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JUDGEMENT DAY
Israel / South Africa
59’
December 2001
02.00
On
a June Friday night this year – 22 yr old Palestinian suicide bomber Sa’id
al-Hutari took his life & the lives
of 20 Israeli teenagers at the Dolphi – a crowded down-town discotheque on the
Tel Aviv boardwalk. Some 120 others were injured.
A sacrifice of innocent human life – it
was by no means the first - on the altar of bloodletting that has been the
tortured history of Israel / Palestine - tragically – it was not to be the
last.
02.33 – IV Sgt. Masuri
Israeli Defense Force – Hebron
I turned on the radio and heard the news and
I hear that some Palestinian blew up himself and 20 Israeli people were killed.
It made me feel sorry and made me feel anger but I don’t run into the street
and see Palestinians and say I hate you because you’re Palestinian. I don’t hate people because of what they are
I hate people because of what they do.
03.00 – VO
It was Jewish Philosopher, Heschel who
said: “Indifference to evil is
more insidious than evil itself;- a silent justification affording evil
acceptability in society”
Nevertheless - for however long it may
take - the evil truth will always be out there - waiting to be exposed.
03.24-
IV Sean Callagham
Ex-SADF
conscript Medical core
The patient, amongst other things, was
interrogated and tortured by the pouring of boiling water over his chest and
genitals. This had resulted in massive burning and blistering of the flesh.
In South Africa, the miracle
of transformation did not come cheap - the price of war - decades of witness to
violence & death - the evil truth - brutalisation of a generation of a
young South Africans on all sides of the conflict.
03.58-
IV Scotch Mdhlope
Ex-SDU Commander
Hitting a person with bricks, with our own hands, cutting him with a
knife. The thing is you think that person’s done something wrong, so we want
him to feel pain before he dies.
Indelible images that shape history -
South Africa then, Israel / Palestine now – carbon copies that resonate –
images defining for all time the essence of a particular struggle & the
consequence of rule through the “barrel
of a gun”.
“Control, humiliation and assault on
personal dignity” – echoes from a dark
South African past reverberating in the reality of the Middle East today;
a bitter legacy - long in the making for
future generations of Palestinian &
Israeli youth alike.
05.12-IV
05.34-Super: Sean Callagham
Ex-SADF conscript medical core seconded
to ‘Koevoet’ (crow bar) unit
Namibia/Angola border
I was 17 years old when I went into the
army nothing prepared me for war for seeing death .my first night all
helicopters came flying over they were calling ‘all Doctors please come to the
hospital or the medical place. I found my self confronted with a patient way
beyond anything I had ever imagined was possible. Blood was everywhere and body
parts missing and so I on, Something which I had never been prepared for.
The way the team would work is we would
pick up a track and we would just follow it and treat the person like an animal
and then at the end of the track until that finally you would catch up with
them and shoot them. And that in itself the excitement of the kill as it were,
and the excitement of not knowing what was coming next. Whether somebody was
going to shoot at you around the next bush or not, could go on for 2 or 3 days.
And there was one incident in which it did go on for 2 or 3 days and finally we
did catch up with the guy, we found he hiding in a crawl and he wouldn’t come
out so we drove over it with a casper and shot in to the rubble and pulled this
guy out of that situation. An of course he had holes in him and he had been
driven over and so on, he was then handed over to me to patch up and during the
interrogation that was going on as I was putting him on a drip and putting on
bandages and so on, out of frustration really, my unit commander shot him
through the head in cold blood right in front of me.
06.52-IV
Sean Callagham.
Ex-SADF conscript medical core seconded
to ‘Koevoet’ (crow bar) unit
My application for amnesty goes to the act
of omission, in that I did not prevent
the execution and I failed to report this incident to anybody when I got back
to base. I think at the time I was disturbed by the incident but saw it in the
light of my answer to Mr mayacroft as purely just another day on the job.
So you didn’t care really about whether he died or not?
I did care for a day or two, because it
was my patient that had died. My caring was because he was my patient not
because he was not because he was a human being.
In fact he was still the enemy?
Exactly.
I/V
The stress that people were under was
enormous, the guys that were with me were taking drugs because we were medics
we had access to drugs on a regular basis. They were trading drugs for food with the kitchen staff. We were
drinking alcohol at an alarming rate and during the Christmas, sort of new year
week, I think maybe 11 or 15 guys in our immediate camp committed suicide. The
sense of sanity was what was sane and what wasn’t sane anymore
08.28
Super:
theatre production 1984
‘National Madness’
‘National
Madness’ going to your head. ‘National Madness’ you would be better off dead’.
“National Madness” portrayed the
struggle of a young white conscript against the onslaught of military
propaganda….
08.41
its for people who believe in apartheid.
- Where do you come from?
- Grahamstown…
- And do you think the communists won’t
catch you there?
- I will do it if I have to major.
… Portraying
the systematic brainwashing employed by state security, the play gave
expression to the anxiety & confusion experienced by a growing number of
conscripts at the time.
