Liars, Just Liars

I talk to my sons – Elie and Shmulik – about their time in the army and stories come out. This week, both Elie and Shmulik shared stories I had never heard. One made me laugh – one made me angry.

Here’s the one that made me angry. Elie was accused of deliberately tripping a 10-year-old Arab girl at the checkpoint. According to the accusation, Elie pulled a wire that causes spikes to move across the road. The intention of the spikes is to immediately disable a car that crosses the checkpoint without permission. I suppose if a child were walking and crossing the path of the spikes as it was pulled by a soldier, she could trip and fall. I suppose because I have never seen it, never heard of it happening.

The truth is that earlier that morning, Elie stopped an Arab who was try to cross without permission and was caught smuggling items into Israel. Elie took the permit away; the Arab was not allowed to cross the checkpoint. Within minutes, the Arab called the army and the media, complained that Elie had abused an Arab child.

Several levels up, the complaint made an impact as the media began calling to inquire about the poor abused little girl. Up the complaint went…and then down. Elie’s superiors were notified. YNET and others had the story and it was about to be printed – what a great story, sure to garner international condemnation, and human rights organizations would decry the abuse. No matter that it never happened – the story was the point. Mean Israeli soldier abuses poor Palestinian child.

Except there was no child and the soldier did nothing wrong.

Elie’s commanding officer called Elie and asked him what happened. Elie heard the story, listened, looked at the line to pull the spike and immediately asked his commanding officer to come down to the checkpoint. He would touch nothing (and even if he did, it wouldn’t have changed anything).  Within a very short time, Elie’s commanding officer came down and Elie showed him the pull-line for the spikes.

It was embedded in the ground. It had rained in the last few days and cars had driven over it. The ground was firmly packed and there was no way Elie could have reconstructed the effect time, rain, and thousands of cars had created. Elie’s commanding officer looked, was easily convinced.

“Liars,” K. said to Elie, “just liars.”

I’m often asked to explain the death of this one, the beating of that one. A 10-year old Palestinian girl that was tripped intentionally by a soldier – it would have made the media, but for the quick mind of the soldier who stood against the lie. The Palestinian girl doesn’t exist…or if she does, she never crossed Elie’s checkpoint that day (or if she did, she did not fall, was not tripped). And a soldier who was on the checkpoint was falsely accused, slandered, maligned. Or could have been – if his commanding officer didn’t believe him and confirm.

That soldier was my son – the story never reported because Elie took one look at the embedded chain that had not been used in many days and had the intelligence to prove himself innocent to a world ready to believe his guilt.

Liars, just liars.

6 Comments

  1. I’m afraid Elie’s experience is not uncommon in the rest of the world. Someone is caught doing something wrong (in this case, the man was smuggling items into Israel) and the immediate response is to seek victim status. As is often the case, they wrongdoer achieves this by attacking the honest party. He tells a lie in order to lower Elie’s reputation (probably hoping that he could argue his own case too) and increase his own. In the liberal media it could easily play out like this: Soldier is a child abuser and cannot be trusted to tell the truth while this decent, hard-working Arab had the courage to stand up for a poor abused Arab girl…

    Yeah, it’s obvious what the media would have done with the story. Reminds me of the story recently — the Israeli soldier was accused of trying to kill (or at least beating) a man when, in reality, it was the soldier saving the man’s life from an angry mob a Palestinians. It only took 5-10 years to get the real story out…

    Liars, just liars.

  2. Your blessed son was fortunate. He would give his life for his country.

    The same cannot be said of the defeatist high command that caters to the Arabs and thinks its mission is to fight Jews.

    No enlisted man should fight for them. They ALL must go – for Elie’s sake and all the sons of Israel serving in the IDF.

    Then Israel can have an army it can be proud of.

  3. When more Israelis died of peanut allergy than from rockets launched by the Hamas, more Palestinian children died because of israeli Phosphorus bombs.

  4. Dear Anonymous,

    Thanks for proving the point of this article better than I ever could. What utter nonsense, you write; how incredibly uninformed you are. it’s always fun to see the latest and greatest Palestinian lie – and you have posted it. Though, actually, this isn’t that latest, or greatest and has already been proven wrong in many places on the Internet.
    http://www.eurojewcong.org/ejc/news.php?id_article=1436

    Does a great review of the peanut allergy – showing it is actually much lower in Israel than elsewhere, and this link lists most of the yearly totals of terrorist murders up to 2006.
    http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisraelworst.html

    So, unless suddenly the peanut allergy has gotten much worse (doubtful); or Palestinians have learned to stop murdering (proven false just last night when another Israeli was killed)…you’ve lost again.

    I do understand that you want to focus on the rockets and not the suicide bombings, stabbings, etc. attacks, but really, a murdered Israeli is a murdered Israeli and shooting artillery at another country is wrong – no matter how many times you hit your target. So, as they say – I’d say with the simple help of Google, your ignorance has been exposed.

    Unless, of course, it isn’t actually ignorance that leads to this question, but rather a determined plan to spread lies, hate and propaganda. Now, wouldn’t that be sad…

  5. Anonymous
    It is so incredible that you have to post under a’no name guise’ and the rest of us are not afraid to put our name to what we post.
    As Soldier’s Mum has said, ‘Lies and more ‘bloody lies.’ Try truth for awhile. It is a refeshing change.

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