“The media’s the most powerful entity on Earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power.”
-- Malcolm X
Prior to 1948, the entire area that makes up what is now Israel and Palestine was called British Palestine and controlled by Great Britain through World War II. It was an example of classic British colonialism, and as was often the case with French, Dutch, or British holdings overseas, the natives living within the colony became restless. In the case of the Jews wanting to found Israel, a country to call their own, they turned to terrorism to get it. There is acute irony in the fact that Jewish snipers were gunning down British officers on the streets of Jerusalem after the war had ended, killing allies that had forced Germany to surrender and liberated concentration camps.
These Jewish snipers and bombers are considered heroes, many of whom went on to become Israel’s future statesmen and ministers.
At the time of his death on March 9, 1992, Menachem Begin, the former Israeli prime minister, had his New York Times obituary written by James Feron. It was entitled “Menachem Begin, Guerrilla Leader Who Became Peacemaker”:
He believed fiercely, and contentiously, that the Jews had a right to a national homeland and that it would range over the land of their biblical forebears. This was Zion and he was a dedicated Zionist. … The pursuit of those goals was an easily identifiable thread running through his life. He was to spend much time explaining and trying to justify what some considered extreme actions and statements.
Over the course of a two-year period between 1945 and 1947, more than 140 British police officers and soldiers were killed by Jewish guerrillas:
The best known of those occurred in 1946, when Irgun Zvai Leumi, the underground terrorist faction he headed during the final years of the British mandate in Palestine, blew up a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which served as headquarters of the British administrators of Palestine. The attack killed 90 people, among them Jewish and Arab employees as well as British officials. The most infamous incident was the Irgun’s attack on an Arab village, Deir Yassin, in April 1948, in which more than 200 men, women and children were killed.
So, in the case of the hotel bomb, the Israelis sacrificed some of their own to kill others.
That same year, another future Israeli prime minister, Yitzak Shamir, conspired in the assassination of the United Nations (UN) mediator, and the terrorists’ quest to acquire a nation would soon be successful. As British public opinion turned against its colonial occupation, the Brits divided up Palestine via the United Nations and departed.
Wouldn’t it be fair to say that the Palestinians also “had a right to a national homeland and it should range over the land of their biblical forebears?”
The Palestinians were supposed to have their own nation state, as determined by the original 1948 “two-state” plan. Israel got its nation as a result of the UN act that year; Palestine technically has not. (Note: unbeknownst to Americans, 138 of the 193 member states of the United Nations, including China and Russia, actually recognize the State of Palestine. The most recent of the advanced countries to do so was Sweden in 2014.)
The landscape changed over time with a number of Israeli-Arab conflicts along the way, most notably the Six-Day War of 1967. This conflict redefined boundaries and restricted access to holy sites following Israel’s victory over Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.
Israel had a right to attack Egypt in June of 1967 as the war drums were already beating. With conflict inevitable, Israel got the jump with a preemptive attack after Egypt cut off Israel’s access to shipping lanes. After the war the victorious Israelis began returning territory and access in what amounted to a “land for peace” process.
The last true war between Israel and Arab nations occurred in October of 1973 with the Yom Kippur War. (Yom Kippur is a most holy day in Judaism.) Egypt to the southwest and Syria to the northeast attacked to regain some of the land lost and not returned after the 1967 war. Israel prevailed again, but it was much more perilous and costly.
The United States was the lone backer of Israel in the conflict, providing money, supplies, and weapons. The Soviet Union and other nations backed Egypt and Syria. Cold War politics was one of the catalysts behind the US-Israel relationship at this stage. With the Soviets allied with so many Arab and Persian Gulf countries, the United States desperately needed a regional entity of its own to support. Israel happily fit the bill. The relationship obviously grew and became more complex, thus affecting the US’s relationship with other countries in the Middle East.
Many subsequent and recent peace initiatives, including the one described at the end of this book, allow Israel to keep some territories acquired in conflict, with slight modifications to the borders and divisions established in 1967. Unfortunately, for the current and recent Jewish regimes, that’s not good enough. They aggressively want all of what was called Mandatory Palestine and they are again resorting to a diabolical combination of violence and public relations to get it.
