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The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians
Part One: Sept. 28 - Oct. 27, 2000
Breaking News, Analysis and Rebuttals
Latest News...
"The Jewish state's soldiers shot dead four Palestinians on Friday (Oct. 27) during stone-throwing protests...Israel deployed helicopter gunships and tanks..." Reuters, Oct. 27, 2000
"Israeli soldiers shot four Palestinians dead today (Oct. 27) ..In Ramallah, ambulances screamed in constant rotation... (Israeli) Helicopters fired rockets tonight at Beit Jala (a Palestinian village)...The casualties today bring the death toll in a month of protests to at least 137, all but eight (are) Arabs. A 27-year-old was shot in the heart at what has become a traditional confrontation point in this West Bank city (Ramallah). He was dead on arrival at the hospital... One man was killed in ...Tulkarm and another in Qalqilya. A man in Jenin was brain dead from his wound, said the deputy health minister of the Palestinian Authority, Dr. Munzer Sharif, who was compiling reports in an office in Ramallah Hospital. In Gaza, a 23-year-old was shot dead ..near the Erez checkpoint that separates the Palestinian- run area from Israel, said Dr. Muawiyah Hasanein, director of the emergency room at Shifa Hospital. Palestinian hospital officials said 142 people were treated for wounds, with 12 in critical condition." John Kifner, NY Times, Oct. 28, 2000
Latest Developments - Friday 27 October 2000
Ramallah, West Bank: At least 250 Palestinians were injured today and 4 Palestinians killed. A strict internal Israeli-imposed closure remains in place throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli military attacked Palestinian residential areas in Beit Sahour and Ramallah with tanks.
Ghassan Youssef Ahmad Salem 'Aweissah, 22 years old, from Ramallah, was shot and killed today as a result of live ammunition to his heart.
Ahmad Mohammad Qassem, 15 years old from Tulkarem, was shot and killed today as a result of live ammunition to his chest.
Bashir Saleh Moussa Shallawit, 15 years old from Qalqilya, was shot and killed today as a result of live ammunition to his chest.
Jaber Ahmad Jaber Al Mishal, 23 years old from Beach Camp, was shot and killed today near Beit Hanoun as a result of live ammunition to his chest.
Hundreds of worshippers were prevented again this Friday, Oct. 27 from entering Al Aqsa Mosque for prayers. Reports of arrest campaigns by the Israeli authorities continue in Jerusalem areas. Heavy Israeli army shooting erupted this afternoon near Qalandia Refugee Camp, continuing late into the evening.
Protests erupted this afternoon throughout the Bethlehem area, with 22 Palestinians injured, including an 11-year-old Palestinian child reported to be in critical condition. Israeli tanks and heavy machine guns were also used in attacks against Palestinian National Security offices in Bethlehem.
Palestinian security sources stated late this evening that the Israeli military attacked the Palestinian General Intelligence Headquarters in Jericho. A nearby restaurant was destroyed from shells fired from Israeli tanks.
At least 16 Palestinians were injured in Halhoul, with Osamma Mohammad, 23 years old, in critical condition as a result of live ammunition.
**Note** We apologize for not issuing an update yesterday, Oct. 26. These updates are being maintained on a voluntary basis. Those of us who have been working on the updates for a month now were somewhat overwhelmed by some of the horrifying incidents that we have personally witnessed here in occupied Palestine during this past month, leaving us at a loss for words yesterday. Her enowis our delayed report for Oct. 26:
Ala Mohammad Mahmoud Jawabreh, 14 years old, from Arroub Refugee Camp, died Oct. 26 afternoon as a result of injuries sustained on 11 October, when he was shot in the head by an exploding, Israeli "Dum-Dum" bullet. He was first given medical treatment in Hebron, then transferred to Saudi Arabia for emergency medical care. He died in hospital in Saudi Arabia yesterday.
At approximately 3:00 AM Oct. 26, the Israeli military shelled with tanks the center of Hebron. Heavy machine gun fire was also directed towards local television station
Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian cars traveling on main roads in the West Bank and Gaza were reported throughout the day on Oct. 26.
