Israels Forsvarsstyrker er onde, og de begår krigsforbrydelser hele tiden, part II

I går kiggede jeg på Politikens sidste dødssejler og problemerne med dens indhold og forfatteren. Idag er det tid til at se på bagmanden bag hele historien. For de af os der ikke har læst gårsdagens artikel er historien kort, at Politiken er hoppet med på en medie-hypet historie om at israelske soldater skulle have myrdet løs i Gaza. Substansen i historien viste sig at være to soldater fra en venstredrejet skole, der fortalte rygter videre.

Har man læst gårsdagens indlæg har man formentlig ikke engang bidt mærke i historiens bagmand. I Politikens artikel optræder han nemlig kun i én sætning, sådan lidt henkastet:

Forstanderen for skolen, Danny Zamir, siger til Haaretz, at han »er chokeret over soldaternes udsagn«.

Hvem er Danny Zamir så? Jo, ud over at han er forstander for skolen hvor soldaterne var kaldt sammen til en gang gruppe-terapi, så har han også en noget kedelig fortid på den israelske venstrefløj.

Til at starte med kan man stille sig skeptisk over for hans "chok" over soldaternes "udsagn". Israel National News har således gravet lidt og fundet ud af at han allerede kort efter Gaza-krigens slutning propagerede dens frygtelighed, dengang også i digtform:

It was the justest of wars, the leaders said with serious faces
It was the justest of wars, the wounded soldiers mumbled
It was the justest of wars, the parents thought as they watched the flickering screens It was the justest of wars, and in Gaza they piled the corpses of dead children atop each other.

Digtet fandt INN på en hjemmeside der - passende nok - hedder "På venstre side". Lidt længere tilbage kan Herb Keinon i Jerusalem Post bidrage med følgende detaljer:

Zamir himself appears in a 2004 book titled Refusnik, Israel's Soldiers of Conscience, compiled and edited by Peretz Kidron, with a forward by Susan Sontag. The book, which earned commendation from no less a personage than Noam Chomsky (Noam Chomsky er en mand der siden 1960erne har skabt sig et navn ved at angribe alt, der bare smager af positivt ved den vestlige verden - Henrik), includes a section by Zamir, described as "an officer in the reserves from Kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar who was sentenced to 28 days for refusal to serve in Nablus and now heads the Kibbutz Movement's preparatory seminary for youngsters ahead of their induction in the army."

Seminariet er selvfølgelig den ultra-sekulære skole, hvor hans elever samledes for at fortælle rygter, hvorefter han lækkede dem til den venstredrejede israelske avis Haaretz. Irael National News har lidt flere detaljer om hans fængselsdom under den første arabisk-palæstinensiske intifada:

...Zamir....was court martialled and jailed in 1990 for refusing to provide security, as a reserve officer, for a ceremony in which a Torah scroll was donated to Joseph’s Tomb in Shechem.

Shechem er det oprindelige, hebraiske navn for en by der idag er omgivet af den arabiske bosættelse Nablus, og her ligger den jødiske helligdom Josefs Gravmæle. Den Josef der er tale om vil kristne måske huske som knægten der blev solgt som slave af sine brødre, kom til Egypten, og der spåede Faraoh at der ville komme syv fede og syv magre år.

Hvis vi vender tilbage til Herb Keinon i Jerusalem Post, så har han uddrag af Zamir´s udgydelser til sit forsvar for sin lydighedsnægtelse:

"Accordingly, collaboration with a regime or government that forces or orders me to be part of an anti-democratic apparatus that leads to self-destruction, disintegration and national decay, along with the utter denial of its own foundations, is illegitimate, unjust and immoral, and will remain so as long as the state does not take one of only two feasible actions: annexation of all or most of the territories conquered in 1967 and granting full civil rights to those residing there; or withdrawal from densely populated areas and a settlement that will release us of responsibility for the residents of those areas, who will chose for themselves whatever regime they desire (of course with security arrangements included)."

That was what Zamir wrote in 1990, reprinted in 2004. The testimonies of the soldiers that he brought to the public's attention seem to corroborate - what a coincidence - his thesis.

