-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=155181&contrassID=
2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
}}}>Begin
Friday, April 26, 2002 Iyyar 14, 5762
Israel Time: 09:28 (GMT+3)
Operation Destroy the Data
By Amira Hass
It's a scene that is repeating itself in hundreds of Palestinian offices taken over by
IDF troops for a few hours or days in the West Bank: smashed, burned and broken
computer terminals heaped in piles and thrown into yards; server cabling cut, hard
disks missing, disks and diskettes scattered and broken, printers and scanners
broken or missing, laptops gone, telephone exchanges that disappeared or were
vandalized, and paper files burned, torn, scattered, or defaced - if not taken. And
it's
all in rooms full of smashed furniture, torn curtains, broken windows, smashed-in
doors, walls full of holes, filthy floors and soiled bathrooms. Here and there, the
soldiers left obscene graffiti or letters full of hatred, but compared to the data that
was destroyed or taken, the insults read like poetry. Even the overflowing toilets look
more like human weakness compared to the organized vandalism reflected in the
piles of smashed computers.
It's not merely the expense of the hardware that has to be replaced. The loss is
immeasurable in shekels or dollars. Years of information built into knowledge, time
spent thinking by thousands of people working to build their civil society and their
future or trying to build a private sector that would bring a sense of economic
stability
to their country.
These are the data banks developed in Palestinian Authority institutions like the
Education Ministry, the Higher Education Ministry and the Health Ministry. These are
the data banks of the non-governmental organizations and research institutes
devoted to developing a modern health system, modern agricultural, environmental
protection and water conservation. These are the data banks of human rights
organizations, banks and private commercial enterprises, infirmaries, and
supermarkets. They all were clearly the targets for destruction in the military
operation called Defensive Shield.
The Israeli public has been spared the sights of the destruction. Here and there, a
photo of some demolished office sneaks into the TV news shows. But Israeli TV
news doesn't find a few seconds to report on a Palestinian woman or a child of nine
who was shot dead from a distance, inside their homes, by an anonymous Israeli
soldier, so how can it find time or reason to report on the crazed destruction
perpetrated by a unit of soldiers in one office.
The IDF has given up denying that some soldiers looted - money, jewels and video
cameras - private homes. That can be explained by officers too weak to impose
discipline on their soldiers and by soldiers too weak to fight material temptation. But
the systematic destruction of the data banks was not a matter of personal weakness
by either officers or soldiers.
Let's not deceive ourselves; this was not a mission to search and destroy the terrorist
infrastructure. If the forces breaking into every hard disk of every bank and clinic,
commercial consultant's office or PA ministry, thought that a list of weapons or
wanted men was inside the disk, all they had to do was copy the information and
pass it on to the Shin Bet. If they thought incriminating evidence was hidden in the
Education Ministry and the International Bank of Palestine and in a shop that rents
prosthetics, the soldiers would have examined document after document, and not
thrown the files on the floor without opening them.
This was not a whim, or crazed vengeance, by this or that unit, nor a personal
vandalistic urge of a soldier whose buddies didn't dare stop him. There was a
decision made to vandalize the civic, administrative, cultural infrastructure developed
by Palestinian society. Was it an explicit order or one given with a wink? Was it an
order or was it the result of permission given to soldiers to do what they want? Did
the order - or wink - come down from the battalion commander or from the brigadier?
Was it from the headquarters of IDF forces in the West Bank or from IDF
Operations? Did it come from the general in command of the Central Command or
from general headquarters?
Either way, the scenes of systematic destruction show how the IDF translated into
the field the instructions inherent in the political echelon's policies: Israel must
destroy Palestinian civil institutions, sabotaging for years to come the Palestinian
goal for independence, sending all of Palestinian society backward. It's so easy and
comforting to think of the entire Palestinian society as primitive, bloodthirsty
terrorists, after the raw material and product of their intellectual, cultural, social
and
economic activity has been destroyed. That way, the Israeli public can continue to be
deceived into believing that terror is a genetic problem and not a sociological and
political mutation, horrific as it may be, derived from the horrors of the occupation.
End<{{{
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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