When you dehumanize a group of people in order to consider them the enemy and take away everything they have (including their lives), it gives you ever more license to treat these people with monstrous, unthinking brutality.
The Israeli people really shouldn't be quite so shocked: they are simply reaping what they have sown, now manifesting as the behavior of the IDF, from the very inception of the Israeli state.
The Israeli people really shouldn't be quite so shocked: they are simply reaping what they have sown, now manifesting as the behavior of the IDF, from the very inception of the Israeli state.
Israel shaken by troops' tales of brutality against Palestinians
A psychologist blames assaults on civilians in the 1990s on soldiers' bad training, boredom and poor supervision
Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem
Sunday October 21, 2007
The Observer
A study by an Israeli psychologist into the violent behaviour of the country's soldiers is provoking bitter controversy and has awakened urgent questions about the way the army conducts itself in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Nufar Yishai-Karin, a clinical psychologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, interviewed 21 Israeli soldiers and heard confessions of frequent brutal assaults against Palestinians, aggravated by poor training and discipline. In her recently published report, co-authored by Professor Yoel Elizur, Yishai-Karin details a series of violent incidents, including the beating of a four-year-old boy by an officer.
The report, although dealing with the experience of soldiers in the 1990s, has triggered an impassioned debate in Israel, where it was published in an abbreviated form in the newspaper Haaretz last month. According to Yishai Karin: 'At one point or another of their service, the majority of the interviewees enjoyed violence. They enjoyed the violence because it broke the routine and they liked the destruction and the chaos. They also enjoyed the feeling of power in the violence and the sense of danger.'
In the words of one soldier: 'The truth? When there is chaos, I like it. That's when I enjoy it. It's like a drug. If I don't go into Rafah, and if there isn't some kind of riot once in some weeks, I go nuts.'
Another explained: 'The most important thing is that it removes the burden of the law from you. You feel that you are the law. You are the law. You are the one who decides... As though from the moment you leave the place that is called Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] and go through the Erez checkpoint into the Gaza Strip, you are the law. You are God.'
The soldiers described dozens of incidents of extreme violence. One recalled an incident when a Palestinian was shot for no reason and left on the street. 'We were in a weapons carrier when this guy, around 25, passed by in the street and, just like that, for no reason - he didn't throw a stone, did nothing - bang, a bullet in the stomach, he shot him in the stomach and the guy is dying on the pavement and we keep going, apathetic. No one gave him a second look,' he said.
The soldiers developed a mentality in which they would use physical violence to deter Palestinians from abusing them. One described beating women. 'With women I have no problem. With women, one threw a clog at me and I kicked her here [pointing to the crotch], I broke everything there. She can't have children. Next time she won't throw clogs at me. When one of them [a woman] spat at me, I gave her the rifle butt in the face. She doesn't have what to spit with any more.'
Yishai-Karin found that the soldiers were exposed to violence against Palestinians from as early as their first weeks of basic training. On one occasion, the soldiers were escorting some arrested Palestinians. The arrested men were made to sit on the floor of the bus. They had been taken from their beds and were barely clothed, even though the temperature was below zero. The new recruits trampled on the Palestinians and then proceeded to beat them for the whole of the journey. They opened the bus windows and poured water on the arrested men.
The disclosure of the report in the Israeli media has occasioned a remarkable response. In letters responding to the recollections, writers have focused on both the present and past experience of Israeli soldiers to ask troubling questions that have probed the legitimacy of the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces.
The study and the reactions to it have marked a sharp change in the way Israelis regard their period of military service - particularly in the occupied territories - which has been reflected in the increasing levels of conscientious objection and draft-dodging.
The debate has contrasted sharply with an Israeli army where new recruits are taught that they are joining 'the most ethical army in the world' - a refrain that is echoed throughout Israeli society. In its doctrine, published on its website, the Israeli army emphasises human dignity. 'The Israeli army and its soldiers are obligated to protect human dignity. Every human being is of value regardless of his or her origin, religion, nationality, gender, status or position.'
However, the Israeli army, like other armies, has found it difficult to maintain these values beyond the classroom. The first intifada, which began in 1987, before the wave of suicide bombings, was markedly different to the violence of the second intifada, and its main events were popular demonstrations with stone-throwing.
Yishai-Karin, in an interview with Haaretz, described how her research came out of her own experience as a soldier at an army base in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. She interviewed 18 ordinary soldiers and three officers whom she had served with in Gaza. The soldiers described how the violence was encouraged by some commanders. One soldier recalled: 'After two months in Rafah, a [new] commanding officer arrived... So we do a first patrol with him. It's 6am, Rafah is under curfew, there isn't so much as a dog in the streets. Only a little boy of four playing in the sand. He is building a castle in his yard. He [the officer] suddenly starts running and we all run with him. He was from the combat engineers.