The Israeli public relations machinery relentlessly refers to Palestinians as terrorists, slamming them as members of radical Arab groups and mythical “Islama-Nazis. In reality, the Palestinians are the victims of relentless terror. In North America, this level of terror and the deplorable conditions of the Israeli occupation and the apartheid situation Palestinians live in goes unreported. What does get documented is any protest by the Palestinians. This is the “terror” that gets mentioned across all platforms by the six multinational corporate media conglomerates in the United States that are owned and/or operated by persons involved with or sympathetic to the Israeli cause. As pointed out in chapter 1, many local and national news outlets in the US are largely supportive of Zionism and Israel’s territorial expansion under any circumstances at the expense of the Palestinians, putting unwanted pressure on the foreign policies of Israel’s few true allies.
For many years the militant wing of the Palestinian political organization Hamas fired rockets from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, as did the Islamic Jihad. These inferior shells generally failed to hit populous areas, and occasionally rockets still are launched at Israel. Air-raid sirens sound and Israeli residents hide.
Militarily, these armaments are rudimentary in relation to the Israeli arsenal, similar in proportion to Palestinian teenagers throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers who are firing assault rifles. An athletic analogy: It’s a desperate middle school basketball team playing against the Chicago Bulls.
Again, rocket attacks have been in retaliation to Israel’s decades-long occupation, the confiscation (stealing) of Palestinian lands and the constant harassment and terror that comes as part of that package. Similar to how British colonialism “created” Jewish terrorists, the Jewish occupation has “created” Arab ones. Hezbollah in Lebanon was founded in 1985, Hamas in Palestine in 1987. (The future of both is discussed in chapter 14.)
In 2000, with settlers continuously claiming Palestinian land in Gaza, the natives decided they’d had enough. Fewer than two hundred thousand Jews occupied 40 percent of the Strip, leaving the other 60 percent to the local Arabs, with a population of 1.5 million. (From the perspective of historical “claims,” Gaza in 1945 consisted of about 145,000 Muslims and fewer than four thousand Jews.)
A violent uprising ensued. Arab militants began lobbing rockets into Israel and attacks on civilians in Israel proper began. Israel responded heavy-handedly. This back and forth went on for about five years before Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to remove all the settlements from Gaza.
It’s a pattern seen over and over and over. Jews harass, occupy and take, Palestinians retaliate, and the Israelis retaliate back with excessive force. After giving up the Gaza Strip, Sharon and Israel decided the trade-off was to gobble up even more land in the West Bank, the much larger hunk of Palestinian land to the northeast that is supposed to make up their future state.
On August 28, 2005, reporter Scott Wilson wrote in the Washington Post under the headline “In West Bank, Israel Sees Room to Grow—Government Moves Swiftly to Capitalize on Pullout from Gaza despite Criticism”:
Enjoying a moment of international sympathy, Sharon’s government is moving swiftly to capitalize on its unilateral withdrawal and ongoing demolition of 25 Jewish settlements [in Gaza]. The government’s efforts are focused largely in the West Bank, land of far more religious and strategic importance to Israel than the remote slice of coastline it has left behind.
Four days earlier, Greg Myre reported similar information in the New York Times under “As Israel Leaves Gaza, It Strengthens West Bank Presence”:
Israeli soldiers worked today to wrap up the military portion of the Gaza Strip withdrawal, and the defense minister said all but a small number of soldiers could be removed from the territory by mid-September. At the same time, Israeli officials confirmed that the government had issued orders to seize West Bank land to build the separation barrier around the largest Jewish settlement, Maale Adumim, and link it up to nearby Jerusalem. The Palestinian leadership said the developments reflected its concerns that Israel would use the Gaza withdrawal, and the international goodwill it had generated, to consolidate its hold on the large settlement blocs in the West Bank.
In the Post article, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat was quoted as saying, “I hope Israel is not going to use the fact it has done something right in withdrawing from Gaza in order to do a lot wrong regarding settlement activities, the wall, and other matters. I hope they will use this to stay the course and to return to negotiations.”
Since then there have been legitimate negotiations once, in Annapolis, Maryland in 2007 led by centrist Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni. There have never been sincere negotiations since Prime Minister Netanyahu and his hawkish foreign minister Avignor Lieberman took over in 2009.
In the New York Times, on April 2, 2009, Isabel Kershner in her column “Israeli Minister Dismisses Peace Effort” quoted Lieberman as saying, “Those who wish for peace should prepare for war,” and continued:
The aim of the Annapolis process, as it became known, was to agree on the framework for a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2008, a goal that was not achieved.