HRA - The Arab Association for Human Rights
The aftermath of the events of October among the Arab community in Israel
Ali took a drag on his cigarette and stared at the ceiling. He was part of the 90% of the Arab community who voted for Barak and his peace platform. Although proud of his Arab heritage, the previous evening Ali had talked enthusiastically about his student days in Tel Aviv and the Jewish friends he made there. 'Their politics doesn't stop us being friends' he told me. This evening, Ali had seen a man killed in front of him by the military forces of the Israeli society that he had believed he was part of. Two hundred youths from the neighbouring Jewish town had begun to attack homes on the edge of Nazareth. As a crowd of Arabs gathered to protect their homes and families, the Israeli army shot two Arabs dead and wounded thirty. Official sources blame Jewish vigilantes, but eyewitnesses testify to the fact that the bullets emanated from the guns of army snipers positioned above the scene. In the face of continuing confiscation of Arab land, housing demolition, education and employment discrimination, Ali had continued to hold out hope for a future more integrated society. One night destroyed that optimism, unleashing resentment and despair.
Jewish citizens have turned against their neighbours, attacks against Arabs, their homes, businesses and places of worship have spread across the country from Nazareth to Haifa to Jaffa. Racially motivated attacks...have sent a clear message to the Arab community that they are outsiders to the Jewish state and society.
My neighbour peeled back the tarpaulin to show me the blood covered car seat. The previous day an Arab family had been driving home when their car was hit by 12 Israeli army bullets. The Arab woman in the front seat received near fatal injuries from two live bullets to the upper body. Like many of the injured she was not even taking part in the demonstrations. Another neighbour was standing on his balcony to watch as Arab demonstrators dodged live ammunition down our Nazareth street. When the Israeli soldiers demanded that he return inside, he refused to move. They shot him in the chest.
Arabs in Israel began to protest in solidarity with Palestinians anger over the deaths at our house of Al-Aqsa mosque, but this anger was combined with a deep rooted frustration at their own status as second class Israeli citizens.
Arabs in Israel, families of the minority of the Palestinian community that was granted citizenship in the state of Israel in 1948, face discrimination in all areas, from housing to employment to education. The Israeli state continues to confiscate land and demolish Arab property in order to build Jewish settlements and highways. The anger built up in the community was expressed in riots that surfaced in Arab towns and villages across the country. In 1976 Israeli armed forces killed six Arab citizens protesting against land confiscation in the Galilee...
(Now) Israeli forces (a)re using tear gas and rubber bullets in an effort to disperse demonstrators. On the second day of the protests, the army was shooting live ammunition including the internationally outlawed 'dum-dum' bullets. This tiny bullet penetrates the skin and then fragments, tearing organs and flesh as it spreads into the body. Injuries were largely sustained in the upper body and chest, revealing a clear intention to kill.
Sakhnin is a small Arab town north of Nazareth. Despite its size, it maintains a very close knit community in which the suffering of anyone's family is shared by all. Political protest is not new to Sakhnin. Every year, Arabs in Israel and Palestine commemorate the 1976 Land Day that originated amongst the people of Sakhnin. This March, on Land Day 2000, the residents of Sakhnin went to protest at the site of the construction of an army base on the edge of the town. Border Police troops attempted to disperse protestors with tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets. Many people were injured and one Arab woman was gassed to death after being overcome by the toxic brand of tear gas which the Israelis use. One demonstrator remains under house arrest, awaiting trial for his part in the demonstrations seven months ago.
Despite their experience of political protest, the community in Sakhnin were not expecting the harsh clampdown of Arab protesters in the demonstrations of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. 'I was standing by the corner shop watching to see what the police were going to do' said one woman.
"I was with a small group of women and nobody was holding any stones. Suddenly bullets came whistling over our heads. These could not have been aimed at anyone else except us, a small group of unarmed observers." Two Arab men from Sakhnin were killed. "We believe that these boys were executed" said another resident. 'There were Arabs killed in each of the towns and villages across the region, all at close range and in the head or upper body. This indicates an intended policy to send a fatal warning signal that would personally touch the lives of every member of the Arab community here in Israel. We as Arabs mean nothing to the state and any means are used to silence us'.
