Identity and Collective Denial - Lia Tarachansky on Reality Asserts Itself (2/3)

The only way to peacefully resolve a problem is by dialogue, & part of getting to the root of the problem is asking questions. Israel & Zionists have never self-reflect to the point that they can see that what they are doing is similar to what Hitler & Nazis did to them in Germany, Poland, Austria, & Netherlands.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPmj1NyTcBI

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Why do you go to Canada?

LIA TARACHANSKY, ISRAEL-PALESTINE CORRESPONDENT, TRNN: Well, my father died, my mother became even more a Zionist, and I went to University, and all of my Zionist identity unraveled.
I can tell you a story. On my first year of university, I walked into my campus, and one day in the very beginning of the winter semester, the university was transformed into one giant flag of Israel. It was flags of Israel everywhere, and it said Israel Week. And in the student union building there was this huge row of tables, and they had all these banners, and they had these titles: Israel is the most democratic state in the Middle East, Israel is the most gay-friendly state in the Middle East, Israel has the best tomatoes in the Middle East, etc. And I walk in. And, I mean, I was shocked and weirded out and creeped out and all kinds of things, ’cause it–to me it made as much–like, Guelph, where I went to school, is a tiny little agricultural university. I mean, I was studying biomedicine in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of, like, fields in Canada. Like, it’s the same as having ... a Canada Week in some small college town in Zimbabwe. It made no sense to me. And so I walked past these people, and I just thought they looked weird, and ... they just creeped me out and they pissed me off because ... I was very much a Zionist and part of the project and Israel all the way, but I was a Russian in Israel. So I didn’t have any illusions about what Israeli democracy looks like. If you don’t fit into this box of what it means to be an Israeli, you’re out.
Which means Ashkenazi, which means strong, which means a veteran. It means a fighter. If you don’t fit into that, you’re out. If you don’t serve in the army, you’re out. If you adopt and embrace your Arab identity, you’re out.

...

I just thought that they were ridiculous, because they had no idea what Israel is all about. I mean, it’s a complex society. And it’s not like we walk around in Israel asking each other, hey, are you a Zionist? I mean, we don’t question each other’s opinions on the conflict, really, while we’re growing up.
I mean, the big debate in the ’90s was: are you for the Yitzhak Rabin plan or are you against it? But Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995. And with Netanyahu and the beginning of the Second Intifada, you kind of stopped debating these things.
No one ever asked me, what do you think? And so, when I came up to these excited 21-year-olds, I understood that the longest any one of them has been in Israel is one week on birthright. They didn’t know anything about us. They were driven on a bus funded by an American billionaire from one tourist site to the other. They met really nice soldiers. They met really friendly Israelis. They were told, this is your national homeland, welcome, you’re one of us. And they return back to Canada with the mission of representing Israel. They didn’t know a thing.
In Israel, we have a lot of jokes about birthright kids, but I won’t get into that here. ... The second year of university, I had decided I’m going to talk to them. Now, I didn’t know what the hell I’m going to say to them; I just knew, I’m going to talk to them. And as I came to campus–and again Israel flags, Israel Week–and this time they had a girl who was standing in the middle of the Canadian winter, outdoors, on campus, and for a week straight she read the names of every single person killed in the Holocaust. ... she stood there day and night and day for a week straight. So this was Israel Week for the Canadians, and this is what made me so upset is because to them they were presenting the Holocaust and this narrative of, like, Israel is the most blah blah blah.
And I think the reason it made me mad is because in Israel we don’t talk about the Holocaust. ... The Israel government uses it a lot to justify a lot of things, but we don’t. We’ve never really opened up the trauma of the Holocaust. We talk about what happened in Auschwitz. But a trauma is not the event of rape. It’s the ten years after the rape. It’s the way that the rape has intertwined itself into your very psychology. And that’s essentially what the Holocaust was for us. It was a national rape. It was not even a national, ’cause it’s bigger than nationalism, but it was a total rape of our identity, and it completely and forever changed the way that we as Jews see the world, whether we and our family was killed in the Holocaust or the neighbors’. ... the irony here is incredible–is how the Palestinians were impacted by the Nakba, having been forced to be refugees all around the world. And so ... to me it was like, why are you talking about the Holocaust? We won in the end. Look, we are so strong, we are in the Middle East, we have a nation. We won.
So as I was about to approach them with this big speech & at the very end of the tables was a different kind of table with a different kind of flag. And I thought, oh, maybe it’s not Israel Week; maybe it’s international week. So I went up to this table, and there was, like, a bunch of people there, and there was a bunch of books. And there’s this flag I’ve never seen before. And I came up to girl that was standing there, and I’m like, what’s this flag? And she ... stands up and she goes, hello, my name is Galia. I’m an anti-Zionist Jew. And this is the flag of Palestine.

...

And I found myself just exploding on this poor girl, just standing there, yelling at her, defending these idiots. What? Why would you bring this Arab propaganda? Why can’t we have just one week to ourselves to talk about Israel and to show Israel to the world? Why would you bring this Palestinian terrorism here? And I’m standing there yelling at her, and I’ll never forget the look on her face. ...

