Not Anonymous

If you follow international news about the Middle East, you will know that there has been an escalation of violence between Hamas and the IDF in the Gaza strip. You will also know, that there was an exchange of fire between Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan Heights for the first time since 1973.

Very likely, this is spillover from the civil war and not actually intended for us, but you know, we fired warning shots back.

All of the above made think of the song "Love Is All Around" by The Troggs:


Only with alternate lyrics, which you can read under the cut.

Come on everyone, sing it with me. Consider this my pre-Local-Elections fanfare and transformative art, the prosody is a bit meh with my changes, but you'll cut me some slack on that one, right?

( War Is All Around )

Despite focusing lately on things not relating to the occupation in a direct manner, I still access the media and am as big a News junkie as ever.

As some of you may or may not know, today is Land Day, which is a commemorative day marking the strikes and protests Palestinians held in 1967 after the state (Israel) appropriated privately held Palestinian land. Thousands of dunams were basically stolen from under the owners feet.

This appropriation is still happening today, obviously.

But Land Day is a big event and such there are more demonstrators and many more wounded.

It's been a while since I've been involved in anti-occupation politics as I am focusing on more organised LGBT activism and, well, my life, but I don't think one can really separate the issues, as they colour every fraction of my life one way or another.

For instance, what does it mean that Israel cut ties with the UN Human Rights Commission, because they dared open up a probe regarding the building of settlements in the West Bank.

Apropos land appropriation. If I cared one whit about Israel's image I'd say we shoot ourselves in the foot, but seriously, we commit flagrant human rights violations every day, all the time. I can't say I'm surprised the foreign ministry started talking about Al-Qaeda (your guess is as good as mine as to why) and about how it's the Palestinian Authority committing - wait for it - diplomatic terrorism on Israel.

Because the state terrorism Israel commits on a regular basis is really not a part of the discourse.

Speaking of state sanctioned terror, and another reason why the IDF is a hierarchical, masculine-supremacist, racist and patriarchal institution of the worst kind?

(Trigger Warning: Rape Culture, Encouragement Of Rape, Overt Racism): IDF Colonel-Rabbi implies Rape is Permitted in War.

If you read the body of the text (heed the trigger warnings, my god!) you will see that when they write "imply", they actually mean "clearly states" that raping female prisoners is not only permitted, but actually encouraged!

...even though fraternizing with a gentile woman is a very serious matter, it was permitted during wartime (under the specific terms) out of understanding for the hardship endured by the warriors. And since the success of the whole at war is our goal, the Torah permitted the individual to satisfy the evil urge...

As the author of the article writes, this is the face of the IDF of 2012.

The fact that this kind of religious doctrine is actually published by the IDF is telling. Mainly, they they really can't see anything beyond their weeping national erection.

Despite the above, or possibly because of the above, I must mention Adrienne Rich's passing.

Her writing has been an inspiration to me for many years, both her poetry and essays - all of which have been a great aid to me when it came to my own feminism, even if I didn't agree with everything she had to say (her gender essentialism was and is notorious, despite the way she leveraged it so beautifully in the political and theoretical spheres).

She was also a Jewish woman who spoke out against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and a supporter of BDS, which, you know, is special.

She also spoke of the role and the responsibility of the poet, the writer, the artist to be political and proactive and not shy away from social justice in their work.

Someone is Writing a Poem

...But most often someone writing a poem believes in, depends on, a delicate, vibrating range of difference, that an “I” can become a “we” without extinguishing others, that a partly common language exists to which strangers can bring their own heartbeat, memories, images. A language that itself has learned from the heartbeat, memories, images of strangers...

May her memory be blessed.

** This post contains spoilers for episode 2.03 of Hawaii Five-0 as well as triggers for frank discussion of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder **

It's hard for me to even talk about the content of this ep with any kind of analytic distance because it's all been overshadowed by the final scene.

I was in the military, the Israeli Defense Force, and it screwed me over.

Not to mention screwed me up.

The scene that triggered me in a way I hadn't been triggered in two years.

When I say the military screwed me up, I mean that I spent a month and a half in a situation room, similar in structure (though nowhere as fancy) as the Navy Intel the civilians just happen to invited to, watching drone footage and seeing a man explode to smithereens, while my fellow soldiers clapped and were oh so very smug.

