palestine i remember i remember i was only a young soldier maybe six months into my service when we began participating in simple security on missions and i'll read from the original post my book we began participating in simple security missions that included patrolling the streets of palestinian towns like ramallah the old city of jerusalem and remote villages in the west bank not once did i have a clue why we were there or what we were securing all i ever saw were civilians going about their business when we were in the more remote areas we saw nothing but the typical pastoral landscape of the west bank the rolling hills t there was no intifada and we were a small highly specialized infantry unit and i remember thinking to myself why are we in a city full of civilians and what are we supposed to do with these lieutenant briefed us before we were sent to ramallah he said we were to walk up and down the streets and that if anyone so much as looked at so much as looked at us we were to beat them or as he put it break every bone in their body this seemed to me to be a pretty extreme thing to say to break people's bones just because they looked at us how could their voice looking at us we were a platoon of fully armed infantry soldiers in a city full of civilians the question is always raised how is it that israeli soldiers that are so supposedly educated in a civilian democratic pluralistic society how is it they become so brutal how's that they're able to execute these orders and how is it they're able to to enforce the occupation on the palestinian people i remember a friend saying to me once having read something that i wrote you make him seem like nazis or something but i don't make them seem like nazis and i don't make them seem like anything else what i do is i describe a situation where these very nice young men and women or i should say otherwise very nice educated young men and women execute the most horrific things against a civilian population civilian population that is completely unarmed that has never had a military never had an army i remember some reading something that was written by sharif a muso once where he described it like this rationalization of the necessity for a jewish majority in israel requires the arabs to be pictured darkly bent on i'll ation of the jews and is culturally incapable of forming democratic add on to that what has recently been published about these really israeli textbooks textbooks that are used in israeli high schools and again i quote what israeli children are was really kids in high school learned or what they see their textbook is the arab with a camel in alibaba dress they describe them as they are described as violent deviant and criminal people who don't pay taxes people who live off the state people who don't want to develop the only representation of palestinians is as refugees primitive farmers and terrorists you never see a palestinian child or a doctor or a teacher or an engineer again in these really textbooks and this is in stark contrast to what palestinians really are whether in israel or in other countries palestinians have always been very peaceful civil society hard working highly educated people people with a sense of social and political responsibility very active and these qualities is very positive qualities of been masked by a campaign that intentionally focuses on the militants minority that is by no means typical or characteristic or represents palestinians in general and for decades the reality is the palestinian leaders of demonstrated nothing but willingness to reach an agreement and to resolve the israeli palestinian conflict  in israel generally palestinian national palestinian national aspirations are ridiculed the claim is always made that the whole notion of palestinian identity is a new thing it was something that evolved after nine hundred sixty seven in the palestinians where israeli citizens are referred to as the arabs of israel which is named it's interesting term because it serves several perfect purposes first of all this is associates the palestinians themselves who are israeli citizens from the land in other words the sense is that these people really have no national aspirations and they actually have no connection to the land so anything they say about their connection to the land must be a must be false and besides that there are twenty two arab countries and since they're just arabs with no particular other identity they can just go on living in the other arab country and this is the sense it creates a misleading impression that this is again just a trends in population another thing that the suggest is that they're living in israel and therefore at the pleasure of the israeli jews and therefore they must be obedient they must therefore they must be grateful and if they misbehave  protests or they don't like it then we will take away their identity will take away their passports will take away their ideas israelis or citizenship they can go somewhere else i believe it was meant to be who spoke in the knesset one day person who belongs to the land to the homeland so his claim was we can take our passports you can take our citizenship but you're not going to take our connection to the land and it's a very very interesting distinction and again the  campaign that the israeli idea is to take away the connection between the people in the land they are trans int and they happen to be here at our pleasure and if we don't like it if they don't like it they can just go or we can send him away but the notion of what the nie as somebody who couldn't was connected to the land is a very powerful lot as opposed to citizenship which is a piece of paper which is really meaningless an important distinction i think to make is to stop calling the domination of palestine by israel and occupation occupation seems like something that's temporary but when you we look at the zionist education system when we look at the way the zionist state treats the palestinians both in in the west bank in gaza and within israel we see that there's a greater picture here there's something here that's far more reaching than just an occupation and people are often afraid to use before that and it is still ongoing today so trying to solve the issue of the occupation is by no means going to solve the issue of the israeli palestinian conflict now when we look at the process that goes on settlements in the west bank for example typically palestinians will be prohibited from entering their own lines the crops will die after some time the israeli army declares the land state lands it's nobody's cultivating the land the state becomes state land then we can do what we want in the settlements are built now this is not now this is happening in the west bank that every day all the time but this is exactly what happened all over israel this is how israel was estab palestinians were sent off their land they were not permitted to return their crops died the cult of the land was not cultivated injures towns and cities and parks and so on were built in their place so what is happening in the west banking today is really no different than the process that took place sixty years ago when the state of israel was established now when we enter into that equation the education system but we enter into that equation the