- The country must be defended Shaun.
- Why?
- The military is non political.
- That’s not true!
- Shaun- there are Cubans in Angola
Shaun.
- Half the people I have come to fight
are South African.
- There are Koreans in Zimbabwe.
- I don’t understand.
- There is a total onslaught against our
nation Shaun.
SADF ‘laying waste’ Cuban forces in Angola-staged
sequence for SABC TV productions documentary.
“BRUG 14”- 1976
09.29-IV
James Whyle
Actor/Playwright
‘National Madness’
You are told one set of things, so its actually very hard
to believe something else. You do feel a
bit mad, because the whole of the televisions, radio and newspapers do say X
but Y is apparent to you and then your sky has been twisted in some way. So yes
I think apartheid was a ‘National Madness’, definitely for the white society
but we will presume for black people it was… no, I suppose just mad out there
really, just mad and worse.
For South Africa’s black community the
1990s were arguably the most violent years.
Torn apart by internecine political violence - manipulated by an
insidious third force intent on destabilising the forthcoming democratic
elections - no one was spared – not even innocent train commuters.
Lawlessness & anarchy prevailed –
and township youth - organised into so-called “self-defence units” – meted out
their own brand of street justice.
10.46-IV
Scotch Mdhlope
Ex-SDU commander
Katlehong
Self defence unit.
When I got involved with the whole thing I
think I was at the age of just 14 if I am not mistaken. About 14. The whole
community at large got involved. In the conflict and started shooting at each
other. The violence even got in to schools and inside schools. They came inside
schools and hurt school children with pangas and all these kind of things. Anytime you know, any day you can die. Its
like when you are a leader people listen. People like to listen to what you are
saying-you know when you’re a leader, you’re keeping in order-ok they say he’s
someone they say has raped some one. He has raped, who, who ,who. What is that
person, you look at the profile of that person. And if I think kill him he has
to be killed.
11.56
TRC
Ammesty Hearing
31st
July 2000-Pretoria
‘The
propaganda machine of the day had so convinced
white young conscripts that the communist threats were something we
needed to deal with. I had never heard of SWAPO. I hadn’t never heard of the
ANC before I went to the army.’
Theatre
production 1984
‘National
Madness’
repeat
after me: ‘the aim of the R1 Rifle is to kill the enemy!’
12.21-IV
James
Whyle
Actor/Playwright
‘National
Madness’
it
was a perversion of say Christianity that was awesome. It was for the first
time in the army I had a sense of evil and I got it by the way Christianity was
being perverted from its opposite. It
was no longer love your neighbour it was kill your neighbour if you skin is of
a certain colour.
12.46-IV
I
was involved with an organisation called 'Youth For Christ'. It was a very
integrated organisation and yet the church the politics and the society I loved
said that the Swart Gefaar (translates: ‘Black Danger’), and foreign communists, were a major problem and
I need to become a man and sign up.
13.02-IV
One
evening we were driving through one of the tar roads and a rocket went through
a engine. And I guess we came to a halt in the middle of a gun fight.and in
that situation you just take you rifle and shove it up the hole in the side of
the casper and you just shoot, it doesn’t matter which direction the person
might be in you just shoot at anything. Not even anything that moves, you just
pull the trigger and hope for the best. I just remember the noise and the
flashes of light and the rockets flying over and under us, and so on it was
just a very tense situation and it was if the world had stopped and there was
this commotion going on. Once it had all
sort of simmered down and finished, I realised I had only shot one shot, as my
rifle had jammed
I
stood on top of the Casper, totally frustrated someone had tried to kill
me. I un-jammed my rifle and fired a
shot into the body of the dead insurgent that lay on the tarmac
As
a corpse jumped on the ground, I thought to myself, what have I done? And later that night I was just sick, had
diarrohea, was vomiting. And really just
got a sense of what I had just done. And
everyone in the team around just laughed at me, and said we all go through that,
it’s just getting used to the thing
In the townships, the bitter harvest continued – the seeds sown in
decades past.
In 1992 alone - more than 20 000 people were murdered - there were 380
000 reported cases of rape.
For Scotch - it was just another violent day - a routine interrogation
amidst all this madness –
That provided a moment of introspection.
15’04
Scotch
Mdhlope
Ex-SDU
commander
Katlehong
Self defence unit.
Guys used to listen to me, when I say come on guys, don’t do it... On that day I put the person in a safe place,
and suddenly, he was beaten up… in some of the incidences I was there – just to
make sure, no, don’t kill him, you can beat him up… and suddenly that person,
some-one came to knock, early in the morning, about 3 in the morning and told
me, you are called into the office, and I got a knock in my chest, and I
thought, no the guy is dead. Then when I
went there, and the way he was tied up, one hand like this to the other leg,
one to the other leg, and it was just so bad, and I looked at him, and thought,
no, this thing is going to far, I’m going too far, I’m going too far…
Super: Namibia: Koevoet
(Crowbar) Unit – parading corpses of SWAPO insurgents
****
The area in which one operated was at time one of quite thick bush and
thorn trees. The tying of a body, that
would in 40+ degrees be bloated by the heat of the sun and ripped by thorns,
was a very intimidating factor on the local population, to drive to some-one’s
house, and say ‘tell me where some-one is or this will happen to you’ erm, the
fact that I never used it as an intimidation factor, in that I never said ‘tell
me’, but I was there, I was a part of it, and that constitutes something for
which I need to be forgiven
17’09 - Super – The Arab-Jewish Theatre,
Jaffa, Israel. Theatre Production March
8 2000, In the Shadow of a Violent Past.
Super
- Yehudit Keshet, Israeli Playwright, ‘In the Shadow of a Violent Past’
In the Shadow of a Violent Past, which is a play
based on a courtroom formula, i.e. a tribunal formula, was inspired by the
Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa. We thought it would be a very good vehicle
for raising the whole issue of human rights that go on in a very legalised way
in Israel. We used actors, both Arab and
Jewish, as well as people who have really been the victims of torture and
administrative detentions, and a whole slew of abuses like this. I have a friend, who was a senior officer in
the GSS, the General Security Services, who are the people who do all the
torture and everything like that, and he came to see the play, and
afterwards, he was so angry - I don’t think he knew it was based on
him. ‘If you see things this way, then
you shouldn’t be in this country, you don’t realise the holy work we do to
prevent people killing you and your children. He was foaming at the mouth,
literally, I’ve never seen anyone foam at the mouth, he foamed at the
mouth. And I realised two things, one
that we had it at home, and secondly, a very, very long process is required
before Israelis can face the fact that they too, as well as the Palestinians
and the terrorists, have done things that perpetuate the situation, that create
the hostility that creates the terrorist acts, and really the acts that are
destroying our society from within.
19’01
Subtitles: Testimony from Israeli
Soldiers… personally involved with the breaking of arms and legs… of Palestinian civilians during the first
Intifada of 25 February 1988
19’13
Let’s
just say this, there were orders from the minister of Defence. Explicit orders to break the arms and
legs. That was at a time when we didn’t
know what to do about the whole thing, and to break arms, mainly arms, so they
wouldn’t be able to throw stones.
19’43
Q:
I want to understand – is this an exceptional event that just happened to be caught on
camera? Or..
No way!
This was the norm, a norm of…
Just like this everyday?
everyday…
On the 15th May 1948 - the
state of Israel was born.
Existing Palestine was partitioned – 78%
for Israel
& 22% - consisting of the Gaza strip
& the West Bank for the Palestinians – demarcated by the so-called “green
line”;
In the process, some 700 000
Palestinians fled there homes to become refugees.
In June 1967 – Israel invaded both the
Gaza Strip & the West Bank – in the course of it’s celebrated “Six-Day War”
– against Egypt, Syria & Jordan.
Thirty four years later, Israel has
never withdrawn – And instead has
established Israeli Settlements – 16 in the Gaza Strip and a hundred &
forty-five in the West Bank.
20’54 - Super:
Gush Ezion Settlement, West Bank
These settlements - central to the
current conflict & bloodshed - for the Palestinians – are concrete
manifestation of occupation & oppression – and for the settlers - testimony
to their qausi religious / historical sense of entitlement.
21’05
Dov Weinstock, Gush Ezion Settlement, West Bank
This land is holy..
It is holy for the Muslims, it’s holy for us, and it’s holy for the
Christians. And if you want land, you
have to fight for it. And it’s not for
money, the fight here is not for oil, it’s not for diamonds, no we have nothing
here, not even water. If you are
stronger, you survive, if not, you find yourself in the sea. This is my promised land. If God had promised me Canada, I would take
that land. But he promised me this
land. There is no solution here. There is no solution. So… look at the tanks. I guess it’s going to the line between the
Jews and the Arabs, Beutelfield…
22’18 Yehudit Dusberg, Gush Ezion
Settlement, West Bank
It was a bare land, no grass, no trees –
all the trees you see here are planted by us, and watered with love. We came to a neglected land and we settled on
it. In ’67, in six days, to fight three
different armies, and to win in six days, that is a miracle, it’s a present
from God. God is here to stay and to
protect us, and the sooner the Arabs accept it, the sooner the blood will
stop. The solution will be that we have
a Jewish leadership that has the courage to say ’it belongs to us, all of it,
and no Arab that does not accept our ruling, can stay here.’
23’18 – Super – Settler Rally – Calling
for War – Jerusalem June 2001
In response to the suicide bomb – at the
Tel Aviv Dolphi-discotheque the week before - the settler community hold a mass
rally in the centre of Jerusalem – calling on the Israeli government to launch
a full-scale war in retaliation.
23’
32
Yehudit
Dusberg, Gush Ezion Settlement, West Bank
We
are too humane to the enemy. You know,
before even sending the army, just stop their water, their electricity, cut off
their road., Soon they have no food
In stark contrast – “Women in Black” –
with a joint statement by Israelis & Palestinians side-by-side: “We refuse to be Enemies”.
