Soldiers and clowns in Tuwani, Palestine

21 thoughts on “Soldiers and clowns in Tuwani, Palestine”

1. That’s a touching story. You should try to get a video up so we can spread that, and inform people in particular of the actions IDF soldiers are taking, no?

2. There’s another iconic “vignette” up at Tony Karon’s Rootless Cosmopolitan website: http://www.tonykaron.com
   The caption of the photograph reads: Hebron settlers attack a Palestinian passerby.
   And what do we see in the photograph? A young Jewish woman has sneaked up behind an older Palestinian woman. The young Jewish woman has grabbed the older Palestinian woman’s white head scarf and is yanking on it. A little Jewish boy – he looks about 10 – has also come up from behind the Palestinian woman and he’s kicking her.
   Two or three other “settlers” are visible to the right of the Palestinian woman. Their “body language” also bespeaks hostile intent.
   Directly in front of the Palestinian woman are two Israeli soldiers.
   The Palestinian woman is the still centre of this scene. Her head is turned slightly to the left and ever so slightly down. I looked long and hard at the photograph – there was something about it – and then it came to me: the stillness of the woman, her dignity, her humanity, the way she’s turned her head…I’ve seen that before: Michaelangelo’s Pieta.
   And I’ve seen those “settlers” before as well. In an earlier incarnation. A 1930s one. In Germany. That time around they were brownshirts and “fine, upright, good Germans” taunting, baiting, spitting at and kicking Jews.
   Nothing to add, except the howlingly obvious: what’s taking place in that photograph is utterly vile, utterly despicable, utterly cowardly. And let’s not leave the corollary unsaid: that young Jewish woman and that ten-year-old Jewish boy are also utterly vile, utterly despicable, utterly cowardly.
   Forty years on I’m still carrying around in my head the images of the self-immolated Buddhist monk in Vietnm, and the Saigon police chief blowing the brains out of the captured Vietcong suspect, and the terrified, screaming, naked, napalmed little girl running down the road toward me.
   I’ve now got another permanent, iconic image. Second one for me from this part of the world. This one joins that horrible sequence of the terrified little Palestinian boy and his dad, trying to shelter behind a barrel. And then both of them slumped over dead a few frames later.
   Bastards.

3. Yes, the Hebron “settlers” are definitely no more than hoodlums.

4. Hi JES,
   Are you being straight up? Do you really mean that? Or are you being darkly ironic and cutting?
   My JES “meter” is either going to spike or go off the cliff, depending on which it is.
   Not that it will – or should – matter to you in the least. But oddly enough it matters to me. The historical and cultural and indeed verbal integument surrounding this whole “question” is astonishingly dense and tough and surely it’s a good thing – if in only minute, local ways – people like you and me can get through it.

5. Yes Tupharsin, I am dead serious about the thugs living in the old Jewish Quarter of Hebron. Judging by the response of Israelis to the Alkobi-al-Aisha “Sharmoooooota” incident two weeks ago, I’d say that my feelings are shared by an overwhelming majority of Israelis, including political opposites such as Amir Peretz and former MK (and former Likudnik, I might add) Tommy Lapid, as well as the rightful heirs to those properties: the descendants of the ethnically cleansed Jewish Community of Hebron.
   I suggest that it is not your “meter” that requires adjustment, but rather your own prejudices relating to Israelis and Zionists that need recalibration!

6. The Hebron settlers are the worst of the worst. I have no desire to defend them, and I condemn their behavior without reservation.
   Nevertheless, I think you crossed a line in describing a ten-year-old child as “utterly vile.” Children are unfinished beings who have the capacity to grow up and learn better. Even the child soldiers who committed atrocities in places like Liberia and Uganda are not vile. To describe someone’s children as vile is to deny their humanity, just as that Palestinian woman’s humanity was denied by the settlers.

