treatment of palestinian brings remembrance of Holocaust
 

Israel shocked by image of soldiers forcing violinist to play at roadblock
http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...361552,00.html
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Monday November 29, 2004
The Guardian

Of all the revelations that have rocked the Israeli army over the past week, perhaps none disturbed the public so much as the video footage of soldiers forcing a Palestinian man to play his violin.

The incident was not as shocking as the recording of an Israeli officer pumping the body of a 13-year-old girl full of bullets and then saying he would have shot her even if she had been three years old.

Nor was it as nauseating as the pictures in an Israeli newspaper of ultra-orthodox soldiers mocking Palestinian corpses by impaling a man's head on a pole and sticking a cigarette in his mouth.

But the matter of the violin touched on something deeper about the way Israelis see themselves, and their conflict with the Palestinians.

The violinist, Wissam Tayem, was on his way to a music lesson near Nablus when he said an Israeli officer ordered him to "play something sad" while soldiers made fun of him. After several minutes, he was told he could pass.

It may be that the soldiers wanted Mr Tayem to prove he was indeed a musician walking to a lesson because, as a man under 30, he would not normally have been permitted through the checkpoint.

But after the incident was videotaped by Jewish women peace activists, it prompted revulsion among Israelis not normally perturbed about the treatment of Arabs.

The rightwing Army Radio commentator Uri Orbach found the incident disturbingly reminiscent of Jewish musicians forced to provide background music to mass murder. "What about Majdanek?" he asked, referring to the Nazi extermination camp.

The critics were not drawing a parallel between an Israeli roadblock and a Nazi camp. Their concern was that Jewish suffering had been diminished by the humiliation of Mr Tayem.

Yoram Kaniuk, author of a book about a Jewish violinist forced to play for a concentration camp commander, wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that the soldiers responsible should be put on trial "not for abusing Arabs but for disgracing the Holocaust".

"Of all the terrible things done at the roadblocks, this story is one which negates the very possibility of the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. If [the military] does not put these soldiers on trial we will have no moral right to speak of ourselves as a state that rose from the Holocaust," he wrote.

"If we allow Jewish soldiers to put an Arab violinist at a roadblock and laugh at him, we have succeeded in arriving at the lowest moral point possible. Our entire existence in this Arab region was justified, and is still justified, by our suffering; by Jewish violinists in the camps."

Others took a broader view by drawing a link between the routine dehumanising treatment of Palestinians at checkpoints, the desecration of dead bodies and what looks very much like the murder of a terrified 13-year-old Palestinian girl by an army officer in Gaza.

Israelis put great store in a belief that their army is "the most moral in the world" because it says it adheres to a code of "the purity of arms". There is rarely much public questioning of the army's routine explanation that Palestinian civilians who have been killed had been "caught in crossfire", or that children are shot because they are used as cover by fighters.

But the public's confidence has been shaken by the revelations of the past week. The audio recording of the shooting of the 13-year-old, Iman al-Hams, prompted much soul searching, although the revulsion appears to be as much at the Israeli officer firing a stream of bullets into her lifeless body as the killing itself. Some soldiers told Israeli papers that their mothers had sought assurances that they did not do that kind of thing.

One Israeli peace group, the Arik Institute, took out large newspaper adverts to plead for "Jewish patriots" to "open your eyes and look around" at the suffering of Palestinians.

The incidents prompted the army to call in all commanders from the rank of lieutenant-colonel to emphasise the importance of maintaining the "purity of arms" code.

The army's critics say the real problem is not the behaviour of soldiers on the ground but the climate of impunity that emanates from the top.

While the officer responsible for killing Iman al-Hams has been charged with relatively minor offences, and the soldiers who forced the violinist to play were ticked off for being "insensitive", the only troops who were swiftly punished for violating regulations last week were some who posed naked in the snow for a photograph. They were dismissed from their unit.

Last week the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem criticised what it described as a "culture of impunity" within the army. The group says at least 1,656 Palestinian non-combatants have been killed during the intifada, including 529 children.

"To date, one soldier has been convicted of causing the death of a Palestinian," it said.

