Israeli and Palestinian officials were outraged after Eden Abergil, a former Israeli soldier, posted pictures of herself with blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian prisoners on Facebook, reports Middle East Online. In a radio interview, Abergil could not understand why her pictures, taken at an unspecified location near the Gaza Strip and posted on the social networking site, generated such uproar.

The photographs uploaded by Abergil from Ashdod and labeled "IDF – the best time of my life," depicted her smiling next to Palestinian prisoners. Because Abergil was discharged a year ago, the Israeli army has no power to prevent her from publicizing the photographs.

One photo shows Eden Abergil crouching in front of three seated detainees -- one with white hair, another with a greying beard and a skullcap and a third, a younger man with black hair who is hanging his head. Another shows her sitting close to the younger man, twisting her head towards him.

While the pictures drew sharp criticism from the Israeli army, the Palestinian Authority described it as an example illustrating how the occupation corrupts Israeli minds. "This shows the mentality of the occupier, to be proud of humiliating Palestinians," according to a statement from the office of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

A puzzled Abergil replied to what she perceived as harsh criticism, asking, "What's wrong with that? I don't understand." Bemused by the reactions it provoked, she also added, "I was photographed innocently, naively, without any political significance. There was no violence -- it was just about the good experience of being in the army, that's all."

Ever since the story became public, access to Abergil's Facebook page has been blocked. However, a number of Israeli bloggers took a screen grab of the comments underneath the two pictures before access was restricted

The incident was denounced by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), a local rights group, which said the incident demonstrated an attitude commonplace in the military. "This reflects an attitude which has become the norm and consists in treating Palestinians like objects, not like human beings," said PCATI head Yishai Menuchin. Other human rights activists commented that taking “souvenir pictures” is a widespread practice within the Israeli military.

Indeed, the sentiment is echoed by the British newspaper The Guardian, which featured a series of pictures similar to Abergil's photos, demonstrating that this type of behavior seems to be the norm. Breaking the Silence, a veterans' group, has released a number of soldiers' pictures. Although the time and location of the events in the pictures are uncertain, they show soldiers posing with prisoners and the bodies of dead Palestinians. Apart from Eden Abergil's face, the the soldiers' faces were obscured in released photographs.

Andrew Wander of Al-Jazeera concurs and adds that other human rights groups claimed that Israeli soldiers routinely take degrading photographs of dead and captured Palestinians and post them on the internet, belying the claims by the Israeli army that Abergil was an isolated case.

Abergil declined a interviews by numerous bloggers and later refused to discuss the matter with Lisa Goldman, an Israeli-Canadian blogger, telling her, “I don’t speak to leftists.”

Meanwhile, Israeli human rights group B'tselem said that testimony from Palestinians corroborates anecdotal evidence that such pictures are not unusual, reports Wander. Michelle Bubis, a spokesperson for B'tselem, told Al-Jazeera that the emergence of the new photographs suggests that these "are not isolated incidents."

"Regarding the pictures published, B’tselem cannot corroborate the precise incidents in which they took place, but reiterates that they are a clear violation of detainees’ right to dignity and an abuse of power by soldiers," she said.
The Jerusalem Post also reports the position of Breaking the Silence, which corroborates other coverage claiming that Abergil’s behavior is the norm and not an exception, contrary to IDF spokesman Avi Benayahu’s statement on the matter.

Commentators criticized Breaking the Silence for posting photos that seem to be part of soldiers' everyday routine, for example, one of a soldier loading a blindfolded Palestinian man onto an ambulance. In response, the organization wrote: "We do not need particularly violent pictures in order to reveal the apathy and passive violence. Even in this picture, where the unit decided to take care of an injured man...we see the norm of taking a picture with the spoils. We are fighting this norm."

Middle East Online explains that social networking websites and video sharing technology have increasingly been used as a way of exposing incidents where soldiers, police or Jewish settlers have humiliated Palestinians, or in some cases even abused them. Last year, Israeli border guards came under fire after posting clips on YouTube showing guards humiliating Palestinians. And two years earlier, a Palestinian from Hebron posted videos online showing Jewish settlers attacking and abusing Palestinians in the southern West Bank city.

In an effort to prevent similar incidents, the Israeli military has implemented strict rules regarding information that soldiers can upload to the internet, adds Wander for Al-Jazeera.

Referring to the possibility that the pictures could damage Israel's image, reports Haaretz, Eden Abergil replied, "We will always be attacked.” Overall, the Arab press was outraged by the pictures, reports YNet News. Some Syrian websites posted the pictures under the heading: "An expression of the sadist culture of the occupation army: An Israeli soldier takes pleasure in the torture of Palestinians on Facebook."

Lebanese publication As-Safir reported, "The derision and oppression of Palestinians has become a new show-off material by the occupation’s soldiers social networking sites." The Arabic-language version of Al-Jazeera compared the Israeli army’s treatment of Palestinians to the infamous Iraqi detention center Abu-Ghraib, where numerous violations were committed against detainees.