And I’m yelling at her and I’m yelling at her and I’m yelling at her, and she can’t get a word in. I don’t even think she said anything. I think she said, I’m an anti-Zionist Jew. I asked her, what is that? And she said something like, we believe in Palestinian human rights, I don’t know, something so banal that I would laugh at it if I saw it today. And yeah, and I just broke. I mean, I’m standing there yelling at her. And I ... think the reason I was yelling at her is because if you live in Israel-Palestine, we are in an active conflict–you eventually lose people. And if you live there long enough, you lose a lot of people.
...

And I’m standing there yelling at this girl in Canada, and I’m teleported to this moment, and I can smell it. And what was amazing is she’s standing there, and she comes from around the table, and she hugs me, and she says in Hebrew, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay. And I’m yelling at her, and the only thing I can think in my mind is everyone who died is your fault. And I don’t know why. Everyone I love. It’s your fault, ’cause you are defending this idea. And as we all know, the war of ideas is a lot more important than the war of bodies.

And that was the end for me. That was the end of something in which you could not ask, you could not touch, you could not criticize. There’s things you can criticize in Israel, but you can’t to criticize the bigger thing. You can’t talk about the bigger issues, the bigger problem. That was the end of that.
...

I mean, before that, whenever I’d talk to people, I’d be like, you don’t know anything; I lost someone in the terrorism. Everyone lost someone in terrorism. You know, you had 9/11; we had a hundred 9/11s; the Palestinians had 10,000 9/11s. America and–you invade not just people’s homes; you invade people’s lives, you tear apart their very belief in security, their very belief that they have a place in this world where they can go to sleep and wake up in the morning. That’s how profound your violence that you project on the world is and the violence that we project on the Palestinians is.

My little tragedy is nothing compared to the bigger picture. And yet it is only when you go to the root of this thing, you go deep into it, and you crack it, and you rip it right open to the point that you–only from that point can you build. And I was so lucky that I had someone like Galia to question me, ’cause this is the end of something, but it has to be the beginning of something else. She started giving me books. She started inviting me to lectures. She started forcing me to watch documentaries.

And the most important thing is she asked me questions. No one ever asked me real questions from a place of humility and empathy. People always told me what to think. They always told me that I was an Arab-hating Zionist. They never asked me, well, what do you think? Does any of what you say make sense to you? If you put A+B+C together, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, right? They only want to kill us; all of them just want to kill us; they don’t have any history; no, we can’t build a Zionist state if we don’t erase their history; there’s nothing to erase, ’cause they were never here. No, they were here, because–. None of it makes any logical line of sense until you start questioning it. And this is what she did for me. She forced me to start asking questions.

And I think that the most profoundly effective thing that growing up in Israel and Zionism in general has managed to achieve is that it taught all of us what questions we cannot ask, to a point that it is now a part of the Israeli DNA, knowing what questions you cannot ask, because once you start asking these questions, everything starts to unravel.
...

I think I am more pro-equality than I am anti-Zionist. I have nothing against spiritual Zionism and the belief that Jews have a place in Jerusalem and all of that narrative. I have no problem with that. I think that it should be open for all to live in and shared equally. My issue is with equality. In Israel it’s–we have institutional legal segregation inside of Israel.
...

There’s all these elements of inequality that I was completely unaware of. Yes, there’s a lot of denial, and we talked about that, but I didn’t know the facts, I didn’t know that we have more than 30 laws that on their surface, in their language, distinguish between Jewish and not-Jewish citizens.

So when Galia started me on this process of questioning, she introduced me to a lot of materials, and I could start asking questions. I started reading Israel’s laws. I started reading Israel’s land laws. I started seeking out all these holes in my education. And once you know, you can’t unknow. I mean, that’s the power of education. And it’s still–I mean, it’s like a spiral. She started me out of the cycle into a spiral, and I’m still on the spiral.
...

The Quantum Mechanics of Israeli Totalitarianism

A great opinion piece, detailing how Israel controls Palestinians.

With that much control, even little kids & teens start to rebel against their own parents, who love them dearly. Israel, after all, is an occupying force, occupying illegally (per several UN resolutions) & would love to even control how much air Palestinians breath (it already controls their water).

It's funny how the Western, developed world still think that Israel is a democratic country, surrounded by authoritarian regimes. As the opinion piece points out very nicely that "the unending occupation, the sheer chutzpah with which the Israeli government continues to expand its presence in the West Bank while sieging Gaza, the escalating protests by minorities inside the country's 1967 borders, & the composition of the new government, all put the lie to such claims today," that it's a democratic country.

What was astonishing for me in reading this commentary was the intro to few processes & procedures Israel has put in place to control the Palestinians. And, these procedures are put in such a way, that an untrained eye would not be able to see the oppression & control Israel exerts on Palestinians.

Then the developed world complains a few rockets were fired in Israeli territory by Palestinians. The developed world should ask the question to themselves, before blaming & complaining about Palestinians, is what would you do if someone (your boss, your parents, your spouse, your neighbour etc.) watches & control your every move? Would you feel relaxed in that environment or would you violently lash back, keeping in mind that moving out of that job / family / relationship / neighbourhood is not an option?
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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/05/quantum-mechanics-israeli-totalitarianism-150507072609153.html

With the coalition government formed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu easily the most ultranationalist & conservative government in Israel's history, even the most cockeyed optimist would shrink from imagining that Oslo can still be revived, if only the right treatment were concocted.

