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Regarding the political system, are the Lebanese citizens capable of real and absolute change? Not Likely 50.0% Probably 34.4% Not Sure 15.6% Total Votes: 96

If Americans Knew : The Case of Hebron
By Farah Salka, Staff Writer

Beirut, Lebanon − Hebron is a West Bank city of 150,000 Palestinians, 500 Jewish settlers and 450 Israeli soldiers. Hebron used to be divided into two areas: H1 is composed of 130,000 Palestinians and is under Palestinian control, and H2 is composed of 20,000 Palestinians and is under Israeli control. This city is notorious for the mounting level of violence against Palestinians in it, violence by settlers and soldiers, but especially that perpetrated by the settlers. Yehuda Shaul, a former Israeli soldier, explains the real situation behind the headlines of the newspapers, having served in Hebron himself. ‘What I did in Hebron every night is firing grenades into Abu Sneina neighbourhood; that is what the Israeli press called, “IDF forces returned fire to the source of fire.” I do not remember once that I recognised the source of fire.’

In one encounter, Yehuda was on duty in Hebron and was sitting on the roof of one of the settlers’ houses. He heard weird drilling in one of the houses underneath so he called the radio and reported the noise. After the patrol arrived to check it, it tuned out that there was a settler who had merely decided to ‘expand his living room in the middle of the night’.

What had basically happened is that he had drilled into the wall, broke into a Palestinian’s shop - for they have the same wall - and threw everything that was in out to the street. He then locked the doors and as simple as that, he now has a bigger house.

What is strikingly interesting about this incident is the fact that no one has tried to stop or arrest him. As a matter of fact, Israeli police in Hebron are afraid of the settlers.1 ‘The story of the settlers’ violence in Hebron is an untold story that most media outlets, including the Israeli media, would not dare cover, due to the settlers’ hostility towards them. The city of Hebron is losing its residents at an alarming pace. Walking the streets of Hebron, you would think you are walking in a ghost town.’2

There are two categories of Jewish settlers; the first being the economic settlers who just move in for the inducement of paying half the rent they would typically pay for the same house in Tel Aviv. Economic settlers sometimes are uniformed to an extent that they have no clue the house they are seeking to move to is on occupied Palestinian territory until they are already there facing reality. The second type is the ideological settlers, namely Zionist extremists. Hebron has forever been a dangerous city, both to live in as a Palestinian or to serve in as an Israeli soldier. It is precisely those ideological settlers that are posing this threat. A memorable example would take us back to the February 25, 1994, when an American Israeli settler, an educated doctor holding the name of Goldstein, gunned down 48 Palestinian Muslim worshippers (received by hospitals and confirmed by name)3 and injured more than 300 others (figures are disputed because the area was subjected to curfew afterwards, and the injured were distributed to more than six different hospitals) in the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron in the holy month of Ramadan just after their 5 A.M. Morning Prayer. Eye witnesses claim the Israeli soldiers engaged in the shooting afterwards, mistaking the mass murder to armed clashes.

The term, ‘ideological settlers’ refers to those extreme right-wing Jews who believe that Hebron is Jews’ right and only theirs. More than that, they are heavily armed and living around the Palestinian unarmed civilians of Hebron. The massacre of 1994 was one blatant example of where fanaticism can get, but it does not stop there. Violence continued in Hebron, although no further outcry was heard in the outside world.

Hebron is engulfing settlers who would do anything it takes to: ‘open fire and kill as many of the blood-sucking Arab passengers as possible.’4 Such people claim their Israeli government has abandoned them and in turn, they are resolute to empty the West Bank of Palestinians by any means: stealing, destroying, shooting or poisoning water supplies.

Israel has been put into a sensitive situation because of the daily attacks of such settlers, which have swayed Israel’s argument that it is always the victim, never the aggressor. However, settler violence has not only been targeted against Palestinian civilians but furthermore against Israeli soldiers, Western diplomats, peace monitors, and anyone accused of the slight chance of having solidarity with Palestinian victims. Such fliers which have been distributed by the settlers might explain the severity of the situation: ‘Revenge is holy. It should be up to the government to do it, but unfortunately, the government does not care about the murder of Jews. There are people whose patience has run out.’

