Blair just said “You would be hard pressed to find anyone who in September 2002 doubted that Saddam had WMD”.
It wouldn’t have been that hard. If he had asked members of the Near East and North Africa Department of the FCO, the Middle East experts in the FCO’s Research Analysts, or in the Defence Intelligence Service, he would have found absolutely no shortage of people who doubted it, whatever position No 10 was forcing on their institutions.
One of the many failures of this Inquiry has been a failure to ask individual witnesses before it whether they personally had believed in the existence of any significant Iraqi WMD programme. I know for certain that would have drawn some extremely enlightening answers from among the FCO and probably MOD participants.
Sir Martin Gilbert allowed Blair to conflate Iran, Iraq, Al-Qaida, WMD and terrorism in a completely unjustified way. When Straw tried exactly the same trick, Rod Lyne did not allow him to get away with it.
A further stark contrast with Straw is that both Blair and Straw were asked about the failure of the UK to secure movement in the Middle East peace process by using our role in Iraq to influence the USA. A major, detailed and fascinating part of Straw’s answer was that Israel’s – and specifically Netanyahu’s – political influence in the USA had prevented progress.
By contrast, Blair did not even mention Israel in response to the questions on the failure to achieve progress in the Middle East. He solely blamed the Palestinian Intafada. He has been anxious to widen the discussion beyond Iraq at every opportunity, and frequently referred to destabilising factors in the Middle East, and again and again pointed to a growing threat from Iran and Iranian sponsorship of terrorism, and to Palestinian terrorism (including Saddam Hussein’s past sponsorship of it).
He has made not one single comment about Israel’s behaviour as a contributing factor in Middle East instability. Given Blair’s official position as Middle East envoy, this lack of any bare pretence at impartiality is most revealing.
Though I’m opposed to capital punishment in principle, I find myself wondering whether in Blair’s case one could make an acception.
Ideally I’d like to have seen the great anti-war march in London, heading for Westminster, instead of dispersing peacefully, and occupying the main centres of government, including the Houses of Parliament; and setting up a people’s parliament to debate the coming war with Iraq.
Obviously this would have been insurection, but sometimes a little insurection is healthy in what’s become an ossified “democracy.” Blair would also have been grabbed after the mob had stormed through the gates of Downing Street.
I’d have liked to have seen him put on trial in the Great Hall in the Palace of Westminster, like Charles the First, and charged with High Treason as well. I’ve no doubt he would have been found guilty. The next bit is more difficult; should we have executed him in the same fashion as Charles the First? I think not, as this kind of martyrdom for his faith would suit him just fine.
If I’d been allowed to address the people I’d have urged them to attack and occupy the centres of government. I believe, on that day, all that was needed would have been a spark, a bit of leadership, and the whole house of cards might have been threatened.
Of course there might have been casualties, but it’s not as if the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq haven’t led to casualities, is it? So, on balance, maybe an open revolt would have been less of a burden than all these years of pointless war for an insane imperialist project.
Perhaps I should add a personal piece of information? A few months before the attack on Iraq, I received a large royalty check. I contacted a few people in politics and said that I was willing to hire a large hall in London, provide free food and drink, and announce that parliament had been unofficially recalled to discuss the coming attack on Iraq and all the “evidence” relating to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the threat they posed to the UK and the world. It was frustrating that Parliament wasn’t discussing what the whole country was discussing. Where was the democracy? The stories coming out of Downing Street needed to be examined and the consequences thought about.
I received the cold shoulder, and the idea of such a Putney-style debate was regarded with something close to horror by the people I presented the idea to.
In my naivity I imagined that the MP’s would jump at the chance of debating an issue of such enormous importance and getting all the relevant information out in the open. I even suggested we could call expert witnesses to present information that countered Downing Streets propaganda. But no, nobody was interested, and I was left high and dry. There’s not much point setting up a “rival” parliament if the MP’s won’t turn up is there?
