Photos of a smiling Israeli soldier posing alongside Palestinian prisoners, blindfolded and handcuffed Tuesday caused the embarrassment of the Israeli army and Palestinian anger, an emotion considered incomprehensible by the complainant.The photos are placed on top of the social network Facebook to soldier, Eden Abargil, since 2009 discharged from the army, created a sensation when Israeli blogs have seized on Monday, before airing on Israeli public television .
One shows the front, squatting in front of a row of Palestinians blindfolded and hands bound, the other in profile, seated next to one of them, his face turned towards him. None of the detainees, dejectedly, seems aware of the direction in which they participate.
The second of these images is accompanied by ribald comment traded on Facebook by the soldier and one of her friends, according to Israeli sites were able to visit the Facebook page which is inaccessible.
"The photographs that evoke some of those of U.S. soldier Lynndie England with Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib are not as overtly sexual images that infamous" said Robert Mackey, a blogger for the New York Times.
The publication in 2004 of photographs showing U.S. soldiers humiliating detainees at the prison of Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, had revealed the scandal of abuse, including sexual abuse, perpetrated by the jailers, provoked outrage and cons practices of the U.S. military.
The Israeli army has denounced "the disgraceful behavior of the soldier" specifying that she had completed his military service a year ago. According to Army Radio, Eden Abargil can not be penalized to the extent that it has completed its service.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority government Ghassan Khatib said in a statement that these images "reflect the mentality of the occupier, the pride of humiliating the Palestinians."
"These Israeli soldiers are almost teenagers, or a little older and they find themselves in a position of power where they can dominate others. It corrupts the youth," he told AFP.
The director of the Israeli Committee against Torture, Yishai Menuchim, railed against "an attitude that has become a norm of treating the Palestinians as objects rather than human beings."
The former soldier for his part told her incomprehension.
"I do not understand what I did wrong. There was no violence on my part or contempt, I have harmed anyone," Eden assured Abargil army radio.
"I have not spoken with the Palestinians, I gave them to drink and eat but I did not say they were being photographed," she said, adding that the images dated from 2008.
"I treated them with respect. Look at the pictures, I'm not making obscene gestures or anything of that kind," she said in a statement to the daily Yediot Aharonot.
The young woman, who served in an intelligence unit of the base at the Nahal Oz near Gaza, now lives in Ashdod (south), the newspaper said.
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