The Israeli Police State
RolandTD20Kdrummer
Posts: 13,066
Interesting story.
"The Israeli Police State
By Avigail Abarbanel
This piece was offered as an op-ed to the Canberra Times, but they weren't interested. It was first published on The Electronic Intifada website. (July 2007)
Last Friday afternoon my husband Ian flew to Israel. He is in fact on his way to an IT conference in Vienna, but we thought that it would be nice for him to make a short 3-day detour to Tel-Aviv to visit my brother and his family and in particular meet my 7 and 5 year old nieces for the first time.
At Ben-Gurion airport Ians Australian passport was confiscated with no explanation. He was taken to a small interrogation room and had to endure an intimidating questioning about non-existent Saudi and Lebanese visas in his passport. He was interrogated by a tough-looking uniformed female police officer while a non-uniformed agent watched. The officer asked him why he had Saudi and Lebanese visas. When he responded that this could not be his passport because he does not have such visas, she proceeded to ask him for the names of his father and grandfather. Despite the fact that Ian answered the question the first time, she repeated it three more times. By that stage Ian realised that they were trying to intimidate him and although he did feel some fear, he pointed out that she asked the same question several times and that he had already answered it. After about 25 minutes of this, Ian was finally released with no explanation and a feeble apology about delaying him.
As a former Israeli citizen with military training I am familiar with the psychological tactics used by the Israeli Border Patrol (MAGAV) and by the military. They deliberately try to intimidate their victim and keep him (or her) in a state of uncertainty - about what is going on, what its all about, where his papers are. They know that foreign nationals would feel profoundly insecure without their passports and that uncertainty would lead to fear and stress in most people. They also know that most peoples confidence would falter under such conditions and if there is anything to divulge, it is more likely come out then. Israeli officers are trained to watch body language, micro-expressions, perspiration, anything. The questions themselves are often just a pretext to induce stress so that they can watch their victim carefully to see if he has any secrets. They had Ians passport. They knew well that there were no such visas in it. (And you have to wonder: what if there were? What would have happened to him then? Australian citizens are free to visit any country they wish. But it appears that in Israel having the wrong visas in your passport turns you into a suspect. Of course we will never know whether the story about the visas was the real reason for his short detention.)
Israel and its apologists repeatedly portray Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East, a uniquely democratic regime in a non-democratic region. Somehow this is supposed to make us feel more sympathetic and justify our support of it. But Israeli democracy is a myth.
In my 27 years there I belonged to the Israeli mainstream. I was Jewish, Israeli-born and secular. I was an ordinary citizen who completed her military service, the quintessential Israeli, not involved in politics or activism of any kind. I minded my own business, worryied about money, work, study, my own little life. I wasnt a trouble-maker by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone who met me back then, would have assumed that I agreed with the prevailing Israeli ideology. And frankly, they would have been right.
Although Israeli daily life could be frustrating, particularly dealing with the bureaucracy, we felt safe in the knowledge that annoying as they might be, our authorities would never turn against us. In fact, the thought wouldnt even occur to us. Because I was a member of this comfortable centre of Israeli society, I was also ignorant of what Israel was capable of, and of what it could mean to not belong.
My first ever taste of this as yet unfamiliar status came around 17 years ago, when my ex-husband (also an Israeli) and I were planning to migrate to Australia, and were in the last stages of receiving our permanent residency. My ex, an engineer and a Captain in the army about to finish his contract, was told suddenly one afternoon, without explanation that he was to report to a certain location to have a little chat with someone from the Military Police.
Our plans to leave Israel were no secret. Leaving Israel is not a crime, and Australia was not on the list of countries that Israeli officers involved in secret military projects were prohibited from visiting or living in after the end of their service (yes, such a list exists). In any case, there was no reason for my ex-husband to suspect that this chat had anything to do with our plans.
He was taken to a small room and instructed to sit on a chair in the middle of the room. He was circled by a female Military Police sergeant who began by saying, We found out that you are planning to migrate to Australia, to which he replied So? Its not a secret. She responded aggressively that he was to shut up, and that she was asking the questions. She then proceeded to ask Why are you leaving? and, Does your wife know that you are planning to leave? Apparently the military found out about our plans from the police, while we were in the process of obtaining clearance for Australian Immigration. They would have known that both of us were involved. The questions were clearly not intended to be engaged with at face value. Initially, my ex started to respond to the point, but when he realised the absurdity of the situation he became annoyed. He then told the sergeant that he did not see the point of the conversation and unless she was accusing him of something, he was leaving. When she responded aggressively again, he stood up, reminded her that he was a Captain and she a Sergeant, and left the room.