'He grabbed the boy. I am a degenerate if I am not telling you the truth. He broke his hand here at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left. We are all there, jaws dropping, looking at him in shock...
'The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing."
Yishai-Karin concluded that the main reason for the soldiers' violence was a lack of training. She found that the soldiers did not know what was expected of them and therefore were free to develop their own way of behaviour. The longer a unit was left in the field, the more violent it became. The Israeli soldiers, she concluded, had a level of violence which is universal across all nations and cultures. If they are allowed to operate in difficult circumstances, such as in Gaza and the West Bank, without training and proper supervision, the violence is bound to come out.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said that, if a soldier deviates from the army's norms, they could be investigated by the military police or face criminal investigation.
She said: 'It should be noted that since the events described in Nufar Yishai-Karin's research the number of ethical violations by IDF soldiers involving the Palestinian population has consistently dropped. This trend has continued in the last few years.'
(Of course, there has been less engagement between the two groups during that time. In recent weeks, however, engagements have increased, and along with that, so have reports of IDF brutality.)
www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2196019,00.html
Recent Reports:
Ethnic cleansing, one sick Gazan at a time.
The Israeli government must feel so proud of itself for not having the any member of the IDF pull the trigger on these people: just let their treatable diseases take their course.
One also has to praise the actions of the Tel-Aviv based Physicians for Human Rights - Israel for their wonderful humanitarian work in this area.
Israel: Government Blocks Medical Evacuations from Gaza
Denials, Delays Cause at Least Three Deaths
Human Rights Watch
October 20, 2007
(New York, October 20, 2007) – Israel is arbitrarily blocking, delaying and harassing people with emergency medical problems who need to leave the Gaza Strip for urgent care, Human Rights Watch said today. At least three patients denied exit permits have died since June, and others have lost limbs or sight due to injuries and disease that have gone without proper treatment.
Despite its 2005 disengagement, Israel maintains substantial control of Gaza’s borders – land, air and sea. Since June 2007, when Hamas forcibly seized power in Gaza, Israel has made it increasingly difficult for medical supplies to get into Gaza and for any of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents to get out, even when they urgently need medical treatment.
"Israel is punishing sick civilians as a way to hurt Hamas, and that’s legally and morally wrong," said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. "Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza despite disengagement, and thus has a legal obligation to facilitate medical care to the greatest extent possible."
The Israeli government, and in particular the General Security Service (Shabak), cite unspecified "security concerns" when denying medical patients exit permits from Gaza. But numerous examples point to the arbitrary nature of those decisions, Human Rights Watch said.
This week, for example, the Israeli government allowed six people with life-threatening conditions to leave Gaza, after the Tel Aviv-based Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel) threatened to challenge the denied permits in court. The government had previously rejected all six on two separate occasions, citing unspecified security concerns.
The six cases include a 16-year-old girl with a congenital heart defect and two women in their twenties with cancer. They all have conditions that Israeli doctors determined require treatment outside Gaza, and one of the women had previously received chemotherapy in Israel.
Since June, PHR-Israel has intervened in 138 cases of patients from Gaza whom the government had rejected for alleged security reasons. It succeeded to date in gaining exit permits for 52 of these people.
According to PHR-Israel, in some cases the person was allowed out of Gaza only if he or she submitted to interrogation by the Shabak. An article this month in the major Israeli daily newspaper Ma’ariv documented how intelligence officers at Erez crossing, the only passenger crossing in and out of Gaza, tell medical patients that they can leave only if they provide information to Israeli intelligence.
A father who recently accompanied his five-year-old son out of Gaza to receive care for an injured eye told Human Rights Watch how he underwent questioning by Shabak at the border in a concrete room with a floor of metal grating that looked down onto an exposed basement. Interrogators sat behind bulletproof glass. Other Palestinians who left for non-medical reasons described the same room.
Israel is taking these measures at a time when its strict control of what gets into Gaza has led to deteriorating medical conditions there, Human Rights Watch said. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the increasing restrictions are "putting the access to health care especially in regard to tertiary care at risk." The organization cites a lack of some oncology drugs and a shortage of functioning laboratory equipment.
Medical facilities in Gaza cannot provide many advanced services, such as cardiovascular surgery, neurosurgery and advanced ophthalmology services.
"There are no machines to treat this in Gaza," said the father of the 16-year-old girl with the heart defect, who was finally allowed to cross into Israel this week. "If it was possible we would have done it here months ago."
In a visit to the dialysis ward at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, this week, Human Rights Watch found doctors having to use catheters whose expiry date had passed. "We sterilize them and do our best," a doctor said.
Human Rights Watch expressed concern that Israeli restrictions on the transfer of individuals and goods in and out of Gaza, including medical supplies – aimed at putting pressure on Hamas – are a form of collective punishment against the civilian population in violation of international humanitarian law.
