A photo taken in June of a Palestinian man being detained near the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. Shortly after taking this photo Israeli soldiers ordered me to stop shooting. (Photo: Max Blumenthal)
Is there anything shocking about the Facebook photos showing the Israeli female soldier Eden Abergil posing in mocking positions next to bound and blindfolded Palestinian men? While her conduct was abominable, I did not find it especially distinct from the documented behavior of Israeli soldiers and Border Police in the Occupied Territories.
Above is a photo I took in Hebron in June before soldiers demanded that I stop shooting (I will release video from Hebron as soon as I get the chance). Scenes like these can be witnessed on any given day in the West Bank. Not only do they show the dehumanization that the Palestinian Morlocks are subjected to on an hourly basis, they depict the world where Abergil spent what she called “the most beautiful time of [her] life.” It is easy to see how young Israelis (or anyone) would be sapped of their humanity in such an environment.
In July, I waited inside the cafeteria of Israel’s Guantanamo-like Ofer Prison after watching Ibrahim Amira, a leader of the Ni’ilin popular committee, be sentenced by a kangaroo court to six months in prison for the trumped-up charge of “incitement” (he was accused of paying kids to throw rocks at the Israeli soldiers who invade their village at least every week, as if they needed encouragement). While I stood at the counter to order a coffee, I watched four female jailers gather around a laptop to check their Facebook pages. I wondered what their status updates looked like. If they wrote anything relating to their work, would their Facebook pages look different than Abergil’s? Of course not. Just take a trip to Eyal Niv’s blog and look at some of the photos other young Israelis are posting.
A photo from Eden Abergil's Facebook profile. (Photo credit: Dimi's Notes)
You don’t have to go to the West Bank or into an Israeli prison to recognize that Abergil is a typical product of Israel’s comprehensively militarized society. Just watch the documentary, “To See When I’m Smiling.” In the film, which tells the soul-crushing stories of four young women conscripted into the Israeli Army, one of the characters recounts posing for a photo beside a dead Palestinian man who had an erection. She was smiling from ear to ear in the photo. However, at the end of the film, when she is compelled to look at the picture for the first time in two years, she does not recognize the monster who bears her image. Her contorted facial expression seems to ask, “Who was I?”
“To See When I’m Smiling” was produced by Breaking The Silence, a human rights group formed by ex-Israeli soldiers who collect testimonies from their peers. Incidentally, Breaking The Silence has published a 132-page booklet of testimonies by female soldiers (PDF here) who participated in acts at least as hideous as those depicted on Abergil’s Facebook page.
Here is Testimony 63, by a female sergeant from the Nahal Unit who served in Mevo Dotan:
I recall once, this was after we moved to Mevo Dotan, to the base there, some Palestinian was sitting on a chair and I passed by several times. Once I thought: Okay, why is he sitting here for an hour? I feel like spitting at him, at this Arab. And they tell me: Go one, spit at him. I don’t recall whether anyone did this before I did, but I remember spitting at him and feeling really, like at first I felt, wow, good for me, I just spat at some terrorist, that’s how I’d call them. And then I recall that afterwards I felt some thing here was not right.
Why?
Not too human. I mean, it sounds cool and all, but no, it’s not right.
You thought about later, or during the act?
Later. At the time you felt real cool.
Even when everyone was watching, you felt real cool.
Yes, and then sometimes you get to thinking, especially say on Holocaust Memorial Day, suddenly you’re thinking, hey, these thing were done to us, it’s a human being after all. Eventually as things turned out he was no terrorist anyway, it was a kid who’d hung around too long near the base, so he was caught or something.
A child?
An adolescent.
Slaps?
Yes.
Blindfolded and all?
Yes. I think that at some point no one even stood watch over him.
The female sergeant recalled the Holocaust when she reflected on her actions. If you are raised in a Jewish home, it is difficult not to see the ravages of the occupation in the light of the Holocaust, regardless of whether you know that the Israeli army’s violence bears little comparison to the exterminationism of the Nazis. Just as when I watched “To See When I’m Smiling,” Abergil’s photos made me think of Costa Gavras’ haunting Holocaust film, “Music Box.” If you have seen it, you will understand my reference. If not, rent it.
I also thought of the first stanza of “Vision,” a poem by the Palestinian writer Muhammad al-Qaisi. The poem reminded me not only of the Abergil’s public unmasking, but of the many Israelis who told me about their experiences in the army as though they were describing some morally debased person they have never met:
I see the faces change their complexion
peel off their outer skin
I see the faces divested
of makeup and masks
and I see an empty stage
the spectators denying their own images
in the third act.