In the absence of any information about this incident, we concluded that this was an attempt to intimidate us out of leaving Israel. Of course it relied entirely on psychology because the military had neither reason nor a legal way of stopping us.
Up until the army found out that we were leaving, my husband as a career officer and myself as the wife of, were treated with great respect in Israeli society and in the military. We didnt just belong, we had an honoured place. The choice of a female sergeant was meant to humiliate him (I mean no offence to females but this is the culture in the Israeli military). Whoever dreamed up this intimidation attempt wanted to show my ex that his rank and status meant little if he was choosing the wrong path. We were angry but mostly shocked that he could be treated like this just because we wanted to leave Israel. Its one thing to encounter the disapproval of friends and relatives in ordinary conversations. Its quite another to be the subject of a menacing questioning by the MP. Our decision to leave apparently placed us in a new position in society, outside that comfortable mainstream. When we finally left at the end of 91 we did so with a bitter taste in our mouths having seen a glimpse of an Israel we didnt know.
Ask any Palestinian and they will tell you much worse stories-frankly, there is no comparison. Palestinians cannot help but be seen as outsiders, whether they are citizens of Israel or whether they are refugees in the Occupied Territories, whether they are children or adults, male or female. All Palestinians live under constant military and police surveillance. They experience nothing of the mythical Israeli democracy. Israeli democracy is something reserved only for the privileged and mostly ignorant elite, of which I was also a member, until I decided to leave. Palestinian citizens of Israel live under an arbitrary and brutal police state. Their dealings with Israeli bureaucracy are not just frustrating but can be outright dangerous.
The Palestinians in the Occupied Territories live under a Pinochet-like regime. They can and do disappear in the middle of the night. They are blindfolded, cuffed, beaten, humiliated, taken to unknown locations with no information given to them or their families, tortured physically and psychologically and incarcerated indefinitely, often without charges and regardless of whether they are guilty of anything. It is arbitrary and it can happen to anyone. This is a far worse version of the two incidents I described above but the basic principles are the same.
In a regime like that you dont have to actually do anything wrong to receive this treatment. This is because it is not only designed to catch people who break the law, it is designed to be a kind of a warning, a hinted threat. Its there to flaunt state power, show people how small and weak they are compared with the mighty state, and offer a taste of what would happen to them if they even think to go against it. In the case of the Palestinians such tactics are also designed to make daily life unbearable in order to break their spirit and intimidate them into leaving. After all, what Israel really wants is all the land but without the people, something that so many in the West still refuse to recognise.
Israel is not a nice country. It is a powerful police state founded on pathological paranoia with only a veneer of civility, carefully crafted and maintained for the consumption of those who still believe in the myth of Israeli democracy. Mainstream Israelis live in a fictional bubble that separates them from reality. If there is a democracy there, only this select group enjoys it - just like the conformist white population in old South Africa. Supporting Israel now is the same as claiming that South Africa under apartheid was an acceptable democracy. It also means abandoning the Palestinians, just like the world abandoned black South Africans (and white dissidents) for 45 long years."
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/7696
"The Israeli Police State
By Avigail Abarbanel
This piece was offered as an op-ed to the Canberra Times, but they weren't interested. It was first published on The Electronic Intifada website. (July 2007)
Last Friday afternoon my husband Ian flew to Israel. He is in fact on his way to an IT conference in Vienna, but we thought that it would be nice for him to make a short 3-day detour to Tel-Aviv to visit my brother and his family and in particular meet my 7 and 5 year old nieces for the first time.
At Ben-Gurion airport Ians Australian passport was confiscated with no explanation. He was taken to a small interrogation room and had to endure an intimidating questioning about non-existent Saudi and Lebanese visas in his passport. He was interrogated by a tough-looking uniformed female police officer while a non-uniformed agent watched. The officer asked him why he had Saudi and Lebanese visas. When he responded that this could not be his passport because he does not have such visas, she proceeded to ask him for the names of his father and grandfather. Despite the fact that Ian answered the question the first time, she repeated it three more times. By that stage Ian realised that they were trying to intimidate him and although he did feel some fear, he pointed out that she asked the same question several times and that he had already answered it. After about 25 minutes of this, Ian was finally released with no explanation and a feeble apology about delaying him.
