The “Summer Camp Of Destruction:”
Israeli High Schoolers Assist The Razing Of A Bedouin Town
On 07.31.10, By Max
AL-ARAKIB, ISRAEL — On July 26,
Israeli police demolished 45 buildings in the unrecognized Bedouin village of
al-Arakib, razing the entire village to the ground
to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest. The destruction was part
of a larger project to force the Bedouin community of the Negev away
from their ancestral lands and into seven Indian reservation-style
communities the Israeli government has constructed for them. The land
will then be open for Jewish settlers,
including young couples in the army and those who may someday be
evacuated from the West Bank after a peace treaty is signed. For now,
the Israeli government intends to uproot as many villages as possible
and erase them from the map by establishing “facts on the ground” in the form
of JNF forests. (See video of of al-Arakib’s demolition here).
“]Moments
before the destruction of the Bedouin village of al-Arakib, Israeli
high school age police volunteers lounge on furniture taken from a
family's home. [The following four photos are by Ata Abu Madyam of Arab
Negev News.One of the most troubling aspects of the destruction of al-Arakib
was a report by CNN
that the hundreds of Israeli riot police who stormed the village were
accompanied by “busloads of cheering civilians.” Who were these
civilians and why didn’t CNN or any outlet investigate further?
I traveled to al-Arakib yesterday with a delegation from Ta’ayush,
an Israeli group that promotes a joint Arab-Jewish struggle against the
occupation. The activists spent the day preparing games and activities
for the village’s traumatized children, helping the villagers replace
their uprooted olive groves, and assisting in the reconstruction of
their demolished homes. In a massive makeshift tent where many of
al-Arakib’s residents now sleep, I interviewed village leaders about the
identity of the cheering civilians. Each one confirmed the presence of
the civilians, describing how they celebrated the demolitions. As I
compiled details, the story grew increasingly horrific. After
interviewing more than a half dozen elders of the village, I was able to
finally identify the civilians in question. What I discovered was more
disturbing than I had imagined.
Israeli police youth volunteers pick through the belongings an al-Arakib family
Arab Negev News publisher Ata Abu Madyam supplied me with a series of
photos he took of the civilians in action. They depicted Israeli high
school students who appeared to have volunteered as members of the
Israeli police civilian guard (I am working on identifying some
participants by name). Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers
were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and
belongings. A number of villagers including Abu Madyam told me the
volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced family
photographs with crude drawings. Then they lounged around on the
furniture of al-Arakib residents in plain site of the owners. Finally,
according to Abu Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers
destroyed the homes.
“What we learned from the summer camp of destruction,” Abu Madyam
remarked, “is that Israeli youth are not being educated on democracy,
they are being raised on racism.” (The cover of the latest issue of
Madyam’s Arab Negev News features a photo of Palestinians being expelled
to Jordan in 1948 juxtaposed with a photo of a family fleeing al-Arakib
last week. The headline reads, “Nakba 2010.”)
According to residents of al-Arakib, the youth volunteers vandalized homes
throughout the village
The Israeli civilian guard, which incorporates 70,000 citizens including youth
as young as 15 (about 15% of Israeli police volunteers are teenagers), is one
of many programs
designed to incorporate Israeli children into the state’s military
apparatus. It is not hard to imagine what lessons the high school
students who participated in the leveling of al-Arakib took from their
experience, nor is it especially difficult to predict what sort of
citizens they will become once they reach adulthood. Not only are they
being indoctrinated to swear blind allegiance to the military, they are
learning to treat the Arab outclass as less than human. The volunteers’
behavior toward Bedouins, who are citizens of Israel and serve loyally in
Israeli army combat units despite widespread racism, was strikingly reminiscent
of the behavior of settler youth in Hebron who pelt Palestinian shopkeepers
in the old city with eggs, rocks and human waste. If there is a
distinction between the two cases, it is that the Hebron settlers act as
vigilantes while the teenagers of Israeli civilian guard vandalize Arab
property as agents of the state.
The spectacle of Israeli youth helping destroy al-Arakib helps explain why 56%
of Jewish Israeli high school students do not believe Arabs should be allowed
to serve in the Knesset –
why the next generation wants apartheid. Indeed, the widespread
indoctrination of Israeli youth by the military apparatus is a central
factor in Israel’s authoritarian trend. It would be difficult for any
adolescent boy to escape from an experience like al-Arakib, where adults
in heroic warrior garb encourage him to participate in and gloat over
acts of massive destruction, with even a trace of democratic values.
Youth volunteers extract belongings from village homes as bulldozers move in
As for the present condition of Israeli democracy, it is essential to
consider the way in which the state pits its own citizens against one
another, enlisting the Jewish majority as conquerers while targeting the
Arab others as, in the words of Zionist founding father Chaim Weizmann,
“obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.” Historically,
only failing states have encouraged such corrosive dynamics to take
hold. That is why the scenes from al-Arakib, from the demolished homes
to the uprooted gardens to the grinning teens who joined the mayhem, can
be viewed as much more than the destruction of a village. They are
snapshots of the phenomenon that is laying Israeli society as a whole to
waste.
...and the destruction begins
http://maxblumenthal.com/2010/07/the-summer-camp-of-destruction-israeli-high-schoolers-join-in-the-destruction-of-a-bedouin-town/
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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