'Bad Apple' Narrative Still Rotten 57 Years After Kafr Qasim Massacre

[Purveyor]

Though individual soldiers were convicted in the 1956 Kafr Qasim Massacre, Israel’s courts never even questioned why civilians were under military rule and curfews. Today, individual soldiers are still convicted of crimes but the occupation itself is never questioned and wrongdoing is dismissed as the work of ‘bad apples.’

By Leehee Rothschild

Fifty-seven years ago, on the afternoon of October 29, 1956, an Israeli Border Police unit shot to death 49, men, women and children from Kafr Qasim as they returned home from a day of work in the fields.

Kafr Qasim, located in central Israel’s Triangle area, was under military rule like most Palestinian villages and towns at the time. From 1949 until 1966 Palestinian citizens of Israel were governed under martial law that limited their movement, and subjected them to curfews, administrative detention and expulsions. The Israeli Border Police, a unit within the IDF at the time, was in charge of maintaining the military imposed law and order in Palestinian population centers.

The day of the massacre was the first day of the 1956 Suez War. Instructed to take all precautionary measures to keep the Jordanian border quiet, Border Police Central District commander Col. Issachar Shadmi decided to change the start time of the nightly curfew time to 5 p.m. The order was issued only in the early afternoon, which resulted in Palestinian farmers working their fields not hearing about the change of the curfew time. Maj. Shmual Malinki, who was in charge of one of the battalions enforcing the curfew on the ground, asked Shadmi what should be done with curfew breakers. Shadmi said, “Allah Yerachmu” (an Arabic blessing for the dead). Malanki passed this message to his officers, instructing them “to shot to kill” every person who violates the curfew. Nevertheless, out of eight officers, only one, Gabriel Dahan, carried out his order. Dahan’s platoon was stationed at the entrance to Kafr Qasim.

As the villagers made their way back from the fields, in trucks and wagons, they were stopped by the soldiers, whom they offered their identification papers. In response, the soldiers started shooting at them. In nine shooting incidents that day, the border policemen killed 19 men, six women, 17 boys, six girls and injured many more. The dead were buried in a mass grave, dug by Palestinians from the nearby village of Jaljulya who the army brought over for that purpose. The wounded were left unattended. They couldn’t be reached by their families, due to the 24-hour curfew; only after it was lifted were they transported to the hospital.

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[PDJane]

1. Those bad apples are trained to be bad apples.

They do what they are trained and permitted to do. Yes, it is a brutal occupation; that is by design. That is how Israel was born, and that is how she continues.

[Scootaloo]

2. Actually it's an excellent argument that is just often misused

"Just a few bad apples" is sort of like the phrase "the exception that proves the rule," or "a rolling stone gathers no moss," one of hose idioms that actually mean the OPPOSITE of how it's often used

"The exception that proves the rule," is when there's an exception that provesthat an unspoken rule exists - "no parking except on sundays" proves the rule that you can't park there on Tuesdays. However it's often used like this:
Person 1: "All frogs are green!"
Person 2: "This one's purple"
Person 1: "Well, he's the exception that proves the rule."

"A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss" is often said as if, good for the stone, who wants yucky moss growing on it? It is used as a form of praise for people who don't settle down and remain "on the go." However in the original context, it was a statement against such a lifestyle, admonishing that people who never settle down and put down roots are as barren and ugly as an unmossed rock.

"Just a few bad apples" is a dismissive way of handling corrupt or otherwise unsatisfactory eople, as if it's just them, no need to worry. But this is a contraction of the full phrase, "A few bad apples spoil the barrel." You pack even a single mushy, moldy apple into a barrel full of perfectly fine apples, and come spring, you're going to have a barrel full of scummy apple mush, and you'll have to get rid of hte barrel - it can't be reused. The saying is essentially a folksy way of making the statement that corruption spreads, becomes systemic, and the only way to deal with it is to deal with the entire institution (the entire barrel) rather than the individual (the bad apple)