. This passage is great — a beginning realization of the 'idea' of Israel is contradicted by the objective reality of what Israel has become. Perhaps Gregory's next step is to realize that the original zionist dream (the 'idea' of Israel) was in a fundamental violation of the rights of native Arabs that already lived there.
If that contradiction can be understood by diaspora Jews, then perhaps a negotiated settlement to the current mess will be possible.
Why be surprised? Palestinian terrorists kill by perfidy all the time. The most interesting case was the young woman whose personal ad brought her "date" out to be riddled with 7.62mm rounds.
I dress like a hiker, look "Arab", and backpack a lot within Israel and Jerusalem-and-Latrun adjacent areas of the West Bank. I've been stopped by the elite police units, by the regular army, by traffic police, Shin Bet, and settlers, because I'm a Jew who looks like an Arab trying to look like a Jew. "Don't be afraid" is the usual line, delivered with equanimity by one soldier with his weapon at "ready carry" and the other (in back of him) at "alert carry". At that point, you are about 1.5 seconds away from six bullets, should you make any sudden movements.
I've been out hiking alone at night, and been stopped and sent back to by the Border Police, with the admonition "You've reached the end of our world", even though I was far from the border, because the mujahadin own the night along the Green Line. I have probably walked past Islamic Jihad on the back side of Mt. Scopus, coming down to the service stop in Sheikh Jarrah, hidden from view by the scrub.
The night-time world is a special place, where it is hard to know who is the hunted and who is the hunter. No wonder the soldiers were scared.
RE: "Some Israeli border guards/police do not wear uniforms."
MY COMMENT: I recall recently reading that Israel is beginning to contract with private companies to perform some security functions in the West Bank.
Thanks for posting this, Phil. It's a very informative story.
At last something we can agree on: We both love Israel and hate the occupation. You also showed a great deal of understanding of what it must be like for a conscripted soldier to be out on the roads at night looking for murderers. (BTW, I believe that the two police officers were murdered in the Jordan Valley, not in the West Bank.)
they own the night
but not the Wehrmacht
Are you saying that the Jordan Valley belongs to Israel and is not part of the West Bank?
grrrr. are these html codes working.
let's try italics or bold.
Maybe. But why not before.
Do we really want a return to the border regime of '49-'67, when the Green Line was guarded with "shoot to kill" orders being standard? Nightly curfews for Umm al-Fahm, Silwan, Issawiya, and the Old City? The gap between the Green Line and the Arab suburbs of Jerusalem was patrolled by traffic police until '87, and by Border Police until '01, and has only become a military zone recently. The relative peace along the line was pivotal in allowing civilization, and it has been replaced by nightly displays of power in the Old City by the Border Police. The relative usefulness of the Security Fence obscures the fact that the Green Line has never meant anything to terrorist infiltrators, and that the war of infiltration scarcely paused, with 1970-74 being characterized by attacks on Israel by Arab states and attacks on Israelis in Europe. The reason Beit Shean was quieter was because the attackers would be returning to the central West Bank, not because of some different status of 1949-Israel. To the terrorists, it is all Occupied Palestine.
Great essay. I'm saving this, thanks.
No, I most certainaly am not!
"The most interesting case was the young woman whose personal ad brought her "date" out to be riddled with 7.62mm rounds."
What made this interesting was that her "date" was a teenage boy (I believe that he was 15 years old).
These situations are why so many people I know refuse to spend time thinking about the situation in Israel-Palestine – it seems no one is in the right, but instead both sides are in the wrong.
Imad Mughniyeh was blown up by unidentified actors. He is reported as "implicated in", "alledged to" have committed and was "indicted" for terrorism by the US, and is described by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy as an "arch-terrorist" in Policy Watch #1340.
Fox News on 2.13.08 framed the response to his assassination as: "The United States welcomed the death of Mughniyeh…" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330525,00.html
Beirut, 16 Mar 09,
http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/Lebanon/BD2BA07A49977F0BC225757B002BD7AA?OpenDocument:
"In the first claim of responsibility, an anonymous man called Agence France Presse to say the "Imad Mughniyeh Group" was behind the Jordan Valley attack in which two Israeli policemen were killed.
The group is named after a Hizbullah commander who was killed by a car bomb in Damascus in February 2008 that was blamed on Israel. It denied involvement."
A Hizbullah leader is assassinated for all alleged crimes. In revenge for Israel's alleged involvement in assassinating the Hizbullah leader, Israel police are assassinated. Nothing is proven on either side.
