Little Green Heroes

I just finished watching the documentary, Checkpoint, and I now see why people like Chuck Johnson and Pamela Atlas Shrugs worship the IDF. They understand that, as occupiers, the Israelis are duty-bound to humiliate the brown people they subjugate. It's the best way to ensure that they don't get too uppity.

Some might say that such constant humiliation only feeds the subjugated's rage and drives them to lash out at their oppressors in desperate, suicidal acts of resistance, but I don't think that's the case. Humiliated people don't attack checkpoints with bombs strapped to their bodies; they cower before their masters.

Take a look at the following descriptions of some of scenes from the film, and I think you'll see what I mean.

The simplest of activities are made impossible by Israeli soldiers, who are documented in the film as sometimes denying Palestinians movement just because they can. Palestinian men, women, and children - healthy, frail, old, and young - are forced to wait in bitter thunderstorms, snow, and the heat to get to hospitals, schools, funerals, jobs, and their homes.

[...]

Israeli border police working in Palestinian Bethlehem brag that they "break" the Palestinians by humiliating them at the checkpoints. To clarify any confusion, one of the officers says, "What do I mean by 'break them?" [I mean] make them suffer. ... Let the world know. This is the Bethlehem Border police." The officer is soon distracted by an attractive 15-year-old Palestinian girl across the road, whom he harasses despite her polite efforts to show she isn't interested.

...a trembling older man in a keffiyeh holds out his bags to the soldiers and explains in broken English, "Food for my wife for Christmas tomorrow. Meat for my family," and begins to tear up when the soldiers deny him entrance despite his declaration of friendship to the young Israelis.

The audience experiences with the Palestinians at the checkpoints the rage that bubbles under when a jaded Israeli, armed to the teeth, doesn't let a Palestinian mother accompany her crying grade-school aged sons through a checkpoint at Khan Younis. Viewers nearly get goosebumps as a Palestinian man shivers and rubs his hands together for warmth during a winter thunderstorm at a checkpoint near Nablus.

The shivering man and his family were turned back to wait in storm while the guard who denied them entrance explained his decision to the cameraman:




Near the end of the film, some of the brown people get uppity:

...they storm through a checkpoint at Ramallah, led by a middle-aged Palestinian woman who yells to the Israelis that they can shoot her if they want, undeterred by the warning shots they fire into the air. As one soldier shouts that he'll "break her bones," a Palestinian shouts, "Is this the freedom you promised us?"

I'm sure that if Chuck and Pamela saw this last scene, they would be very disappointed in their heroes for not executing the ungrateful mus-coms on the spot. Our Leader would never allow our own soldiers to make such a mistake in Iraq. I bet that knowedge brings a smile to Chuck and Pam's faces.