In September, the Israeli cabinet declared Gaza "hostile territory" and voted to restrict "the passage of people to and from Gaza." The government says implementation of the decision is pending legal review, but the flow of people and goods into and out of Gaza has steadily declined since the cabinet’s decision, according to numbers provided by the Israeli military.
According to the United Nations, an average of 40 patients per day entered Israel from Gaza for medical treatment in July. In September, that number was down to five.
"Israel’s denial of medical care to those in urgent need amounts to collective punishment against the population, which violates international law," Whitson said. "The civilians of Gaza are paying the price."
In June, PHR-Israel and another Israel-based human rights group, Gisha, challenged Israel’s restrictions on medical evacuees in the Israeli Supreme Court. The court rejected the petition and accepted the government’s distinction between life-threatening cases, which should be allowed out of Gaza on a humanitarian basis, and those that affect "quality of life," for which the state can exercise discretion. But that distinction, when followed at all by the government, has been applied inhumanely.
According to PHR-Israel, in June the Israeli government denied an exit permit to `Ala’ `Awda, 25, who needed emergency treatment after getting shot in both legs, because it did not consider his case life-threatening. `Awda was unable to get proper care in Gaza, and doctors had to amputate his right leg. The government denied a second request, deeming the one-legged `Awda a security threat, and shortly thereafter doctors amputated his other leg.
At least three patients who were rejected for security reasons since June have died. According to PHR-Israel, they are:
* Muhammad Murtaja, 19, who died from a malignant brain tumor on the morning of July 1. The government approved his second request for entry later that day.
* Na’il Abu Warda, 24, who suffered from chronic renal disease. He had permission to leave Gaza but was denied transit through Erez nevertheless and died that night.
* Muhammad Abu `Ubaid, 72, who died on October 3 in need of open heart surgery after his exit permit was denied.
This week, Human Rights Watch interviewed three people in Gaza with medical conditions who were prevented from leaving on security grounds. They included a man who said he was accidentally shot in the ankle in May, who was not allowed out despite getting an exit permit, the girl with the congenital heart defect, and a woman with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The latter two were among those allowed out this week.
Human Rights Watch interviewed three other people who were applying for their exit permits, including a man with a herniated disc, a man with nerve compression in his back, and a man with thyroid cancer. "I will go to any country, I don’t care," said `Abd al-Safuri, 27, who needs surgery for a herniated disc.
With some exceptions, patients allowed out of Gaza must walk nearly 1 kilometer through a security zone to reach the Erez crossing, and then submit to extensive security procedures and occasional interrogation by the Shabak.
Human Rights Watch learned of some patients with prearranged clearance at Erez, who were nonetheless sent back, again for unspecified security concerns. They had to restart the complex process of getting a bed in a hospital outside Gaza, secure financial coverage, and seek security clearance for another day.
"Israel has legitimate security concerns about militant groups firing rockets from Gaza into civilian areas," Whitson said. "But denying medical treatment to a 16-year-old girl with a congenital heart defect doesn’t make Israel any safer."
www.uruknet.info/?p=m37382&hd=&size=1&l=e
PHOTO ESSAY:
hrw.org/photos/2007/iopt1007/
This symbolic gesture, of course, is not the same thing as actual punishment. Until actual prosecutions are accorded to the practitioners of these illegal practices, the Government stands in tacit approval.
IDF commander rebuked over 'human shield procedure'
Brigadier General Yair Golan faces freeze in promotion following investigation on use of Palestinian civilians
Hanan Greenberg Published: 10.18.07, 21:32 / Israel News
IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi decided on Thursday evening to rebuke the commander of former West Bank Division, Brigadier General Yair Golan, and to freeze his promotion, due to the findings of a Military Police investigation launched following various reports of the use the 'human shield procedure' in the West Bank.
During the procedure, Palestinians are asked to try and convince neighboring suspected terrorists to give themselves up.
Golan was a leading candidate to soon receive the rank of major general, and he was linked with the role of the prime minister's military secretary. But his promotion was put on hold until the investigation ends.
The investigation is focused on operation 'Hot Winter' carried out by the IDF in Nablus in April 2007. Investigators are checking to see whether soldiers used Palestinian civilians as human shields. A video clip from the Associated Press shows soldiers leading a Palestinian to a home with their weapons pointed at him.
Military Police investigators attempted to see whether senior officers in the Central Command, and perhaps higher up, authorized the use of the procedure despite knowing that the IDF had forbidden it.
The IDF Military Advocate General, Brigadier General Avi Mandelblit, decided that there was no basis for submitting a charge against Golan, but materials collected during the investigation suggested that as commander of forces in the area, failures did occur under his watch, including the use of the 'human shield procedure'.
