http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/showArchiveArticle.asp?id=44786
Sunday, April 18, 1999
A Mini-Pogrom in Tul Karm
By Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz
I hadn't seen anything like it in the territories
for a long time: household utensils, telephones, a
computer, furniture, electrical appliances, pictures
and more all scattered across the floor and smashed
to pieces. Among the wreckage was a defaced copy of
the Koran. The air conditioner on the wall had been
damaged, the clock smashed, potted plants upended,
wardrobes wrecked, the electricity generator
destroyed, doors ripped off their hinges and sacks
of valuable seeds ripped apart and their contents
spilled everywhere, turned into veritable seeds of
destruction.It happened last Wednesday in the Kadan
family's plant nursery, the largest of its kind on
the West Bank, on the border separating Tul Karm and
Shweia, opposite the milestone that demarcates the
change from Area A to Area B. The members of this
well-off family are considered to be "good Arabs":
They trade a lot with Israel and have not a few
friends in the country.
The forces arrived at dawn: At about 3:30 A.M.,
Basam Kadan was startled awake by the noise of the
gates being torn down. Basam has six daughters and a
3-month-old son, and they too were awoken by the
kicking on the doors. The soldiers and the police
forcibly entered the area of the nursery and then
Basam's house. The signs of the forced entry are
apparent on every door.
Armed with hammers, they smashed everything they
could reach. A picture of the late head of the
family, Badia Kadan, who was president of the Tul
Karm Chamber of Commerce for 16 years and who died
just a year ago, hangs smashed upon the wall. The
family's Subaru that was parked in the yard has been
wrecked beyond recognition: All four tires have been
ripped with knives, its rear window and headlights
smashed to smithereens. In the late father's bedroom
in the elegant family wing of the house, drawers
have been broken into: The brothers complain that
$6,000 was hidden there by their mother, who had
just returned from heart surgery in Jordan. The
money disappeared during this nighttime visit. Basam
complains that he was hit during the attack.
Who was responsible? Basam Kadan claims they were
soldiers. The IDF spokesman was quick to point out
that this was an action undertaken to find
disassembly plants for stolen cars, and that the
police were therefore responsible. There were only
four or five soldiers attached to the force and they
were not involved, explained the spokesman. The
spokesman for the Samaria and Judea District Police,
Rafi Yaffe, tried at first to deny the whole story:
He had checked and found that the police had no
information concerning any such incident. As was
once the fashion, he tried to imply that perhaps the
Palestinians themselves were involved. A few hours
later, though, he changed his mind: The commander of
the Kedum police station, Hai Yitzhak, visited the
area and discovered, according to the spokesman,
that "a certain amount of damage had been done to
the nursery. We take this matter very seriously. We
will undertake an inquiry and those responsible will
be put on trial."
So the bad old days are back. A police force that
was searching for a stolen vehicle disassembly plant
- which is actually to be found not far away - went
and vented its anger on the homes of innocent
civilians. The police destroyed simply for
destruction's sake, with no operational or other
goal to justify their actions. They were only Arabs,
after all, so the police were entitled to do what
they like, to ruin and to destroy, to beat and to
injure, to vent their frustration or simply have fun
in the night.
Severe financial damage was caused to the Kadan
family: Their friend, Baruch Yogev, who owns an
Israeli seed company, explained at the week end that
the cost of a single kilogram of the seeds that were
scattered and destroyed during the vandals' attack
can range as high as $20,000 or $25,000. It would
seem that the family will survive the economic
setback. It is far more difficult to tell how they
will survive the burden of degradation and fear that
the police planted in their Tul Karm night of
violence. What will the Kadan children remember from
that night? How will their parents explain to them
what happened? What message will they carry with
them, and why did they deserve this treatment? Was
it merely because they are Palestinians?
And this is us as well: A country that sends its
finest doctors to build a field hospital in Kosovo
and help a persecuted national minority, also sends
its police to sow cruel destruction and violence in
the homes of innocent civilians, who are also
members of a conquered and persecuted people
(c) copyright 1999 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved
