Light a candle and curse the darkness–and the Occupation

Much has been made of Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s population by inducing power outages (in addition to closing border crossings, strangling commerce and banking activity, and rendering most workers jobless). But Lawrence of Cyberia has caputured this in the most human of terms with this image.

Palestinian climbs makeshift ladder to cross Israel’s 25-foot high concrete barrier in West Bank village of al-Ram on Jerusalem outskirts–Jun 4 2007. (AFP/File/Gali Tibbon)

Lawrence of Cyberia published a very important post, One Thousand, Two Hundred And Seventy-Six People Per Week, about the complete ineffectuality of Israel’s Separation Wall. You know, that’s the miracle barrier meant to seal off Israel from terror attack. The same one whose purpose was never in a million years to make a land grab for Palestinian territory outside the Green Line. The same one that has cost billions to build. The same one which the World Court called a violation of international law.

Diane Mason’s post shows the utter futility of the Wall as security barrier. And she shows it with statistics furnished by the Israeli police themselves:

Palestinian worshipers climb over Israel’s separation barrier from A-Ram to Jerusalem en route to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque, 20 Oct 2006. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti

Israeli politicians tell us that their only purpose in building the Wall is to secure Israel from suicide bombers, and that its proven track record in that regard justifies its continuing construction on Palestinian land: as if we are too stupid to read for ourselves the Israeli security service’s warning that the respite in suicide bombings is due to the truce that Hamas has maintained, and not the Wall, which the militants have already learned to bypass.

…Although the Wall is capable of inflicting misery on a great many Palestinians, it is difficult to believe that it is capable of keeping suicide bombers out of Israel, seeing as it is already proving incapable of keeping out thousands of Palestinians who circumvent it to avoid being cut off from work or other essential services.

A news item…was broadcast…[recently] on Israel’s Channel Two:

“Last night, Israeli television broadcast a report showing Tel Aviv police hunting Palestinian workers who bypass the Wall to look for work.

A Channel Two camera crew accompanied Israeli police patrols as they raided construction sites and arrested workers who were sleeping outside or in builders’ workshops…

The report revealed that Israeli police said they arrested 17,620 Palestinian workers inside the Green Line during the last two months. It also reported that 2,552 were arrested in the past two weeks…

The report said in conclusion: ‘The wall, siege, security cordon, police patrols and border guards have not prevented tens of thousands of workers from reaching Tel Aviv every month’”.

(translation mine–D.M.)

Two thousand, five hundred and fifty-two arrests in just two weeks adds up to an awful lot of people circumventing Israel’s Wall. And of course those numbers reflect the absolute minimum number of Palestinians who successfully bypass it, as they count only those who are arrested while working inside Israel, not those who remain there undetected.

Israelis can believe if they want to their own propaganda about how the dreadful things they do to the Palestinian people are necessary for “security needs”. If they are more comfortable believing that the Wall in the West Bank is a defensive measure that has stopped the suicide attacks, rather than a land-grabbing measure which – from a security perspective – leaks like a sieve, I guess they have that right. But they don’t have the right to expect the rest of us to be stupid enough to believe it too.

The next time Israeli apologists tell you that the Wall is a security measure that keeps suicide bombers out of Israel, just remember the number 1,276. One thousand, two hundred and seventy six is – at a minimum – the average number of permit-less Palestinians who bypass the Wall on a weekly basis to work in Israel. They are asking you to believe that the destitution Israel’s West Bank land grab inflicts on some of the poorest people on earth is justified because a wall which is breached at least 1,276 times a week by undocumented workers is nevertheless impermeable to suicide bombers. That’s what they’re asking you to believe.

That’s how stupid they think you are.

Palestinians cross Israel’s separation barrier from A-Ram, Sunday, Feb. 18, 2007. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

I did some math and it works out that if you annualized the numbers in the Channel 2 report 67,000 Palestinians would be arrested in a year within Israel. But as Diane says, that’s not how many actually cross over the wall to work illegally in Israel. Even if you presume that some of those 67,000 may be the same individuals arrested more than once, the number of individuals crossing must be at least twice or more higher. So a very conservative estimate would find well over 100,000 Palestinians crossing the Green Line. We can even concede that it’s possible that some of those crossing are not physically crossing the Wall since it is not complete in certain places.

But the truth of Diane’s claim remains solid. The Wall is a sham as a security measure. It is a shibboleth meant to allow Israeli politicians to soothe the Israeli populace that they are doing something to protect them from terror. It may even be possible that it poses some slight obstacle to a would-be terror bomber. But whatever obstacle it poses is minor indeed as you look at these images that Diane features at her blog.