You could say I went slightly crazy after that happened. And wouldn't you know, six months after the war I was diagnosed with a mild case of PTSD. Mild, because I could function "normally", my anxiety didn't cripple me, my hyper awareness didn't give me agoraphobia and my flashbacks were few and far between.

The screens, the night vision, the smug expressions of everyone's face (except Danny's) were all too much and my anxiety sky rocketed really fast.

So here I am, in my bed room, my eyes leaking a broken tap and I fucking hate Hawaii Five-0

The only thing that made me say "I'll watch this next week", after I spent an hour or so curled up in my bed talking to a friend on chat and calling another, was the fact that Danny, as he watched the fucking nightmare in night vision and gunfire, was freaked out.

On a more coherent level, I'm really not keen on the narrative of American Military might mowing down brown criminals.

Militarism is a destructive ideology and Hawaii Five-0, who has always been neutral when it came to politics, is taking a right turn here in a way I find extremely distressing.

Not to mention triggering.

Steve being morally ambiguous is fine, the military is often like that, my work with Air Force intelligence during my service has probably enabled the death of far too many people, but I don't think about that.

I think about the war I served and actually saw men die in – suffice to say my politics took a radical left turn after that.

I don't want to see my politics reflected back at me, that's boring, but must I have this fucking Freudian fetish of Military = Good?

One of the symptoms of my PTSD is rage. Like uncontrollable rage. My heart has been beating double time since this morning and it feels like my brain is trying to crack my skull wide open.

I am fucking pissed at them for showing operations like that noble and good and mighty. They are not. They are dark, murky, morally ambiguous at best if not downright evil.

When I saw that man die, five years ago, he was blown up by a drone; I was on comms with those pilots twelve hours a day. I spent four shifts in a row listening in to Pilot School drop outs, writing down and shouting out co-ordinates until my throat was raw.

Situation rooms are only calm when something explodes and then they are a flurry of activity.

Two years of not much more than hyper awareness and spikes of anger and now I feel like I want to trash my room and destroy everything.

Thank god Danny, at least, had the decency to look askance at what he was seeing.

A story broke out yesterday, regarding former female soldier of the IDF, Eden Abergil, who posted photos of herself on Facebook with detained Palestinians tied and blindfolded captioned:
"Army... Best Time Of My Life :) "

This has been making headlines two days in a row, who would have thunk it, that a stupid young woman's narcissism and obtuseness would raise more awareness about the inhuman treatment of Palestinians by the IDF than Breaking the Silence ever could, or the picture and story of a crying Palestinian boy

The worst thing about this is, of course, that she has no idea that she did anything wrong.
This quote really encompass the way the Army desensitizes us from feeling any compassion towards those we've been indoctrinated to not view as human:

"I still don't understand what's wrong," [Eden Abergil] told Army Radio on Thursday, saying that the "pictures were taken in good will, there was no statement in them."

"Good will" is actually supposed to be in "Good faith", but the translations sometimes go a bit too literal, in good faith, as in without the intent to cause any harm.
Of course, she didn't want to hurt anyone, she didn't consider the props of her military experience as remotely human.
Of having any will of their own. Of having any ability to consent to these photographs or to being the backdrop of this person's best days and on what was most likely their worst.

The real problem is, it's hard for me to lay the blame solely on Abergil's shoulders, in her point of view she treated the Palestinians with decency and perhaps, compares with the horror stories that have come out of Hebron, Gaza and the villages around the West Bank settlements, she really did.

The problem is, that this is a norm. The fact that this is a norm, dehumanising prisoners, treating them as props, having absolutely no perspective as to what it means to be in a position in which you are sitting with a bunch of blindfolded and tied up men, taking pictures for your amusement and treating that time as beautiful, is a terrible truth we have to contend with.

The truth is that the IDF does terrible things. Things that traumatise Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Call me naive, but when I read about soldiers who attack Peace Activists handing out flyers I'm inclined to believe that this kid is feeling that he's being judged by them (and he is by virtue of being part of the IDF that is under critical scrutiny by us Peacniks) and lashes out at what he perceives an attack on his Brothers in Arms, his meaning for living at the moments. National Pride may be a part of it, but that's a very rationalised argument and one usually given in retrospect.