Mr. Lieberman said that the Israeli government “never ratified Annapolis, nor did Parliament,” and that it therefore “had no validity.” … Often contradictory and contrary in his positions, Mr. Lieberman, a resident of a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, has said that he advocates the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Yet in January 2008 he pulled his party out of the last governing coalition, led by [Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert and the centrist Kadima Party, in protest against the Annapolis-inspired talks.
Since 2009 Israel has only pretended to have an interest in negotiations. During any periods of calm between the two sides, Israel has sent soldiers into Palestinian villages, often in the middle of the night to make raids on homes more terrifying, and to make unjustified accusations and arrests. Once the locals retaliated, the battles were back on, as was the coverage in the news media. Israeli provocation meant legitimate talks of a “two-state solution” could be avoided.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank continues.
Headlines like the one in the New York Times on August 24, 2004 were common: “Israel Adds to Plans for More Housing Units in Settlements,” as in 533 more housing units in the West Bank close to Jerusalem. Steven Erlanger wrote:
The announcement came a week after the government issued tenders for the construction of 1,001 new housing units on the West Bank and said it was planning to issue tenders for another 633 units, though it has not done so yet. Together with the new units from rezoning, this would amount to 2,167 permits to build dwellings beyond Israel’s 1967 boundaries. By comparison, 908 new units were offered for sale in those areas in 2003, 647 were offered in 2002 and 917 in 2001, the year Ariel Sharon became prime minister, according to the daily (Israeli newspaper) Yediot Aharonot.
Israel managed to convince the United States to allow for “natural growth” in all existing settlements. A nifty and useful catchphrase that carried added building development through this time period, before things became more brazen under Netanyahu.
Immediately after the 2005 Gaza pullout, both Israel and the US demanded Palestinian elections, expecting a unified government without Hamas. Hamas won in the Gaza Strip in early 2006 and infighting began between the rival Palestinian factions in Gaza and the West Bank. The United States of Israel didn’t like that. Tempers flared, aid money was cut off, and Hamas made the mistake of firing rockets. It wasn’t long before Israeli troops were once again invading Gaza.
According to an article in the Jerusalem Post on December 29, 2016, between 2006 and the end of 2016, there were 10,412 rockets fired into Israel—more than half of them, 5,622, during the “wars” of 2008-09, 2012, and 2014. The number has been minimalized in recent times; only twenty-four rockets in 2015 and fifteen in total for all of 2016. Thirty-three Israelis died as a result of rocket fire between 2004 and 2016. The rocket fire, retaliatory or not, should be and has been deemed a “war crime” by the same international humanitarian groups that also consider Israel’s occupation illegal.
In 2017, thirty-five rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, none resulting in death or injury. A December barrage that year was in response to Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. In late 2018, almost four hundred rockets were fired, a third of them intercepted by the Iron Dome, Israel’s missile defense system paid for by the United States. Hundreds and then dozens were fired in 2019 and 2020 respectively, the flare-ups part of border skirmishes and protests against Israel’s treatment of Gaza.
Personal retaliatory attacks, frequent in the early 2000s, occurred again mostly between 2015 and 2017, with a few desperate Palestinians who worked or snuck into Israel resorting to knife and car ramming attacks against Israeli citizens. As a result during the two years, six times more Palestinian civilians, attackers, and rioters were killed than Israelis.
Also as a result of these activities, Israel finished a series of walls to keep the general Palestinian public out of Israel proper. Palestinian workers who have to cross into Israel do so at a series of checkpoints. Gaza was enclosed while in the West Bank more Palestinian land was stolen to make room for the barrier.
In a Washington Post article from May 30, 2006 entitled “In the Village of Nowhere, a Fate Soon Sealed—Wall to Enclose Palestinians Inside Jewish State,” writer Scott Wilson told of local shepherds whose families have lived and worked in their village for hundreds of years:.
The 1993 Oslo accords [peace talks held in Norway with limited agreements] began a process of separation between Israel and the Palestinians and established a semi-autonomous [partially independent] Palestinian government in the occupied territories. But the Palestinian uprising that began in 2000, including suicide bomb attacks on Israeli civilians, led Israel to build a towering barrier to keep Palestinians out. The course of the wall, drawn by Israel, is now also separating thousands of Palestinians from their property and from each other.
Jerusalem is considered the holy center and capital for both peoples. It was generally split in half by the United Nations in 1948 with East Jerusalem designated for the Arabs. The city is centralized on the map and serves as a gateway and border where the two nations share access to holy sites. Israel to the left; Palestine to the right. Gradually, the Palestinians have lost much of their land inside the city and around it.