100,000 attend 11th memorial rally for Yitzchak Rabin (credit: Baz Ratner/AP)

As my friend from Lawrence of Cyberia wrote to me tonight, David Grossman’s keynote address to the 100,000 who attended Yitzchak Rabin’s 11th annual memorial, was heartbreakingly beautiful. It was soulful in a way Israel has become no longer capable of being. It was angry in the way a Biblical prophet could be. It was classical Zionism, a vision of the Jewish people as beacon of hope and morality in a trouble world. Here’s what Diane wrote:

This speech made me cry when I read it. My 10 yr old came in to ask when I was going to make dinner, and was very concerned to find me crying at the computer!

That’s the way I felt about it. It didn’t make me cry, though perhaps that’s because the conflict has left me bereft of emotions human beings can usually muster for the tragedies which afflict them. I wish I could’ve cried.

But anyway, that’s beside the point. This speech was worth crying over. It was masterful in every way. Note as you read it that Grossman adopts the brilliant conceit of imagining an Ehud Olmert who is a decent, caring leader and human being. An Olmert who is confused, but welcomes the thoughts of an avid Zionist thinker like Grossman. And the latter gives Olmert the benefit of his considerable wisdom in envisioning a creative, even brilliant set of tactics that could conceivably break Israel out of the death grip it’s maintaining on the Palestinians and vice versa. In reality, Grossman and all of us know that Olmert has not a whit of courage or vision in him; that he will pay no attention to Grossman’s ideas; that the killing will continue unabated. But the key is that Grossman tried to treat him with human decency. The fact that Olmert will repay him with utter silence will only redound to the latter’s eternal shame in Israeli political history.

David Grossman speaks to rally with Rabin backdrop (credit: Dan Keinan)

I didn’t agree with everything he said–especially about Hamas and its Islam. While I am suspicous of Hamas as most, I do not see Hamas as nearly as much of an impediment to peace as Olmert and his government. The key question is not Hamas recalcitrance or belligerence. The key question is: is there a will to peace on both sides? If there is, these obstacles can be overcome. If there is not, then it is useless and we (Israel) are doomed. But my quarrels with Grossman on this are really minor quibbles that in no way detract from the historic and memorable nature of his speech.

I spent hours translating this speech only to have Diane provide me a Haaretz link to a translation of the entire speech. I even asked a Haaretz writer to check whether they’d be publishing one. When he responded “No” I thought I had a green light to do my own. Apparently, when readers began requesting a translation someone at the paper thought better of not doing one. So with apologies to Haaretz, I quote the entire speech (with several minor editing changes):

The annual memorial ceremony for Yitzhak Rabin is the moment when we pause for a while to remember Rabin the man, the leader. And we also take a look at ourselves, at Israeli society, its leadership, the national mood, the state of the peace process, at ourselves as individuals in the face of national events.

It is not easy to take a look at ourselves this year. There was a war, and Israel flexed its massive military muscle, but also exposed Israel’s fragility. We discovered that our military might ultimately cannot be the only guarantee of our existence. Primarily, we have found that the crisis Israel is experiencing is far deeper than we had feared, in almost every way.

I am speaking here tonight as a person whose love for the land is overwhelming and complex, and yet it is unequivocal, and as one whose continuous covenant with the land has turned his personal calamity into a covenant of blood.

I am totally secular, and yet in my eyes the establishment and the very existence of the State of Israel is a miracle of sorts that happened to us as a nation – a political, national, human miracle.

I do not forget this for a single moment. Even when many things in the reality of our lives enrage and depress me, even when the miracle is broken down to routine and wretchedness, to corruption and cynicism, even when reality seems like nothing but a poor parody of this miracle, I always remember. And with these feelings, I address you tonight.

Ehud Olmert (cartoon: Ben Heine)

“Behold land, for we hath squandered,” wrote the poet Saul Tchernikovsky in Tel Aviv in 1938. He lamented the burial of our young again and again in the soil of the Land of Israel. The death of young people is a horrible, ghastly waste.

But no less dreadful is the sense that for many years, the State of Israel has been squandering, not only the lives of its sons, but also its miracle; that grand and rare opportunity that history bestowed upon it, the opportunity to establish here a state that is efficient, democratic, which abides by Jewish and universal values; a state that would be a national home and haven, but not only a haven, also a place that would offer a new meaning to Jewish existence; a state that holds as an integral and essential part of its Jewish identity and its Jewish ethos, the observance of full equality and respect for its non-Jewish citizens.

