Americans: Your tax dollars at work

“Six Shots at a Dog”

Shlomo Hazan in Matzpen (August 1979)

“‘I was arrested because I wasted six bullets on a dog!’ a bearded fellow wearing a skull cap told me. He appeared to be somewhere in his forties, with a naive look stamped on his face which displayed bewilderment at the evil meted out to him. To his mind the whole thing was ridiculous; he simply couldn’t understand it. Neither could I.

“This exchange took place in a military prison of the Israeli army in March 1978. In the course of the conversation it transpired that the ‘dog’ was an Arab resident of East Jerusalem. After that revelation I began to understand, but the fellow still could not make any sense out of it. Neither could the people who gathered around us: ‘But he only killed an Arab ….’ ‘He was defending himself and the Jewish people ….’ ‘For that they arrest someone? …’ (In all truth, this is a fair sample of Israeli public opinion.)

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