It was also hinted that such a radical proposal could, perhaps, in the current climate, have been a rather dangerous path to follow, and maybe I shouldn’t go public with my idea. So I didn’t, until now.
Wow!
Also, while I’md putting my neck on the block so to speak, I think it’s important to realize that the real, current, threat to our way of life doesn’t come from the pathetic pricks of the terrorists, but in reality comes from the exaggerated reaction of the state to terrorism. What’s left of classic, bourgeoise, liberal, democracy; is being slowly but surely dismantled before our eyes. A pefect example is the legal safeguard of habeus corpus. Now, the state, can seize, imprison for ever, and not only not bring the person to trial in a court of law, but it doesn’t even have to charge them with any specific crime! Not only that, the state can kill people in foreign countries at will based on hearsay. Then there’s the whole ghastly issue of torture taking place in secret prisons.
Clearly we are seeing our freedoms shredded and systematically abandoned all under the cover of the bogus war on terror, which is increasingly a war of terror, aimed not just against a handful of terrorists, but at the rest of us as well.
Writerman, “a dangerous path” in what way? I’m intrigued.
I only meant that people seemed nervous about the consequences of openly attempting to undermine the government by introducing too much “democractic excess” in the ritualized, controlled, chanelled, psuedo-democracy, that is the “Westminster model.”
My impression was that people were concerned about how far Blair was willing to go in order to get his way, and his war.
For example, parliament didn’t exactly spend much time debating Iraq, did it? I mean compared to fox hunting. They always seemed to in recess or there wasn’t enough room or time for a proper debate. The British way always seems to smother rather than strangle, doesn’t it?
Nobody said anything remotely threatening to me, only I got the distinct feeling that there was a lot of concern about what might happen next.
The main reason Blair had to spend so much time lying about the phantom of Iraq’a weapons of mass destruction was that otherwise he couldn’t have gotten the support of parliament for the war. But he knew he could always count on the Conservatives, no matter what. They didn’t need much pursueding. It was his own party he had to convince, browbeat, cheat, lie to.
Someone told me that they were sure Blair wouldn’t hesitate to split the Labour Party over the issue of Iraq, if he had to. Some even thought he wanted to do that, causing a re-alignment of British politics. Blair ruling perhaps as leader of a new Christian Democratic centre party, comprising the right of New Labour and the Conservatives. But all this is very speculative.
The point is, people thought Blair capable of almost anything. In a re-aligned Westminster, he could even have ruled as leader of a minority government. Another person said that in their opinion, Blair was more than ready to sacrifice New Labour to save himself.
I was very struck by edo’s quote from Salandria over on the thread-whose-name-we-must-not-utter, which might in part explain writerman’s fears. We, here on this blog, assume that Blair would be at pains to conceal his guilt. Perhaps he doesn’t give a damn, aware that we are few and impotent, and anyone who feels uppity should reflect upon the sad conclusion of a certain walk in the woods.
I suddenly realised who Blair reminds me of – it’s Mehitabel the cat:
my youth i shall never forget
but there s nothing i really regret
wotthehell wotthehell
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai
the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell
and i end with my favorite motto
toujours gai toujours gai
aaa~
tinyurl.com/mehitabel
Actually, I’m going for walk in the woods in few minutes. The snow is all around, deep, and crisp, and even.
It’s important to remember that Blair and the cabel around him, his loyal courtiers, reliant on his patronage, were only a tiny minority dragging the country to war, against the will of the vast majority of the people.
The establishment didn’t support the war en masse. There were deep splits, and virtually no one, in private, which I can attest to, believed that Iraq was really a threat, or that it had a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction at its disposal. Everyone knew that Iraq was on its knees and broken, after the wars and the sanctions.
The problem was how to stop Blair? With the Sun behind him and the Conservatives, it was going to be very, very, difficult indeed.
In reality Britain is a country/state ruled by a handful of extremely powerful people, who are used to getting their way on most issues. Anyone who questions this “dictatorship”, or maybe I’d prefer to call it a “dictatorshop”, is filtered out of the political system.
The filter functions as both a net that can keep people out and lift people up. Blair is one of those people. That’s why “class” is so important in Britain. It both trains and teaches one about where power is, and what it is, and how one weilds it.
Chilcot is a prime example of this process in action. Blair is both a product and a useful tool of the class/power system, which is why he is so successful. The British always defer to power, and Blair at the inquiry still represents very powerful interests who one would be foolish to cross. Which is why he carefully inserted his “oath of loyalty” to both the United States and… Israel. In public life one crosses the interests of those two at one’s peril.
In parliament it was extraordinary how few people dared to stand up to Blair, even though anyone could see the absurdity of his sales-pitch about the threat from Iraq. It didn’t stand up to a moments scrutiny and was laughable. Yet, literally only a handful of MPs criticized Blair, why? Simply because criticizing Blair, would mean, in reality, that one was criticizing the United States and Israel at the same time, and that’s not the way to get ahead in politics in modern Britain.
So what one has is a degenerate system which is maskquerading as a democracy, which in fact is closer to an oligarchy, which in times of war becomes a dictatorship in all but name.
This makes me weep silently inside. Damn Bush’s and Blair’s evil eyes.
http://tiny.cc/W4tYS
The 2003 Peace March needed a follow-up plan. It should have been an ultimatum, not a protest. The message should have been “No war, or we will all be back!”
I found last Friday’s protest miserable and dispiriting. A few hundred people. Eddie says that people are bored with the issue. I disagree. I think they’re beaten, and have accepted subservience.
As to elections and voting, someone should draw up a list of all the MPs who voted against.
Actually, I don’t think the problem is confined to the corridors of power. I think that following rules has replaced good judgement at all levels throughout our society. I expect that everyone has encountered this. I had it on my way home on Friday. I’d accidentally thrown away the wrong half of my (ludicrously expensive) return ticket. So I went up to the ticket office, explained, showed them the “out” ticket, and drew a complete blank. The system software made it impossible for staff or supervisors to issue a ticket without full payment. So I got home by fare dodging; I’d only taken the bare minimum of cash as the protest had apparently been banned.
Nothing is anyone’s responsibility anymore. The people making the decisions are insulated from the people affected by those decisions by *Call centers, *Customer Services departments, *Software interfaces *Barriers, reinforced glass and security systems etc. The barriers around Parliament and Downing Street are more of the same, as are the robots and drones killing people in Afghanistan.
I think that anger is very general, but there’s no clear target. Blair is the target here, but we all know that the system failed, that the system, and lots of lesser systems, have been implemented from the top downwards, they lack transparency and accountability. Even your home PC and mobile phone obey the instructions of the manufacturer rather than the user.
Writerman,
you are quite right about overwhelming US / Israeli power, but again, this is top-down power, not popular power. I don’t know if a majority of US or Israeli citizens support war, probably it’s pretty evenly matched. But the system uses the few-percent mismatch to justify all-out conflict.
Yesterday’s InI newsletter alerted me to this:
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=62781
Can anyone follow the link on that page to the blog and translate and summarise, please? It looks similar to the case that Mary linked to.
Writerman has it on the button when saying
‘So what one has is a degenerate system which is maskquerading as a democracy, which in fact is closer to an oligarchy, which in times of war becomes a dictatorship in all but name.’
It will be up to us, from now on, to inform and cajoule and prosletise to voters that the only way of us NOT going to war with Iran, in the same illegal schock and awe fashion, will be by voting for thrid or fourth parties, as both major parties will inevitably be supporting US hegemony which is decisively negative to a sustainable life on earth.
Thats my conclusion anyway, please wake me up when I get too nauseating about it, but I feel we as voters can scramble their plans if we vote against their allegiances and plans, forever idealistic.
Will Billy Bragg be voting against noLabour plans and will he tell others
to do the same? can he go against his basic instincts and vote pro humanity?
