Yesteday an Al-Aksa Brigades terrorist detonated a bomb at the Kalandia checkpoint just north of Jerusalem, killing two and wounding eighteen.
The checkpoints are routinely described in news reports as sites of supposed Israeli inhumanity. Just yesterday, the New Zealand Herald described the IDF checkpoints as “manned by young and sadistically aggressive Israeli soldiers.” The Guardian painted a similiar picture with their article yesterday on a supposedly evil checkpoint commander named Udi.
Here’s another look entirely — an IDF soldier uploaded a slideshow from his time at the Kalandia checkpoint: Webshots community: Checkpoint
Click on ‘Slideshow’ to see what the media aren’t reporting — warm and friendly relations between the soldiers and the local Arabs. (Vegetarians beware — scenes of raw lamb!)
The photographer comments on LGF (who gets the hat tip for this):
99% of the physical work I did at that checkpoint involved preventing arab on arab violence….
We had to chase a couple of guys who mugged an arab taxi driver. He was shaking and we had to comfort him etc etc..
Once there was a stabbing, some arab guy pushed in front of another and was stabbed in the leg… Again we had to chase the perpetrator and give medical aid to the victim.
Another time these teenagers cutoff an old man and he insulted them. They jumped out of their car and started to chase him and threatened to kill him. Upon catching up to these guys they told me that the old guy also called us IDF soldier pigs so he deserved to be beaten. To which I had to explain to them that namecalling doesn’t justify violence. Anyways when I threatened to arrest them for approaching him, they backed off.
He also comments on the cameramen:
When I was at that checkpoint cameramen would often show up (all of them arab of course) and wait for hours for something to take pictures of. 99% of the time there was nothing to photograph so the reporter would wait and wait…..
I remember once we helped a really old guy get out of the checkpoint when he walked in the wrong direction, he didn’t really understand us so we just stood in his way so he would understand that this was the wrong path and turn around. Anyways this AP photographer was just snapping away when this happenned. There were tons of incidents like this.
There were so many times this happenned. I wanted to kick the cameramen out since the Palis like to put on a show in front of them but Israel has this thing about being a democracy…
