[Peace-discuss] The other occupation we're responsible for

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Israel shocked by image of soldiers 
	forcing violinist to play at roadblock
	Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
	Monday November 29, 2004
	The Guardian

Of all the revelations that have rocked the Israeli army over the past
week, perhaps none disturbed the public so much as the video footage of
soldiers forcing a Palestinian man to play his violin.

The incident was not as shocking as the recording of an Israeli officer
pumping the body of a 13-year-old girl full of bullets and then saying he
would have shot her even if she had been three years old.

Nor was it as nauseating as the pictures in an Israeli newspaper of
ultra-orthodox soldiers mocking Palestinian corpses by impaling a man's
head on a pole and sticking a cigarette in his mouth.

But the matter of the violin touched on something deeper about the way
Israelis see themselves, and their conflict with the Palestinians.

The violinist, Wissam Tayem, was on his way to a music lesson near Nablus
when he said an Israeli officer ordered him to "play something sad" while
soldiers made fun of him. After several minutes, he was told he could
pass.

It may be that the soldiers wanted Mr Tayem to prove he was indeed a
musician walking to a lesson because, as a man under 30, he would not
normally have been permitted through the checkpoint.

But after the incident was videotaped by Jewish women peace activists, it
prompted revulsion among Israelis not normally perturbed about the
treatment of Arabs.

The rightwing Army Radio commentator Uri Orbach found the incident
disturbingly reminiscent of Jewish musicians forced to provide background
music to mass murder. "What about Majdanek?" he asked, referring to the
Nazi extermination camp.

The critics were not drawing a parallel between an Israeli roadblock and a
Nazi camp. Their concern was that Jewish suffering had been diminished by
the humiliation of Mr Tayem.

Yoram Kaniuk, author of a book about a Jewish violinist forced to play for
a concentration camp commander, wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that
the soldiers responsible should be put on trial "not for abusing Arabs but
for disgracing the Holocaust".

"Of all the terrible things done at the roadblocks, this story is one
which negates the very possibility of the existence of Israel as a Jewish
state. If [the military] does not put these soldiers on trial we will have
no moral right to speak of ourselves as a state that rose from the
Holocaust," he wrote.

"If we allow Jewish soldiers to put an Arab violinist at a roadblock and
laugh at him, we have succeeded in arriving at the lowest moral point
possible. Our entire existence in this Arab region was justified, and is
still justified, by our suffering; by Jewish violinists in the camps."

Others took a broader view by drawing a link between the routine
dehumanising treatment of Palestinians at checkpoints, the desecration of
dead bodies and what looks very much like the murder of a terrified
13-year-old Palestinian girl by an army officer in Gaza.

Israelis put great store in a belief that their army is "the most moral in
the world" because it says it adheres to a code of "the purity of arms".
There is rarely much public questioning of the army's routine explanation
that Palestinian civilians who have been killed had been "caught in
crossfire", or that children are shot because they are used as cover by
fighters.

But the public's confidence has been shaken by the revelations of the past
week. The audio recording of the shooting of the 13-year-old, Iman
al-Hams, prompted much soul searching, although the revulsion appears to
be as much at the Israeli officer firing a stream of bullets into her
lifeless body as the killing itself. Some soldiers told Israeli papers
that their mothers had sought assurances that they did not do that kind of
thing.

One Israeli peace group, the Arik Institute, took out large newspaper
adverts to plead for "Jewish patriots" to "open your eyes and look around"
at the suffering of Palestinians.

The incidents prompted the army to call in all commanders from the rank of
lieutenant-colonel to emphasise the importance of maintaining the "purity
of arms" code.

The army's critics say the real problem is not the behaviour of soldiers
on the ground but the climate of impunity that emanates from the top.

While the officer responsible for killing Iman al-Hams has been charged
with relatively minor offences, and the soldiers who forced the violinist
to play were ticked off for being "insensitive", the only troops who were
swiftly punished for violating regulations last week were some who posed
naked in the snow for a photograph. They were dismissed from their unit.

Last week the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem criticised what it
described as a "culture of impunity" within the army. The group says at
least 1,656 Palestinian non-combatants have been killed during the
intifada, including 529 children.

"To date, one soldier has been convicted of causing the death of a
Palestinian," it said.

"The combination of rules of engagement that encourage a trigger-happy
attitude among soldiers together with the climate of impunity results in a
clear and very troubling message about the value the Israeli military
places on Palestinian life."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004