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November 29, 2004, Vol. 6 Issue 18

GELT BY APPROPRIATION: The Israeli government is proposing to directly transfer over NIS 300 million to settlements in the occupied territories, according to a new analysis from the Israeli Peace Now movement of Israel's 2005 state budget bill. This sum does not include the security budget that is allocated for settlements, nor does it include a substantial amount for settlements that is hidden from the public and cannot be located in the state budget. However, after a ...

GELT BY APPROPRIATION: The Israeli government is proposing to directly transfer over NIS 300 million to settlements in the occupied territories, according to a new analysis from the Israeli Peace Now movement of Israel's 2005 state budget bill. This sum does not include the security budget that is allocated for settlements, nor does it include a substantial amount for settlements that is hidden from the public and cannot be located in the state budget. However, after a careful examination of the proposed budget, Peace Now determined that some of the funds identified as earmarked for settlements are being allocated to sites in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank that are supposed to be evacuated under the disengagement plan. "It is frustrating to see that when the economic situation in Israel is so grave, the government continues to invest in settlements, including those slated for evacuation," said Peace Now director general Yariv Oppenheimer. The report says that the central government ministries used to allocate funds to the occupied territories are the Agriculture Ministry, the Housing and Construction Ministry, the Industry, Trade, and Labor Ministry, and the Transport Ministry. Some NIS 9.5 million is to be transferred to the settlement branch of the central district, which includes the Jordan Valley, Megilot, Shomron, Binyamin, and Gush Etzion regional councils. Another NIS 6.9 million is transferred to the settlement branch of the southern district, which includes the southern Hebron hills and Gush Katif regional councils. The report states that the Jewish Agency's settlement branch, which is involved in developing settlements beyond the Green Line, receives funding from the Agriculture Ministry. More than 50% of the Jewish Agency's settlement branch's budget is spent on projects in the West Bank and Gaza. The Jewish Agency's settlement branch pays for, among other things, generators for temporary sites that are not hooked up to the electricity grid, loans, and grants for infrastructure work, such as setting up a water system, connecting a site to the electricity grid and investments in infrastructure in temporary sites. The report notes that the description in the budget bill of the settlement branch's budget indicates that it is used to help establish new settlement outposts and to turn them into permanent settlements. Peace Now found that land earmarked for the construction of 500 new housing units will be sold in 2005 in Maale Adumim. The budget for the plan to develop the infrastructure in Maale Adumim comes to some NIS 25 million. This budget will be allocated by the Housing and Construction Ministry. Land earmarked for the construction of 500 new housing units is also to be sold in Har Homa in 2005. The budget for development in the settlements is estimated to be NIS 43 million. Another NIS 32 million will be transferred to pay for guarding and other security activity in East Jerusalem. For its part, the Industry, Trade, and Labor Ministry is going to offer some NIS 8 million in grants for settlements, while benefits for investors over the Green Line will reach an estimated NIS 5 million. (Ynet & Ma'ariv, 11/21/04)

PROTECTING THE CRIMINALS: Akiva Eldar reports that the Knesset Finance Committee recently approved an additional NIS 380,000 on top of over NIS 32 million that has already been allocated this year to fund security for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem. Knesset Member Haim Oron, who has for years tracked the private security arrangements for the Ateret Cohanim and Elad association settlers that are paid for from the state budget, calculated that each Jewish settler in East Jerusalem costs the public coffers approximately NIS 18,000 a year. The settlers are the ones who give the orders to the security firm, making the guards into their private militia, underwritten by the Israeli public. Oron and the Ir Amim organization (which promotes coexistence in Jerusalem) claim that the allocation was granted, in part, to pay for the cost of guarding buildings that were unlawfully constructed in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods in Silwan and Abu Dis, including a six-story structure. In a letter to the Attorney General, they questioned how a law-abiding state can underwrite the private security of Jewish transgressors of the construction laws, while at the same time it sends border policemen to safeguard bulldozers razing unlawful buildings of the Palestinian neighbors. What's more, the route of the separation barrier was altered in such a way that one of the legally dubious buildings of the settlers will not be left outside the fence. (Ha'aretz, 11/25/04)

CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The IDF is considering ordering officers living in illegal West Bank outposts to move out. A considerable number of career army officers are living in illegal outposts, including a deputy brigade commander in compulsory service. And while IDF commanders in the West Bank and civil administration officials have been aware of the situation for a long time, nothing has been done about it until now. However, the IDF is to discuss the issue soon, and it is likely to ask officers living in outposts, at least those earmarked for evacuation, to leave. In 1998, a helicopter pilot on reserve duty set up an outpost near the settlement of Itamar, but the air force did nothing against the pilot. Since then, the outpost has been "laundered," but other officers, many of them from settlements, have joined other illegal outposts. These officers include a deputy brigade commander in Golani who is living in an outpost earmarked for evacuation in the northern West Bank, another officer who recently applied to live in an outpost near Ramallah, and a third officer attending a military academy course to become company commander who is living in an illegal outpost in the northern West Bank. (Ha'aretz, 11/21/04)

COMMAND PERFORMANCE: Several Southern Command officers have been taken out of the decision-making circles that pertain to the preparations for the disengagement plan, out of concern details of the plan will leak out. One of the officers, a settler himself, has close contacts with Gush Katif settlers. In recent months, the Southern Command has stepped up its efforts to prepare for implementation of the pullout. The issues at hand, some of which are classified, are mainly connected to the operational plans and infrastructure aspects of the evacuation. "It expresses a lack of faith in the commanders," said one officer in the command. "A classic example pertains to an officer that has a job that is very relevant to the disengagement. He has close contacts with settlers and security officers of the settlements. He has been completely taken out of the loop out of concern he would leak to the settlers." Another officer said, "Some officers talk too much and try to get the Gaza settlers and the rabbis to like them. It is a necessary measure in this sensitive time." (Ma'ariv, 11/16/04)

THE GUSH IS ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF HILLS: In recent weeks, Israeli security branches have observed a migration. Individuals from the violent groups of Kahanists and hilltop youth are moving from the West Bank to Gush Katif in Gaza. This is the vanguard. The deployment of the anarchistic groups in the field is intended to forcibly prevent the disengagement process. The hilltop youth-the violent, mobilized and inciting vanguard-will act alongside and within the established settler groups. There are those who are thinking about and planning the organized resistance to the evacuation. There is a "distribution of forces and tasks" there. These will be joined, in a non-orderly fashion, by the provocateurs, the anarchists, and the Kahanists. These groups have no clear spiritual or operational leaderships. They form ad hoc connections. As the atmosphere in the West Bank and Gaza grows more extreme, the extreme groups gradually disengage. Their worldview does not include concepts of Israeli law, and most reject all symbols of civilization. They regard Arabs as thieves, secular Jews as rabble, and the army as the enemy. The field is already bustling with activity towards the day of disengagement. Trenches are being dug around illegal settlement outposts and settlements slated for evacuation, plans are being made to prepare obstacles and fences in order to obstruct the movement of security forces. Supplies are being collected. The army monitors and sees what is happening. Since it is clear to these violent groups that the army will block the main roads leading to the settlements, they are already preparing plans for ways to forcibly reach settlements and outposts, even through roads that cross Arab villages and towns. If the IDF prevents them from reaching Gush Katif in an orderly fashion, they plan to come by sea, but nothing will stop them from reaching Gush Katif, even through Rafah or Khan Yunis. If they have to reach Homesh, they will not hesitate to get there through Nablus. This movement is expected to be accompanied by pogroms and fire due to Palestinian resistance. As far as the army is concerned, preparation for these situations means diverting troops in order to prevent these street battles. At the same time, the army is preparing for a situation where there will be an attempt to vandalize the equipment serving the security establishment for purposes of evacuation, like bulldozers and trucks, while still in their lots. The army is also preparing for situations around evacuated settlements in which new settlements will be established that will require the army to split up its forces to remove the new settlement outposts. (Yedioth Ahronoth, 11/26/04)

