I used to live in an old neighborhood in Jerusalem called… well, it had many names. The neighborhood had a lot of history behind it and the residents included an elderly Kurdish couple (who still spoke Aramaic), an artist Holocaust survivor, a young Yemeni couple with their kids, a low-class Syrian family that always shouted at each other in Arabic, a non-Jewish Frenchman and an Arab reputed to be in hiding for corroborating with Israeli officials. I wish I could have those days back again and get to know those people better.
One day there was a disturbance at the Temple Mount. I can’t remember the details but some Arabs were protesting outside Al-Aqsa Mosque and Israeli soldiers were sent to control them. I had purchased a Newsweek magazine the next day. It featured an Arab protester at the Temple Mount. When my young Yemeni neighbor came by our house, I showed him the magazine. He grabbed it from me, threw it to the ground and stomped on the photo of the Palestinian as he blurted some harsh words of contempt against Arabs.
He was a member of the infamous “Mishmar ha-Gevul” (Border Patrol). These people were known for their venomous hatred toward Arabs.
So I was not surprised when I came upon this story at Alarabiya:
Activists have slammed a video released on Monday by Israeli human rights agency B’Tselem which shows an Israeli border officer kicking a Palestinian boy in the Israeli-controlled sector of Hebron.
The officer is seen in the video grabbing the nine-year-old boy, Abd a-Rahman Burqan, by the arm, dragging him as he says: “Why are you causing trouble?” A second officer walks towards the boy and kicks the child as he cries out.
According to B’Tselem, the incident took place on Friday close to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Ibrahim mosque, a location that frequently witnesses clashes between police and young Palestinian boys.
The boy’s father, Amer Burqan, said his son had gone out to get soup which is given out to the poor.
Israel’s Border Police immediately announced an investigation into the incident. In a statement released shortly after the video was put online, it said it “condemns the police conduct as contrary to its values,” reported the Times of Israel.
On the contrary. This conduct is very much in accordance with its values – unless things have dramatically changed over the past 25 years.
It’s a fine line a government must walk if it’s serious about protecting its borders. On the one hand, a certain amount of animosity, toward the threatening population, is helpful. We can see, on our own southern border, how ineffective Hispanic border agents can be in protecting us from infiltration by other Hispanics. On the other hand, kicking children is not exactly helpful if we want international sympathy and support. Notably, the soldier in question appears to be Mizrahi* (or he could be Druze). Mizrahis tend to have the least sympathy toward Arabs in Israel as their own parents often experienced anti-Jewish behavior in their original homelands. What they are usually not told is that some of this behavior was instigated by the Zionists in order to force the Jews to leave those lands for Israel.
Emotions and attitudes can be powerful allies, or handicaps, when it comes to protecting a nation from invasion. The words “racism” and “xenophobia” imply there is something wrong with wishing to protect the ethnic integrity of your own homeland. On the contrary, any nation that lacks these sentiments soon becomes extinct. It’s “progressive” and “liberal” attitudes then become a thing of the past. Women’s rights, children’s rights, animal rights, environmentalism and the rights of sexual minorities all become subordinate to “immigrant’s rights”.
July 4, 2012 at 8:09 pm
A couple of comments under the video say the kid was grabbed, just as he was picking up stones to throw at soldiers, but the video starts only with the first soldier grabbing the kid. An honest video would have shown what the kid was up to. They deliberately took it out of context. The soldiers grabbed the kid because they’re evil Zionists, not because they didn’t want him to throw rocks at them.
The story about the soup is the usual Arab b.s. Insert tiny violin here. Everyone knows Arab kids throw rocks at Jewish soldiers, because they’re not allowed to respond in kind. The second soldier will be disciplined for not being a doormat.
Whose fault is this incident? The parents, who teach their children that Jews are easy targets; the leftist Jews, who enable the Arab bullies; and the Israeli government, which should have told the world to mind its own business by now.
July 4, 2012 at 8:47 pm
[...] »The Border Patrol [...]
July 5, 2012 at 8:16 am
While I’m neither a Zionist nor an anti-Zionist, I find it a bit unfair to blame the Zionists for the behavior of Muslims, in particular, the Yemeni Muslims that would have been the oppressors of your acquaintance’s ancestors. They didn’t need the help of the Zionists to treat Jews badly!
In many cases, Muslims treat Christians even worse than Jews, but that’s a whole other topic…
July 12, 2012 at 6:10 pm
What to speak of what the Mohammed and Jesus cults did to Hindus (and in many cases still do!)
July 5, 2012 at 11:26 pm
Re: Mizrahim
The Mizrahim are kind of interesting. In many ways they’re to the Ashkenazim in Israel what white middle Americans are to San Francisco yuppies.
It should be noted that most of those who participated in the anti-African riot in Tel Aviv were Mizrahi Jews, and when criticized for their racism, some pointed out that Jews in the northern part of Tel Aviv (presumably Ashkenazim) could afford to be tolerant/indulgent because the Africans weren’t actually in their own neighborhoods.
The words “racism” and “xenophobia” imply there is something wrong with wishing to protect the ethnic integrity of your own homeland.
That’s essentially the argument that Israel’s resident bleeding heart liberal, Gideon Levy, once made in Haaretz. Basically, he argued that there were no democratic means to prevent Arabs and the Haredi from becoming the majority in Israel, and that attempts by secular Jews to stop current demographic changes were despicably racist.
His counterparts in Western countries make the same exact argument regarding white people wanting to preserve a white majority.
Basically, white people nowhere have a right to maintain a majority, and must not only tolerate, but even celebrate, their eventual demographic displacement.
July 6, 2012 at 7:46 pm
I have to add something to my comment: “Soup=tea and Skittles.”
July 12, 2012 at 5:54 pm
I’m glad there are people like you, and many in Israel, who defend Jews whenever there is any chance they are in the right – and I don’t deny that the soldier’s actions might have been justified. As for me, I got burned out on the intense hatred (on both sides) from all the years I lived there. I find it hard to see “Good guys” and “Bad guys” over there, with some exceptions of course.