Det er nu ikke den store tilfældighed. Hvad der generelt i pressen refereres til som et "møde" eller enddog "gruppeterapi" lader mere til at have været en lejlighed for Zamir til at presse de historier han gad høre ud af sine tidligere elever. Dem han ikke gad høre blev der ikke lavet store overskrifter ud af. En mindre kontrovers mellem Zamir og piloten "Gideon":

Zamir: "Among the pilots, is there also talk or thoughts of remorse? For example, I was terribly surprised by the enthusiasm surrounding the killing of the Gaza traffic police on the first day of the operation: They took out 180 traffic cops. As a pilot, I would have questioned that."

Gideon: "There are two parts to this. Tactically speaking, you call them 'police.' In any case, they are armed and belong to Hamas ... During better times, they take Fatah people and throw them off the roofs and see what happens.

"Gideon" hentyder til et tilfælde, hvor Hamas´"politifolk" kastede en mand fra Fatah ud fra en 15 etager høj bygning, så han blev knust mod fortovet neden for bygningen. Video af mordet kan ses her. Andre gange kom det til længere diskussioner, hvis eks-eleverne ikke fulgte parti-linien, her soldaten "Yossi":

Yossi: "I am a platoon sergeant in an operations company of the Paratroops Brigade. We were in a house and discovered a family inside that wasn't supposed to be there. We assembled them all in the basement, posted two guards at all times and made sure they didn't make any trouble. Gradually, the emotional distance between us broke down - we had cigarettes with them, we drank coffee with them, we talked about the meaning of life and the fighting in Gaza. After very many conversations the owner of the house, a man of 70-plus, was saying it's good we are in Gaza and it's good that the IDF is doing what it is doing.

"The next day we sent the owner of the house and his son, a man of 40 or 50, for questioning. The day after that, we received an answer: We found out that both are political activists in Hamas. That was a little annoying - that they tell you how fine it is that you're here and good for you and blah-blah-blah, and then you find out that they were lying to your face the whole time.

"What annoyed me was that in the end, after we understood that the members of this family weren't exactly our good friends and they pretty much deserved to be forcibly ejected from there, my platoon commander suggested that when we left the house, we should clean up all the stuff, pick up and collect all the garbage in bags, sweep and wash the floor, fold up the blankets we used, make a pile of the mattresses and put them back on the beds."

Zamir: "What do you mean? Didn't every IDF unit that left a house do that?"

Yossi: "No. Not at all. On the contrary: In most of the houses graffiti was left behind and things like that."

Zamir: "That's simply behaving like animals."

Yossi: "You aren't supposed to be concentrating on folding blankets when you're being shot at."

Zamir: "I haven't heard all that much about you being shot at. It's not that I'm complaining, but if you've spent a week in a home, clean up your filth." ...

Yossi: "There was one day when a Katyusha, a Grad, landed in Be'er Sheva and a mother and her baby were moderately to seriously injured. They were neighbors of one of my soldiers. We heard the whole story on the radio, and he didn't take it lightly - that his neighbors were seriously hurt. So the guy was a bit antsy, and you can understand him. To tell a person like that, 'Come on, let's wash the floor of the house of a political activist in Hamas, who has just fired a Katyusha at your neighbors that has amputated one of their legs' - this isn't easy to do, especially if you don't agree with it at all. When my platoon commander said, 'Okay, tell everyone to fold up blankets and pile up mattresses,' it wasn't easy for me to take. There was lot of shouting. In the end I was convinced and realized it really was the right thing to do. Today I appreciate and even admire him, the platoon commander, for what happened there.

In the end I don't think that any army, the Syrian army, the Afghani army, would wash the floor of its enemy's houses, and it certainly wouldn't fold blankets and put them back in the closets."

Zamir: "I think it would be important for parents to sit here and hear this discussion. I think it would be an instructive discussion, and also very dismaying and depressing. You are describing an army with very low value norms, that's the truth.."

....og så kommer motivationen for hele balladen:

"It is quite possible that Hamas and the Syrian army would behave differently from me. The point is that we aren't Hamas and we aren't the Syrian army or the Egyptian army, and if clerics are anointing us with oil and sticking holy books in our hands, and if the soldiers in these units aren't representative of the whole spectrum in the Jewish people, but rather of certain segments of the population - what are we expecting? To whom are we complaining?