UNSETTLING TERROR, PART I: Commenting on the settlers' growing use of violence in the occupied territories, Ze'ev Schiff wrote, "There are things that settlers have been doing lately to the army that if they were done by Palestinians would be defined as violence, and even as terrorism. For example, vandalizing the separation fence. The intent was not to destroy the fence but to cause false alarms to harass the soldiers. If a Palestinian had done so, they would certainly have been shot by the soldiers. And how would the IDF respond if Palestinians scattered tacks on the roads to flatten military vehicle tires? It would be called 'cold sabotage' and would have been listed as an act of terror in the statistics. As for the ugliness of that act, it should be noted that it was aimed deliberately against a military ambulance sent to extract a Palestinian wounded in clashes with settlers over the olive harvest. Such examples are evidence of the mounting extremism that has taken place in recent months among some of the settlers. Without wanting so, those extremists are causing Palestinian terrorism. Cases of blocking an IDF's company vehicle at Yitzhar, or calling soldiers 'Nazis' when they accompanied disengagement administrator Yonatan Bassi, who was not able to reach his destination because of the harassment, may not be as severe as the cases mentioned above, but it is clear that the law was broken. Have any of them been arrested or prosecuted? The attacks on the Palestinian olive harvesters and the vandalization of Palestinian property has gone on for years-there's nobody stopping the vandals and the harassers. Senior officers in the Central Command are saying with worry that they used to be certain that no settler would open fire on soldiers in case of the evacuation of settlements-and now they are not so sure. They say there are signs that groups of extremists among the settlers are now completely out of control. Their hostility is not only aimed at the Palestinians, but also toward anyone who symbolizes the Israeli regime." (Ha'aretz, 11/24/04)

UNSETTLING TERROR, PART II: Ze'ev Schiff continued, "Hopefully, the Shin Bet knows enough and in time, about what the extremists are plotting. If not, the secret service should make finding out a top priority. Meanwhile, the extremists regard the Shin Bet as a hostile body against whom steps must be taken for self-defense, and they pass on to their friends and colleagues how to foil Shin Bet activities. The hard core extremists among the settlers are in the Samaria district, not Gush Katif. The current assessments are that when the evacuation of Gush Katif begins, 'the people from the hilltops' in Samaria will head south to Gaza to join the struggle against the army and police sent to evacuate settlers who refuse to leave of their own volition. The IDF and police are perceived by those 'hilltop people' as representatives of a hostile regime. The same is true in the northern West Bank. Out of the four settlements meant to be evacuated, there is one, Sa Nur, where a group of extremists has moved in declaring they will refuse to be evacuated. The place was once an artists village but they left, and the new occupants have taken their place. As in the case of Gush Katif, the army has plans for an evacuation in Samaria. The plans were prepared even before the matter of compensation was completed. The army expects all those areas to attract people from outside the areas to try to disrupt the evacuation. They will certainly try to put up new outposts during the evacuation or try to return to the scene after an evacuation to try to re-establish the settlement. It is a waste of time to try to dissuade them with an information campaign. Administrative steps must be taken against them, their weapons confiscated. When they blocked the army vehicle in Yitzhar, there should have been immediate arrests or the company should have been removed from the settlement. If the assessment is that the extremism has reached the point that shots will be fired, action must be taken against the extremists, now." (Ha'aretz, 11/24/04)

WHAT IS IN A NAME? Israel is working with the U.S. and UN to try to define the legal status of the territories that are due to be evacuated under the disengagement plan. Israel is seeking a creative formula that will diminish its responsibility vis-à-vis Gaza following its withdrawal from the area. Israeli officials are proposing the creation of interim stages, like "a step toward ending the occupation," or the definition of "effective control of the area." Another idea, which has met with differences of opinion among experts in Jerusalem, is to declare that the Oslo Accords are still valid and that the disengagement plan is a withdrawal in the framework of one of the phases of that accord. Israel would like to receive international legitimacy for the claim that the occupation will end with the disengagement; but international law does not recognize any interim conditions and only speak of occupation or lack of occupation. There are two problems in this respect. First, Israel would like to retain control over the Philadelphi Route at Rafah, the border crossings and the air space and territorial waters of the Strip, meaning that some responsibility will remain with Israel. Second, Gaza and the West Bank are recognized internationally as "one territorial unit" and Israel accepted this definition in Oslo. Disengagement from Gaza alone can therefore not be considered an end of the occupation. (Ha'aretz, 11/22/04)

