Tag: Gaza

by Dalia Karpel

September 21st, 2007.

A NEW ISRAELI STUDY CONFIRMS OUR WORST FEARS.

“We – Israeli Soldiers – were put there to punish the Palestinians”, says Ilan Vilenda, an Israeli soldier who served in Rafah during the first Intifada.

Ilan is the only soldier of 21 who agreed to have his name published, after he was interviewed by psychologist Nofer Ishai-Karen.

The soldiers spoke freely to Nofer, who served with them in the same ESHBAL platoon 20 years ago; They disclosing their innermost emotions about the horrendous crimes, in which they took part: Murder, breaking bones of Palestinian children, actions of humiliation, destruction of property, robbery and theft.

Soldier “A” testimony:
“We decided to turn an old shower in our base to a make-shift detention cell. A Palestinian was brought there, handcuffed and mouth banded so he couldn’t talk, or move. We “forgot him there for three days”…

Soldier “B” testimony:
“I was on my first patrol. Others simply shot like mad. I started to shoot as they did. They ‘set my on’. I took my weapon and shot. Nobody was there to tell me otherwise”

— Psychologist Ishai-Karen was shocked to find that the soldiers enjoyed the ‘intoxication of power’, and had pleasure from using violence. She said: “Most of my interviewees enjoyed their own instigated violence during their Occupation service”.

Soldier “C” testimony:
“The truth is that I love this mess – I enjoy it. It is like being on drugs. If I didn’t enter Rafah, to put down some rebellion -at least once a week- I’d go berserk.

Soldier “D” testimony:
What is great is that you don’t have to follow any law or rule. You feel that YOU ARE THE LAW; you decide. Once you go into the Occupied Territories YOU ARE GOD”.

Emotional dumbness

Soldier “E” testimony:
We drove an APC through Rafah. A man of 25 walked nearby. He didn’t hurl a stone at us or anything. Then without any reason “X” shot him in the stomach. We left him lying on the sidewalk”.

Soldier “F” testimony:
Some “tough guys” developed it into ‘an ideology’, according to which we have to react brutally even for minor events. A woman threw a sandal at me. I kicked her with my foot at her crotch. I broke her. She can’t have children any longer. Next time she won’t throw sandals at me… and when another woman spat at me she got the butt of my gun in her face. She can’t spit now.

Soldier “G” described his first forced entry to a home to detain a Palestinian:
“He was real big, some 30 years old. He refused detention. We hit him but couldn’t force him down. Some people came hurling stones at us. We beat him and told him to lie down. Till he finally did. We drove to the base with him. By that time he had lost consciousness. He died some days later”.

Nofer Ishai-Karen: “Some NCOs encouraged the soldiers to behave brutally, and provided their own example.

Soldier “H” testimony:
After two months in Rafah a new NCO commander arrived. The first patrol, which he commanded, was at 06 hours. Rafah was under curfew. Not a soul was on the street. Then he saw a young boy, of about 4, playing in the sand in the courtyard of his home. The kid was building a castle in the sand.

Suddenly the NCO, a guy from the Engineers Corps, ran to chase the kid. We followed. He captured the kid and broke his elbow. Broke the kid’s elbow! Damn me if I’m not telling the truth! Then the NCO treaded on the kid’s stomach three times, before he moved on. We couldn’t believe our eyes… But the next day we went on patrol with that guy and the soldiers started to imitate him…

What happened then?
Some guys couldn’t stomach it. The case of severe abuse of three young adolescents, who were bounded hand and foot by a staff sergeant, got them to alert a senior officer. “When the medic arrived the boys were bleeding all over, their clothes were soaked with blood, and they were shivering from fear.

They were made to kneel like dogs and were afraid to move”. The NCO was punished by 3 months detention. But the platoon commander backed the NCO and reprimanded the conscientious soldiers for ‘defaming the platoon’.”

Nofer Ishai-Karen: The sacred value in the [Israeli] Army is “fighters’ solidarity”, i.e., loyalty towards your fellow combatants. The platoons protected its secrets, as a family defends its ‘black sheep’. The fellows regard as “traitors” the conscientious soldiers, says Nofer Ishai-Karen. The cover-up was complete when our ‘good guy’ was excommunicated and ostracized by the entire platoon. And the NCO? He left the country, and now lives in the U.S. of A. The majority of the soldiers of these platoons had left Israel. Only five or six remain in Israel.

Nofer studied two platoons ESHBAL and ESHKHAR, the last was more extreme in its violence, she says.

Finally back to Ilan Vilenda, the only soldier who allowed Nofer to use his full name and even be photographed. Vilenda was a staff sergeant in charge of ‘operations’.

Ilan Vilenda’s testimony:
“Our job was to beat them… I personally hit a boy and another. I used my hands or the truncheon. We beat more severely [Palestinian] adults. We acted like policemen but we acted outside the law. There was this Palestinian who had a TV at home. The World Cup in Soccer was on, and we used to invade his privacy to watch the games. After a while he had enough, and asked us take the TV set and move.