The point of criminal prosecution is, to the extent possible, to prove that a criminal act has been committed and, when the criminal nature of an act can be substantiated, to provide social redress through the punishment prescribed by law. Extra-legal killings for alleged crimes put States executing such actions outside the law, and IMO by doing so create the potential for an extra-legal response against individual members of the State.
Should be:
A Hizbullah leader is assassinated for alledged crimes.
Sounds more like 1930's style underworld Chicago gang feuds.
It appears that the period 1970-1974 was characterized by violence against civilians in both directions–
link
You take your détente where you find it. The fact is that from '70-'74 and '77-'87 the Israeli occupation regime in East Jerusalem was designed to approximate a civil-society administration of a peaceful city, even when terrorism and rioting were present. The retooling of that situation, first by the 1st Intifada, and later and more seriously by the PA "mini-intifada" of '96, obviated a situation whose smooth continuation might have led to peace. A smooth transition from peaceful Israeli administration to peaceful Palestinian administration was prevented when the PA/Hamas/Jihad overplayed its hand and revealed that the final goal had never changed, leading to the indefinite occupation/separation that now holds.
And a few Israeli employers who thought they could still visit their former employees in the West Bank.
Shades of the OAS–cut all contact by killing the bosses or the workers who have inter-communal connections. Disassemble community on the micro-level. The Haifa factory massacre of '47 sent the message that class consciousness and trade-unionism and personal connections were as grass. Sinister.
You can find a photograph of Mughniyeh on the web, holding a gun in the cockpit of TWA 847 during the hijacking.
I suppose the US or Israel could have asked Syria pretty-please to extradite him. Obviously, the standard of proof of a US Federal Grand Jury isn't enough for you. And the US did stick with the legalism. Mughniyeh had so many enemies, had his hands in the deaths of so many people, Americans, Israelis, Lebanese, that it's almost a case of Fuentovejuna or the Orient Express. And perhaps the Syrian Mukhabarat had its reasons as well.
Also, to quote Nag in Kipling's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"–"If you move I will bite, and if you do not move, I will bite."
Obviously the provocation of Jews living in Nabi Samwil in 1920, Jaffa in 1921, and Hebron in 1929 was just too great.
That's pure crap, and you know it…
Obviously the provocation has a lot more than 'living' than your willing to admit. But you knew that….
The US did in fact ask France and Saudi Arabia to detain Mughniyeh or allow his apprehension on several occasions, when he was transiting those nations or (in the case of Saudi, at one time) on one of their aircraft. So the US, of which you are a citizen, acted totally above-board with respect to Mughniyeh. You can, of course, object to the CIA attempts on Fadlallah's life, but that is a slightly different issue.
It is highly likely that either another Arab power or the Lebanese or Syrian opposition are responsible for the attack. And even if you were Syrian or Lebanese, your objection would have no effect on the essential Law-of-the-Jungle lawlessness of those societies, nor do the S&L bars or legal associations or human rights groups have enough leverage to stop whomever wants to set up a car bomb (or even just beat up Western journalists) in Damascus or Beirut.
Just so it's clear. There was an American murdered on TWA 847. Most likely by Imad Mughniya.
Something about this story doesn't make sense. The Palestinian on the side of the road with a flat tire was obviously not on a Jews-only throughfare. He was on a road used primarily by Palestinians.
Imagining myself in the place of the West Bank Palestinian, stuck with car problems, if two Israeli 'policemen' stopped near me, I don't think the first thing to cross my mind would be that they were there to help me. In fact I'd be scared witless.
Were the policemen wearing uniforms? Were their arms readied? Were they driving a marked car? Are we to be sure that the reason they stopped was in deed to offer assistance [were there any witnesses]? And if true, wouldn't they have been exta-sensitive to the anxiety they'd produce in the Palestinian?
Forgive me, but the Israelis need to assume their part of responsibility for the deaths of the officers. You can't brutalize, torment, immiserate a people, uproot their groves and crops, take their land, over the course of decades, and not imagine the consequences such behavior might have. Cause and effect. I should think that, were the Israelis in a position to be honest with themselves, they'd realize that their worst enemy is their own behavior …
You seem to be thinking that this was some kind of a misunderstanding by a normal motorist. It was an ambush, a terrorist trap. The policemen were uniformed traffic police, in a marked car, with their weapons holstered. There was a single shooter, and the hits were to the head. Someone pretending to be a broken-down motorist walked up to the car soon after it stopped, drew a weapon, and fired, close enough that the bullets did not pass through the car at all, perhaps from inside the vehicle.
There is a reason that American police order people to remain in their vehicles during a traffic stop, or to keep a certain distance if they pull up to a pedestrian.
