Those who still linger under the misapprehension that the Israeli army is the most moral in the world should watch this short video of the army’s late-night entrance into Nurif, a small village near Nablus, deep in the West Bank.<\/p>\n
The soldiers behave more like football hooligan militia. They fire flares, wail their noisy sirens, let off percussion grenades, and mock the villagers by telling them the equivalent of “Wakey, wakey” in Arabic.<\/p>\n
The goal of all this? Even the army admits there had been no disturbances, and they were not looking to “arrest” someone. Rather, this is what soldiers call “establishing presence”: ie waging psychological warfare against ordinary Palestinians, and terrifying the children. It’s all about teaching the Palestinians who’s boss.<\/p>\n
The Israeli army, of course, hastens to claim this was an abuse of procedure by a lone commander, who is being disciplined. Palestinians would guffaw at that. This kind of incident goes on regularly. It’s just that on this occasion a Palestinian filmed the incident and thought to hand the video over to an Israeli NGO, which is publicising it.<\/p>\n