Nehemia Shtrasler : Opinion It's a Disgrace to Be an Israeli These Days
Okay, I get it. You can’t say “I’m ashamed to be Israeli.” After saying that, you have to apologize to avoid being fired.
If
so, is it okay to say I was shocked? That I couldn’t believe what I was
hearing? That I felt an overwhelming nausea rising deep in my gut at
hearing the number of people killed and wounded in Palestinian demonstrations near the Israel-Gaza border?
It’s legitimate to order the army to keep the demonstrators from crossing into Israel from the Gaza Strip,
but it must do so by nonlethal means: water cannons, tear gas grenades
and sponge-tipped bullets aimed at demonstrators’ legs. Anything but
live bullets, and certainly not live bullets aimed to kill.
Anyone
who gives an order to fire live bullets at unarmed demonstrators who
aren’t endangering soldiers’ lives is giving a patently illegal order,
one over which a black flag flies. Only an evil heart could fail to
grasp this.
This week, a shocking video was published. It
showed a sniper shooting a Palestinian who didn’t endanger him at all.
The Palestinian in the pink shirt was a substantial distance away from
the border fence, so there was no reason in the world to shoot him.
In the clip, you can see him standing for a
minute, and then you see him fall, shot in the leg. And then you hear
the sounds of excitement and joy from our side: “Wow, what a fabulous
video, son of a bitch, he’s flying with his leg in the air; get out of
here, you sons of bitches.”
The
young man in pink didn’t even know he was in the sniper’s sights. You
can see him roaming about without fear. He didn’t know that Israel had
declared a “kill zone” of 80 to 100 meters inside Gaza’s sovereign
territory, and that anyone who enters it can be killed.
Commenting on this incident, Defense Minister
Avigdor Lieberman said, “The sniper deserves a medal. ... The IDF is the
most moral army in the world.” A medal for what? For having a
sophisticated rifle with telescopic sights and shooting unarmed people
like sitting ducks while he himself is well concealed, at no risk at
all? For an operation like this, the army deserves the accolade of the
most moral army in the world? They should do a remake of “1984,”
Lieberman-style.
The
Gazans had several types of “weaponry.” They had slingshots, like David
against Goliath. They had tires, which they burned. And they also had
mirrors which they brought from home, which they used to try to blind
the snipers, a tactic first used by Archimedes against the Romans 2,000
years ago. With this sophisticated weaponry from ancient times, the
Gazans fought unsuccessfully gainst the snipers, who killed 32 of them,
including photographer Yaser Murtaja, who was wearing a vest with
“press” written on it in giant letters. They also wounded some 300
people with live bullets, 20 of them seriously, and another 1,000 or so
with sponge-tipped bullets and tear gas.
These are numbers the mind can’t digest. We’ve apparently reached the point where human life isn’t worth a cent.
But that’s not quite true. It depends on the person.
In 2009, the book “The King’s Torah” was published. It discussed what Jewish law said about killing non-Jews.
Basing itself on “proofs” from the Talmud, it claimed the Torah’s
prohibition on murder applies only to Jews; killing non-Jews is
permissible.
The
book sparked a storm at the time and generated fierce opposition, but
today it would apparently be received with complete understanding. The
fact is that many politicians and pundits weren’t upset at all by either
the live fire on demonstrators or the large number of people killed and
wounded.
They
said the Gazans “sent their children to commit acts of terror, so it’s
good that we stopped them.” They said, “We left Gaza, so we aren’t to
blame for anything.” They described the demonstrators as “a terrorist
invasion whose goal was to destroy Israel,” adding, “Kudos to the IDF
for blocking the invasion with no casualties on our side.”
And what about the unarmed civilian casualties on the other side? That’s okay. See “The King’s Torah.”
It’s a disgrace to be an Israeli these days. Disgrace accompanied by overwhelming nausea.
Nehemia Shtrasler
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