Operation Breaking 'Breaking the Silence'

The Israeli organisation Breaking the Silence, an organisation of Israeli veterans working to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, which collects and publishes the testimonies of Israeli soldiers on the reign of terror inflicted by the IDF on occupied Palestinians, has done sterling work in exposing the brutal reality of Israeli military rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

Here, for example, are but three BTS testimonies among many from Israel's 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, reproduced by Norman Finkelstein in his breathtaking 2018 book Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom (pp 258-60):

[What were you shooting at?]
At houses.
[Randomly chosen houses?]
Yes.
[How much fire were you using?]
There was constant talk about how much we fired, how much we hit, who missed. There were people who fired 20 shells per day. it's simple. Whoever feels like shooting more - shoots more. Most guys shot more. Dozens of shells [per day], throughout the operation. Multiply that by 11 tanks in the company.

***

I don't know how they pulled it off, the D9 operators didn't rest for a second. Nonstop, as if they were playing in a sandbox. Driving back and forth, back and forth, razing another house, another street. And at some point there was no trace left of that street... Day and night, 24/7, they went back and forth, gathering up mounds, making embankments, flattening house after house.

***

There was one afternoon that the company commander gathered us all together, and we were told that we were about to go on an offensive operation, to 'provoke' the neighborhood that dominated us, which was al-Bureij... Because up until then, we hadn't really had any engagement with them... [W]hen it started getting dark my tank led the way, we were in a sort of convoy, and there was this little house. And then suddenly we see an entire neighborhood opening up before us, lots of houses, it's all crowded and the moment we got to that little house, the order came to attack. Each [tank] aimed at whichever direction it chose... And that's how it was really - every tank just firing wherever it wanted to. And during the offensive, no one shot at us - not before it, not during it, not after it. I remember that when we started withdrawing with the tanks, I looked toward the neighborhood, and I could simply see an entire neighborhood up in flames, like in the movies. Columns of smoke everywhere, the neighborhood in pieces, houses on the ground, and like, people were living there, but nobody had fired at us yet. We were firing purposelessly.

However, as Finkelstein warns:

"Once Israel successfully browbeat the international human rights community into submission, the only remaining chink in its armor was domestic human rights organizations. Of these, Breaking the Silence most aroused Israel's wrath. The soldier eyewitness testimonies it had compiled after each of Israel's massacres in Gaza were us unimpeachable as they were devastating. Israel consequently set out in a very public way to destroy Breaking the Silence... Should it neutralize breaking the Silence, Israel will have cleared the last obstacle in its path to committing future massacres in Gaza. Henceforth, no one will be around to compellingly document its crimes for a Western audience. However reputable and reliable Palestinian human rights organizations might be, unfortunately and unfairly, they lack credibility among the broad public in the West. In the 'operations' to come, Israel will be able to carry on as it pleases, emboldened in the knowledge that it can do so with guaranteed impunity. It's a new sequence of catastrophes waiting to happen." (p 288)

Could this be Operation Breaking Breaking the Silence's opening salvo?

"A group of active reserve duty IDF soldiers are flying to the UK this summer to share their testimony in parliament with MPs. This event, hosted by the [former Labour] MP [turned independent in February] Ian Austin in the Palace of Westminster on June 11, is part of a campaign on the dilemmas faced by Israeli soldiers on the ground. Organised by the Israel Britain Alliance and the organisation 'My Truth', the event will include opportunities for parliamentarians to put questions to soldiers." (IDF reserve soldiers hosted by MP Ian Austin in parliament to share testimony, Mathilde Frot, jewishnews.timesofisrael.com, 16/5/19)

A Quotidian Execution

Words fail in the face of the multifarious horrors and outrages routinely, casually, gleefully perpetrated by uniformed Zionist gangsters on occupied Palestinians, the latest being a bullet to the head of a young Palestinian man lying on his back, motionless, probably barely alive, in a street in occupied Hebron.*

If anyone out there still needs convincing that the murder and mistreatment of Palestinians is, and always has been, core Zionist practice, I urge them to read a copy of Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers' Testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010, compiled by Breaking the Silence, and open their bloody eyes:

"We had a commander in the unit who would just say in these words... 'I want bodies. That's what I want.' [...] From his first speech to us... he said, 'I want bodies full of bullet holes.' [...] Before we went out on an important mission he'd say, 'I want bodies full of bullets.' And if we came back with someone we'd killed, he was happy. That's how it was." (The commander said, 'I want bodies full of bullets', pp 79-80)

[*See Netanyahu's hypocritical condemnation of videotaped Hebron execution, electronicintifada.net, 25/3/16.]

