Hebron Horrors - MJ Rosenberg - former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report

Hebron Horrors

Source: http://www.israelpolicyforum.org/display.cfm?rid=1579

MJ Rosenberg, Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum, is a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report.

Some 400 settlers live in H-2 in the midst of 30,000 Palestinians.

Last month, I visited H-2 despite being told by an Israeli friend that it is â€œthe worst place in the West Bank.â€ How so? â€œThe settlers there are religious fanatics and dedicate their lives to terrorizing the Palestinians with the goal of driving them all out. The Palestinians canâ€™t fight back because the army wonâ€™t let them. On top of all that, the settlers hate the soldiers almost as much as they hate the Palestinians because the soldiers try to curb their activities. These soldiers are in a situation where they have to defend fanatics who routinely refer to them as Nazis.â€
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I walked into the heart of H-2 following a short inquisition by an IDF soldier. My first stop was the Ibrahami Mosque, which encompasses the Tomb of the Patriarchs. As I walked down the steps toward the mosque, a young Palestinian made the point of informing me that I was following the same route Jewish zealot Baruch Goldstein took when, in February 1994, he burst into the mosque and shot dead 29 Muslims at prayer.

Goldstein is a hero to the Hebron settlers. His burial place (in a tourist park named after Meir Kahane) was turned into a shrine where settlers annually celebrate Goldsteinâ€™s murder spree with parties and games. (In 2004, police arrested some of them for holding an illegal celebration of both the Goldstein murders and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin). For Palestinians, of course, the Goldstein massacre is a symbol of the ultimate threat.

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But the most striking thing is the steel mesh screens (see photo) that the Arabs have installed just above the heads of pedestrians to protect them from the garbage and excrement routinely dumped by the settlers from their second floor windows. The screens catch all sorts of disgusting stuff and lethal objects like cinder blocks, although liquid debris does make its way to the ground or on the heads of anyone below.

Itâ€™s an appalling sight. Imagine looking up and seeing and smelling the foulest debris just above your head, stopped only by mesh. But then everything about H-2 is appalling, including the fact that Israeli soldiers are forced to serve there.
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Last summer a group of 70 soldiers who had served in Hebron created a photographic and video exhibit at a Tel Aviv college about their experiences there called, â€œBreaking Silence.â€ The exhibit, which was a huge success, described from the soldiersâ€™ point of view, the dehumanizing experience that serving there had on them. Many spoke of the fear they had â€“ not only of the Arabs or of the Jews â€“ but of being terribly transformed as human beings by the experience.

One soldier spoke of being frightened by the â€œrushâ€ he felt from giving Arabs orders. "I was ashamed of myself the day I realized that I simply enjoy the feeling of powerâ€¦Forget for a moment that I think that all these Jews are nuts and that I believe we should leave the territories. But how dare [a Palestinian] say â€˜noâ€™ to me? I am the Law! I am the Law here!

â€œOnce I was at a checkpoint, a so-called strangulation checkpoint, blocking the entrance to a village. On one side a line of cars wanting to get out, and on the other side a line of cars wanting to get in. I stood there, gesturing â€˜you to do this,â€™ â€˜you do that.â€™ You start playing with them, like a computer game. â€˜You come here, you go there.â€™ You barely move, you make them obey the tip of your finger. It's a mighty feeling.â€

A second soldier wrote: â€œThe thing thatâ€¦affected me emotionallyâ€¦was when we had just arrived in Hebron. I was on guard duty, when suddenly, from one of the small streets, a settler girl shows up and shouts at me very urgently: â€˜Soldier, soldier, come quickly, there's an Arab here who's attacking a girl.â€™ I got very alarmed and advanced with my weapon cocked. The scene that unfolded was of an Arab with his two children. Heâ€™s trying to protect them from another settler girl who's throwing stones at them. I blow my fuse and start screaming at herâ€¦.Sheâ€™s screaming back that they are Arabs and should be killedâ€¦and the father, poor guy, says, with helpless eyes, â€˜We're used to it, we've been here a long time now, it's alright.â€™ "

A third soldier spoke of the day a group from abroad came to visit Hebron for the Jewish holidays. "One morning, a fairly big group arrived, around 15 Jews from France. They were all religious Jews. They were in a good mood, really having a great time, and I spent my entire shift following this gang of Jews around and trying to keep them from destroying the town. They just wandered around, picked up every stone they saw, and started throwing them at Arabs' windows, and overturning whatever they came across.

â€œThere's no horror story here: they didn't catch some Arab and kill him or anything like that, but what bothered me is that maybe someone told them that this is one place in the world where a Jew can take all of his rage out on Arab people, and simply do anything. Come to this Palestinian town, and do whatever they want, and the soldiers will always be there to back them up. Because that was my job, to protect them and make sure that nothing happened to them."

Note that this soldier said that he had no â€œhorror storyâ€ to tell, just an ordinary day for soldiers, not to mention Palestinians, in Hebron. And that is, of course, the greatest horror.

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Hebron Horrors - MJ Rosenberg - former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report

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