A child runs from tear gas in Nabi Saleh. (photo: Joseph Dana)
For the second time this week, soldiers raided the village of Nabi Saleh. From the hours of 12:00 until 03:00 last night, soldiers raided eighteen houses in the village of Nabi Saleh. Soldiers, in full combat equipment, raided the houses in order to photograph people, mostly young men, and check ID cards. No arrests were made. However, the intentions of the army are clear.
The pattern has been used many times in the past. The army raids a house in the middle of the night. Soldiers take a photograph of a 15 or 16 year-old child and match the photograph with ID information. Then, some days later, during the weekly nonviolent demonstration, soldiers go from house to house with a picture book of people and arrest them. It does not matter if the suspected person is in the middle of the demonstration or inside the house watching television.
Once soldiers apprehend the suspect, they create a story that the person was throwing stones or ‘rioting.’ This story is usually based on zero evidence and it does not have to be in order to be used in an Israeli military court. The only thing necessary is for a soldier to say that he saw the person throwing stones. No photographic or video evidence is needed. Not even another witness.
Last night’s raid was the second time this week for Nabi Saleh. Bassam Tamimi, one of the Popular Committee leaders of Nabi Saleh, said that the army has raided almost every house in the village this week. Every male between the ages of 12 and 22 has been photographed by the army and their ID numbers have been taken.
Nabi Saleh, a small village west of Ramallah, has engaged in unarmed demonstrations against the confiscation of their land by the neighboring Jewish settlement of Halamish for the past year. There have been countless injuries, arrests and collective punishment against the village over the past year as the army has tried to crush the protest. This Friday afternoon, Nabi Saleh will once again march to its land and demand an end to the Israeli occupation.
These night raids are used throughout the West Bank against villages that are engaged in unarmed resistance to Israel’s occupation and separation barrier. When the media cameras and activists are not around, Israeli soldiers harass villagers in a form of collective punishment. The youth of these villages are wanted men (actually, children) in the eyes of the Israeli government and many end up in Israeli jails.
Attacking children and youth is one of the most perverse forms of collective punishment. I can’t help but think of an example of punishment targeting children from Jewish history. In the fifteenth century, King Manuel of Portugal ordered the first born child of almost two thousand Jewish families be banished to the remote island of São Tomé in order to collectively punish the Jews for not converting to Christianity upon their arrival to Portugal from Spain. Eventually, Portugal forcibly converted its Jewish population, but over 2,000 children were banished to the island. While Israel is merely banishing Palestinian children from Nabi Saleh to remote prisons, the method of punishment is similar. Is it reckless to think of an a forgotten episode in Jewish history while watching the occupation of Palestinians? My feeling is no.
Raiding West Bank villages, photographing youth and then arresting them days later is a sick form of Israeli control over the Palestinian population. These children end up in jail for months on bogus charges which could not stand up in any court of law that is interested in justice. If one wants to see the true cost of engaging in nonviolent and unarmed resistance to Israel’s occupation, look at the children that are siting in Israeli jails. The Portuguese banished Jewish children to a remote island, Israel banishes Palestinian children to remote concrete jails.
January 13, 2011
4:02 am
Jesus!! I can’t believe the stuff you write. Listen, just out of curiosity, since you admit the demonstrations are “unarmed,” not “non-violent,” just who do you think is doing the unarmed but violent stone-throwing in the non-Ghandi-like demonstrations?
January 13, 2011
4:04 am
[...] צה"ל פשטו במהלך הלילה על 18 בתים בכפר נבי סאלח וצילמו את יושביהם. [...]
January 13, 2011
4:10 am
Maayan, I am very happy that you are reading the posts on +972. I am afraid, however, that I will not be able to engage with you on these issues because of the incredible gulf of perception, experience and knowledge on the topic discussed on my part of the site. I am basing my reports on personal experience from the ground and knowledge of Jewish history which I received from Israeli, American and European Jewish Studies programs. Stone throwing is an issue but it is always in response to incredible violence from the IDF which includes and is not limited to the use of rubber coated steel bullets, live bullets, high velocity tear gas projectiles that are used as large bullets and collective punishment of entire villages.
My advice to you is simple. Go to one of these demonstrations. See what is happening with you own eyes before you make such strong and baseless claims. If you live in Israel, which I assume that you do, you can travel half an hour by car on a Friday or Saturday afternoon. I offer this because of the strength at which you argue these issues.
Thanks again for reading the site. All the best
Joseph
January 13, 2011
4:19 am
You suppose your education is superior to mine?
You suppose I don’t know these demonstrations?
It’s okay, Joseph, I’ve well understood how most of you debate on 972, and it is not to debate but to dismiss and insult. To my mind, that shows the weakness of YOUR positions, not mine.
