print:IDF "Self-Defense" in Farraheen | Palestine |Axisoflogic.com

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.

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