Look at what befell us. Look what befell the young, bold, passionate country we had here, and how, as if it had undergone a quickened aging process, Israel lurched from infancy and youth to a perpetual state of gripe, weakness and sourness.

How did this happen? When did we lose even the hope that we would eventually be able to live a different, better life? Moreover, how do we continue to watch from the side as though hypnotized by the insanity, rudeness, violence and racism that has overtaken our home?

And I ask you: How could it be that a people with such powers of creativity, renewal and vivacity as ours, a people that knew how to rise from the ashes time and again, finds itself today, despite its great military might, at such a state of laxity and inanity, a state where it is the victim once more, but this time its own victim, of its anxieties, its short-sightedness.

One of the most difficult outcomes of the recent war is the heightened realization that at this time there is no king in Israel, that our leadership is hollow. Our military and political leadership is hollow. I am not even talking about the obvious blunders in running the war, of the collapse of the home front, nor of the large-scale and small-time corruption.

I am talking about the fact that the people leading Israel today are unable to tie Israelis to their identity. Certainly not with the healthy, vitalizing and productive areas of this identity, with those areas of identity and memory and fundamental values that would give us hope and strength, that would be the antidote to the waning of mutual trust, of the bonds to the land, that would give some meaning to the exhausting and despairing struggle for existence.

The fundamental characteristics of the current Israeli leadership are primarily anxiety and intimidation, of the charade of power, the wink of the dirty deal, of selling out our most prized possessions. In this sense they are not true leaders, certainly they are not the leaders of a people in such a complicated position that has lost the way it so desperately needs. Sometimes it seems that the sound box [ed. I would translate this as "echo chamber"] of their self-importance, of their memories of history, of their vision, of what they really care for, exist only in the miniscule space between two headlines of a newspaper or between two investigations by the attorney general.

Look at those who lead us. Not all of them, of course, but many among them. Behold their petrified, suspicious, sweaty conduct. The conduct of advocates and scoundrels. It is preposterous to expect to hear wisdom emerge from them, that some vision or even just an original, truly creative, bold and ingenuous idea would emanate from them.

When was the last time a prime minister formulated or took a step that could open up a new horizon for Israelis, for a better future? When did he initiate a social or cultural or ideological move, instead of merely reacting feverishly to moves forced upon him by others?

Mister Prime Minister, I am not saying these words out of feelings of rage or revenge. I have waited long enough to avoid responding on impulse. You will not be able to dismiss my words tonight by saying a grieving man cannot be judged. Certainly I am grieving, but I am more pained than angry. This country and what you and your friends are doing to it pains me.

Trust me, your success is important to me, because the future of all of us depends on our ability to act. Yitzhak Rabin took the road of peace with the Palestinians, not because he possessed great affection for them or their leaders. Even then, as you recall, common belief was that we had no partner and we had nothing to discuss with them.

Rabin decided to act, because he discerned very wisely that Israeli society would not be able to sustain itself endlessly in a state of an unresolved conflict. He realized long before many others that life in a climate of violence, occupation, terror, anxiety and hopelessness, extracts a price Israel cannot afford. This is all relevant today, even more so. We will soon talk about the partner that we do or do not have, but before that, let us take a look at ourselves.

We have been living in this struggle for more than 100 years. We, the citizens of this conflict, have been born into war and raised in it, and in a certain sense indoctrinated by it. Maybe this is why we sometimes think that this madness in which we live for over 100 years is the only real thing, the only life for us, and that we do not have the option or even the right to aspire for a different life.

By our sword we shall live and by our sword we shall die and the sword shall devour forever. Maybe this would explain the indifference with which we accept the utter failure of the peace process, a failure that has lasted for years and claims more and more victims.

This could explain also the lack of reaction by most of us to the harsh blow to democracy caused by the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as a senior minister with the support of the Labor Party – the appointment of a habitual pyromaniac as director of the nation’s firefighters.

And these are partly the cause of Israel’s quick descent into the heartless, essentially brutal treatment of its poor and suffering. This indifference to the fate of the hungry, the elderly, the sick and the disabled, all those who are weak, this equanimity of the State of Israel in the face of human trafficking or the appalling employment conditions of our foreign workers, which border on slavery, to the deeply ingrained institutionalized racism against the Arab minority.