OPERATION OFFENSIVE SHIELD: In a dramatic ruling issued on the eve of disengagement, Justice Yehezkel Barclay of the Jerusalem Magistrates Court convicted three mothers from the settlement of Hebron of endangering the lives of their babies, after barricading themselves inside a settlement outpost in stormy weather. About a year and a half ago, on a cold and rainy winter day, three women arrived at the Hill 26 outpost in Kiryat Arba, bearing with them their infants, who were only a few months old at the time. This was not a rare step. Mothers coming with newborn infants to participate in battles against evacuating settlement outposts are a common sight in the occupied territories. The three women barricaded themselves in an abandoned vehicle that stood on the hill, locked the doors and refused to exit. Even after the hill was declared a closed military zone, the women persisted in their refusal to evacuate. They remained in the locked vehicle for hours with their children, until police officers were forced to break in and evacuate the women, who continued to embrace their infants all the while. According to the indictment, "The defendants resisted evacuation, and despite the rainy and cold weather lay down on the muddy ground, with the infants in their arms being shaken from side to side. The presence of the infants in the struggle made it even more difficult for the police officers to carry out their duty, due to the fear that the infants would be harmed." Justice Barclay, who viewed police footage of the incident, said, "One can clearly see the defendants coming with their infants in difficult weather conditions to the site of the event, and using them as a shield-thereby making it difficult for the army and police to evacuate them." A police officer, who has participated in the evacuation of many settlement outposts and is well familiar with the phenomenon, said, "This is a very important ruling, particularly in advance of the implementation of the disengagement plan. Causing harm to a helpless infant was only a matter of time, and I hope that now the cynical use of children will stop, and the danger to their lives will pass. Mothers must understand that they are crossing a moral red line, in addition to breaking the law, by endangering their children in this manner." (Yedioth Ahronoth, 11/24/04)

ISRAEL'S LATEST EXPORT: The Zionist Council is warning that the balance of Jewish migration to Israel in 2004 is likely to be negative. It says that the number of new immigrants by the end of this year will come to 20,000, but only a third of them are halachically Jewish, while the number of emigrants is 15,000, most of them Jewish. These troubling data are based on figures from the Interior Ministry, the Jewish Agency, and the Central Bureau of Statistics. One of the reasons for the negative balance-the first in 29 years-is the large number of those leaving. Another reason is the fact that only a third of new immigrants are halachically Jewish. Two-thirds of the new immigrants are not recognized as Jewish by halacha, and 11% of them even define themselves as completely Christian. Israel believes that the true number of Christians among the new immigrants is much higher, but many fear to disclose their religion. However, it is important to note that many of the non-Jewish new immigrants consider themselves Jewish in all senses. Other disturbing news: more than 100,000 new immigrants who came to Israel since 1990 have since left, 70,543 of them from the former Soviet Union. It is believed that the economic crisis and the ongoing Intifada will only increase the number of new immigrants who leave. (Yedioth Ahronoth, 11/25/04)

"CONFIRMED KILL" CONFIRMED: Israeli Channel Two's "Uvda" program aired excerpts taken from a military radio recording of IDF soldiers involved in the shooting of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, Iman el-Hams, a few weeks ago in Gaza, an incident that led to the commander in charge of the shooting ("Captain R") to be indicted in the Southern Command's military court last week. Behind the charges against the commander is the "kill confirmation" incident in which he fired at the girl after she was initially shot to death, then returned to her body and continued to shoot her. Here are the excerpts: 06:48 The observation point identifies the girl. Observation point: "It's a little girl. She's running defensively eastward.a girl of about ten, she's behind the embankment, scared to death." Outpost gate guard: "They're charging at her right now." 06:52 Iman el-Hams is hit. Observation post: "Receive, I think that one of the positions took her out." Operations room: "What, she fell?" Observation post: "She's not moving right now." The company commander hears, but doesn't stop. Company commander: "I and another soldier.are going in a little nearer, forward, to confirm the kill.receive a situation report-we fired and killed her.I also confirmed the kill. Over." The incident is over. The company commander "clarifies" procedure. Company commander: "This is commander, anything that's mobile, that moves in the zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed. Over." (Yedioth Ahronoth, 11/23/04)