Senator Xenophon's Israeli Apartheid Moment

Just when I was beginning to think that The Australian's Middle East correspondent, John Lyons, had been exiled to Cairo as punishment for exposing the winning ways of Israeli troops with Palestinian kids on the ABC's Four Corners program in February, he's now back in the West Bank, reporting on a visit to the Israeli settler-besieged city of Hebron by that rarity in Australian politics, a politician of independent mind beholden to neither party line nor Israel lobby:

"In an empty street in Hebron, deep in the Palestinian territories, independent senator Nick Xenophon is trying to have two conversations at once. A Palestinian woman in a caged balcony is explaining her plight while an Israeli settler carrying a handgun wants his say." (Hebron 'heartbreaking,' for Xenophon, John Lyons, The Australian, 10/5/14)

Don't they all.

"Both want the ear of the South Australian senator on his first visit to the region. 'This is madness,' he said later. In Hebron, 800 settlers live surrounded by 180,000 Palestinians. 'I would urge any Australian politician who comes here to go to Hebron, walk the streets, run the gauntlet of checkpoints and speak to both sides,' he told The Weekend Australian.'

"As he walked the ghost-town streets of Hebron, the Palestinian woman, Zleikha Muhtaseb, called from the cage she has built to prevent settlers breaking her windows. 'Where in the world do you need to put a cage around your house?' she shouted. She came downstairs to shake Senator Xenophon's hand through a security grill - the Israeli army has welded shut her front door so she can only open the back door, and the army does not allow her to walk on the street in front of her house.

"But US-born settler..."

That'd be right.

"... David Wilder, carrying a Glock, says Palestinians are not allowed on to that street for security reasons - that recently an Israeli was shot dead nearby."

Can you believe it, Senator, these Arab schmuks have the crazy idea that we're here to take over their town?!

"Senator Xenophon said later: 'What I saw in Hebron was heartbreaking - the division, the segregation, the palpable fear in the community. He questioned whether having a civilian law for Israelis and military law for the Palestinians could last. 'It seems unsustainable that you have two different legal systems for people living in the same community,' he said."

It's called apartheid, Nick. (Not that you'd expect to see the 'A' word in a Lyons' report on Israel. Not since the hue and cry that followed the last time he (?) used the word at any rate: See my 10/5/12 post Down the Memory Hole.)

"In Jerusalem, he met the Likud party's Yariv Levin, who said Israel was committed to peace."

LOL

"He met Breaking the Silence - almost 1,000 current and former Israeli soldiers trying to reform how the army relates to Palestinians - and human rights group B'Tselem. Senator Xenophon said: 'There is some hope through Israeli groups like Breaking the Silence and B'Tselem, who show the views of the Israeli government do not necessarily represent the views of all Israelis.'

"He was briefed by Australian barrister Gerard Horton from Military Court Watch about a Unicef report that found ill treatment of Palestinian children appeared to be 'widespread, systematic and institutionalised.' Mr Horton said MCW had found that since the report there had been some improvements but 90% of detained children were still tied and 55% reported physical abuse.

"Before leaving, Senator Xenophon had a message for any Australian politician who argued Israel's settlements were not illegal. 'I would urge Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten to have a good look at the International Court of Justice's statement on Israeli settlements,' he said. 'The ICJ statement is crystal clear - all settlements are illegal under international law'."

The accompanying photograph (in the print edition), by Sylvie Le Clezio, showing Zleikha Muhtaseb in her balcony/cage, with Xenophon below on the street being earbashed by The Glock is priceless. The pained look on the senator's face says it all. This is clearly his Israeli apartheid moment. 

Confected Outrage Over a Boy-cott

The drama queens of the Israel lobby would have us believe that they are SHOCKED to learn that someone's kid/little brother was not only present at last Tuesday's protest against a proposed Max Brenner outlet at UNSW, but that the child (around 8-10 judging from the photograph featured on the front page of this week's Australian Jewish News) was "brandishing" (Ziospeak for 'holding' when someone they don't like is doing it) a sign reading 'Max, Max, Murderer!':

"They are raising a young child on myths and prejudice and planting the seeds of hatred with reckless disregard for the ultimate consequences. They have learnt nothing from history," ranted Peter Wertheim of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. "It is deplorable to see a young child being indoctrinated with falsehoods and hatred," echoed Yair Miller of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. ('Planting the seeds of hatred', AJN, 3/5/13)

"[I]t's hard to respect people who allow their children to brandish such offensive signs at such a young age," intoned the the AJN editorialist piously. "If more time was invested in teaching youngsters about tolerance and peace, instead of promoting conflict and hate, such scenes - and indeed the scenes we see in the Middle East on all too frequent a basis - would perhaps be less common." (What are they teaching?)

God forbid that our kids should know that consumer choices have real consequences. That there is often a connection between Big Business and War. Or that, in this instance, Max Brenner "sweetens [the] special moments" of troops who gun down Palestinians, young and old, with monotonous regularity and get away with it every time. (See my 12/7/09 post How Sweet It Is.)

