Israeli Society Has Truly Fallen to Cruelty, Violence and Apathy–Just Look at Us

PALESTINE - ISRAEL, 9 Sep 2024

Gideon Levy | Haaretz/After the Truth-Shower – TRANSCEND Media Service

8 Sep 2024 – On Friday [6 Sep], 11 funerals were held in the Jenin refugee camp. Eight of the deceased were camp residents who were killed by the Israeli army; three died of natural causes. None of them could be buried during the 10 preceding days, on account of the brutal Israel Defense Forces operation in the camp. The bodies of another five people were seized by the army, for its purposes.

On Friday morning the IDF left the camp, after completing the mission that was given the sadistic name Operation Summer Camp, and residents began returning to what was left of their homes after the army’s camp. They were in shock.

One man said Saturday that the sights were even worse than the scenes of destruction after 2002’s Operation Defensive Shield and that the behavior of the soldiers during those 10 terrible days was more violent and vicious than ever before. The spirit of the war in Gaza has become the zeitgeist of the army.

My interlocutor, Jamal Zubeidi – who had already lost nine family members to the Palestinian struggle, including two of his sons, and who last week lost Hamudi, the son of his nephew Zakaria Zabeidi – returned once again to a ruined home, as in 2002. During the 10 days of the operation, he hid in his daughter’s home on the mountain. About two-thirds of the camp’s approximately 12,000 residents were removed from it, led in refugee columns under the supervision of the soldiers, as in Gaza.

As the people of Jenin buried their dead, soldiers shot and killed a 13-year-old girl. Bana Laboum died in her home in the village of Qaryout, whose residents tried to defend themselves after settlers set fire to their fields. The settlers riot, the army comes – and kills Palestinians, oddly enough. “Confrontations,” the media calls the incidents. The rape victim confronts their rapist, the robbery victim their robber. In the insanity of the occupation, the aggressor is the victim and the victim is the aggressor.

At around the same time, not far from Qaryout, in the village of Beita, soldiers killed a protester – an American human-rights activist who was also a Turkish citizen. Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot in the head during a demonstration against the wildcat settlement Evyatar, which was built on the village’s land and has already cost the lives of at least seven Palestinians.

The White House said that it was “deeply disturbed by the tragic death.” But this was not a “tragic death.” Jonathan Pollak, a Haaretz journalist said that he saw the soldiers on a rooftop: “I saw the soldiers shooting. … I saw them aiming,” adding that at the time there were no active clashes. As to the “deep disturbance” in the White House, it will pass quickly.

President Joe Biden has not called the woman’s family, as he called the Goldberg-Polin family; Ezgi Eygi was also not declared an American hero, as was Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was abducted and executed.

On Saturday, Josh Breiner published a video filmed in Megiddo Prison the morning of the criminal killings, in which dozens of Palestinians lie on the floor – prostrate, half-naked, their wrists bound behind their backs – as Israeli guards walk past them; one holds a police dog that passes inches from the detainees’ faces, barking viciously.

The Israeli flag flies over this disgraceful spectacle – a gift to Itamar Ben-Gvir. The Israel Prison Service reassured the handful of outraged observers: “It’s a routine exercise.” This is routine. A common prison service entertainment, a Shabbat ceremony for the sadistic guards.

All this happened on Friday, an ordinary day. Israel yawned. It was much more upset by the (infuriating) arrest of a young Jewish woman who threw a handful of sand at Ben-Gvir than by the fatal shooting of a non-Jewish woman who was motivated by principle no less than the young woman from Tel Aviv.

And in the ruins of the Jenin refugee camp, Jamal Zubeidi tried to gauge the extent of the damage to his home, the contents of which soldiers threw into the street. There was no power in the camp, and darkness descended on it. In all our long years of friendship, I had never heard Zubeidi sound more despairing. “They will return and we will return. A new generation will come. It won’t end here,” he said wearily.

Look at what happened Friday in the Jenin refugee camp, in Qaryout, in Beita and in Megiddo Prison – and perhaps you will see us, finally.

_____________________________________________

Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. Levy joined Haaretz in 1982, and spent four years as the newspaper’s deputy editor. He was the recipient of the Euro-Med Journalist Prize for 2008; the Leipzig Freedom Prize in 2001; the Israeli Journalists’ Union Prize in 1997; and The Association of Human Rights in Israel Award for 1996. His new book, The Punishment of Gaza, has just been published by Verso.

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Source: Haaretz

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One Response to “Israeli Society Has Truly Fallen to Cruelty, Violence and Apathy–Just Look at Us”

1. anaisanesse says:

   9 Sep 2024 at 19:53

   So so sad. The Israelis and the USA seem to have no way of interacting with anyone they have decided is an enemy with anything but violence. Punishment , sanctions, denial of necessities, refusal to consider anyone else’s humanity. Why is this?

   Reply