Aside from that, there is a gender angle here of course, because this is a female soldier and female soldiers, are very much fetishised. PR campaigns for the IDF will always use pretty blonde soldiers, this article from Sociological Images (Potentially NSFW) paints the picture much better than I ever could.
Female soldiers should be "like men", but not too much, because they need to be desirable as well.
These are the acts of a "proper" female soldiers. You can bet that if it were a male soldier, the amount of air time and articles written on this would be drastically less. Not that the act would have been any less terrible, but it would be perceived as less, after all, this is not something new.

For me personally, my time in the Army was a time of great boredom and the making of friends. Some of my closest friends are people I met in during my service. I have many friends who did not serve.
I feel no shame in having done my time, had I known then what I know now, I would have refused and caused a great deal of pain and disappointment to my family.

You know, generally speaking, I think it's a mistake to use the word Apartheid when speaking of Israel proper (the West Bank and Gaza are, of course, under Apartheid rule) possibly because my family is South African.

Most likely, because it is one of the reasons my family immigrated and sought out a better life. I mean, even if they were white, they were still Jews.

Zionism probably looked like a good deal. I wonder how it is living up to the dream.

I have no dreams of that kind. Of packing up and leaving for a better life in a land far away from the one I was born in. I am not an immigrant, despite living with a bunch of them and I wonder if that has made me take this country for granted.

Possibly. But so what? By virtue of being Jewish I have no fear of deportation, nor do I have any fear of imprisonment for anything to do with my ethnicity.

Unlike the 400 children of immigrant workers who are to be deported. Without their parents, because Netanyahu's government is heartless, cruel, near-sighted.
Consider, that this is how Netanyahu justifies the Cabinet's decision to deport these children:

"This is a reasonable and balanced decision," Netanyahu said Sunday after deciding to deport hundreds of migrant workers' children. "It was influenced by two primary considerations - the humanitarian consideration and the Zionist consideration. We're looking for a way to absorb and adopt to our hearts children who were brought up and raised here as Israelis. On the other hand, we don't want to create an incentive that will lead to hundreds of thousands of illegal migrant workers flooding the country," he said.

Consider, that just this morning, 230 immigrants from North America - i.e. Americans and Canadians - arrived in Israel, 85 of them are going to enlist immediately into the IDF.
A "privilege" they are denying an Intersex Haredi man. This here, is intersectionality. I mean, a Haredi man, who wants to serve, is denied because his body doesn't match the criteria of manhood.

I wish we would stop pretending we're a democracy and just acknowledge that we're a liberal ethnocracy (as my friend Yael, aptly put), because see, we're not totalitarian in the classical sense. We have no actual dictator or figure head... we have a pervasive ideology, which we cow-tow to and destroy lives to live up to.

That act of Jewish immigration is, I'm sorry to say, Apartheid. Not the same kind that was committed in South Africa and indeed, perhaps it is the wrong word, it is often a word which doesn't mean what we think it means. So here's what it means to me; as a person who grew up hearing it, hearing about Nelson Mandela and growing up under the love and care of people who wanted me to be colour-blind: ( Apartheid )

The Occupation is not just in Palestine. Apartheid may have a very specific meaning, but language is a very flexible thing. And separateness (which is the translated meaning of the word) may not actually be what it means, but difference, prejudice and the assumption that this is done for the good of the nation, is appalling.

I was going to write some more about the fact that different Jewish groups are treated differently under the law, about pinkwashing, about the privilege of writing this and being (relatively) safe.
But that would just be procrastination.

I know it seems like I'm constantly talking about this, but honestly this stuff is scary and so blandly disingenuous that I'm not sure people actually realise the danger of this sort enterprise.

There was a "Police Day" at an elementary school in a small town in the centre of Israel.

Just the title got me prickly with anxiety:

At 'Police Day,' first-graders get to play with real rifles and machine guns

"An educational institution should educate for civic values and independent thought, not admiration for force," said Amit Sharon, whose daughter attends one of the schools. Border Police spokesman Chief Superintendent Moshe Fintzy said the program was authorized and coordinated with the Education Ministry. "We're not like Hezbollah, which train kids to commit suicide," he said.
[...]
[Another parent] noted that although the children understood that all the weapons were used for dispersing demonstrations, there were no explanations about why people held protests or when they might need to be dispersed. "As far as they know now, all protests need to be disbanded by any means necessary. That's hardly education for democracy," he said.

