Twilight Zone / 'I've lost my heart' (Gideon Levy)

[UndertheOcean]

Was it the stun grenade that hit her head, the shock caused by its explosion or the rubber bullet fired by the Border Police? Does it make any difference? Did the Border Policeman intend to kill a child of 11 - or not? What difference does it make? The real question is why Border Policemen come almost daily to Anata, doing the devil's work, as it were, just when children are on their way home from school? What are they looking for, for heaven's sake, near a school in Anata, a West Bank town located northeast of Jerusalem? The Border Police come, the schoolchildren throw stones, the police fire and kill another innocent little girl - and nobody is called to account. The Shai (Samaria and Judea) police district is investigating, but not the Police Investigation Department.

~SNIP~

But Abir's story is somewhat different: She is the "daughter of." Her father is an activist in Fighters for Peace, an organization of people from both the Palestinian and Israeli sides, who have decided to doff their uniforms, set aside their weapons and talk peace. Aramin has lectured in recent months in dozens of places all over the country, in living rooms and at schools and universities, from Hatzor Haglilit to Kfar Sava. A few days before he lost his daughter, he appeared before students at Tel Aviv University. Now he too is a bereaved father.

~SNIP~

"Once there was a demonstration in Halhul in memory of a female student who had been killed. I was 12 years old and soldiers came and started to shoot. How did they come so quickly, falling out of the sky? There's a demonstration and they come immediately, with tear gas and bullets. I was so afraid. The people scattered. I have a limp from birth, I wanted to run away, but I couldn't flee like the other children and the soldiers caught me. What a memory that is. Very big, frightening soldiers and they hit me a few times and I fell to the ground. I fled and I thought that I had to take revenge. I hadn't done anything to them - and they always did that to us. I fled in the direction of the mountains and there was shouting in the wadi. We found a farmer with six bullets in his legs, who had only been working on his land. How I cried over him.

~SNIP~

"Many things that I saw in the film about the Holocaust I saw afterward in life. I saw in the intifada how they buried people alive in Salem, and how they killed a woman and left her on the road, just as in the film where I saw a Nazi officer who fired at a woman from his window and afterward people passed by and left her on the road. How can someone who knows the taste of suffering, slavery and racism do the same thing to another nation? In spite of that I had many friends among the prison guards, but for me Israelis were the soldiers, the settlers and the prison guards.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/817894.html


Very ,very sad.

[pocoloco]

1. According to Eric Hoffer the answer to

"How can someone who knows the taste of suffering, slavery and racism do the same thing to another nation?" is that there is a parallel in child abuse.

If you abuse a child eventually the abused will end up as an abuser of his own children.

If the people of a nation are subjected to abuse and eventually overthrow the government and take control they themselves know no other method of governing.

If he is correct then there doesn't look like there is a lot of hope for the people of Iraq or the Middle East.

[UndertheOcean]

2. true :(

n/t

[breakaleg]

3. There is that cycle of violence that often occurs within the inividual, but

when we are talking about a government made up of many people who've come together from various backgrounds, and educated people at that, then I'm afraid that scenario isn't a good enough excuse for what's happening. One would have to believe that there is not a clear head in the bunch.