Goldblog: Ketziot & Abu Ghraib

I've rapidly changed my opinion about Jeffrey Goldberg. When I read his pieces in the New Yorker, he sounded like just another American leftist against Israel. But then I found out that he actually lived in Israel and served in the IDF - which is way better than what I've done. So his Zionist bona-fides are greater than mine and as such, I allow him his left-wing opinions. I say 'allow' and not 'agree' because I can still think he's wrong - but since he's paid his dues and comes to his opinions from real experience, he's an "Israeli" voice in my mind, and not a Diaspora Jew.

That said, read his post about comparing his IDF service as a prison guard in Ketziot to the reports about Abu Ghraib. Here's the first few lines to whet your appetite. How Ketziot Never Could Have Prepared Me for Abu Ghraib:

When Sy Hersh first told me about Abu Ghraib, I could not understand him, and not merely because he begins sentences in the middle of sentences. This was a problem of cognition. I had long ago built a template in my mind about these sorts of issues, and the story Sy was telling me did not fit.

This template was something I devised in the 1991, when I was a military policeman at the Ketziot Military Prison Camp in the Negev Desert of Israel. I had moved to Israel at the age of 20. I was drafted, and after many strange and discomfiting turns, I found myself in Ketziot, where I didn't want to be, for several reasons, including a) it's very hot in the Negev and I have the melanin of a Finn; b) I was raised as a socialist Zionist, which meant that I was a Jewish nationalist who opposed the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; c) the job itself, which was to maintain order in a prison holding 6,000 Palestinians, most of whom would kill me if given a chance. This is not to say that I wouldn't die for Israel. I just didn't want to die enforcing an occupation I thought morally and politically dubious.

Pic from here. Backpost finished 2009-12-06.