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Pricking the Eye and Stirring the Heart
Jul. 30th, 2008 01:22 pmTuesday afternoon, during one of the regular demonstrations and protests against the Separation Wall in the West Bank village of Nil'in, on the outskirts of Ramallah a boy between the ages of 9-12 (reports vary) was shot dead by what appeared to have been a live round* fired by an IDF border guard.
His name was Ahmad Husam Yousef Mousa.
Ha'aretz report and the BBC report.
A serious inquiry and probe is going to take place because of this incident.
Say they do find the culprit, that one teenager that shot that one child. What then? They suspend him? They kick him out of the unit? Will they actually arrest this 18-20 year old soldier for murder?
Or this going to be another thorn among the roses of the IDF? An anomaly, everyone in the service are Good Boys, salt of the Earth and all that other stuff that we hear about the soldiers, who are actually policemen.
Beyond the fact that this is a travesty and a tragedy of the highest degree, I can already hear the reactionary media and talking heads saying: The soldier was provoked, what's a child doing there anyway, those Arabs have no morals sending their children into dangerous situations, well he would have grown up to be a terrorist anyway - throwing stones at that age, etc. etc. etc.
I'd also like to know what kind of people are being discharged into Israeli civilian life. Are these soldiers really comfortable with what they're doing in the West Bank? Can they really excuse their behaviour and actions by saying that they were "just following orders", which are patently illegal?
A patently illegal order as written in the small pamphlet every new IDF recruit gets the day they enter the system is an order that "Pricks the eye and stirs the heart" - "אי חוקיות הדוקרת עין ומקוממת את הלב".
I tend to give these kids (because that's what they are) the benefit of the doubt, because I find it really difficult to believe that they've lost any kind of perspective and really do not regard the Palestinians as people and merely as a monolith of Terrorism.
It's the commanding officers in which I have absolutely no faith any more.
In any event there is a demo taking place this evening outside Defence Minister Ehud Barak's house in Tel-Aviv.
Information in Hebrew and English ( Under the Cut )
*It may very well have been a well aimed rubber bullet, those things at close range are deadly. And I don't know if you know that a rubber bullet is merely a regular projectile covered in, well, rubber.
His name was Ahmad Husam Yousef Mousa.
Ha'aretz report and the BBC report.
A serious inquiry and probe is going to take place because of this incident.
Say they do find the culprit, that one teenager that shot that one child. What then? They suspend him? They kick him out of the unit? Will they actually arrest this 18-20 year old soldier for murder?
Or this going to be another thorn among the roses of the IDF? An anomaly, everyone in the service are Good Boys, salt of the Earth and all that other stuff that we hear about the soldiers, who are actually policemen.
Beyond the fact that this is a travesty and a tragedy of the highest degree, I can already hear the reactionary media and talking heads saying: The soldier was provoked, what's a child doing there anyway, those Arabs have no morals sending their children into dangerous situations, well he would have grown up to be a terrorist anyway - throwing stones at that age, etc. etc. etc.
I'd also like to know what kind of people are being discharged into Israeli civilian life. Are these soldiers really comfortable with what they're doing in the West Bank? Can they really excuse their behaviour and actions by saying that they were "just following orders", which are patently illegal?
A patently illegal order as written in the small pamphlet every new IDF recruit gets the day they enter the system is an order that "Pricks the eye and stirs the heart" - "אי חוקיות הדוקרת עין ומקוממת את הלב".
I tend to give these kids (because that's what they are) the benefit of the doubt, because I find it really difficult to believe that they've lost any kind of perspective and really do not regard the Palestinians as people and merely as a monolith of Terrorism.
It's the commanding officers in which I have absolutely no faith any more.
In any event there is a demo taking place this evening outside Defence Minister Ehud Barak's house in Tel-Aviv.
Information in Hebrew and English ( Under the Cut )
*It may very well have been a well aimed rubber bullet, those things at close range are deadly. And I don't know if you know that a rubber bullet is merely a regular projectile covered in, well, rubber.