The sheer humbug of such voices is breathtaking.

Not from them an admission that Israeli kids are groomed from day 1 for conflict and hate:

"This very cute kid who'd regularly visit our [army] post decided that he didn't like Palestinians walking beneath his house, so he took a brick and threw it at this girl's head. Kid's there do whatever they want. No one does anything about it. No one cares. Afterward, his parents just praised him. The parents there encourage their children to behave like that. There were many cases like that. Eleven-, twelve-year-old Jewish kids beat up Palestinians and their parents come along to help them, set their dogs on them - there's a thousand and one stories." (Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers' Testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010, Breaking the Silence, pp 308-309)

Nor from them an admission - let alone an expression of concern - that the abuse of Palestinian kids by Israeli soldiers, police and intelligence personnel has reached alarming proportions.

Here, for example, is the opening paragraph of the Christian Peacemaker Teams' recent report, Occupied Childhoods: Impact of the actions of Israeli soldiers on Palestinian children in H2 during February, March & April 2013:

"The recent mass arrest of 27 Palestinian children by Israeli soldiers on March 20, 2013 is a shocking example of the violation of children's rights in H2 (the portion of Hebron under Israeli Military control) in and near the Old City neighborhood of Hebron. Sadly the event is not an isolated incident. The suddenness of the arrest and the fact that it was not precipitated by a specific incident but was instead an attempt to round up as many children as possible in order to question them make the incident particularly egregious. Unfortunately children living in H2 are subject to experiences which violate their rights as children on a daily basis. Since the start of February human rights workers in Hebron have witnessed and documented 47 detentions and/or arrests of children age 15 and under by Israeli soldiers. A UNICEF document* released in February, 2013 describes the arrest, interrogation and detention by the Israeli army, police and security agents of approximately 700 Palestinian children aged 12 to 17 each year, throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)." (cpt.org)

What hypocrites!

[*See my 18/4/13 post The UN Goes to Water.]

What Price Honest Reporting?

On July 8 last year, I posted an Australian Jewish News advertisement for an "Advocates Mission for Israel," co-sponsored by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and Zionist website HonestReporting and scheduled for November 2012.

According to HonestReporting, there were 20 takers - "mostly members of Sydney's Jewish community, plus a number of West Australians and Americans." (30/11/12)

Precisely which category participant Anne Skinner, described in The Australian Jewish News as a "freelance writer and editor [who] self-funded her participation," fits into I do not know. Let us assume she's Australian. At any rate, it was Ms Skinner's wrap-up which appeared in the December 21 issue:

"The opinions in this article," we are told, "were partially informed by the mission's advocacy program." Now whatever else may have helped inform Ms Skinner's opinions on the Palestinians - Leon Uris' novel, Exodus, perhaps? - she does not reveal. One thing's for sure, though: Israeli settler Itamar Marcus's wearily familiar line - that the Palestinians are not so much sinned against as sinning - was given an unqualified thumbs-up by her:

"According to Israeli independent media monitor Palestinian Media Watch, PA-controlled Arab [sic] language media routinely incites hatred against Israel and Jews, much of it aimed at radicalising children and delivered via cartoons, sermons and programs on sport, culture and education. The Palestinians need - and must have - a state of their own. But instead of preparing them for peace, their leaders are warping the minds of generations of citizens - a criminal tragedy conveniently ignored by journalists intent on blaming Israel for all Palestinian ills." (Time to engage soft power)

Yes, I know, we've heard it all before, but what really puzzles me is the extraordinary revelation that Ms Skinner self-funded her undignified prostration at the feet of Mr Marcus.

Frankly, if she'd really wanted to find out what's going on (or should that be 'who's going down'?) in the occupied Palestinian territories, and where the undoubted hate is coming from, all she had to do was visit a well-stocked book store here in Australia, and, for a mere AUS$35, purchase and read Our Harsh Logic: Israeli soldiers' testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010 (2012), compiled by the good folk of Breaking the Silence.

Our Harsh Logic is no amateur effort. Its contributors are all experts in the field if I may put it that way. Yes, if honest reporting was what Ms Skinner really wanted, as opposed to HonestReporting - know what I mean? - Our Harsh Logic is the place to find it:

"The worst thing I saw in Hebron happened the day after Elazar Leibowitz's funeral. I was guarding the Gross post, which is on the roof of a building and is the lookout for Hebron's central square... [I]n the middle of my shift, sometime in the afternoon, I see an old man with a cane walking down, an Arab from Abu Sneina. The old man looked sixty-plus, had a cane, he gets to the Abu Sneina intersection, to Gross Square, and all of a sudden three sixteen- or seventeen-year old [settler] kids jump him, they push him down to the ground in a second. They grab a stone and they open up his head. They start kicking him down on the ground, bashing his head. Here's a sixty-year-old man with a stream of blood gushing from his head, blood pouring from his head... I understood that basically anything that goes on there, that innocent [Palestinian] kids, fourteen years old, eight years old, die there for no reason, that settlers go into their houses and shoot at them, and settlers go crazy in the streets and break store windows and beat up soldiers and throw eggs at soldiers and lynch the elderly - all these things don't make it to the media. Hebron is a small, isolated world, and the Avraham Avinu neighborhood is isolated inside Hebron, and more soldiers guard it than people living there. The people living in the neighborhood do whatever they want, the soldiers are forced to protect them. The settlers are the biggest Jewish Nazis I've ever met. And it's here in the State of Israel, and no one knows about it, and no one wants to know, and no one reports on it." (pp 304-307)

"We were in Jabal Juar at that time. It used to be an Arab school, and for at least a few years now it's been an IDF post. There was an incident there where some settlers jumped some woman, an elderly woman. She was ill in some way. They injured her stomach, a serious stomach injury. It was only later that we understood she'd been ill. But apart from that, she was very old, and a few settlers jumped her in the Erez alley." (p 307)

"My main problem in Hebron was with the settlers, the Jewish community. I got the feeling we were protecting the Arabs from the Jews. And neither side liked us, but it felt like the Jews did whatever they wanted and no one cared... Here's an example of something that happened right near me: I was on guard duty, and one of the soldiers at another post called a medic over the radio. Someone replaced me at the post and I ran down to see what had happened, and I saw a six-year-old Palestinian girl, her whole head a gaping wound... This very cute [settler] kid who'd regularly visit our post decided that he didn't like Palestinians walking beneath his house, so he took a brick and threw it at this girl's head. Kids there do whatever they want. No one does anything about it. No one cares. Afterward, his parents just praised him. The parents there encourage their children to behave like that. There were many cases like that. Eleven-, twelve-year-old Jewish kids beat up Palestinians and their parents come along to help them, set their dogs on them - there's a thousand and one stories." (pp 308-309)

See what I mean?

Who Serves the Drinks?

"Within colonial histories, the term 'bwana' demarcated racial and class distinctions: white men were 'bwana' and white women 'memsahib.' The implicit distinction was between colonizer men as rulers and colonized boys as servants, an ideological as opposed to chronological distinction." (Jambo Bwana: Obama as Tourist-Guest, gukira.wordpress.com, 22/4/09)

The converse of political Zionism's current efforts to portray its project in Palestine as a return of the native son to a homeland from which he was long ago driven, is its wholesale repudiation of the nation that Israel is a settler-colonial state founded by European Jewish colons. This particular facet of Zionism's flight from reality (let me count the ways) looms large in contemporary Zionist discourse these days.

It is no coincidence, for example, that such a prominent contemporary apologist for Israel as Alan Dershowitz should have begun his 2003 book, The Case for Israel, by attempting to rebut the charge. Is Israel a Colonial, Imperialist State? is the question-title of the first chapter of his book. As you'd expect, Dershowitz's answer is a resounding 'NO!': "Israel is a state comprising primarily refugees and their descendants exercising the right to self-determination... refugees escaping the oppressive anti-Semitism of colonial Europe and the Muslim states of the Middle East and North Africa." (pp 13-14)

Sure, sure, Bwana, but it's not really that complicated. You see, there's a very simple test for what is and isn't a colonial state: Who serves the drinks?

"'You will have a coffee,' [Elisha] stated, snapping his fingers for the Arab waiter. He put me in mind of the racist post-'67 occupation joke: God calls the founders of the great faiths to his house and they sit around in armchairs - Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius. Suddenly they realise someone is missing. 'Where's Mohammed?' asks Buddha. God claps his hand to his forehead. 'Of course,' he says, 'I forgot. Mohammed! Bring 6 coffees right away!'" (The Death of Moishe-Ganef, Simon Louvish, 1986, p 116)

"There was some guy, I think his name was Muhammad, who became a friend of ours. What does that mean? He understood the game. He understood that the person who makes the decisions isn't... he got it that there's no reason to get the right permits and whatever, the way to do things is with the soldiers in the field. So that's how he got friendly with us. He'd ask, 'Hey, do you need cigarettes?' He would distribute gas in the area, so he'd always come and go, and if you needed something, then you give money to Muhammad and he'll bring it... or he wouldn't take the money. Food? Something to drink? Drinks, cigarettes, little things like that, sure. And in exchange, he'd cross more easily than other people." (Our Harsh Logic: Israeli soldiers' testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010, Breaking the Silence, 2010,p 278)

As Though They Owned the Place

The Palestinian homeland held a magnetic attraction for the early Zionist colons:

"Hitherto the Turks had been [the Arabs'] landlords indeed, but the key of the house had been the Arabs' and the Arabs' only. Now* the Arabs were presented with latchkeys to their own hearths, Zionist strangers were given identical latchkeys, and in a day or two were pointing out the rooms in which they had been born." (Palestine: The Reality, JMN Jeffries, 1939, p 410) *1919-1923

Of course, following the depredations of 1948, the only bit of Palestine to escape their 'attention' was the fragment known as the West Bank - but, mind you, that was only until 1967:

"It is like being in a small room with your family. You have bolted the doors and all the windows to keep strangers out. But they come anyway - they just walk through your walls as if they weren't there. They say they like your room. They bring their families and their friends. They like the furniture, the food, the garden. You shrink into a corner, pretending they aren't there, tending to your homework, being a rebellious son, a strict father or an anxious mother - crawling about as if everything was normal, as if your room was yours for ever. Your family's faces are growing pale, withdrawn - an ugly grey, as the air in their corner becomes exhausted. The strangers have fresh air, they come and go at will - their cheeks are pink, their voices loud and vibrant. But you cling to your corner, you never leave it, afraid that, if you do, you will not be allowed back." (The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank, Raja Shehadeh, 1982, p 133)

These days, having swallowed and digested the Palestinian homeland in its entirety, it's the humble Palestinian home that's now become the focus of these invaders. No one is safe. Nothing is sacred:

"There was an operation in the company next to mine where they told me that a woman was blown up by a fox*, her limbs were smeared on the wall, but it wasn't on purpose. They knocked and knocked on the door and there was no answer, so they decided to open it wet**. He put down a fox and just at that moment the woman decided to open the door. And then her kids came over and saw her. I heard about it during dinner after the operation, someone said it was funny, and everyone cracked up, that the kids saw their mother smeared on the wall." (Our Harsh Logic: Israeli soldiers' testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010, Breaking the Silence, 2012,p 40) *explosive device; **with explosives

"We got an order, some team went to an IDF benefit, and they told us to go into a house in Hebron. We'd been in that house 2 weeks before, same owners, same procedure. We didn't really understand why we had to do it. You went to search, or to stay there? The same procedure, to take down the family... that night, all of a sudden they tell us a TV crew's coming, they want to film you - it was Hanukkah - eating doughnuts. Slowly we started to realize that they sent us into the house to film us for television. Really. They sent us into the house to film us for television. Also, afterward, we left in the morning or the afternoon, there were warnings or something. And they sent us in to film us for television. That night we were on the Channel 2 news for 20 seconds, that's it. They prepared everyone, they brought us doughnuts to show that we were happy and strong." (ibid p 106)

"They go into a house, part of what's called 'personal pressure', the whole idea is that you go in... you rest inside the house. Meaning, you move the family to some room and you rest, you make a kind of war room in some room, in the living room or I don't know... whatever room you come across. But there was one time when they came, they went in, and they wanted to watch something on TV. So they took the family and put them in another room. The family was sitting near the TV, but the soldiers wanted to watch something, they took the family, moved them into a different room so they could watch something. There was an explicit rule not to do something like that, not even to sit on the chairs. When I went around, I normally went around with the deputy company commander, wherever he went around, he made sure the soldiers didn't... the team above me, they sat on the sofas and moved the family... What was it? What was it? I don't know, soccer, something with soccer." (ibid, p 107)

"We got an order to go into the Al-Amari refugee camp, I think. There was an order that now we're going every week to a refugee camp to 'go over it.' 'Going over it' means you search everything... We'd come in, send all the men to the school - from age 15 to 50... there were always all kinds of numbers. Whoever has a mustache goes to the school... they stay there all day. And with the women and children we go from house to house with maps. You go through each house and search everything. We're good kids, so we come, open the closets, look, move things around, put things back, like that, all day. That particular day was the World Cup final, and we're finished, also because it was the final, and because it was extremely hot. So we go, make our rounds, as usual we don't find anything, like in all those operations. Our officer was always into... we'd go in, like, a team of 5 to blow up every door. This was covered up. It wasn't really, it was to train us to blow things up. So we'd learn a bit. Also, we did it out of enthusiasm for this game: any door that was a bit difficult, even though we had a crowbar, hammer, all kinds of equipment, we had to blow it up." (ibid p 109)

It should come as no surprise that this extraordinary 'interest' in Palestinian homes is almost as old as the Zionist project itself. In fact, I think I may actually have stumbled upon the earliest recorded instance of the phenomenon. The year is 1920:

"The American Zionist Medical Unit (that which had obtained special Zionist passports for the journey), good as its work was in itself, would not hear of acting under the control of the Public Health Department. It toured the country without authorization, and was involved in quarrels with Arab municipalities because it carried out inspections of Moslem houses through its own uniformed inspectors, who entered them without the consent of the inhabitants and as though enjoying the very Governmental authority which its members had refused to accept for themselves." (Palestine: The Reality, JMN Jeffries, 1939, p 310-311)