Wafaa, a teacher from Sakhnin High School, spoke of the devastating effect that this events had on the children of Sakhnin. Every child knows the two who died, or has family and friends that were injured. Daily life cannot go on because the situation has changed forever. The students want to talk about the deaths of the two men, to express their grief and disbelief...
Rasmiyya is the coordinator of a women's organization in Sakhnin. In an effort to work towards coexistence between Arabs and Jews, she had organized workshops with ocal Jewish women's groups to try to improve understanding between the two communities. The results before the recent crisis were not always positive. "We talk about cooking and music and everybody smiles, yet nobody wants to talk about the Israeli demolition order on my house" said one woman from the village. 'The Jewish women complain that politics is divisive, yet this is my life. If these women cannot face that, and cannot share in the responsibility of their society, I don't want to know'. Despite the difficulties that Arab women faced in encounters with Jewish women, Rasmiyya had continued to believe that she could work towards Arab-Jewish coexistence.
In spite of her reservations Rasmiyya spoke at a women's meeting organized by a Jewish feminist group, two week after the Intifadah began. Although this meeting was supposed to reflect a join Jewish-Arab struggle to end the violence, the meeting was totally dominated by Hebrew language showing no respect for Arab sensibilities and suffering. "Despite their claims to share our struggle they are...not working to help us live as Arabs in a tolerant multicultural state."
Rasmiyya was one of the Arab speakers at this event and for the first time in her work with the coexistence movement she insisted on speaking Arabic. The deaths of 13 members of her community have led her to totally reassess her relationship with the Israeli left wing. She was disappointed with the reaction of the audience, feeling that nobody addressed the concerns that she brought from an Arab perspective. 'The Jewish women's groups have told me that this does not effect our joint struggle for women's rights. Yet how can I work with them when they refuse to acknowledge their part in the Zionist society that has killed 13 of my people?"
The Arab community supported Barak in his electoral challenge against Netanyahu. He wooed Arab support by promising to pursue the peace process which had reached stalemate with Likud. Yet under Barak, land confiscation and housing demolition continued, and now state forces have killed Arab citizens in order to prevent them demonstrating their dissatisfaction with the government. 'My hand shook when I voted for Barak but I did it' said one Arab voter from Nazareth, 'Now he has betrayed us and over and over again I curse the day I went out to support him'. ..
No one here has hope of real justice resulting from any Israeli led inquiry into Israeli Army war crimes... Through their actions the Israeli state has sent a harsh warning that dissent will not be tolerated. Arab citizens do not have the right to freedom of thought and public assembly. Israeli forces have used excessive violence against the Palestinian community in the territory occupied in 1948, as they have been doing for years against Palestinians in the occupied territories of 1967, and as they have not against violent Jewish demonstrators.
Despite efforts of human rights organizations to call for international support for this minority community, nobody is optimistic about the future. People here have suddenly grasped reality and it is a state in which they are totally vulnerable. The Israeli state has demonstrated that not only will it fail to protect Arab citizens, it will support aggression against them.
Nazareth was silent as the sun rose on the day following the attack of the citizens from Natzrat. Ten thousand people attended the funerals but there were no more mass demonstrations. Before this national outbreak of anti-Arab pogroms and police brutality, many Arabs believed that, despite their status as second class citizens, it was possible to work hard and achieve a place within Israeli society. The Intifada of 2000 has shattered that illusion...the situation of the Palestinians ...has now gone far beyond the discrimination experienced by second class citizens. The Israeli state and many of its Jewish citizens have sent a clear message that Arabs are the enemy within. The community must face the future in this knowledge and nobody is quite certain what this will mean.