treatment of palestinians who are citizens of other countries u s citizens who try to come and visit and harassment that they have to go through spending hours at the airport before they're allowed to enter spending hours at the airport before they leave and creating an experience that most people would not want to repeat when we enter into the same equation again the rules and the regulations that palestinians with in the west bank have to go through just to just to live just to travel just to conduct their business just to get married the complicated issue of palestinians who live in jerusalem and there and their issue of their id and their permits and where they're permitted to reside whether or not permitted to reside and the ongoing attempts by the israeli authorities to take away the jerusalem id from palestinians who live abroad so that they will not be able to come back when you throw all that into the equation there what you see again is an ongoing consistent  ethnic cleansing this is not an occupation where we just want to use the land this is an ethnic cleansing where israel wants to rid the land of its population and to create a land for the jews a country was jews only or  a vast majority in the decades after the ninety six seven where there are ample opportunities to make peace based on the two state solution and in every possible at every point israel rejected it and instead they preferred to allocate massive resources to further the israeli military build up and to build settlements in the west bank so this my father said this in a speech about twenty years ago here in the united states a country that invests in an army and military is not a country that wants peace it's very simple especially we're talking about billions and billions and billions of dollars the way israel invested its army so this was the what they opted to do they opted to build a massive army and to build settlements in the west bank and not to negotiate a peace agreement with the palestinians and not to partition the land which is what led us to the situation in which we are today and as i look back at my life growing up as as an israeli the way we see our homeland again is everything that happened that was in jewish history trivialized the only thing that's important is that we were there two thousand years ago we were thrown out we were exiled and now we returned and everything that's being done now is to connect the past with our present and trivialize anything that happened in the interim including the fact that half the population are not jews that is a big part of it and again that ties in once why ethnic cleansing is so important the only way we can make that connection is if there is no other people living there with us who are different and so the ethnic cleansing is a big part of come making that connection of trivializing not only the culture not only the history but the people who live on the land that are not us that are not jews i remember it reading something papa wrote where he says the occupation proceeds from the same media logical infrastructure on which the one nine hundred forty eight ethnic cleansing was erected in other words the current israeli policies in the west bank are directly related and part of the same policies that created the ethnic cleansing nine hundred forty eight that executed the i think cleansing forty eight so there's a direct connection there and this is really a continuation one is the continuation of the other and of course this explains many many thing many things  and again going back to the process upon which israel takes over the land i participated in a protest in between maher just a few weeks ago they have a weekly saturday protest and the process that is i was there in the spring and i saw everything in bloom terraces upon terraces of fruit trees and so on in bloom it was it was a beautiful site i was there again a few weeks ago and now all the fruit are sitting on the trees and the army will not permit the farmers to go and collect the fruit they will not permit them to go and cultivate the land they will not give them access to go to the land so that everything dies they can claim that the land belongs to know and can take over it and keep building permits or so during the protests there were perhaps maybe fifteen or twenty protesters maybe a little bit more they were walking towards me too or on the agricultural lands over the terraces and the fruit trees and the army was already there and i got there maybe a minute or two after that after the protest i was a little behind and the army was running amok and he was incredible to see you had at least seventy eighty maybe one hundred soldiers you had the israeli army and then you had the border patrol or the border police which is another kind of military unit but a belongs to the police and they are ruthless than the army ever a petition they're called and the army was telling everybody to leave and pretty much everybody was turning around to leave but that wasn't enough the soldiers went behind everybody and pushed and you could see people and this was you know those rocks and shrubs and thorns and everything i mean on the ground and the terraces and they were pushing brutally pushing everybody around and they created this this unnecessary war between the handful of protesters and the massive forces of the army brought in and one point i was pushed and i turned around to the soldiers to tell the stop pushing me and i don't know seconds later the major who was in command he was the deputy brigade commander showed up in my face started shouting and yelling and then demanding my id and in no time at all grabbed my thumb tried to break it put me in a choke started yelling at me and then accusing me of assaulting soldiers and accusing me of not willing to identify myself and everything within seconds and in such a brutal way in your face and of course within attempt to intimidate well protesters don't get intimidated so the palestinians are getting intimidated to go back every saturday and then they put up with this and they and what happened to me happens to them every week i think given my i pretty much right away i mean i just i'm a little bit wanting to know what is my decently but i gave them my id and then he proceeded to push me and others pushed me and we were all eventually pushed down these terraces in a way that was not the protests there clearly by definition and also according to the directives that are given by the organizers there are nonviolent and they're peaceful marches and unfortunately they're not very well attended there you have it so the soldier was standing up on the terrace above the rest of us and we were standing on the dirt road but then i was notified that i was already under arrest and i should and and i shouldn't go anywhere because they had my id they had my passport so i couldn't leave and then this exchange began between us on the bottom of the soldiers and we looked at soldiers again to fully armed they've got helmets on they've got their gear they've got their guns it's hot day you know there's dust from all the running and pushing and everything and they look like they just they were just victorious in some battle of some really serious difficult battle and i looked up there and i said to them doesn't this look absurd to you why you