John Pilger’s documentary of several years ago is still relevant today:
Warning: extremely explicit and gruesome. Does not show the Israeli military in a good light, but in an honest one.
What really grabbed me here was how much the illegal Israeli settlement (in Palestinian territory!) looked like a concentration camp in reverse–there is an electric barbed wire fence around the perimeter, but the prisoners are outside, while the “guards” live in relative luxury within it. Why anyone would want to live in such a sterile jail is beyond me. But then again, the settlers seem locked in a prison mind-set of their own. It is exactly like South African apartheid (which, as Pilger notes in another documentary, is still far from dead).
What gives me hope about all this? The fact that some Israelis, even those who’ve lost relatives to Palestinian suicide bombers, are thinking this through–and coming to the hard truth that it takes an awful lot of despair to become a suicide bomber. And that those thinkers are growing in number. They are drawing the once-unacceptable conclusion that repression does not work–and in fact, will only spur more and more violent uprisings.
Truth first, and justice–and only then reconciliation will be possible.