My latest for teleSUR. Excerpt: It was late July, 2008. As ICAHD rebuilding camp participants were just about to go to bed, a word came through on a house demolition operation that would most likely take place at 4 a.m. the following morning. We were offered a chance to take part in an act of nonviolent resistance against the home demolition. Many of us decided to go. Time was running out. For obvious reasons, it was one of those moments in which there probably wasn’t much one could have said to improve the atmosphere. When it was four o’clock in the morning, the Yamam, one of the special forces units of the Israeli Border Police, began the raid. Outside the huge building, there were one thousand heavily armed police officers. The police was beating and kicking us and hospitalizing a number of people. When everyone had been evicted, the area was declared “a closed military zone”. I have never experienced my own powerlessness so strongly. The young police officers were laughing amongst themselves, tossing water bottles to one another, making fun of the Palestinian families who were crying on the street right in front of them. It was just another day at the office. Once used by someone else to describe someone else, the phrase “banality of evil” came to my mind.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 11:04:45 +0000