24’06
The inevitable scuffle as Right-wing
extremist group – “Kach” – loaded guns at their side & shouting racist
slogans - attempt to mutilate the banners.
24’23 – Super: Israeli Women In Black – Protest Vigil
against 34 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
(Jerusalem June 2001)
With solidarity vigils held
simultaneously in 150 countries worldwide –
“Women in Black” have been nominated for this
year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
Marking the 34th Anniversary
of Israel’s invasion of the Palestinian Territories – this Vigil attended by some 3000 Israeli peace
activists calls for:
an end to the occupation, with total
evacuation of the 161 settlements in the Gaza Strip & West Bank;
The establishment of the state of
Palestine alongside the state of Israel according to the original “green-line”
borders – with Jerusalem the shared capital of the two states.
24’57
– Adi Knutzman – Israeli Peace Activist
There’s
a small group of settlers, that live in the Occupied Territories, and it
happens the whole Israeli people have to fight the war of the settlers, because
they are not willing to move, because they want to be there at any costs, and
we all have to pay the rice.
25’21 Ronee Jaeger, Israeli Peace Activist
As
you walk around Western Jerusalem, you see they all live in Apartments,
everyone lives very tightly. And if you
go to the settlements, you live in a Villa at a quarter the cost of one of
these crummy little apartments. You have
a yard, a garden. How many people want
to leave that. And it costs you very
very little. Each Settler costs over a million sheckels a year. The Government has just allocated over 3
billion to Biva, the bus security, and even to make their homes more
secure. So people in Israel are not
happy about this. Most will tell you the
settlers are getting a fantastic free ride, and the rest of us are, what they
call in Israel, suckers
26;14
– Super: Bethlehem Checkpoint
(‘Machsom’)
Controlling the movement of Palestinians is a full-time occupation –
checkpoints or “Machsoms” are everywhere – from age 18, every young Israeli –
man & woman – is conscripted.
26’23
To record human rights abuses, a group
of 30 self-appointed, Israeli women – the “Machsom Watch” - monitor the
checkpoints – there presence both a public statement of opposition to the
occupation and a means of discouraging the potential for abuse and humiliation.
26’38 - Ronee Jaeger, Israeli Peace
Activist
Our being there at the checkpoint is a
very visible statement that there is not a consensus on this occupation, that
many Israeli’s are totally opposed to it – opposed to what is does, firstly a
selfish concern at what it does to us, the rate of husbands battering wives is
tremendously high. Research into prejudice into young children, into
racism. Children, at the age of six, will
tell you they hate Arabs, that Arabs smell, that the best Arab is a dead
Arab. All of these things are becoming
part of our culture. And it’s all part
of our being an occupying force. So in
order to occupy other people, to subjugate them, to humiliate them, you have to
tell yourself you are better than them, different to them. This is what we are doing now, 55 years after
the Second World War, when we should have learned a very different lesson.
27’ 40 – Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum,
Jerusalem
27’ 55
Adi Knutzman – ‘Machsom Watch’ Activist
Being
Jewish it is very difficult for me to see, after all the things we have gone
through, in Europe during the Second World War, the kind of things they are
doing to other people. This feeling that
we have this big strong army, that is called the defence army, but is in fact
the army of occupation
28’30 Super: Gaza City 30th January 1988
28’30 Sergeiy Sandler, Conscientious Objector.
Israel’s level of violence in schools is one
of the highest in the world, and we have Ministry of Education stickers saying
‘fight violence’. And at the same time
Israeli forces are bombing Gaza and Ramallah, and this is not violence, but it
is universally seen as, I don’t know, self defence. Yopu’re defending yourself against an unarmed
cilvilian population, and that’s self-defence.
And at the same time it is teaching the children to be good soldiers,
first and foremost. A school measures it
success in Israel by the number of people it send to the Army. Just like that. It values above all other values military
service. Which is not a value at all if
you look at it rationally.
29’43
- Ronee Jaeger, Israeli Peace Activist
Had soldiers
say ‘it’s good you’re here’ I’ve had
others say the most terrible things to me.
I’ve had soldiers say they hate me more than the Arabs, because you have
taught the Arabs they have rights
Even in the West bank, Palestinians are
not permitted to use the main highways & must travel alternative &
mostly untarred routes.
[
after sync in car ]
31.07
- Hijazi Eid - Palestinian tour guide
The
main road from Hebron to Bethlehem takes just 20 minutes. But now we have to go
this way.. because it is forbidden for
us to use the main road. It is just for the settlers and the Israelis.
31.22 V/O
Palestinian tour guide, Hijazi Eid.
Having travelled the one-and-a half-hour dirt road from Bethlehem – for
Palestinians further passage and back-door entrance to Hebron is blockaded by
mounds of concrete and rubble.