An Amnesty International Report speaks of how 19-year-old Swedish activist, Tove Johansson, was harassed on November 18, 2006, by the settlers near the Tel Rumeida settlement in Hebron. The young activist was aiding Palestinian children in reaching their school through an Israeli checkpoint. The Israeli soldiers in charge at that time did not attempt, in any way, at safeguarding the security of Tove or capture the perpetrators who struck her with a broken bottle, causing facial injuries.5

Ariel Fischer, a 38-year-old Israeli settler says, ‘This is God’s land given to us, the Israeli people; if you do not wear a yarmulke6, get out.’7 So what is basically happening in Hebron is that Palestinians are being forced to an average of five days per week of curfew, whereas the Jewish settlers are free to wander about. That means that when an Israeli settler is knocking one’s shop down, and the shop owner knows that is happening, he can simply not leave his house to stop him for two reasons: Firstly the settler is armed and secondly, the owner is under curfew hours.

Palestinian Nafez Bani Jaber, aged 45, has buried 123 of his sheep. ‘First they poisoned the sheep. Next will be the children. These are war crimes.’ Jewish settlers have chased him across his fields and Israeli police declared they found poisoned needles that most likely have been used on his sheep. The violence of those settlers has targeted the specific Muslim faith of the Palestinians at Hebron. Graffiti can be found all over the walls of Arab shops with degrading insults about Prophet Muhammad. Human rights organisations have regularly documented attempts of settlers at ripping off Muslim women’s veils while abusing them in the streets.

In 1992, Edward Said described Hebron as a city that is about to explode, and the fact of the matter is that it did. The 1994 massacre of Palestinians, for Said, is inevitable to say the least. Furthermore, he presents a question that is rational to pose. Political Islam has been the new mantra in Western media and for policy makers, namely after the September 11 attacks. Why is attention never drawn to the equally severe and dangerous features of political Judaism? Out of all present correspondents in the U.S. who had reported on the Hebron events, literally only one had taken a step away from mainstream one-dimensional reporting and moved forward to relate Baruch Goldstein and his massacre to Zionism and its aftermaths. David Shipler of The New York Times made aconnection between political Judaism and Zionism itself.8 ‘Zionists have been taught that there ought to be no distinction between Zionism and Judaism, that Arabs are the ones on the land of Israelis and not the other way around, that the Palestinians of Hebron are intruders and aliens.’ The core of the matter lies in the fact that Goldstein is not an exceptional insane individual as the media portrayed his case but one that is replicated by many others in the Israeli society.  A similar case can be taken with the Rabbi Moshe Levinger who has murdered a fourteen-year-old Palestinian boy in Hebron after breaking his neck; only to be given a sentence of six months of community service as a penalty for his crime.9

After New York’s bombings and the arrest of several Muslims in charge, the whole Muslim faith was attacked and Islamo-phobia emerged in unprecedented degrees, triggered by media reporting. The coming ‘Islamic threat’ and was the new obsession of the West. On the other hand, never was the notion of a global Jewish threat even mentioned, as if Muslim extremists are all there is to worry about in the world.

We have to take a step further from the normalisation system of reporting traditions on incidents in Israel and dig deeper into underlying results. If we compare the reflections of media to the massacre in Hebron to those of post-September 11, the findings would be appalling. For instance, we never saw programs inviting terrorism experts to analyse the rise of the ‘global Zionist terrorism’ organisation operated by the Mossad, as an example. It is a journalistic defect to always consider the official Israeli line as granted and never take the initiative to analyse more than that. It is misleading to constantly depict those incidents as non-representative, trying to detach them from the developments of the big picture.10

American media failed to focus on what brought Goldstein to such a massacre and thereby what factors might bring other cases to such a crime. Before moving from the U.S., he had been a student of Rabbi Meir Kahane, infamous for open calls for violence against Arabs. He had been psychologically prepared for hate and grudge, violence and killing, and not coexistence before he had actually set foot in the occupied territories.11

Jewish settlers even blame the Israeli police for not repressing Palestinian violence. Ironically though, the settlers, condemning Palestinian violence, end up themselves ‘throwing rocks, cursing and vandalizing police cars,’ as an Israeli policeman, Shahar Mahsomi, testified. 12 Mahsomi later went through a concussion as a cause of being struck with a rock on the head by a settler. Avi Alamm expressed his dismay at the situation, ‘I cannot believe we are risking our lives to defend these fanatics; these people make me ashamed to be a Jew.’ He was referring to a Jewish boy that was walking with an Israeli flag and dressed like Goldstein, whom many try to imitate and regard as an icon.

