BREAKING THE BONES OF LITTLE CHILDREN
The study [by Israeli doctoral student and clinical psychologist Nufar Yishai-Karin] . . . included interviews with 18 soldiers and three officers who served with her in two armored infantry units. She knew most of them from her military service. She interviewed each of them personally in his home for a few hours and recorded the interviews; she still has the tapes. Her prior acquaintance with the soldiers led them to trust her implicitly, and they opened up fully, readily telling her about crimes they themselves had committed: murder and killing, BREAKING THE BONES OF LITTLE CHILDREN, inflicting humiliation, destroying property, stealing . . . The article describes the brutalization of some of the soldiers . . . Among the brutalized group was the impulsive type of soldier, who used the opportunity to let off steam, sometimes enthusiastically. Testimony: “I went out on my first patrol . . . Others on the patrol were just shooting like crazies . . . I also started shooting like all the others . . . Look, I WON’T TELL YOU IT WASN’T COOL . . . suddenly you are responsible for what you are doing. You take the gun. You shoot. You do what you want.”
(‘Parallel Lives’ , Dalia Karpel, article in Haaretz. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/909589.html).
commanders encouraged the brutality
Some junior commanders encouraged the brutality and even endorsed it. “After two months in Rafah a new commanding officer arrived … So we do a first patrol with him. It’s 6 A.M., 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 grabbed the boy. I am a degenerate if I am not telling you the truth: HE BROKE HIS HAND AT THE WRIST . . . BROKE HIS LEG . . . AND STARTED TO STOMP ON HIS STOMACH . . . 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.”
(Dalia Karpel, op.cit.).
BEASTS WALKING ON TWO LEGS
The Palestinians are BEASTS WALKING ON TWO LEGS.
(Israeli President Menahim Begin, speech quoted in the New Statesman, 25 June 1982).
CUT HER STOMACH OPEN WITH A BUTCHER’S KNIFE.
The Jews ordered us to line up against the wall started shooting. All were killed: my father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, uncles, aunts and some of their children. Halim Eid saw a man shoot a bullet into the neck of my [pregnant] sister. THEN HE CUT HER STOMACH OPEN WITH A BUTCHER’S KNIFE.
(Fahimi Zidan, a Palestinian child survivor of the infamous Deir Yassin massacre of 1948).
MAKE THE PALESTINIANS SO MISERABLE
“We have to do everything to MAKE THE PALESTINIANS SO MISERABLE that they will leave.”
(Rafael Eitan, Israeli general and politician, 1980).