7. Jonathan,
   I disagree.
   Human beings – young and old – can be vile. If there is a line there – and I think there is – it’s about two or three years behind that kid. A seven-year-old – even an eight-year-old – is, as you say, well and truly “unfinished”. And in any case isn’t physically strong enough to hurt anyone when he puts the boot in. A ten-year-old is a different cup of tea. He’s well on his way – certainly old enough to know better, as the saying goes.
   It’s not a question at all of denying his humanity. He’s only too human – as we all know from Golding and any other number of artists who’ve had the courage to go there and report back honestly.
   I fully accept that his “environment” – his parents, his older siblings, his community generally – has a great deal to answer for in his case, but even in the circles in which he moves – involuntary shudder here – I’d be very surprised if there weren’t at least one or two of his ten-year-old playmates who would have demurred – i.e., not put the boot in. Which gets the thing just like that into sheep and goats country, whatever the mealy mouthed platitudes are about the innocence of children.
   And while we’re at it, “denying their – denying her – humanity” also smacks of the platitudinous. In this context at any rate. And particularly when you hold that slogan up against some of the other “matters” that are being “denied” in that part of the world. What I’m talking about – it goes without saying – is the Palestinians’ land, their livelihood, their liberty, their pursuit of happiness. Let alone their lives in many cases.
   Your accusing me of having “crossed a line” is so much squid ink. Anything – anything – to divert the gaze from that little ten-year-old shite running up behind that poor woman and kicking her.
   And for that matter, “worst of the worst” – “utterly vile”…er, am I missing something?
   By your own admission those people are pissing in your soup. You need to stop drinking it. Millions of the rest of us around the world have had our fill of it.
   Last thought – a ten-year-old’s brain is, what, 85 percent developed? Okay, 85 percent of that little scoundrel is utterly vile. Does that work for you?

8. JES,
   Pleased to hear it. My question is, why do you stand for it? Is it that proportional representation system you’ve got, which means – and please by all means edify me if I’m wrong about this – that tiny fringe parties can hold the balance of power…and accordingly can “exact their price”?
   Think of the goodwill that would be created – let alone the “surge” of favourable, world-wide publicity – were Israel to order those “hoodlums” to get their backsides out of there and get back where they belong.
   If 90 percent – or 80 percent – or even 58 percent – of the country feels that way…well, why can’t that consummation devoutly to be desired be brought about.
   As for your last para, uh uh. It won’t wash. My Chambers defines “prejudice” this way: “a judgement or opinion formed beforehand or without due examination”. Nothing at all beforehand about it. And while the term “due examination” is fairly elastic – I assure you I have been “examining” away for many years. I read voraciously. Hoover up “news programmes”. Thrash it out with everybody I come across who’s interested. And what’s equally to the point here, unlike you – or Salah, for that matter – I’m a disinterested party. I’m neither Israeli nor Arab, Jewish or Muslim. I live a long way away from the “Middle East” (and thank my lucky stars for it).
   I’ve got no problem at all with Israelis. I’ve got Israeli friends. And were you to ask me about the great mass of them – Israelis generally, I mean…as a people – most of them (the ones I’ve met at any rate) are great – they’re attractive, switched-on, vibrant, likeable people.
   My problem – and it bears repeating, I’m a disinterested party – is with the small minority of Israelis who are busy stealing other people’s land. I think they’re purblind. And foolish. And dangerous. A danger to themselves. Certainly to their Arab neighbours. To the rest of their compatriots. And ultimately, I fear, to the rest of us. Because of what’s building – and we shouldn’t kid ourselves, a mushroom cloud over any city – in Israel or somewhere else in “the west” or in the Muslim world – will do for all of us.
   So, no recalibration needed. No “prejudices” to “recalibrate”. Don’t much like Zionism – at least in its latter day, Dorian Gray stages – but that’s not a prejudice, that’s just common sense. If you apply the old judge-a-tree-by-its-fruit test – well, surely it’s beginning to look like one of the lousier ideas of the modern, post-1789 era.
   Nothing much to add, except perhaps to point out that one of my first “posts” here said, “the United States should guarantee Israel’s borders.” Its 1967 borders, that is. Start from there and there’s a chance. For everybody concerned. All kinds of problems – big problems – but none of them is insurmountable. Carry on from where things are now and your grandkids and Shirin’s (or Salah’s) grandkids and maybe my grandkids are f_ _ _ed. It’s not gonna get better. It’s gonna get worse. It’s the deadest of ends – a prison on one side of a wall, a ghetto on the other. And if that “formula” doesn’t work – well, all they are saying is give war a chance.
   No thanks, JES.