I live in fear of the future generation if this is the public education, especially when one parent is quoted saying:
"the children were very impressed by the demonstrations, especially by the dogs that attacked and stopped someone on command. I don't understand their complaints - there's nothing wrong with demonstrating Border Police activities. It's part of the reality of life here. The kids' tender souls weren't hurt".

Jesus.

Of course, Israeli schools are the "shit" these days, what with racial segregation which is finally being cracked down after years of this shit going on in the Orthodox Settlement of Immanuel.

And yes, when I say Settlement, I mean it is a town built in the West Bank, Palestine. So, yeah.
Racism.

The irony is anvilicious.

At least 10 activists killed as Israel navy opens fire on Gaza aid flotilla.

As someone said to me, sometimes the non-violent solidarity groups act as cover for the violent solidarity group.

Oh, wait...

I'm genuinely shocked that it took such a violet turn. That there are so many wounded and killed and that the IDF just opened fire on ships they knew had European Legislators, Nobel Laureates, VIP's who are known activists and a bunch of civilians.

Al-Jazeera reports that the incident took place in international waters.

This is bad bad bad, horrible.

I can't even begin to talk about this. This is just so wrong.

Whoever gave theses orders was out of their mind!

This is not what I expected when I went to bed last night.

This being a personal blog in which I talk about as assortment of stuff, some more interesting to you, dear readers, than others, I feel it's important to disseminate information, even if it doesn't actively concern you.
It actively concerns me, so I suppose that's good enough.

Some of you may know about the gag order placed in Israel regarding an "espionage" case.

I don't want to talk about Anat Kam, journalist who was placed under house arrest since December for handing over "top secret" documents that show the IDF breaking High Court Rullings regarding, among other things, the assassinations of various Palestinian leaders.
She handed over this classified information to Ha'aretz journalist Uri Balu while she was doing her time in the IDF.
Uri Blau himself is now in exile in London because the Shin-Bet (what in Hebrew we call the Shabak, שב"כ, which is the acronym for "General Security Services"... they're not a Secret Police, they have carte blanche to do things the police and the IDF cannot do... like break into homes of activists, tap their phones, allegedly torture "security"/"political" prisoners and recruit via any means necessary Palestinian collaborators.

I want to talk about the fact that during my time in the IDF, I too was privy to classified information but I was too naive, insular, politically unaware and oblivious to actually understand that what I was doing was doing more harm to people's lives, than good.

What do I mean by this?

My life as a middle class Ashkenazi Jewish girl in a middle class town a twenty minute drive westward from Tel Aviv insulated me, totally, to the reality of what was going on a twenty minute drive eastward, across the border - "The Green Line". All I knew, before I was drafted in 2003, was that the West Bank had lots of Settlers and Palestinians blew themselves up from time to time.

I was fucking clueless. ( More on that, because this is long )

This is so tiring.

Israel is only "liberal" for some people who live here.

Wake up!

I understand hate.

That feeling of disgust that sits at the pit of your stomach when you think of something or someone you wish simply didn't exist.

I understand wanting to eliminate that source of that seemingly wants to take over your life, that by simply existing, changes you or casts a shadow upon who you are.

There's a reason love and hate are so closely tied together - both emotions bring about physical changes and you can't help but want to expel and express those emotions.

What I don't understand and with great hope never will, is prejudice. Prejudice has many symptomes, hate is only one of them and it is such an impersonal hate that I can't understand it. Hate (like love) are so personal and energy consuming, I'm always baffled as to why you'd bother to hate a group of people.

Of course, I understand how it works, how it expressed, how it is reproduced... all that. I've made it my business to counter all of that.

But for the life of me I do not get it.

I do not get how people (like retired US General John Sheehan) can say things like the fact that the Dutch army has openly gay soldiers caused the massacre and genocide in Srebrenica.
Why?
Because "homosexuality" is bad for morale.

For Fuck Fucking Fuckity Sake!!!!!!!!!!!

My rage issues resurfaced, before I did my breathing exercises. Beyond him being totally and utterly wrong, saying things like that are is simple incitement and I doubt anyone will do anything about it.

Queers are always fair game for slander.