I don’t believe there is much of a difference between Democracy and dictatorship.
They are just names, just words, useless slogans.
What matters is facts. And the Facts are the UK and America are war mongering states, more war mongering then any nation they label as a dictatorship and more warmongering than any nation they eccept in to their democratic club.
Ok I recognise three types of government.
The type that invades others.
The type that is/is going to be invaded by others. And the type that isn’t invaded or invades.
To the best of my knowledge, most of the nations who go about invading others call themselves Democracy.
If that is democracy, **** democracy.
Ingo,
this has to be approached constituency by constituency. Anti-war voters have to vote for whichever anti-war candidate stands the best chance of being elected. In certain constituencies, this will be the Labour candidate.
The third, fourth and lesser parties should really be thinking of standing aside and fielding just one candidate between them, to best oppose the supporters of war.
Arsalan,
this isn’t democracy. We need to win back democracy. Most ordinary voters do not want and did not want war.
**** democracy, **** freedom, **** America, **** Britain, **** patriotism, **** Israel, **** Zionism, **** it all.
**** all the slogans they use to justify killing babies. **** them and their mothers,
It is the right of everyone to defend themselves, so **** our tropes I side with the people whose lands were invaded.
**** each and every one of our boys who died for his country, and may each and everyone of them burn in hell for ever and ever.
Soldiers do not have to fight when they are ordered to, each has is able to desert, and each and everyone choose to join the army.
Arsalan,
if they can make us angry, they have passed our guard. They will have planted the seed of conflict and division in our hearts, and their machine needs to reap that harvest for its fuel. The ordinary people of the world want no conflict, just the chance to live our lives.
Sorry I had just finished reading this when I wrote that.
I need to remember that there will come a time when the other side are holding the guns.
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/such-a-nice-jewish-girl/
“Such a nice Jewish girl”
Female soldiers break their silence
01.29.2010 | YNet
Six years after first collection of Breaking the Silence testimonies, organization releases booklet of testimonies from female soldiers who served in territories. Stories include systematic humiliation of Palestinians, reckless and cruel violence, theft, killing of innocent people and cover-up. Here are only some of testimonies
Amir Shilo
Published: 01.29.10, 15:47 / Israel News
“A female combat soldier needs to prove more… a female soldier who beats up others is a serious fighter… when I arrived there was another female there with me, she was there before me… everyone spoke of how impressive she is because she humiliates Arabs without any problem. That was the indicator. You have to see her, the way she humiliates, the way she slaps them, wow, she really slapped that guy.”
The Breaking the Silence organization on Friday released a booklet of testimonies by female soldiers recounting various abuse cases involving Palestinians in the West Bank.
In recent years, females have been increasingly involved in combat and field operations in the IDF and Border Guard. Among other things, these female soldiers engage in daily contact with the Palestinian population ?” at roadblocks and in Palestinian communities.
According to the latest testimonies, many of these young women have trouble coping with the violent reality they are exposed to and find themselves facing situations that contradict their values. Some of them end up engaging in acts, or turning a blind eye to acts, that will burden them years later. Like their male counterparts, some of these females have a need to speak about what they saw.
“The girls have greater difficulties in telling the story, because they’re the minority to begin with” the organization’s director Dana Golan says.
‘Each soldier would give them a pet’
In the framework of the latest project, Breaking the Silence gathered the testimonies of more than 50 female soldiers who served in various posts in the territories. Ynet presents some of the highlights in this report.
Golan noted that female soldiers were not more sensitive to the Palestinians than their male comrades.
“We discovered that the girls try to be even more violent and brutal than the boys, just to become one of the guys,” she said.
Reporter took a picture, ‘special patrol’ sent to get them (Photo: Reuters)
A female Seam Line Border Guard spoke of the chase after illegal aliens: “In half an hour you can catch 30 people without any effort.” Then comes the question of what should be done with those who were caught ?” including women, children, and elderly. “They would have them stand, and there’s the well-known Border Guard song (in Arabic): ‘One hummus, one bean, I love the Border Guard’ ?” they would make them sing this. Sing, and jump. Just like they do with recruits… The same thing only much worse. And if one of them would laugh, or if they would decide someone was laughing, they would punch him. Why did you laugh? Smack… It could go on for hours, depending on how bored they are. A shift is eight hours long, the times must be passed somehow.”
