That’s exactly what seems to have happened with Eden Aberjil, a young woman from the southern Israeli port town of Ashdod, according to an Associated Press story on Yahoo!. Naturally, given that we now run our whole lives online, it happened on Facebook.
Israeli news websites and blogs have run two photographs that the woman posted on Facebook from her time doing Israel’s compulsory military service. In one, she is sitting cross-legged beside a blindfolded Palestinian man and leaning toward him with her face upturned. Another shows her smiling at the camera with three Palestinian men with bound hands and blindfolds behind her.
The image alone is pretty bad, suggesting that she is taking pride and pleasure from her power over the prisoners. But perhaps the worst part is the comments by the woman and her friend, in an exchange below one of the comments.
“You’re the sexiest like that,” her friend wrote.
“I wonder if he’s got Facebook!” the woman in the photograph responded. “I have to tag him in the picture!”
Well. If there were any doubt about her attitude from the pictures alone, there’s not now.
Aberjil has reportedly not responded to requests for comments but an Israeli military spokesman condemned the photos. Captain Barak Raz said: “Aside from matters of information security, we are talking about a serious violation of our morals and our ethical code and should this soldier be serving in active duty today, I would imagine that no doubt she would be court-martialed immediately.” Given that she has finished her military service, this seems unlikely.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib said the photos showed a deeper problem — how Israel’s 43-year-old occupation of Palestinians has affected the Israelis who enforce it.”This shows the mentality of the occupier,” Khatib said, “to be proud of humiliating Palestinians. The occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting.”
I have no doubt that it’s true that the compulsory military service does affect Israelis psychologically, though I’m sure each individual responds in different ways.
In one sense Facebook was just the forum for this entire incident - a neutral staging ground like a café. In another sense, that’s not true at all. I’m not suggesting Facebook is culpable but I do think it’s changing the way we interact. The ability to share online creates a powerful impulse to make something worth sharing. Would anyone have taken the photographs in the first place without the ability to share them online at venues such as Facebook? And does the ability to casually ‘like’ and comment on your friends’ photographs make people feel validated and help foster social interactions that favor humor over kindness?
Or was this just human nature all along and Facebook and the internet is exposing us for how we truly are, and always have been?
Photo credit: Photo originally posted by Eden Aberjil on Facebook, reproduced by sachim.tumblr.com blog and Associated Press. In the undated photo, an Israeli army soldier poses in front of blindfolded men identified in the Israeli news media as Palestinian prisoners. Israeli news media and bloggers have identified the soldier in the photos as Aberjil.
Source: All Facebook
Tuesday, August 17, 2010