A Long Day of “Suffering” In Hevron: Part 1

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Kislev 1, 5777

December 1, 2016

Palestinian terror unreported in the Israeli or international media yesterday

The Gush Etzion area was the scene of multiple attacks yesterday with terrorists firebombing military vehicles, starting another forest fire, and attacking more Israeli men, women, and children with “rocks.”

In addition, Palestinians attacked the perimeter security fence at Kiryat Arba (where I was yesterday), and carried out other attacks at Silwan, Beit El, and numerous other places.

24 days until the dreaded showdown at Amona

What’s going to happen with the government coalition?

A good question. The issue of Amona is threatening to tear the government apart with one party in the coalition, Kulanu, declaring that it will not support the proposed Registration Law to “legalize” the Amona Jewish community–and another, Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party, declaring that if Kulanu refuses to support the Law, Jewish Home will block any other Law brought up by anyone or any party in the Coalition.

How this will play out is anyone’s guess.

Today’s Blog:

A Long Day of “Suffering” in Hebron: Part 1

Obviously, there was no israelstreet blog yesterday.

Following up on his trip to Samaria a few weeks ago, your humble servant went back to Hevron, a place where I have been many times before. This time, however, I went with the group that I perhaps despise more than any other in Israel, Breaking the Silence.

As I have often written, I revile Breaking the Silence because of their constant efforts to demean the Israeli Army–and because of their ongoing attempts to delegitimize Israel abroad. I find it appalling that foreign entities pay disgruntled IDF veterans to travel around the world spreading frauds about the so-called “Israeli occupation.”

However, as regular readers of this blog know, I feel that it is important to go out with groups I despise because it enables me to better get inside the mindset of our enemies. Normally, when my wife and I take these trips, we remain somewhat “undercover”, but yesterday, the factual distortions and omissions were coming so fast that we quickly came out of the shadows to reveal our ideological bent.

But I am getting a little ahead of myself.

The morning started at 8 am at the Savidor (Central Tel Aviv) Train Station where we met our guide, Ido, his assistants Merphie and Victor, and 45 bright-faced, cheery young people. Most of these young people were Europeans, primarily from Germany, but there was a smattering of Americans and even a Japanese journalist from Tokyo. They were mostly in the 20-25 year old age range.

Throughout the day, I was continuously dazzled by their lack of knowledge about the situation. To put it a different way, they were ideal “fresh meat” for Breaking the Silence propaganda.

The tour began. It was quickly apparent that Ido, the guide, did not know our driver who was an Israeli-Arab from Kfar Qassem. Since we were sitting in the front two seats, we heard Ido assure the driver in Hebrew that ours was another busload of people “who are against the occupation.”

At that point our indoctrination began.

Ido immediately began talking about how “settlers” harass Palestinians–a theme that he continued incessantly all day. He then wanted to tell us about his background, growing up the son of an IDF officer in a “center-left wing” town of Karmei Yosef. What he didn’t mention was that Karmei Yosef is a “settlement” in the Judean Hills that was founded in 1984 around the time that he was born. It is known in Israel as a “yuppie community.”

For the next 25 miles, we heard a stream of statistics: only half of all 18 year old Israelis go to the army, of that half only 10% serve in combat units in “the West Bank” and Gaza. Immediately, we began to silently question Ido’s “facts.” In the first place, the statistics that we are familiar with put the percentage of 18 year olds at around 70%, and in the second, there are no Israeli soldiers in Gaza (later in tour, we questioned Merphie about this, and she said that Ido meant “soldiers that serve in Gaza during wars” and “soldiers who might be engaged in undercover operations in Gaza”).

Of course that distinction was never made to the tour participants for whom Ido’s “facts” instantly became “facts.”

In any case, Ido continued on, recounting how much he wanted to serve as a combat soldier before he went into the army–even to the point that he and his friends hired a personal trainer to get into shape. He described himself as “mur-al”, a “fanatic” who wanted to go out and make “arrests”  (in the end, he was assigned into an artillery unit).
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As we continued down Highway 6, the lecture quickly devolved into a description of the types of missions that Ido eventually became involved in; according to Ido, sometimes soldiers blithely “kill innocent Palestinians” while making arrests, and sometimes they “keep them alive.” Again, we held our silence, knowing full well however how this nonsense plays on college campuses in the U.S. or at anti-Israel conferences throughout Europe.

What quickly became apparent was that for Ido and Breaking the Silence, all Palestinians are innocent; all Jews in the “West Bank” are occupiers (more on this tomorrow), all soldiers are people who have lost their moral compass in their support of the “settlers”, and the Israeli government is a group of right-wing fanatics who have subverted democracy.

It is indeed a fraudulent story that plays well internationally.

Next Ido described what he called “mapping missions.” According to Ido, Israeli commanders keep a list of “innocent Palestinian families” and randomly choose houses to go into in the middle of the night. Once there, they line up families against a wall amidst babies crying and mothers screaming, handcuff and blindfold fathers, and take down information which is quickly thrown away when the soldiers return to base. The point of the exercise, according to Ido, is simply to intimidate the Palestinians and make them aware of the Army’s presence.

When one of the people on the bus asked “how often does this take place?”, Ido at least said that it happens more frequently in times of Palestinian attacks on Israelis. Which of course hits very close to the truth. Leaving aside Ido’s emotionally exaggerated description of what takes place in the houses, the IDF performs such missions looking for terrorists.

But remember, according to Breaking the Silence, the primary terrorists are soldiers and the government. And if Ido said it once, he blathered this a hundred times “Nothing the Army does in the West Bank has to do with security, it is all political.”

From the mapping mission question, Ido then wanted to tell us that most Palestinians who have carried out stabbing attacks in the last year were not members of “terror cells”, implying that they were not really terrorists at all.

Finally, after all of this we came to the end of Ido’s personal biography tour at which time he said that at some point he became a commander of unit of some ten soldiers, and when they all left the army, they headed to places like India and South America because they had “to clear their heads”; in short, Ido said, “the Army sucks.” Ido then wanted to tell us that he studied media at a university, became a teacher, and then turned to a life of activism because he finally realized “what I did in the Army was wrong”; “I was engaged in a political mission . . . it is not an army’s job to occupy.”

At this point we turned off Highway 6 onto Road 35 and headed toward Hevron.

I will spare you the next 20 miles about how “Breaking the Silence” started but suffice it to say that, in Ido’s words, it was all about “corrupt and immoral” missions and protesting against a “systematic occupation of Palestine.” In this explanation, Ido began to use the term “Palestinian-Israelis” to refer to Israeli-Arabs. It was one of a hundred subtle linguistic manipulations used by the Breaking the Silence members on the tour–all of which lead to the delegitimization of Israel.

As we passed through the Tarkumiya checkpoint and began to near Hevron, Ido then launched into an abbreviated historical discussion of the city.

It is at this point that we will stop for today while I clear my head.