As a student of the collective Israeli mindset and long-time observer of Israeli behavioral patterns, I wasn’t surprised a bit by Lieutenant Colonel Shalom Eisner’s behaviors with Danish peace activist Andreas Ias.
The Israeli propaganda machine would want us to believe that the incident was an aberration, a kind of anomaly that in no way represents the true ethos of the Israeli army. But this is untrue.
In fact, from my observation of Israeli behavior for decades I can solemnly testify that Eisner’s behavior represents the norm rather than the exception.
Israeli barbarity, savagery, brutality and incivility, especially toward Palestinians, are too banal and too routine to even warrant raising an eyebrow.
The footage of the ugly incident near Jericho shows Eisner walking up to a man taking part in a bicycle ride in the Jordan valley, and without warning, hitting him in the face with his M-16 automatic rifle.
The Danish activist collapsed and was carried off by fellow protesters.
The attack was "condemned" by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Peres and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
However, it is highly likely that these denunciations are disingenuous and only meant to mislead and deceive European public opinion. Needless to say, when it comes to deceitfulness and mendaciousness, the Israelis are masters in their own right.
In their commentaries on the "public relations disaster", most Israeli pundits and commentators condemned Eisner for his stupidity and tactlessness, not brutality and savagery.
One noted commentator, Eitan Haber, wrote in Ynet: " I would send him (Eisner) packing for stupidity alone."
Haber suggested that Eisner’s blunder was not striking an unarmed peace activist in the face per se, using his M-16 rifle, but doing this in full view of TV cameras.
Likewise, I’m nearly absolutely sure that what has driven Israeli leaders, such as Peres, to strongly condemn the incident is not their concern about the excessive and unjustified violence and savagery, but the public relations damage Israel’s image would suffer.
After all, it was Peres who around this time in 1996 ordered the Israeli army to bombard a UN Peace-keeping Forces’ shelter in Southern Lebanon, where hundreds of Lebanese civilians had sought refuge from Israeli bombing and air-strikes, killing and maiming more than a hundred innocent civilians. The gruesome carnage was only one of the numerous Nazi-like atrocities identifying and characterizing Israeli conduct.
What is even more important is that Peres, who is often celebrated around the globe as a man of peace and moderation, has consistently refused to apologize for the deliberate mass murder. Not even a simple mea culpa has been uttered by the old man’s mendacious mouth.
I have chronicled hundreds if not thousands of "incidents" in which Israeli soldiers and settlers behaved even worse than did Eisner. Some of these acts are quite cannibalistic and worthy only of wild beasts. But, at the end of the day, every thing is swept under the carpet because the wrong-doers, the perpetrators, belong to the Master Race, the Chosen People, whereas the victims, whether they happen to be Palestinians, or British, or Danish, are children of a lesser God, whose flesh is like the flesh of donkeys and whose issue is like the issue of horses.!!!
In a certain sense, really don’t blame Eisner. This is all he has learned, this is all he has been taught, this is all he has been raised and trained to do.
Eisner puts a small kippa on his head, which suggests he is affiliated with the so-called religious Zionist camp. This camp, with which most settlers are affiliated, is racist to the bone. They believe that non-Jews are infra-human beings or quasi-animals, who are not entitled to human rights or human dignity. Indeed, the lives of non-Jews, according to these Talmudic fanatics have no sanctity, which should enable Jews to murder these goyem with utterly no compunction.
Similarly, it is likely that Eisner graduated from Merkaz Ha’Rav, the notoriously racist Talmudic college in West Jerusalem, where students are indoctrinated in Jewish fascism and supremacy.
There the students are taught that Jesus is the Hitler of Bethlehem and that Palestinians are Amalek who ought to be exterminated from the face of earth because so says the Lord.
For those who don’t know, Merkaz Ha’Rav, which means the Centre of the Rabbi, was named after Abraham Kook, who considered non-Jews unhuman and utterly evil.
According to Kook (1865-1935), "The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews—all of them in all different levels—is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle."
With this in mind, one can imagine how Eisner approached Andreas Ias. He, too, may have been instructed by his neighborhood synagogue that the lives of non-Jews, including Europeans, have no sanctity and that they can be killed rather nonchalantly.
How would or could fanatical Israeli Jews, indoctrinated in Tanya or Chesronot Shas think otherwise. In the final analysis, it is futile to expect Israel to behave "normally," meaning in a civilized manner. After all, one can not give what one has not.
Again, I am sure Israel, which locks down innocent people for more than 10 years without charge or trial and murders school children on their way to school because someone somehow hurled a stone toward an Israeli tank or armored vehicle, will not change or amend its modus operandi, which is based on brutality, prevarication and deception.
In public, they argue that Eisner has been dismissed for two years and that his conduct will not be tolerated. But in private and away from the eyes and ears of the world, they will tell him not to worry at all, "we only want to shut up these anti-Semitic bastards in Denmark and the rest of Europe."
Khalid Amayreh (Arabic: خالد عمايرة, b. 1957 Hebron) is a Palestinian journalist based in Dura, near Hebron. Amayreh has experienced years of restrictions on his activities and travel, including imprisonment. Some of his many articled can be found here: http://www.xpis.ps/