Yawning gap between rudeness and discipline

Sometimes official ceremonies are just a big yawn, and there's no disguising it. But for one dozy squaddie, failure to stifle his boredom has sent him to lock-up for three weeks. Haaretz reports today on the yawning gap between what's rude and what's jail-worthy:

The Israel Defense Forces has sentenced a soldier to 21 days in jail for yawning during a recent memorial service for assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Officials report the soldier yawned while the commander of the Ramat David Israel Air Force base was delivering a speech during last week's memorial ceremony for Rabin. The senior officer paused for a few minutes after the yawn, which was described as long and loud.

The soldier was subsequently arrested by the army, tried for his "disrespectful act" and sentenced to 21 days in military prison. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit noted that the soldier is able to request a pardon, which will be considered according to military regulations.

The soldier's mother told Israel Radio that her son was not disrespectful, but tired. She said that her son deserves to be punished for inappropriate behavior, but the verdict is disproportionately harsh.

She further said her son was raised upon Rabin's legacy, and that yawning is known to be an uncontrollable physical act.

IDF don't mess with Tutu on his long-blocked visit to Gaza strip

Bishop Desmond Tutu, in Gaza today, spoke to survivors of the Beit Hanoun shelling, which killed 19 civilians, 8 of them kids, in their sleep. It was a long-postponed fact-finding mission for the Human Rights council in Geneva. Israeli authorities had denied the peace envoy and Nobel laureate entry to the Gaza strip in December 2006, so he entered through Rafah, the crossing controlled by Egypt. There had been fears that security concerns cited by the Israelis, who by treaty have a say in the operation of this border, would block his entry again. Had that occurred, peace advocates had suggested that the Bishop might resort to moving from Port Said, Egypt to Gaza City port in a flotilla or even a zippy Zodiac craft (which might have been legally thwarted by Israeli naval officers.)

Tutu said he had asked Ismail Haniya, prime minister of Gaza's Hamas government: "Can you stop the firing of rockets into Israel?"

Haniya was dismissed by Mahmud Abbas, the Palestinian president, last June when Hamas seized control of Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas."The incident we are meant to investigate was a violation of human rights in the fact that civilians were targeted," Tutu said.

"We have said to the prime minister [Haniya] that equally, what happens with rockets fired at Sderot is a violation."

Tutu was referring to the town in southern Israel that has borne the brunt of rocket and mortar fire by Gaza fighters.

He also condemned the blockade that Israelis say puts pressure on the Hamas authorities to end the attacks by their gunmen and rocket launchers.

"What is happening in Gaza is unacceptable. We have already seen and heard enough to move us to tears," Tutu said after his 40-minute meeting with Haniya.

Tutu, who was a prominent anti-apartheid activist when South Africa was still under white minority rule, said it was crucial that the two sides negotiate.

"That was our experience in South Africa. Peace came when former enemies sat down to talk," he said.

On Wednesday, the team was due to visit Beit Hanoun, where the 2006 killings occurred, to interview witnesses and survivors of the attack.

They will prepare a report to present to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The Israeli attack on Beit Hanoun on November 8, 2006, was widely condemned by the international community for killing 19 civilians, including five women and eight children, in their homes.

In February, the Israeli army announced that no charges would be brought against Israeli soldiers over the attack.

After conducting an internal investigation, Israel concluded that the shelling of the civilians' homes was "a rare and grave technical error of the artillery radar system".

Spy Blimp : how Israeli nerve center works

Izzy Bee is abroad for two weeks, but will attempt to keep a pulse monitor on Israel for loyal readers of this blog. Here's a post, by Anne Penketh of the London Independent, which details how the watchers can watch from afar. The "separation barrier", known as the "security fence" or "the wall", depending on your point of view, is supplemented by remote IDF eyes in the sky. Children under scrutiny view this pale albino guppy that hovers overhead with alarm. Here's how it functions, from an eye-witness:

The Israeli nerve centre watching Gaza's every move

A group of Israeli soldiers is gathered round a television screen. They are watching the grainy images of a youth crawling towards the perimeter fence that hems the Palestinians inside the Gaza Strip.

The dark form tracked on camera is placing a bomb by the fence. Minutes later, his body is shaken by tank fire. A second shot confirms that the militant is dead, and his bomb activated.

We are inside the Nahal Oz military base on the border with Gaza. With the help of a white blimp bristling with cameras, and remote-controlled drones that buzz overhead, the Israeli military have every square inch of Gaza under surveillance.

At Nahal Oz, the headquarters of the southern command which monitors Beit Hanoun and the rest of northern Gaza, the cameras watching the nearby fence pick up every sound.

Palestinians have been warned that if they approach within 300 yards of the fence they are risking their lives. The sensors along the fence can tell the difference between a human and an animal if it ventures into the no-man's land where Palestinian crops and orchards have been flattened. A low throbbing alarm goes off if the sensors are activated.

The moment a Qassam rocket is fired towards Israel, a siren sounds inside the army base. The soldiers know they have 12 seconds before the notoriously inaccurate missile reaches its target, usually in the town of Sderot.

"If a Qassam is fired, we don't fire back straight away because of the possibility of hitting civilians," says a second lieutenant who identifies herself as Hila. "It goes through a lot of levels before we have permission to fire."

On a quiet day, some seven or eight rockets come over the fence. But when tensions are running high, as during the Lebanon war, up to 70 missiles are fired against the Israelis. "They know where we can fire, and where not, so they deliberately choose places where we cannot retaliate," the officer says. In one case, Palestinians fleeing Israeli fire took refuge in a petrol station.

On the army base TV screens militants can be seen using children to place their home-made bombs in an attempt to avoid reprisal gunfire. The fighters are also accused of storing weapons on the first floors of houses, where civilians living in downstairs rooms risk bearing the brunt of Israeli missile strikes.