She's no Lynndie England

People in Israel/Palestine are making a big fuss about this and another such photo that were posted on Facebook by the female Israeli soldier pictured. NYT reports on the comments they generated.

A few friends on her page praised the pictures, including one who wrote, “You look so sexy like that.” Ms. Abergil’s reply, using the shorthand of the medium, was, “Yeah I know lol honey. What a day it was. Look how he completes my picture. I wonder if he’s got Facebook! I have to tag him in the picture!”

 Officials in that corner of the Middle East are not LOLing, however.

Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib condemned the photos and said they pointed to a deeper malaise - how Israel's 43-year-old occupation of Palestinians has affected the Israelis who enforce it.
"This shows the mentality of the occupier," Khatib said, "to be proud of humiliating Palestinians. The occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting."

"These are disgraceful photos," said Capt. Barak Raz, an Israeli military spokesman. "Aside from matters of information security, we are talking about a serious violation of our morals and our ethical code and should this soldier be serving in active duty today, I would imagine that no doubt she would be court-martialed immediately,"

 Look, I appreciate how horribly the Palestinians are treated, I really do, but, being from the country that brought the world Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, I fail to be shocked or dismayed at the above photo. And to address Mr. Khatib's comment about the mentality of the occupier; it took American troops and their superiors no time at all become corrupted and filled with malaise after invading Iraq, and our transgressions towards our captors far exceed the trifle at the top of this post. Does this mean that Israelis inherently have higher moral fortitude that us? If this is the case, is it at an individual or systematic level? The infamous events at Abu Ghraib point to a problem in the system, but of course it, like every system, is run by and made up of individuals.