Most of the female soldiers say that they sensed there was a problem during their service, but did nothing.
Another female soldier’s testimony, who served at the Erez checkpoint, indicates how violence was deeply rooted in the daily routine: “There was a procedure in which before you release a Palestinian back into the Strip ?” you take him inside the tent and beat him.”
That was a procedure?
“Yes, together with the commanders.”
How long did it last?
“Not very long; within 20 minutes they would be back in the base, but the soldiers would stop at the post to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes while the guys from the command post would beat them up.”
This happened with every illegal alien?
“There weren’t that many… it’s not something you do everyday, but sort of a procedure. I don’t know if they strictly enforced it each and every time… it took me a while to realize that if I release an illegal alien on my end, by the time he gets back to Gaza he will go through hell… two or three hours can pass by the time he gets into the Strip. In the case of the kid, it was a whole night. That’s insane, since it’s a ten minute walk. They would stop them on their way; each soldier would give them a ‘pet’, including the commanders.”
‘Child’s hand broken on the chair’
A female soldier in Sachlav Military Police unit, stationed in Hebron, recalled a Palestinian child that would systematically provoke the soldiers by hurling stones at them and other such actions. One time he even managed to scare a soldier who fell from his post and broke his leg.
Retaliation came soon after: “I don’t know who or how, but I know that two of our soldiers put him in a jeep, and that two weeks later the kid was walking around with casts on both arms and legs… they talked about it in the unit quite a lot ?” about how they sat him down and put his hand on the chair and simply broke it right there on the chair.”
Even small children did not escape arbitrary acts of violence, said a Border Guard female officer serving near the separation fence: “We caught a five-year-old… can’t remember what he did… we were taking him back to the territories or something, and the officers just picked him up, slapped him around and put him in the jeep. The kid was crying and the officer next to me said ‘don’t cry’ and started laughing at him. Finally the kid cracked a smile ?” and suddenly the officer gave him a punch in the stomach. Why? ‘Don’t laugh in my face’ he said.”
‘Palestinian beaten before being released to Strip’ (Photo: AFP)
Was there also abuse of women?
“Yes” the same soldier replied. “Slaps, that kind of thing. Mainly slaps.”
From men?
“Also. From whoever. It was mainly the female combat soldiers who beat people. There were two who really liked to beat people up. But also men, they had no problem slapping a woman around. If she screamed, they’d say, ‘Shut it,’ with another slap. A routine of violence. There were also those who didn’t take part, but everyone knew it happened.”
Sometimes an entire “production” was necessary to satisfy the violent urges. “There’s a sense of violence,” a border policewoman in the Jenin area said. “And yes, it’s boring, so we’d create some action. We’d get on the radio, and say they threw stones at us, then someone would be arrested, they’d start investigating him… There was a policewoman, she was bored, so okay, she said they threw stones at her. They asked her who threw them. ‘I don’t know, two in grey shirts, I didn’t manage to see them.’ They catch two guys with grey shirts… beat them. Is it them? ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Okay, a whole incident, people get beaten up. Nothing happened that day.”
An education noncommissioned officer from the Border Guard took her officers for a Sunday of culture ?” a show in Tel Aviv. When they got back to their base in the Gaza Strip, they were appalled by the dissonance ?” one moment they’re clapping in a theater, the next moment they’re acting like beasts.
“Crossing the checkpoint, it’s like another world… Palestinians walk with trolleys on the side of the road, with wagons, donkeys… so the Border Guards take a truck with the remains of food and start throwing it at them… cottage cheese, rotten vegetables… it was the most appalling thing I experienced in the territories.”