The problem today is not that anyone but the most self-interested Israeli, Palestinian or US officials still pretends that the peace process is functioning. Rather, it's that hardly anyone in a position of power can explain precisely when, how & especially why it died. To do so requires moving far more deeply into the dynamics of the endlessly troubled peace process than most policy-makers or commentators are willing to delve, into what I term the "quantum mechanics" underlying Oslo's fatally flawed structures.

Israel has long claimed uniquely democratic credentials in a region besot with authoritarian regimes.
The unending occupation, the sheer chutzpah with which the Israeli government continues to expand its presence in the West Bank while sieging Gaza, the escalating protests by minorities inside the country's 1967 borders, & the composition of the new government, all put the lie to such claims today.

Matrix of control

What's still poorly understood by most non-Palestinians is just how deep the level of control has long been. Even if you've spent decades travelling through the West Bank & Gaza, the intensity of that control remains hard to grasp.

As I walked through the Jordan Valley last month near the front-line village of Fasayel, I began to understand how one reason why it's been so difficult to explain the intensity & all-encompassing scope of Israel's "matrix of control" over the Occupied Territories is that even its critics don't use strong enough language to describe it.

Israel is not just an "occupier" or a "coloniser". However democratic it may (or may not) be inside its 1967 borders, in the Occupied Territories Israel's rule is nothing short of totalitarian.

In calling Israeli rule totalitarian, I am not arguing that the government mimics the worst policies of thought control & ideological purism practised by the 20th century's Fascist & Communist states such as Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia or Maoist China (although Israel's constant harassment & imprisonment of Palestinian activists does reflect a desire to control how Palestinians think and act, at least publicly).

Rather, I'm talking about a much deeper level of control, at what can only be described as the quantum level of Palestinian daily life.

To understand how it feels to live as a Palestinian today you need to think like a particle physicist, not a social scientist. Moving through the space of Israel/Palestine involves negotiating a host of forces that the average Palestinian has about as much control over as the average electron or proton does of the nuclear & quantum forces determining its path. And it's through this near total control of the space that Israel is able, in George Orwell's description of totalitarianism, to "control the past as well as the future".

Israeli geographer Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) coined the "matrix of control" to describe these forces. The name evokes numerous overlapping layers of control, including the physical infrastructure of settlements & their security corridors & zones, bypass roads, closed military areas & even "nature reserves". The matrix also includes the bureaucratic & legal/planning levels, & the use of large-scale violence & imprisonment to control people's behaviour & movement.

With its matrix of control, Israel has achieved an unparalleled & uniquely successful synergy of "bio" & "necro"-politics, controlling life & death at most every scale of Palestinian existence. The matrix is continuously adjusted with as much care as Israel has adjusted the caloric intake of Gazans during its periodic intensifications of the Gazan siege.

Three, four & five dimensions

A look at the group of detailed maps created by ICAHD reveals upwards of two dozen parameters of control that can intersect at any given coordinate on the map. But the map is only a two dimensional representation of a multidimensional & multi-levelled reality. It's not just various forces meeting on the ground. When you're walking through the 97% of the West Bank that is in Areas B or C & thus under Israel security control, you realise that the matrix extends both under the ground you're walking on & above your head.

Below ground, Israel controls all the water resources in the West Bank, &d for 50 years has systematically taken most every possible well, stream, aquifer or other water source from Palestinians (in direct violation of international law, it must be remembered).

It also controls the airspace above Palestinians' heads, as the constant buzz of Israeli fighter jets training overhead in the Jordan Valley, & the ubiquitous presence of drones & helicopters almost everywhere at any time, & the prohibitions on building new floors on existing structures makes clear.
In whatever direction Palestinians look or want to step or reach - left or right, forwards or backwards, above or below them - the land, air & water surrounding them is largely outside their permanent control.

Blink of an eye

But it is not just that most of their territory is out of Palestinian hands. The quantum physics of Israel's matrix of control also has its own Heisenberg, or uncertainty principle.

In quantum mechanics this principle asserts that it is impossible to know with precision the exact state of a particle because the very act of observing it changes its state. In the same way, merely by changing their location Palestinians change the state of territory upon which they are moving.

On the one hand, despite the rockiness of the landscape, the geography of the West Bank can be among the most liquid on earth. It changes as one moves through it, depending on who you are - Jew or Palestinian, settler or refusnik, soldier or international. Spaces that seems open & free can suddenly be surrounded by military forces & closed off, declared off limits for any length of time for a variety of reasons merely because Palestinians moved into & through it or used it for grazing, water, or other normal activities.

Moreover, their very movement through the geography can change it not just for a moment, but permanently. At the same time, the uncertainty principle can also operate with a time lag. If Palestinians decide to walk through a Jordan Valley village, for example, or to plant trees on their land in the hills around Hebron or Jenin, it's not at all uncommon for the Israeli military to issue demolition or confiscation orders a few days later.

In particular, the movement of Jews has an even more profound effect than Palestinians especially when establishing an outpost or settlement. Once land is claimed even on the flimsiest of pretexts the military usually moves in & declares a still larger area a security zone, making it impossible for Palestinians to access the land for months, years or even decades.

And so, it seems that land in Palestine can change states from liquid to solid almost instantly, freezing in place whatever Israel decides it wants frozen, from people to legal categories. The quantum physics of Palestinian geography can thus produce permanent changes not just in the three normal dimensions of space, but in the conflict's "fourth dimension" as well, namely time.