No, Tony, It Isn't Rocket Science

The readers of Murdoch's Australian are often too clever by half. The following letter, for example, appeared in yesterday's edition:

"About the Middle East conflict, it occurs to me if little boys throw stones at big boys and the big boys keep coming over and beating them up, what should the little boys do? Surely the answer is to stop throwing stones. I would expect that after 65 years the message might be starting to sink in. After all, it isn't rocket science, is it? (No pun intended)." Tony Physick, Goolwa, SA

Good one, Tony, but what if the little boys aren't throwing stones but simply objecting to being pushed around by the big boys?

He's hitting an Arab, and I'm doing nothing
Unit: Nahal
Location: Hebron
Year: 2009

The forward command team... kept telling us they hit Arabs for laughs all the time. On patrols and... they always hit them, but there was one time that was my main event... One day we got an alert. We jumped up, began to gear up, me and the medic were getting the gear for the jeep, and the company commander opened his office door, came out, and said: 'Scram everybody, only me and -- are going.' He told me to leave my gear and come as I am. He wasn't wearing his bullet-proof vest or anything, just his uniform and weapon. We drove to the Pharmacy checkpoint. There were two or three kids there who wouldn't go through the metal detector. We stopped the jeep, he got off, took a boy to the alley.

One of the kids who wouldn't go through the machine?

Yeah. And then he did what he did.

What?

He... I can see it, like a film. First he faced the kid, the kid was close to the wall, he faced him, looked at him for a second, and then choked him with the... held him like this with his elbow.

Against the wall?

Choked him up against the wall. The kid went wild, and the company commander was screaming at him, in Hebrew, not in Arabic. Then he let him go. The kid raised his hands to wipe his eyes, and the commander gave him a blow. The kid stopped wiping his eyes and dropped his hands, he left his hands at his side, and then the slapping started. The kid began to scream, it was scary, and people started coming around the checkpoint to look in the alley. Then I remember the commander coming out and telling them 'It's OK, everything's OK.' He yelled at the kid: 'Stay here, don't go anywhere.' He came out, said everything was OK, called over the squad commander from the checkpoint, stood facing the kid and told the squad commander, 'That's how you deal with them.' Then he gave the kid another two slaps and let him go...

How old was the boy?

A teenager. Not eighteen. More like thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old.

(From Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers' Testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010, Compiled by Breaking the Silence, 2012, pp 24-25)

It's the occupation, stupid.

If you go out on the campus today...2

Update: In my first post of the same name (18/4/08), I analysed some of the campus carry-on of the US Zionista vigilantes over at StandWithUs.com, a self-styled "pro-Israel advocacy organization" now taking root here in collaboration with the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).

I made the point, in reference to an exhibition currently touring US campuses, Breaking the Silence, that the SWU Zionistas had no compunction in targeting fellow Jews deemed to have deviated from the (Kadima/Likud or worse) party line. Another, nastier, example of SWU anti-Jewish activism may be found at http://www.richardsilverstein.com/. Under the heading Jewish Organizations Harass Jewish Peace Activists you can read how an "associate director of Stand With Us" was caught out sending an email to a Jewish peace activist at his home email address, asking him why he hated being a Jew and why he was in favour of murdering Jews.

In that post I also described the SWU travelling exhibition Inside Terrorism: The X-ray Project, a propagandist exploitation of x-rays of Israeli civilian victims of Palestinian suicide bombings, showing nuts, bolts and nails lodged in their bodies by the force of the blast. I made the point that the oft-heard Zionist call for 'balance' was not, in this case, met by the inclusion in the exhibition of x-rays of Palestinian victims of Israeli state terrorism.

An example of what might have been seen, if they had practised what they preached, are x-rays of Palestinians killed by flechette shells. The recent death by flechette in the Gaza Strip of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana is relevant here. The following paragraphs are from Donald Macintyre's 18/4/08 report, Tank shell that sprays deadly darts killed cameraman in Gaza, say doctors, in the UK Independent:-

"Bordered by lemon trees on one side and an olive grove on the other, the country lane leading to Joher Al Dik, where Fadel Shana was killed doing his job, was all but deserted yesterday afternoon. But two teenage boys from the Nusseirat refugee camp displayed half a dozen of the dull, black, inch-long darts which they said they had found amond the cactus growing along the verge opposite where Mr Shana had parked his unarmoured SUV to film a tank on Wednesday afternoon.