The soldier said she tried to protest, but was silenced by the commanding officers. When she tried to go around them to higher authorities, she found a solution. “Almost immediately I got into an officers’ course.”
‘You don’t know which side you’re on’
Some of the testimonies document incidents of vandalism of Palestinian property, and even theft. The same female soldier who recounted her time at the Erez checkpoint said, “Many times the soldiers would open the Palestinians’ food.”
And would they take it as well?
“Yes. They take things all the time at checkpoints in the territories. You’ll never see a soldier without musabaha (chickpea past similar to hummus). And that is something they give many times… They are so desperate to pass that they even sort of bribe the soldiers a little… ”
A female Border Guard officer spoke of how Palestinian children would arrive at checkpoints with bags of toys for sale ?” and how the Border Guard would deal with them: “‘Okay, throw the bag away. Oh, I need some batteries,’, and they would take, they would take whatever they wanted.”
What would they take?
“Toys, batteries, anything… cigarettes. I’m sure they took money as well, but I don’t remember that specifically.” She also spoke of one incident in which the looting was caught by a television camera, and the affair blew up. “Then, the company commander gathered us and reprimanded us: ‘How did you not think they might see you?'” No one was punished: “Really, it was an atmosphere in which we were allowed to hit and humiliate.”
Some of the gravest stories come from Hebron. A Sachlav female soldier spoke of one of the company’s hobbies: Toy guns. “Those plastic pellets really hurt… we had a bunch of those… you’re sitting on guard and ‘tak’ you fire at a kid, ‘tak’ ?” you fire at another kid.”
She recounted an incident in which a Palestinian reporter took a picture of one of the soldiers aiming a gun at a boy’s head. She said a “special patrol” went into Hebron, and came back with the pictures. The soldier said they either paid the reporter, or threatened her.
And the pictures were circulated in the company?
“No, they were destroyed the same day.”
What did the company commander say about it?
“He said it’s a good thing they didn’t reach the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.”
Company commander reprimands, but no one punished (Photo: Reuters)
Some of the testimonies from Hebron deal with the difficult position the soldiers find themselves in, between Palestinians and settlers ?” who they say are even harder to handle. Some of the female soldiers were shocked with the level of violence the settlers’ children used against the Palestinians. “They would throw stones at them, the Jewish kids,” a Nahal female soldier said, “and the parents would say anything… you see this every day in Tel Rumeida.”
Doesn’t it seem strange to you that one child throws a stone at another child?
“Because the one child is Jewish and the other is Palestinians, it’s somehow okay… and it was obvious that there would be a mess afterwards. And you also don’t really know which side you are on… I have to make a switch in my head and keep hating the Arabs and justify the Jews.”
In her frustration, the same female soldier told of how she once spit on a Palestinian in the street: “I don’t think he even did anything. But again, it was cool and it was the only thing I could do to… you know, I couldn’t take brag that I caught a terrorists… But I could spit on them and degrade them and laugh at them.”
Another female Sachlav soldier told the story of the time an eight-year-old settler girl in Hebron decided to bash a stone into the head of a Palestinian adult crossing her passing by her in the street. “Boom! She jumped on him, and gave it to him right here in the head… then she started screaming ‘Yuck, yuck, his blood is on me'”.
The soldier said the Palestinian then turned in the girl’s direction ?” a move that was interpreted as a threat by one of the soldiers in the area, who added a punch of his own: “And I stood there horrified… an innocent little girl in her Shabbat dress… the Arab covered the wound with his hand and ran.” She recalled another incident with the same child: “I remember she had her brother in the stroller, a baby. She was giving him stones and telling him: ‘Throw them at the Arab’.”
9-year-old shot to death
Other testimonies raise concerns as to the procedures of opening fire in the territories, particularly crowd control weapons. A female Border Guard detailed to protocol she called “dismantling rubber” ?” the dismantling of rubber bullets from clusters of three to single bullets, and peeling the rubber off of them. She also said that, despite the clear orders to fire in the air or at the demonstrators’ feet, it was common procedure to fire at the abdomen.
