One has to wonder. Here is Israel for ever beating its own chest about what a democracy it is - indeed, the only one in the Middle East it claims, as do its supporters.
Increasingly, the country's strong-arm tactics, both internally and externally, must surely give pause to even its most ardent fans. But then to challenge and question immediately attracts the label of "self-hating Jew", "anti-semite" or "anti-Zionist".
Read this troubling piece "Intimidation and Interrogation in Tel Aviv" on CounterPunch with grave concern:
"It is simple: even if you are as convinced as I am of being innocent, of being on the right side of the law; even if you have nothing to hide – now the police has picked you up as if you belonged to a dangerous underground network, now you have been interrogated by a man whose questions were formulated and asked as if you were a felon, now your computer has been confiscated as if it carries texts that encode a national threat. Words you and your friends formulated thoughtfully are stated back to you in a flat, accusing voice: you realize they are a half or quarter sentence that fails, even grammatically, to articulate what they accuse you of. But their ineptness is not what worries you – it is the arrogance that allows them this deep, enraged misreading. No wonder that nearly a week afterwards your “surrounded” position in the street flashes out at you. If you were given to such sentiments you would feel alone in the street, horribly alone.
Intimidation, I am learning these days, is when you find that the law can turn against you: This does not come as a surprise to me: I live in a security-dominated country in which Palestinian citizens already live under a different interpretation and dispensation of the same law that still mostly protects someone like me. But now that I have been interrogated by a man called Amichai (literally: “My people live”) my knowledge has an added dimension: It takes a while into my interrogator’s list of questions until I figure out that this exchange is not conducted under the usual rules of conversation, of civilian communication. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this: every word I say not only freezes immediately (later I’ll have to sign the protocol and it feels as though I sign my words away, cut their lifeline) – it can and may well be used against me. In view of the misreading I mentioned before, I stand warned: even grammar stops counting here."
Increasingly, the country's strong-arm tactics, both internally and externally, must surely give pause to even its most ardent fans. But then to challenge and question immediately attracts the label of "self-hating Jew", "anti-semite" or "anti-Zionist".
Read this troubling piece "Intimidation and Interrogation in Tel Aviv" on CounterPunch with grave concern:
"It is simple: even if you are as convinced as I am of being innocent, of being on the right side of the law; even if you have nothing to hide – now the police has picked you up as if you belonged to a dangerous underground network, now you have been interrogated by a man whose questions were formulated and asked as if you were a felon, now your computer has been confiscated as if it carries texts that encode a national threat. Words you and your friends formulated thoughtfully are stated back to you in a flat, accusing voice: you realize they are a half or quarter sentence that fails, even grammatically, to articulate what they accuse you of. But their ineptness is not what worries you – it is the arrogance that allows them this deep, enraged misreading. No wonder that nearly a week afterwards your “surrounded” position in the street flashes out at you. If you were given to such sentiments you would feel alone in the street, horribly alone.
Intimidation, I am learning these days, is when you find that the law can turn against you: This does not come as a surprise to me: I live in a security-dominated country in which Palestinian citizens already live under a different interpretation and dispensation of the same law that still mostly protects someone like me. But now that I have been interrogated by a man called Amichai (literally: “My people live”) my knowledge has an added dimension: It takes a while into my interrogator’s list of questions until I figure out that this exchange is not conducted under the usual rules of conversation, of civilian communication. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this: every word I say not only freezes immediately (later I’ll have to sign the protocol and it feels as though I sign my words away, cut their lifeline) – it can and may well be used against me. In view of the misreading I mentioned before, I stand warned: even grammar stops counting here."
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