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I find this article absolutely maddening. Not because of what is written in it, but what is not. https://twitter.com/halbfinger/status/1335949647018414086
The article looks at Israeli police abuse and its particular impact against Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians in Jerusalem as well as other non-Jews or non-white Jews in Israel.
But you can't find the word "Occupation" in the piece!
Now some will say, this is about Israeli police, not the military and thus about inside Israel and not West Bank Gaza.
But that fundamentally misunderstands the problem. The military occupation of the WBGEJ has been around longer in the state of Israel's history than it has not and has come to shape every facet of Israeli society over half a century.
The idea that Palestinian life is cheap and that impunity for uniformed Israelis killing Palestinians is valued is CONSTANTLY reinforced in Israeli society through the military occupation.
There is one interesting deviation in the article which touches on the bigger, deeper forces shaping dynamics. It is nearly at the end of the article
This is absolutely true. The institution has a colonial legacy that dates back over 72 years. But if that is relevant, AND IT IS, how is the ongoing and more than half a century old military occupation not a major factor? Mind boggling.
(On that note, Matthew Hughes' article on the Special Night Squads during the British Repression of the great revolt in Palestine and British Jewish collaboration is a must read) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2015.1083220
It is also strange because it seems this article was sort of shaped to get an American audience to understand the dynamics, but even here in the US we are having increased discussion about how the problems with policing are tied not just to racism and its deep history...
but also to militarization and the war on terror. Israel is a microcosm of that dynamic on crack. So much so that in an effort to support the US-Israel relationship, US police delegations to Israel are facilitated so they can learn counter-terror techniques.
And as a Palestinian citizen of Israel myself, who has been subjected to racial profiling there, I was similarly shocked by the absence of any discussion on racial profiling in the article.
And unlike in the US, where authorities don't like to acknowledge using racial profiling (even though they do) In Israel it is the pride of law enforcement. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/31/israel-police-chief-roni-alsheich-natural-suspect-ethiopians-crime
Anyway, I wish I could understand what happened here. Such an important article and an important topic with some pretty big and obvious holes.