dressed like this is the enemy i mean you bring all of you takes really one hundred soldiers to push down fifteen twenty peaceniks of the flag is this really what you all signed up to do and and then i think was i think i thought it was important to realise two things number one that what they're doing is illegal what they're doing is brutal isn't acceptable and that they will one day pay the price and i said that several times and when facing soldiers in these possess it to asians and i said to them you need to realize that one day you're all going to go down on your knees and you need to beg forgiveness from the people of it tomorrow because thanks to these people these protests are peaceful thanks to these people there are no suicide bombers thanks to these people there is no violence to speak of and you need to go down on your knees and apologize now because you don't do it now you're going to do it later on and they didn't like that couple soldiers you know back their commanders to you know come and get me and how dare i talk to them like this and how do i say this and i said again you guys will all go down on your knees and beg forgiveness for what you've done to these people committed to resistance through peaceful means so it's a very unique place in that regard that there is such a unique because because palestinian resistance by a large like that but the concentration of people in both them are who are committed to nonviolent resistance is quite remarkable that's why i like to go there and then the exchange went back and forth and then they started they went back and claimed yes well you attacked a soldier you attacked a soldier and so on and so forth which of course was absurd and i said to them also i said look at you guys there's a really really makes you think it would make sense to anybody to hear that i attacked you you're fully armed you're in combat here besides this is a violent protest by definition by declaration and one point another soldier will finally take off my gear and will be just you and me you know man on man and i said no you don't understand this is a nonviolent protest nonviolence is a princip and this principle is what guides these people that come to protest here come to march here they're not going to roll over and die they're going to come back next week but the principle remains you can break people's arms you can choke them you can beat them you can arrest them but they're to come back and it will be them and the others and of course they didn't like hearing that and another thing that i like to remind them is why i am in my father was in that i noticed soldier is i notice an officer is and i know what a general is and there were days when the israeli army fought real armies now the israeli army is fighting nobody really fighting they're beating people up there brutally oppressing and be beating people up and again i remind them in the unit that is in charge of these  whatever they're called you know coming this protest and brutally pushing people around has a special name it's called father something which is some kind of an exotic bird and they're very proud of their you that scared no wonder people think you're scared because if this is what it takes to deal with just a few peaceniks of the flag then obviously must be very scared which of course they didn't like but i but they need to understand that this is what they're saying their actions and these are young i mean the soldiers can't be more than one thousand in the officers a twenty one maybe and if the see a more senior officers could be twenty five maybe approaching thirty i mean the young people and this particular major this particular everybody left and they took me off to the side and all the commanders all the officers were standing by the jeep and you know there they began taking off their helmets and they were west where he had their fill of dust and i said look at you you look like you just came back from a real battle you're pretending like you're real soldiers what did you actually do what did you actually do you ended up with me i'm the enemy these fifteen twenty peaceniks or however many there were these are the enemy look at you pretending like you're a real army and you're not doing anything all you're doing is pushing around a few peaceniks of the flag you need to realize you're not an army you need to realize you're not this you know this israeli army legend that you know everybody's talking about that one war isn't defeated armies you're nobody or nothing this is a fake and phony this is not a real war in you're not real soldiers you're a brutal occupying force that's just you know here to dominate a civilian by declaration nonviolent unarmed population so they cuffed me and they when they were done with me they gave me over to the civilian police who then proceeded with the arrest because i'm an israeli civilian and and then the police had to make sure that one of the officers of common actually filed a complaint against me otherwise they'd have to let me go which is what happened in the past the officers didn't show up and they had to let me go after several hours without any charges this time they came and actually pressed charges and the charges included salting soldiers refusing to identify myself and the officer made up this whole story now was the officer that i was dealing with that was the major this was the captain at the time the different officer how he asked me for my id and i refused and i pushed him and he pushed me back and finally he had to reach out and pull my idea out of my pocket and i was wearing a shirt with no pockets and i said to the police officer which pocket exactly did he pull it out of he went behind my he went behind my back and pulled out my my my id was already with his commanding officer by then by the time i even saw this guy it was a complete tall tale that he made up which included a few other they also claim that i call them nazi which i didn't do and i never do but this was this is the but this was this is there you know lying is part of what they do brutally pushing around people who have done nothing wrong is part of what they do and again i can't help but looking back you know twenty or so years ago when i was a young officer and my lieutenant gave me those commands to break the bones of any of it looks at me gave me baton and handcuffs and i thought what is he talking about well these young soldiers obviously have had better you know better training better education because they knew very well what they were doing and they were and they and they believed that what they were doing was the right thing and they kept challenging me and challenging me saying to me things like well if your father was a general he must be very much he must be ashamed of you know i said will google his name and you'll see was he wouldn't be ashamed you'd be ashamed of you because you guys have brought the israeli army to the lowest point anybody could possibly imagine and for decades ago he said that this would happen so you are actually living his worst nightmare and he was one of the founders he was in the poem and so on and so forth so he carried he he he's the one upon which he's the generation upon which the legend of the israeli army of the greatness of the israeli army was built and i look at you you're ashame