When this takes place here so naturally, without shock, without protest, as though it were obvious, that we would never be able to get the wheel back on track, when all of this takes place, I begin to fear that even if peace were to arrive tomorrow, and even if we ever regained some normalcy, we may have lost our chance for full recovery.

The calamity that struck my family and myself with the falling of our son, Uri, does not grant me any additional rights in the public discourse, but I believe that the experience of facing death and the loss brings with it a sobriety and lucidity, at least regarding the distinction between the important and the unimportant, between the attainable and the unattainable.

Any reasonable person in Israel, and I will say in Palestine too, knows exactly the outline of a possible solution to the conflict between the two peoples. Any reasonable person here and over there knows deep in their heart the difference between dreams and the heart’s desire, between what is possible and what is not possible by the conclusion of negotiations. Anyone who does not know, who refuses to acknowledge this, is already not a partner, be he Jew or Arab, is entrapped in his hermetic fanaticism, and is therefore not a partner.

Let us take a look at those who are meant to be our partners. The Palestinians have elected Hamas to lead them, Hamas who refuses to negotiate with us, refuses even to recognize us. What can be done in such a position? Keep strangling them more and more, keep mowing down hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom are innocent civilians like us? Kill them and get killed for all eternity?

Turn to the Palestinians, Mr. Olmert, address them over the heads of Hamas, appeal to their moderates, those who like you and I oppose Hamas and its ways, turn to the Palestinian people, speak to their deep grief and wounds, acknowledge their ongoing suffering.

Nothing would be taken away from you or Israel’s standing in future negotiations. Our hearts will only open up to one another slightly, and this has a tremendous power, the power of a force majeur. The power of simple human compassion, particularly in this a state of deadlock and dread. Just once, look at them not through the sights of a gun, and not behind a closed roadblock. You will see there a people that is tortured no less than us. An oppressed, occupied people bereft of hope.

Certainly, the Palestinians are also to blame for the impasse, certainly they played their role in the failure of the peace process. But take a look at them from a different perspective, not only at the radicals in their midst, not only at those who share interests with our own radicals. Take a look at the overwhelming majority of this miserable people, whose fate is entangled with our own, whether we like it or not.

Go to the Palestinians, Mr. Olmert, do not search all the time for reasons for not to talk to them. You backed down on the unilateral convergence, and that’s a good thing, but do not leave a vacuum. It will be occupied instantly with violence, destruction. Talk to them, make them an offer their moderates can accept. They argue far more than we are shown in the media. Make them an offer so that they are forced to choose whether they accept it, or whether they prefer to remain hostage to fanatical Islam.

Approach them with the bravest and most serious plan Israel can offer. With the offer that any reasonable Palestinian and Israeli knows is the boundary of their refusal and our concession. There is no time. Should you delay, in a short while we will look back with longing at the amateur Palestinian terror. We will hit our heads and yell at our failure to exercise all of our mental flexibility, all of the Israeli ingenuity to uproot our enemies from their self-entrapment. We have no choice and they have no choice. And a peace of no choice should be approached with the same determination and creativity as one approaches a war of no choice. And those who believe we do have a choice, or that time is on our side do not comprehend the deeply dangerous processes already in motion.

Maybe, Mr. Prime Minister, you need to be reminded, that if an Arab leader is sending a peace signal, be it the slightest and most hesitant, you must accept it, you must test immediately its sincerity and seriousness. You do not have the moral right not to respond.

You owe it to those whom you would ask to sacrifice their lives should another war break out. Therefore, if President Assad says that Syria wants peace, even if you don’t believe him, and we are all suspicious of him, you must offer to meet him that same day.

Don’t wait a single day. When you launched the last war you did not even wait one hour. You charged with full force, with the complete arsenal, with the full power of destruction. Why, when a glimmer of peace surfaces, must you reject it immediately, dissolve it? What have you got to lose? Are you suspicious of it? Go and offer him such terms that would expose his schemes. Offer him a peace process that would last over several years, and only at its conclusion, and provided he meets all the conditions and restrictions, will he get back the Golan. Commit him to a prolonged process, act so that his people also become aware of this possibility. Help the moderates, who must exist there as well. Try to shape reality. Not only serve as its collaborator. This is what you were elected to do.

Certainly, not all depends on our actions. There are major powers active in our region and in the world. Some, like Iran, like radical Islam, seek our doom and despite that, so much depends on what we do, on what we become.

Disagreements today between right and left are not that significant. The vast majority of Israel’s citizens understand this already, and know what the outline for the resolution of the conflict would look like. Most of us understand, therefore, that the land would be divided, that a Palestinian state would be established.

