Tag: Humiliation

West Bank 2011: One year of Humiliation in a Two Minutes Video

It is a new year in the West Bank

And on Christmas, a rainy and great wind swept over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Trees bent and roofs rattled but the wind couldn?t carry away the suffering, vulnerability and the long 365 days of humiliation.

Israeli border soldier stands guard during repeated clashes with Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank town of Qalandia in 2011

 
IN the so called Middle East?s only democracy, they do not do guillotines. But there are other innovative rituals of humiliation, designed to reassure the Palestinians that every New Year could well be their last in the land of their ancestors, .. the land of olive trees. As the wind calms down everything returns to normal, but not for the Palestinians, they don?t. Continue reading “West Bank 2011: One year of Humiliation in a Two Minutes Video”

Marines Urinating on Dead Taliban: How Low Will We Go?

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Huffington Post Posted: 1/13/12 11:45 AM ET
I haven’t fully digested the disgusting news that U.S. Marines have been caught on video urinating on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, so this post is not offered as a coherent think-piece. But what is there to think about, anyway? What is there to say, really, except that there’s absolutely no excuse? No excuse for the policy makers and officers, but neither is there one for the brutalized young perpetrators. Their lowly enlisted status doesn’t excuse them; we should offer them compassion, but not absolution, for the guilt they carry. The next time I’m in a U.S. airport and the passengers break out in applause when the gate agent or flight attendant congratulates “our men and women in uniform,” I’ll remember this incident.

In keeping with its maddening, self-regarding role as the American Pravda, a hand-wringing New York Times “analysis” worries that “the images could incite anti-American sentiment at a particularly delicate moment in the decade-old Afghan war.” Well, how could they not have that effect? And why shouldn’t they? Continue reading “Marines Urinating on Dead Taliban: How Low Will We Go?”