There needs to be a wall between the two, and one should not live in the face of the other. Maybe by the time I have grandchildren, the wall could be taken down and the brothers could learn to be civil again, but until then, we must disengage.
Especially if it will prevent our young soldiers doing things like this….
Fiddler at the Checkpoint
Israeli troops forced a Palestinian man to play his violin in order to pass through a roadblock near the West Bank city of Nablus, human rights activists said Thursday.
An officer made the Palestinian man take out his violin and play for about two minutes as hundreds of other Palestinians waited behind him for their turn to pass, said Horit Herman-Peled, a volunteer for the Israeli rights group Machsom Watch, which monitors soldiers' conduct at the roadblocks.
The army said the soldiers made him open the case and play the instrument to show there were no explosives hidden inside, but noted the incident was "insensitively dealt with by the soldiers at the roadblock who are faced with a difficult and dangerous reality."
It said a high-level investigation was conducted, and that the soldiers had been reprimanded.
For more on this matter see Checking the Checkpoints and Machsom watch
2 comments:
I have been asked on numerous occasions both in the US and in Israel to turn on a computer, take a picture with a camera, drink from a bottle I've held, and the such to show what I have is safe and is what I am saying it is. With my red hair and light skin I can hardly pass for an Islamic Terrorist... To ask him to play his instrument was proving that he is indeed a musician and was not carrying the instrument around as a cover, or filled with explosives. What this world needs is to recognize that security and safety come much before racial profiling, and annoyance. Yes, I would rather if there were no security lines and checkpoints at malls, city entrances, eateries, and street events, but the unfortionate truth is without the fear of being searched attacks would rise in numbers.
I agree that sometimes it is necessary to take precautions in order to prevent attacks, but to make him play for two whole minutes seems humiliating. The IDF seemed to agree in that the particular soldier was reprimanded for his actions.
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