As a former Israeli citizen with military training I am familiar with the psychological tactics used by the Israeli Border Patrol (MAGAV) and by the military. They deliberately try to intimidate their victim and keep him (or her) in a state of uncertainty - about what is going on, what its all about, where his papers are. They know that foreign nationals would feel profoundly insecure without their passports and that uncertainty would lead to fear and stress in most people. They also know that most peoples confidence would falter under such conditions and if there is anything to divulge, it is more likely come out then. Israeli officers are trained to watch body language, micro-expressions, perspiration, anything. The questions themselves are often just a pretext to induce stress so that they can watch their victim carefully to see if he has any secrets. They had Ians passport. They knew well that there were no such visas in it. (And you have to wonder: what if there were? What would have happened to him then? Australian citizens are free to visit any country they wish. But it appears that in Israel having the wrong visas in your passport turns you into a suspect. Of course we will never know whether the story about the visas was the real reason for his short detention.)
Israel and its apologists repeatedly portray Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East, a uniquely democratic regime in a non-democratic region. Somehow this is supposed to make us feel more sympathetic and justify our support of it. But Israeli democracy is a myth.
In my 27 years there I belonged to the Israeli mainstream. I was Jewish, Israeli-born and secular. I was an ordinary citizen who completed her military service, the quintessential Israeli, not involved in politics or activism of any kind. I minded my own business, worryied about money, work, study, my own little life. I wasnt a trouble-maker by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone who met me back then, would have assumed that I agreed with the prevailing Israeli ideology. And frankly, they would have been right.
Although Israeli daily life could be frustrating, particularly dealing with the bureaucracy, we felt safe in the knowledge that annoying as they might be, our authorities would never turn against us. In fact, the thought wouldnt even occur to us. Because I was a member of this comfortable centre of Israeli society, I was also ignorant of what Israel was capable of, and of what it could mean to not belong.
My first ever taste of this as yet unfamiliar status came around 17 years ago, when my ex-husband (also an Israeli) and I were planning to migrate to Australia, and were in the last stages of receiving our permanent residency. My ex, an engineer and a Captain in the army about to finish his contract, was told suddenly one afternoon, without explanation that he was to report to a certain location to have a little chat with someone from the Military Police.
Our plans to leave Israel were no secret. Leaving Israel is not a crime, and Australia was not on the list of countries that Israeli officers involved in secret military projects were prohibited from visiting or living in after the end of their service (yes, such a list exists). In any case, there was no reason for my ex-husband to suspect that this chat had anything to do with our plans.
He was taken to a small room and instructed to sit on a chair in the middle of the room. He was circled by a female Military Police sergeant who began by saying, We found out that you are planning to migrate to Australia, to which he replied So? Its not a secret. She responded aggressively that he was to shut up, and that she was asking the questions. She then proceeded to ask Why are you leaving? and, Does your wife know that you are planning to leave? Apparently the military found out about our plans from the police, while we were in the process of obtaining clearance for Australian Immigration. They would have known that both of us were involved. The questions were clearly not intended to be engaged with at face value. Initially, my ex started to respond to the point, but when he realised the absurdity of the situation he became annoyed. He then told the sergeant that he did not see the point of the conversation and unless she was accusing him of something, he was leaving. When she responded aggressively again, he stood up, reminded her that he was a Captain and she a Sergeant, and left the room.
In the absence of any information about this incident, we concluded that this was an attempt to intimidate us out of leaving Israel. Of course it relied entirely on psychology because the military had neither reason nor a legal way of stopping us.
Up until the army found out that we were leaving, my husband as a career officer and myself as the wife of, were treated with great respect in Israeli society and in the military. We didnt just belong, we had an honoured place. The choice of a female sergeant was meant to humiliate him (I mean no offence to females but this is the culture in the Israeli military). Whoever dreamed up this intimidation attempt wanted to show my ex that his rank and status meant little if he was choosing the wrong path. We were angry but mostly shocked that he could be treated like this just because we wanted to leave Israel. Its one thing to encounter the disapproval of friends and relatives in ordinary conversations. Its quite another to be the subject of a menacing questioning by the MP. Our decision to leave apparently placed us in a new position in society, outside that comfortable mainstream. When we finally left at the end of 91 we did so with a bitter taste in our mouths having seen a glimpse of an Israel we didnt know.