This post originally appeared on Max Blumenthal's blog.
Poor soldier, sitting there all scared and dehumanized while that maximalist Palestinian fails to make a “better wheel”, or even to look at him!
Indeed. More green ribbon needed there, it seems.
Looking at thsi picture, I finalyl get what Witty means by “live and let live” and “mutual humanization”.
Israel, ah yes: the Democratic State of Humiliation.
Selling its soul out for a piece of real estate.
Taxi, I think it has more to do with Israeli soldiers getting some cheap erotic thrills out of stuff like this eventhough chains, whips and the black leather are substituted by the plastic handcuff ties she is holding in the photos. I thought there were laws in the US and the UK against showing pictures of people in bondage for sexual stimulation; maybe plastic is permitted.
War is pornography, Walid, hi-drama pornography.
Ya know, I read this news in the morning and I felt repulsed by the female cretin (I always expect more from my own sex) and then as it kept feeding into my news feed from everywhere, I got a bit cynical. Why is this so news worthy? I mean, this disgusting person took pictures of prisoners (and what were they arrested for? Did they not have their papers in proper order for their Zionist overlords?) and then this generates so much outcry? Americans will look at these pictures and think, “big deal, they weren’t harmed or traumatized, just humiliated…”
Meanwhile:
-settlers destroyed more land today
-the Israeli government stole more land today
-UN is saying that schools and health clinics will close in Gaza because of a lack of funds
-more Palestinians were detained and held without charges
-children are still rotting away in Zionist prisons
-a father was denied entry to Jerusalem after his wife was rushed to a hospital there due to complications with her pregnancy, she had twins last week. Daddy can’t visit his newborns or his sick wife in the hospital
And nobody cares and everyone is talking about this trashy Israeli woman that gets off on taking pictures of old detained men.
If it’s any consolation, a lot of Americans will see these photos and will feel an inkling of the repulsion they felt when they saw what we were doing at Abu Gharib.
I know it’s going painfully slow, but reaction in the United States will change. Especially when funding this sort of atrocity really starts hitting the average American in the pocketbook — sooner or later, the war costs will hit our economy, which is already sagging under the weight of finance industry malfeasance and “free” trade’s apple-coring of our industrial base.
It’s pretty disgusting that it will take until it hurts Americans in their wallet to care, when it should have been hurting their hearts decades ago. But hubris has its consequences and sadly, I think we’re in for something nasty in the next decade to come, at least. The United States is veritably hemorrhaging at this point.
Brava Seham, this is the norm and even laudable in mainstream US society. “Look at them thar swarthy prisoners, comfortable enough to be featured on Facebook!”
And in some circles it only abets the canard that Israeli methods are the most humane; and unfortunate Americans in the same position are merely less tactful…and only when they choose to relay their pics of humiliations that leave marks on the untermenschen.
Seham,
the picture sums it all up: the complete lack of human feeling for what is taking place right in front of her … how it underlies all the horrors that follow
Seham, I think Americans are going to look at the photos and instantly think: Lynndie England. Abu Graib. The smirk on her face is identical. True it is that this is probably all they will see of it, not the followup comments that everyone in the IDF does this all the time, so what’s the big deal? But they will see the photo and realize that something is not right here in “the most moral army.”
If not Abu Graib, they may see US troops in Vietnam posing with photos of dead gooks and wearing necklaces of ears, photos that brought home to the US public the evil of what was happening there. Or grinning hunters posing next to a dead buck.
BYahoo declares that the “delegitimization campaign” is one of the 3 greatest threats to Israel. Abergil has contributed to the delegitimization process and made it easier for the next news of Israeli atrocities to be more easily accepted by the brainwashed public.
Seham ~ I agree that this is small fry compared to other atrocities occurring in Palestine and even Israel – but I also agree w/ Chaos and potsherd, and thought the same thing myself: this will resonate w/ Americans because of Abu Ghiraib.
Listening to the news on the radio this morning (in Australia – Radio National on ABC, the national public broadcaster) I was surprised to hear this incident being reported in their hourly news update. Even better, the IDF spokesperson was merely quoted by the newsreader, while a Palestinian representative was given airtime and he (I didn’t recognise the name) made an eloquent statement about this being representative of the daily humiliations Palestinians endure under Israeli rule. This is AM radio mind you, listened to by old people and dorks such as myself. It’s a small incident but it does resonate.
I sent a note to the ABC to praise them for paying attention to this – no doubt there’ll be a small avalanche of complaints from pro-Israelis, there normally is whenever their jewel is described in anything less than sparkling glittering shimmering praise.
That she summarizes her experiences and actions in such an environment as “the most beautiful time” of her life is quite disturbing.