“Israeli Barrier in Jerusalem Will Cut Off 55,000 Arabs” proclaimed the New York Times on July 11, 2005. It’s only gotten worse.
Meanwhile, real terror continued on a regular basis against the Palestinians not only in the Gaza Strip, termed an oversized “prison” by many, but also in the occupied and unoccupied territories of the West Bank. Among other things, it’s a classic case of bullying. Israel has the money, the weapons, and practically 100 percent of the mainstream media support in the United States.
As part of their security plan, the Israelis were among the first in the world to introduce the widespread use of drones. Occasional use of drones in the 1980s has progressed to standard operating procedure today.
Scott Wilson, in his Washington Post column on December 3, 2011 titled “In Gaza, Lives Shaped by Drones,” defined the Arabic word zenana, which roughly translated means “buzz.” He wrote, “In neighboring Egypt, a source of Gaza custom and culture, the term is slang used to describe a relentlessly nagging wife.” He then contrasted that light-hearted description with historical reality:
Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in the summer of 2005, ending a nearly 40-year presence in a territory its forces occupied in the 1967 Middle East War. In 2006 Hamas gunmen captured the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit just outside Gaza’s fortified boundary, and since then, Israel has stepped up military operations and aerial surveillance in the strip. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights says 825 people have been killed by drones in Gaza since the capture of Shalit, who was released in October [2011].
Fair trade-off? Wilson goes on to say: “Most of those killed, according to the organization, have been civilians mistakenly targeted or caught in the deadly shrapnel shower of a drone strike.” Four of those civilians were young Gazan boys, killed while playing on a beach in 2014. The Israelis said “the military will conduct an investigation.” A secret investigation finally revealed the truth four years later. Robert Mackey for The Intercept wrote an article on August 11, 2018 headlined “Secret Israeli Report Reveals Armed Drone Killed Four Boys Playing on Gaza Beach in 2014”:
Testimony from the officers involved in the attack, which has been concealed from the public until now, confirms for the first time that the children—four cousins ages 10 and 11—were pursued and killed by drone operators who somehow mistook them, in broad daylight, for Hamas militants. The testimony raises new questions about whether the attack, which unfolded in front of dozens of journalists and triggered global outrage, was carried out with reckless disregard for civilian life and without proper authorization. After killing the first boy, the drone operators told investigators, they had sought clarification from their superiors as to how far along the beach, used by civilians, they could pursue the fleeing survivors. Less than a minute later, as the boys ran for their lives, the drone operators decided to launch a second missile, killing three more children, despite never getting an answer to their question.
Damn secret reports. Flash back to a week after the incident itself, to the Washington Post on June 14, 2006. The Israeli’s initial report was included in a story with a different slaughter: “Israeli Airstrike Kills 10 Palestinians—Eight Civilians among Dead; Israel Denies Role in Last Week’s Fatal Beach Explosion. The Post wrote, “Later in the day, the Israeli military said an internal investigation showed that it was not responsible for a deadly explosion on a Gaza beach last week that Palestinian officials have called a war crime.”
Here’s a shocker: the Israelis were lying.
The Washington Post, May 18, 2004, “Israelis Kill 19 in Gaza Raids”: “Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli military spokesman, said the army was investigating the deaths of the children. ‘We don’t know exactly what happened there,’ he said.”
The New York Times, November 3, 2006, “Israel Kills 2 Women during Mosque Seige”: Israeli troops fired at a large group of unarmed Palestinian women …”
The Washington Post, November 9, 2006, “‘Shells Kept Falling’ on Gaza Apartment, Killing 17 in Family”: “Israeli leader expresses regret …”
Endless.
Unlike the stock market, past performance does guarantee future results as it relates to the Israeli Defense Forces’ behavior. Often enough, murder, mayhem for fun or target practice are the sole motivation behind killing.
In 2014, Mackey’s story pointed out that on the very same day of the beach murders, the IDF’s public relations unit had released footage for journalistic consumption, showing three examples of times where drone operators had held off on carrying out a strike because civilians were nearby: “Those images were released one week into Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, a fifty-day offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza in which Israel would eventually kill 1,391 civilians, including 526 children.” (See chapter 6 for a discussion of how fanatical religious doctrine plays a part in this.)