This is closure, tightening of the
military siege on virtually every Palestinian town & village - a means of “collective punishment” - against
the total Palestinian civilian population.
At strategic points - for sake of
Israeli settler security - plantations across the West bank – the bread &
butter of Palestinian families – have been uprooted.
31.07 - Hijazi Eid - Palestinian tour
guide
Closure is you know the killing of the
daily life of Palestinians. They divided each town, each village, each camp
from each other. So they’ve blocked it by tonnes of rubble and they just like a
prisoner in the jail they’ve just blocked it anytime they want. All my dreams,
I was dreaming in a lot of things to do with tourism. But life has seen my
dream like a snow house melted by this crazy situation that we live in. I can
see its irrational, really, their treatment of us, they don’t want to see
anybody Palestinian in this country, they don’t want to see any Palestinian
raise his voice.
32.48
…. Cried for death. Because you know
this man, I know him by the way – he’s from my village. And he’s going by the
way to the hospital twice a week to clean his kidneys. You see that very
miserable and tragedy scene for that man – his sons carried him and they
couldn’t carry him and he couldn’t walk. Its just a part, a simple part from
our daily suffering from this occupation.
33.28
Nobody can understand for what is
this?For what is this? All these blocks.. All these closures.. For What..?
33.36
– VO – HEBRON (tomb of the patriarchs)
Hebron - Ancient & bloodied city –
the Ibrahimi Mosque & tomb of Abraham –
stained with the blood of 29 Palestinian worshipers gunned down by an
Israeli Settler in 1994.
In the main Shuhada Street - a 24hr
vigil for 10month old Israeli Settler baby
Shalhevet Pass – shot & killed in her father’s arms - by a
Palestinian sniper in March this year.
Friction & conflict occur on a daily
basis – with a group of some 500 Israeli Settlers – protected by Israeli
security forces – effectively holding hostage some 140 000 Palestinian
civilians living in Hebron under 24 hr curfew.
The hostility is tangible – whether in
Settler graffiti on Palestinian storefronts – or the attitude of automatic
weapons - slung with defiant impunity.
16)
- 20 secs [ Intro Anti-Conscription Movement – Yesh Gvul & Moran etc. ]
34.29
Hijazi Eid - Palestinian tour guide
We
don’t take the Israeli life because they are Israeli, because they are Jews or
because they are Christian. We just hate the violence, we just refuse the
occupation, we don’t agree for that. That’s all.
34.40
Kawther Salem – Palestinian Photo-journalist
In
Hebron there are 41 houses occupied by the army. The rooftop they are using
like military post. So these families they live all the time under shooting in
the house, under curfew, no school, do you think it is a normal situation? The
people they are all the time watching the TV for shooting and killing. Funeral,
blood, children killing. They live in jail in their private home. No school, no
computer, no beach, no club, no library. Just in front of them blocked doors,
soldiers, settlers, capture, closure.. it’s a damaged situation.
35.41
Lt YAKI BILIGI – Israeli Defence Force
You
can feel them. You know their frustration. They are good people, not all of
them take part in the violence.. they just want to work, to study, to grow like
every young man. And in a lot of ways they cannot do it.
36.03
– JOANNE LINGLE – Christian Peacemaker Team
We’re
able to have a lot of dialogue with soldiers. Unfortunately we are not able to
have dialogue with the settlers, they don’t want to talk to us but the soldiers
tell us they don’t like being here. They are trained for war and they are sent
here to do police work, which they are not trained for. The Palestinians don’t
want them here.. the settlers don’t feel that they are doing enough and as on soldier
said to me.. ‘everybody hates us here’…”
36.49
– SGT. MASURI – Israeli Defence Force
They
don’t like us. They shoot at us and throw stones. They don’t like us much… I
cant let my emotions control my work. My work is only to guide the Jews – the
Jewish citizens and nothing else. My order not to kill anyone.. my order is not
to hurt anyone, period.
37.04
- General CONSTAND VILJOEN – Retired Head: SA Armed Forces
War
is a young mans game. Older people in war find it difficult to adapt
themselves. I felt the young south African soldiers very very adaptable and
excellent soldiers.. We were surprised we could put them in the most difficult
situations and they could handle the war.
37.33
– SCOTCH MDHLOPE – ex-SDU commander, Katlehong self-defence-unit
One
older person said to me. Scotch you are the ones who are supposed to fight now…
because you’ve got no house, you’ve got no babies, you just have a girlfriend
or girlfriends. So its good for you to fight because you don’t lose anything.
And at the time I said yeh you’re right- you’ve got babies and stuff. But after
this whole thing, when I sat down and I tried to understand whats going on in
my life it was very wrong, it was totally totally wrong. Sometimes, somewhere,
Im not saying that we were used, but somewhere, somehow, sometimes, we are
triggers, easy triggers to use to do this kind of conflict.
38.18 - VO
YESH GVUL – “there is a border” – referring to
the 1967 “green line” – this movement embraces the stand taken by some 200
young Israeli men & women – who have – since the September uprising or “Intifada” - refused to serve the Israeli
Defence Force – in the occupied territories.
