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08.17.10 - 8:35 PM
"What They See 24/7"
The Israeli human rights group Breaking the Silence has posted more pictures of IDF soldiers abusing or humiliating Palestinian prisoners to prove what many of us suspected - that similar Facebook photos posted earlier this week are the norm, not the exception. Israeli activists say such pictures reflect the inevitable dehumanization wrought by the Occupation. More "trophy" pictures here. Graphic.
"It encapsulates precisely the feeling among soldiers serving in the territories. At some point, they stop seeing these handcuffed people as human beings." - Yehuda Shaul, founder of Breaking the Silence.
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34 Comments so far
Show AllWhere is M$M to cover this? And how about the Congressmen and Obama who say their support of Israel will never waiver, any condemnation?
i hate to use the falsely hierarchal descriptive term, psycho-pathological,-but that is what best describes what has happened to the humans who have put themselves under thrall to the the monstrous and murderous abstract entity, functioning psycho-spiritually as an idol, the state which hides itself behind the name,"israel"....or to quote norman finkelstein, "israel has become a lunatic state."
guernica, why do you say that you hate to use the falsely hierarchical descriptive term, psychopathological?
I am just curious, to be honest. Sounds off topic, but that never stops anyone here anyway. Why is it "falsely hierarchical"? Or even hierarchical, as a descriptive term.
rita
it's a term of the allopathic-medecine medical priesthood, and is used to justify all kinds of monstrous institutional behaviour...like electro-shock...i think i meant to say false.
Wow, things are worst than I thought.
This is plainly SICK but then Nazis were doing the same things.
http://www.lucifereffect.com/dehumanization.htm
How what goes around comes around :-(
Actually, to be honest, this is not an example of "what goes around comes around".
Sorry, Shakespear1....:-)
What was it Mark Regev, Netanyahu's spokesman, called the IDF? "The most moral army in the world".
I don't know if he did, but that was said at least thirty years ago.
And being repeated to this day.
De-Countrify Israel Now and force Zionists to pay Reparations.
TOT, i see a piece on France being asked to pay reparations to Haiti.
I wonder if you are behind that as well...........(some humor).
Yes. "The most moral army in the world" is and has ever been the IDF's self narrative.
On the one hand they howl "anti-semitism!" if they are called to the mat - "Why does israel get such harsh criticism when we are doing nothing that america, europe, et. al doesn't do?".
On the other hand they break their arms patiing themselves on the back for being "the most moral army in the world(TM)".
Ya can't have it both ways. If you practice the same atrocities that others do, you can hardly be better than everyone else.....
Kudos to the people who are doing this!
I am waiting for u.s. military to follow suit.
Oh, there was Winter Soldier. How many of us watched it? I don't think it got any msm press at all.
Israel and the United States should be denounced as terrorist states. I notice that some of the worst settler scum in Israel come from New York and I can see why the two countries love each other.
If you are brave enough to stand over a bound, bleeding, and gagged (or dead) human with an automatic weapon, then you should be brave enough to have your face exposed within the photo that your are so gloriously posing. Show your faces oh courageous warriors!
To protect the anonymity of these abusers is wrong. We should be protecting the victims, rather than sanctifying the safety in which oppressors can perpetuate their crimes.Show their faces!
Quit protecting the abusers.
The abusers are not the ones who are responsible for this website, so it is the activists running the site who are pixilating the photos. that is what i gather from this, anyway.
Is there a u.s. counterpart where our military is posting such photos with testimony, etc.? My guess is that if there is (let me know, by the way, please), they are not showing the faces of their comrades in arms.
However, i shall now write to the contact address on the website and ask about this.
peace.
RE: "Israeli activists say such pictures reflect the inevitable dehumanization wrought by the Occupation." - Abby Zimet
FROM HAARETZ, 11/13/08:
(excerpt)…Last week, soldiers from the Golani infantry brigade posted a video on YouTube depicting a blindfolded Palestinian being forced to repeat phrases in Hebrew as the soldiers manning the checkpoint laugh in the background.
One of the lines is: “Golani will bring you a log to stick up your ass.”
As the detainee repeats the words, the soldiers are heard laughing raucously in the background…
ENTIRE HAARETZ ARTICLE – http://www.haaretz.com/news/idf-soldiers-filmed-humiliating-bound-palestinian-face-court-martial-1.285454
FROM BBC NEWS, 11/07/08:
(excerpt)…The video shows a bearded Palestinian detainee, blindfolded, and apparently kneeling close to a high concrete barrier.
Around him are a group of Israeli soldiers, some of whom are jeering. One soldier goads the blindfolded man into repeating what he is saying.
The taunt ends with the words: “Golani will bring you a log to stick up your ass.”
As the man repeats it, the soldiers can be heard laughing loudly…
ENTIRE BBC ARTICLE WITH THE VIDEO EMBEDDED - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7715861.stm
These pictures are not the work of fear and loathing crazed 20 year old soldiers, orders for such treatment come from the very top. Yitzhak Rabin, who is remembered as almost a Gandhi--all the more so because of their identical assassinations by fanatics who shared their religious identity--ordered Israeli soldiers to "break their bones" in 1988 soon after the largely nonviolent first Intifada broke out in the Occupied Territories.
http://www.zcommunications.org/broken-bones-and-broken-hopes-by-amira-hass
True enough.
And if you live in the u.s. are you aware that the orders for torture come/came from the top?
Time to start dealing with the problem as human beings on planet earth and stop playing right into the us vs them game, which the powers that be want.
But then, as i have begun to say in posts here, i never did have school spirit. I don't know anything about football.
peace.