The procedure was outlawed by the High Court, a decision also adopted by the IDF.
Golan today serves in a temporary position as project manager in the IDF's operational branch.
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3461591,00.html
Top IDF officer censured over use of 'human shields' in Nablus
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
Israel Defense Forces Brigadier-General Yair Golan was censured on Thursday for allowing soldiers to use Palestinian civilians as "human shields" during military operations in the West Bank.
IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi decided to reprimand Golan - who formerly served as commander of forces in the West Bank - following a probe by the IDF's criminal investigation division into the army's use of human shields during raids in the town of Nablus.
Golan was the most senior officer to be questioned in the probe, which the army launched last March after IDF soldiers were filmed forcing a young Palestinian man at gunpoint to lead them from house to house during an arrest sweep in Nablus.
The army said in a statement that Golan would be passed over for promotion for at least the next nine months.
In a landmark 2005 decision, Israel's Supreme Court banned the use of
Palestinian civilians as human shields in general, and specifically outlawed taking Palestinian civilians on searches. Before the decision, the army would often have Palestinian civilians knock on the doors of houses where militants were believed to be hiding and ask them to surrender.
The army said the practice - known as the neighbor procedure - prevented
violence by encouraging militants to give themselves up. But in August 2002, a 19-year-old Palestinian student was killed in a gunfight that erupted after he was forced to knock on the door of a building where a Hamas fugitive was hiding.
Since the Supreme Court decision, Palestinians have accused the army of
continuing the practice, but proof was elusive. Human rights groups say the use of civilians in military operations has dropped sharply since the Supreme Court ban, but has not disappeared.
The Israeli rights group B'tselem, which monitors human rights violations in the West Bank, on Thursday praised the army's decision to reprimand Golan.
"We welcome the fact that the army took this seriously and investigated the case and took action," B'tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said. "Golan was a senior officer who broke the law, and we hope that this will send a message to officers that they cannot give orders like this to soldiers."
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914568.html
Rachel Corrie redux.
Israeli bulldozer crushes Palestinian teenager
Israel faces UN, EU criticism over illegal collective punishment against Palestinians in Gaza.
GAZA CITY - A 16-year-old Palestinian boy was killed on Thursday after being run over by an Israeli army bulldozer during a military incursion in the Gaza Strip, medics and witnesses said.
Mahmud Kayed was run over by the bulldozer when it lurched towards a group of youths throwing rocks at the vehicle during the army incursion in the Al-Bureij refugee camp, they said.
Four Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire during the operation, medics said.
Israeli bulldozers were ripping up farmland in the area, while soldiers were going house to house searching for militants and weapons, they said.
No comment from the Israeli army was immediately available.
The death brings to 5,866 the number of people killed since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians.
Israel faced barrage of criticism over sanctions
Gazans stocked up on food and fuel on Thursday as Israel faced a barrage of criticism over its decision to brand Hamas-run Gaza a "hostile entity" and possibly cut its basic supplies.
"I've started stocking fuel to be able to work if Israel interrupts supplies," said Nidal Eslim, a 33-year-old taxi driver and father of seven, for whom his taxi is the sole source of income.
"I will try to stock up 500 litres, which will last me for a couple of days. You have to live somehow."
Throughout the impoverished coastal strip -- which with 1.5 million residents is one of the world's most densely populated places -- residents were buying up food, water and fuel.
"It's the best thing to do to prepare ourselves for the coming days," said Rima, one of the women who rushed to buy up drinking water.
Israel's security cabinet on Wednesday declared Gaza "hostile" in response to continuing rocket fire from the territory where Hamas seized control three months ago in a showdown with its Fatah rivals.
The European Union on Thursday joined a rising chorus of opposition to the move, which has been branded as illegal collective punishment against the residents of a territory already reeling from economic sanctions, border closures and Israeli military operations.
"We are making the same appeal as the UN secretary general for Israel to reverse this decision," said the spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
Britain also voiced "concern" over the decision, with a Foreign Office spokesman saying the government was "monitoring developments."
UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urged Israel to reconsider its decision.
"Such a step would be contrary to Israel's obligations towards the civilian population (of Gaza) under international humanitarian and human rights law," he said in a statement.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas condemned it as an "arbitrary decision" that will "aggravate" Gazans' suffering, while Hamas blasted the move as "collective punishment."
US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) echoed the sentiment, saying: "Israel has the responsibility to protect its citizens, but not by collectively punishing the people of Gaza, which seriously violates the laws of war."
Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation, but is still considered an occupying power under international law as it controls the territory's borders and nearly all aspects of daily life, HRW said.
The vast majority of food, medical supplies and other goods are transferred to Gaza through Israeli-controlled crossing.
