“I told him, `Don’t hit me, I am sick and old. I can’t withstand a beating. Why are you hitting me? Am I so threatening to you, that you have to assault me?’ I told him that I wanted to speak to the officer in charge… The soldier I spoke to and two other soldiers knocked me to the ground. They kicked me in the back and beat me.
“I asked them why they were beating an old man. The law all over the world is that it is forbidden to beat old people, women, and children. One of the soldiers told me that I was impudent and was acting as if I knew the law. Then he hit me on the back of my head with the butt of his rifle. I collapsed and lost consciousness. I regained consciousness about forty minutes later. I saw that my head was bleeding, and blood was flowing down my body. I was dizzy and in pain, mostly in my back, chest, head, and left thigh. None of the soldiers were around. Only my donkey. He was eating the weeds that I had cut.”
Kashu’a went home with his donkey. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Tulkarm, where he was treated and later discharged. link
The US does a lot more than just pay the “soldiers” and buy the weapons:
Your gifts help support many people here in Israel, especially at a time when tourism is still down as a direct result of Arab terror. The thirteen pizzerias and eateries we use are very grateful for the business that our project provides. As we are taught, the highest form of charity is to give someone the opportunity to earn an honest living….
You can choose from five pizza packages, all with 18″ pizza pies and large bottles of soda*. Your orders are handled via our secure server…
These are delivered, on your behalf, to soldiers out in the field: jeep and foot patrols, roadblocks, army bases and on guard duty.
Your gifts of over $250 are eligible for a US IRS tax deduction.
You can also send burgers to our soldiers here
or from our burger site, BurgerIDF.org
I recommend you skip the pizza and send your donation to Jews for Justice for Palestinians.
Better hurry before they get put on the “terror” list. I don’t know if you can get a US tax deduction, though.
Those fuckers. Beating an old man is terrorism. I don’t care whose uniform you wear. It’s fucking terrorism.
It destroys the occupied, but it also destroys the occupiers. People’s humanity must be removed, in both cases. In the first, to justify the occupation, and in the second to enforce it.
Thus you have many instances, most of which are not publicized, of things such as torture at Abu Ghraib, extrajudicial killings just because one feels like it, and the beating up of an old man in an olive grove.
to beat him . . . he made them do it, with his insolence. It was his fault. And they didn’t kill his donkey, did they. They could have, if they were mean like you say. So next week they will cut down the olive trees, so he won’t come back, and won’t force them to do it again.
They are really the good guys in all this . . . “chosen” by “god”, don’t you know . . .
they are the “Chosen One’s” at least I’m sure in their mind ; )
And if you think this is bad, wait till you see the “Christian” fanatics take charge, and you’ll have to see it, for you will NOT hear about it.
When they come to my property, they will NOT hear it either. For you never hear the shot that gets ya. FACT
Strange that a country at war should be worried about tourism???
I agree that it sounds odd, almost unseemly, for Israel to worry about tourism, but it is a real issue, and not just for Israelis. Here’s a country with virtually no natural resources but, on the plus side, the biggest concentration of educated people (Jewish, Moslem and Christian) in the entire region and, an even bigger asset, historical and religious sites that over three billion(Christian, Moslem and Jewish) people would love to visit. (And that’s not to mention incredible beaches, Tel Aviv nightlife, snorkeling in the Gulf of Aqaba, etc., etc.) The entire country, from the Jordan to the Mediterranan, should be rolling in money, but instead Israel’s economy has stagnated and the Palestinians’ has severely contracted. Both of them are on life support, from the U.S. and the EU, respectively.
Now imagine if they had as many tourists per capita as Italy or France (the current world leaders in tourist businesses). How many atrocities would there be, on either side, if everywhere you looked you saw groups of Japanese “office ladies” shopping and porcine Americans hoisting themselves onto tourist buses?
This is one instance — maybe the only one in today’s world — where corporate/business interests have lost out to racists and religious fanatics. And everyone has suffered as a result. Close to 50% of Palestinian children — and an amazing 10% of Israeli kids — are malnourished. Adults aren’t much better off. Yet if they ever come to their senses — and I think the chances of that are about equal to the U.S. Republicans doubling the minimum wage — a united Israel/Palestine could be the envy of the entire Middle East.
which explains why Israelis are present at the fundie
Super Church conventions in the US.
See May ‘Harper’s Magazine.’
And corporate interests have not lost out.
Israel has the important job of guarding America’s oil in the region, from neighboring countries full of terrorists who want to steal it.
on malnourishment. But I have to disagree about Israel guarding “our” oil. That explains why we prop up brutal regimes like Egypt and Saudi Arabia but not why we give so much aid and support to Israel. After all, they don’t have any oil of their own, and our support for Israel has actually made it harder to get oil from the likes of Iran.