HRA - The Arab Association for Human Rights, Mary's Well Street - PO Box 215 - 16101 Nazareth. Tel: 06-6561923 - Fax: 06-6564934 . Oct. 25, 2000
Latest Developments - Wednesday 25 October 2000
Ramallah, West Bank
Casualty Toll Since Sept. 28:
129 Palestinians Killed, 4000 Injured
Overview: Protests erupted throughout the West Bank and Gaza this afternoon, with at least 50 Palestinians injured. Israeli attacks on Palestinian farmers and families attempting to harvest olives continued throughout the day, in addition to destruction and confiscation of agricultural lands. According to Israeli media reports, a total of at least 700 Palestinians have been arrested by the Israeli military authorities since 28 September 2000. A strict internal closure remains in place by the Israeli Authorities on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A total of 129 Palestinians have been killed within the past 27 days and over 4000 injured.
Bethlehem area The village of Beit Jala and nearby Aida Refugee Camp were shelled twice by tanks this evening from the bordering settlement of Gilo. Residential areas in the village of Beit Sahour were shelled once by tank fire and attacked by heavy machine gun fire this evening, burning down one home. In yesterday's attack in Beit Sahour, 2 ambulances were fired on andprevented from reaching injured residents, injuring two medics in the process. Armed confrontations were reported late this evening in Bethlehem. Israeli settlers attacked the villages of Hossan and Tqu' this afternoon.
Hebron Israeli settler attacks were reported throughout the day in villages in the Hebron area. In nearby Beit Awwa, the Israeli army raided the village, destroying personal property and homes and arresting a number of residents. Clashes were reported in Hebron in the evening. In the old city of Hebron, a number of Palestinian residents were evicted by the Israeli military and their homes used as military outposts. A large number of homes have been evacuated in this area, adjacent to an Israeli settlement, and converted into Israeli military outposts. In addition, a number of Palestinian houses bordering Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza have been evacuated for weeks now as a result of regular Israeli attacks by tanks and heavy machine gun fire from the bordering settlements. The Israeli controlled areas of Hebron remain under curfew for the 26th consecutive day.
Jenin area Clashes erupted this afternoon in Jenin following the funeral of Nimr Youssef Nimr Mari', 22 years old from Kufur Dan, Jenin, who was shot and killed yesterday as a result of high velocity ammunition to his heart. At least 33 Palestinians were reported injured. In a number of villages in the Jenin area, the Israeli military fired tear gas into olive orchards where farmers were harvesting olives, forcing the villagers out of the orchards. Attacks on farmers and confiscation of agricultral lands continued throughout the day. A mass arrest campaign by the Israeli authorities of Palestinian residents was conducted in the Jenin area today. The number of those arrested is unknown. Israeli settler attacks were reported in the villages of 'Anin, Ya'bad, 'Arrabi, Jaba', and Silt Al Thaher. Military reinforcements and heavy artillery have been deployed at all checkpoints in the Jenin area. Armed confrontations were reported this evening in the village of Zababdeh, and attacks by heavy machine gun fire on the village of Ya'bad.
Nablus Israeli settler attacks were reported this afternoon in the villages of Yitma, Huwarra (which remains under curfew for the 18th day), Beit Furik, Qaryout, and Burin (where tens of dunums of olive trees were chopped down by Israeli settlers this afternoon). A number of Palestinians were reported injured as a result of the attacks. Late this evening, attacks on the Nablus area were reported from heavy machine gun fire.
Tulkarem Armed confrontations were reported this evening at the two entrances to Tulkarem. The college of Khadoureh at the entrance of Tulkarem was attacked again by heavy machine gun fire from Zionist attackers.
Times of India Hits Israeli Racism
Outside of America, fury at the Israelis continues to build. The following is from yesterday's edition of the leading newspaper on the Indian sub-continent, the Times of India:
"The horrors of the Nazi holocaust suffered by the Jewish community over 50 years ago have been politically appropriated by Israel to position itself as a perennial potential victim surrounded by implacable foes. But, over the years Israel has, by its own actions, undermined all this goodwill.
"From being the oppressed, it has turned oppressor with a vengeance. It is no one's contention that the Israelis stand by and be attacked by armed Palestinian youth. But does any civilized nation respond to stones by opening up with heavy artillery and helicopter gunships? Israel does so and believes it is right to do so. It has adopted a position that it is willing to inflict awesome damage on the adversary in order to minimize its own casualties. This attitude suggests that it does not accept that the Palestinian it confronts on the streets of the occupied territories is even of the same species as the Jewish people."
