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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=661708&contrassID=2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
On apathy
By Haaretz Editorial
In today's Haaretz Magazine,
Gideon Levy tells the story of
Mahmoud Shawara,
a 43-year-old father of nine,
who left for work on his donkey
one day from his house in the
village of Nuaman, near Bethlehem,
was arrested by border policemen,
and, after he refused to accompany
the soldiers without his donkey,
was tied to the donkey.
The frightened donkey then
galloped toward the village;
Shawara sustained serious
injuries all over his body,
and ultimately died in great
pain in the hospital to which
he was taken by eyewitnesses.
Although the Department for
Investigating Policemen found
no relationship between the
border policemen's behavior
and Shawara's death,
testimony indicates that this is
an abusive practice well known to
Palestinians.
It even has a nickname:
"the donkey procedure."
On Wednesday,
Haaretz located another man,
Maamoun Abu Ali, who underwent
similar abuse at the hands of
border policemen two months ago,
not far from the place where
Shawara was arrested and tied
to his donkey.
Abu Ali, according to his testimony,
was also tied to a donkey.
A concrete block was placed on his back,
his hands were tied, and the border
police then prodded the donkey to run.
Luckily for him,
however, his donkey
refused to budge,
so Abu Ali was saved from death.
Cases of abuse of Palestinians,
whether by soldiers or by settlers,
have stopped making headlines in
the press or eliciting shock.
Nor do investigations of these
incidents appear to be serious,
and complaints are ignored
until the story is either
published in the media or
dealt with by one of the
human rights organizations
active in the territories.
This growing apathy can perhaps
be attributed to the continuous
satisfaction felt over the
disengagement from Gaza,
following which Israelis feel
that the occupation is about to end.
But, meanwhile,
the occupation is continuing in all its severity,
with all the abuses that have characterized it
throughout the years.
Earlier this month, Amira Hass
reported on Taher Odeh, 14,
who was released from the
hospital where he was being
treated for gunshot wounds,
and immediately afterward
underwent 24 hours of abuse
in a military police facility
until he was freed and sent home.
These two stories from the past
month join a long list of reports
in all the media outlets about
settlers chopping down Palestinians'
olive trees, something that has been
going on without interference since April.
Even though another 100 olive
trees were cut down this week,
and even though 15 complaints
were filed to the police,
and even though, in total,
we are talking about property
destruction amounting to thousands
of trees in the northern West Bank,
the law enforcement agencies have
yet to make any effort to locate
the settlers responsible,
and no arrests have been made.
The prime minister,
Knesset members and
ministers have not
made their voices heard,
and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz,
who is in charge of preventing all
the incidents and abuses described here,
has not even bothered to explain what he
has done to correct even a fraction of
this injustice.
The political "big bang" changed
nothing in the authorities' attitude
toward Palestinians' human rights.
This apathy is a stain on the face
of Israeli society that it will
find hard to remove.
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