Thursday, April 24, 2008

War on Terror Dehumanizes All Parties to It

Excerpts from Stephan Lendman, Opednews.com

We man checkpoints, stop people from going somewhere, humiliate them, but "I'm doing my duty (and) inflicting pain on people, harming them unnecessarily." It affects your mind, your sleep the longer you serve there. Jews do as they please. There are no laws. Anything goes, breaking into shops, occupying Palestinian homes. Your judgment gets impaired when everyday your enemy is an Arab. You don't look at them as people. But they're not dogs, not animals, not inferior, yet they simply don't count, and since they're your enemy you can kill them.”

Serving in Hebron made me feel there's something different about being a Jew. I can't explain it. I'm supposed to guard the settlers who don't have the kind of morality I was raised to believe. I reached a point where I didn't know who the enemy was anymore, Jews or Arabs. Maybe I need to protect the Arabs, not the Jews who attack them. I feel emotionally injured. If someone's caught breaking curfew, we can let them have it aggressively. Hold them, make them wait eight hours with no water, sit and wait. "Why? Because he walked outside. Because he dared go buy something. Because he dared send his kid to school." We can even shoot them.

It no longer is "willing to take part in such choices. We are no longer willing to go on being mobilized, raising our children for mobilization....while those in charge of the country go on deploying the army easily, rather than building other solutions."

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