Give me information, then, Eurosabra. Provide links.
What makes you so sure of your claims that this was an ambush? Do you have verifiable sources? It seems that there haven't been any direct witnesses accounts, as of this date. Israeli officials could have invented anything they like, which unfortunately is not an uncommon occurrence.
It was Mort Zuckerman's claim, in the account above: "Did you hear about the two policemen who stopped to help a driver stuck with a flat–and were shot to death in the head at point-blank range?".
I didn't make it up.
Where do you get your ambush theory. Again, links to plausible sources would be welcome.
But you don't address the real thrust of my comment, which was to suggest that Israel is digging its own grave, through its brutality.
You Google it and dig, those who know, know. I don't have to convince you, and anyway, that's not how things are decided in the Jordan Valley.
I don't think a kinder Israel would make a difference to the Jihad, really. But I don't think peace will prevail. Which frustrates me to the extent that the vast majority of Palestinians I know are rather peaceful and sane.
There was a single shooter, and the hits were to the head.
The fact that the hits were to the head doesn't mean the shooter intended to kill the policemen.
Just like the fact that dead Palestinian children present shots to the head doesn't mean that the Israeli soldiers shot them deliberately, God forbid.
Eurosabra: "I don't think a kinder Israel would make a difference to the Jihad, really. But I don't think peace will prevail. Which frustrates me to the extent that the vast majority of Palestinians I know are rather peaceful and sane".
Cripes, this is the biggest load of condescending disingenuousness: 'rather peaceful and sane'. Reminds me of this cretin [can you imagine returning to your home, after having fled for your life, to find such a letter?]. Is that not the very definition of cruelty?
I didn't ask you whether you thought 'peace would prevail', rather I raised the question as to the changes Israelis intend to make in their behavior. Israel has not made, and is not making, a good case for itself by dispossessing and assassinating people, beating up pregnant women, children and the elderly, and generally tormenting an entire population. How can the jews, of all people, justify such barbarity?
The Gaza assault was the last straw, for many in the wider world. Israel is actively frittering away the sympathy it once enjoyed. In the context of such violence, who, beyond Israel's borders, is likely to care for the lives of two, admittedly supremely unfortunate, policemen? [In point of fact, it doesn't much matter whether they were ambushed or were simply down on their luck].
The fact is that the presence of Israeli police and occupation forces in the West Bank is a permanent source of death and anguish to Palestinians. The Israelis have one of two choices before them: assume responsibility for further incidents such as these or work towards durable solutions, the latter option of which would imply a major change in behavior and strategy.
That was the essence of my question to you.
"Obviously the provocation of Jews living in Nabi Samwil in 1920, Jaffa in 1921, and Hebron in 1929 was just too great." We get it, Eurosabra. Palestinians are the only people who have to be collectively punished for riots/atrocities committed decades ago because they have something you want. No Palestinian can be forgiven even though they had nothing to do with it. Even though they are not affiliated with any organization that did. According to one article called 'Hell in Hebron', even Palestinians who have a plaque for saving Jews in 1929 are not spared from IDF raids. http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-johal150904.htm
Extra-legal killings for alleged crimes put States executing such actions outside the law, and by doing so create the potential for an extra-legal response against individual members of the State. Why would Israel's leaders care about danger to their own citizens? Having one's police killed creates media interest, igniting anger against those identified as the enemy. The situation is a win all the way around for those who have other interests than a peaceful life for the people of Israel and Palestine, or of the US. "To the terrorists…<i >my/the State's version of what the terrorists believe" The message dinned into our ears by interests entirely vested in convincing us that the world is inhabited by terrorists: Be afraid, be very afraid. Be too afraid to think or to ask questions. Believe in an omniscient and protective State, which will protect us from all the enemies of the Good, which is our side, the side God is on. So much more reassuring than questioning why those who lead our nations care so little about the danger their actions create for us or others in the world. Increasingly, I wonder what is being done/has been done, by unknown actors from my nation, and others, to assure that I will believe in Terrorism and support a War against it.
Livingbridge's comment was to the point and imo is worth reposting: The Gaza assault was the last straw, for many in the wider world. Israel is actively frittering away the sympathy it once enjoyed. The fact is that the presence of Israeli police and occupation forces in the West Bank is a permanent source of death and anguish to Palestinians. The Israelis have one of two choices before them: assume responsibility for further incidents such as these or work towards durable solutions, the latter option of which would imply a major change in behavior and strategy. posted by: livingbridge | April 29, 2009 at 06:38 AM