Der er altså tale om simpel brødnid, al den tid at Zamirs med-kibbutznikker ikke længere kan dominere de væbnede styrker så meget som de har gjort før. Som Israel National News kunne rapportere fra udnævnelses-ceremonien efter et officers-kursus i februar:

A senior officer present at the graduation ceremony, which took place on Tuesday in the Bahad-1 training camp in the Negev, said, “The religious are the kibbutzniks of today.” The reference was to the disproportionately high contribution made by kibbutz members to the IDF in the early decades of the State of Israel.

The fact that the religious comprise a high proportion of IDF officers is not new. Between 30-40% of graduates in recent officers’ courses have been religious - well more than twice as much as their proportion in the general population.

“The national-religious are replacing the kibbutzniks in the ranks of combat and command,” the officer said. “They learn at home the importance of sacrifice for the nation and of giving of themselves for the State.”

Hvad der er tale om er, at de sekulære israelere, som kibbutznikkere som Zamir hører til, i højere og højere grad søger til de grene af militæret der holder dem ude af frontlinien - forsyning, artilleri, efterretning, luftvåben og flåde, mens de national-religiøse vælger at træde ind i de huller de efterlader i kamp-enhederne.

Som sådan intet problem, da de sekulære for en stor dels vedkommende stadig sidder i chefstillingerne i forsvaret, men dette er truet af at de israelske forsvarsstyrker altid i meget stor grad har rekrutteret deres højere officerer fra kampenhederne - hvor de national-religiøse udgør en større og større del af de potentielle officers-emner.

Da man ikke bare sådan kan tvinge andelen af sekulære i kampenhederne i vejret må man altså gå en anden vej for at minimere antallet af de national-religiøse der kommer i topstillinger i militæret, nemlig ved på forhånd at miskreditere dem som officers-materiale.

En anden mulighed er at sørge for, at kampenhederne ikke får mulighed for at brillere, som for eksempel da den ultra-sekulære premierminister Ehud Olmert (der i sin tid som borgmester i Jerusalem lod araberne bygge titusindvis af illegale boliger i deres bosættelser) under krigen i Libanon i 2006 valgte at lade det sekulært-dominerede luftvåben gå i front. Det viste sig at være umuligt for luftvåbnet at stoppe strømmen af missiler fra Hezbollah i nord, så man i en panik-redning i sidste øjeblik istedet beordrede fuldstændigt uforberedte kamptropper in på landjorden.

Eller, sagt meget kort: motiveringen for det hele er simpel institutionel krigsførsel fra sekulær side.

Israels Forsvarsstyrker er onde, og de begår krigsforbrydelser hele tiden

Så skal vi til det igen: Israels Forsvarsstyrker er onde, og de begår krigsforbrydelser hele tiden.

Seneste eksempel er en historie, der oprindeligt bliver bragt i et obskurt blad på et venstredrejet seminarium i Israel, lækkes delvist til den venstredrejede israelske avis Haaretz, tages op af venstredrejet britiske BBC, for så endelig at blive kalkeret af i bl.a. vores egen venstredrejede Politiken. Og som sædvanlig bliver historien bare bedre og bedre, jo flere medier den har været igennem.

Men lad os starte med journalisten, der står for artiklen, Naimah Hussain. Hun er palæstinensisk araber, uddannet fra RUC hvor hun bl.a. har skrevet opgaver om velsignelsen ved et samfund med borgerløn og arbejderråd til at styre arbejdspladserne og hvordan Venstres professionalisering af den politiske kommunikation er et demokratisk problem. Derudover har hun arbejdet på bl.a. Dagbladet Arbejderen inden hun kom til Politiken, og har for den sags skyld også været med i Foreningen for Undersøgende Journalistik, for hvem hun begejstret reklamerede for seminarer med "Danmarks (og nogle af verdens bedste) gravere". Hold det sidste in mente, mens jeg går videre.

I Politiken satte journalist Naimah Hussain under overskriften "Israelske soldater afslører drab på civile"scenen som følger:

Episoderne er kommet frem, efter et hold soldater samledes på deres gamle militærskole, hvor de talte om deres oplevelser som kampsoldater i Gaza.

Forstanderen for skolen, Danny Zamir, siger til Haaretz, at han »er chokeret over soldaternes udsagn«.

Som mellemspil, for Naimah Hussains egen regning, bare for at gøre klart, at de her brødebetyngede soldater er rigtigt, rigtigt skyldige, og at de alle er kollektivt skyldige i det hele:

Gruppen af soldater, som blandt andet bekender, at de udover drab på civile, også bevidst ødelagde civiles ejendom, troede ikke, at de ville blive holdt til ansvar.

