There are so many people just totally concerned with local affairs that they forget about the bigger picture of what is happening in the rest of the world.
Fair enough, sometimes the roughshod way that our leaders -— municipal, provincial and federal -— are treating us is of concern, but we have nothing to fear compared to indigenous people in other parts of the world.
Videos are being passed around to people who do care about what is happening outside of our own world. Videos that never make it on to our TV sets. Those that control our TV viewing assume it is not worthy of being reported, or more likely, TV station corporate owners don’t want the truth to be known.
On March 24, two young Palestinian men, both 21 years old, attacked Israeli soldiers manning a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron. Both Palestinians were shot, one dead, the other lay wounded on the ground. Minutes later, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier arrived, approached the wounded Palestinian, aimed his gun at the young man’s head and pulled the trigger. All of this was captured on video.
This was not some scene from the war in Syria or Afghanistan. It was a cold-blooded execution — an act which constitutes a war crime.
However, for most Israelis the soldier is the victim of this story. Some 57 per cent of Israelis oppose an investigation. Sixty-six per cent describe his behaviour in positive terms. Only 20 per cent think criticism is warranted. A tiny five per cent believe the killing should be judged as “murder.”
Israel has always trumpeted the “morality” of its army — unchallenged because few people besides Palestinians could prove otherwise. However, with the increased use of camera phones, more and more pictures of the crimes of a belligerent occupying power are reaching the outside world.
Palestinian frustration with the apartheid rule by Israel are reaching the proportions (190 attackers have been killed in the last six months) that will soon lead to another “intifada,” which led to the Israeli killing of 2,220 Gaza occupants (among them, 551 children and 299 women) in 2014.
Hopefully, this video and the aftermath will open a window to the rotten state of the Israeli political system.
Frank Martens
Summerland