Talk about hitting the Talmudic nail on the head! The Indian editor makes the two main debating points we need to articulate repeatedly: 1. Though it is claimed to be an indispensable enhancement of human rights, the ""Holocaust" industry is the main prop justifying and excusing the Israeli slaughter of civilians. 2. Israeli atrocity, apartheid and expulsion are predicated on the principle that Palestinians are not human beings like Jews are (something tacitly seconded by the American media). This principle is straight out of the Jewish religion. For example, Maimonides ruled that non-Jews are not human (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Rotze'ach 2:11).
With these two points we create an unbeatable equation: opposition to the religion of Judaism and the cult of "The Holcaust" --rather being racist or hateful -- actually combats racism, diminshes hate and saves lives.
Talmudicized
Ah, the business of killing Palestinian civilians!
What could be more prosaic and part of the daily routine?
Already this bloody little business has moved from the front pages. The carnage is managed by Associated Press photographs that concentrate on Palestinians throwing stones and show few images of Israeli tanks, helicopter gunships or machine gunners in action.
Arabs are being murdered. Ho-hum. Let's butter our toast and check the sports page. This is the mindset of a Talmudicized American population who would be raising alarms and running hysterically to and fro with black armbands, purple circles under their eyes from anguished, sleepless nights, petitions, picket signs and all the paraphernalia of outrage, if these were Jews who were being murdered night after night, week after week since the end of September.
I grant you, most of the goyim have never heard of the Talmud, but they've been Talmudicized just the same. The symptoms are patent --the "unChosen" race of Arabs can be shot -- if not with impunity -- then amidst a generalized sense of compassion-fatigue and apathy.
The "Holocaust" platitudes have been lost in the heat of Israeli mass murder and the dust of Arab cadavers. All the "lessons" we were supposed to learn at the "Holocaust" museums and the Anne Frank shrines, about "Never Again," and the pledge to shield the next generation of dehumanized civilians from the bullets and the poison gas of an occupying army, have fallen like the leaves of autumn.
But watch the fatuous indignation when the voiceless, powerless Palestinians place a homemade bomb in some hapless Jewish market in Jerusalem and innocent Jewish civilians perish. Then the world will get an education in public relations, as the ear-shattering decibel-levels of Talmudicized moral indignation churn through the planet like a dynamo. At that time it will be immediately incumbent on every American to speak out or stand accused of condoning "yet another Holocaust against God's Holy People."
But what kind of indignation is it that only gets stoked when the "Chosen people" are killed? A racist, Talmudicized indignation, that's what; a worse racism than Hitler ever peddled. Hitler never claimed to be a humanitarian when he advanced his race-hate. Talmudic race-hate is advanced by pompous human rights big mouths whose self-righteous belief in their own goodness, as corroborated by the media and sanctified by the Jewish power structure, is the main contributor to ever more needless carnage in a Middle East held hostage by the searing contempt of Zionism and Judaism for Arabs.
Americans scream bloody murder if a baby seal is clubbed to death in the Arctic but suck soda pop at the World Series when Palestinian babies are shot to death like the goyim they are.
Talmudicized. There is no more apt a word for Americans.
Michael A. Hoffman II Oct. 24, 2000
Latest Developments - Monday 23 October 2000 Ramallah, West Bank
Mass protests took place throughout the West Bank and Gaza this afternoon, with clashes erupting in a number of areas. A strict internal Israeli-imposed closure is in place again throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli settler attacks continued today in villages in the northern West Bank. The Israeli military attacked Palestinian residential areas in Beit Jala, Hebron, and Jenin with rockets from attack helicopters, tanks, heavy machine gun ammunition, and linked automatic 40mm 'launched' grenades. Attacks continue well into the night in Hebron and Jenin.
Nada Sa'id Sroujeh, 52 years old, from Tulkarem, was killed this afternoon.