"According to doctors who examined [Shana's] body...at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, it was controversial darts like those, fletchettes, fired from an Israeli tank shell that explodes in the air, that caused his death. X-rays displayed to Reuters showed several of the flechettes embedded in the dead man's chest and legs, and more were found in his flak jacket, clearly emblazoned, like his vehicle, with 'TV' and 'Press' signs...

"The Israeli military was silent last night on whether it planned to launch the 'swift, honest, and impartial investigation' into Mr Shana's death, urged by David Shlesinger, the editor-in-chief of Reuters News, who said the medical evidence underlined the case for such an inquiry. While expressing 'sorrow' for Mr Shana's death, a military official said the area was one in which there was 'ongoing fighting against armed, extreme and dangerous terrorist organisations on a daily basis'. The presence of media, photographers and other uninvolved individuals in areas of warfare is extremely dangerous and poses a threat to their lives'. But Mr Shlesinger said: 'The markings on Fadel Shana's vehicle showed clearly and unambiguously that he was a professional journalist doing his duty. We the military must work together urgently to understand why this tragedy took place and how similar incidents can be avoided in the future. This tragic incident shows the risks journalists take every day to report the news.

"The military would only say that all its weapons 'are legal under international law'. Israel's Supreme Court rejected a 2003 petition arguing that the use of flechettes as an anti-personnel weapon contravened a 1980 UN convention, but the Israeli human rights group Btselem said last night that the flechettes violated international law and demanded a criminal investigation."

If you go out on the campus today...

Hot on the heels of the campus Howardistas/Horowistas come the campus Zionistas. Just a few posts back I dealt with the Young Liberal Dob-in-a-Don campaign (From Howardistas to Horowistas). Now the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has announced the appointment of Joel Burnie, a 23 year-old Monash University arts-law student and former president of the Australian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) as its "first campus co-ordinator to promote Israel and Jewish culture." (Pro-Israel lobby appoints first campus watchdog, The Australian, 16/4/08).

As with our Howardista-Horowistas, AIJAC's campaign, like graffiti vandalism and SUVs, is a US import, "a joint venture with the US campus movement StandWithUs, which advertises itself as 'the next generation of Israel advocacy'."

AIJAC director Ted Lapkin had reportedly declared in Quadrant in 2006 that "Australian academe was a 'rogues' gallery of anti-Zionists'." Mr Burnie, however, was keeping Ted's hyperbole on a tight leash - at least until he's on his feet: " 'I'd like to do some proper investigation to see if there is a systemic problem [of academic bias against Israel], but I do not believe there is... we need to make sure that all academic opinions are being expressed equally on campus'... Asked if his role had been created to counter anti-Israel bias or anti-Semitic activity, Mr Burnie said: 'This position has not been created out of an emergent necessity'. Rather, he would be 'an on-campus advocate for Israel and Jewish culture'. 'The role involves promotion of Israeli culture and promotion of Israeli speakers that may come out to Australia. It will give students access to these people so they can listen and be educated'."

Watch this space as the faux sceptical Joel trumpets the faux findings of his "proper investigation." Something along the lines of Australian Academe a Rogue's Gallery of Anti-Zionists! perhaps?

Just as David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com is holy writ for our Horowista campus vigilantes, StandWithUs.com is the inspiration for their Zionista comrades. So let's take a peek:-

1) The Suicide Terrorism Industry's first production, you may remember, was the carcass of an exploded Jerusalem bus hawked to strategic venues around the world. Its second production, Inside Terrorism: The X-Ray Project, is currently doing the rounds of US campuses. X-Ray is described as an exhibition of "X-rays and CT-scans of patients who survived suicide bombings in Israel, displaying nuts, bolts, and nails, lodged into victim's bodies by the force of the bomb... [designed] to explore the most important social issue of our times, the effects of terrorism on a civilian population." An exhibition of Palestinian IBM fragments from Zionist pilgrimage site Sderot is no doubt lurking just around the corner. (See my post Talk to the hand 'cause the face ain't listening, Gareth, 6/4)

Despite the constant calls of Zionist propagandists for 'balance' whenever a half-way objective story on the Middle East conflict manages to sneak into the mainstream media under Zionist radar, don't expect X-Ray to include any pics of slivers and chunks of Made in America/Israel ordnance in Palestinian victims of Israeli state-terrorism. But, hey, let's be charitable here. Surely the only reason for their absence is logistic. After all, while you can fit all the Israeli pics in one room, the Palestinian ones would need a venue as large as the Louvre.