Eventually Israel would blame Hamas for the killings, stating that the militants were using these people as “human shields.” This is a popular, emotion-jarring catchphrase that’s a standard part of the propaganda package. Media outlets in the US of I are more than happy to follow along and utilize it, as opposed to contemplating the fact that Israel was killing indiscriminately (randomly) with as much force as possible. Like the time when Israel blew up a United Nations school in Gaza, knowing it was full of panicked civilians (see chapter 5).
In his Al Jazeera article from November 28, 2013, “Gaza: Life and Death under Israel’s Drones,” Jonathan Cook pointed to the residual effects of drone warfare, outside of the obvious destruction:
A survey in medical journal the Lancet following Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s month-long attack on Gaza in winter 2008-09, found large percentages of children suffered from symptoms of psychological trauma: Fifty-eight percent permanently feared the dark; 43 percent reported regular nightmares; 37 percent wet the bed and 42 percent had crying attacks. [Psychologist Ahmed] Tawahina described the sense of being constantly observed as a “form of psychological torture, which exhausts people’s mental and emotional resources. Among children at school, this can be seen in poor concentration and unruly behavior.”
One could easily point out that this isn’t unique to Gaza. Children who grow up in poverty or with certain levels of trauma anywhere in the world are less likely to do well in school, less likely to advance socio-economically, and therefore less likely to become upstanding and productive citizens. They’re doomed to everlasting hardship as long as conditions remain the same.
Remarkably, this doesn’t mean they’ve lost their sense of humor.
In “Sleepless in Gaza—Israeli Drone War on the Gaza Strip” by Dr. Atef Abu Saif, published on the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Foundation website in March 2014, the doctor’s article describes life firsthand. He described drones as the new face of the occupation in Gaza:
The drone has become a part of everyday life for Gazans. They wake up in the morning to its noise, and it’s the same noise they hear while trying to sleep. It is always there, to the extent that one might even momentarily forget it is there. Young activists make fun of the situation by inventing names of movies with the word drone such as “Drones in Black”, “A Drone to Remember”, “Drone and Prejudice”, “Gone with the Drones”, “Honey I Blew Up Gaza” … “Sleepless in Gaza”, “Harry Potter and the Deadly Drones”, “Gazans of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Drone”, “Israeli Mission Impossible IV: Erase Gaza”, and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the Drone.”
Meanwhile, the in-your-face version of the occupation unfolds in the West Bank, where Jewish religious fanatics, known as settlers, harass and terrorize Palestinians land owners and farmers. They terrorize, squat on and steal land with the help of the Israeli government and army.
Set aside physical violence and vandalism for a moment and just imagine what it might be like knowing that at some point strangers are going to come along and steal your land. They might also burn your crops first, or set fire to your home, but ultimately your property will be gone. If you react violently, you’re arrested or shot.
These aren’t remote warring tribes in a developing sub-Saharan African nation, cut off from the rest of the world. The criminals are Jews from Israel, a country touted as “the lone democracy in the Middle East.”
In the March 14, 2007 New York Times article called “West Bank Sites on Private Land, Data Shows,” writer Steven Erlanger informed us that an advocacy group had sued the Israeli government to obtain the data, which showed that 32.4 percent of property held by Israeli settlements was on private land:
The group, Peace Now, prepared an earlier report in November, also provided to the New York Times, based on a 2004 version of the Israeli government database that had been provided by an official who wanted the information published. Those figures showed that 38.8 percent of the land on which Israeli settlements were built was listed as private Palestinian land. The data shows a pattern of illegal seizure of private land that the Israeli government has been reluctant to acknowledge or to prosecute, according to the Peace Now report. Israel has long asserted that it fully respects Palestinian private property in the West Bank and takes land there only legally or, for security reasons, temporarily.
The settlers’ actual justifications are based on religious fanaticism, claiming alleged ownership based on unverifiable ancient history. The Palestinians have possessed much of their land for hundreds of years if not longer. Part of the occupation is also likely based on pure and simple greed.
For economists, Israel is ahead of many western nations in terms of its gross domestic product, which annually approaches US$400 billion. The United Nations refers to it as having a “highly advanced free-market, primarily knowledge based economy.” If having someone from a country of this caliber stealing their neighbor’s land isn’t bizarre enough, how about when they throw in state-approved terror?
On April 22, 2017, Haaretz published a video online “Settlers Attack, Injure Activists Accompanying Palestinian Shepherds in West Bank.” Yotam Berger wrote:
Activists accompanying Palestinian shepherds near a West Bank settlement were attacked by settlers on Friday. Settlers threw stones at the activists, who belong to the Ta’ayush [Arab-Jewish partnership] organization, and tried to hit them with clubs near the Baladim [settler] outpost. Four of the activists were lightly hurt, according to a complaint filed with the police.
