The Truth of Q.E.D

[eumelia]

I've been a bit down the past few days.
Saturday I was busy and didn't really notice anything.
Yesterday I was a bit out of it, though I enjoyed meeting friends I hadn't seen in a while at Uni and in my own Town.
Today I woke up feeling a bit phlegmatic and worn.
I'm pretty sure it has to with the good ole' biological... stuff... the female body tends to go through on a monthly basis, but... still, it's affecting.

It's probably also to do with the weekend's News stories.

I wrote about the teaser to the soldiers' testimonies being published - We're all right, we're okay / you only think we act this way! - and having read the articles... to say that it made me feel bad is probably an understatement.
The whole Week End Ha'aretz edition was chock full of everything that is and went wrong with the IDF during Operation Cast Lead and beyond.
The main articles to read, if you want to are these:
"Shooting and Crying:

Aviv: "I am squad commander of a company that is still in training, from the Givati Brigade. We went into a neighborhood in the southern part of Gaza City. Altogether, this is a special experience. In the course of the training, you wait for the day you will go into Gaza, and in the end it isn't really like they say it is. It's more like, you come, you take over a house, you kick the tenants out and you move in. We stayed in a house for something like a week.
[...]
"One of our officers, a company commander, saw someone coming on some road, a woman, an old woman. She was walking along pretty far away, but close enough so you could take out someone you saw there. If she were suspicious, not suspicious - I don't know. In the end, he sent people up to the roof, to take her out with their weapons. From the description of this story, I simply felt it was murder in cold blood."

Zamir: "I don't understand. Why did he shoot her?"

Aviv: "That's what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn't have to be with a weapon, you don't have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him. With us it was an old woman, on whom I didn't see any weapon. The order was to take the person out, that woman, the moment you see her."

Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009

Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."

There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.
[...]
The IDF Spokesman's Office comments on the phenomenon: "Military regulations do not apply to civilian clothing, including shirts produced at the end of basic training and various courses. The designs are printed at the soldiers' private initiative, and on civilian shirts. The examples raised by Haaretz are not in keeping with the values of the IDF spirit, not representative of IDF life, and are in poor taste. Humor of this kind deserves every condemnation and excoriation. The IDF intends to take action for the immediate eradication of this phenomenon. To this end, it is emphasizing to commanding officers that it is appropriate, among other things, to take discretionary and disciplinary measures against those involved in acts of this sort."
[...]
Sociologist Dr. Orna Sasson-Levy, of Bar-Ilan University, author of "Identities in Uniform: Masculinities and Femininities in the Israeli Military," said that the phenomenon is "part of a radicalization process the entire country is undergoing, and the soldiers are at its forefront. I think that ever since the second intifada there has been a continual shift to the right. The pullout from Gaza and its outcome - the calm that never arrived - led to a further shift rightward.

"This tendency is most strikingly evident among soldiers who encounter various situations in the territories on a daily basis. There is less meticulousness than in the past, and increasing callousness. There is a perception that the Palestinian is not a person, a human being entitled to basic rights, and therefore anything may be done to him."

More articles can be found at the on-line Week End Edition of Ha'aretz from the weekend of 20th of March here - Week's End 20/03/2009.

All the above was written this afternoon, but I didn't a get a chance to post to LJ.

More and more information and articles concerning IDF violence has been coming in and I'm having trouble keeping up.
I'm putting here a few more articles, sans quotes, because in a way it's just more of the same, but it must be noted and must written down somewhere that can be accessed by as many people as possible.
IDF troops used 11-year-old boy as human shield in Gaza.
Rights group: IDF killed 16 medical workers during Gaza op.
IDF soldiers ordered to shoot at Gaza rescuers, note says, with a picture of the note, for those who can read Hebrew.
A bit off tangent, but still connected with the issue - Israel using excessive force against protesters.

In an interesting coincidence, I had to read an article about National shame for a seminar I'm taking at Uni.
I think the only thing I can say is Q.E.D.