But however many dimensions one considers, the goal remains the same: to achieve, in the words of the Palestinian-Israeli hip-hop group DAM, "Maximum Jews on maximum land; minimum Arabs on minimum land."

Neoliberal policies

There is even a fifth, economic dimension in which the physics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict operates. The neoliberal policies imposed on the Occupied Territories under Oslo have ensured that when Palestinians aren't being displaced by Israeli settlers or bombs, they are fixed in place as objects of development, whose economic life is confined to small spaces that remain largely under Israeli control. The possibility of their becoming subjects able to shape their own destinies is, it seems, outside the laws of physics operating in the Holy Land.

It is the changing nature of the political, physical & economic geographies of the Israeli-controlled Occupied Territories that has made it so difficult for Palestinians & their supporters internationally (including in Israel) to develop effective strategies of resistance, never mind transcending the occupation.

With Oslo's final demise, Palestinians don't just need new strategies for resisting an occupation without end; what's needed is an entirely new physics as well.

Indeed, it has long been argued that Palestinians are still waiting for their Ghandi. It might well turn out that to overcome decades of totalitarian Israeli rule, a long-dead peace process, & ineptitude, corruption & authoritarianism internally, Einstein would be a far more useful figure.


Mark LeVine is a professor of Middle Eastern History at University of California, Irvine, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Lund University.

Israeli soldiers cast doubt on legality of Gaza military tactics

Well, Muslims already dislike Israeli occupation of Palestine, but reading these kinds of stories / articles, I wonder how come others still support the occupation, wholeheartedly. Heck, saying anything against the Israeli occupation is considered "anti-Semitic" & many developed countries are outlawing it, outright (Canada, included). And then the whole world considers the developed countries of the West as fair, just, & humane?

But then, is it fair to solely blame the West for supporting Israel in its illegal occupation of Palestine? After all, the leader of the country, where Islam's 2 holiest sites are located, who is also known as, "custodian of the 2 holy mosques," collaborated with Israelis against Iran, for its own geopolitical agenda.

It was not that surprising to read the gung-ho, radicalized, extreme hateful attitudes of the Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians. It wasn't surprising to read how bombings were conducted or civilians were killed ("shoot in memory of our comrade" who was killed by friendly fire). It was not surprising that how sites which should not have been bombed (UN schools being used as refugee centers, for example) were bombed & reported in the world media that they were never bombed (because the firing order was given for a few hundred meters out of the supposedly-protected site, & then given a "correction order" to fire again at the site, & only the first firing order is logged in the records, not the "correction fire.")

It wasn't surprising, at least to me, & I assume that to millions more around the world, because these kinds of stories about Israel are not uncommon. There are news articles, opinion pieces, movies, etc. for as long as I can remember. Heck, with internet, it's becoming even easier to spread these kinds of stories around. But, the situation on the ground have only gotten worsen in the past half century, & not become better in any way.

Be it any war waged by anyone (US, UK, NATO, Israel etc.) for any reason (usually to kill a threat), it usually achieves the opposite. The threat never goes away & actually, increases much more. Because, the person whose innocent family has been killed off right before him/her, has no reason or hope to keep living. Then, that person becomes a suicide bomber & joins a party which allows it to take revenge.

On top of that, actions like these by countries waging wars make their own populace further insecure, since now, they don't know if & when that person will strike back. This was all very nicely portrayed in a Canadian movie, "Inch'Allah". It even showed how adversely these hardline tactics affect Israeli soldiers themselves, since their hearts know what they are doing is wrong (assuming they are conscientious enough), but they have to follow orders. This long-term conflict between the hearts & minds give them PTSDs. So nobody is winning with this illegal occupation of Palestine.

People who have their eyes closed will keep defending Israel & dismiss stories like these, even though, these are accounts of the war from soldiers who were themselves involved in that uni-lateral Gaza war of 2014. These people don't just stop there but take away anyone's right to criticize Israel, too.

As George Orwell said, "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/04/israeli-soldiers-cast-doubt-on-legality-of-gaza-military-operation

Testimonies provided by more than 60 Israeli soldiers who fought in last summer’s war in Gaza have raised serious questions over whether Israel’s tactics breached its obligations under international law to distinguish & protect civilians.
 
The claims – collected by the human rights group Breaking the Silence – are contained in dozens of interviews with Israeli combatants, as well as with soldiers who served in command centres & attack rooms, a quarter of them officers up to the rank of major.
 
They include allegations that Israeli ground troops were briefed to regard everything inside Gaza as a “threat” & they should “not spare ammo”, & that tanks fired randomly or for revenge on buildings without knowing whether they were legitimate military targets or contained civilians.
 
In their testimonies, soldiers depict rules of engagement they characterised as permissive, “lax” or largely non-existent, including how some soldiers were instructed to treat anyone seen looking towards their positions as “scouts” to be fired on.
 
The group also claims that the Israeli military operated with different safety margins for bombing or using artillery & mortars near civilians & its own troops, with Israeli forces at times allowed to fire significantly closer to civilians than Israeli soldiers.
 
Phillipe Sands, professor of law at University College London & a specialist in international humanitarian law, described the testimonies as “troubling insights into intention & method”.

“Maybe it will be said that they are partial & selective, but surely they cannot be ignored or brushed aside, coming as they do from individuals with first-hand experience: the rule of law requires proper investigation & inquiry.”