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES: In an analysis of the recording of the "confirmed kill" incident, Ofer Shelah wrote, "It is hard to know where to begin to respond to the spectacle that was aired [last week] on the program 'Uvda.' Should it be the sight of the frightened soldiers, none of whom shouted out that a ten-year-old girl is not a 'threat that needs to be neutralized?' Maybe it should be with their commander, who sees the girl fluttering between death and life and still sticks her with another burst of automatic fire, just to be sure? And maybe it should be with the language, half of which launders the atrocity and the other half of which is a violent, alienated outward manifestation of the psyche of people who are emotionally unable to take any more. The most appropriate response, what can we do, is to begin from the top. The death of Iman el-Hams is a terrible incident, and yet it is the kind of thing that happens when the beast in the human soul is unleashed under conditions of war. But the military establishment that came into view in the course of the incident, and mainly in the course of what followed in its wake, belongs neither to the realm of warfare nor its pressures. It shows an army and a chain of command that has lost its way, for whom the cheapness of truth is equal only to the cheapness of life. The incident was investigated by the commander of the division, and that investigation was then approved by the OC Southern Command and the chief of staff. Subsequently, they tried to explain away the conclusions by saying that the company commander had one version and the soldiers another. But everything was recorded on the military radio, everything was filmed, there is no one who disputes the facts. What exactly was it that Brig. Gen. Zakai investigated? What is it exactly that Maj. Gen. Dan Harel and Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon approved? What is the dignity of truth, which values are the IDF's values in the opinion of these people? Do they care about what we were exposed to [last week], or will they once again hunt down whoever spoke with the journalists? The IDF comes across in this incident like a defeated band of gunmen in the field, and as whitewashing liars in the Kirya [IDF headquarters]. The argument revolved around the meaningless phrase 'kill confirmation' (every combat soldier learns [in training] to confirm that the targets he is about to pass no longer constitute a threat) instead of talking about the truly important thing: these commanders, from the company commander who fired a burst of automatic gunfire into the girl's corpse, all the way up to the chief of staff, who approved the investigation report that established that 'the company commander failed to discern who was shooting at him and, therefore, he fired into the ground,' are not worthy of serving in their posts." (Yedioth Ahronoth, 11/23/04)

THE CAPTAIN R SYNDROME: In another commentary on the incident, Yaron London said, "Diplomatic maneuvering is not the reason why we are destined to withdraw from Gaza. The reasons for the withdrawal, which for reasons of verbal delicacy has been dubbed 'disengagement,' can be found in the testimony that led to the indictment of Captain R. The captain, a company commander in the Givati Brigade, is the man who allegedly shot at a 13-year-old girl who became trapped near the Girit outpost. After she dropped to the ground, he drew near her and then fired again, to confirm her death. The crime is exceedingly grave, but our war against the Palestinian uprising drags us into committing frequent atrocities. Few of them are discovered, and some of them are exposed only after combat troops are out of uniform and throw at us what most of us do not want to know. We insist that the IDF is still the most decent of armies, but it is not an army of celestial angels. Like in every group of people, the souls of the people in that group bow to circumstances, and the circumstances that our policy has faced them with dulls their moral sensibilities. Perpetual warfare in the midst of a civilian population; the perpetual friction with people about whom one does not know whether they are innocent civilians or terrorists with explosives strapped to their bodies; the animosity felt for the adversary and the fear of his guileful tricks; the incessant need to interpret orders that are never sufficient to cover the entire array of possibilities that reality produces; and finally-the exhaustion, soldiers' greatest enemy, also dooms our army to becoming worn out. Since the beginning of the occupation, and all the more so after the eruption of the Intifada, doomsday prophets have envisioned that this would be the outcome, and that this violence would gradually seep in from the battlefield into our streets and homes. Now we can no longer deny that this had indeed come to pass. Disengagement expresses not only our desire for moral convalescence, but also the simple fact that we did not win the war for Gaza. It is difficult to admit this, but it is the truth, and we would do well were we to recognize it so that we do not inflate our mistakes. How can we know that we were not victorious? The definition is simple: a country is not victorious when it is coerced into conceding a swath of land that until not long before its leaders declared should not be conceded under any circumstances. We were not victorious, and everything else-the Road Map, demographics, and the desire to promote Palestinian self-governance-are explanations we use to drug ourselves so as to overcome the mental discomfort. But, thankfully, it is a good thing that we were not victorious. Had we been victorious, incidents of the kind attributed to Captain R would multiply without any borders. We need a border." (Yedioth Ahronoth, 11/23/04)

