Only we are human beings, all the rest are rubbish
Because that’s how it is in our eyes, the Jews — we are human beings, and the Palestinians are not. And until we understand that they too are human beings, we will not be human beings either.
By Kobi Niv (Translated from Hebrew by Sol Salbe)
In almost every country in the world, when cops or soldiers grab an 80-year-old elderly person who’s not suspected of anything, cuff them, tape their mouth and toss them in some freezing cold hole thus causing its death — it is called “murder” or at least “manslaughter”. The perpetrators are prosecuted. In our case, this is called “a failure of IDF values,” and the killers are chided or relegated to kitchen duties. And in general, had that elderly person not happened to have been an American citizen, but just a run of the mill shitty Palestinian — even this dismal response would not have happened. The IDF Spokesperson would have informed us that he had died of an unexplained cause and the matter would have thus ended.
But because of Omar ‘Abd al-Majid Assad’s US citizenship, Chief of Staff Kochavi troubled himself to meet with the US Ambassador to Israel where he apologised for the killing. Neither the chief of staff nor anyone in Israel’s military or political chain of command bothered to express sorrow or apologise to Assad’s family. And I will only mention here that after a Jordanian soldier massacres a group of Israeli teenage girls, King Hussein troubled himself and came to the house of each of the bereaved families, knelt before them and asked for their forgiveness. Another shitty Arab.
Our self-forgiveness for the atrocities committed by our soldiers in the territories is so deep that the Haaretz newspaper, which ostensibly opposes the Occupation, went to the trouble of publishing a major article suggesting that the Netzach Yehuda battalion is a pirate militia that developed under the IDF’s nose. No. The IDF places brigades, battalions and units staffed by soldiers from the bottom of the socio-economic scale (Kfir, Border Police, Netzach Yehuda) in the positions of foot soldiers in the [Occupied] Territories. Ethiopians, Druze, Circassians, lower echelon Mizrahim, Haredim, New immigrants and such. This method of governance over those referred to as “natives” was not invented in Israel. It is part of an age-old colonial rule, in which “underprivileged tribes” are put in charge of bullying and oppressing the occupied subjects without the white masters having to soil, God forbid, their delicate hands in shit and blood. This is also what the IDF does.
About two weeks ago, two IDF officers were killed by an officer from their unit. A major disaster. Last week, two Palestinian workers were killed in a scaffolding collapse on the 42nd floor of a building in Tel Aviv. That is also a major disaster, isn’t it?
But the difference between the media coverage of these two terrible preventable incidents was like between heaven and earth. In the case of the death of the Jews, the media told us every detail about their lives and accompanied the bereaved families on their mourning passage for many days. In the case of the deaths of the Palestinians, the media only reported that it happened, perhaps mentioned their names, tut-tutted that it was wrong for such things to happen, and that’s it. They did not tell us anything about their lives and certainly did not followed up their families. And why? What is the difference? These are soldiers and these are construction workers? After all, when a crane collapsed in Yavne about two and a half years ago and four Jewish workers were killed, even then the coverage looked completely different.
The difference in relation to the dead is not in the profession but in the nationality. Because that’s how it is in our eyes, the Jews — we are human beings, and the Palestinians are not. And until we understand that they too are human beings, we will not be human beings either.