Sa'id Tambour, 18 years old, from Nablus died this morning after being clinically dead for 4 days, due to injuries sustained on 20 October 2000.
Ashraf Habaibeh, 15 years old, from Askar Refugee Camp, Nablus, died this morning after being clinically dead for seven days as a result of live ammunition to his head on 16 October 2000.
Abdel Aziz Mahmoud Taha Abu Sneineh, 55 years old from Abu Sneineh, Hebron was killed this evening as a result of missiles fired from tanks on his home.
Bethlehem area Israeli attack helicopters and tanks attacked the village of Beit Jala, including Bir 'Ona, and Aida Refugee Camp, this evening from the nearby settlement of Gilo, causing damage to a number of homes, injuries to at least one civilian and a medical team in their ambulance. Reports from the area state that the St. Nicolas Orthodox Church and the Arab Orthodox Club were damaged in the attacks.
Hebron Residential areas in Hebron were attacked this evening by Israeli tanks and heavy ammunition, damaging at least 10 houses. Abdel Aziz Mahmoud Taha Abu Sneineh, 55 years old from Abu Sneineh, Hebron was killed this evening as a result of missiles fired from tanks on his home. His four children were also injured inside their house, reportedly in critical condition. Ambulances are unable to transport injured to hospitals.
Rafah Late this evening, Israeli attack helicopters and tank rocketed areas in Rafah. Reports state that the neighborhood of Tel Al Sultan is currently being attacked by rockets from Israeli helicopters.
A Giant Prison Riot
What we have seen in the West Bank and Gaza during the last three weeks was a giant prison riot by Palestinians. Of the more than 100 people who died and the 3,000 who were wounded, 95% were Arabs.
In North America, the pro-Israel media poured venom on Palestinians, even claiming that stone-throwing teenagers on the occupied West Bank were threatening Israel's very existence. Some media cheerleaders of Israel's right wing even called on the United States to go to war against "these animals." American politicians vied to condemn Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Across the Muslim world, ferocious anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred erupted with terrifying, unprecedented intensity. From Morocco to Indonesia, pictures of a terrified 12-year-old Arab boy, huddling beside his father, slowly being shot to death by Israeli troops became for Muslims as much an icon of suffering as the famous, heartbreaking picture of a 10-year-old Jewish boy, hands raised over his head, being marched out of the Warsaw Ghetto by Nazi SS troops.
Yet after this latest orgy of hate and violence, nothing really has changed. Israelis and Palestinians remain stuck together, like two scorpions in a bottle. Israel still faces the same three choices: a peace agreement that a majority of Palestinians will find minimally acceptable; to keep shooting Palestinian rioters, which severely damages Israel's standing worldwide and encourages anti-Semitism; or ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel insists it made huge concessions at Camp David II, and says a permanent peace deal was within reach, but collapsed because Yasser Arafat refused to give up claims to the Old City of Jerusalem, which Israel conquered in 1967 and annexed. But the Old City was not the only make-or-break issue.
More important, and largely ignored by the media, was the question of Palestinians' right of return. During Israel's creation in 1948, and in the 1967 war in which Israel seized the West Bank, 1.1 million Palestinians, plus hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees from Golan, were driven from their homes and land. Fifty-two years later, the Palestinian refugee diaspora, concentrated in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza, has grown to 5-6 million, the world's largest refugee population.
According to UN figures, one in four of the globe's refugees is Palestinian. They have subsisted in squalid camps as stateless outcasts for half a century.
A quarter of the one million Palestinians who live in Israel proper are internal refugees. No Palestinians have ever been compensated for loss of property or homeland, estimated in U.S. dollars at $180 billion. Neither have Sephardic Jews from the Mideast who lost their property when they moved to Israel.
UN Resolution 194, of 1948, affirms the right of all Palestinians to either return to their lost homes or to elect compensation. The UN has reaffirmed this resolution more than 100 times. Numerous human rights conventions have codified the legal right of expelled civilian populations to return home.
Israel rejects these UN resolutions by asserting Palestinians were not driven by Israeli forces from their homes, but voluntarily abandoned them.Though prominent Israeli historians have amply debunked such claims, this 52-year old canard forms the legal basis for denying Palestinians any right of return.