But I can see where such a mental state originates. It comes from a deeply indoctrinated person who believes she is upholding society’s ideals while successfully performing her military duties. Within that context — however twisted and depraved — it makes sense. It’s no longer abnormal. In fact, it is only abnormal to those who hold different ideals, those who are accustomed to different moral and ethical values.
If each one of us is judged based on the group or society of which he or she are members, then such behavior is to be commended. This girl’s actions become, within such context, a success story.
Sometimes symbolism is far more shocking than a thousand statistics or opinion polls. The photos above are the essence of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians.
Behold.
Max asks:
Is there anything shocking about the Facebook photos showing the Israeli female soldier Eden Abergil
humiliating Palestinians. Maybe not to you, but for some reason it was to me. I have read a lot on this issue, but those images made an impact that many hundreds of sentences of polemics did not achieve.
BTW I have seen some of your videos, keep up the good work. They are powerful as well. But these are also for other reasons: namely they are presented by participants that are totally oblivious to what these images mean.
In Haaritz now she defends herself:
Referring to the possibility that the images could injure Israel’s image in the international arena, Abergil said: “We will always be attacked. Whatever we do, we will always be attacked.”
>> Referring to the possibility that the images could injure Israel’s image in the international arena, Abergil said: “We will always be attacked. Whatever we do, we will always be attacked.”
“Whatever we do”, eh? How about, for starters, you stop your oppression, occupation and colonization, your destruction of homes and properties and your theft of natural resources. And maybe start “humanizing ‘the Other’”. Then, if you still are attacked, you’ll have a right to bitch.
What’s that? Oh, right, you prefer to “Remember the Holocaust!”
The talkbacks to the Ha’aretz article are almost unanimously condemning, and the few defenders, who use the typical Israeli excuses, are vigorously condemned.
Has anyone here served as a low-ranking enlisted young person in the US Army? There’s very little done by such people without upper echelon approval, by specific or implicit orders. I doubt the IDF is any different.
link to guardian.co.uk
After watching wikileaks Collateral Murder video and listening to the banter I’ve no doubt the same thing occur in the US Army – almost any army for that matter.
Then there are those among the armed forces who find their tasks repugnant. Reporting on rising suicide rates in the US Army a few week ago, Amy Goodman & Juan Gonzalez did a heartbreaking interview with the parents of a soldier who killed himself after he had to kill two unarmed Iraqi soldiers. The interview doesn’t go into detail on the incident, but the soldier had kept and worn their dog tags, then one day just hung himself.
‘With Military Suicides on the Rise, Parents of Two Soldiers Who Took Their Own Lives Say Obama’s Words Ring Hollow’
link to democracynow.org
I may be wrong but I seem to recall hearing suicides are now killing more US soldiers than combat.
And (to close my rant) military contractors like Blackwater/XE and Halliburton need to be shut down. Beyond the wildly inflated no-bid cost-plus contracts they get, if a volunteer army can’t raise enough soldiers to fight a war obviously the general population don’t feel threatened. If they did, they’d enlist. So it went in Vietnam (w/ conscription bother here in Australia and the US) and Afghanistan and Iraq (private mercenaries supplanting conscription).
You are right, more GIs kill themselves than are killed in combat:
link to ft.com
My original point was meant to be that, basically subject soldiers have only been following orders–much is conveyed to the lower ranks by
innuendo and atmospherics, not officially by repeating an official paper order. The upper ranks always cover their ass.
Further, the same is true in the IDF; the latest stats reveal more have been killed by suicide than by combat–suicide is the #1 cause of death in the IDF: link to ifamericansknew.org
This goes right to the heart of the matter.
The responsibility lies with their superiors ; this kind of behavior falls well within what is accepted in this kind of framework.
Magnes Zionist has posted additional photos of IDF gloating over captured/killed Palestinians:
‘Move Over Eden Abergil. New Facebook “Souvenir Pictures” of Bound Palestinian Civilians’
link to jeremiahhaber.com
And of course there is the ‘Deutschland Uber Alles’ photos which went round by email and were posted by NF on his site:
‘THE GRANDCHILDREN OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FROM WORLD WAR II ARE DOING TO THE PALESTINIANS EXACTLY WHAT WAS DONE TO THEM BY NAZI GERMANY…’
link to normanfinkelstein.com
And they’re trying to spread the blindfolds, on the Internet and in particular on Wikipedia, according to this new article in Ha’aretz: The right’s latest weapon: ‘Zionist editing’ on Wikipedia: The right’s latest weapon: ‘Zionist editing’ on Wikipedia: