When Israel re-arrested Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank town of Dura, the detainees faced familiar treatment.
They were blindfolded, handcuffed, insulted and kept in inhumane conditions. More unusual was that each man had a number written on his forehead.
Osama Shaheen, who was released in August after 10 months of administrative detention, told Middle East Eye that soldiers brutally stormed his house, smashing his furniture.
“The soldiers turned us from names into numbers, and every detainee had a number that they used to provoke him during his arrest and call him by number instead of name. To them, we are just numbers.”
You would think Israel, of all countries, ought to know how blatantly evil this kind of stuff looks.
They do, they just don’t care.
They do, and that’s the point.
Israel of all countries is the one desperately trying to prove it’s more like Nazis (strong white Europeans in their opinion) than like their victims. That’s the lesson they got from it all.
They are a broken nation.
And I understand how they become one, what I don’t understand is how Armenians haven’t (having plenty of their own weaknesses, of course).
what I don’t understand is how Armenians haven’t
Because they don’t have a regime supporting them them in that?
Have you not seen anything they’ve done previous to this? It’s all completely conscious, they absolutely mean to treat Palestinians like the Nazis did Jews etc.
I have, that’s why I said this kind of stuff to instead of this in particular, I was referring to all of it pretty much
They don’t care. No one is preventing them from becoming Nazis themselves.
I know a Holocaust survivor who is horrified by everything going on in Israel and Palestine. I also am related to deceased Holocaust survivors and their children, grandchildren, cousins, etc. all seem to think this situation is pretty awesome. They call the Palestinians animals and other terrible things and talk like it’s all political and say that people who disagree with them are brainwashed and unintelligent.
I can’t be 100% certain, but I think I now understand what it was like to sit at a table with burgeoning Nazis and Nazi-supporters and I’m sad to say that I failed the test. Yes, I argued, I disagreed, and I walked away, but I’m starting to get why everyone didn’t just attack the Nazis in Germany. What do you do when you recognize a Nazi but that Nazi helped raise you and didn’t seem to be a Nazi until they suddenly doubled down on the wrong choice?
That sounds really tough man I’m sorry. Thank for you at least sharing your perspective. It’s an important perspective to keep in mind. This stuff gets oversimplified, and often, ironically, by disregarding the element of human relationships.
“It’s clobberin time”
I know, but when you’re in the actual situation then you start asking yourself “am I really gonna hit my 80-something year-old great-aunt?” And you start realizing that the cops are definitely gonna get called and then there’s gonna be even more Nazis around you and that the new ones have a trigger-happy reputation.
I love my mother dearly and would not hesitate to slap her across the face if she called any human an animal. My grandmother I might not hit but I’d certainly cuss out.
Institutionalized segregation always leads to conflict. Nations onlynrecover once they abandon that segregation. Israel and Palestine need to come together into one nation as unrealistic as that might seem.
Remember when they almost achieved peace nearly 30 years ago and then an ultra-Orthodox Jew murdered the Israeli prime minister? He was probably a member of Hamas.
\s
Personally, I’d tell them they’re the ones behaving like animals, and cut all future contact.
Maybe someday they’ll wake up and realize that they’re on the wrong side of history. Or they’ll pass on to the next life and figure it out when they’re not in heaven.
How disappointed the generation before them would be, having survived that same treatment only to become the monsters that they struggled to escape.
Israel wasn’t founded by holocaust survivors and treated them less than equal.
I’ll take history repeat for 1000.
This seems vaguely familiar but I can’t quite put my forearm on it.
Elizabeth Warren supporters?
Numbers are so 1940’s, I thought they might have moved to QR codes by now.
Harder to draw quickly, gotta have them pre printed and then there is the ink costs and where on earth could Israel get the money for that?
They couldn’t turn the world today into a movie because the writing would be called too lazy and ham-fisted to be realistic.
“The Nazi analogies were so over the top, like we get it, they’re bad people… It’s insulting to the audience.”
—average review
“You’re watching it wrong! Those are protagonists!”
—US government in the comments
I’m telling you, this Earth show jumped the shark last decade.
No, the humanity show did. We’ll be cancelled long before the Earth will.
Sure, the Earth channel has other shows but Humanity has become the main pull of the channel such that it’s pretty much the Earth show. I’ve tried watching some of the other stuff Earth puts out but it hasn’t held my attention like Humanity has, even if the last few seasons have been absolute dogwater.
It was those damn writer’s strikes!
It would take somebody with a rye wit.
Mmmmm,… rye wit.
Is that an intentional bread pun? I’m not getting the relation.
Yes, to go with ham-fisted.
Cheers! Half of the time I understand jokes every time.
This is what happens the other 50%.
For fuck sake, how blatant does it need to get before people recognize this for what it is?
The people who are willing to recognize it for what it is have already done so.
You mean admit to it? They can just continue refusing.
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Found this but I don’t know how credible it is. From around the same time.
Article says numbers written, title says branded.
It’s not good, nothing about this is. However, I’m not seeing actual hot branding to foreheads.
Democracy Now! Is a factually credible left wing news source.
and it’s fucking amazing. A refreshing (but depressing) way to get the news.
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It could be just one squad, and not systematic.
Democracy now is one of the most credible news sources out there. Amy Goodman is meticulous about it.
This is no longer a boring dystopia
Literally 1940
… branding detainees with numbers, check… now, what’s next on Hitler’s to do list?
—Bibi, apparently
It’s not a brand. It’s a mark with a marker. And I think even Bibi and his legions of assholes might be sensitive about tattoos and actual brands.
wow what a distinction.
first of all Bibi is a Hitler apologist. the only thing he’s sensitive about is the existence of brown people.
second of all it’s the same exact shit. the point isn’t the method, it’s the dehumanization.
They have become that which they hated.
Treating Gaza like an open air extermination camp and even branding them the way prisoners were tattooed in German camps.
Yea but a number drawn with a sharpie would fade away. Have you thought of some more permanent way of inking those numbers in their skins? Not to mention that the forehead is a bit too much, it might make the guards uncomfortable. Have you considered someplace a bit more discreet, like maybe the wrist? /s
My grandfather had a number tattooed on his arm. Never again means never again for everyone.
Shame on Israel. Zionism is an evil racist ideology, distinct from Judaism
I wonder why this seems to be the only news org posting this. It seems we know there are camps in the West Bank where people are being detained, and we know the conditions are brutal, but the numbers on the forehead is a very specific extra detail that I can’t seem to find any other sources on numbers being written on foreheads. Did MEE just get the exclusive scoop or what?
Well if all you are used to is your establishment talking heads in narrow lockstep then it might be off putting. It isn’t at all damning for a single outlet to report on something. Especially when working somewhere so dangerous to be.
In reality this is, as others seem to be at pains to point out, a minor addition to the mountian of nightsoil. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to fabricate such a lightweight appendix if it is likely to undermine reporting on more serious events.
Calling it branding isn’t entirely out of scope with the normal usage of the word either. It just is slightly problematic in that we are now conditioned to expect the very worst of humanity from some of the IDF soldiers so our minds expect hot irons.
Yeah that’s what trips me up: it seems like such a “lightweight appendix” (good expression) to tag onto what we already know. I guess some stories just break with one reporter and one lead.
