Israel Is Destroying Its Own Freedom
If there is a symbol of the reality of Israeli rule in the occupied territories it is the photograph from Nabi Saleh.
Haaretz Editorial Sep 13, 2015 3:12 AM
Palestinians scuffle with an Israeli soldier in Nabi Saleh.
Palestinians try to prevent Israeli soldier from detaining a boy during a protest in the West Bank village Nabi Saleh, August 28, 2015.Reuters
In the row of flags at the entrance to the United Nations in New York, the flag of Palestine now flies. It’s only symbolic, as if the nations of the world sought to say, if we cannot grant the status of a genuine state to Palestine, we will settle for symbolic recognition. Another symbol of a long, bloody and ongoing battle between Israel and the Palestinians. A few thousand kilometers away from that hapless glass building — where the world’s leaders will once again convene this month to voice foolish hopes about world peace — the parties continue to spill real blood. The last colonial state, which today celebrates the 48th Rosh Hashanah of the occupation, continues to believe that controlling another people ensures its victory.
This superstition, which in the past vanquished great powers such as France, Britain and the Ottoman Empire, was shaken a few days ago by a terrifying, symbolic picture. In the small village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, an armed and masked Israeli soldier set upon Mohammed Tamimi, a 12-year-old boy with an arm in a cast. His mother and additional female relatives then set upon the soldier, trying to free the boy from the soldier’s choke hold.
If there is a symbol that summarizes and distills the reality of the State of Israel in the territories, it is the photograph from Nabi Saleh, which spread around the world like wildfire. In Israel some people were angry that the soldier did not shoot the boy, and some were astounded at the humanity of the soldier, who decided, on the basis of either his conscience or the presence of television cameras, not to shoot. This is a distorted dichotomy, which would not exist if Israel understood that occupation and morality, occupation and heroism, occupation and democracy, cannot coexist.
“I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the ‘natives,’ and so in every crisis he has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him,” George Orwell wrote in “Shooting an Elephant.”
As long as Israel persists in the occupation, it condemns itself to destroying the freedom of the Palestinians and of itself. It condemns itself to being trapped in the picture of Nabi Saleh.
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