Israel shocked by image of soldiers forcing violinist to play at roadblock

Thank you army's critics. In other news, critics of democracy say the problem is with voters, not with the officials they elect.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAH Farrell why do you always post the news that makes me MAD

I mean, he could have walked past and said he was a musician and they were like "hey play us something like would ya?" and he does it and it's all fun rather than trying to humiliate the guy. And then afterwards they would be like "nice one off you go son." i mean. they probably wouldn't know of this whole violin hoo-ha.

the violin thing is pretty goddamned famous. I imagine if you're fucking israeli you MIGHT have heard about, I SUSPECT they have a history curriculum which COULD possibly have a section on the FUCKING HOLOCAUST.

they probably would learn about the holocaust in school and yeah so if this violin thing was famous then they would have known about it. i didn't know whether the violin thing was famous or not.

There are bigger patterns out of individual actions, though. I mean, however much an individual kid wants to learn, if you double the school budget, grades go up. If people who do shit like this get a slap on the wrist, it'll continue.

Yoram Kaniuk, author of a book about a Jewish violinist forced to play for a concentration camp commander, wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that the soldiers responsible should be put on trial "not for abusing Arabs but for disgracing the Holocaust".

Progress made not through concern for fellow humans beings, but by appreciation of dramatic irony. Someone ring Momus!

Ken: yeah, I seem to have assumed the gun, though they probably were carrying guns - but I can't even see any in the picture on the BBC, so I withdraw it.

Andrew: I do think it's a problem with the military command, who haven't punished soldiers for these things (and maybe encouraged them, through the general language and attitudes of the conflict), which will increase their occurance. Soldiers at the checkpoints have difficult, dangerous and traumatic jobs, so while I of course acknowledge that they are blameworthy for the occurances, I think blame also lies with the politicians who put them in that position.

and the 'we're the victims' from the israeli comment on the priece is really sickening.

Now THAT shows you their values!

Seriously, though. This article is just one more reason why I'm anti-zionist.

It really really pissed me off that the one guy was like "we only exist because of the holocaust! we can't water down our excuse!" with complete disregard to the human rights violations.

guh.
guh.
guh.

Maybe we should start rounding up gang-bangers off the streets of compton and send them off to war! It would solve both domestic crime AND staff our military with bloodthirsty goons!

The critics were not drawing a parallel between an Israeli roadblock and a Nazi camp.

Well... yes they were...

The victimization race is always ugly and sad. But I find the reaction to when it's raised by the Israelis as justification for doing something terrible vs the non-reaction when the same justification card is played by Arab terrorists rather revealing/disappointing.

For me, the same issue applies for the Israeli military as it does for the US military, I don't give a shit about which horrible group of subhumans you're up against, you fucking behave, it's in the damn paperwork you signed and you're in the uniform, assholes.

it's true, though.

-- bnw (rainermrilk...), November 30th, 2004 4:18 PM. (bnw) (later)

This isn't that great a comparison though. The justification used by the Israelis happened 60 years ago, justification used by Arab terrorists is happening now. Not that I support either side's actions, of course.

yes, because there is *never* any international outcry when a suicide bomber kills Israeli citizens.

That's not true. There's a huge level of disgust among Israelis about this. And I wouldn't say Sharon's Mr Popular. Even today he only narrowly won no-convidence votes in the knesset.

I'll pretend for a second that you're not trying to play down the Holocaust as a widdle bit of wewigious pewsecution. But just for a second.

That being said, the statement made by the Israeli I'm too lazy to look up to the effect that "our existence in the Middle East is justified by the Holocaust" is grossly mis-representing what has been presented (in my recollection) as the *official* reason for Israel's existence. Which is: Israel has ALWAYS had a right to exist, Holocaust or no (right? feel free to correct). If he actually means what he says (and if other Israelis believe him), then he's doing a lot to undermine that justification in the eyes of those that don't like Israel anyway. To wit (and to paraphrase PPlains): "awww...a bunch of you got killed and now you get our own FUCKING COUNTRY?! How is that fair?!"

I forgot where I was going with this. Bullet points:
* ease up, PPlains
* the Israeli army has a lot to answer for
* those that would construe forced violin playing as more offensive to the cultural memory of Israel than to human rights in general are certifiably batshit.