Nineteen have thus far been imprisoned
for taking this stand.
Conscientious
Objector, Moran Cohen.
38.43
- Moran Cohen Conscientious Objector
It’s
a big mistake to attack citizens inside the green line. Its not right, not from
a strategic nor moral point of view. I felt terrible after the last suicide
bomb attack in Tel Aviv,… where many youngsters lost their lives. But this didn’t
make me change my beliefs and ideas. In fact it strengthened them. It’s not
right to attack citizens from both sides – but resistance is justified. This last suicide bomber teaches us that as
long as there is an Israeli army in the occupied territory there will be
actions.. – like suicide bombers.
39.20
LT YAKI BILIGI – Israeli Defence Force
If
you say that you live in a new middle east, that you just want to live
peaceful, then the army will change you inside – make you more violent. Its
true you do a daily work, that’s the army, you cant ignore all the things, you
cant say ‘I’m living in a new middle east and I don’t need to go to the army’…
39.52
– SHMULIK SZEINTUCH – conscientious objector
As
young people in this country, we’re all brainwashed.. being told that there is
a stranger out there who is the Arab who wants to kill us, or at least want to
get us into the ocean. And when you hear that as a kid for about 18 years you
come to believe it. Nowdays I think its easier because there are more voices
that are going against this brainwash. So more and more people are becoming
aware that it is possible not to serve in the army and its not a stain on your
history if you don’t.
40.29
- VO
The sentiments of “conscientious
objection” - opposition to oppression through institutionalised militarisation
of society –
Israel today - South Africa in the dark days of the 1980s.
The End Conscription Campaign – one of
many opposition / support organisations that evolved in the 1980s - the “thin
end of the wedge” – an important component of the irreversible momentum
generated through mobilisation of
non-violent opposition to apartheid oppression – organised across racial
barriers – finding common ground in the principals of universal human rights.
41.12 VO
Significant too in Israel / Palestine
today – solidarity across racial lines, as side by side - with their bare hands
- Jewish & Arab activists – dismantle blockades and mobilise relief convoys
bringing food and supplies to besieged Palestinian villages.
Non-violent opposition across racial
boundaries – a crucial step towards breaking the cycle of violence &
revenge.
41.38 archive from 1984 Theatre
production ‘National Madness’
‘Thy shall love thy lord thy God.. Thy
shall love thy neighbour as thy self.. Thou shalt not put him in a township..
thou shalt not force him to carry a pass.. thou shalt not shoot down his
children.. thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self..’
41.56 VO
Gaza city skyline.
It’s airport closed, port embargoed
& border with Egypt blockaded,
the Gaza strip is under total military
siege.
Subject to economic strangulation -
according to British Relief Agency, Oxfam – 64% of Palestinian households now
live below the poverty datum line – 74% meet the criteria for United Nations
emergency food assistance;
and for those – fortunate enough to be
economically active – subjugation through the daily humiliation of control and
assault personal dignity.
42.32
Marisa Kemper-ali
It’s
the concept of guilty until proven innocent. Whereby people are pulled over on
the road, or stopped in the street to be searched.
42.40
QUASSEM ALI – Bureau Chief – Ramattan Media Centre
It
doesnt matter if you are a business man, or a politician, or you are an artist,
you are Palestinians.. always a Palestinian for them.. They try to degrade you,
to intimidate you, and the worst is that they want you to accept this kind of
humiliation as normal.
43.00
- Marisa Kemper-ali
It’s
a very difficult process for us to leave the GAZA stip is now virtually
impossible as a family. So we’ve actually never travelled together outside of
Gaza. 8 days before the interfada broke out we invested in a home in Ramallah.
That home Kasam has never seen.. Kasam literally cannot get out to see his own
home now.. we’re renters here in Gaza, we were planning to move.
43.30
- QUASSEM ALI – Bureau Chief – Ramattan Media Centre
So
like you are living here in Gaza and also our colleagues in Musbag. Maybe Gaza
is worse because it is like pig shit. I
thinmk the m,ost valuable thing fot the human loife is dignity. What I’m asking for is a simple thing – I
want to be a free human being like any other human being in the world. That’s it.
And that is the big problem for us as Palestinians, so everything 0
business, prestige, power – it’s not important for me if I don’t have my
dignity.
Subjugation, hopelessness & despair
– conditions that spawn the “suicide bomber” – the retrieval of dignity in
self-immolation against the oppressor – to Palestinians “martyrs” and Israelis
- “terrorists”.
44’24
- Subtitle –
The
Israeli Army in the Occuppied Territories today is there to’protect the
settlers’. The fact that the army is
across ‘the green line’, is already an act of conquest…. Not just toward the
Palestinian People… the humiliation, the beatings…. The Israel soldier in
Palestinian territory is the conqueror.