China's foreign ministry warned that Israel's measures would "lead to the further escalation of tensions in Gaza and further affect the humanitarian situation there."
And Jordan's government spokesman warned of the "dangerous humanitarian, security and environmental repercussions", while stressing Israel's move would "not help create the suitable environment for progress in the peace process".
www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=22264
A psychologist blames assaults on civilians in the 1990s on soldiers' bad training, boredom and poor supervision
Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem
Sunday October 21, 2007
The Observer
A study by an Israeli psychologist into the violent behaviour of the country's soldiers is provoking bitter controversy and has awakened urgent questions about the way the army conducts itself in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Nufar Yishai-Karin, a clinical psychologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, interviewed 21 Israeli soldiers and heard confessions of frequent brutal assaults against Palestinians, aggravated by poor training and discipline. In her recently published report, co-authored by Professor Yoel Elizur, Yishai-Karin details a series of violent incidents, including the beating of a four-year-old boy by an officer.
The report, although dealing with the experience of soldiers in the 1990s, has triggered an impassioned debate in Israel, where it was published in an abbreviated form in the newspaper Haaretz last month. According to Yishai Karin: 'At one point or another of their service, the majority of the interviewees enjoyed violence. They enjoyed the violence because it broke the routine and they liked the destruction and the chaos. They also enjoyed the feeling of power in the violence and the sense of danger.'
In the words of one soldier: 'The truth? When there is chaos, I like it. That's when I enjoy it. It's like a drug. If I don't go into Rafah, and if there isn't some kind of riot once in some weeks, I go nuts.'
Another explained: 'The most important thing is that it removes the burden of the law from you. You feel that you are the law. You are the law. You are the one who decides... As though from the moment you leave the place that is called Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] and go through the Erez checkpoint into the Gaza Strip, you are the law. You are God.'
The soldiers described dozens of incidents of extreme violence. One recalled an incident when a Palestinian was shot for no reason and left on the street. 'We were in a weapons carrier when this guy, around 25, passed by in the street and, just like that, for no reason - he didn't throw a stone, did nothing - bang, a bullet in the stomach, he shot him in the stomach and the guy is dying on the pavement and we keep going, apathetic. No one gave him a second look,' he said.
The soldiers developed a mentality in which they would use physical violence to deter Palestinians from abusing them. One described beating women. 'With women I have no problem. With women, one threw a clog at me and I kicked her here [pointing to the crotch], I broke everything there. She can't have children. Next time she won't throw clogs at me. When one of them [a woman] spat at me, I gave her the rifle butt in the face. She doesn't have what to spit with any more.'
Yishai-Karin found that the soldiers were exposed to violence against Palestinians from as early as their first weeks of basic training. On one occasion, the soldiers were escorting some arrested Palestinians. The arrested men were made to sit on the floor of the bus. They had been taken from their beds and were barely clothed, even though the temperature was below zero. The new recruits trampled on the Palestinians and then proceeded to beat them for the whole of the journey. They opened the bus windows and poured water on the arrested men.
The disclosure of the report in the Israeli media has occasioned a remarkable response. In letters responding to the recollections, writers have focused on both the present and past experience of Israeli soldiers to ask troubling questions that have probed the legitimacy of the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces.
The study and the reactions to it have marked a sharp change in the way Israelis regard their period of military service - particularly in the occupied territories - which has been reflected in the increasing levels of conscientious objection and draft-dodging.
The debate has contrasted sharply with an Israeli army where new recruits are taught that they are joining 'the most ethical army in the world' - a refrain that is echoed throughout Israeli society. In its doctrine, published on its website, the Israeli army emphasises human dignity. 'The Israeli army and its soldiers are obligated to protect human dignity. Every human being is of value regardless of his or her origin, religion, nationality, gender, status or position.'
However, the Israeli army, like other armies, has found it difficult to maintain these values beyond the classroom. The first intifada, which began in 1987, before the wave of suicide bombings, was markedly different to the violence of the second intifada, and its main events were popular demonstrations with stone-throwing.
Yishai-Karin, in an interview with Haaretz, described how her research came out of her own experience as a soldier at an army base in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. She interviewed 18 ordinary soldiers and three officers whom she had served with in Gaza. The soldiers described how the violence was encouraged by some commanders. One soldier recalled: 'After two months in Rafah, a [new] commanding officer arrived... So we do a first patrol with him. It's 6am, Rafah is under curfew, there isn't so much as a dog in the streets. Only a little boy of four playing in the sand. He is building a castle in his yard. He [the officer] suddenly starts running and we all run with him. He was from the combat engineers.
'He grabbed the boy. I am a degenerate if I am not telling you the truth. He broke his hand here at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left. We are all there, jaws dropping, looking at him in shock...
'The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing."