9. The Catholic Church might agree with you, Tupharsin. Canon law holds that seven is the age of reason. On the other hand, it also holds that those between age seven and puberty are only partly responsible. I believe there’s something similar in Jewish law.
   My point of reference, as I mentioned in my prior comment, is the child soldiers in Africa. Many of these have committed, or been forced to commit, atrocities including murder, rape and torture. Nevertheless, in places like Liberia and Uganda, they are being rehabilitated rather than being treated like adult war criminals. They are not simply to be dismissed as vile.
   I’m not trying to distract attention from that ten-year-old child. I want to focus attention on that child, and how the occupation is warping him, to underscore how urgent it is to end the occupation and remove the settlements before it’s too late for such children. The story of the Palestinians and what’s being taken from them is already being told. Who’s going to tell the story of the other damage being done by the occupation – the damage to Israel’s soul itself?

10. Nothing much to add, except perhaps to point out that one of my first “posts” here said, “the United States should guarantee Israel’s borders.” Its 1967 borders,
    That’s what Saudi King Abdullah peace offer in 2002 he put it forward and approved agreed by Arab League.
    But as common Israelis rejected because their wishful is a separate individual peace agreements garbing the land from their neighbours by unfair setting supported by pro-Israeli partners and supporter like US/UK, this the drama going one for more that 50 years.
    Till now Israeli schools teaching Israelis kids with their country without boarders
    The U.N. on November 22, 1967 issued Resolution 242 (Text at Yale’s Avalon Project) calling upon Israel to withdraw from “territories occupied in the recent conflict.” The resolution underscored “‘the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,'” and “‘the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from acts of force.'” Resolution 242 also called for a “‘just settlement of the refugee problem.'” (see Schulze, 40 and Document 11, 108)
    So whos fault? I think first the west they flee their guilt’s toward the JEW from the massacres and crimes against they done to Jews ended in British Impair offering land they dose not owned and gifted to JEW to apology for them but the crate another crime which is still to date cost thousands of human suffering and killing, also Israelis they have their believe this land is gifted to then by God.
    It might bring what Robert Fisk (Which JES and most Israelis don’t like) he said if you go to Palestinians and ask them they will show you their Othman land certificates, and Britt’s Tax receipt to prove they own the land, move to the Israeli settlement and ask they tell you this land gifted by their God!!! So how we can fix this?

11. Jonathan,
    That was some kind of alchemy.
    I don’t feel shamed. I don’t feel bettered. I do feel better.
    In short, what a piece of work is the brilliantly humane!
    Couldn’t fillip my king over too quickly after that last para.
    All best…

12. “The Catholic Church might agree with you, Tupharsin. Canon law holds that seven is the age of reason. On the other hand, it also holds that those between age seven and puberty are only partly responsible.”
    We all know what an authority the Catholic Church is on matters of juvenile development.

13. “the child soldiers in Africa. Many of these have committed, or been forced to commit, atrocities including murder, rape and torture.”
    How on earth you can compare a ten year old Israeli living freely with its family in a free society with child soldiers in Africa, who have been kidnapped, held against their will, and forced to commit horrible acts is unimaginable. The former is acting out of free will, the latter have been robbed by brutal, powerful adults of all freedom. The comparison is odious.

14. “Zionism -…in its latter day, Dorian Gray stages”
    Is this, perhaps, the nub of the matter?

15. Shirin,
    And you’re some kind of all right, too!

16. Shirin, the comparison is that a child is a child. Children are capable of rehabilitation.

17. All right, that last answer was a bit too offhand. What I meant to say was that even when children are ripped from their homes, forced to commit atrocities and made into involuntary outcasts from their society – as you rightly point out happened to the child soldiers – they remain human beings with the potential for good. They cannot simply be written off as “vile” even though some outsiders, and some members of their own societies, would like to do so. If it’s possible for them, after such an ordeal, to re-learn and rehabilitate, then it is also possible for a ten-year-old who is acting with the same moral free will as most ten-year-olds and who still has the capacity to grow up, regret and learn. If you write off children, then you’ve written off humanity.
    The flip side of this is that every society has a responsibility to its children not to place them in a position where they need rehabilitation. The fact that the culture of occupation has done this to a ten-year-old Israeli child is one reason why Israel needs to wake the hell up and get these settlers out. This isn’t the only reason by any means, but it’s criminal for a society or a subset of a society to allow its own children to grow up in a morally compromised environment. Recruiting a child as a soldier and making him kill, planting a child in the middle of Hebron and teaching him that his neighbors are dirt – the difference is a matter of degree, and the crime belongs to the society that allows such things.