Why, then, do we keep exhausting ourselves with the internal bickering that has gone on for 40 years? Why does our political leadership continue to reflect the position of the radicals and not that held by the majority of the public? It is better to reach national consensus before circumstances or God forbid another war force us to reach it. If we do it, we would save ourselves years of decline and error, years when we will cry time and again: “Behold land, for we hath squandered.”

From where I stand right now, I beseech, I call on all those who listen, the young who came back from the war, who know they are the ones to be called upon to pay the price of the next war, on citizens, Jew and Arab, people on the right and the left, the secular, the religious, stop for a moment, take a look into the abyss. Think of how close we are to losing all that we have created here. Ask yourselves if this is not the time to get a grip, to break free of this paralysis, to finally claim the lives we deserve to live.

WARNING: I wish to warn anyone who reads this that I feature here a photo of the Palestinian injuries caused by DIME. This and others featured at the RaiNews site are some of the most horrific wound images I’ve seen. They are not for the faint of heart. Turn away now if this will cause you great distress.

Rai24News has tonight broadcast its expose (video here–wmv file, use Windows Media Player) of the new DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) weapon which Israel used to devastating lethal effect in Gaza during July and August. The tungsten and carbon in the bomb explode with such force that they create micro-shrapnel which in effect severs the limbs of victims just below the genitals. It essentially fries the skin and organs with which it comes into contact and amputates limbs with the effect of a circular saw. You can find photographic testimony of the damage at the Rai site. Doctors in Gaza never saw wounds like this before and knew quite quickly that they were dealing with a weapon they’d never seen. At least 62 victims have been treated for one or more severed limbs from this munition.

Palestinian wounds suspected of being caused by DIME (credit: Rai24News)

The RaiNews production crew, the same one which exposed U.S. use of phosphorus shells against insurgents in Fallujah, did meticulous research interviewing Palestinian medical personnel, an Israeli weapons expert and former IDF general, and Italian lab specialists. They reach the conclusion that in all likelihood the weapon in question is DIME.

The report does not weigh in specifically on the question of whether or not the Israelis developed this weapon themselves or secured it from the Air Force, which originally developed it. My money is on the weapon having been transferred to Israel by the U.S. But I’m dying to have a journalist actually ask a Pentagon PR flack to comment on this. I’d love to get even a “no comment” on the record.

When questioned by the news crew, the IDF maintained its boilerplate denial: “Israel uses no weapons that are not legal under international law.” Which of course begs the question since DIME is brand new and international law has not had an opportunity to make a judgment on its legality.

Though the report does not specially answer this question, I am assuming that the IDF refused to talk to the Italians officially since the only source quoted is Maj.-Gen (res.) Yitzhak Ben-Israel, former director of the IDF’s weapons lab. His interview is fascinating in an utterly ghoulish sort of way. He speaks of the weapon as being perfectly suited for urban environments (like Gaza) because according to him, you can kill an intended victim while leaving an innocent bystander standing nearby unharmed.

He even likens DIME to scenes from American police dramas in which a policeman faces an armed hostage-taker. The policeman shoots the gunman “right between the eyes, not 10 cm to the left or 10 cm to the right” and leaves the hostage untouched. In other words, DIME is the Dirty Harry of the U.S. military and the IDF. This all sounds quite “wonderful” (again in a ghoulish sort of way) until one considers that DIME’s kill zone is 12-25 feet. In crowded spots like Gaza (with the highest population density of any place on earth), this could mean killing many more than just a single intended victim or two.

Haaretz columnists have noted the IDF’s fascination with technological gizmos which are supposed to give Israel an advantage over its adversaries. A reliance on such “superiority” was part of what lulled its army into complacency on the eve of the Lebanon war. In its fascination with new weaponry, clearly the IDF loses sight of the impact of such weapons not only on its victims, but also on Palestinian and world opinion as a whole. Does the IDF not think that it will pay a high price for use of such ghastly implements of death?

What I have not read in any account of this weapon is its new and savage way of assaulting the human body. To compensate for its smaller kill zone, the weapon’s lethality within that zone has been amplified by the new carbon/tungsten micro-shrapnel. It is more precise (perhaps), but kills “better” or more intensively. It seems to leave only tell-tale pock marks and barely perceptible entrance wounds while wreaking havoc with the body’s internal organs. What kind of insane weapon is this?