In March 2000, BBC reported on some ‘militant Jews’ who had gathered at the graveyard of Goldstein for the occasion of celebrating the passing of the sixth anniversary of his massacre of Palestinians. They were all dressed like him: gunmen with doctor’s coats, army uniforms and forged beards. Around 10,000 people have paid homage to Goldstein’s grave since the massacre. This is what is written on the marble of the tomb, ‘To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of Israel.’13

Now the question is how much have Americans heard or read about those ideological settlers as opposed to how much they have heard about suicide bombers. Israel Shahak, an Israeli doctor connects the event to another one in 1984, the ‘Jewish Underground’. This group was caught in action, trying to blow up the mosques of the Temple Mount; they were preparing to bomb nine Arab busses and timing the bombs to explode just on start of the Sabbath, avoiding the harming of any pious Jew.14 The 1994 act was never connected to the 1984 act nor were any of them connected to a larger spectrum of acts that have never stopped.

John Dugard, a United Nations expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict used in his report on the situation the term ‘terrorising’ to describe how the settlers act with the Palestinians. They use impunity, intimidation of children on their way to school and destroying farmers' trees and crops. That is what he has experienced in his field visits to the designated areas. He also noted how Israel has [theoretically] withdrawn its military forces and dismantled its settlements from the Gaza Strip –at least that is what media reporting and non-reporting has depicted for the outer audience. The truth of the matter for Dugard is that Israel continues to dominate life in the Strip and still uses targeted killings and carries out sonic booms over Gaza. ‘Sonic booms, which terrorise and traumatize the population and the targeted assassination of militants (and innocent bystanders) by rockets fired from the skies, serve as a constant reminder to the people of Gaza that they remain occupied.’15

Dugard claims that his reports are an outcome of live visits to the region because he never received any cooperation from the Israeli government while acting as a human rights watchdog. Itzhak Levanon, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations claims that Dugard’s allegations are ‘misinformed and inaccurate.’ However, no counter-facts were presented to prove the statements false.

The Israeli soldier Yehuda Shaul speaks about soldiers’ violence. ‘The Israeli society does not know and is not told –maybe they do not want to know– what really goes on there. The most important thing is that mom and dad know that when we come home smiling, seemingly sane, we were not. We lived in a kind of mini schizophrenia. On Sunday, we put our uniforms and crossed the line, and resumed being monsters each at their own level.’16

Yehuda is one of a brave group of soldiers who founded an organisation in Israel to expose all the hidden brutality happening away from media cameras. This organisation of ex-Israeli soldiers is named, Breaking the Silence. ‘We kept silent between guard duties, between leaves, and when we were discharged, but that is over now. The Nachal’s commander said things like: A war, like in a war or there is a war against terrorism; and for three and half years, we have been in a minor confrontation. But behind all those mottos and lofty sayings, there is an eighteen year-old child who for three years wears green, holds his weapon and controls people, what does that do to his soul?’

In Hebron, settlers put signs for the soldiers to get them to decline from evacuating outposts. Signs read statements similar to, ‘Soldier you must be able to distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ by expelling enemies and not comrades.’

‘Before I went to the territories, I had values, education, ideology and everything I was brought up on. But the day I set foot in those occupied territories, they took all that, put it in a blender for one hour, and today, I am the result of that.’17

Israeli journalist, Shlomo Avineri, introduced the term ‘South Africanisation’ of Israel in an article in 1988. It would be interesting to see what he has to say after two decades from that.18 Israel Shahak adds that conditions are ‘theoretically and officially’ far worse then they were in South Africa.19

Shaul continues explaining: ‘You start in Hebron, and you say there is a line I will not cross. After one week, just before falling asleep, you realise that you already crossed that line. So you set a new line and so on so forth. You start here and finish there.’

Soldiers tend to perceive the world through the lenses of watchtowers, camouflage nets and armoured jeeps.20 It is these perceptions that transform the duty in the occupied territories to an act of numbness. It can be rightly compared to a sort of a high, where you are always tired and hungry, always scared to die and always eager to catch that ‘terrorist’. ‘It is a life without rest. It is simply an experience that no human being should have, the experience of a hunted animal, a hunting animal, an animal…’

Israeli soldiers do not move without bullet-proof vests, helmets and weapons. Every one of them has two grenades and seven clips. Nevertheless, they walk with constant fear that someone will shoot at them. Then a Jewish child from the settlements comes over to the soldiers giving them chocolate bars and notes of appreciation for ‘killing the Arabs’. A Jewish child that can barely read and write at such an age knows of hate, grudge and killing.21

The act of listening to the testimonies makes one wonder how dangerous it is to have that indescribable power at such an age and for such purposes. Whether it is the mere act, or having such acts unreported to the rest of the public is the graver danger, is quite hard to decide.

To be continued…

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