"The combination of rules of engagement that encourage a trigger-happy attitude among soldiers together with the climate of impunity results in a clear and very troubling message about the value the Israeli military places on Palestinian life."

You have gone on and on offending people who belong to other religious groups, ethnicities and races.

You make these remarks without thinking.

This garbage which you posted is from one of the most biased anti-Israel mouthpieces out there.

Aside from the historical precedent set by the garbage producer, is the trash within the article. It took an incident of checking to see if someone is really a musician and spun it around so many times and made it into a story of pure poppycock.

And even more disturbing is your need to put in bold certain sections. It's disturbing to have you come onto Greekchat and talk about how Israel shouldn't exist, post articles pushing it, and not any other country. It's disturbing how you can talk about how you don't care about anti-semitism. And it goes beyond Jews but to how you have talked about Protestants and Catholics - to how you have made awful remarks about blacks and how people should bomb the majority of America and Americans.

You need to grow up.

You need to wisen up.

And when you're done, you can go into Israel and let people know you are gay and afterwards, take a trip into any Arab country and say the same thing (I recommend you not going into an Arab country first just so you can stay alive to see Israel).

-Rudey

All I did was post an article, but thanx for your daily neocon homophobe ranting Rudith.

God Bless You,
~merry gentleman

A) This has nothing to do with being a neo-con.
B) You posted a garbage article. People I suppose could post garbage articles talking about how gays are all child molestors and I guess the same would be OK because all they did was post it.
C) thanx for your daily ignorant/bigot/racist/anti-semite/anti-Israel/anti-America ranting. Now go talk about how you want to bomb Americans and other BS.

-Rudey

The UK's Daily Guardian is not the paragon of pro-American nor pro-Israel positive press in the world.

The Guardian is trash. Its writing is trash and its subjects are beyond trash. It runs articles like "Israel simply has no right to exist" and justifies terrorism repeatedly. But of course this long-time Greekchat bigot would post it when he read the headline on some trash listserv he is on probably had a link to it.

-Rudey

No. You did more. You posted an article, and replaced its title with an invective title of your authorship.

The Guardian is essentially a tabloid (especially with regard to foreign affairs, but I digress).

Or should I start posting pieces from US tabloids that are latently homophobic?

I suppose my economic position will come into play here, though, as I'm obviously an idiot conservative. Read a book, not the guardian's website.

The Guardian is a tabloid.

Or should I start posting pieces from US tabloids that are latently homophobic?

I suppose my economic position will come into play here, though, as I'm obviously an idiot conservative. Read a book, not the guardian's website.

Well since the Guardian got hacked on... let's try the Jerusalem Post shall we?

The army has lost its way
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...175447&apage=1


Nov. 27, 2004 19:50 | Updated Nov. 27, 2004 20:04
By NOGA TARNOPOLSKY

Yes why don't you read it? The Jerusalem Post is not rubbish like the Guardian.

Obviously since you're soooooo focused on repeatedly being anti-American and anti-Israel, it might be difficult for you to understand the difference in what was posted.

This was not a concentration camp. There are no ovens set up and ready to burn bodies.

They asked him to play his violin to check if indeed he was a musician and who he was saying he was. Just because someone took a picture of it and is trying to spin it a different way doesn't change what happened.

As for the other incident of a girl being shot - it has nothing to do with this unless this proves to be something other than a check. Even then most of the Israeli society along with citizens in every country consider it reprehensible and inexcusable.

But really it is great that some non-Jewish people love to throw around Holocaust imagery that cheapens an experience which their people never had.

-Rudey

Rudey-
Do you have evidence that Uri Orbach and Yoram Kaniuk are not jewish and are cheapening the holocaust?

I am talking about you and others who are not Jewish constantly throwing the holocaust around like it is nothing. While you are ignorant and bigoted, I don't think you are so stupid that you wouldn't know what I was talking about.

-Rudey

To save the pissing match . . .

A.) Are you actually going to defend the Guardian?

B.) Surely you can see the differences between the two pieces . . . one which condemns the horrible death of a little girl and explains why the violin incident was completely different, and another which somehow links the two to, of everything, Dauchau??

If you can't, throw me on ignore as well, because the distinction is clear as day.

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