Says former Israeli soldier Eden Abergil who has outraged Arab world by posting pictures of her with blindfolded Palestinian prisoners on her Facebook page
Says former Israeli soldier Eden Abergil who has outraged Arab world by posting pictures of her with blindfolded Palestinian prisoners on her Facebook page
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Another abu ghraib? One of the pictures Eden Abergil put up on
Facebook. Pic/AFP
"I still don't understand what I did wrong," Eden Abergil told Israeli army radio. Abergil, a reserve officer with the Israeli army who completed compulsory military service last year, provoked outrage over photographs in which she posed next to handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinians.
She said, "There's no violence or intention to humiliate anyone in the pictures. I just had my picture taken with them in the background. I did it out of excitement, to remember the experience. It wasn't a political statement or any kind of statement. It was about remembering my experiences in the army and that's it."
The pictures have provoked a furious reaction from Palestinians, who compared them to images of US soldiers abusing of Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad in 2004.
Abu Ghraib II?
"This is not very different to what was exposed at Abu Ghraib in Iraq," said Mustafa Barghouti, secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative. "It is not an individual act, or a personal act or a lack of judgment, but a part of the constant racist behaviour that is implanted in the Israeli army and a whole philosophy of discrimination against Arabs and Palestinians."
However, Abergil defended her actions, saying, "I did not humiliate those detainees. I didn't hit them, I didn't act toward them unpleasantly. It's completely different than the American soldier some are trying to compare me to."
An Israeli army spokesperson described the Facebook photographs as "shameful behaviour".
The photos have since been taken down from her Facebook site, but Israeli media reports the photos were labeled "IDF -- best time of my life."
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