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And theft as well as violence. "There's this car accessory shop there. Every time, soldiers would take a tape-disc player, other stuff. This guy, if you go ask him, will tell you plenty of things that soldiers did to him.

"A whole scroll-full ... They would raid his shop regularly. 'Listen, if you tell on us, we'll confiscate your whole store, we'll break everything.' You know, he was afraid to tell. He was already making deals, 'Listen guys, you're damaging me financially.' I personally never took a thing, but I'm telling you, people used to take speakers from him, whole sound systems.

"He'd go, 'Please, give me 500 shekels, I'm losing money here.' 'Listen, if you go on – we'll pick up your whole shop.' 'OK, OK, take it, but listen, don't take more than 10 systems a month.' Something like this.

"'I'm already going bankrupt.' He was so miserable. Guys in our unit used to sell these things back home, make deals with people. People are so stupid."

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The thing is, soldiers bring this crap home with them. It isn't turned on and off like a tap and it can result in moral decay in other areas of society. There has been a lot of journalism in Israel of late speaking about the amount of corruption and shadiness in many other sectors - sectors often well populated with ex-soldiers.

[ 19 April 2008: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

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Or using a 10-year-old child to locate and punish a 15-year-old stone-thrower: "So we got hold of just some Palestinian kid nearby, we knew that he knew who it had been. Let's say we beat him a little, to put it mildly, until he told us. You know, the way it goes when your mind's already screwed up, and you have no more patience for Hebron and Arabs and Jews there.

"The kid was really scared, realising we were on to him. We had a commander with us who was a bit of a fanatic. We gave the boy over to this commander, and he really beat the shit out of him ... He showed him all kinds of holes in the ground along the way, asking him: 'Is it here you want to die? Or here?' The kid goes, 'No, no!'

"Anyway, the kid was stood up, and couldn't stay standing on his own two feet. He was already crying ... And the commander continues, 'Don't pretend' and kicks him some more. And then [name withheld], who always had a hard time with such things, went in, caught the squad commander and said, 'Don't touch him any more, that's it.' The commander goes, 'You've become a leftie, what?' And he answers, 'No, I just don't want to see such things.'

"We were right next to this, but did nothing. We were indifferent, you know. OK. Only after the fact you start thinking. Not right away. We were doing such things every day ... It had become a habit...

"And the parents saw it. The commander ordered [the mother], 'Don't get any closer.' He cocked his weapon, already had a bullet inside. She was frightened. He put his weapon literally inside the kid's mouth. 'Anyone gets close, I kill him. Don't bug me. I kill. I have no mercy.' So the father ... got hold of the mother and said, 'Calm down, let them be, so they'll leave him alone.'"

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B.L. Zeebub LLD: The thing is, soldiers bring this crap home with them. It isn't turned on and off like a tap and it can result in moral decay in other areas of society.

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Here follows more discussion of this. Michel Warschawski wrote about the peculiarities of Israeli law in his essay from December of 2004, The New Israel. Warschawski calls Israel a fake democracy and explains why.

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Democracy for Israelis has always been restricted to two things: predominance of the majority over the minority by means of elections and the acts of the executive branch being based on laws adopted by a parliamentary majority (AIC Special Reports, winter 1986). This is obviously a rather meager conception of democracy, which completely neglects the concept of rights.

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Corruption, torture, extra-judicial executions are also mentioned. But there are other mechanisms that Warschawski draws attention to: outright denial, "flexibility" of the laws, and personalized legislation.

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The first is outright denial, which leads to veritable schizophrenia. We have witnessed this mechanism at work in the intelligence services, police, and public prosecutors’ systematic lies about the use of torture; their lies in court ultimately led to a serious institutional crisis and the formation of a national commission of inquiry. Another example: denying the existence of the Israeli nuclear arsenal has prevented establishing safeguards. According to international experts this has resulted in many technical incidents and made Israeli reactors the most dangerous in the world after Chernobyl-type reactors.

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"veritable schizophrenia", i.e., a society that is mentally ill is the result of fake democracy. And a certain moral impoverishment sets in ...

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When a country has created borders that it has continually expanded in violation of every rule of international law; when the end, that is, the Jewish state, always justifies the means; then it should be no surprise that respecting Israel’s own rules turns out to be terribly difficult. Ordinary citizens follow the example of their leaders, who apply at home the same lack of rules that they have applied systematically in international relations. The impunity that Israel enjoys within the international community is not only a denial of justice to the victims of its permanent aggression; it is also one reason for the internal degeneration of Israeli society. “But why should I be the only one in this country who obeys the laws?” the racquetball player asks on the Haifa beach.

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We have:

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Violence is manifested not only in Israeli politics but also in everyday interactions at home and in the street. The lack of civility that has always been one of Israeli society’s blemishes has mutated into sheer crudeness. While Israelis were noted in the past for their inability to say “please,” “excuse me,” or “thank you,” today they are ready to physically attack someone who cuts ahead of them in traffic; and since they often have guns on them, such incidents sometimes end in tragedy. Psychologists and social workers are continually warning about this escalation of violence, but their warnings seem unlikely to make a difference. The whole society is sick, terribly sick.

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The oppressor does irreparable harm to himself as well and moral turpitude sets in. It's like wood rot on a boat that isn't taken proper care of. The ship will eventually sink.

[ 19 April 2008: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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...the kid was stood up, and couldn't stay standing on his own two feet. He was already crying ... And the commander continues, 'Don't pretend' and kicks him some more. And then [name withheld], who always had a hard time with such things, went in, caught the squad commander and said, 'Don't touch him any more, that's it.' The commander goes, 'You've become a leftie, what?' And he answers, 'No, I just don't want to see such things.'

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One of Efrati's worst experiences started when some Palestinian kids threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at his unit when he was out on patrol in south Hebron. About 40 minutes afterward, he says, other soldiers in his unit identified and shot dead one of the youths who threw a flaming bottle. He was 11 years old.

"It was reported in the Israeli media later that one terrorist with a Molotov cocktail was killed," he recalls, sitting in a Tel Aviv cafe. "I didn't feel so good, but most of my friends didn't care, and we had so much to do. These things were happening all the time," he says.

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(How was that?)

[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]