--Still Helpful: Tuesday, January 3

News item: 

Bruce Ramsey / Times editorial columnist
"Occupiers in another land, but hated all the same"

Wednesday, December 28, 2005: Editorials & Opinion

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002707197_rams28.html

The full text of the article is included at the end of this email. 

Why we are asking you to write: We usually ask you to write critiques of misleading media pieces, but this is an unusual opportunity to commend the Seattle Times for publishing a rare comment that tells the unvarnished truth about the brutal practices of the Israeli army that occupies Palestinian territory. We wish to encourage future writing of this kind. We expect that the Times will receive many letters criticizing the columnist and the paper for having taken this step. Your letters will send the important message to the Times that there are many readers who are concerned about the behavior of an occupying army and appreciate it being described for what it is.

Bruce Ramsey's column relays the message of some former Israeli soldiers who have become repelled by the mistreatment of Palestinian civilians which they have witnessed and, indeed, practiced themselves. These former soldiers have founded an organization called "Breaking the Silence," which toured the United States and visited Seattle in late October (see http://www.breakingthesilence.com/). Ramsey quotes the two young veterans at length, describing how they used gratuitous force essentially to terrorize the Palestinian population into submission. The two former soldiers, Mr. Sharon and Mr. Chayut, describe how they realized that they were engaging in brutal practices that had nothing to do with protecting Israeli lives and that were unconscionable behavior.

Bruce Ramsey very briefly draws a parallel between the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation -- strongly supported by the U.S. Administration -- of Palestinian lands. We should thank Mr. Ramsey for this observation and point out that the U.S. support or implementation of any occupation is thoroughly wrong and objectionable, and that the violence done unto civilian populations through the methods described in this column can only result in an escalation and perpetuation of terror.

Talking points for letter writing:

Whichever point(s) you choose, the most important thing is to say thank you.

--Mr. Ramsey has taken the courageous step of using the appropriate name for the U.S. presence in Iraq and the Israeli presence on Palestinian land: "occupation." Through tortuous legalistic reasoning and simple distortion of the English language the truth is usually concealed, leaving such euphemisms as "disputed territory" or "administered lands" to hide the reality of an illegal occupation. Once the word is gone, the truth disappears as well.

--Mr. Ramsey's recounting of Sharon's and Chayut's message provides us with a relatively detailed description of the brutality of the Israeli occupation visited daily upon Palestinian civilians for the last 38 years. The humiliation and the mean, wanton, destruction committed by Israeli soldiers can only result in an outburst of anger from those thus affected. It is in the violence of occupation that we should find the original cause of the conflict, not in the usually-implied "hateful" character defects of those under occupation.

--Given the vicious nature of this occupation, we call for an end to the U.S. Administration's economic support of Israel as long as it continues militarily to occupy Palestinian land.

--We call on the U.S. Administration to pressure the Israeli government to implement a complete withdrawal from Palestinian land, accompanied by direct peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

--Furthermore, the American people should examine and reconsider their support of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, which shares many of the brutal attributes of the Israeli occupation. The U.S. army has even called on the assistance of the Israeli army for training of in the treatment of an occupied population (see "Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq," http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4815008-103681,00.html ). Given the similarities of the two occupations, it is no wonder that in both cases there are horrendous outbursts of violence in response.

--It is important to remember that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is illegal. Prominent among relevant elements of international law are the 1949 Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory. The Fourth 1949 Geneva Convention, covering belligerent occupations, prohibits a host of acts currently committed by the Israeli government, including construction of settlements, collective punishment, forced transfer of the native population, and denial of education. (see http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm)

Email your letter to: opinion@seattletimes.com

Reminders:

1) Please write even if you only have time for a brief note. Numbers count. If you are not published, you will still be helping someone with a similar viewpoint get into print.

2) The word limit for letters that are intended for publication is 200.

3) Don't forget to begin your letter with a reference to the title and date of the article or opinion piece to which you are responding. Example: "Regarding William Safire's Friday column ("Sharon shifts Middle East politics")....