Yishai-Karin concluded that the main reason for the soldiers' violence was a lack of training. She found that the soldiers did not know what was expected of them and therefore were free to develop their own way of behaviour. The longer a unit was left in the field, the more violent it became. The Israeli soldiers, she concluded, had a level of violence which is universal across all nations and cultures. If they are allowed to operate in difficult circumstances, such as in Gaza and the West Bank, without training and proper supervision, the violence is bound to come out.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said that, if a soldier deviates from the army's norms, they could be investigated by the military police or face criminal investigation.
She said: 'It should be noted that since the events described in Nufar Yishai-Karin's research the number of ethical violations by IDF soldiers involving the Palestinian population has consistently dropped. This trend has continued in the last few years.'
(Of course, there has been less engagement between the two groups during that time. In recent weeks, however, engagements have increased, and along with that, so have reports of IDF brutality.)
www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2196019,00.html
Recent Reports:
Ethnic cleansing, one sick Gazan at a time.
The Israeli government must feel so proud of itself for not having the any member of the IDF pull the trigger on these people: just let their treatable diseases take their course.
One also has to praise the actions of the Tel-Aviv based Physicians for Human Rights - Israel for their wonderful humanitarian work in this area.
Israel: Government Blocks Medical Evacuations from Gaza
Denials, Delays Cause at Least Three Deaths
Human Rights Watch
October 20, 2007
(New York, October 20, 2007) – Israel is arbitrarily blocking, delaying and harassing people with emergency medical problems who need to leave the Gaza Strip for urgent care, Human Rights Watch said today. At least three patients denied exit permits have died since June, and others have lost limbs or sight due to injuries and disease that have gone without proper treatment.
Despite its 2005 disengagement, Israel maintains substantial control of Gaza’s borders – land, air and sea. Since June 2007, when Hamas forcibly seized power in Gaza, Israel has made it increasingly difficult for medical supplies to get into Gaza and for any of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents to get out, even when they urgently need medical treatment.
"Israel is punishing sick civilians as a way to hurt Hamas, and that’s legally and morally wrong," said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. "Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza despite disengagement, and thus has a legal obligation to facilitate medical care to the greatest extent possible."
The Israeli government, and in particular the General Security Service (Shabak), cite unspecified "security concerns" when denying medical patients exit permits from Gaza. But numerous examples point to the arbitrary nature of those decisions, Human Rights Watch said.
This week, for example, the Israeli government allowed six people with life-threatening conditions to leave Gaza, after the Tel Aviv-based Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel) threatened to challenge the denied permits in court. The government had previously rejected all six on two separate occasions, citing unspecified security concerns.
The six cases include a 16-year-old girl with a congenital heart defect and two women in their twenties with cancer. They all have conditions that Israeli doctors determined require treatment outside Gaza, and one of the women had previously received chemotherapy in Israel.
Since June, PHR-Israel has intervened in 138 cases of patients from Gaza whom the government had rejected for alleged security reasons. It succeeded to date in gaining exit permits for 52 of these people.
According to PHR-Israel, in some cases the person was allowed out of Gaza only if he or she submitted to interrogation by the Shabak. An article this month in the major Israeli daily newspaper Ma’ariv documented how intelligence officers at Erez crossing, the only passenger crossing in and out of Gaza, tell medical patients that they can leave only if they provide information to Israeli intelligence.
A father who recently accompanied his five-year-old son out of Gaza to receive care for an injured eye told Human Rights Watch how he underwent questioning by Shabak at the border in a concrete room with a floor of metal grating that looked down onto an exposed basement. Interrogators sat behind bulletproof glass. Other Palestinians who left for non-medical reasons described the same room.
Israel is taking these measures at a time when its strict control of what gets into Gaza has led to deteriorating medical conditions there, Human Rights Watch said. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the increasing restrictions are "putting the access to health care especially in regard to tertiary care at risk." The organization cites a lack of some oncology drugs and a shortage of functioning laboratory equipment.
Medical facilities in Gaza cannot provide many advanced services, such as cardiovascular surgery, neurosurgery and advanced ophthalmology services.
"There are no machines to treat this in Gaza," said the father of the 16-year-old girl with the heart defect, who was finally allowed to cross into Israel this week. "If it was possible we would have done it here months ago."
In a visit to the dialysis ward at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, this week, Human Rights Watch found doctors having to use catheters whose expiry date had passed. "We sterilize them and do our best," a doctor said.
Human Rights Watch expressed concern that Israeli restrictions on the transfer of individuals and goods in and out of Gaza, including medical supplies – aimed at putting pressure on Hamas – are a form of collective punishment against the civilian population in violation of international humanitarian law.
In September, the Israeli cabinet declared Gaza "hostile territory" and voted to restrict "the passage of people to and from Gaza." The government says implementation of the decision is pending legal review, but the flow of people and goods into and out of Gaza has steadily declined since the cabinet’s decision, according to numbers provided by the Israeli military.