And way to completely reduce that kind of tragedy to absurdity. This beyond a simple case of arrogant ignorance.

Fucking hell.

Within three months of being enlisted into the IDF I put on something like 5 kg.
I had cried, tears rolled down my face, as I told my mother I had jock itch because my thighs were rubbing together, along with the very ill-fitting uniform.
I didn't wear clothes in my proper size for the two years that I served.

Food in the IDF is disgusting.

I was not vegetarian at the time, but I pretended to be, because the processed tofu schnitzels looked more appetizing and less likely to give me salmonella than the "regular" food.

Having done kitchen duty like a champ, I can tell you, the cooks are over worked, it's an yucky job, you have to deal with teenaged girls being grossed out by things (being a young aunt cured me of viewing leftover food as gross) that they've seen people eat and, well, dealing with the fact that despite having the most "practical" power (they're the wheelers and dealers of the army) they're in fact the lowest echelon of military jobs.

Yeah, the food was gross. We comforted ourselves by going to buy chocolate, biscuits, chocolate-chip cookies, crackers and cheese...

Yeah, it was good times in the barracks.

Is it any surprise girls (who do not do combat, which most of us do not) put on, on average, 10 kg of weight throughout our two year run.

I got thinking about because I saw this News article.
It made me guffaw. That's another way of saying LOL.

The IDF is going to cut out of its menu in the canteens (i.e. the cafeteria where you get your food for free) the fattening pastry foods - mainly Bourekas and rogalach - which have been traditional foods found in meetings, unit gatherings and, as mentioned, the canteens.

Nothing like promoting more resentment in the ranks!

I mean, I understand the need and want to promote "good health" which is a real oxymoron in the military - I cannot tell you how many yeast infections I had during my service because the trousers I wore five days a week was basically spun plastic.

Also, Doctors generally do not believe soldiers who come to the infirmary, their initial thought is that you are there to get sick-leave, which are days off not docked from your regular holidays.

You basically have to be dying in order to get treatment - or be at the emergency room with an actual bodily trauma.

Yeah, "good health".

Food is a big deal in the army.
It's something we arrange our time around - two hour lunch breaks are not unheard of, hell, unless I had something extremely pressing to do I could spend more time faffing around looking for chocolate and drinking seven cups of coffee a day (which was my average, I was up to ten cups a day at some point... withdrawal was a bitch after I was discharged).

Food was my comfort. Mainly because the food presented to us in the canteens was just so bad. Any other food was great and much of it was eaten.

I've spoken about the uniform before, so I don't need to tell you about the gendered aspect of it, but I remember how one day, I felt cramps, it wasn't that time of the month, so I went to the bathroom, opened my belt and instant relief.
Yeah, my belt had been pressing into me.
You can imagine what I did next.
I cried like the big baby I am/was.

Looking back, I can't say I felt bad about putting on the weight. It was something I didn't consciously think about - I mean, I hated myself for being "fat", but I was never ever willing to give up food that made me feel good.

That period of my life was full of half-assed attempts at weight loss.
"Weight Watchers" is a nightmare, as though we don't get judged enough in our lives.
Eating smaller portions got me eating more instead of less.
I got into shouting matches with my mother over my weight and what I was willing to do, or not do, in order to "control myself".

Yeah, food was a battle ground.

I don't know how much I eat today. I know that over the past few months I've lost weight, which worried me for a while, because weight loss has become something I associate with trauma and I still don't know what has caused me to become even smaller than I was.

Food in the IDF was part of what got me through it. Take outs, cakes, biscuits, the gatherings... *sigh* good times.
But they made my plastic pants split at the seam.

I'm glad it's over, never to return.

At times, it seemed to never end. I was even about to sign up for more - I was insane and full of fear of the outside world at the time - so when that fell through I suddenly had two weeks left of service.
The relief (and the weight loss that commenced simply because I was happy to be outside that framework) was unbelievable.

Related but off tangent; I don't know if Kung Fu is for me. I was in the best shape of my life while I was in those classes, but I didn't know how to protect myself, which pretty much negates the purpose...

As mentioned, I'm now thin, but very out of shape. I'm a slob, I don't exercise, I should, but I don't - I need to maלe the decision to go back to martial arts, but I need to want it and at the moment... I don't.