Eden Abergil, the former IDF soldier who posted photographs of herself posing
with bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainees on her Facebook page, truly
cannot understand what all the fuss is about.
“I didn’t physically hurt
anyone,” she said, accurately, on Tuesday, in a series of media interviews after
the photographs were republished in newspapers around the world and prompted
coverage on international TV networks.
RELATED:Poll: What do you think of Eden Abergil's facebook photos?Facebook flooded with photos of detainees“There’s no violence,” she said,
correctly, and, more dubiously, “There’s no contempt.”
She stressed that
“I actually took care of the detainees. We always treated the
Palestinians well, we always provided them with food and drink and would laugh
with them. We never cursed, spat on or touched them. The few photos I put on
Facebook are part of my military experience. It was innocent. People blew it way
out of proportion. I have respect for all human beings… I served the
country.”
Lots of soldiers have themselves photographed with Palestinian
detainees, she added. And she seems to have been right about that, too. Breaking
the Silence and B’Tselem, two Israeli organizations that seek to draw attention
to what they consider the evils of the occupation, were quick to produce
numerous other examples of snapshots taken by and of Israeli soldiers alongside
Palestinian captives, some of them showing the detainees in poses far more
humiliating than those that Abergil posted in the Facebook album she labeled
“The army… best time of my life.”
Until the storm over the pictures broke
publicly, they were visible on Abergil’s page to all Facebook users, and
attracted a range of responses. Although some viewers posted shocked criticisms,
others found the pictures amusing, and Abergil still didn’t see a problem. One
friend’s posting that Abergil looked “super sexy” in a snap alongside one of the
detainees elicited a response from her about, “What a day that was. See how he
completes my picture. I wonder if he’s on Facebook. I have to tag him in the
photo! Ha ha.”
The IDF, however, was not amused. In a statement, the IDF
Spokesman’s Unit described Abergil’s behavior as “shameful,” and another
spokesman called the photographs “a serious violation of our morals and ethical
code.”
It has now been reported that Abergil is being stripped of her
military rank and excluded from reserve service, to which she has responded that
the IDF has let her down and that she is “sorry that I served in such an
army.”
SOME CRITICS have attempted to draw comparisons between Abergil’s
photographs and pictures of laughing American soldiers posing with tortured
detainees at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
The comparison is superficial and
misplaced. The Abu Ghraib pictures revealed a despicable culture of torture at
the American detention center; Abergil’s document the
all-too-unfortunately-familiar banality of widespread arrests of suspected
Palestinian militants in the fraught climate of the West Bank – until recently
the dispatch zone for waves of Palestinian suicide bombers targeting Israeli
civilians.
Nonetheless, the episode also highlights the dangerous ease
with which Israel’s regrettable need to deploy soldiers in the West Bank –
involving relentless interaction with the Palestinian civilian population – in
order to keep our populace safe, can breed a routine in which respect for those
civilians is lessened or lost.
That’s what Abergil did wrong – in the
posting of her photographs, in the taking of her photographs and in the nature
of her poses in the photographs: She lost sight of the fact that the Palestinian
detainees in her charge, whatever their suspected crimes, must be afforded
fundamental respect as fellow human beings.
Israel, as the prime minister
can be heard saying almost every week, has no desire to rule over the
Palestinians. It seeks a viable compromise with their leadership that would
enable Israel to live in peace and security alongside an independent Palestinian
state. Thus far, largely because of a Palestinian reluctance to acknowledge the
legitimacy of Israel’s sovereign presence here, such an accord has proved
elusive.
And since, in its absence, Palestinian extremists have exploited
the intermingling of our populations to carry out murderous acts of terrorism
against our people, the Israel Defense Forces have been deployed, including in
and around Palestinian areas, to thwart further such acts.
That vital
protective soldiering must be done by the IDF with absolute professionalism,
humanity and morality, while the politicians work toward creating a reality in
which it will not be necessary. Eden Abergil’s photographs constitute far from
the most egregious conceivable breach of those standards. But a dismal breach
they most certainly are. And the IDF is rightly instituting a new educational
effort within its ranks to underline why.