Here is a dose of reality:
<<< Current Israeli tactics break no new ground; it is only the scale of violence that has extended, as the resistance has swept over virtually the whole of Palestinian society. Years ago, "opening fire in response to throwing stones" had become "a casual matter" (Davar, Nov. 21, 1980). Systematic torture has been documented since the earliest days of the occupation, a fact now conceded by the official Landau Commission, headed by a respected former Supreme Justice, which recommends "moderate physical pressure" -- "a euphemistic expression meaning that torture is allowed for a serious purpose, as distinct from torture for pleasure," Margalit comments.
Take the West Bank town of Halhul. In 1979, according to Mayor Muhammad Milhem (later expelled without credible charge with a typical parody of judicial process), the town was placed under a two-week curfew after two young Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers in response to stones thrown at a bus. In further punishment, the authorities banned a wholesale vegetable and fruit project that was to be the key to the town's development. Several months later, after settlers claimed that stones had been thrown, the inhabitants of the town, including women and children, were held outdoors through a cold rainy night for "interrogation."11
In 1982, a delegation of Labor Alignment leaders, including noted hawks, presented to Prime Minister Menahem Begin detailed accounts of terrorist acts against Arabs, including the collective punishment in Halhul: "The men were taken from their houses beginning at midnight, in pajamas, in the cold. The notables and other men were concentrated in the square of the mosque and held there until morning. Meanwhile men of the Border Guards broke into houses, beating people with shouts and curses. During the many hours that hundreds of people were kept in the mosque square, they were ordered to urinate and excrete on one another and also to sing Hatikva [the Israeli national anthem] and to call out `Long Live the State of Israel.' Several times people were beaten and ordered to crawl on the ground. Some were even ordered to lick the earth. At the same time four trucks were commandeered and at daybreak, the inhabitants were loaded on the trucks, about 100 in each truck, and taken like sheep to the Administration headquarters in Hebron. On Holocaust Day, ...the people who were arrested were ordered to write numbers on their hands with their own hands, in memory of the Jews in the extermination camps."
The report describes torture and humiliation of prisoners by soldiers and settlers allowed into the jails to participate in beatings, brutal treatment of Arabs by settlers, even murder with impunity. There was no reaction, because, as Yoram Peri wrote bitterly, the victims are just "Araboushim" (a term of abuse, comparable to "nigger" or "kike").12 The Hebrew press provides an elaborate record of similar practices over many years.
Within Israel, workers from the territories can expect similar treatment. Under the heading "Uncle Ahmed's Cabin," Yigal Sarna, a few months before the uprising, tells the "story of slavery" of the tens of thousands of unorganized workers who come to Israel each day. "They are slaves, sub-citizens suspected of everything, who dwell under the floor tiles of Tel Aviv, locked up overnight in a hut in the citrus grove of a farm, near sewage dumps, in shelters that...serve rats only" or in underground parking stations or grocery stands in the market, illegally, since they are not permitted to spend the night in Israel, including "slaving children" and others hired at "the slave markets of Ashkelon, Jerusalem, Ramat Gan and other places." A few days later Knesset member Ran Cohen reported the treatment of Arab workers by Border Guards in a Tel Aviv Hotel: "The Arab workers were cruelly beaten up, and were compelled to masturbate before the Border Guards, to lick the floor of their flat and to eat coffee mixed with sugar and tooth paste, and their money was stolen." They brought complaints to the authorities, but after more than two months, there had been no investigation.13
The key feature of the occupation has always been humiliation: they must not be allowed to raise their heads. The basic principle, often openly expressed, is that the Araboushim must understand who rules this land and who walks in it with head lowered and eyes averted. If shopkeepers try to open their stores in the afternoon as a gesture of independence, the army compels them to close in the afternoon and open in the morning. If a remote village declares itself "liberated," meaning that it will run its own internal affairs, the army attacks, and if stones are thrown as villagers try to keep the soldiers out, the result will be killings, beatings, destruction of property, mass arrests, torture.
Israeli Arabs too must be constantly wary. An Arab friend drove me one evening from Ramallah to Jerusalem, but asked me to take a taxi to my hotel from his home in East Jerusalem (annexed by Israel in defiance of the UN, while more than doubling the city's area14) because he might be stopped at a roadblock on returning home, with consequences that might be severe. On a walk in the old city with an Arab friend, he reached up and touched a black flag -- many were hung in mourning after the assassination of PLO leader Khalil Al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) in Tunis by Israeli commandoes. A Border Guard standing nearby whipped out a camera and photographed him, following him with the camera trained on him as we walked on, adding a menacing comment. This man does not frighten easily; he spent years in an Israeli prison, and after his release has been outspoken in advocacy of Palestinian rights. But he requested that we go at once to the nearby Border Guard headquarters to explain what had occurred to an officer he knew; otherwise, he feared, he might be picked up by the police, charged with responsibility for hanging the flags, taken for "interrogation," and dispatched into oblivion. An Israeli friend and I went to the headquarters, where the words "Bruchim Haba'im" ("blessed are those who enter") appear over the doorway; in the light of the (well-deserved) reputation of the Border Guards, one can only imagine the fate of Arabs so blessed. The officer we sought could not be reached at once (he was engaged in wiretapping, we were casually informed), but when he arrived, we explained what had happened and he called the patrol and ordered them to drop the matter. Luckily, there was "protection" in this case.
The pattern is common. Israeli journalist Tom Segev reports what happened when an Arab lawyer told him that a random walk through Jerusalem would yield ample evidence of intimidation and humiliation of Arabs. Skeptical, Segev walked with him through Jerusalem, where he was stopped repeatedly by Border Guards to check his identification papers. One ordered him: "Come here, jump." Laughing, he dropped the papers on the road and ordered the lawyer to pick them up. "These people will do whatever you tell them to do," the Border Guards explained to Segev: "If I tell him to jump, he will jump. Run, he will run. Take your clothes off, he will take them off. If I tell him to kiss the wall he will kiss it. If I tell him to crawl on the road, won't he crawl? ... Everything. Tell him to curse his mother and he will curse her too." They are "not human beings." The Guards then searched the lawyer, slapped him, and ordered him to remove his shoes, warning that they could order him to remove his clothes as well. "My Arab," Segev continues, "kept silent and sat down on the ground" as the Border Guards laughed, saying
again "Really, not humans," then walked away. "People were passing by and didn't look at the Arab, as if he were transparent. `Here you have your story', said my Arab." Others are not so fortunate, and may be beaten and taken away for "interrogation" and detention without charge. Complaints to the police evoke still further brutality, as amply documented.15
These are the conditions of daily life for Ahmed, and the background for the uprising. >>> |
