[Peace-discuss] The brutalization that comes with occupation.

[Morton K.Brussel]

The article below, detailing the psychology of Israeli soldiers in 
occupied Palestine, could easily apply to American soldiers in Iraq.
This comes by way of Mazin Qumsiyeh and was originally published in an 
Israeli newspaper:
See http://qumsiyeh.org.
mkb


by Diana Rubanenko

"We acted without thinking, like zombies"

Breaking the Silence - combat soldiers describe their service in the
Occupied Territories. This time - soldiers who beat up Palestinians and 
fire
rounds from their machine-guns at civilian's homes "just because they 
can."

"It takes time to understand that for three years we weren't normal 
people",
says K., a first-sergeant who served in the Engineering Corps' Yael
reconnaissance unit. "We were like zombies. We didn't make decisions
independently. We did things without prior thought. If I'd been told - 
and I
was told - to hit some old woman in the stomach with my rifle-butt, to 
get
her to shut up, I would have done it without thinking at all. No 
problems".

What does "and I was told" mean?

"For example, when we entered houses I was told 'Give him a slap to 
shut his
mouth'. When my officer questioned someone, he used to shake him, that
someone, make him lie on the ground. Push him and slap him around. To 
get
him to talk. Even though none of us spoke Arabic. At any rate, none of 
us
was able to ask him questions and understand his answers and
understand what he's saying and why he's crying. But we put on a show,
pretended we understood, so we could feel we were doing something. 
Because
we were an elite unit. We are an elite unit, so obviously we can do
everything.

"Once, one of my team went way too far. He brought someone in, shoved 
him,
knocked him down, kicked him, really beat him up. I couldn't watch any 
more,
so I stopped him and went with another guy, so he could show me all the
papers. It was a totally weird situation, because he was a man of 
sixty, and
I didn't understand a word he's saying, and we didn't
even know what we were looking for, and you just pass the time away 
because
we had to be there, we had to demonstrate our power".

First-sergeant K. is another witness who has decided to break the 
silence.
After K.'s demobilization from the IDF, his testimony was taken by a 
member
of the Breaking the Silence organization. Most testimonies in Breaking 
the
Silence have been given by soldiers who were demobilized from the IDF 
over
the past year, and are no longer in compulsory service. The fact that 
most
of the witnesses are now civilians stems from two facts - first, that
serving soldiers are forbidden to speak out without official 
authorization,
but also because - during their army service - combat soldiers find it 
hard
to assimilate the magnitude and complexity of events. "It took a really 
long
time", says K. "to realize the enormity of the things we did, the 
houses we
blew up, the way we treated people".

"We fired a hell of a lot"
First-sergeant, Armored Corps

"I was in the S. operational company. A company where there's no law  
and no
order. Everyone did what he felt like, and me specifically, I used to do
what I felt like. And doing what you felt like, in Ramallah for example,
means you've got a road with vehicles parked at the sides, and you
intentionally drive over the vehicles with your tank. And I'm not 
talking
about one or two tanks that do it. I'm talking about lots, really lots. 
Or
in Rafiah, when I was there, I used to wake up in the morning and fire a
round of 2000."

What's that?

"A round of 2000 means 2000 machine-gun bullets. In Rafiah, we were
constantly under attack, every single day, with hand-grenades, missiles,
whatever was going.

So there was an instruction in force that now and then every weapon had 
to
fire over the defensive wall, avoiding damage to houses or anything 
else.
But because of the lack of restrictions there ... we fired a hell of a 
lot.
And a 2000 round means 2000 bullets in a row, that you fire towards an
entire town, straight at houses, straight at doors. I'm not the only 
one who
did it. Dozens of others did it".

What did you think about at the time?

"I don't know. I was with the machine-gun, I didn't think. In the army, 
I
never thought. Never. And I'd come home, and tell my friends what I was
doing in the army. I mean, it's not something I was ashamed of or 
something.
No way. I did what they told me, and - as well as what they told me - 
did
what everyone else did. Because everyone knew. I never thought, what'll
happen if I shoot? First - I fired. If I thought at all, it would be 
later.
But I never thought while I was firing, while I was actually doing it".
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http://qumsiyeh.org