2) As well as exploiting the pain and suffering of Israelis to score propaganda points, the US Zionistas are doing their bit to relieve 'offending' academics of their jobs. Clicking on "Activism & Action Alerts" takes you to "'Deny Nadia Abu El-Haj Tenure from Barnard/Columbia'." Nadia's crime? "Alleging that archaeologists have 'created the fact of an ancient Israelite/Jewish nation', where none actually existed. She asserts that the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a 'pure political fabrication'." Hm, that kind of straying from the straight and narrow should be reason enough for a retrospective campaign against self-hating Jews George and Ira Gershwin, who penned those non-pc lyrics "De things dat yo' liable to read in de Bible/It ain't necessarily so." Thankfully, the 'Deny El-Haj Tenure' campaign hasn't so far succeeded, but here's one that has: "'Deny Norman Finkelstein Tenure' - This petition was affective [sic*] and instrumental in Chicago, where DePaul University denied Finkelstein tenure in June 2007."

*You can see that playing Spot the Current Campus Existential Threat to Israel does wonders for the Zionistas' spelling.

3) So much for academics who buck the party line. Just as much fun can be had silencing the Palestinian voice on celluloid. Click on "Students 'solve' Mideast crisis," and you can read about the stink the Zionistas kicked up at Canada's University of Windsor over a Muslim Students Association (MSA) proposal to screen Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority, a film described schizophrenically by Zionista Dario David Hunter as both a "documentary... depicting Palestinians recounting abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers" and "basically 90 minutes of indoctrination." Another Zionista, Pamela Goldstein, is hilarious in her faux outrage: "'I watched it on YouTube last night', she said. 'I just found it... very dramatic, and almost hysterical. It was an incitement to hatred. I mean, you watched that film and you wanted to hate every single Jew that ever lived'."

Faux outrage was followed by faux bon-homie as the MSA's attempt to shine a bit of light into a dark and nasty corner was eventually foiled by a Zionista charm offensive: "Along with the film, the event was to include a lecture by Abdel Qadir Tayebi of the Windsor Islamic Association -described by [Osama] Iqbal [president of the MSA] as the MSA's chaplain or spiritual adviser. On the day of the event, Iqbal said he was approached by the university's international students adviser, and he made the decision to cancel once he realized how Jewish students felt. Following the cancellation of the event, Iqbal met with Hunter, Goldstein and former WJSA president Erin Glatter to discuss their concerns. 'I think that the issue is not with the Muslim students presenting their point of view which members of our community may not necessarily agree with', Hunter said. 'I think... the rather aggressive way it was presented [Say NO to these atrocities NOW and learn the FACTS] was problematic'. Goldstein said she intends to have Iqbal and Hunter on her radio program to talk about what happened [Don't call us, Iqbal, we'll call you], and she's looking forward to more joint events by Muslim and Jewish students. 'So we've decided we are going to solve the Middle East crisis', said Goldstein to laughter. 'And we feel confident that we can do it'."

And why wouldn't Goldie be laughing? Step back a bit and see how it's done:-

a) Israel, presenting as a Jewish state representing all Jews, everywhere, abuses the Palestinian inhabitants of a territory it occupies in violation of international law, while misrepresenting such abuse as self-defence against an alleged generic Jew-hating Muslim threat.

b) Someone makes a film about the Palestinian victims which gives them a voice to reveal what the self-proclaimed Jewish state is doing to them.

c) A Muslim student grouping, concerned that fellow Muslims are under attack, decide to screen the film.

d) Zionista foot soldiers on campus scream that it is anti-Semitic and will incite hatred of all Jews, everywhere.

e) The Muslim students, on the defensive since 9/11, perhaps influenced by Zionist propaganda misrepresenting the Middle East conflict as a clash between Judeo-Christian 'civilization' and Muslim 'barbarism', possibly confused about the elementary distinction between Judaism, the faith, and Zionism, the political ideology and program, and unable to see that the wool is being pulled over their eyes by the Zionistas, who deliberately misrepresent all criticism of Israel's abuse of Palestinians as an attack on all Jews, everywhere, are spooked into pulling the film and sucked in by Zionista blandishments.

f) Result: the voices of the abused Palestinians are once again silenced, the current Campus Existential Threat to Israel is neutered, the Zionistas are laughing, and Palestinians continue to be abused. Bingo!

Tellingly, The Australian's article on AIJAC's new campus crusader reported him saying that he "would continue the inter-faith work he did through [the AUJS] talking with Muslim and Christian student groups."

And speaking of touring exhibitions, even those organized by Zionists of the wrong kind will be targeted by the Zionistas. Judging by this particular "Activism & Action Alerts" notice -"'IDF Sign Against 'Breaking the Silence' - Only to be signed by former IDF soldiers " - I assume (I say 'assume' because the information sought by clicking on it cannot be accessed) that an exhibition of photographs by former IDF whistleblowers on the crimes of the Israeli occupation is being picketed. Certainly, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has accused the organizers of BTS of encouraging anti-Semitism and making Jewish students "feel threatened personally."

What with Horowistas and Zionistas crying foul, playing 'I spy', or otherwise involved in hosing down dissenting views and enforcing the party line, does one dare to venture out into the campus woods today?