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The Summer Camp of Destruction:
Israeli High Schoolers Assist the Razing of Palestinian Bedouin
Town By Max Blumenthal
August 2, 2010
AL-ARAKIB, ISRAEL, On 07.31.10, By Max Blumenthal—
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.
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 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 Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers destroyed the homes.
“What we learned from the summer camp of destruction,” 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
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21 Responses to “The “Summer Camp Of Destruction:” Israeli High Schoolers Assist The Razing Of A Bedouin Town”
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jb4362 says:
Heartbreaking and disgusting, all at once. As always, thank you for sharing this, Max.
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[...] Max Blumenthal: 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). [...]
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gd says:
The people traumatized have been greatly harmed, they will suffer from depression, PTSD, anxiety, stress kills. These young volunteers were harmed too, their souls were killed.
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Leigh says:
The only vaguely optimistic thing to say about this sickening stuff is that the more of it they do, the less international support they will have; and the less credibility the people will have who blindly defend them. Alan Dershowitz, for example, wrote about ethnic clenzing that “political solutions often require the movement of people and such movement is not always voluntary.” One should send this story around to the usual crowd to draw some insensitive comments. The only question is whether the Palestinian community can bear the suffering while Israel gradually erodes its own international standing.
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[...] ????? ?? ???? ?????? ??-?????? ????? ???? ???, ????? ??????? ???? ?????, ??????? ?????, ???? ????? [...]
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stevelaudig says:
all courtesy of U.s. taxpayer dollars. either direct or “tax deductible”
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[...] Wenn Siedler ein Haus in Ost-Jerusalem übernehmen, gibt es kein Erbarmen. Ich habe mir mal die Gesichter angesehen, die der Polizisten, der Soldaten und die der Vorbeilaufenden. Sie sollten sich schämen, ich sehe sattdessen Triumph. Neun palästinensische Familien evakuiert, auf die Straße gesetzt, völlig entrechtet. Sie haben nun ihre erste Nacht auf der Strasse verbracht und ich weiß nicht wieviele noch folgen, in dem besetzten Ost-Jerusalem. Ich denke auch an die anderen „zwangsenteigneten Familien in Silwan, sie leben teilweise schon fast ein Jahr in Zelten vor ihrem geraubten Grundstück. Die „Notunterkünfte“ wurden schon mehrfach zerstört, die Familien von Siedlern bedroht. Geschützt werden in einem zionistischen Israel die gewältätigen extremen Siedler. Israelische und internationale Menschenrechtsaktivisten demonstrieren jede Woche gegen das Unrecht, gegen den Rassismus, gegen die Vertreibung und werden von der Polizei brutalstmöglich schikaniert und verhaftet. Ein neues Gesetz soll diese Kundgebungen verbieten und unter harte Strafen stellen. Nein, Israel ist keine Demokratie! Ich finde dieses Verhalten faschistisch! [...]
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[...] Max Blumenthal reports: 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). [...]
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arieh zimmerman says:
Shocking it may be, but it should come as no surprise that the upper echelon of Education Ministry is as putrid as the rest of the government. 10th, 11th and 12th grade students do not have classes which relate to current affairs; even if they did, too many of them would have teachers who would be inadequate, or worse, to the task of properly educating our kids. Of equal concern are the number of right-wing parents who obviously must be proud of their children’s actions as they help the on going Jewish colonization of Baudouin land.
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ecantarow says:
All through the 1980s I reported on Israel and West Bank. In 1982 I reported on attitudes of Israelis towards Arabs in general, Palestinians in particular. The results of the poll: shocking. The younger the Israeli Jew, the more racist he/she was. Things have only worserned until the entire country now shares opinions that, in the ’80s, used to be seen as “lunatic fringe.” As commentator above notes, the US enables all of Israel’s crimes against humanity. I am sorry to feel that if we sent Obama’s aides this story, Obama would do exactly nothing. Why? He is only one of a long line of imperial Presidents, beholden only to corporate and state power. Bedouins and Palestinians – “the natives” – are weak, therefore expendable. Israeli arms and electronics development, and Israel itself, represent Growth, our great Assets, therefore not expendable. Nonetheless we should protest. It would be very nice if our movement didn’t split hairs about “one state/two states,” “the Lobby,” etcetera, and focused on Israel’s injustices, abuses, and crimes of peace and war. As well as on US complicity with these.
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[...] The “Summer Camp Of Destruction:” Israeli High Schoolers Assist The Razing Of A Bedouin Town [...]
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[...] journalist Max Blumenthal travelled to the village and learned that some of the cheering civilians were teenage volunteers [...]
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Leseempfehlungen zum Themenschwerpunkt Israel/Palästina « Der AmSeL-Gedanke Plus = Gemeinschaft says:
[...] The „Summer Camp Of Destruction“: Israeli Highschoolers assist the Razing of a Bedouin Town vom gestrigen Samstag verarbeitet. Der Titel heißt, grob übersetzt, etwa: Das „Sommerlager der Zerstörung“: [...]
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[...] Source [...]
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[...] on an-Naqab expulsions Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and belongin…. A number of villagers including Madyam told me the volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their [...]
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[...] 200 people, busloads of civilians were there cheering. Max Blumenthal has now visited Al-Arakib and has a thorough report on his blog that the cheering civilians were high school students. Excerpt:Arab Negev News publisher Ata Abu [...]
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lareineblanche says:
Stellar and careful reporting as usual, Max.
” ‘obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.’ Historically, only failing states have encouraged such corrosive dynamics to take hold.”
-Not only do you give people the facts “after the facts”, but you put it in a historical perspective, and notice the direction in which things are going. -
[...] The “Summer Camp Of Destruction:” Israeli High Schoolers Assist The Razing Of A Bedouin Town. Share and [...]
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[...] Veterans Today By Max Blumenthal [...]
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Summer Camp Of Destruction: Israeli High Schoolers Assist Razing of Bedouin Town | Hot to Spot says:
[...] left paying ”Trail of Tears” bill as President Obama Responds by Doing Nothing!
By Max Blumenthal Hitler Youth of Israel Moments before destruction of Bedouin village Al-Arakib. Israeli [...]
http://maxblumenthal.com/2010/07/the-summer-camp-of-destruction-israeli-high-schoolers-join-in-the-destruction-of-a-bedouin-town/
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