Således var ordene. Og her begynder problemerne.

Til at starte med den såkaldte "militærskole". Hos bl.a. AP og BBC er ordet "Military Academy", hvilket jo alt andet lige giver det en vis militær legitimitet. Går man imidlertid til den kilde som de alle nævner, nemlig historien i Haaretz, så står der intet om hverken "militærskole" eller "Military Academy", men følgende:

The soldiers are graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course
at Oranim Academic College in Tivon

..og gider man bruge 10 sekunder på at google skolen, så finder man ud af, at "Oranim Academic College" ikke er en militærskole, men et seminarium der uddanner lærere og pædagoger, og at det hele er tilknyttet et venstredrejet landbrugskollektiv.

Det "Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course" der omtales har som sådan heller ikke meget med militæret at gøre - det er en såkaldt Mechina, et program der hører ind under Sh’nat Sherut - muligheden for at udskyde værnepligten et år ved at lave frivilligt offentligt arbejde. Deltagelse i kurset kræver, at man senere deltager i de Israelske Forsvarsstyrker, men indeholder ingen militær-relevant træning - der er 10 måneders undervisning i historie, etik osv, og frivilligt arbejde som lærervikarer, pædagogmedhjælpere osv.

Det er tidligere elever på kurset, der mødtes på skolen for godt en måned siden for at tale om deres erfaringer, og det er fra kursets blad Briza ("Brisen"), at disse endog meget selektivt blev lækket til de venstredrejede israelske aviser Haaretz of Maariv.

Når man nærlæser artiklerne om affæren går det op for én, at der er tale om siger og skrive to soldater , begge sergenter, der er basis for hele medie-stormen. De to udsagn i Politikens gengivelse, og mine kommentarer:

1) En mor og hendes to børn blev skudt og dræbt af en israelsk skarpskytte, netop som de var blevet sluppet fri fra det hus, hvor de blev tilbageholdt. Skarpskytten havde ikke fået besked om løsladelsen fra kollegaerne.

Sammenlign med Haaretz´ oprindelige version:

"There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof,"

"The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders."

Det første man bemærker er, at Politiken-versionen udelader at moderen og hendes børn netop får besked på at gå væk fra faren, og at de altså på trods af direkte israelske ordrer selv går ind i farezonen.

Det næste man bemærker er, at soldaten der ifølge Naimah Hussain "bekender" drab, faktisk ikke selv har set noget af det - han refererer rygter, han har hørt.

2) I et andet eksempel, som kom frem under soldaternes møde, blev en ældre
palæstinensisk kvinde skudt på cirka 100 meters afstand. Dette på trods af, at
soldaten godt kunne se, at hun ikke udgjorde en trussel, skriver AP.

Her undrer man sig over, hvorfor i alverden Naimah Hussain vælger at citere AP for noget, hun lige så godt kan gå til sin kilde - Haaretz, som hun nævner tidligere i artiklen. Når man gør det for hende forstår man imidlertid hvorfor, for så finder man hvad det er, AP har kogt ned til det understregede for hende:

"One of our officers, a company commander, saw someone coming on some road, a woman, an old woman. She was walking along pretty far away, but close enough so you could take out someone you saw there. If she were suspicious, not suspicious - I don't know. In the end, he sent people up to the roof, to take her out with their weapons. From the description of this story, I simply felt it was murder in cold blood."

Det første man bemærker er, at Politiken-versionen laver en soldat der fortæller rygter videre om til et pålideligt vidne, der endda akkurat kan angive afstanden til kvinden.

Det næste man bemærker er, at fyren på baggrund af rygter har det fint med at beskylde sine kolleger for mord.

Dertil kommer, at Israels kanal 2 fjernsyn ifølge The Muqata har kontaktet den ene af de to ovennævnte "vidner", og at denne blankt indrømmer, det er rygter han har hørt, ikke noget han selv har været vidne til. Det ville også være lidt svært for ham andet, for han har overhovedet ikke været i Gaza-striben.

Man sidder med andre ord tilbage med endnu et tilfælde af venstredrejet propaganda rettet med brodden mod Israel. Og sjovt nok igen i Politiken.