A female Border Guard officer in Jenin spoke of an incident in which a nine-year-old Palestinian, who tried to climb the fence, failed, and fled ?” was shot to death: “They fired… when he was already in the territories and posed no danger. The hit was in the abdomen area, they claimed he was on a bicycle and so they were unable to hit him in the legs.”
But the soldier was most bewildered by what happened next between the four soldiers present: “They immediately got their stories straight… An investigation was carried out, at first they said it was an unjustified killing… In the end they claimed that he was checking out escape routes for terrorists or something… and they closed the case.”
A female intelligence soldier who served near Etzion recounted an incident in which snipers killed a boy suspected of throwing a Molotov cocktail. The soldiers coordinated their stories, and the female soldier was shocked, mainly by the happy atmosphere that surrounding the incident: “It was written in the situation evaluation after the incident that from now on there will be quiet… This is the best kind of deterrence.”
‘They don’t know how to accept the women’
The female soldiers repeatedly mention the particular difficulties they had as women, who had to prove that to were “fighters” in the midst of the goading male soldiers on the one hand, and the Palestinians, who have a hard time handling women in uniform on the other hand. The following story of a female Border Guard officer sums the matter up.
When the interviewer asked her if the Palestinians “suffer even more from the women in the Border Guard”, she said: “Yes. Yes. Because they don’t know how to accept the women. The moment a girl slaps a man, he is so humiliated, he is so humiliated he doesn’t know what to do with himself… I am a strong and well-built girl, and this is even harder for them to handle. So one of their ways of coping is to laugh. They really just started to laugh at me. The commander looks at me and tells me, ‘What? Are you going to let that slide? Look how he’s laughing at you’.
“And you, as someone who has to salvage your self-respect… I told them to sit down and I told him to come… I told him to come close, I really approached him, as if I was about to kiss him. I told him, ‘Come, come, what are you afraid of? Come to me!’ And I hit him in the balls. I told him, ‘Why aren’t you laughing?’ He was in shock, and then he realized that… not to laugh. It shouldn’t reach such a situation.”
You hit him with your knee?
“I hit him in the balls. I took my foot, with my military show, and hit him in the balls. I don’t know if you’ve ever been hit in the balls, but it looks like it hurts. He stopped laughing in my face because it hurt him. We then took him to a police station and I said to myself, ‘Wow, I’m really going to get in trouble now.’ He could complain about me and I could receive a complaint at the Military police’s criminal investigation division.
“He didn’t say a word. I was afraid and I said. I was afraid about myself, not about him. But he didn’t say a word. ‘What should I say, that a girl hit me?’ And he could have said, but thank God, three years later I didn’t get anything and no one knows about it.”
What did it feel like that moment?
“Power, strength that I should not have achieved this way. But I didn’t brag about it. That’s why I did it that way, one on one. I told them to sit on the side, I saw that he wasn’t looking. I said to myself that it doesn’t make sense that as a girl who gives above and beyond and is worth more than some boys ?” they should laugh at me like that because I am a girl. Because you think I can’t do it… ” What did it feel like that moment Today, when you look at it three years later, would you have done things differently?
“I would change the system. It’s seriously defective.”
What does that mean?
“The system is deeply flawed. The entire administration, the way things are run, it’s not right. I don’t know how I would… I don’t think I did the right thing in this incident but it was what I had to do. It’s inevitable under these circumstances.”
You’re saying the small soldiers on the ground are not the problem, but the whole situation surrounding them?
“Yes, this entire situation is problematic.”
The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Office said in response to the publication: “These are anonymous testimonies, without any mention of a time or a place, and their reliability cannot be examined in any way. The IDF is a controlled state organization, which learns and draws lessons, and cooperates with any serious body with the shared goal of exhausting any inquiry when such an examination is inquired.