Ask any Palestinian and they will tell you much worse stories-frankly, there is no comparison. Palestinians cannot help but be seen as outsiders, whether they are citizens of Israel or whether they are refugees in the Occupied Territories, whether they are children or adults, male or female. All Palestinians live under constant military and police surveillance. They experience nothing of the mythical Israeli democracy. Israeli democracy is something reserved only for the privileged and mostly ignorant elite, of which I was also a member, until I decided to leave. Palestinian citizens of Israel live under an arbitrary and brutal police state. Their dealings with Israeli bureaucracy are not just frustrating but can be outright dangerous.
The Palestinians in the Occupied Territories live under a Pinochet-like regime. They can and do disappear in the middle of the night. They are blindfolded, cuffed, beaten, humiliated, taken to unknown locations with no information given to them or their families, tortured physically and psychologically and incarcerated indefinitely, often without charges and regardless of whether they are guilty of anything. It is arbitrary and it can happen to anyone. This is a far worse version of the two incidents I described above but the basic principles are the same.
In a regime like that you dont have to actually do anything wrong to receive this treatment. This is because it is not only designed to catch people who break the law, it is designed to be a kind of a warning, a hinted threat. Its there to flaunt state power, show people how small and weak they are compared with the mighty state, and offer a taste of what would happen to them if they even think to go against it. In the case of the Palestinians such tactics are also designed to make daily life unbearable in order to break their spirit and intimidate them into leaving. After all, what Israel really wants is all the land but without the people, something that so many in the West still refuse to recognise.
Israel is not a nice country. It is a powerful police state founded on pathological paranoia with only a veneer of civility, carefully crafted and maintained for the consumption of those who still believe in the myth of Israeli democracy. Mainstream Israelis live in a fictional bubble that separates them from reality. If there is a democracy there, only this select group enjoys it - just like the conformist white population in old South Africa. Supporting Israel now is the same as claiming that South Africa under apartheid was an acceptable democracy. It also means abandoning the Palestinians, just like the world abandoned black South Africans (and white dissidents) for 45 long years."
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/7696
Progress is not made by everyone joining some new fad,
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
Of course they want to make life as miserable as humanly possible so the Palestinians will leave.
For a group that claims the moral high ground, and a safe and just democracy....I can;t imagine anything further from the truth.
Apartheid II and nobody can see it. They maybe like it...closet racists I suppose.
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
This kind of statement is not only an insult to your own people, but also to those who truly suffered in south africa. The comparison is nothing but a big fat lie. The Palestinians suffer because they are pawns of a leadership (both in the PA and in the wider Arab world) that is committed ONLY to Israel's desruction. The PA has the BIGGEST EU aid package but Arafat chose to spend every last penny on the terrorist war against Israel. This included the propaganda war that you seem to be serving, and the creation of a whole new generation of Israel hating fanatics by indoctrinating their school children in the most shocking manner seen since Nazi germany. If you dont believe me, watch the documentary 'Relentless' from honestreporting.com
http://www.honestreporting.com/relentless/new_version/content-pages/view-trailer_sep.aspor
or see the many clips from Palestinian TV on palestinian media watch: http://www.pmw.org.il/
Peace.
Actually they have. Its called the truth.
PS. I just realised that the original post was not the testimony of the poster. My reply was kinda directed at the author, but Roland; whats the deal with your Israel bashing?
A question we've all wondered about ...
other than the fact that they are currently occupying and oppressing people, and have been for decades, what's the deal with 'bashing' them?
Right ... If this was the whole story, you guys would post hundreds of times each day, all up in arms about 70% of the world's nation-states. Israel is on your radar, and lots of other people aren't. Presumably, there's a reason.
I've been browsing this board for sometime now and cant help but notice your all out hatred for Israel. its scary.
not to mention insult those who dont agree with you. this is a typical child move. lemme guess you are about 16 or 17?
er um yea. something like that.
No way....really? You've got to be kidding. I just don't see it.
I think I actually remember reading him calling out someone for posting something bad about hamas (cant remember exactly)
his response was "you only come here to bash muslims"
are you serious! I've been browsing here for maybe a month and have seen an almost daily anti Israel thread from him. scary stuff.