“I was born on a Kibbutz, to a family whose values were humane ‘Zionist left wing’. The Palestinians threw tons of stones at us. Whereas at the beginning my ideological commitment restrained my actions, my anger accumulated, and I released it violently. It was meant to be. We were there “to make them [Palestinians] pay. My political views changed too. I now support the extreme-right-religious National-Religious Party. After his release from the army, Vilenda and 5 other Israelis were arrested in Goa, India for possession of LSD. “I wanted to serve my country. This was my task… but the entire IDF is executing illegal-orders.

Who is responsible?

General Matan Vilna’i [now serving under Ehud Barak as vice Minister of Defense] was at the time [during the First Intifada] Chief of the IDF Southern Command. He often visited our platoon and discussed with soldiers, says Nofer But… there you go… the ‘Instruments of DENIAL and CONCEALMENT’ went to work…”

Besides: The Israeli Army didn’t provide the unit with regular training, nor were the soldiers given regular leaves, or provided with free time to recuperate and recover. The interviewed soldiers maintained that the longer they operated [against the Palestinians in Rafah] without leave, the more violent they became in imposing their kind of ‘Law and Order’. They claimed “Army [commanders] were aware of the erosion towards violence, and encouraged it in order to save manpower”.

NOTES:
General Matan Vilna’i must have known what happened. High-ranking officers who served on the Occupied West Bank had voiced similar warnings against Israeli Army behavior. “The orders left a wide gap, a margin… of intentionally un-specified ‘grey zone’, which encouraged violent behavior of soldiers”, said Reserve Colonel Elisha Shapira, who served in the Nablus Area at the same time. Soldiers were told “don’t hit Palestinians – but bring them to interrogation ‘swell-headed’ – blown-up”.

The events, which Nofer Ishai-Karen researched, happened some 17 years ago. The situation has further deteriorated since that time. Now Israeli Army and Air Force General openly take pride in acts of revenge against Palestinian civilians. Maj-Gen Eliezer Shkeidi took pride in announcing that his pilots break the sound barrier over Gaza, producing sonic booms.

These cause severe PTSD symptoms among young children; they have also caused miscarriages among pregnant women. The indiscriminate shelling of Palestinian homes had caused many deaths lately, including many children. Perhaps last but not least: The Israeli cabinet, backed by Washington, said it would disrupt power and fuel supply to Gaza.

[1] This is an abbreviated translation of an article by Dalia Karpel titled HAMEDOVEVET [=the one who makes people talk]. The article appeared on the Hebrew Weekend Supplement, on 21 September 2007. It is based on academic research, which Nofer Ishai-Karen and Psychology Prof. Joel Elizur, of the Hebrew University published in ALPAYIM Magazine Vol. 31.

[2] The article was not translated to English and thus did NOT appear in Haaretz English Language edition.

[3] Psychology Prof. Joel Elizur, of the Hebrew University, who guided Nofer Ishai-Karen in her Master’s thesis, served in the reserves in the Mental Health Department of the Israeli Army. But the IDF wouldn’t allow him to research into Israeli Soldiers’ violence. The researchers hold the interview raw audio material.

[4] To my best knowledge the Israeli Army hasn’t either charged a single case of abuse or murder by soldiers of Palestinians in proper court.

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/905287

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) deplores the unanimous decision by the Israeli cabinet to impose sanctions on supplies of electricity, fuel and other basic goods and services to the civilian population of Gaza, and calls upon the international community to prevent this crime against humanity from being carried out. Indeed, the very legal framework invoked by Israel to carry out this illegal and immoral act – declaring Gaza a “hostile entity” within a “conflict short of war” – has absolutely no standing in international law. The collective punishment of an entire civilian population, by contrast, is explicitly prohibited.

We call on the Secretary General of the UN, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, to urgently convene the Security Council in order to tell the Israeli government that this step is completely unacceptable and must be rescinded.

We call on the governments of the world, and in particular the American government and the European Parliament, to censure this decision, especially in light of recent attempts to revive the diplomatic process.

We call on the world’s religious leaders to condemn this blatant violation of human rights and the most fundamental assault on human life and dignity, made especially poignant as it is being implemented during the holy month of Ramadan. As Israelis, most of whom are Jews, we call upon Jewish leaders to speak out unequivocally against this offence against Jewish values on the eve of Yom Kippur

And we call upon the peoples of the world to let their officials and leaders know of their repudiation of this cruel, illegal and immoral act – an act that stands out in its cruelty even in an already oppressive Israeli Occupation. ICAHD condemns attacks on all civilians, be they Israeli or Palestinian. Violations of international law by governments affecting millions of people are, however, especially egregious and must be denounced.

Israel’s decision to punish Gaza’s civilian population, with all the human suffering that entails, constitutes an instance of State Terrorism against innocent people. Only when Israel is held accountable for its actions and international law upheld will a just peace be possible in the Middle East.