Describing the rules that meant life & death in Gaza during the 50-day war – a conflict in which 2,200 Palestinians were killed – the interviews shed light for the first time not only on what individual soldiers were told but on the doctrine informing the operation.
 
Despite the insistence of Israeli leaders that it took all necessary precautions to protect civilians, the interviews provide a very different picture. They suggest that an overarching priority was the minimisation of Israeli military casualties even at the risk of Palestinian civilians being harmed.
 
While the Israel Defence Forces Military Advocate General’s office has launched investigations into a number of individual incidents of alleged wrongdoing, the testimonies raise wider questions over policies under which the war was conducted.
 
Post-conflict briefings to soldiers suggest that the high death toll & destruction were treated as “achievements” by officers who judged the attrition would keep Gaza “quiet for 5 years”.

The tone, according to one sergeant, was set before the ground offensive into Gaza that began on 17 July last year in pre-combat briefings that preceded the entry of 6 reinforced brigades into Gaza.

“[It] took place during training at Tze’elim, before entering Gaza, with the commander of the armoured battalion to which we were assigned,” recalled a sergeant, one of dozens of Israeli soldiers who have described how the war was fought last summer in the coastal strip.

“[The commander] said: ‘We don’t take risks. We do not spare ammo. We unload, we use as much as possible.’”
 
“The rules of engagement [were] pretty identical,” added another sergeant who served in a mechanised infantry unit in Deir al-Balah. “Anything inside [the Gaza Strip] is a threat."
 
The area has to be ‘sterilised,’ empty of people – & if we don’t see someone waving a white flag, screaming: “I give up” or something – then he’s a threat & there’s authorisation to open fire ... The saying was: ‘There’s no such thing there as a person who is uninvolved.’ In that situation, anyone there is involved.”
 
“The rules of engagement for soldiers advancing on the ground were: open fire, open fire everywhere, first thing when you go in,” recalled another soldier who served during the ground operation in Gaza City. The assumption being that the moment we went in [to the Gaza Strip], anyone who dared poke his head out was a terrorist.”

Soldiers were also encouraged to treat individuals who came too close or watched from windows or other vantage points as “scouts” who could be killed regardless of whether there was hard evidence they were spotting for Hamas or other militant groups. “If it looks like a man, shoot. It was simple: you’re in a motherfucking combat zone,” said a sergeant who served in an infantry unit in the northern Gaza strip.

“A few hours before you went in the whole area was bombed, if there’s anyone there who doesn’t clearly look innocent, you apparently need to shoot that person.” Defining ‘innocent’ he added: “If you see the person is less than 1.40 metres tall or if you see it’s a lady ... If it’s a man you shoot.”

In at least one instance described by soldiers, being female did not help 2 women who were killed because one had a mobile phone. A soldier described the incident: “After the commander told the tank commander to go scan that place, & 3 tanks went to check [the bodies] ... it was 2 women, over the age of 30 ... unarmed. They were listed as terrorists. They were fired at. So of course they must have been terrorists.”

The testimonies raise questions whether Israel fully met its obligations to protect civilians in a conflict area from unnecessary harm, requiring it not only to distinguish between civilians & combatants but also ensure that when using force, where there is the risk of civilian harm, that it is “proportionate”.

“One of the main threads in the testimonies,” said Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer & legal adviser to Breaking the Silence, “is the presumption that despite the fact that the battle was being waged in urban area – & one of most densely populated in the world – no civilians would be in the areas they entered.”

That presumption, say soldiers, was sustained by virtue of warnings to Palestinians to leave their homes & neighbourhoods delivered in leaflets dropped by aircraft & in text & phone messages which meant – in the IDF’s interpretation – that anyone who remained was not a civilian.
 
Even at the time that view was deeply controversial because – says Sfard & other legal experts interviewed – it reinterpreted international law regarding the duty of protection for areas containing civilians.
 
Sfard added: “We are not talking about a [deliberate] decision to kill civilians. But to say the rules of engagement were lax gives them too much credit. They allowed engagement in almost any circumstances, unless there was a felt to be a risk to an IDF soldier.”

If the rules of engagement were highly permissive, other soldiers say that they also detected a darker mood in their units that further coloured the way that soldiers behaved. “The motto guiding lots of people was: ‘Let’s show them,’ recalls a lieutenant who served in the Givati Brigade in Rafah. “It was evident that was a starting point. Lots of guys who did their reserve duty with me don’t have much pity towards [the Palestinians].”

He added: “There were a lot of people there who really hate Arabs. Really, really hate Arabs. You could see the hate in their eyes.”

A second lieutenant echoed his comments. “You could feel there was a radicalisation in the way the whole thing was conducted. The discourse was extremely rightwing ... [And] the very fact that [Palestinians were] described as ‘uninvolved’ rather than as civilians, & the desensitisation to the surging number of dead on the Palestinian side. It doesn’t matter whether they’re involved or not … that’s something that troubles me.”

And the testimonies, too, suggest breaches of the IDF’s own code of ethics – The Spirit of the IDF – which insists: “IDF soldiers will not use their weapons & force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war, & will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity & property.”

Contrary to that, however, testimonies describe how soldiers randomly shelled buildings either to no obvious military purpose or for revenge.
 
One sergeant who served in a tank in the centre of the Gaza Strip recalls: “A week or two after we entered the Gaza Strip & we were all firing a lot when there wasn’t any need for it – just for the sake of firing – a member of our company was killed.

