Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
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Kiryat Sh'monah, January 13 - NGOs decried Israel's downing of an unmanned aircraft today that penetrated the country's northern border, claiming that the IDF should have ascertained the device's intentions before opening fire, and not assume malice amid some likelihood that the quadcopter fled its economically-beleaguered homeland in search of employment and a brighter future.
A surface-to-air missile downed a drone this morning that had crossed from Lebanon near Israel's northernmost city, the latest in a string of such infiltrations by Hezbollah-operated craft - the Iran-backed Shiite militia that exerts de facto control over Lebanon and an existential foe of the Jewish State. Activists from Btselem, Human Rights Watch, and other groups demanded an investigation into the incident, charging that the military personnel responsible for the order to fire failed to ascertain that the drone in fact aimed to accomplish anything beyond finding a stable source of income, given the collapse of Lebanon's economy, currency, public services, and supply situation.
"We have come to expect this kind of prejudgment and prejudice from Israel's security forces," lamented Btselem's Anna Thropomorova. "Shoot first, ask questions later, if at all. In fact I believe they only ask questions later when we and our colleagues in the human rights community give the matter attention, because Israel sees no interest in questioning its assumption that a remotely-piloted device with the potential to conduct espionage, sabotage, bombing, or other malicious purposes, and known to form part of the arsenal of the world's richest and best-equipped terrorist organization, must be intercepted immediately. It's an extension of their brutal attitude toward Palestinians, whom the IDF see as a threat by default just because of a few thousand Israelis killed in Palestinian violence. How many Palestinians did IDF troops kill for throwing firebombs when maybe those Palestinians were just trying to initiate a friendly game of catch?"
Dan LeKhafshtus of Human Right Watch concurred. "The prejudice is deadly," he decried. "A humane response would involve gentler treatment and perhaps eventual repatriation, but Israel has seldom shown willingness to change its behavior in that direction."
A statement by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel called on the High Court to restrain the IDF from intercepting any future cross-border drones not just from Lebanon, but from Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and the Gaza Strip, as well. "No device must suffer because it seeks a better existence for itself and its children," the statement read. "We fear that failure to act on this phenomenon will explode in our faces."
