Amira Hass :Israel’s Violent Cowardice Faces Palestinian Protesters' Bravery
Israeli soldiers have gotten used to feeling heroic in their planes, tanks and…
haaretz.com
When it comes to bravery and daring, the young
Palestinian demonstrators are defeating the Israeli soldiers and Border
Police. They are armed with agility and speed, kaffiyehs covering their
faces. They are armed with stones and Molotov cocktails, while the
soldiers — behind them military exercises — are armed with and protected
by armored vehicles, drones, helmets, deadly weapons of various types
and poisonous tear gas.
Against the bravery of the
young Palestinians, the cowardice of the Israeli soldiers is exposed.
They have gotten used to feeling strong and heroic in their planes,
tanks and armored jeeps, in their detention and interrogation rooms and
observation towers with sophisticated equipment, in their late-night
break-ins into houses and their pulling minors from their beds.
Facing the kaffiyeh, stone and Molotov cocktail they are lost. Insulted. Then vengefulness erupts.
You,
Israeli reader, should liberate yourself a bit from the Israeli media
diet that makes the situation so shallow; you should liberate yourself
from the language of the masters of “civil disorders and riots.”
Instead, watch the uncensored
clips from the “battle” field: soldiers in jeeps running protesters
over, a soldier spraying tear gas from point-blank range in the eyes of
medics who come to evacuate the wounded. Soldiers setting on a store
owner who brings in his wares while clashes are going on, and the
soldiers kick him in an orgy of sadism.
This violent cowardice of
Israeli soldiers comes on the orders of the higher-ups — military and
political. It’s part of obligatory service in an army whose main role is
to defend the colonialist expansion.
The bravery and
daring of the Palestinians is against their will, forced on them as
foreign rule has been forced on them. This courage is passed on by
osmosis from generation to generation for as long as the reasons behind
these traits have not been removed. And the adults look on in amazement
at the young people: They have nearly forgotten they were once like
them.
No top officer or political
leader, no emergency reserve call-up order can force the Palestinians to
go out to the military checkpoints and separation barrier in the
villages trying to preserve the tradition of the popular struggle for
more than a decade and cultivate the bravery and daring. If the
unpopular Palestinian leaders have done something smart, it’s their
order that armed Palestinians should not be allowed to come close to the
protest sites.
The Palestinian demonstrators
know they could be killed, arrested, tortured or put on a degrading show
trial. But they are armed with justice. (And to be precise, not with
“their” justice, postmodern and relativist, but justice. Period.)
We won’t say thank you that
the soldiers in the West Bank aren’t spraying the protesters with live
bullets and killing 10 at once, as they killed the protesters in Gaza.
We can assume they received orders to try not to kill demonstrators.
It turns out that when the
army wants to, it can operate without killing. Does this mean the
soldiers and police received orders to kill anyone a few meters from
them suspected of possessing a knife? Including a yeshiva student whom
they mistake for an Arab?
True, in contrast to the
bravery and daring of the many protesters is the desperation of others.
Without orders from above they run to their deaths, waving a knife,
because in such situations it’s clear the Israeli soldiers are dying of
fear, and their cowardice is deadly.
Deadly by order? Because what
is it to riddle a person with bullets who’s already lying wounded on the
ground if not cowardice, murderousness, carrying out an order or all of
them together?
Journalist Mohammed Daraghmeh
published a courageous article that speaks to the hearts of many and
angers others. The title: “Don’t go out to die, Palestine needs you
alive.” Daraghmeh calls on the young people, as he says he tells his own
children, not to let the despair and emotion of revenge cause them to
lose their heads — and lives.
The politicians, he writes,
fear losing their popularity, so they don’t dare come out publicly
against the knife attacks. He calls on the intellectuals not to remain
silent and not to fear; they should shout out against this contagious
suicidal phenomenon and bring it to an end.
He calls on all Palestinian
leaders “from the extreme right to the extreme left” to say enough is
enough, seize the opportunity and channel the national anger toward mass
protest against the occupation — “protest without death, protest that
is all about life, revolution, hope and change.” The world, he writes,
does not accept the knifing and car-ramming attacks on civilians, just
as it opposed the “martyr operations” — suicide attacks.
He continues: “It is said: Did
the nonviolent struggle bring an end to the occupation? And I will say:
Has the armed and military struggle done this? Our cause is not local
but international. The world has created the problem, and it is the one
that will find the exit. But it will not do so if we keep silent [about
the occupation], and it will not do so if we commit suicide. It will
only do so if we preserve the human path of our national struggle.”
And we should add: The
humanity and courage of those fighting for freedom stand out against the
cowardice and lack of humanity of those who have stolen it.
Amira Hass
Haaretz Correspondent
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