Gutsy essay in Ha’aretz about Israel’s brutal youth. Batya Gur confronts a group of female soldiers harassing an elderly Palestinian:
This was not one of the greater and more visible
evils that take place around us daily, nor was
it a disaster, only an insidious and consuming
evil, one that is hard to pinpoint and define
in words. I do not see the horrors that take
place at the checkpoints every day. I know very
well that such an act by a woman like me,
someone who avoids any political activity or
any consistent struggle for human rights, is
actually a sentimental act. Such a trivial act
of protest is a bit like sweeping the path to
my own private garden, but what the words and
eyes of this soldier with a blond ponytail and
a pierced tongue reflected was not easy to
sweep away; it was the glittering, sharp tip of
a force of nature: the destructive power that
has been penned up in the all-powerful
authority of 18- and 19-year-old men and women.
This power which we, the Jewish citizens of the
state of Israel, have put in the hands of our
children, the second and third generation of a
very long occupation.