[wvns] Avigail Abarbanel: Israeli Police State
The Israeli police state
Avigail Abarbanel
The Electronic Intifada
9 July 2007
ISRAELI POLICE STATE: So-called Israeli democracy
keeps tight control over Palestinians in the occupied
territories. Here a border policeman argues with
Palestinians at the main checkpoint between outside
Bethlehem denying them entrance to the holy city of
Jerusalem to celebrate the Islamic holiday of Leilat
al-Qadr, 18 October 2006. (Magnus
Johansson/MaanImages)
On Friday, 8 June 2007, my husband Ian flew to Israel.
He is in fact on his way to an IT conference in
Vienna, but we thought that it would be nice for him
to make a short three-day detour to Tel-Aviv to visit
my brother and his family and in particular meet my
seven and five year old nieces for the first time.
At Ben-Gurion airport Ian's Australian passport was
confiscated with no explanation. He was taken to a
small interrogation room and had to endure an
intimidating questioning about non-existent Saudi and
Lebanese visas in his passport. He was interrogated by
a tough-looking uniformed female police officer while
a non-uniformed agent watched. The officer asked him
why he had Saudi and Lebanese visas. When he responded
that this could not be his passport because he does
not have such visas, she proceeded to ask him for the
names of his father and grandfather. Despite the fact
that Ian answered the question the first time, she
repeated it three more times. By that stage Ian
realized that they were trying to intimidate him and
although he did feel some fear, he pointed out that
she asked the same question several times and that he
had already answered it. After about 25 minutes of
this, Ian was finally released with no explanation and
a feeble apology about delaying him.
As a former Israeli citizen with military training I
am familiar with the psychological tactics used by the
Israeli Border Patrol (MAGAV) and by the military.
They deliberately try to intimidate their victim and
keep him (or her) in a state of uncertainty -- about
what is going on, what it's all about, where his
papers are. They know that foreign nationals would
feel profoundly insecure without their passports and
that uncertainty would lead to fear and stress in most
people. They also know that most people's confidence
would falter under such conditions and if there is
anything to divulge, it is more likely come out then.
Israeli officers are trained to watch body language,
micro-expressions, perspiration, anything. The
questions themselves are often just a pretext to
induce stress so that they can watch their victim
carefully to see if he has any secrets. They had Ian's
passport. They knew well that there were no such visas
in it. (And you have to wonder: what if there were?
What would have happened to him then? Australian
citizens are free to visit any country they wish. But
it appears that in Israel having the "wrong" visas in
your passport turns you into a suspect. Of course we
will never know whether the story about the visas was
the real reason for his short detention.)
Israel and its apologists repeatedly portray Israel as
"the only democracy in the Middle East," a uniquely
democratic regime in a non-democratic region. Somehow
this is supposed to make us feel more sympathetic and
justify our support of it. But Israeli democracy is a
myth.
In my 27 years there I belonged to the Israeli
mainstream. I was Jewish, Israeli-born and secular. I
was an ordinary citizen who completed her military
service, the quintessential Israeli, not involved in
politics or activism of any kind. I minded my own
business, worried about money, work, study, my own
little life. I wasn't a "trouble-maker" by any stretch
of the imagination. Anyone who met me back then, would
have assumed that I agreed with the prevailing Israeli
ideology. And frankly, they would have been right.
Although Israeli daily life could be frustrating,
particularly dealing with the bureaucracy, we felt
safe in the knowledge that annoying as they might be,
our authorities would never turn against us. In fact,
the thought wouldn't even occur to us. Because I was a
member of this comfortable center of Israeli society,
I was also ignorant of what Israel was capable of, and
of what it could mean to not belong.
My first ever taste of this as yet unfamiliar "status"
came around 17 years ago, when my ex-husband (also an
Israeli) and I were planning to migrate to Australia,
and were in the last stages of receiving our permanent
residency. My ex, an engineer and a Captain in the
army about to finish his contract, was told suddenly
one afternoon, without explanation that he was to
report to a certain location to have a little "chat"
with someone from the Military Police.
Our plans to leave Israel were no secret. Leaving
Israel is not a crime, and Australia was not on the
list of countries that Israeli officers involved in
secret military projects were prohibited from visiting
or living in after the end of their service (yes, such
a list exists). In any case, there was no reason for
my ex-husband to suspect that this "chat" had anything
to do with our plans.
