confirmed that throwing stones is the method used by "Arabized" undercover soldiers so as to merge with the crowd.
In the course of the day, more details about the events emerged: this was a unit that had never before been used for such an action: the prison service unit "Massada," whose normal job is to suppress mutinies in the prisons. This is an especially savage unit, perhaps the most violent in the country, which was supplied with new means of "riot control." Among others: salt bullets that are designed to cause particularly painful wounds. Muhammad Hatib, the man mentioned above, 30 years old and father of two children, got four bullets in his back: large, swollen, black-blue rings the full width of his back.
These salt bullets were brought to Israel from America at the beginning of the 1990s, but until now the army has shrunk from using them, fearing a public outcry. They were tried on us for the first time.
It appears that the army prepared the whole action in advance as a trap. The "Massada" unit tried out its tactics and weapons on this peaceful march of civilians.
The shocking difference between the ways the two demonstrations were treated provides food for thought.
The settlers are openly preparing and trying to paralyze the state, prevent the implementation of government and Knesset decisions, and, in effect, to overthrow Israeli democracy. But Ariel Sharon and his people call publicly to "embrace them," to "love them" and "view their pain with understanding." This is the directive given to the security forces. For peace activists, quite different treatment is indicated.
This throws light on a much more important phenomenon that may determine the future of Israel. Here, people have got so used to it that they accept it as natural. Abroad, people don't know about it.
The fact is that every day, all the Israeli media devote their main news reports to the settlers' propaganda. Every single news program on each of the three TV channels gives exhaustive coverage to the affairs of the settlers, speeches by settlers and interviews with settlers. Often, these reports fill half the news programs.
Between the settlers and the media a kind of symbiosis has come into being-they work "with one head." Every day several events are prepared for the media, which scoop them up greedily, to serve as unpaid propaganda organs of the settlers and the extreme right. Once upon a time, it was usual to give the other side the right of response, for the sake of "balance." Not anymore. There is no other side.
In the news programs, not a word-literally not a word-of criticism of the settlers is ever heard. The establishment "leftists" also speak