44’57
IV Sean Callagham
Ex-SADF conscript Medical core
I
think the thing I lost the most was my humanness, my ability to feel emotioopn,
my abilty to love, to be a father, to be a husband. Subsequentlky I’ve been to see a couple of
the guys that were with me, and many oif them were still living within those
dreams, those nightmares
45’22 Super: 30th September 2000, Netzarim
Junction, Gaza
Jamal
Al-Dora & 12 year old son MOHAMMED ‘under fire’ by Israeli soldiers.
45’43
The callous shooting of 12
yr old Mohammed Al-Dora by Israeli security forces - has become –
internationally - the defining image - of the brutality and tragic loss of
youthful life - taking place in Israel / Palestine almost daily.
For Mohammed’s father, mother, two
sisters & four brothers – this image is both a haunting assurance that
Mohammed will never be forgotten as well as a living nightmare.
Shown repeatedly – every day on
Palestinian Television – together with other emotionally charged musical video
compilations of Israeli military brutality against Palestinian civilians – the
cumulative effect of this propaganda onslaught on today’s generation of
Palestinian youth – only the future will tell.
46’33 Ahmed Elbaz, neighbour and friend
Everyone
here, when he got killed he got sad. Of
course he looked sad. Because he was
sincere – he was loved by all the people here.
The bombing, and the shooting rocket, and the shooting infant children –
we don’t want this, of course I hate it.
I want to be Palestinian soldier, all Palestinian youth is like me,
because we have suffering in Gaza
47’09
Mohammed Al-Dora – enduring
image of the senseless spilling of innocent blood – begs the question - when will visionary
leadership of sufficient integrity and strength of character emerge on both
sides of the Israel / Palestinian crisis – to stop the slaughter, and implement
a just & lasting peace.
47’33 Super:
Smador Elhanan. Aged 13 when
killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber.
Jerusalem, September 1997
Dr
Nurit Peled- Elhanan
‘She was a little thing. She was tiny, very delicate. And, modest, she had this kind of modesty
about her that I admired. My perfect
little girl, see, who danced, and this is it.
She was lovely.
48’02
Rami Elhanan, Smador’s father
Smador was ‘hadab’, which means in Hebrewthe
first flower that comes from the plant.
47’10
Dr Nurit Peled- Elhanan
I adored her from the day she was
born. She was quiet, and her serenity and her wisdom, there isn’t much more to tell about her, she
was learning all the time, she was wide eyed all the time, she was grasping
things..
48’34 Rami Elhanan, Smador’s father
I
don’t have any feelings for the perpetrator, he’s a victim just like
myself. I have great anger to the
leaders, of those two people that lead us to blood, and murder, and blood and
murder, to the circle that never ends, of terror and retaliation, and don’t
have the courage to do what is necessary
49’06: Dr Nurit Peled- Elhanan
I
blamed then, and I blame now, the Government of Israel and their policies in
the occupation. I think they are the
creators of Hamas, of suicide bombers.
Rami Elhanan, Smador’s father
There is no figure people can look up to
and believe in. Not on the Israeli side,
not on the Palestinian side. There is no
such political leader with a vision, with an understanding of the needs and the
pains of both sides. Because no side
knows completely the suffering of the other side.
49’44
Dr Nurit Peled- Elhanan
I
don’t think that anything should demand the blood of a child. Nothing.
And the people who say ‘that is the price of peace’ are liars and they
don’t understand the meaning of peace.
This is the price of war.
50’13
Yitzhak Frankenthal, Arik’s father.
Founder Israeli/Palestinian Bereaved Parent’s Organisation.
Arik.
Arik was 19 and a half years old.
He was in the Israeli Army. And
he was murdered by Hamas terrorists. And
it was on the 7 July 1994. Many people
ask me ‘what about forgiveness?’ And I
say ‘never, I will never be ready to forgive.
Bring me my son back, I will forgive you. But I am ready for reconciliation, to open a new page. I lost Arik because there is no peace. And what I am doing is to establish peace
between us and the Palestinians. For
Arik I can do nothing. It is only for my
other kids who are living I can do something.
I have stablised a group of, to date, over 190 fa,milies who have lost a
member of the family, and a group of 140 Palestinian fa,milieus. Al of us haver lost a kid, and we are not
looking for revenge. We are looking for
reconciliation between the two nations.
Palestinians want peace. They
want to live, they want an education, they want to have an economy, exactly
like the Israelis. And there is no
reason not to establish a peace between us and the Palestinians. It’s not a question if
the peace will come, but how much more blood, how much more dead will be in our
street. It is not a question if peace
will come, because we are living one inside the other. There is no other way. Only the peace way.
52’24
Nelson Mandela, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, and RSA President-Elect 1994
I will use all my strength to help bring about
peace, democracy justice for all in our country
(applause)
52’46F.W. De Clerk Nobel Peace Prize Laureate & SA Apartheid
State President
In South Africa, part of the factors
which really brought us to the point
where we made initiatives no-one really expected was, partly on the one
hand was the acceptance we had to change because we were on the wrong
road. Secondly, the realisation no
solution could be found through the barrel of a gun.
