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Inside The Moral Corruption Of Israeli Society: Zionist National Psyche
22 December 2010 By Joseph Dana
After being arrested in a Palestinian demonstration
near Hebron some time ago, I was handcuffed and
blindfolded then sat in the direct sun along with
another Israeli activist. After some time, an IDF
commander arrived on the scene and asked one of his
soldiers, "why are those two in the sun?" The soldier
reported that he just put us next to some Palestinians
that were arrested in the same demonstration. The
commander, clearly upset with his young soldier,
ordered that we be moved to the shade because `they
are Jews." Then he personally inspected the zip-tie
handcuffs of the Palestinians, making sure that they
were as excruciatingly tight as possible.
This was one of my first concrete experiences in the
West Bank in which I was able to see just how soldiers
viewed Palestinians. It was as if they were not fully
human or at least, not as human as Jews.
Purposeless is a word that is used often in the new
Breaking the Silence collection of IDF soldiers'
testimonies from the past ten years of occupation in
the West Bank. Testimony after testimony tells a story
of some experience where soldiers harassed, terrorized
and `controlled' Palestinians for seemingly no purpose
at all.
Soldiers would raid a house, arrest an unwanted man,
or shoot unarmed civilians while forcing families to
stand in the cold wearing only night cloths for no
reason whatsoever. After telling their stories of
abuse, many soldiers say they saw no purpose in
conducting these actions.
From an operational standpoint, there is no purpose in
arresting an unwanted man or harassing a village with
sound bombs at four in the morning. However, there is
a greater purpose for the constant harassment of
Palestinians. It is done to reinforce the notion that
they are an occupied and controlled people as well as
to indoctrinate young soldiers in the ways that the
army understands the Palestinian population; as not
completely human. Viewing Palestinians as less than
human is a profound example of the moral corruption of
Israeli society.
In order to occupy, with all the violations of the
humanity of the occupied, the occupier must
internalize a moral high ground.
The `purposeless' arrests, night raids, and other
violations of human rights are a necessary component
for soldiers to understand their high ground. The fact
that most of the horrific crimes discussed in the
testimonies were conducted by commanders and others in
supervisor positions further reinforces this idea that
`purposeless' operations are done for a clear purpose.
Breaking the Silence has given us a window into the
method of indoctrination in Israel at its most sacred
level, that of the army.
One of the most recent testimonies from the book,
reports of `purposeless' activities in Ramallah and
Hebron in 2008-2009:
We also had arrests that we were tired of. There was a
feeling that they were purposeless, for example
looking for people who cut the fence or people who
threw stones or were identified at demonstrations
against the fence or inciters.
It was a feeling of purposelessness. If in Hebron
there was a feeling that you were arresting an
unfortunate person, the feeling here was that we were
doing nothing. There was one arrest, I don't remember
in which village it started heating up, and there was
chaos and I remember the company commander cocked his
weapon and said they need to calm down, and the Shin
Bet came in the middle of the village among a few
houses of a large family.
Testimony 22 evokes another picture of terror. Titled,
"The battalion commander marched him barefoot", a
soldier recalls having his commander order a house
raid in Gaza in 2002-3:
We are taking everyone out of the house at four in the
morning in the freezing cold and leaving them outside
in the cold, in robes, without a minute of warning to
put on some clothes, and leaving them for a half hour
outside until you do the search. Up to cases where
they come with a Givati force in Gaza, they go in with
the battalion commander; they find someone there who
isn't connected to anything, a house that's not at the
location they received, a different house.
And of course in every home in Bet Lahia, outside of
the house, there are pictures of Shahids so he says to
him: "What's this?" And then he decides to take him
with us and he's barefoot. They walk three kilometers
from his house to the border and he's barefoot. He
asked the battalion commander if he could put shoes
on, sandals, he asked him in Hebrew and he goes to
him: "No"! He started bleeding on the way.
As I was reading this document in disbelief and
sadness, I mentioned a couple of testimonies to my
flat mate who was an IDF commander three years ago. I
told him about one testimony which described how
soldiers in Hebron would train for house arrests by
selecting, at random, a Palestinian home. In the
middle of the night, they would raid the house and
arrest whom they pleased. After the terrorizing was
over, the soldiers would release the innocent man (or
men) that they captured and have an operational
debriefing to inspect performance.
My flat mate, rather dismissively, asked if I was
surprised by this. "I used to do the same thing", he
exclaimed and continued, "They are doing the same
right now somewhere out there in the West Bank."
The majority of soldiers have committed similar
actions or watched them happen. When soldiers, our
national pride, bravely come forward and speak of what
happens behind our walls and checkpoints, we have a
privileged position to better analyze the national
psyche. What is found is that the occupation has led
to a moral corrosion of Israeli society which has
almost reached a point of no return.
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