Yediot Achronot reports that IDF soldiers who took photos in which they gleefully gave a blindfolded Palestinian detainee the finger (two extended middle fingers, precisely) and brandished a loaded weapons in his face will get a five month prison sentence.
I find it strange that the military prosecutor should almost apologize for the prosecution by saying it was forced to do so by the “moral siege” under which Israel currently finds itself in the aftermath of the Goldstone Report. It’s as if they’re saying that ordinarily this wouldn’t even be considered offensive enough to prosecute. The article also notes that the pressure of “world opinion” motivates the case as well in the eyes of the prosecutor.
For some reason, Yediot’s current article on the prison sentence entirely omits that the soldiers gave the detainee the finger and displays a photo in which a soldier points a loaded weapon at the prisoner but doesn’t give him the finger, which has the effect of further softening the offense.
The article also claims that the detainee testified that he was not harmed by the soldiers, while Channel 2 TV news interviewed the detainee who recounted that the soldiers abused him by laughing at him. Yediot appears to be pulling punches in a misguided effort to protect the honor of the IDF.
If anyone has seen an unblurred version of this photo please let me know. These people should be fully exposed and identified.
Has it occurred to them that it’s well past time the “most moral army in the world” started living up to its name?
I have heard so many stories of abuse from Palestinians, Americans and Europeans relating their experiences with the Israeli Army that it would take all day to tell them. Believe me, this one incident is the tip of the iceberg. If they’re thinking to redeem themselves by prosecuting these soldiers, they’re deluding themselves.
Well, once again, Richard, this is information that can so rightly be brought before the attention of a wider audience. It merits our indignation that such incidents can still happen. Perhaps, also, our despair. They do seem to occur these days with a monotonous regularity and this can only reinforce a situation already predisposed toward disaster, one heading rapidly for yet another point of no return.
Does this small snapshot of an event reveal something about the larger picture, the bigger canvas upon which it must remain forever depicted? Or will it soon be lost in all that detail, just one more item to be stored away, added to that mountain of minutiae that six decades of conflict must inevitably generate?
Could it be that we are looking here at what might be considered a fractal, a tiny portion of the whole but one having all the hallmarks of the master copy, complete with that recurring strand of DNA so vital to its existence?
If so, then closer examination might uncover the secret of this code and thus provide some means of dismantling or forestalling the driving force behind it.
It must be deemed unlikely that these soldiers would have deliberately chosen the position in which they now find themselves. Rather, had they known the risks their actions would entail, a much different, a more professional form of conduct might then have been expected of them.
When the risks become so big, when they are known to be hovering about the place in increasing orders of magnitude, it is an extremely foolish person who would tempt fate by ignoring their presence and thereby suffering the consequences of such deliberate inaction.
Young men make mistakes; as do old men and, often, these are much bigger ones. But the biggest mistake of all is not to learn from what has happened.
So, what have we learned?
Without direction, without a clear path to follow, we can all get lost so easily and whatever guidance was given at the start may have been forgotten by the time we are that much further down the road.
What do you do when you’re lost?
You stop; you look around. You try to find some landmark, some fixed point, something that won’t change or disappear as you approach it.
And if there are no longer any landmarks to be had, no certainty within sight, then the path remains hidden and to venture further leads on to…. nowhere.
In which case, it would appear that we must fashion a landmark of our very own.
I think we’ve been lost long enough. Time to create a more permanent structure from which to realign all this wandering in the wilderness.