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Worried Aunt In Abu Ghosh
By mickielynn on 2010-02-27 21:30:40
'T'd like to see the mothers, every time they hear of war, ask themselves, 'Where are the women? What are they doing? What
is their solution?'" Sanam Anderlini Here's an article written by Deb Reich that has been haunting me for almost a year. It
was written in mid March of 2009 after "Operation Cast Lead" had taken place in the Gaza Strip. Even though we don't hear
that much about it, there is a growing peace and anti-occupation movement in Israel in spite of the compulsory 2 year
military service for young men and women after high school graduation. There is also a group of young conscientious
objectors called the Shministim who refuse to carry out the activities of occupation. Many have been imprisoned for their
actions. This eloquent writer is not a mother or a grandmother but an aunt. She captures the concerns that we also have for
our own young soldiers when they go to war and suffer the consequences of their own and others' actions. From both films
and literature I've learned that IDF members also suffer from PTSD after their service in the occupied territories. Dear all...
My nephew, whom I greatly love, was conscripted not long ago into the IDF after a year of national service, and chose to
join a combat unit. To my knowledge, I am the only one in the family who is unhappy about all of that (except the national
service part, when he worked with disadvantaged urban youth). However, this is not my child, but my sister's child. Since I
am not the parent, what could I have said? How much could I have interfered? I sent him an email when he was inducted,
saying, basically: "Sometimes after people get in the army, they discover that it is not what they thought it would be and they
are troubled when they learn how it really is. If this happens to you, there are resources -- people you can talk to, outside of
the army"-- and I gave him some suggestions.... names of organizations he can contact. --Meantime he has finished basic
training and is in an officer's course. I wonder what slogan will be on the T shirt someone in his unit will print to mark the
end of the course? http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2009/03/photos-of-idf-training-graduates-t.html Will I be sorry
later that I did not dare to interfere more vocally? I think about what he will almost certainly be required to inflict on others,
including noncombatants, including children, unless he opts out somewhere along the way, a choice requiring a very strong
resistance to groupthink and to a lifetime of brainwashing, a choice grounded in a profound inner conviction that the IDF is
wrong, wrongly deployed, an instrument of a criminal and oppressive national policy, massively transgressing the norms we
are supposed to hold dear -- a conviction which I can't see how he can possibly have developed, all of a sudden. And, since
we become what we do, I think also about what this behavior of his will be doing to him. When he comes home on leave,
surely he will be treated like a good son, a good brother. No one will ask for details of what he has been doing since his last
leave. How is he to know he is doing wrong if everyone around him acts like all is well? That vacuum, that silence, seems to
me to be criminal. That silence makes the families of IDF occupation soldiers into accessories to the murder of
noncombatants. Doesn't it? Today, after reading Uri Blau's "No Virgins, No Terror Attacks" in Haaretz, I sent my nephew
another email - pasted below. I try to be gentle with him because I keep reminding myself that this is not a volunteer army.
My nephew was conscripted, and if all the brainwashing he has been subjected to, and his misplaced patriotism, made him a
willing conscript into an army of occupation, still he was a conscript, nonetheless. That distinction, of course, will have no
bearing on his culpability for any war crimes he may commit while in uniform.... Not even the Qassams fired from Gaza at
civilian populations in Israel will have a bearing on his culpability for any war crimes he may commit while in uniform...
Dear G., I hope you are well and doing OK, hon... When I saw this article (below), I immediately thought of you. You are
the one I worry about these days, for a lot of reasons. What they talk about in this article is one of the reasons... Try to take
care of yourself somehow in the midst of all the insanity. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html Below, the
first few paragraphs. Read it to the end online. I rest my case. --Deb Last update - 22:41 20/03/2009 Dead Palestinian
babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009 By Uri Blau The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv
handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring
their unit's insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the premises, the
sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies,
fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and
afterward hands over the finished product. Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child
and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print
on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly
anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian
baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked
battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1
shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who
grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."
There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a
drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images
underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an
enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants...