By Amira Hass

In the most recent Israel Defense Forces raids in the Gaza Strip, during which dozens of people were detained for interrogation by the Shin Bet, the security service adopted a procedure unknown in recent years: The detainees were forced to undress in the presence of another detainee and a soldier or a member of the Shin Bet and then be interrogated while wearing a disposable, blue paper overall. This emerged in cumulative testimony from the Strip. In the West Bank, apparently, the color of the overall is white.

According to a clarification by Haaretz with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, this procedure has been implemented in the last three months with detainees from Beit Lahia, the Al Fuhari neighborhood in Khan Yunis and twice with detainees from the agricultural town of Shuka east of Rafah, on June 9 and on August 3.

In earlier raids where a large number of Palestinians who were not suspects nor wanted men were detained, they were not stripped and usually were questioned while wearing their own clothes. But the Shin Bet said in response that “an examination by the relevant security factors indicated there has been no change in the professional instructions for the manner of examination.”

Othman Hussein, a resident of Shuka who works in the research and planning department of Palestinian Authority Chair Mahmoud Abbas’ bureau, was detained with another 83 people during an August 3 raid, along with his 16-year-old son. All of them – except for an employee of the Gaza European Hospital – were released within 24 hours.

Hussein, 44, is a writer and a poet. He was held for interrogation a year ago as well. “At the time they maintained a certain attitude of respect,” said Hussein in a phone conversation with Haaretz. “I sat in detention for 22 hours, and I was interrogated for an hour, mainly regarding my opinion of current events. They didn’t strip me and they didn’t humiliate me. “This time, their method was particularly humiliating, embarrassing and disgusting. I’m convinced it’s a method designed to humiliate and weaken us in front of the interrogator.” Hussein said that all those questioned who were taken from their homes were Fatah members like him and known as such.

The raid on Shuka, which stands on the edge of Rafah airport, began at about 1 A.M. Friday morning and ended at 5 P.M. According to Hussein, the soldiers announced on loudspeakers that all men aged 15-45 should leave their homes and gather in the neighborhood square. At the same time, the soldiers conducted searches of about 50 houses, detaining men. Four children under the age of 15 and about 20 adults over the age of 45 were also detained, Hussein said. “I didn’t plan to leave the house, but when I saw that my 16-year-old son was on the way to detention, I joined him.” Hussein said it was about 6:30 A.M.

The 84 detainees gathered gradually in the square and eventually had their hands cuffed behind their backs. It was very hot, with no shelter from the sun. But the soldiers offered bread and water, said Hussein. Around 10 A.M. one group was told to get onto a truck, and a second group was taken at 12 noon. Hussein and his son were in the first group.

“We were about 10 meters from the truck. When we approached it, the soldiers blindfolded us. When they saw that we couldn’t get onto the truck with bound hands and blindfolded, they grabbed us, one by one, and tossed us into the truck, like sheep. Except that sheep are not handcuffed and blindfolded.”

After a short ride they arrived at an army camp in the Kerem Shalom area. There they were put two at a time into a wooden hut with only three walls. A man wearing civvies told them to undress completely in front of him and passed a metal detector over their naked bodies, including their behinds, according to Hussein’s testimony.

Hussein and his son were put together in the hut. According to additional testimony, men and women soldiers were walking near the open hut all the while. Afterward, everyone was told to don an overall and put his clothes in a separate black bag, and then the detainees were handcuffed and blindfolded again.

The detainees were moved to outside the interrogation rooms, where they waited, in groups of 10 at a time. Each was interrogated separately by a Shin Bet investigator. There appeared to be only two interrogators. At the entrance to the interrogation room, handcuffs and blindfolds were removed.

Hussein said he came before the interrogator angry and upset. The interrogator did not introduce himself and asked questions “whose answers he has in the computer in any case – how old I am, who my relatives are, how old they are, etc. Then he asked me about what had happened between Hamas and Fatah. I answered him: ‘You strip me next to my son, sit me in the sun for about four hours, and then you want me to tell you my opinion of Hamas and Fatah? I don’t want to tell you.”

The investigator nevertheless tried several times to get him to say something about his political opinions, but he refused, Hussein said.

At the conclusion of the questioning, at 2 P.M. they were once again handcuffed and blindfolded. At 10 P.M. they were allowed to look for their clothes in a pile of black bags and were taken by bus to the Sufa crossing, north of Kerem Shalom. From there, in the middle of the night, in a dangerous border area, they made their way on foot several kilometers to Rafah.

The response of the Shin Bet: “As a rule, the security check is determined according to the concrete level of risk of the person under interrogation, which is decided according to the circumstances of each individual case. This examination does not usually include stripping the interrogatee. However, in exceptional cases, the examination can include stripping in view of past instances in which terrorists harmed security personnel with whom they had contact. It should be emphasized that the examination is external only, and the dignity, privacy and modesty of the interrogatees are strictly maintained.”