He was taken to a small room and instructed to sit on
a chair in the middle of the room. He was circled by a
female Military Police sergeant who began by saying,
"We found out that you are planning to migrate to
Australia," to which he replied "So? It's not a
secret." She responded aggressively that he was to
shut up, and that she was asking the questions. She
then proceeded to ask "Why are you leaving?" and,
"Does your wife know that you are planning to leave?"
Apparently the military found out about our plans from
the police, while we were in the process of obtaining
clearance for Australian Immigration. They would have
known that both of us were involved. The questions
were clearly not intended to be engaged with at face
value. Initially, my ex started to respond to the
point, but when he realized the absurdity of the
situation he became annoyed. He then told the sergeant
that he did not see the point of the conversation and
unless she was accusing him of something, he was
leaving. When she responded aggressively again, he
stood up, reminded her that he was a Captain and she a
Sergeant, and left the room.
In the absence of any information about this incident,
we concluded that this was an attempt to intimidate us
out of leaving Israel. Of course it relied entirely on
psychology because the military had neither reason nor
a legal way of stopping us.
Up until the army found out that we were leaving, my
husband as a career officer and myself as the "wife
of," were treated with great respect in Israeli
society and in the military. We didn't just belong, we
had an honored place. The choice of a female sergeant
was meant to humiliate him (I mean no offense to
females but this is the culture in the Israeli
military). Whoever dreamed up this intimidation
attempt wanted to show my ex that his rank and status
meant little if he was choosing the "wrong" path. We
were angry but mostly shocked that he could be treated
like this just because we wanted to leave Israel. It's
one thing to encounter the disapproval of friends and
relatives in ordinary conversations. It's quite
another to be the subject of a menacing questioning by
the MP. Our decision to leave apparently placed us in
a new position in society, outside that comfortable
mainstream. When we finally left at the end of '91 we
did so with a bitter taste in our mouths having seen a
glimpse of an Israel we didn't know.
Ask any Palestinian and they will tell you much worse
stories -- frankly, there is no comparison.
Palestinians cannot help but be seen as outsiders,
whether they are citizens of Israel or whether they
are refugees in the Occupied Territories, whether they
are children or adults, male or female. All
Palestinians live under constant military and police
surveillance. They experience nothing of the mythical
Israeli democracy. "Israeli democracy" is something
reserved only for the privileged and mostly ignorant
elite, of which I was also a member, until I decided
to leave. Palestinian citizens of Israel live under an
arbitrary and brutal police state. Their dealings with
Israeli bureaucracy are not just frustrating but can
be outright dangerous.
The Palestinians in the Occupied Territories live
under a Pinochet-like regime. They can and do
disappear in the middle of the night. They are
blindfolded, cuffed, beaten, humiliated, taken to
unknown locations with no information given to them or
their families, tortured physically and
psychologically and incarcerated indefinitely, often
without charges and regardless of whether they are
guilty of anything. It is arbitrary and it can happen
to anyone. This is a far worse version of the two
incidents I described above but the basic principles
are the same.
In a regime like that you don't have to actually do
anything wrong to receive this treatment. This is
because it is not only designed to catch people who
break the law, it is designed to be a kind of a
warning, a hinted threat. It's there to flaunt state
power, show people how small and weak they are
compared with the mighty state, and offer a taste of
what would happen to them if they even think to go
against it. In the case of the Palestinians such
tactics are also designed to make daily life
unbearable in order to break their spirit and
intimidate them into leaving. After all, what Israel
really wants is all the land but without the people,
something that so many in the West still refuse to
recognize.
Israel is not a nice country. It is a powerful police
state founded on pathological paranoia with only a
veneer of civility, carefully crafted and maintained
for the consumption of those who still believe in the
myth of Israeli democracy. Mainstream Israelis live in
a fictional bubble that separates them from reality.
If there is a democracy there, only this select group
enjoys it -- just like the conformist white population
in old South Africa. Supporting Israel now is the same
as claiming that South Africa under apartheid was an
acceptable democracy. It also means abandoning the
Palestinians, just like the world abandoned black
South Africans (and white dissidents) for 45 long
years.
Avigail Abarbanel is a former Israeli and a local
psychotherapist/counsellor. She may be reached at
avigail A T netspace D O T net D O T au
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