Some people do weird things just to get a hard-on.
I hate Nazis...especially Israeli ones.
Some of these photos are clearly disturbing displays of callousness and insensitivity, but others are ambigious. With the soldier's facial expressions obscured, it's not always clear whether they're mocking their captives or simply guarding them (see 9/9 in the Guardian sequence). And while the caption of photo 8/9 suggests the soldiers are ignoring the bloody Palestinian prisoner at their feet, it looks to me as if the soldier on the right is squeezing a bag connected to an IV line running into the wounded man, ie, he's administering first aid.
What is more disturbing is that you are trying to make excuses for what CLEARLY break every law of the Geneva Convention. Oh that's right Israel do not adhere to them or one of the UN sanctions, they are only for the little people .....
Israel is a signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), but not to the two protocols adopted in 1977.
Article 13 of the convention on prisoners of war state: "Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity." As I said before, I am not sure if all the photos of prisoners depict "insults."
Which "UN sanctions" do you refer to?
Needless to say, I am sure you share my concern about the conditions under which Hamas has been imprisoning Gilad Shalit.
shalit is a captured enemy soldier, and has not been mistreated, and tortured, unlike the palestinian prisoners hamas is holding him to exchange for..
Since the International Committee of the Red Cross hasn't been allowed access to him, we don't know how he's been treated. He certainly has not been provided the protections accorded POWs under the Geneva Convention.
i repeat, shalit is being held for exchange.- to mistreat him would make no sense, however the torture and other mistreatment of the palestinian prisoners of the israelis, many of them children, has been well documented. shalit is not a captured soldier in a normal 50/50 war, but a soldier in a murdering illegally occupying army and must be kept in a secret location.-hasbara trolls will find any point they can to argue, they just argue and argue...enough is enough..one day the entity that has taken the name of "israel" will disappear, falling back into the abyss in the human spirit from which it arose..
Derick, i really believe you are being facetious.
Your questions remind me of "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin"? Focusing on the trees and oblivious to the forest.
As a jew with both parents being jewish, i can't be accused of being antisemitic, although i don't know if you are. But that is neither here nor there.
As for Shalit, you know as well as i do that he is the one thing israel IDF has to focus on. And so what? He may well be dead. I have no doubt that anything is possible - i am not naive. So what is your point, may i ask? If Shalit is mistreated, then thousands are responsible? Palestinians are capable of their own atrocities? How surprising....not. I thought that zionists think they are morally superior anyway. So, what's the problem?
Oh, it must be an example of asymetrical warfare, i suppose.
The shear obviousness of the absurdity of your points is itself, a tactic. And you know it and feel you are clever. Chutzpah without wisdom is a very dangerous combination. Watch and see how it all unfolds. Sooner than later.
Israel cares nothing of jews and wants to encourage antisemitism. Why else does it exist? So it needs to keep offending the rest of the world. Such a foolish people. And although they are too blind to see it, they are authoring their own suicide note. Believe it, Derick. And remember. You heard it here.
Peace,
rita
I can assure you that I am not being facetious, and do not consider my points to be at all absurd. What strikes me as absurd is your assertion that "Israel cares nothing of [J]ews and wants to encourage antisemitism. Why else does it exist?" I would say the State of Israel exists so that Jews can live as a sovereign nation in Eretz Israel.
derick maybe you are honest and not a hasbara troll, but if so first you are in a deep state of denial and second, you haven't thought very deeply about the state of "israel" and its history...for one instance going back to herzl's worship of the nationalist german state as the highest representation of human culture...
..o by the way, the end doesn't justify the means..but if you are in denial about or just following the state propaganda about those means.....
I've thought enough about it to know it's the State of Israel, not "israel."
Your espousing platitudes that unfortunately, belie the facts on the ground.
Did you feel the Flotilla posed a threat to israeli national security?
Serious question.
Yes. Israel has every reason to inspect maritime cargo being sent to Gaza in order to prevent the importation of weapons. If the flotilla had gone to an Israeli port as directed, no one would have been hurt.
in the meantime, from jeff halper, speaking of the geneva conventions--
..."Israel already takes 85% of the West Bank’s water for its own use, either for settlements (settlers use five times more water per capita as do Palestinians, and Ma’aleh Adumim is currently building a water park in addition to its four municipal swimming pools and the huge fountains constantly flowing in the city center) or to be pumped into Israel proper – all in flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an Occupying Power from using the resources of an occupied territory.
Accusing the farmers of “stealing water” – their own water – the Israel water company Mekorot, supported by the Civil Administration and the IDF, has in recent weeks destroyed dozens of wells, some of them ancient, and reservoirs used to collect rain water, which is also “illegal.” Hundreds of hectares of agricultural land have dried up as irrigation pipes have been pulled out and confiscated by the Civil Administration. Fields of tomatoes, beans, eggplants and cucumbers are dying just before they can be harvested, and the grape industry in this rich valley is threatened with destruction. “I’m watching my life dry up before my eyes,” Ata Jaber, a Palestinian farmer who has had his home demolished twice, most of whose land lies buried under the Givat Harsina neighborhood of Kiryat Arba and whose plastic drip irrigation pipes are destroyed annually by the Civil Administration just before he can harvest. “I had hoped to sell my crop for at least $2000 before Ramadan, but all is gone.”"...
It is commendable to show such explicit views of the IDF version of the "worlds most moral Army" - on this point it is perhaps an opportunity to refer to:
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/deutschland-uber-alles/ to further illustrate Israel's perception of the "enemy".
In all fairness though, such actions in "What they see" is true of all soldiers in military oppressions.Demonizing the enemy is part of basic training.