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Might, Power, and Beating

You may not care for Palestinians, but this? Excerpt of March 20, 2006 interview with Professor (now Emeritus) of Economics Daniel McGowan, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Geneva, New York).

“At that time in 1989 I visited 10 hospitals, Palestinian hospitals, from East Jerusalem, and Hebron, and in Gaza, and Rafah and so forth, and I witnessed the children in the hospitals with broken hands and broken arms. And in story after story I found out how their hands and arms were broken.

“If they made the victory sign, a ‘V’ for victory, which they all did, even after a home was demolished the kids would all climb up on the rubble and make this sign, but if the Israeli soldiers caught them, they put their hands flat down on a board or on a stone, and they smashed it across the top with a baton. And they did that repeatedly, and in hundreds of instances they broke those children’s hands, for showing that sign.

“If the child was caught throwing a rock, they held the arm away from the child, with the top part of the arm down, and hit them across the elbow, right on the edge of the elbow, which would shatter the bones and render the arm useless. And so many, many Palestinian people today have these broken arms and broken bones. And it was a deliberate policy of the Israeli government. In fact it was [Israeli Defense Minister] Yitzhak Rabin who said  ‘we will deal with the Palestinians with might, power, and beating.’ ”
See Washington Post, January 22, 1988 for a report on Rabin’s changing policy.