“The company commander came over to us & told us that one guy was killed due to such-and-such, & he said: ‘Guys, get ready, get in your tanks, & we’ll fire a barrage in memory of our comrade” … My tank went up to the post – a place from which I can see targets – can see buildings – [and] fired at them, & the platoon commander says: ‘OK guys, we’ll now fire in memory of our comrade’ & we said OK.”

How Israeli forces used artillery & mortars in Gaza, says Breaking the Silence, has raised other concerns beyond either the rules of engagement or the actions of specific units.
 
According to the group’s research during the war, the Israeli military operated 2 different sets of rules for how close certain weapons could be fired to Israeli soldiers & Palestinian civilians.
 
Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, & himself a former soldier, explains: “What our research during this project uncovered was that there were 3 designated ‘Operational Levels’ during the conflict – numbered 1 to 3. What the operational level was was set higher up the chain of command. Above the level of the Gaza division. What those levels do is designate the likelihood of civilian casualties from weapons like 155mm artillery & bombs from ‘low’ damage to civilians to ‘high’.

“What we established was that for artillery fire in operational levels 2 & 3 Israeli forces were allowed to fire much closer to civilians than they were to friendly Israeli forces.”

Ahead of the conflict – in which 34,000 shells were fired into Gaza, 19,000 of them explosive – artillery & air liaison officers had been supplied with a list of sensitive sites to which fire was not to be directed within clear limits of distance. These included hospitals & UN schools being used as refugee centres, even in areas where evacuation had been ordered.

“Even then,” explains Shaul, “we have a testimony we took that a senior brigade commander issued order how to get around that, instructing that the unit fired first outside of the protected area & then calling for correction fire on to the location that they wanted to hit.

“He said: “If you go on the radio & ask to hit this building, we have to say no. But if you give a target 200 metres outside then you can ask for correction. Only thing that is recorded is the first target not the correction fire.”

And in the end, despite the high number of civilian casualties, the debriefings treated the destruction as an accomplishment that would discourage Hamas in the future.

“You could say they went over most of the things viewed as accomplishments,” said a Combat Intelligence Corps sergeant. “ “They spoke about numbers: 2,000 dead & 11,000 wounded, half a million refugees, decades worth of destruction. Harm to lots of senior Hamas members & to their homes, to their families. These were stated as accomplishments so that no one would doubt that what we did during this period was meaningful.

“They spoke of a five-year period of quiet (in which there would be no hostilities between Israel & Hamas) when in fact it was a 72-hour ceasefire, & at the end of those 72 hours they were firing again.”

Without responding to the specific allegations, the Israeli military said: “The IDF is committed to properly investigating all credible claims raised via media, NGOs, & official complaints concerning IDF conduct during operation Protective Edge, in as serious a manner as possible.

“It should be noted that following Operation Protective Edge, thorough investigations were carried out, & soldiers & commanders were given the opportunity to present any complaint. Exceptional incidents were then transferred to the military advocate general for further inquiry.”

'Grueling & hazardous': HRW exposes Palestinian child abuse in Israeli settler farms

So, apparently, the Holocaust allows Israelis to employ Palestinian children as low-wage workers, & the world stays silent on it, because Palestinians need to suffer now for the suffering of the Israelis in the Holocaust.

Now, some may say, why am I bringing up the Holocaust in an article about child labour in Israel. The reason is that you say anything, which seems to be against Israel, & the answer is always, from Israelis & Zionist supporters, is that Jews have suffered a lot from the Exodus to Holocaust. Although, that is nothing to do with the topic at hand, the answer is always the same.

So, apparently, everyone else, regardless of whether they ever did anything to any Jew or Israeli, need to suffer now.

It's funny how Israelis always find a nice loophole. Child labour is illegal in Israel BUT if child labourers are employed through a middleman contractor, then it's all legal.
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http://rt.com/news/249281-child-abuse-israeli-farms/

Human Rights Watch has heavily criticized the abuse of Palestinian children working on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that children are working in hazardous conditions & in violation of Israeli & international law.
 
The report, called “Ripe for Abuse,” said that children as young as 10 are working on the settlement farms in the Jordan Valley, sometimes in conditions that are harmful to their health.
 
HRW also said that much of the produce cultivated & harvested by child labor is exported to Europe & the US.
 
"Israel’s settlements are profiting from rights abuses against Palestinian children. Children from communities impoverished by Israel’s discrimination & settlement policies are dropping out of school & taking on dangerous work because they feel they have no alternatives, while Israel turns a blind eye," HRW's Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement.
 
The head of the settlement community in the Jordan Valley dismissed the HRW report as “lies.”

"They've made up lies. The entire goal of this organization is to sully Israel's image. If they'd show me a farmer employing a child, I'd report it to police immediately," David Elhayani, a former farmer, told AFP.
 
He insisted he would lose his exporting license if he were caught employing child labor, although he did acknowledge that the Palestinian contractors he works with use middlemen who could employ children without a farmer knowing about it.
 
HRW interviewed 38 children & 12 adults to research their report in the Palestinian communities of the Jordan Valley who were employed by settlement farms in the area. HRW acknowledges that children are the minority of workers employed on settlement farms, but says that they do so because of a lack of any real alternatives.
 
Israel’s policies throughout the occupied West Bank restrict Palestinian access to land, water & fertilizer as well as their ability to transport & sell their goods.