18. The flip side of this is that every society has a responsibility to its children not to place them in a position where they need rehabilitation.
    What about Iraqi Childs? Who is responsible Jonathan Edelstein?
    Is it Iraqis!!? Or US?
    Did you know those 3200 mercenaries they sent to Baghdad are the most dangerous criminals and gangs set by your country to terrorised Iraqi Childs and families?
    Did you read the news that Blackwater filing in their chops very low level over Baghdad all the day and shooting bombing civilians!!
    Who can stop these crimes Jonathan Edelstein?
    You talking law and rules when your law will be applied then?
    You and other lawyers are good to give excuses but who cares about what going on in Iraq of crimes in name of “War On Terror” and War facing Iran in Iraq! Very flash names…
    What Iraq and Iraqi done to Americans and UK? you should not surprise these Childs and kids when they grow up they hate you much, you should excuse them what because you show them the ugliest horror by your troops and your official when all American keep their head down do nothing for their administration with all uncovered lies of this war, what they done and I believe you are one of them all went and elected GWB for three times!!
    If you blame Iraqis and accusing them, hate them that they had done nothing to overthrow the dictator regime for 35 years, then you chosen by you free rights by electing in three times GWB, he is not better than Saddam what he done to Iraqis.

19. Jonathan,
    No, a child is NOT a child. Maybe that is a reasonable statement in reference to toddler who has not yet reached the level of development at which children truly have free will an ability for compassion, but it is certainly not a reasonable statement when referring to a ten year old. Whether or not the child, or the adult can be rehabilitated is irrelevant.
    And yes, it is utterly odious to hold a child who has been robbed of anything resembling a normal child’s life by being kidnapped and forced by overwhelmingly powerful adults to psychologically adapt to being forced into the role of instrument of war to the same standard as one who is living with his family, receiving an education, and allowed a relatively normal life.
    And by the way fewer and fewer people are receptive to the canard that Israelis are the real victims of the mess that they created by trying to make someone else’s land their own – a canard that was carried to the ultimate extreme by Golda Meir’s statement to the effect that Palestinians victimize Israelis by forcing Israelis to kill them. You Israel apologists make yourselves look ridiculous by making about Israelis out to be the victims of every single aspect their own criminal actions against the Palestinians (and the Golan Syrians, and everyone else whom they have robbed of property, rights, and life itself). Damage to the Israeli soul indeed! Did it not ever for a single moment occur to you that you are putting the cart before the horse? Perhaps it is the dirty soul of Israel that is the problem to begin with.

20. I guess you missed what I said about “the crime is Israel’s for perpetuating this occupation that is corrupting its society?” I’m not exactly channeling Meir here, I’m pointing out the utterly obvious and non-controversial fact that long-term wars, occupations and counterinsurgencies corrupt a society. Part of that corruption is the effect on the moral compass of children such as those who live among the settlers. And yes, it’s the occupation that’s corrupting Israel and not the other way around, as is also painfully obvious when talking to any Israeli not on the far right.
    Anyway, there’s not much point in carrying this further, but one thing that Helena has said often, and in my opinion correctly, is that once people start being discussed in terms of disease or dirty souls or whatnot, then their humanity is denied and the door is opened to do anything to them. She’s pointed out how dangerous it is when right-wing people refer to Palestinians or Iraqi Sunnis, even suicide bombers, as a cancer or a death cult. Talking about the dirty souls of Israelis, or Americans or British or what have you, is the flip side of the same coin.
    I’ll leave it here. We get along much better when we’re talking about international law or mansaf.

21. I think one core of the discussion is really the question of the age at we should hold a developing young person completely responsible for her/his own actions. I would say the age is quite a lot higher than ten. And though the boy in question may– or may not, we really don’t know– have had a good, secure childhood in a loving family, nonetheless he has apparently been raised in an ideological atmosphere and inculcated with all kinds of hate propaganda directed against Palestinians…
    So the question really is, what can we do with the many scores of thousands of such boys and girls who have been raised in settler enclaves like this throughout the West Bank?
    Many of them have already grown up and gone on to propagate their hate-fueled actions– the “hill youth”.
    I think that the restraint, removal from points of confrontation and probably from the OPTs as a whole, re-education, and redirection of these young people must be primarily the responsibility of the Israeli government and society as a whole. But of course it’ll be a long time before that starts to happen.
    In the meantime, we in the US should do all we can to make sure that not one penny of our tax $$ is used, directly or indirectly, to further the settling project, and to give real support to all those– Palestinians and Israelis– who are working to end both the settlement project and the occupation as a whole.

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