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In an interview with Israeli Army radio on Tuesday, a former Israeli soldier said, “I still don’t understand what’s wrong” with photographs she posted on Facebook of herself posing next to blindfolded Palestinian detainees.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Eden Abergil, who posted the images in an album dedicated to her time in the military — called “The Army… the most beautiful time of my life :)” — said that the “pictures were taken in good will, there was no statement in them.” She added that they were not intended to humiliate the prisoners but merely to document her “military experience,” and that she had no idea they “would be problematic.”
As The Lede explained on Monday, Ms. Abergil’s photographs were quickly duplicated by Israeli bloggers she described as “leftists,” and the images were shown and discussed on Israeli television after they came to light.
Although Ms. Abergil, whose compulsory military service reportedly ended last year, seems to have no regrets about her snapshots now, the Israeli blogger Dimi Reider suggested that she may feel differently in the years ahead.
On Tuesday, Mr. Reider pointed out that “To See If I’m Smiling,” a harrowing documentary produced in 2007 by a former Israeli soldier, Tamar Yarom, illustrated how much memories of military service can shift with time.
The documentary, which can be viewed online, is based on the testimonies of six women who struggle to deal with memories of their service in the Israeli military. One of the women, Meytal Sandler, a former medic, described being haunted by an image she had posed for next to the body of a Palestinian man.
In the film, Ms. Sandler described the night the photograph was taken:
There’s a shooting battle and again there’s a dead body. And what is by now a normal procedure, we take the body put it near the latrines and wash it. Then, something very funny happens: he has an erection. A dead body with an erection. We laugh a little because it’s embarrassing. And… it’s open grounds, so anyone come and take a peek. Some female sergeants that I knew arrive from the operations room come in. One of them has a camera and without even thinking, I tell her, ‘Come, take my picture.’ And I sit down next to the dead body and… I have my picture taken.
As she described the memory, Ms. Sandler looked haunted and on the verge of tears. But the film includes video of her at a party marking the end of her military service — reading a letter from the other soldiers who tell her, “You know that we love you,” showing off a gift, dancing to electronic music — to illustrate how differently she felt about her stint in the army at the time.
Later, she told the filmmaker:
I’m not sure when it was, but at some point, I became very ashamed of that picture. And… I didn’t tell anyone about it, that it existed. I forgot about it a little. But I would like to see it. To see if I look different. I want to see if I’m smiling.
Near the end of the documentary, as she prepared to look again at the photograph, which had not been in her possession, Ms. Sandler said: “Who wants to deal with the evil within himself, the alienation? Who wants to deal with that? Dealing with these questions is painful.”
In the same film another former soldier, an education officer named Dana Behar, also described snapshots being taken with the bodies of Palestinians, in Hebron:
I’m washing dishes in the kitchen, which is what I did most of the time, suddenly there’s this commotion and I hear the guys coming in and I understand that they’ve returned with something — they’re not empty-handed. I dry my soapy hands and go outside to see what’s up. I see they’re back with dead bodies of terrorists, on stretchers, that were covered.
They say, “Yep, we’ve got some terrorists’ bodies here.”
I’m like, “What? Cool… What?”
It really deterred me, this unexpected presence of death. Then they pulled out cameras and took pictures with the bodies. I thought: “It’s wrong to take pictures with dead bodies.” On the other hand it wasn’t terrible enough to make me call a journalist and say: “Oh dear, they’re taking pictures with dead bodies, we need to alert the world. …”
I didn’t think for a moment that taking pictures was normal. It’s not normal. But the reality of the territories isn’t normal either. Everything that happens there isn’t normal but somehow… it works. A minus and a minus make a plus. Abnormal and abnormal work. It fits.
Although an Israeli military spokesman denounced Ms. Abergil’s snapshots as “base and crude” on Monday, Israeli human rights groups agreed with her description of them as far from unusual. Ishai Menuchin, who leads Israel’s Public Committee Against Torture told Haaretz:
These terrible photographs reflect a norm in the way Palestinians are viewed, as an object and not as humans. It is an attitude that ignores their feelings as humans and their individual rights.
On Tuesday, Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli veterans that collects testimony from soldiers who served in occupied Palestinian territories, added one of Ms. Abergil’s images to a new Facebook album of similar photographs — some quite graphic — taken over the past decade.
As The Jerusalem Post reports, the group’s collection of images bears a note referring to the Israel Defense Forces spokesman who suggested that Ms. Abergil’s images are unusual:
Unsurprisingly, the I.D.F. spokesman released a ’shocked’ statement saying that this is the “shameless and ugly behavior of one soldier.” This picture is not the ugly behavior of one person, but a norm throughout the army… that is a result of military rule over a civilian population over a long time.
The group’s statement continued:
We suggest to the I.D.F. spokesman not to insult the intelligence of the Israeli public, and to clarify that this is a widespread phenomenon, not an unusual incident by one soldier. We attach similar pictures taken in different times and areas over the past 10 years.
These pictures are only the first collection. Taking real responsibility is not blaming the lowest ranks, but honestly confronting with the deteriorated moral state of the senior commanders responsible.
Speaking to the military radio station on Tuesday, Ms. Abergil, whose compulsory service ended last year, refused to accept any responsibility for harming Israel’s international reputation, saying:
We will always be attacked. Whatever we do, we will always be attacked.
Later, Ms. Abergil told Ynet News, an Israeli news site, that the military had informed her she would be dismissed from reserve service and stripped of her rank. Since “the army let me down,” she said she does now have one regret: “I’m sorry that I served in such [an] army.”
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Its so sad that the conflict has gone on for so long that the dehuminazation of people (I specifically don't mention either side as both have done it to each other) has grown to the point that they can't even see what they did was morally wrong.
Her pictures are akin to trophy shots from hunters. Its simply wrong and will continue to get worse and make it even harder to ever create peace.... US should never had allowed Israel to keep the occupation going in the first place. It was illegal then just as it is now.
