I think Israelis and their supporters are losing their minds. Decades of using violence has not silenced their resistors, and the pressure is driving them mad. The only way they can go on on the same path is to keep dehumanizing their enemies more and more. This is the low they have reached these days when they attacked families in Gaza, or "Operation Dead Cast". It's truly sickening. I found out about this in another blog.
//www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html
Here are some of the images printed on the shirts. They truly are disgusting but I'm sure Lotus Feet and friends would proudly display them walking down public American streets... sure...
//www.philipweiss.org/.a/6a00d8341cc8ad53ef01...
//www.philipweiss.org/.a/6a00d8341cc8ad53ef01...
And their descriptions/captions:
//www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/03/raci...
There is another report in today's Ha'aretz that I do want to comment on. Uri Blau's article "'No virgins, no terror attacks'" describes the practice of Israeli soldiers getting custom clothing printed with their unit's insignia along with graphics and text. Below are some examples of shirts that were printed, along with some of the images. These images only appeared on Ha'aretz's Hebrew-language website:
* Sdfsd A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him.
* A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills."
* After Operation Cast Lead, soldiers from that battalion printed a T-shirt depicting a vulture sexually penetrating Hamas' prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh
* A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."
* There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!"
* A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.
* "Let every Arab mother know that her son's fate is in my hands!" had previously been banned for use on another infantry unit's shirt. A Givati soldier said this week, however, that at the end of last year, his platoon printed up dozens of shirts, fleece jackets and pants bearing this slogan.
* "It has a drawing depicting a soldier as the Angel of Death, next to a gun and an Arab town," he explains. "The text was very powerful. The funniest part was that when our soldier came to get the shirts, the man who printed them was an Arab, and the soldier felt so bad that he told the girl at the counter to bring them to him."
* In 2006, soldiers from the "Carmon Team" course for elite-unit marksmen printed a shirt with a drawing of a knife-wielding Palestinian in the crosshairs of a gun sight, and the slogan, "You've got to run fast, run fast, run fast, before it's all over." Below is a drawing of Arab women weeping over a grave and the words: "And afterward they cry, and afterward they cry." [The inscriptions are riffs on a popular song.]
* Another sniper's shirt also features an Arab man in the crosshairs, and the announcement, "Everything is with the best of intentions."
* A shirt printed after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza for Battalion 890 of the Paratroops depicts a King Kong-like soldier in a city under attack. The slogan is unambiguous: "If you believe it can be fixed, then believe it can be destroyed!"
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i'm glad to see that neither rosie nor mehdi
by anonymous fish on Mon Mar 23, 2009 01:36 PM PDThave shied away from this. i can't imagine any justification being acceptable. whether they expressed any "irony" or not... it's disgusting. i know young men in the military get a little carried away. my son started exhibiting some "macho bullshit" after boot camp and i've seen some pretty tasteless tee shirts on marines. but this... IF true...goes beyond the pale.
dare i say i agree with Q... this doesn't arouse anger ONLY in the ME... it will arouse anger throughout the world.
if there is anything biased or incorrect about this... israel better get on the stick and prove it. it ain't good.
The irony of war.
by Mehdi Mazloom on Sat Mar 21, 2009 10:58 AM PDTHere is an excerpt from the Hebrew version by Uri Blau's article. You or anyone else is welcome to translate it into English and read the content.
Again, I also think it is repugnant demonstration of disregard to human life. However, on the larger context, one has to also realize that, these T-shirt in a way intended to send a message and provide an outlay to young Israeli solder's frustration with luck of progress with peace process.
It also tells thugs like Hamas, that disregard to human life, can (and does) work both ways. The message to these idiots is, if you disregard the lives of your own civilians, by putting them in harms way. Send young man & woman homicide bombers to kill our civilians, why should we be concerned.?
באנו, ראינו, הרסנו
המציאות שעמה
מתמודדים החיילים המשרתים בשטחים ניכרת בחולצות שהודפסו בזמן האחרון.
חולצה שהודפסה רק בשבוע שעבר יכולה ללמד משהו על הלכי הרוח של חיילי גדוד
לביא, המשרתים בגדה במשך שלוש שנים רצופות: "באנו... ראינו... הרסנו!"
נכתב על החולצה, לצד איורים של כלי נשק, חייל בעל עיניים זועמות וכפר
פלסטיני שבמרכזו מסגד חרב.
בכלל, מסגדים חרבים וישובים פלסטיניים
בוערים הם דימוי שחוזר על עצמו בחולצות רבות. חולצה שהודפסה בגדוד 890 של
הצנחנים לאחר מבצע עופרת יצוקה בעזה מתארת חייל דמוי קינג-קונג במרכזה של
עיר תחת מתקפה. הסיסמה לא משתמעת לשתי פנים: "אם אתה מאמין שיכולים לתקן,
תאמין שיכולים להרוס!"
Mehdi, I think Israelis and their supporters are losing their
by rosie is roxy is roshan on Fri Mar 20, 2009 09:00 PM PDTminds too. I read the first article, the Israeli one, in that top Israeli newspaper, Haretz, and that Israeli journalist Uri Blau and the other Israelis he interviewed who are against the tee shirts didn't mention anything about the irony, but these Israelis sure didn't like the shirts.
I posted a feed not long ago from al Jazeera about how so many Israeli soldiers were disgusted with the Gaza operations because these Israeli soldiers felt they'd killed for nothing and so these Israelis were desperate not to go back and kill again. One of the top feeders posted on the thread that why didn't I understand that all Zionists were killers? The feeder's normally quite balanced. I was surprised. I tried to explain the different factions among Israelis as well as I knew them, I have a general impression, as well as the fact that not all Israeli soldiers are neccessarily Zionists (as we know so many young Israelis leave Israel for all different kinds of reasons). since every Israeli has to do miltary service and that it's virtually impossible for an Israeli to get conscientious objector status there so the Israeli refuseniks go in and out of prison and so forth. but the feeder never replied about the Israelis I mentioned.
And it struck me as kind of odd too because you see my Dad was a Zionist and he never killed anyone, or at least if he did, he never told me about it.
I like to read that Israeli paper Haaretz and al Jazeera together. They both constantly feed articles all day and they share quite a few feeds actually and they get them early. If you take the two of them together, I find you get a pretty balanced view. IMHO
Mehdi, I can't read Hebrew well and I know you and I fundamentally disagree on so many things but I hope you get my point.
Irony of life
by Mehdi Mazloom on Fri Mar 20, 2009 08:14 PM PDTI wish some of you been able to read the Hebrew version of these stories, things would have been better understood.
You will be surprised to learn that, many of these solders admit that they ordered these shirts, to point out the irony of life, rather then their disregard to other human beings. It demonstrates to everyone that, one way or another is the victim of the same ugly theater of tragedy - or perhaps comic..
I think Israelis and their
by rosie is roxy is roshan on Fri Mar 20, 2009 08:07 PM PDTI think Israelis and their supporters are losing their minds.
He did a damn good job exposing this, that Israeli journalist Uri Blau. In Ha'aretz.
disgusting...
by Q on Fri Mar 20, 2009 06:29 PM PDTand they wonder why they arouse anger in the Middle East.