53’20 General Constand Veroen Retired Head, SA Armed Forces
Well I’ve the greatest respect for the
Israeli defence capability, they are pretty strong, there’s no doubt about
it. I feel the same about ours in
1985. But the real solution is not a
military one. There is no doubt in my mind
the sooner there is a solution, the better for them, and the Palestinians. Because war has a very bad effect on people,
it hardens their attitudes. After making
more war, some time you have to sit around the table, how to resolve this
thing? With the hardened attitudes it
becomes more and more difficult to really find the solution.
54.06 FW De KLERK
The military leaders
said to us as a cabinet look 80% of the responsibility of bringing to an end
these conflicts lies on the shoulders of the politicians.. we can only create
time and space for you to do so.
54.27 - General
Constand Viljoen – Retired Head SA Armed Forces
If people ask me what I
regret as a retired general. I would say by not applying more pressure on the
government to bring about changes that would solve the conflict sooner than it
was resolved. And maybe that’s another
mistake that the state of Israel could do.. by stretching out the conflict over
such a long period because you are military strong. But actually you are losing
strategic alternatives in the final soultion.
55.10 - YASMIN SOOKA –
chair TRC committee on human rights violation
What do we do with
youth? We were an increadibly militarised society on both sides of the fence. I
think we have failed those people we have not integrated properly them into our
societies we have not given them opportunities in which they can fashion
themselves to be responsible members of our society. And I think we’ve seen the
consequences of that – young people, unemployed, who have taken to crime. The
other thing that we never taught them is, how to adjust from a war situation,
into living in an ordinary society where the use of a weapon is something which
shouldn’t be tolerated.
55.54 - VO
Brutalised by his experiences as a
Self-Defence-Unit Commander - after years of searching, Scotch finally found
healing through professional counselling and a primal wilderness trail
experience.
By his own admission, Scotch was one of
the more fortunate – and today runs a wilderness therapy operation for
community members who have suffered trauma in the course of their daily lives.
56.15 - SCOTCH – SDU
commander
The mountain on its own
is like you know, moving in different places, Im not used to it, thinking like,
you know, what if I fall here? If I fall here I am going to die, you know,
really die! So I got so afraid that I asked myself, I wondered.. that time when
I used to carry a gun, that
time when I used to lead this crowd, and that time when I used to shoot and all
those things.. can I take that power and use it here.. and I found that I cant.
Its like just nature itself with its own
powers. that taught me, here you are.. now wheres that power.
57.02 - SCOTCH
We try to deal with the
human mind, we try to go deep inside yourself, and we try to see inside
yourself, and try to understand yourself.. who you are, where you come from,
and where you are going.
57.23 - SEAN CALLAGHAN
- TRC
For me the committee
found that the occupation of Namibia, the establishment of Kofoet and the war
in Angola were violations of human rights, and for me I participated in that. I
have found healing in this process, I have found healing in making a
submission, I have found healing in going before the medical sector hearings.
And today constitutes the last few words in the paragraph and a full stop for
me. And for me I want to when Im 65 years old look back and say I closed that
chapter in 2000 and I got on with the rest of my life. And so, I really ask for
forgiveness for the role that I played, and , it sounds grand in a sense, but
the role that I played in defending the policies of aparteid in occupying
Namibia, in waging war against Angola, and participating in a Kofoet unit.
Because those things were wrong and those things were a violations of the basic
human rights of many of those people.
58’24
Waging war against Angola, participating
in a covert unit. Because those things
were wrong, and a basic violation of the human rights of many of those people.
58’39
Judge R Pillay
Its honourable to know that you are one
of the very few people in this country who is prepared to face the past. I know it’s not going to be easy to forget
what happened. It’s easier said than
done to close a chapter in a life. But
at least you came here to bare your soul, and important to say you saw it. On behalf of the Committee, we wish you well
in the future. Thank you.
59’20: Super: Klapperkop Monument, Pretoria
There isn’t a single family in South Africa that hasn’t fought on every single side. Whether those who were conscripts who were in Angola or Namibia, or whether those were guys who were involved in township conflicts or faction fighting, or whatever the turmoil that our history has been, there isn’t a single family that has escaped. And the devastation that that brings in terms of lawlessness, of crime – a nation of fathers that don’t know how to love, how to care. A generation of mothers that have had to deal with what has happened to their partners. We’re going to reap the tragedy of that for many years
00;19
Super: – Tswaing Crater Wilderness Therapy
00’13 - IV Scotch Mdhlope Ex-SDU Commander
You know, I can’t really say I am
finally healed. It’s kind of a
process. Each time I come to the
wilderness – I’ve been coming a long time – but each time I come new stuff,
each time, new stuff. I learn more about
myself. My heart, my life, my inner
self. It more free now than it was. If I didn’t get this kind of help, I don’t
think I would be alive now, because of the life I was living. So I am healed, but also in the process.
……………………………….