“Ask [the children] if they have any bread in the house,” a Palestinian middleman who supplied Palestinian workers to settlement farms told an Israeli human rights worker.
 
The researchers found that most of the children working on settlements had dropped out of school & the rest were working part time while still attending school.

“It’s very obvious which kids go to work in the settlements, because they are exhausted in class,” a school administrator told HRW.
 
On average, children said they began working at the settlements when they were 13 or 14, but HRW found one boy who said he started working when he was 10. Work starts at 5:30 a.m. or 6 a.m. & lasts for 7 to 8 hours, which increases to 12 hours during harvest time, often for 6 or 7 days a week.

“The work that children perform can be both grueling & hazardous,” the report says. Some children complained of skin rashes, dizziness & vomiting after spraying crops with pesticides without adequate protection while others were injured by sharp blades & machinery used to cut crops.
 
Temperatures can exceed 50 degrees Celsius in summer & so many of the children as well as the adults are susceptible to heat stroke.
 
The children working in settlements are paid very low wages, far less than the Israeli minimum wage, which is $6.20 an hour. Most of the children interviewed by HRW earned $16 to $19 a day.
 
Israeli & Palestinian law makes it illegal to work if you’re under 15. Under military orders issued by Israel in the West Bank, Israel’s domestic minimum wage law is applicable to Palestinian workers in settlements.
 
But the practice of using middlemen to hire workers means there’s mostly no contract linking an employee child or otherwise to their employer.
 
Workers are paid “in cash, [get] no pay slips, & there are no [work] permits, so there is no paper trail to demand severance pay or anything else,” a Palestinian middleman told HRW.
 
Children working in Israeli settlements not only violate Israeli & Palestinian law but also international law. Both Israel & Palestine are party to the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which protects children from being economically exploited & from performing work which is hazardous or interferes with their schooling.
 
HRW also called on the US & Europe to stop importing produce from the settlements, much of which is given preferential tariffs.
 
"The EU has moved to exclude Israeli settlement products from the preferential tariff treatment it provides to Israeli goods... but [member states] have not instructed businesses to end trade with settlement-based entities. The US in practice continues to grant preferential treatment to Israeli settlement products under the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement," HRW said.

Criminal Minds, S1E8 (quote 2)

A great quote from Carl Jung. People who have internal issues (abused in the past, mentally unhealthy etc.) are more inclined to hurt others than, rather, mentally healthy people. Some of the examples are US soldiers keeping guard in Gitmo prison (there are narratives from soldiers who couldn't torture those detainees because they were apparently mentally healthy, but some really enjoy it). Then, there is a certain occupying force in the Middle East (i.e. Holy Land), who were tortured (at least, their predecessors) in Europe.

 

Israel lobby's attack on academic freedom

As an update on this opinion piece (which is a good one), the said conference in the piece was cancelled by its organizers. It was supposed to be held on April 17-19, 2015.

In the end, academic freedom lost the battle.

It's funny that no individuals & the Western media make any sound using statements like "freedom of speech" when these kinds of attacks are done by Jewish lobbies to silence the academics, but if you even try to talk to people what's the point of disrespecting a religion by drawing its sacred individuals ... whoa ... "Muslims are against freedom of speech".

But, hey, the West is oh so fair & balanced !!!
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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/03/israel-lobby-attack-academic-freedom-150322061358503.html

For years, Israel lobby groups have slammed the Palestinians' call for a boycott of Israeli universities as an attack on "academic freedom". Now the mask has well & truly slipped.
 
Next month, the University of Southampton in the UK will hold a conference on Israel & international law to bring together "scholars from law, politics, philosophy, theology, anthropology, cultural studies history & other connected disciplines".
 
However, in an unashamed attack on free speech, the university has come under increasing pressure to cancel the gathering.
 
Late last year, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, & the Union of Jewish Students wrote to the head of Southampton's Law School, claiming that the conference would "surpass the acceptable".
 
In February, the organisations met with umbrella group Universities UK, where they complained that "freedom of speech" was preventing universities from "considering valid representations on behalf of the Jewish community". Strangely, British ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould was also present.
 
In recent weeks, a steady stream of attacks on the University of Southampton has even included the suggestion that the conference would make the university "complicit in furthering the rising & harrowing tide of anti-Semitism in Europe".
 
For their part, the university has emphasised its legal obligations to protect free speech. A spokesperson said that the university "is committed to academic freedom, free speech & opportunities for staff & students to engage with a wide range of opinions & perspectives".
 
Meanwhile, hundreds of academics have signed a statement in support of academic freedom. Professors from Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Harvard, MIT, the University of California & more, have condemned "partisan attempts" being made to "silence dissenting analyses of the topic in question".
 
The whole episode is instructive about the way in which Israel advocacy groups seek to hypocritically & disingenuously shut down critical discussion.
 
First, opponents of an academic boycott of Israel present themselves as defenders of "academic freedom" - even though Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) is a campaign based on the institutional complicity of Israeli universities in occupation & war crimes.
 
Yet the same Israel lobbyists who incorrectly say BDS is an attack on academic freedom now want to shut down a conference simply because they don't like the ideas that will be discussed. Indeed, in a strikingly McCarthyite gesture, one anti-BDS umbrella group went through 56 conference speakers & labelled 45 of them "anti-Israel".
 