4) Personal experiences and/or qualifications, when relevant, can be helpful in establishing your authority. However, you can also establish your authority by writing factual, logical, respectful letters. When possible, include a reference to your source, such as, "according to the Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem,..."

5) Don't try to respond to every problem with the piece in question. Just pick one or two points to concentrate on.

6) Don't forget to include your full name, street address and contact phone numbers. The paper needs these to verify that you are actually the author. Only your name and city will appear in print.

7) Please bcc us at alerts@palestineinformation.org or forward your letter to that address. This is for our media monitoring records.

Thank you! 

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Full text of article:

Occupiers in another land, but hated all the same

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002707197_rams28.html

The travails of American occupiers of Arab Iraq may not be so different from those of the Israeli occupiers of Arab Palestine. That is what I thought while hearing the stories of Avichay Sharon and Noam Chayut.

Sharon, 24, and Chayut, 26, had been in the Israeli army. They were here recently to criticize what their army does, touring under the auspices of a group called Breaking the Silence. Of course they "had an agenda." Keep that in mind -- but hear their story.

"It is very difficult to do this," said Sharon. "We love our country. We grew up in patriotic Zionist homes, thinking we would serve in the most moral army in the world." But the civilian notion of morality is difficult to apply to the job of a military occupier.

The occupiers are shot at. To protect themselves, they search for weapons. They have learned it is dangerous to approach a front door. Where houses are wall-to-wall, they pound or blast through the wall instead. This is a tactic proven to reduce casualties. "We invented it," said Chayut.

As a soldier, he commanded a squad in Jenin. Besides confiscating weapons, he said, "the order was to arrest every male between 16 and 50. You go to every house, handcuff and blindfold the men, put them in a truck and send them to Israel." Usually, he said, the men were beaten up, though "that was not in the order."

Sometimes the soldiers would commandeer a house, either leaving one room for the family or expelling them. "I could choose who will be the family sent outside for three weeks," Chayut said. He added, "I was 22 years old."

Every night there would be a search-and-arrest operation. "You stop feeling that these are people," Chayut said. "You can't sympathize. You break things. You break the walls, maybe you break the floor if you suspect there are weapons hidden there. I was in a small kid's room, tossing the things in the kid's knapsack. I saw the kid in the corner. He was six or seven years old. He was afraid of me. I saw fear and hatred in his eyes -- and I realized I looked like a monster to him."

This was Chayut's moment of truth.

 "Five minutes before, we had thrown that boy's father against the wall -- his father, who is like a god to him. That is the essence of being an occupier."

None of what I'm describing is about killing. Killing is not the essence. It is the power to kill -- which is the power to humiliate. These youths were humiliating men older than their fathers, and for any reason, or for none at all. They did it for a political reason, or because they were frustrated, or simply because they could.

They could take an armored personnel carrier and squash parked cars with it. And they did.

"Was it fun?" I asked Chayut.

"It is fun," he said. 

Smashing cars was not a military necessity. Ripping out a decades-old olive orchard along a road in Gaza was, Sharon said, because it made the road secure. He recalled the Palestinian owners of that orchard -- an old man, a middle-aged man and a boy -- beholding the destruction of their family's asset. "I am the son of a farmer," he said. "I know what it means to have an orchard."

 To all this I know the all-purpose reply: There is a war on. The occupier has to "suppress terrorism." The occupier has to take "security measures." Always the occupier has to "defend." Those are labels. From the perspective of far away they may be satisfying. From the perspective of these two soldiers, pushing the muzzles of their rifles at frightened fellow humans, they were false labels, heavy carpets thrown over inconvenient facts. 

The facts, as they saw them, were that they were occupiers, they were hated, and they were doing things to make them hated more. 

I asked Sharon his thoughts about Iraq.

"I am not an expert on Iraq," he said. 

Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is bramsey@seattletimes.com