Diggin’ In The Dirt
Interesting article “unearthed” by RafahPundits:
Inside one of the modest half-built houses in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, the Middle East Times met with R, a full-time tunnel-digger with a memory full of tales about his 10-year experience in tunneling under the Israeli-Egyptian-Palestinian borders.
My favorite part of that article is where the tunnel maker explains…
“The tunnel cannot contain such a [anti-aircraft]missile,” he said. The biggest weapons that can be smuggled in tunnels are assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.”
Ah, I feel MUCH better now, feel free to return to your digging, sorry to have disturbed you sir.
“The biggest problem was the sand left over from the digging and how to hide it,”
Reminds me of the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” where the guy digs a tunnel out of prison and lets out the dirt in the prison yard….I heard a story of Jews doing the same thing to escape a concentration camp.
Way off topic, but whatever.
Isn’t it nice that Rachel Corrie protected people like this. She was apparently successful in protecting terrorists to judge from this article.
#1. rachel corrie wasn’t protecting terrorists, she was defending an innocent person’s home from demolition.
#2. israel regularly demolishes homes, not because of terrorism, but because those homes were built without construction permits. in the last 10 years, israel has bulldozed 20,000 arab homes. there are 30,000 more slated for demolition.
#3. arabs build their homes without permits because the israeli government discriminates against them and will not grant them permits. this matter has come before the israeli supreme court countless times.
#4. the israeli government also rezones arab residential neighborhoods into agricultural, commercial and industrial zones, then files demolition orders for the arab residences in those areas, and knocks them down, leaving tens of thousands homeless in the last few years alone.
#5. at no point ever has the israeli government once suggested that the home which rachel corrie was defending was connected with terrorism or weapons tunnels. their claim, #1, is that they weren’t even planning on demolishing the house corrie was defending that day (though they did demolish it several months later), and #2, that the house itself was in the way of the “security zone” they’d established along the border between egypt and gaza. ie., there wasn’t a weapons tunnel, but just to make sure there won’t be one in the future, they intended to knock it down. is that just? let’s make a family homeless because of the potential use of their house? what ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? and now you know why rachel corrie was there.
#6. arik ascherman of rabbis for human rights is currently on trial for doing precisely what rachel corrie did (though, obviously, he didn’t get run over) with the intent to draw attention to this grave injustice.
#7. it’s real convenient for you to make such statements from iowa. come back and speak to me when you’ve actually been in the west bank and seen the idf demolish a house with your own eyes, like i have.
I agree that home demolition is generally wrongful and that Arabs receive unfair discriminatory treatment. But, the proper response is something other than willful obstruction of government activity. I support legal actions to prevent such destruction in Israeli courts. I support political action (campaigning, speech, etc.) to prevent unjust use of home destruction. I support greater due process rights to prevent homes from being destroyed without some evidentiary basis.
Rachel Corrie’s actions and those of ISM regularly protect terrorists as much as innocents. I support parties like Shinui because I think they are more likely to strike a balance where civil rights are protected while preventing terror. The problem with people who
volunteer to be tools of the ISM is that they unfairly single out Israel for condemnation, and cannot know if they are protecting an innocent or a terrorist in many circumstances.
Rachel Corrie’s actions and those of ISM regularly protect terrorists as much as innocents.
I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay, waitin’ for a citation to come my way…
But, the proper response is something other than willful obstruction of government activity. I support legal actions to prevent such destruction in Israeli courts.
chief, the israeli court rules in favor of the arabs and the government continues to defy the court rulings and discrimiante against the arabs. they go back to court time and time again over the same cases. at a certain point, the legal channels exhaust themselves and civil disobedience — active resistance — becomes necessary.
Thank you, Mobius. But what does this mean:
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Legal channels are not limited to court action. Israel is a democracy that generally protects free speech. Legal forms of protest are available. I haven’t seen any evidence that illegal forms of protest (except perhaps IDF refusenik protest) are helpful, particularly since the beginning of the second intifada. If such illegal forms of protest encourage or protect terrorists, then they are also immoral as well as unjustified. Whatever you think of Rachel Corrie, it is difficult to say that she did sufficient good to justify the Palestinian incitement and Israeli/American alienation she has created.
Mobius, did you just justify terrorism?
tm: i wrote, “at a certain point, the legal channels exhaust themselves and civil disobedience — active resistance — becomes necessary.” if, in your book, civil disobedience, aka non-violent resistance, is terrorism, then i guess i did.
chief, the israeli court rules in favor of the arabs and the government continues to defy the court rulings and discrimiante against the arabs.
Oh, I don’t agree at all. Yeah, things move slowly, not quickly. But they’re changing. Which reminds me: I’m looking forward to Asaf’s posting about the Supreme Court verdict in the suit against the JNF, when it comes out.
