Foreword: This collection describes subjects which, for lack of space, could not be dealt with in the previous collection "The situation in the fifth year of the Intifada", such as the prevalent collective punishments and their effects on the Palestinians, descriptions of their feelings and attitudes as prevalent in particular villages and towns or others parts of population, the effect of the expulsion, etc.

All emphases mine. Israel Shahak

Hadashot, 7 December 1992.

By: Ranny Talmor (transl. by Prof. Israel Shahak)

Let’s ask ourselves what he is afraid of

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO AN ENTIRE ISRAELI GENERATION WHICH BECOMES CORRUPTED BY KILLING WHILE LAUGHING? BY KILLING AND ENJOING IT? BY KILLING AND NUMBERING THE KILLED ON THE BUTT OF THE GUN?

In the TV Newsreel program on last Friday, Yehuda Kava interviewed four "Israeli soldiers who served in the Territories during the Intifada. It was very hard to sit in front of the TV screen. “I am trying to carry out the mission and also to remain somehow a human being", said one of the interviewed, but it is a kind of Mission Impossible. After a three days hunt, Ranny Davidi succeeded to catch a person who seemed to him as the leader of the local rioters: "We simply took him to an isolated place, and he got what I got during the three days when I could not catch them. If these were beatings or all kinds of… I cannot call it torture, but we wanted to make him feel the maximum amount of pain… Only after we calmed ourselves by beating him thoroughly, we reported to the company about it. He was, of course, almost fainting by then, so I just threw him off the jeep like a bag of potatoes".

Negev Ahi-Miriam sent a force of armed reservists "to serve as a bait for stone throwers". Two 14 years old children too young to distinguish between a bait and worms, did what they were expected to do. "Then I opened fire at them. When I returned to the company, the rumor spread and all the other soldiers immediately congratulated me and at last I joined the club and became a killer like the other and was told: ‘welcome, make a mark on the gun butt’. It was a huge success. I fulfilled the mission…"

Ran IIan, a guitar player in a rock band: "People throw stones, then, when you are hunting somebody, a whole company with an immense motivation will join you. The hunted man resists, curses, spits, but then he is silenced with a few blows of the fist… You would like, really, to beat him up to the end, till he is totally dead, because you have been running ten hours to catch somebody… You have very strong feeling that you are on a national mission when beating him. You are protecting the State of Israel, the entire Zionist enterprise. Holding the Gaza Strip". Ran Ilan. a stupid, unhappy and brainwashed child, adds: "Listen carefully: But then I thought: if chasing Palestinian children in the alleys of Gaza, to silence them with a few blows of a fist really means protecting the Zionist enterprise, then the Zionist enterprise should go to hell".

Three war criminals appeared in the newsreel. Yes, three war criminals who identified themselves with their full name, stood unafraid in front of the camera, and described their crimes. Only one of them expressed some doubts, maybe even repented. If there were any hope that the day of judgment will come, that these three, and thousands of their comrades and commanders and generals and chiefs of staff and defense ministers and prime ministers of the occupation will be brought to court, the repentance would surely help him. But what shall be done with an entire generation who has been corrupted fundamentally, and who has already passed the abominable stage of "shooting and crying" since now they shoot and laugh, kill and enjoy it, kill and mark the number of killed on their gun butt?

And yet another soldier appeared on the screen, anonymous and with his face hidden. "The Border policemen and Givati soldiers brought whole loads of children to the base. I was sure they were unloading bags of potatoes. I asked a Givati soldier what had happened and then he said, oh, my dear, we just change their shape from what they got from their mother. The children were trembling with pain, fear and cold and were begging for mercy … At night I am hearing the prisoners screaming when they are being tortured in the cells, I hear the beatings going on, and I recall these sights of the chap with the bine of his shoulder outside his body and a mark of blue color around the heart. Terrible, terrible…

One decent man who till today does not sleep at night. But in a society that turns the sons of another people into potato bags and its own sons into military boots, he must appear under the condition of not revealing his name and his face. Let’s ask ourselves what he is afraid of, and then let’s be shocked only a little by the German TV reports about skinheads.