By Max Ajl
Jewbonics
Saturday, Apr 24, 2010
What are you seeing here? After an hour's time to correctly set up this
horrible act, Israeli military bulldozers and tanks entered Palestinian
land and churned up winter wheat, rye, and lentils, because they could,
because that's how they punish the Palestinians living in Abasan
Kabeer, Farraheen, and because Israeli strategy is to shrink the Gaza
prison and force the people living there to rely solely on a feeding
tube called UNRWA for survival.
You are seeing them turn the soil over so that the most fertile surface
humus is placed underground, not only destroying crops but reducing
fertility for subsequent years. We had just escorted farmers reaping
about 6 dunums of lentils in the area that was subsequently bulldozed.
You are seeing them desperately trying to bait Palestinians into
violence, so that they can respond by shooting up the surrounding area.
And, they hope, starting up a feedback cycle of tit-for-big-tat
violence which can be used as a totally purposeful justification for
another military strike on the civilian infrastructure.
After Israeli military bulldozers, plated with armor and escorted by
four Merkava tanks, had finished razing a 200-meter-wide swathe of
Palestinian winter wheat in front of the homes in which we were
drinking tea in Abasan Kabeer, we went back to Jaber and Layla’s rented
home. Rented, because the house they own is too close to the border,
500 meters, and Israeli bulldozers are liable to destroy it and Layla
and Jabar have small children. On our way we passed through the narrow
streets of the village. We passed a very small boy and his brother,
even smaller, hiding behind a fence off the main road. They had seen us
from a distance. They were visibly shaking. One was Amir, he looked
maybe five or six, the littler one three or four. They were visibly
quaking, and would not say hello to us, and cowered behind their
mother. She explained: it was because of our backpacks.
The only
foreigners Amir and his brother in rural Farraheen had ever seen were
IDF soldiers coming to destroy homes, shooting and killing and
devastating. Because of our backpacks, they thought we, too, were IDF.
Because of the IDF these little children are terrified of people from
the outside world, because all they know of such people is that they
are trying to destroy their world.
Photo stills.
Jewbonics
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