Quote of the Week, 26.1.06

Quote of the Week, 26.1.06

When I first got to Hebron I wouldn't open fire on little children. And I was sure that if I ever killed or hurt anyone, I'd go so crazy that I'd leave the army. But finally I did shoot someone, and nothing happened to me. In Hebron I shot the legs off of two kids, and I was sure I wouldn't be able to sleep anymore at night, but nothing happened. Two weeks ago I hurt a Palestinian policeman, and that didn't affect me either. You become so apathetic you don't care at all. Shooting is the IDF soldier's way of meditating. It's like shooting is your way of letting go of all your anger when you're in the army. In Hebron there's this order they call "punitive shooting": just open fire on whatever you like. I opened fire not on any sources of fire but on windows where there was just wash hanging to dry. I knew that there were people who would be hit. But at that moment it was just shoot, shoot, shoot.

Extract from an interview with Israeli soldiers (who are identified by pseudonyms) conducted by Israeli journalist Uri Blau and printed in Kol Ha'Ir, a Jerusalem weekly, in September 2001. Translated from Hebrew by Tal Haran, and published in English translation in the April 2002 edition of Harpers Magazine. - From Lawrence of Cyberia

Uri Avnery, who knows Israeli Prime Minister Sharon well, has written that Sharon has long planned grandiose schemes for restructuring the Middle East and that "the winds blowing now in Washington remind me of Sharon. I have absolutely no proof that the Bushies got their ideas from him. But the style is the same." - Joshua Micha Marshall in The Washington Monthly.

Media disinformation

Media disinformation

Recently, you saw headlines like this: "Suicide bomber in Netanya (Israel)". What you never see - because the U.S. media hides it - are the acts of aggression by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and the colonialists (euphemistically called "settlers" by the American media) against people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT - Gaza Strip and West Bank). The victims of this aggression by the world's sixth largest military are largely Palestinian, who are among the world's poorest. Many of the victims are children but they also include Americans, internationals and Israeli Jews who support the Palestinians in their quest for dignity and liberty. News crawler below shows you what happened in the OPTs in the last two weeks of November, 2005.

Full reports are available online.

Israeli War Crimes

Israeli War Crimes

Democracy Now!: Class-action lawsuit filed against Moshe Ya'alon, former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defenses Forces, currently in the US. He is being sued for alleged war crimes committed during the Israeli shelling of a U.N. compound in the Lebanese town of Qana in 1996. Hundreds of civilians were killed in the bombings. They had taken refuge in the compound following Israeli attacks on their villages.

Similar suit filed against Avi Dichter, the former head of Israel's Shin Bet security service. Dichter is being sued on behalf of the family members of 14 Palestinians killed during an IDF assassination attempt on a Hamas leader in Gaza in July 2002.