Israeli warriors – thrashed by Hezbollah but ferocious against Palestinian orphanages, beauty salons

The general of onions and garlic
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, July 13, 2008

...How wretched is an army that empties storerooms of food and clothing for the needy, how ridiculous that the GOC signs orders to close hairdressing salons, how pathetic is a military raid on bakeries and how cruel is an occupation that shuts down clinics on any pretext.

Here is the "next thing" in the war against terror: the war against hairdressers. After Hamas took over half the Palestinian people, in no small measure because of Israel's policies, after we tried to fight Hamas with weapons and siege, destruction and killing, mass arrests and deportations, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service have invented something new: a war on shopping malls, bakeries, schools and orphanages. First in Hebron, now in Nablus. The IDF is closing beauty salons, clothing stores and clinics, and even one dairy farm, all on the pretext that they are connected to Hamas, or the rent they pay is given to a terror organization.

...the Israeli occupation has gone crazy. A few months ago I visited the charity institutions and commercial centers the IDF has begun closing in Hebron; I saw infuriatingly absurd scenes. A modern school, intended for 1,200 students, standing closed on orders of the GOC, and a library for young people about to shut.

Thus the occupation proves once again that there is no place in Palestinians' lives that it cannot reach, and that it has no boundaries...

In Israel no voices were raised in protest, of course, either against the closing of the school or the closing of the TV station. According to the Israeli train of thought, if we close a bakery making bagels for orphans, Hamas' power will weaken; if we throw hundreds of needy children into the streets from their boarding school, they and their relatives will become sympathetic to Israel; if we close a crowded shopping mall, its irate owners and customers will become Fatah supporters.

...How wretched is an army that empties storerooms of food and clothing for the needy, how ridiculous that the GOC signs orders to close hairdressing salons, how pathetic is a military raid on bakeries and how cruel is an occupation that shuts down clinics on any pretext.

Hamas has entered the vacuum created in the West Bank and Gaza. Like any religious movement, it sprouted in the soil of distress and poverty. Now Israel comes along and says let's make the poverty and distress even worse. Why? To fight Hamas. There is nothing more absurd. Tens of thousands of poor children in the West Bank have nowhere to turn to aside from the Islamic charities that Israel suspects of being linked to Hamas, although many were established long before the organization was born. Israel stopped seeing to the population's welfare under the occupation, despite its obligation under international law, and the Palestinian Authority is also not showing any special interest in social and economic needs. Fatah has always devoted more resources to military camps, guns and official cars than to orphanages, hospital beds and dialysis machines.

This is the vacuum the Islamic Movement is filling, offering an impressive level of services. The orphanage I visited in Hebron is one of the most beautiful and well-cared for I have seen. It takes quite a bit of cruelty to threaten its closure,..

Full report at Haaretz, July 13, 2008