The masked figures attacked and then fled.
The Ta’ayush website posts weekly updates of harassment, violence, and illegal land confiscation. In their update “This Week—April 5-12, 2020—in the Occupied Territories,” the website reported that settlers were taking advantage of the Corona-virus pandemic:
Taking advantage of the general closure—imposed by Israel to prevent Corona-virus spread—the Jewish settler-colonists are constructing a series of new settler-colonist outposts on the hill range around Auja, expanding and building in the illegal outposts already existing in the South Hebron Hills, invade with their flocks sown Palestinian fields inside Area C and causing extensive damage to their Palestinian neighbors, nearly always without any interference by Israeli army and police …
There are times when the Israeli army has and does intervene on behalf of the Palestinians, particularly when the violent settlers are considered “extreme.” The most extreme Jewish religious fanatics will actually attack IDF soldiers who are protecting Arabs and the land in question. But there is no consistent policy. For the police and the soldiers, defense of Arabs and their land comes down to where the land is located, how much of it is tied up in the Israeli judicial process (the Supreme Court has intervened and delayed settlements in instances), or simply the mindset of the soldiers themselves. How much intestinal fortitude do they have to fend off fellow Jews, or just how racist are they? Most will stand by and watch.
The headline and sub-headline of Carol Cook’s story in Haaretz on April 22, 2017 are self-explanatory: “Over Passover, Settlers Attacked Three Grandmothers. I Was One of Them”:
“We, three women in our 60s and 70s, wanted to see the settlement reality for ourselves. We got a smaller but bitter taste of the violence and hatred Palestinians in the area experience as routine.”
Another Jewish writer for the same paper, Amira Hass, brings up a different form of terror, although Apartheid (see chapter 8) is potentially a more accurate word. In “Israel Incapable of Telling Truth about Water It Steals from Palestinians” on June 22, 2016, she goes into great detail about water amounts used by the various constituents, various levels of dishonesty on both sides, and the lies Israel tells in order to justify its actions. The final paragraph provides an emotional summary with a bit of sarcasm:
But in Farkha, Salfit and Deir al-Hatab people describe, on the verge of tears, how humiliating it is to live for weeks without running water. And we have not even spoken about the dozens of Palestinian communities on both sides of the Green Line that Israel, a light unto the nations, refuses to allow to connect to the water infrastructure.
For the government of Israel, Hass would be considered a liberal. A Jew interested in peace. She would be hated by the extremists and mocked by those in power, despite being quietly supported by close to half the population.
There are millions of Jews in Israel and the United States who support the plight of the Palestinians. The most fascinating among them are former IDF soldiers.
In the early 2000s, the Breaking the Silence exhibition and movement began, as documented by the Washington Post on June 24, 2004. “‘Breaking the Silence’ on West Bank Abuse—Israeli Soldiers Exhibit Depicts Mistreatment of Palestinians by Troops, Settlers in Hebron,” by Molly Moore. In the exhibition film, soldiers narrate while photos display incidents they were involved in.
“We get out of the jeep,” he says. “You see the groom, you see the bride, the father. As they go out [of their car] you see on their faces the fear.” The deputy commander did not want to allow the wedding party to pass, according to the soldier, who adds: “He wants to spoil everything, so they go home. He takes the car keys. “The bride is crying, the father of the groom is really begging,” he continues. “You see on their face how they are anxious about the most significant day in their life. On the other hand, I can see the deputy commander looks at them and does not see them as humans.”
Moore describes some of the other standard-operating-procedures of abuse and humiliation. Like a teenager being blindfolded and handcuffed to a chair for sixteen hours, accused of throwing stones. The top of the story:
Military police on Wednesday interrogated three Israeli reserve soldiers who organized an exhibit of photographs and videotapes chronicling mistreatment of Palestinians by troops and Jewish settlers. A statement issued by the military said the three men were ordered to provide testimony as part of an investigation into the “allegedly violent crimes against Palestinians and damage to Palestinian property” depicted in the show.
“The army wants to keep us quiet and scare us away,” Micha Kurz, 22, said after what he described as seven hours of questioning by investigators. “They’re not going to shut us up, because we have a lot to say, and they’re not going to scare us off.”
Peace-mongers! A dirty word to both governments of the United States of Israel.
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