I mostly agree with your posts, Ductape (if you’ll permit me to call you that for short), but here I think you need to delve deeper into the almost surreal mix of guilt and racism that lies behind our unflagging support for the Zionist Right.
We support Israel for several reasons:
Politically it is unwise to not do so. The American Jewish Lobby does have a lot of votes. Bush didn’t realize this when he first assumed office, since at the time he was if anything more pro Arab. After he was in office for a while (possibly before 911 – I don’t quite remember the time-line) he began to change (or flip flop) on the issue.
We don’t want to analyze the situation. Maybe it’s arrogance, maybe ignorance, maybe we just made too many mistakes and don’t want to admit them.
Also, I do agree with Ductape that it is a foothold in the Middle East that is dependent upon us, therefore indebted to us. If all hell breaks loose in the region we can count on Israel as a place we can use. If not Israel proper – then at least the Palestinian territories. The Saudis not so much. To be sure we prop up the monarchy, but their people really hate us and hate their monarchy.
The US stuffs its little pitbull AND pays off Egypt et al, and toward the same end: guarding America’s oil in the region, and generating revenue for Armani-clad gunrunners.
Neither a peaceful, indpendent, law-abiding Israel nor democratic neighbors with educated populations would serve that purpose. Nor would such a scenario generate revenues to the arms industry.
Religion is a useful tool. The situation in the Middle East would never have become such a cash cow for the intended beneficiaries if the stuffed pockets of oilngun barons were the only justification presented to the participants.
When you write that Israel is an armed watchdog over “our” oil or simply a massive American armory, you’re buying into the wingnuts’ arguments. The fact is, excessive U.S. support of Israel has been a What’s-the-matter-with-Kansas-like case of working against our own interests. We no longer have access to two countries’ oil (Iraq’s and Iran’s) in large part because those nations hate us so much for supporting Israel. And what good did all that weaponry do us the last two times we went to war in Israel’s backyard?
I’ll grant you that many people believe Israel is a useful bastion of U.S. power, but the historical record shows that it clearly is not, certainly not one worth the tens of billions of dollars the U.S. government has poured into it.
If you really want to understand why the U.S. is so invested in Israel, with so little return for that investment, you have to look deeper, w a y deeper, all the way back to Holocaust guilt and all the way forward to the (supposedly) approaching Apocalypse.
In short, I can understand why you’re looking for rational explanations for our support, but the truth is, rationality has nothing to do with it.
I am sorry if I implied that the policy was intended to provide a benefit to ordinary Americans, or ordinary Israelis. That was certainly not my intention.
As you point out, it is quite contrary to the interests of both those groups.
Like the crusade in Iraq, its list of intended benificiaries is somewhat shorter.
The US does indeed regard the oil in the Middle East as its own. The US regards the earth and all it contains as its own, and this is not only the bedrock of its foreign policy, but a core cultural value.
I just posted a diary on this today.
The use of religion as a tool in war is as old as are religion and war. If you will forgive me repeating this simple explanation:
If I come to you seeking your gold and your son to help me conquer the neighboring village because they have chests of jewels that I want for myself, you will be likely to refuse.
If, however, I can persuade you that the bestial scum in the next village has insulted your God, who has in turn commanded you to send your gold and your son to avenge His Divine Honor, my chances of success are improved immeasurably.
US policy regarding its oil in the region is as rational as greed ever is.
I think I will donate to Doctors without Borders.
Looks like these soldiers are creating a few patients
for them.
If I have any money left over from that, I’ll donate to
Human Rights Watch.
At the risk of being labeled anti-Semetic once again. I see Israel repeating so much of what was done to Jews during the thirties and pray to the Great Spirit that they don’t follow that path to its end result. Many of the Israeli soldiers treat the Palestinians like animals, talk to them as the Nazi’s talked to Jews in thirties, denigriate them, treat them with little or no respect and dignity and view them as vermin. Like the Nazi’s, how long can a culture dehumanize another culture before it starts on a path of annihilation of that culture. This is the question the Jewish State must first ask itself, if it is indeed going to commit to a 2 state solution. The one sided MSM coverage of Suicide bomber kills 13 Israeli’s on the headlines, where Israeli troops kill 3 Palestinians children playing soccer, gets buried in the middle of paper and never sees the light of day on MSM TV or radio coverage. And our clueless leaders, just keep pumping billions and billions of dollars into the Israeli economy. I pray that the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can find common ground soon and facilitate a peaceful agreement to their many and complex problems.