January 13, 2011
4:44 am
Thank you for yet another excellent article. Interesting how Mayaan studiously ignored your very accurate observations about the system of “military justice” in OPT. Respect & solidarity!
January 13, 2011
5:09 am
I see what is no limited is your fantasy, not the use of force by the IDF. Were IDF troops really using live bullets the media would report on dozens of killed men daily. You have no idea what the “use of force” and “incredible violence” of modern army is. Also, the comparison with Jewish kids in Portugal is misplaced. Jews did not call throw all Portuguese to the Atlantic or claim Portuguese have no right to settle and live in the Iberian peninsula. Nor did Jews throw stones at Christians there.
January 13, 2011
6:47 am
Michael, Joseph can’t answer you because of the incredible gulf between his education and yours, not to mention that you don’t know a thing about Palestinian demonstrations.
January 13, 2011
6:51 am
mayyan, was it joke?
January 13, 2011
6:54 am
My comment was a joke, but his comment was hilariously serious.
January 13, 2011
8:52 am
Maayan, you have already said that you are afraid even to go Silwan. Have you attended a demonstration in the West Bank?
January 13, 2011
10:45 am
The Israeli mind works thusly: Portuguese Jews did not throw stones, ergo Palestinians deserve to be pushed out of their land.
Wake up Shlomo! and keep reading.
January 13, 2011
11:09 am
Maayan, I see. The gulf between my education and that of those admirable who received their degrees in Budapest is wide indeed. Mr. Dana’s PhD in Jewish history is bound to come from Cote d’Ivoire. PostDoc in Mogadisho University is underway as well. The academic community is impatiently waiting.
January 13, 2011
12:30 pm
Michael, so your logic is that if Portuguese Jews threw stones at Christians they’d deserve whatever they got? I hear a similarly construed argument about the Holocaust now and then (“How dare you compare to Nazi Germany? Jews didn’t blow up buses!”), and can’t help but muse about what it actually implies.
January 13, 2011
12:49 pm
Hi Dimi. my post was a soft poke into the Zionist mind. it is hard to argue with ignorant arrogance, it is easier and as helpful to expose it.
It is a bit encouraging to see folks like Maayan and Michael reading parts and pieces from the articles here, what I’d love to see these people do is read entire documents and articles on sites like this, or better yet, see for themselves the reality of the occupation and apartheid before they go off on a hasbara binge shooting at all directions.
I am an Israeli myself, I am an ashamed Israeli.
January 13, 2011
1:42 pm
Neve Gordon: Israel’s assault on human rights:
http://www.counterpunch.com/gordon01132011.html
January 13, 2011
2:51 pm
Maayan- I am willing to give you the name and number of several Kravi friends of mine, that can tell you in person over a cup of coffee what their sherut in the west bank was like.
Better yet, you can read 400 pages by BTS of dozens of kravi soldiers talking about exactly these types of events, from the military perspective.
Or do you not believe the IDF soldiers also?
Dear Michael, if you have a problem with degrees from budapest you can take it up (1) with the european union (2) with your doctor who most likely also got his degree there
January 13, 2011
2:56 pm
People like Michael actually BELIEVE a rathole like Tel Aviv is a richer and more sophisticated city than Budapest! The provincialism of the average Israeli is truly mind-bending and a disgrace to world Jewry.
January 13, 2011
4:52 pm
Tahel, I have plenty of sources about what goes on in Judea and Samaria. As far as I’m concerned, the presence of Israeli soldiers inside another population hurts everyone. It hurts the Palestinians and it hurts the Israelis. I think some Israeli activities are heavy-handed. However, I also think that the number of successful, and even attempted, terror attacks has dropped dramatically. So I am torn. Do I let the IDF do things that can be disagreeable and even harsh (I am not condoning anything illegal) that ensure our safety, or do I go back to 2001, 2002?
The interesting part of this challenge that I face is that the Palestinian leadership is well aware of this moral dilemma. And while they have no qualms about sending bombers into Israeli restaurants or denying Jewish links to this land, they know that they are playing on my qualms.
They also know it makes for effective propaganda.
What they would like you to forget, Tahel and Joseph and Lisa, is that they could already be leading a state with no Israeli soldiers in their midst.
So I ask you again, why don’t you demonstrate with your fellow Palestinians in Ramallah, in front of Abbas’s office. Demand that he sign a peace agreement, and then you will have the pleasure of knowing that you brought about peace and the end to night-time raids by the IDF.
Lisa, it was Issawiya, not Silwan.
January 13, 2011
5:15 pm
Sorry Joseph,
I’m about as left as they come but most of your “analysis” is really off the mark. In fact, this entire posting made no sense. Soldiers raid houses to take pictures of young men and then come back later to arrest the young men because they have a picture of them in a book? It doesn’t even make sense.