THE MORAL OF THE STORY, PART I: On May 12th this year, Y turned on the TV and his mood turned lugubrious. Six soldiers from the Givati reconnaissance company had been killed in the APC disaster. The explosion blew everything to pieces. Body parts flew in the air, the Palestinians rejoiced. Then Hezbollah's television station showed pictures of crowds handling the body parts. Y heard the reports and was furious, disgusted. "Animals," he said to himself. And then he felt a pinch, a sense of powerlessness, the kind you feel when looking into the mirror and only want to put your fist into the image and smash it to smithereens. He remembered two years back. Y was then a junior officer in Haredi Nahal. The Hamra roadblock, a suicide bomber comes and blows himself up. Nobody was hurt, only one body lay on the ground, that of the terrorist. Actually, it wasn't even a body. Body parts. Y's friends were happy, exultant. Some took a hand, put it next to a foot, and later told him they played with the body as if it was Lego. And then they brought out the cameras. G, another junior officer, asked to have his picture taken with the severed head. The guys laughed. The head was stuck on a pole, like a scarecrow, and afterwards-or perhaps before-a cigarette was stuck in the head's mouth. "This was a riot for the company," Y says, "Everyone thought it was hysterical. I remember I tried to tell them: are you guys crazy? You're just revolting. They didn't understand what I was talking about. And the more time that passes, the worse and worse it seems to me. Suddenly you look at it completely from the side and tell yourself: 'wait a second, we want to think that we're better than them, than the Arabs, and here we are, just like them. They're our enemy, we're their enemy. They have no [moral] codes, but where are our codes? How are we different from how they acted in the APC disaster? How are we different than the Ramallah lynching? How are we different?" Reporter Eyal Gonen noted, "You can look for differences. And you can find them. What appears to be innate Palestinian cruelty, etched in the behavior of the masses, only takes place on the Israeli periphery and in isolated cases. But you can also look for cause for concern, and that is readily visible: you can ask, for example, why was this instance in which troops played with a Palestinian's body parts-as singular and unrepresentative a case as this may be-not followed up with due processes and in the command ranks, even though most of the unit apparently knew about it. You could ask how it is that in many IDF units-and this is no longer an isolated case-posing happily with a Palestinian's body has become nearly routine. You could ask how it is that the body of a terrorist, who is obviously already dead, becomes a sieve after soldiers are allowed to riddle it with bullets as a souvenir. So maybe all this is actually not that important, because when there are errant weeds, they abuse living Palestinians, and we shouldn't be too upset when these errant weeds play around a bit with dead Palestinians." (Yedioth Ahronoth, 11/19/04)

THE MORAL OF THE STORY, PART II: Y recalls that there was "a lot of stress at the roadblock. Normal things, like all the IDF units do at the roadblock. And the more you do it, the more your sensibilities are dulled. You stop looking at them, the Palestinians, as if they were people. You see a taxi stuffed with 15 people going through the roadblock and you think: here's a taxi full of Arabs. You don't think that the 15 people [are] crowded into a taxi in order to bring food for their families, and that while you get NIS 600 a month, they too are getting NIS 600 a month-for an entire family. You don't think about that, you can't think about that. And you want to do only one thing: to do as much as you can. To break routine and kill as many Arabs as you can.For weeks afterwards [the roadblock incident] guys would pass the pictures around and laugh. I personally found it difficult to see this. The head without a throat, the hands, but everyone was terribly excited, they said it was cool. I remember I told them: 'what's the matter with you? Leave this alone, doesn't it plain disgust you? Are you animals?' One guy, who really got excited over the pictures, told me: 'what's your problem, they're Arabs.' I think he would have taken it harder to see a cat run over in the street. And suddenly you look at them and you ask yourself: 'is this how we were when we were drafted? Were we all such animals?' And I don't think we were. These were guys who I was with from the beginning, since basic training. They weren't so bloodthirsty then. And then time passed and, right in front of your eyes, you see how your friends have turned into monsters. Simply monsters." L, a soldier who served in Gaza and saw dozens of pictures of soldiers smiling with bodies at their feet, says that there is a very fine line, very fragile, and dangerous. "If this was one or two cases, fine. But it isn't. It's a phenomenon. Taking a camera is routine. Okay, so you don't take it to photograph bodies, but it's for that as well.When I was discharged from the army I told myself, we're no better than the Americans who abused Iraqis, or the Palestinians who played with our soldiers in the APC disaster. But you don't think about it, you suppress it, don't talk about it. Maybe you dream at night, but you go on. But at some point we have to stop and ask ourselves how we came to this and where we're going. I'm not a leftist or a rightist, I'm religious from a nationalist home, but now, when I think about it, all these pictures of the guys and the bodies, I feel bad about it." (Yedioth Ahronoth, 11/19/04)