According to the United Nations, an average of 40 patients per day entered Israel from Gaza for medical treatment in July. In September, that number was down to five.
"Israel’s denial of medical care to those in urgent need amounts to collective punishment against the population, which violates international law," Whitson said. "The civilians of Gaza are paying the price."
In June, PHR-Israel and another Israel-based human rights group, Gisha, challenged Israel’s restrictions on medical evacuees in the Israeli Supreme Court. The court rejected the petition and accepted the government’s distinction between life-threatening cases, which should be allowed out of Gaza on a humanitarian basis, and those that affect "quality of life," for which the state can exercise discretion. But that distinction, when followed at all by the government, has been applied inhumanely.
According to PHR-Israel, in June the Israeli government denied an exit permit to `Ala’ `Awda, 25, who needed emergency treatment after getting shot in both legs, because it did not consider his case life-threatening. `Awda was unable to get proper care in Gaza, and doctors had to amputate his right leg. The government denied a second request, deeming the one-legged `Awda a security threat, and shortly thereafter doctors amputated his other leg.
At least three patients who were rejected for security reasons since June have died. According to PHR-Israel, they are:
* Muhammad Murtaja, 19, who died from a malignant brain tumor on the morning of July 1. The government approved his second request for entry later that day.
* Na’il Abu Warda, 24, who suffered from chronic renal disease. He had permission to leave Gaza but was denied transit through Erez nevertheless and died that night.
* Muhammad Abu `Ubaid, 72, who died on October 3 in need of open heart surgery after his exit permit was denied.
This week, Human Rights Watch interviewed three people in Gaza with medical conditions who were prevented from leaving on security grounds. They included a man who said he was accidentally shot in the ankle in May, who was not allowed out despite getting an exit permit, the girl with the congenital heart defect, and a woman with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The latter two were among those allowed out this week.
Human Rights Watch interviewed three other people who were applying for their exit permits, including a man with a herniated disc, a man with nerve compression in his back, and a man with thyroid cancer. "I will go to any country, I don’t care," said `Abd al-Safuri, 27, who needs surgery for a herniated disc.
With some exceptions, patients allowed out of Gaza must walk nearly 1 kilometer through a security zone to reach the Erez crossing, and then submit to extensive security procedures and occasional interrogation by the Shabak.
Human Rights Watch learned of some patients with prearranged clearance at Erez, who were nonetheless sent back, again for unspecified security concerns. They had to restart the complex process of getting a bed in a hospital outside Gaza, secure financial coverage, and seek security clearance for another day.
"Israel has legitimate security concerns about militant groups firing rockets from Gaza into civilian areas," Whitson said. "But denying medical treatment to a 16-year-old girl with a congenital heart defect doesn’t make Israel any safer."
www.uruknet.info/?p=m37382&hd=&size=1&l=e
PHOTO ESSAY:
hrw.org/photos/2007/iopt1007/
This symbolic gesture, of course, is not the same thing as actual punishment. Until actual prosecutions are accorded to the practitioners of these illegal practices, the Government stands in tacit approval.
IDF commander rebuked over 'human shield procedure'
Brigadier General Yair Golan faces freeze in promotion following investigation on use of Palestinian civilians
Hanan Greenberg Published: 10.18.07, 21:32 / Israel News
IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi decided on Thursday evening to rebuke the commander of former West Bank Division, Brigadier General Yair Golan, and to freeze his promotion, due to the findings of a Military Police investigation launched following various reports of the use the 'human shield procedure' in the West Bank.
During the procedure, Palestinians are asked to try and convince neighboring suspected terrorists to give themselves up.
Golan was a leading candidate to soon receive the rank of major general, and he was linked with the role of the prime minister's military secretary. But his promotion was put on hold until the investigation ends.
The investigation is focused on operation 'Hot Winter' carried out by the IDF in Nablus in April 2007. Investigators are checking to see whether soldiers used Palestinian civilians as human shields. A video clip from the Associated Press shows soldiers leading a Palestinian to a home with their weapons pointed at him.
Military Police investigators attempted to see whether senior officers in the Central Command, and perhaps higher up, authorized the use of the procedure despite knowing that the IDF had forbidden it.
The IDF Military Advocate General, Brigadier General Avi Mandelblit, decided that there was no basis for submitting a charge against Golan, but materials collected during the investigation suggested that as commander of forces in the area, failures did occur under his watch, including the use of the 'human shield procedure'.
The procedure was outlawed by the High Court, a decision also adopted by the IDF.
Golan today serves in a temporary position as project manager in the IDF's operational branch.