Sure Israel has a right to exist, but turning to the Holocaust as an excuse for making a thirteen-year old Palestinian girl into Swiss cheese is the lowest of the low. If it wasn't for the fact that in comparison, Israel's enemies would've probably strapped a bomb to that little girl eventually for some martyrdom, I'd say that Israel should shut the hell up.

Even if it was felt that the Holocaust had lost it's power as a claim to a right to the land, there's the regularly quoted fact that they were attacked the day after the last colonial power left, and won back their land and more ("excuse us for winning the war", which I think sits behind the subconscious view of PLO as proxy for Palestinians as proxy for all Arabs as people who will descend like locusts given half a chance). So a right to their land granted them by being king of the hill.

who's been doing that though?

Yeah, it's way worse than official apartheid. But while this guy is a certifiable moran, he's just one novelist that wrote about a violinist in the holocaust, and there's really no reason why his idiotic arguments should be seen as representative of anyone who isn't him.

But the public's confidence has been shaken by the revelations of the past week. The audio recording of the shooting of the 13-year-old, Iman al-Hams, prompted much soul searching, although the revulsion appears to be as much at the Israeli officer firing a stream of bullets into her lifeless body as the killing itself.

except for offical policy, past occurances and little things like that, no ... no reason at all.

Thanks, Israel!
I'm moving back to Europe then! No way they can say no to that!

USA!
USA!
USA!

But his points are all so interesting and original! How can you resist particpating in such well-reasoned and civilized debate?

How's THAT for simplification?

next time I make intentionally inflammatory remarks at least be a bit more timely, jesus!

In other news, that thirteen year old girl shot herself.

The US Gov does that for you.

It was one of Israel’s dirty little secrets. In the early 1960s, as Israelis were being exposed for the first time to the shocking testimonies of Holocaust survivors at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a series of pornographic pocket books called Stalags, based on Nazi themes, became best sellers throughout the land... The books told perverse tales of captured American or British pilots being abused by sadistic female SS officers outfitted with whips and boots. The plot usually ended with the male protagonists taking revenge, by raping and killing their tormentors... The Stalags, a peculiar Hebrew concoction of Nazism, sex and violence, are re-emerging in the public eye.” – Isabel Kershner, The New York Times (Sept. 6, 07). Ari Libsker, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, explores this phenomenon by interviewing the men who wrote the Stalags, as well as Israeli survivors and cultural critics who consider how fantasy may seep into public consciousness and become indiscernible from the historical record.

http://www.filmforum.org/films/stalags.html

Just saw this. Really liked it.

Avoids drawing a facile and off-mark parallel between the holocaust and the occupation -- in fact doesn't directly address the occupation at all -- but provides a window into Israeli national culture, myth and fantasy that could certainly inform one's understanding of the conflict.

Also suggests that there's a tendency toward the pornographic in mainstream study of the holocaust, i.e. the obsession with retelling not just a few but dozens and dozens of individual horrors and atrocities in lurid detail.

I read about that Staligim literature in Haaretz a while ago. I'm guessing they were more popular with people who had never been near the camps. They sound a bit like those Men's Adventure Magazines from America that Taschen brought out a book about recently, only more lurid and more transgressive.

Max Mosley's probably got the whole set!

haha

I'm guessing they were more popular with people who had never been near the camps

The film never makes any explicit claims about this, although it's hard to imagine concentration camp survivors enjoying the books. In a broader sense, the film is very much about the role of the Holocaust in the imagination of Israelis/Jews who did not experience it, which by now is of course almost all of them.

One interesting point in the film (which could have used more exploration) has to do with the way the holocaust and its survivors were dealt with in the years immediately following WWII. Until the Eichmann trial, according to the film, there wasn't an extensive public discussion of it at all, and survivors were often treated with a mix of distant awe, curiosity and even suspicion -- after all, didn't you have to be especially cruel or self-serving to survive? The film at least suggests that the answer is "no," but the fantasy nonetheless gripped non-survivors.

The film's most surprising claim is that the "Joy Division" or "Pleasure Block" at Auschwitz probably didn't exist or at least wasn't made up of Jewish women who were spared in exchange for servitude. I had never heard this suggestion before but it made perfect sense - after all it's hard to imagine Nazis would openly maintain a Jewish brothel.

not Jewish is correct, "didn't exist" is wrong.

ah ok.

In any case, it's apparently still widely taught as fact (that it was Jewish) in Israel because of the popularity of the books of K. Tzetnik.

the original new story in this thread is ridiculous. claims of moral authority only extend to those who believe you.