Israeli and Palestinian officials were outraged on Tuesday after a former Israeli soldier posted on Facebook pictures of herself with blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian prisoners.
Eden Abergil, the former soldier aged about 20, appeared mystified in a radio interview by the uproar over the photographs taken at an unspecified location near the Gaza Strip and uploaded to the social networking website.
One photo shows Abergil crouching in front of three seated detainees — one with white hair, another with a greying beard and a skullcap and a third, a younger man with black hair who is hanging his head.
Another shows her sitting close to the younger man, twisting her head towards him.
The images drew a sharp response from Israel’s army, which slammed them as “shameful behaviour” and said officials would be looking into the actions of the woman who left the military last year.
They were also denounced by the Palestinian Authority, which said the photos showed how the occupation was corrupting Israelis.
“This shows the mentality of the occupier, to be proud of humiliating Palestinians,” said a statement from the office of prime minister Salam Fayyad.
“There is nothing in the world that can justify this humiliation that is part of the Israeli occupation practices on daily basis.”
Puzzled
But Abergil said she was puzzled by the harsh reaction.
“What’s wrong with that? I don’t understand,” she told Israel’s army radio, clearly bemused by the fierce backlash that erupted two weeks after she posted an album of pictures entitled: “The army — the best time of my life.”
“There was no violence in the pictures, there was no disrespect,” she said defiantly, insisting she had been caught on camera with the Palestinians merely “in the background”.
It was not clear whether the Palestinians in the pictures had been detained for security reasons or because they were seeking to work illegally in Israel.
“I was photographed innocently, naively, without any political significance. There was no violence — it was just about the good experience of being in the army, that’s all,” she argued.
Public access to Abergil’s Facebook page has since been blocked but not before a number of Israeli bloggers took a screen grab of the comments underneath the two pictures.
Commenting on the second photo, one of her friends writes: “You’re the sexiest like that,” prompting Abergil to reply: “Look how he completes my picture, interesting to see if he’s on Facebook! I should tag him in the picture!”
Underneath, the woman who apparently took the picture, Shani Cohen, and Abergil exchange lewd banter about the prisoner being aroused by the soldier sitting next to him.
Denounced
The incident was denounced by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), a local rights group, which said the incident demonstrated an attitude commonplace in the army.
“This reflects an attitude which has become the norm and consists in treating Palestinians like objects, not like human beings,” said PCATI head Yishai Menuchin.
His comments were echoed by Ghassan Khatib, spokesperson for the Palestinian premier.
“These Israeli soldiers are almost teenagers, or a little bit older, and they find themselves in a powerful position, being able to dominate others. This corrupts young people,” he said.
“Occupation is humiliating and oppressive to the occupied people but it also corrupts the occupier in too many different respects, including this one.”
Social networking websites and video-sharing technology have increasingly been used as a way of exposing incidents where soldiers, police or Jewish settlers have humiliated Palestinians, or in some cases even abused them.
Last year, Israeli border guards came under fire after posting clips on YouTube showing them humiliating Palestinians. And two years earlier, a Palestinian from Hebron posted videos online showing locals being attacked and abused by Jewish settlers in the southern West Bank city.
Images of soldiers posing alongside bound detainees are widely considered as taboo, largely in the wake of the atrocities exposed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq following publication of a series of horrific photographs.
The images, which came to light in 2004, showed US soldiers standing proudly next to bloody and battered prisoners, many of whom were naked and hooded. — AFP