Second, the initial strategy - first in private, then in public - was to insinuate that the conference would somehow harm "community relations", a transparent attempt to tap into fears about "extremism" & antisemitism.
 
University officials were told by those seeking to censor that the conference was causing "great concern & distress" & would have "damaging consequences for student welfare & community relations on campus". Jewish Leadership Council chief executive Simon Johnson claimed that the conference would "have a detrimental impact on cohesiveness".
 
This kind of discourse is a growing trend. The Board of Deputies, for example, has cited "community cohesion" when opposing local councils who fly Palestinian flags in a gesture of support for an occupied people.
 
Third, the meaning of free speech is revised so as to mean a discussion that won't disturb Israel's die-hard defenders. Board of Deputies' vice-president Jonathan Arkush demanded that unless the university "re-structured" the conference, it "should be cancelled". This wasn't censorship, he said, "merely" asking for "a balanced debate".
 
The Board's "insistence" on so-called even-handedness is ironic, given that the organisation's outgoing treasurer has spoken of his inability to criticise Israel while in office. According to Laurence Brass, those who speak out "are subjected to very harsh & sometimes quite abusive personal criticism". Indeed, Arkush himself requested that Brass keep quiet.
 
The double standards are beyond parody. The Henry Jackson Society's Douglas Murray declared that the conference is not protected by free speech because it is "one-sided" - just days after penning an article that claimed "Britain is a country which now has trouble with free speech".
 
MP Caroline Nokes, meanwhile, described "academic freedom" as "sacrosanct" before, with a lack of self-awareness, immediately qualifying the inviolable principle in the case of this "apparently one-sided" conference.
 
"This isn't about academic freedom," said the Zionist Federation in their petition. They protest too much. But it is not only a matter of standing firm against an attack on academic freedom masquerading as concern about "bias" or "community relations".
 
It is also about the bigger picture, a continuation of efforts to silence critical debate & points of view, especially the Palestinian perspective, at a time when the voice of the expelled & occupied is being heard louder than ever. Efforts to censor are not a sign of strength, but of weakness.

Atheism & Religion

So, as you may have already come across this news story today, what I had an issue with this incident was an atheist killing 3 Muslim student. He may have gotten the inspiration from movie, "American Sniper." (just like killers in France got the inspiration from Yemeni branch of Al-Q**da) & as I have said earlier, these killings, abuses, & harassments etc are just the start right now in the West.
Besides, the obvious lack of media coverage of this incident in the West (hey, after all, a red-blooded, beer-drinking, American killed 3 Arabs who must be plotting some nefarious scheme against US), his religion cannot be blamed in this incident, because he was an atheist.
 
Ironically, don't atheists always harp on their own misguided opinion that religion is the root problem of all evils in this world. Their argument is as hollow as guns are the source of killings (& people have no responsibility in any and all deaths occurring around the world ... I guess, judges should be sentencing guns & not people) or smartphones & social media are the causes of an increase in child abuse by predators or movie making tools are the causes of the rise in pornographic movie productions & consequently, the subjugation & exploitation of girls, as young as little kids.
 
Be it religion or guns or smartphones / internet or movie making tools (movie camera, movie editing software etc), these are all mere tools or ways & means. At the center of all of these are the actions of a human.
 
Yes, that may sound like NRA's defence that guns don't kill people, but people do, but it's true. A tool is just a tool. You can destroy the world with it or create something beautiful with it. You can kill people with a bomb or use it to bore holes in the ground to make a tunnel. You can use smartphone to keep yourself updated what's going on in the world & learn new things or do sexchat. You can use movie making tools to make porn (the best, recession-proof, business on the internet) or make videos for the Animal Planet & learn something new.

Similar to these tools, you can use religion to kill people & incite hatred or learn to be a better human. Religion was used by:
 
1. Christian Kings to get poor people under their kingdoms to wage wars, labelled as Crusades, to loot & plunder the Middle East & essentially, amass wealth for themselves. Crusades had nothing to do with Christianity.
 
2. Zionists use Judaism as an excuse to extract more land from Palestinians for themselves (all Zionists can be Jews but not all Jews are Zionists).
 
3. Hindus killed innocent Muslims (Gujarat incidents) in the name of religion (how many said Hinduism is inherently violent religion at the time?) at the incitement of political figures (Narender Modi, the current Prime Minister, was the provincial governor at the time) to gain votes / favours from far-right, nationalist minority, but Hinduism, itself, as a religion has nothing to do with violence.
 
4. ISIS can use Islam as an excuse to kill humanitarian workers & burn people alive. Religion has nothing to do with these incidents. After all, we all know ISIS is playing to the sensitivities of violent individuals around the World who are readily accepting Islam, just so they can go to Middle East & kill people (since they can't do that anywhere else, since they will / can be caught & prosecuted).
 
People, regardless of religion, ethnicity, cultural, or language, need to be given proper training & development in their lives. Just like we all need proper training & development to perform well in our jobs or careers, we all need proper & correct study of religion (whatever or whichever religion that may be) to become a better human. Religion is not the problem of all evils in this world but people themselves are. Current world has shunned the religion & let the hordes of "untrained" people out on the world. Everyone is feeling ready to do whatever they want to do to anyone else, disregarding any and all basic humanity. And when it is blame time of why that hideous crime was done, religion gets the finger. After all, religion can't defend itself now, can it???

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2948803/Man-arrested-3-shot-death-North-Carolina.html