A Palestinian arrest so ridiculous even the Israeli judges smiled

[grassfed]

Something about 12-year-old Bassam caused two Israelis to smile. Two Palestinians noticed, but did not remember their smiles as being disparaging or arrogant. On the contrary. The Palestinians regarded the smiles as a rare moment in which two Israelis - and not just any Israelis, but military judges - realized how ridiculous the situation was.

There were three other Israelis present, who held back their cries as they watched the boy enter, faltering - the chains around his legs clanging against each other, the prisons service coat he wore much too big for him. These three women, of their own accord, go regularly to the caravans that house the Ofer military tribunal and take notes. Were it not for these three women, who eventually shared his story, Bassam would have become yet another hidden detail of a non-event. A non-event of the sort that takes place countless times, all the time. Without those non-events, it is impossible to comprehend what life is like under hostile rule.

This particular non-event began with Bassam (not his real name), who lives in a village west of Ramallah, deciding to visit his aunt who lives in another village 14 kilometers away. It took place in the afternoon hours of Monday, December 21, 2009. Bassam's home is some 10 kilometers north of Route 443 and his aunt's home to the south. A narrow, winding path links the villages located along the way. Bassam took two taxis, then began walking the rest of the way. At the suggestion of another boy he met on the path, he took a shortcut through a valley and headed for the little tunnel that runs below the road which is closed off to Palestinians, but built on their land.

Several hundred meters from the elevated road, some Israel Defense Forces soldiers popped out from in between the olive trees. According to the boy, they called him over, saying "Come, come." "I was afraid and fled," Bassam says. But the soldiers grabbed him. He noticed there were two jeeps nearby

more http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1149888.html

[azurnoir]

1. Thank you

just a day in the life of a kid growing up under occupation

[grassfed]

2. more routine daily life in the OT

Inside the Jewish halfway house of awareness, with ‘Breaking the Silence’
by PHILIP WEISS

Dana Golan, the director of Breaking the Silence, is on a three-week tour of the U.S. Tonight she will be at the Columbia University Hillel. Yesterday she gave her talk at NYU, in a beautiful space called the Kevorkian Center. Lovely Middle East tile work. The room was crowded with about 75 people. There were only a few hasbara types there, smoldering. The rest of the crowd was young, and, I’m guessing, mostly Jewish.

Golan was there to introduce the booklet of women’s testimonies, and she told her own story. She was an education officer in Hebron nine years ago, at 18. She asked to go out on a weapons search one night so as to know what was happening in the occupied territories, and the “drill” that was familiar to everyone but her, including the Palestinians, unfolded. A house was entered at 2 in the morning. The father came to the door. The women and children stood in the corner. Everything was turned upside down in a search for weapons. Her hope that they would somehow put everything back in the drawers was fantasy.

It was time for the women to be searched. Golan and another woman went into a separate room and one by one the Palestinian women were led in. The Israelis made the women strip “almost naked– to me naked was too much." Golan searched the women in a way that she had only seen from movies, not being an expert. The other woman said that sometimes they put on gloves and did an interior body search. Golan said to herself that she would never do that, even if the woman had a bomb inside her. All was justified in the name of Israeli security. "It was the first time I was ashamed of wearing the uniform." Presumably there have been many such times since.

The women on Golan’s video were just as moving. One education officer reported to command that soldiers were stealing beads and Korans when they raided Palestinians; for “squealing,” a “herem” or excommunication was ordered, she was frozen for four months and men spat as she went by. Another was responsible for conveying an officer’s report in Gaza after an incident in which a boy was beaten to the point of hysteria, cigarettes put out on his body. The report was honest. The commander ordered it to be revised, or the investigation unit would be all over the base. The report was revised; the boy was said to be a liar. In another case a woman was unsure of whether the boys she was to testify against had actually thrown stones. “They will confess,” she was assured, and she walked away with nightmare visions of what that meant. (I believe that most of the young people in Israeli prisons are there for throwing stones–27 percent, Goldstone reports, at paragraph 1460.)

more http://mondoweiss.net/2010/02/inside-the-jewish-halfway-house-of-awareness-with-breaking-the-silence.html

[Ken Burch]

3. At least half the comments in the Haaretz "talkback" section DEFENDED the arrest of the boy

All those who would defend this treatment of what was obviously an innocent child should be ashamed of themselves. And they should also ask themselves: is having "a state" ever worth giving up so much of one's humanity that a person could actually defend military persecution of children and attack the reporter who broke the story of it?

The weirdest responses there were the ones who essentially justified the arrest on the grounds that "he might be innocent now...but he could become a 'martyr' later". None of those who took that despicable line made the obvious connection between the liklihood that, if this child DID become a terrorist later, it would probably stem directly from the pointless humiliation and subjugation he was subjected to at the hands of a group of strutting, macho soldiers.


And in commenting on all of that, I have to look at the example that we as Americans have set...and that Israelis, tragically, learned from: the idea that a "strong" nation has to be sadistically cruel just to prove that it's "strong"...that you have to subdue others to be "free". We helped create the mindset that caused this event, and as Americans we have an obligation to look at ourselves and make sure we break ourselves of this toxic worldview.

[pelsar]

4. theres goes that imagination again....always surprises me....

we as Americans have set...and that Israelis, tragically, learned from: the idea that a "strong" nation has to be sadistically cruel just to prove that it's "strong"

i know you have nothing to back up your opinion.....but i guess i should ask anyway....so where is your information from?

[Ken Burch]

5. What imagination?

1)that was an accurate count of the number of comments that endorsed the arrest of this kid(a kid even YOU would have to admit was innocent and harmless);

2)The other comment was on the nature of the American definition of strength.