Though articles have been written about DIME in the U.S. and British media, to my knowledge no one in this country has written about this story (yet). This post is a cri de coeur for some enterprising journalist to take this subject on. I think using Palestinian guinea pigs to test the lethality and effectiveness of experimental U.S. weapons is a heinous crime whether or not it violates existing international law. If I wasn’t so cynical I’d call for Congress to investigate this story. The fact that it is bought and paid for by Aipac would throttle such a proposal in the cradle.

Another eerie factoid about DIME is that it is remotely, rather than self-propelled, which means that you barely hear it before it strikes. It emits a small buzzing sound as it flies through the air.

My thanks to Lawrence of Cyberia, who thanks to her knowledge of Italian, was able to “open up” the Rai24 story to me and find lots of supporting material on the channel’s website and related sites.

Thanks to Lawrence of Cyberia for this devastating quotation from Jyllands-Posten after Kristallnacht (for larger, more legible image click on thumbnail image for full-size display). I wonder what Little Green Footballs and Jyllands-Posten’s other Jewish supporters would make of the newspaper’s support for Hitler’s policy of ridding Germany (and the world) of Jews? Perhaps they’re trying to make amends to Jews by goading the Muslim world into a conflagration that might rival Kristallnacht?

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, no?

Lawrence of Cyberia broke my heart tonight. But as anyone who has followed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can tell you, your heart breaks far too often when you come to care for the fate of these two troubled peoples. There are all too many opportunities to get your heart broken.

Tonight, Diane wrote about a particularly nasty 2003 incident first reported in the New York Times, in which Israeli Border Police picked a 17 year-old Hebron boy at random, threw him in the back of their jeep, drove him to the town’s deserted industrial zone and beat him up along the way. An officer in the front seat filmed a trophy video of the beating while his colleagues in the back seat did the deed. When they tired of the beating they physically threw him from the speeding jeep. The boy died when his head hit the ground with the jeep traveling roughly 40-50 mph.

The reason Diane wrote about this story is that this month one of the four perpetrators was convicted of the killing (his three colleagues remain on trial). But after reading the defense lawyer’s claim that these men were only acting according to standards set for them by the Border Police itself, she began to realize that a litany of similar prosecutions against other Border Police personnel for similar abuse proved the lawyer correct. In other words, both the Border Police–perhaps explicitly–and Israeli society tacitly want their police to terrorize the Palestinian population treating it in a brutish, bestial manner. So why prosecute individual officers for doing what they were taught to do?

I’m not sure whether Diane believes the four policemen should be set free. But she certainly does want to focus attention on the institution of the police itself and its history of sadistic treatment of Palestinians.

Among her litany of similar cases was this one. It’s the one that broke my heart.
B’Tselem reports that Nazih Salah ‘Awad Damiri, a 24-year old Palestinian shepherd living near Tulkarem came upon Israeli Border policemen while moving his flock through a fence. After they detained him and forced him to humiliate himself in their presence, the officers had far worse in store:

Then he told me to ride to the nearby grove. I asked him about my ID card. He told me that we hadn’t finished, and that he would be behind me. He and the other policeman followed me in the jeep. When we reached the grove, he tied the donkey to a tree and told me to fuck it. He repeated his demand a couple of times. He also told me to lift up the tail of the donkey and tie it around my head. I told him that the tail was too short, and that I wasn’t able to do it. He stood facing me and aimed his weapon at me. The other policeman was in the jeep, watching what was going on.

I stood behind the donkey, took out my penis, and told him “enough.” He said, “I’ll tell you when it is enough.” I was frightened to death, and I couldn’t get an erection, so I couldn’t do anything. He made me continue, and I pretended that I was doing what he wanted me to do. I tried to look over at them, but the policeman yelled at me and told me not to look, and that if I did, he would shoot me. This went on for about thirty minutes, before he told me to stop. He tightened the saddle on my back and gave me back my ID card. Then he told me, “Ride over to the flock, fuck them, and I’ll chase you.” I rode away, the saddle still on me, and he watched me go. After I got some distance away from them, I untied the saddle and walked over to my brother, who was on the land west of the fence, and told him what happened.

I post these stories not to single the Israeli side out for special opprobrium. I make clear regularly when I write about this conflict that there is degradation, brutality and humiliation on both sides. Perhaps the Israelis have more power and opportunity to inflict a greater share on the Palestinians, but that doesn’t mean the latter get off scot free either. For what is Palestinian suicide bombing other than the utmost torture? It’s the Occupation, stupid. It destroys humanity for both Israelis and Palestinians. And we can expect such bestial behavior to continue till there is a breakthrough for peace.