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3461591,00.html
Top IDF officer censured over use of 'human shields' in Nablus
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
Israel Defense Forces Brigadier-General Yair Golan was censured on Thursday for allowing soldiers to use Palestinian civilians as "human shields" during military operations in the West Bank.
IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi decided to reprimand Golan - who formerly served as commander of forces in the West Bank - following a probe by the IDF's criminal investigation division into the army's use of human shields during raids in the town of Nablus.
Golan was the most senior officer to be questioned in the probe, which the army launched last March after IDF soldiers were filmed forcing a young Palestinian man at gunpoint to lead them from house to house during an arrest sweep in Nablus.
The army said in a statement that Golan would be passed over for promotion for at least the next nine months.
In a landmark 2005 decision, Israel's Supreme Court banned the use of
Palestinian civilians as human shields in general, and specifically outlawed taking Palestinian civilians on searches. Before the decision, the army would often have Palestinian civilians knock on the doors of houses where militants were believed to be hiding and ask them to surrender.
The army said the practice - known as the neighbor procedure - prevented
violence by encouraging militants to give themselves up. But in August 2002, a 19-year-old Palestinian student was killed in a gunfight that erupted after he was forced to knock on the door of a building where a Hamas fugitive was hiding.
Since the Supreme Court decision, Palestinians have accused the army of
continuing the practice, but proof was elusive. Human rights groups say the use of civilians in military operations has dropped sharply since the Supreme Court ban, but has not disappeared.
The Israeli rights group B'tselem, which monitors human rights violations in the West Bank, on Thursday praised the army's decision to reprimand Golan.
"We welcome the fact that the army took this seriously and investigated the case and took action," B'tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said. "Golan was a senior officer who broke the law, and we hope that this will send a message to officers that they cannot give orders like this to soldiers."
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914568.html
Rachel Corrie redux.
Israeli bulldozer crushes Palestinian teenager
Israel faces UN, EU criticism over illegal collective punishment against Palestinians in Gaza.
GAZA CITY - A 16-year-old Palestinian boy was killed on Thursday after being run over by an Israeli army bulldozer during a military incursion in the Gaza Strip, medics and witnesses said.
Mahmud Kayed was run over by the bulldozer when it lurched towards a group of youths throwing rocks at the vehicle during the army incursion in the Al-Bureij refugee camp, they said.
Four Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire during the operation, medics said.
Israeli bulldozers were ripping up farmland in the area, while soldiers were going house to house searching for militants and weapons, they said.
No comment from the Israeli army was immediately available.
The death brings to 5,866 the number of people killed since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians.
Israel faced barrage of criticism over sanctions
Gazans stocked up on food and fuel on Thursday as Israel faced a barrage of criticism over its decision to brand Hamas-run Gaza a "hostile entity" and possibly cut its basic supplies.
"I've started stocking fuel to be able to work if Israel interrupts supplies," said Nidal Eslim, a 33-year-old taxi driver and father of seven, for whom his taxi is the sole source of income.
"I will try to stock up 500 litres, which will last me for a couple of days. You have to live somehow."
Throughout the impoverished coastal strip -- which with 1.5 million residents is one of the world's most densely populated places -- residents were buying up food, water and fuel.
"It's the best thing to do to prepare ourselves for the coming days," said Rima, one of the women who rushed to buy up drinking water.
Israel's security cabinet on Wednesday declared Gaza "hostile" in response to continuing rocket fire from the territory where Hamas seized control three months ago in a showdown with its Fatah rivals.
The European Union on Thursday joined a rising chorus of opposition to the move, which has been branded as illegal collective punishment against the residents of a territory already reeling from economic sanctions, border closures and Israeli military operations.
"We are making the same appeal as the UN secretary general for Israel to reverse this decision," said the spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
Britain also voiced "concern" over the decision, with a Foreign Office spokesman saying the government was "monitoring developments."
UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urged Israel to reconsider its decision.
"Such a step would be contrary to Israel's obligations towards the civilian population (of Gaza) under international humanitarian and human rights law," he said in a statement.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas condemned it as an "arbitrary decision" that will "aggravate" Gazans' suffering, while Hamas blasted the move as "collective punishment."
US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) echoed the sentiment, saying: "Israel has the responsibility to protect its citizens, but not by collectively punishing the people of Gaza, which seriously violates the laws of war."
Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation, but is still considered an occupying power under international law as it controls the territory's borders and nearly all aspects of daily life, HRW said.
The vast majority of food, medical supplies and other goods are transferred to Gaza through Israeli-controlled crossing.
China's foreign ministry warned that Israel's measures would "lead to the further escalation of tensions in Gaza and further affect the humanitarian situation there."
And Jordan's government spokesman warned of the "dangerous humanitarian, security and environmental repercussions", while stressing Israel's move would "not help create the suitable environment for progress in the peace process".
www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=22264
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