“The forces in the Central Command are engaged in a daily battle against the terror organizations. The soldiers undergo a professional training which includes a special reference to the contact with the Palestinian population, mental preparation led by professionals, a routine training by their commanders and ongoing control.
“Another aspect in the supervision over the IDF’s activity is the investigative-legal aspect. The IDF includes a number of bodies whose job it is to probe incidents in which any activity against the orders is suspected. Appealing to these bodies is the right, but also the duty, of any soldier or commander, who feels that any activity is being done against orders. Female soldiers and commanders receive the same training given to the fighters.”
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And when that time comes remember what the Palestinians have gone through and what the Zionists have done before you make a judgment.
Arsalan,
I have tried to contact you through your forum, but I don’t know if it is working properly. The message I sent is still in my ‘Outbox’, not in my ‘Sentbox’. I tried to send it to ‘Unite’; that is you, isn’t it?
Arsalan, I hope that I will always strive for peace, no matter how bad things get, but we are all just human. I am sorry.
Clark I forgot the password to my forum.
Sorry
This is my email address, I am unlikely to forget its password;
[email protected]
Arsalan,
I’ve e-mailed you; thanks. I never display my e-mail address in public, as it can lead to spam.
What’s important now is to look to the future, as Blair is doing; and think about how one stops the west attacking Iran, using the weapons of mass destruction tale all over again. Would they really use it again? Probably, the ruling state has no honour.
We are ruled by the state. A form of state where capitalism, the corporate media, politics, the military; have merged into one another to form a new whole. It’s the state dreamed of fascist leaders. The corporate state. Parliament is a mere rubber stamp. A forum where the democratic ritual is played out for public consumption.
Sure we have democratic rights, but these are being systemativally curtailed. We have democractic rights, but not much power. Voting for parties that are santioned by the state isn’t really much of a choice is it? We can say what we like, but the state isn’t listening to what we say.
Blair seems to be positioning himself once more to act as a salesman for yet another war. But has he reached his sell-by date?
Whilst his reputation is in tatters, this is primarily in the UK. In the US he still has worth as a salesman of death and destruction. He’d make a “good” team with Obama.
Iran is now in the cross-hairs. Our goal is regime change. The problem is how to achieve it without setting the entire region on fire. But, given the potential rewards of destroying the Islamic Revoltion, it’s worth the risk. Our client state/dictatorships will take care of things at their end.
Writerman,
I pretty much agree, but I think Iran may be in the jaws of a vice rather than the crosshairs, ie pressure is being exerted, rather than the approach towards Iraq. According to my 2002 figures, Iran made 2.2% of world military expenditure. Any idea where Iraq stood? Much less than that, at a guess. Iran may be too powerful to attack outright. Now, Yemen, Somalia, Haiti, on the other hand…
But yes, we need to fight back against the corporatisataion of the UK.
The Birth of the Power State. Or The Power State Drops the Veil of Democracy.
How could one stop the UK taking part in an attack on Iraq? Well, if we lived in functioning democracy, there would be a chance, only we don’t. It will be a re-run of Iraq all over again, onlyt the script will have been brought up to date and the leading actors have been changed. Obama’s great value is that he was recognized as someone who could get away with it, whereas yet another Republican would have an uphill struggle selling a new war.
The central narrative is the same, only instead of non-existant weapons of mass destruction, we now have non-existant nuclear weapons.
At a minimum only something close to a general strike could stop a degenerate parliament taking Britain to war again, and how likely is that, a general strike? After all in our “democracy” the Trades Unions have been crushed as an effective counterweight, or political centre of power. Thatcher’s smashing of the National Union of Mineworker’s saw to that.
I think people underestimate the effects and consequences of the destruction of the Unions for democracy in Britain. After that all people really had as “power” was the vote, and that really isn’t enough in a “democracy” like ours to safeguard our fundamental rights.
Once New Labour became incorporated into the state apparatus, like the other two major parties, “demcracy” effective came to a halt in Britain, or changed into something else. Another type of state form. The Power State, or the corporate state.