Ori Nir, writing in this week’s Washington Jewish Week, draws a line between how Israeli treatment of Palestinians has devolved in recent decades, and the deleterious effect that has had on Israelis within the "Green Line":
It would be a colossal stretch to argue that the occupation is exclusively responsible for this ugly wave of brutality and hatred. But it would be equally irresponsible to ignore the impact of the brutal behavior of Israelis across the Green Line on what is happening inside Israel. What happens in Nablus and Hebron doesn’t stay there.
Agree, disagree, but please: Shut off any ideological blinkers you might have about the "spokesman for Americans for Peace Now" credit line and read the whole thing, understanding it for what it is — a cri de coeur from an Israeli with an unabashed love for his country and countrymen.
It’s intuitive, it’s hard, if not impossible, to pin down, but I can’t help but agree with Ori, based on my own experiences covering, policing and living through the first Intifada. You can’t compartmentalize behavior. You can’t teach a dog to maul folks on some streets and to turn over for a belly-rub on others.
Soldiers — barely out of puberty, hormones and anxieties still raging — bring this crap home with them.
There were two headline-making instances during the first Intifada of young men who joined the army and then, at the first opportunity, brought their guns home and shot their abusive fathers dead. Much of the coverage of the trials was sympathetic, as tales of parental abuse emerged, but the courts ultimately threw the book at both defendants; the defendants had violated the concept of "purity of arms" and Israelis were able to look down that road and see chaos.
Both soldiers had acted in isolation — they didn’t know one another. But one couldn’t help but wonder, at the time, if the knowledge of other soldiers who had brutalized — sodomized in one case — Palestinian detainees and then had served nominal sentences had not created a notion of permissive use of lethal authority.
I was grateful, then, to be a mature soldier and to have my service limited to month-long stints in the reserves. I was anxious, then, for the young men consigned to this behavior for three years straight.
One story I covered then for the Jerusalem Post dealt with "Parents against Erosion," who were shattered by the behavior of sons coming home every three weeks for weekends home: The sullenness, the outbursts, the anger. They sought support and counseling for guiding their kids back to being, well, kids. However they had voted in 1988, they sought a way out of a "situation" that was eating alive their loved ones.
I don’t know what happened to the group, but it exemplified the principle of "enlightened self-interest." Doing good everywhere means good gets done at home.
There are broader questions about how an occupation leads to delusions of compartmentalization. This is one that has always exercised me: Settlers and their backers, whatever the merits of their claims and arguments, often treat legalities the way the Yishuv treated the British Mandate. They ignore laws, they work with sympathizers within the establishment to skirt rules.
Yet during the Mandate, the establishment was an unnatural colonial presence — the British. Now, it is the fulfillment of the Zionist ambition.
What does it do to Zionism, to Israel, when a powerful political grouping internalizes a strategy of relentlessly undermining the establishment?
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