And because of this you compare the IDF to King Manuel of Portugal ordering the first born children of 2,000 Jewish families to be banished to a remote island? The other day you wrote that because a handful of Jews are going to move into an abandoned hotel in East Jerusalem that this means the entire world should stop trying to partition the land into a Jewish and Arab state and instead simply call for the transformation of Israel into one greater Palestinian Arab state?
Work on your analytical skills please. What has two degrees in Jewish history (was one not enough??) gotten you? Its gotten you videos in which, in true Avigdor Lieberman/Pat Buchananesque fashion, you ask dumb American teenagers on the streets of Jerusalem whether they are more loyal to Israel or American which then get reposted on neo-nazi white supremacist sites. Its gotten you to film “mondoweiss” video productions for a site whose proprietor writes numerous articles on Jewish-American “dual loyalties” for the far-right Pat Buchanan American Conservative Magazine. Its gotten you to team up with Max Blumenthal, someone who barely knows what the difference between a Jewish and Druze Israeli, has, again in Avigdor Lieberman-esque fashion, questioned the loyalty of Jewish Senators and said they belong int the Knesset and not in the US Senate and who has declared that the Jewish connection to Israel is akin to Blumenthal’s non-existent connection to ancient Aztec Mexico. Its gotten you to team up with a bizarre woman who names herself Harribic Tubbman who prank calls Jews by taunting them, regardless of their real name, as “Shlomo.”
This is what your 2 degrees in Jewish history has gotten you – I hope you were on scholarship or something or else I’d say you really did not get your money’s worth my friend. If you want to look for historical comparisons with persecutors of Jews I would look first at the people you associate yourself with.
January 13, 2011
9:54 pm
Dimi, my logic is that were Jews throwing stones at Christians it could be somehow punishable. As they didn’t they suffered with no guilt. Same goes to the Holocaust: Jews caused Germany no harm but Germany attacked them and eventually exterminated them. Now and here the state of things is different.Jews and Palestinians are involved in conlict. Saying the Palestinans are but innocent victims is total hypocricy.
Also, it should be remembered that all the conditions and events of Middle Ages are not akin to these of the Modern Time. Portuguese of 15th Century are not Germans of 20th as the last are not today’s Israelis. Of course, the academic luminary from Budapest may not detect it from the height of his position…
January 13, 2011
10:02 pm
…………………………………….I guess you never heard of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. By your repulsive logic, their resistance to brutalization made Jews culpable in their own destruction. At least, that’s the case you are making about the Palestinians. It’s people like you who cause so much international euphoria whenever Israelis are attacked and blown to pieces.
January 14, 2011
1:13 am
Insulting the authors of pieces is not permitted? But you guys insult commenters freely. Interesting.
January 14, 2011
1:27 am
Am I the only one that see’s the Monty Python joke in this, after all “no one expected the Spanish Inquisition”
January 14, 2011
1:57 am
Joseph – my issue with your original post was that it does not make any sense. You are alleging that soldiers raid every house in a village late at night in order to take pictures and then later come back and arrest every youth and throw them in jail because they have a picture of them in their book? And yet somehow all these youth sitting in jail manage to make it back to their village to participate in the next week’s demonstration?
Since you obviously use your two degrees in Jewish history to justify your political analysis I think its very fair to question how someone who claims such a wonderful understanding of Jewish history could undertake the actions that you have. If you understood jewish history as well as you claim you
would never be making videos seeking to prove the claim of anti semitic Right wing fascists that Jews in america are more loyal to Israel than to America. In your two Jewish history degrees did you somehow not learn what happens when Jews of a country are accused of being disloyal? Until you understand that
you have absolutely ZERO credibility to attack Avigdor
Lieberman when you engage in exactly the same behavior and I challenge you to get even ONE other +972 writer to defend you asking jewish american teens whether they are more loyal to the US or to Israel and then posting it for the whole world. Or the fact that you count unrepentant anti semites such as gilad atzmon among your facebook friends and allow them to post your videos. Not Lisa nor Didi nor Ami or Yuval or Noam will because they took the lessons from jewish history that one dosent need two degrees to understand. In fact, despite bragging how you use your knowledge of jewish history to understand the presence, the only time you have ever written about jewish history is where you compared yourself to baruch spinoza because of the reaction to you filming drunken teenagers and now comparing the idf to the portuguese king. Ill leave it up to the intelligent readers here to judge the depth of your historical knowledge based on these statements coupled with your questioning the loyalty of diaspora jews to theory home country.
Its not a personal attack, its a questioning of your jewish history understanding which you constantly use to give yourself credibility including in this post.
January 31, 2011
9:48 pm
I agree with Maayan – Yes the occupation is repulsive, yes it is wrong – but can anyone explain why if Israel got out of Gaza, things are worse than ever there for the palestinians?
Why with all the aid, palestinians in Gaza still live in such dismal conditions? Where has all this money gone?
(This is not a rethorical question, I would really like to know!! Thanks