98: Montreal
00: Toronto, Montreal
03: Buffalo, State College, Toronto, Montreal, NYC x2, Hershey
04: Toledo, Grand Rapids
05: Kitchener, London, Hamilton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto
06: Toronto x2
07: The Vic, Lolla,
08: EV Toronto x2
show me a post where I said "you only come here to bash muslims" in reference to hamas.
and yeah, I'm sure you have been "browsing" here for months.
saying I have an all-out hatred against Israel is just utter garbage. Just because I speak out against their occupation and oppression doesn't mean I have an all-out hatred.
next you'll be saying I'm anti-semitic.
It is a normal occurance....a few people get eachother aroused by bashing Israel, then they have a circle jerk.
With a copy of the Quran close at hand, no doubt.
I really dont feel like searching through your posts. I've been posting on here for 10 mins and people are already agreeing with me about you.
I'm curious. do you like Jewish people? do you respect them? do you have Jewish friends?
how easily you can be read...
if people transform hatred of occupation and oppression = hatred of Israel, then that's fine.
i mean, they're wrong, but it's fine to be wrong. who am I to judge?
on that note, who the fuck are any of you guys to judge me.
edit: oh, by any of "you guys", I meant you and your alternate accounts
hate Israel all you want. I asked you very specific questions about jews, not Israel.
questions you conveniently didnt answer.
try to bait me to insult you and get banned all you like, but I'm done responding to the likes of you, who doesn't like to discuss issues, but rather sidetracks just to piss people off.
fucking nice
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
Where? In this thread?
Aparthied II has a nice ring, by the way. Sounds like it could be a Metallica song.
I'm not baiting you. I'm asking you if you respect Jews? and if you have any jewish friends? very simple questions.
I'm not sure that equals racism.
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel#International_recognition
]Arab rights in Israel are certainly not "equal"[/url]
And as for the comparison with Apartheid:
Finkelstein: 'Beyond Chutzpah'...
'..B'Tselem...observes in a recent report that the Israeli "roads regime" in the West Bank, "based on the principle of separation through discrimination, bears striking similarities to the racist Apartheid regime that existed in South Africa until 1994", and "entails a greater degree of arbitrariness than was the case with the regime that existed in South Africa." The roster of supposed anti-Semites making the verboten Apartheid analogy also includes the editorial board of 'Haaretz', which observed in September 2006 that "the Apartheid regime in the territories remains intact; millions of Palestinians are living without rights, freedom of movement or a livelihood, under the yoke of ongoing Israeli occupation," as well as former Israeli Knesset member Shulamit Aloni, former deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti, former Ambassador to South Africa Alon Liel, South African Archbishop and Nobel Laureate for peace Desmond Tutu, and "father" of human rights law in South Africa John Dugard. Indeed, the list apparently also includes former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Pointing to his "fixation with Bantustans," Israeli researcher Gershom Gorenberg concluded that it is "no accident" that Sharon's plan for the West Bank "bears a striking resemblance to the "grand apartheid" promoted by the old South African regime." Sharon himself reportedly stated that "the Bantustan model was the most appropriate solution to the conflict."
'..It's no accident that the plan bears a striking resemblance to the "grand apartheid" promoted by the old South African regime, in which blacks became citizens of "independent" bantustans. According to an Israeli diplomat who spent many years in Africa, Sharon paid both secret and public visits to South Africa in the 1980s. "I saw what interested him: bantustans, as if it were just an intellectual interest," the diplomat told me. "He had a fixation with bantustans that seemed out of proportion."
The diplomat's evaluation is that Sharon is seeking to re-create the bantustan system in the West Bank. "If you tell him it failed in South Africa, he'll say that there it didn't work because of the disproportion between blacks and whites, but that here [the Jews] are still a majority." Backing up that evaluation is a recently published booklet by far-right politician Benny Elon, who regards even Sharon's version of a Palestinian state as dangerous. The booklet contains a map of the state-to-be -- taken from a document published by Sharon a decade ago, according to Elon's spokesman. The map shows 11 separate enclaves with a gerrymandered shape familiar to anyone who remembers the bantustans of the old South Africa.
Here's where the outposts come in: They fill in the gaps between settlements in Area C. The initial number of settlers in each spot is tiny. But with those small numbers, the physical presence of Israeli civilians extends through Sharon's "security zones." The longer the outposts are in place, the more people will move to them and the harder it will be to evacuate them...'