Well, Mobius, the discussion revolved around Rachel Corrie and bulldozers. Rachel Corrie was working with and on behalf of ISM. ISM espouse “active resistance” and to them, that phrase does not connote civil disobedience. Forgive me if I misunderstood but the context seemed to be that Corrie’s activities were legitimate and since she was acting in concert and as part of ISM’s agenda, once you mentioned active resistance, I immediately thought of their support for Hamas’s “active resistance”
I’m glad you meant stuff like standing in front of bulldozers to protest actions intended to prevent smugglers from smuggling arms to be used by the very people whose active resistance the ISM supports. Standing in front of bulldozers to prevent the destruction of homes that may serve as hideouts for tunnels is a very foolish activity.
Perhaps the ISM would have been much more effective in preventing the destruction of these homes if they were exhibiting civil disobedience against the smugglers and the Palestinian terror groups that use the arms the smugglers bring across the tunnels. Then, the ISM would be preventing Palestinian violence, Israeli retaliation, Israeli preventative and punitive measures (such as bulldozing homes), endangerment of death by bulldozer to their activists, and promoting peace because Israel (oddly enough) keeps demanding that a good faith effort to srop the terrorism must precede any peace talks.
srop = stop
I’m glad you meant stuff like standing in front of bulldozers to protest actions intended to prevent smugglers from smuggling arms to be used by the very people whose active resistance the ISM supports. Standing in front of bulldozers to prevent the destruction of homes that may serve as hideouts for tunnels is a very foolish activity.
as i’ve stated repeatedly, i don’t really have many qualms with israel demolishing homes that are known to be used for weapons smuggling (despite finding the whole mess regrettable). but, as i noted above, the home which rachel corrie was defending had no such claim against it. therefore it was set to be demolished not on any grounds other than its proximity to the egyptian border and thus its potential to be used for such purposes.
my computer has the potential to be used to hack into a bank. my car has the potential to be used to run someone over. my shoelaces have the potential to be used to strangle someone. my pen has the potential to be jabbed in someone’s throat. my pharmaceutical prescriptions have the potential to be abused. but the potential of using these objects to commit a crime does not constitute the commission of a crime, and to be punished for that potential is an inherently unjust action. therefore, i do defend rachel corrie’s decision to protect the home she stood in front of — however, i would not had the home actually been used for weapons smuggling.
8opus:
In April 1995, the Ka’adans, of Baka al-Gharbiya, petitioned the High Court of Justice after the Katzir membership committee rejected their application for a plot to build their home there on the grounds that they were Arabs.
The court case and the out-of-court efforts to solve the dispute continued for five years. After the sides failed to reach a compromise, the High Court handed down a landmark decision on March 8, 2000, declaring that the government could not discriminate against Arabs in the allocation of state lands. Katzir was developed by the Jewish Agency, which works exclusively on behalf of Jews. The court therefore ruled that the ILA could not give land to the Jewish Agency for development since it discriminated against Arabs. The court also ordered the Katzir membership committee to reconsider the Ka’adans’ application and to disregard the fact that they were Arabs.
The authorities allegedly tried to ignore the court’s orders. The Ka’adans, represented by Dan Yakir, the legal adviser of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, petitioned the High Court again, charging that the ILA, the Jewish Agency, and the membership committee were trying to avoid implementing the ruling. During this period, the membership committee rejected the Ka’adans’ second application, for “social” reasons.
further details on this case and many more like it are available from the association for civil rights in israel.
Mobius, wars are not fought on the basis of the presumption of innocence and justice as meted out in the US for fake medical drug sales.
Rachel Corrie was standing in the way of a tactical move in a war to eliminate a potential source of armaments to the enemy. Ostensibly, she was protecting the home of a family that had done nothing, but in reality she was protecting the capability of Hamas and other groups to smuggle arms of war into Gaza to eventually be used against Israel.
That’s why I’m being very clear in stating that if the ISM was interested in civil disobedience and in peace, they would be protesting against Hamas and the Fatah bodies that fight. They don’t. In fact, they tacitly support their actions, considering them to be fighters in a reasonable form of “civil resistance.”
Within the context of this discussion, when you speak of non-violent civil resistance, you are ignoring the reality of the above. This is war. The Palestinians are treating it like it’s war; Fatah and Hamas say it’s war; and even the ISM is acknowledging that this is war. The ISM is merely couching its actions with claims that they represent peaceful civil disobedience. Civil disobedience for peace would target the people who are putting innocent Palestinians in harm’s way. They should be resisting the people who are putting average Palestinians at great risk, the terrorists of Hamas and the Fatah fighting groups.