The slow civil war in the Palestinian West Bank, occupied illegally by Israel, between the hundreds of thousands of Israeli squatters planted there by the Israeli government and the local people who are being displaced, is a daily affair. Armed Israeli squatters encroach on Palestinian water and land daily. In recent days, remarkably, video has begun surfacing of settler shootings of Palestinians, with the complicity of the Israeli army, which typically stands by and watches the slaughter.
Meanwhile, Israel has been repackaging goods produced by the squatters in the Palestinian West Bank as ‘made in Israel.’ South Africa and Denmark have decided to forbid this practice, raising howls of rage in Tel Aviv.
When South Africans accuse you of Apartheid practices, you have to admit they know whereof they speak.
The settlers can use the “Stand your ground” defense and say they felt they were being threatened, which forced them to fire their weapons on unarmed young men. Works here.
This is reminiscent of the Jim Crow-era South when law enforcement officers like Sheriff “Bull” Connor allowed racist segrgationists a free fifteen minutes of time to attack civil rights demonstrators.
The deliberate indifference in the video exhibited by the IDF is appalling. It is videos like this that hurt Israel’s public image on the international level.
Still Dancing With Bashir, eh, IAF?
One wonders about whether stuff like this and the bombing of Lebanon and all the other Apartheid horrors produces any significant internal strains and tensions in the Israeli Defence Forces. Not every conscript doing his duty for the fatherland might think what happened was right, or even smart. At some point, cognitive dissonance becomes so painful that there has to be a novation of the spirit.
The dudes in uniform on that hillside might have been situationally, or emotionally, or both, or neither, driven not to make their nominal tribespersons drop their weapons. Reminds me of that scene in “Lawrence of Arabia” where Lawrence and the Bedou catch up to the Turkish gaggle of troops that have just looted and murdered and raped in a village back down the road: “No Quarter!”
It’s a human thing, and I doubt we as a species will survive it.