"Abandoned" Palestinian property was expropriated and given or sold to Jews. Israeli governments have steadfastly maintained Israel has no moral or monetary responsibility for Palestinian refugees and owes them nothing. Israel rejects charges it is violating the 1949 Geneva Convention by shooting civilian demonstrators because it is "administering" rather than "occupying" the West Bank.
There is no room in Israel, insist Israelis, for Arab refugees, though room was found for one million Russians, not all of them Jews, and Falasha Ethiopians...
At the failed Camp David talks, Israel's PM Ehud Barak reportedly agreed to a token return of up to 100,000 Palestinian refugees, labeled as "family reunification..."
Aside from these two sops, only a very limited number of Palestinian refugees - subject to Israeli American approval - would be allowed to settle in the proposed new Palestinian mini-state. In other words, even after a peace agreement, 2-3 million Palestinians would remain stateless and homeless.
Even if Yasser Arafat is eventually strong-armed into a deal with Israel and America, most of his people want no part of an agreement that leaves them either penned up in an Israeli- dominated mini-state - little better than a group of reservations akin to apartheid South Africa's old bantustans - or left like human garbage in refugee camps... That grim prospect, even more than Jerusalem, was the true cause of the latest Palestinian explosion.
Muslims, Christians and Jews will eventually find some way to time-share he Old City's disputed 200 square metres of holy places, as competing Christian sects have learned to do in Bethlehem. But there will be no lasting regional peace until millions of Palestinian refugees are somehow made whole and become convinced they have a future.
Eric Margolis | Toronto Sun | October 22, 2000
Dispelling Media Myths About Palestine
For half a century, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the most distorted area of our foreign news coverage. Yet it's not that confusing; no more so than, say, South Africa during apartheid. It, too, was complicated, but the political and moral issues involved seemed clear. Not so with the Mideast. Let me give some examples.
War. As in, "Is this war? It certainly feels like it." (Marcus Gee in The Globe and Mail). No it doesn't. Wars occur between countries with armies. Here you have one country and one army: Israel. Palestinians run local government and police; they have no tanks, army or air force. They don't even control the airport. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said what Israel has done so far "doesn't amount to anything. It is not one in a million of what we can do if we are really at war." Exactly. His "nothing" is incomparably more than the best Palestinian effort. The equation is absurd. The National Post said "Israel could easily win an all-out war with the Palestinians." They could easily win an all-out war with my local Starbucks, too.
Ceasefire. As in endless calls for. Between who? Kids throwing stones and helicopters firing rockets?
Geography. An audience member on CBC's Counterspin asked why Palestinian parents let their kids out on the streets, implying Israeli parents wouldn't. But, hey, the reason you don't see Israeli kids throwing stones at tanks is that no streets in Israel are occupied by a foreign army. The more than 100 deaths have been on Palestinian territory.
The UN. Columnist George Will sums up the United Nations as "that nest of anti-Israeli regimes" because, I suppose, General Assembly votes on the Mideast tend to run about 150-2, the two being Israel and the U.S. The National Post says "the Palestinians prefer to deal with the UN . . . while the Israelis trust only the Americans." That's another weird equation: One country equals the whole UN? The very notion of the U.S. as mediator is bizarre. When the recent violence broke out, both presidential candidates robotically declared support for Israel.
Whose point of view? CBC Radio's Dick Gordon asked an Israeli, "Do you ever think it might get out of control?" But for Palestinians, it's always out of control. The New York Times' David Shipler said Arab leaders "reportedly" make "private remarks" disputing historical Jewish ties to Jerusalem's Temple Mount, which "touches the deepest Israeli fear." About being seen as legitimate inhabitants of the land in Arab eyes. That doesn't equate, either: anxiety over having your emotional attachment questioned versus actual daily checkpoints, expulsions, kidnappings, demolitions . . .
Peace. As in the Oslo accords, or Camp David. This is peace in a very narrow, negative sense. Even after many years of bloody intifada,Palestinians did not get a state, or the right to return to their homes, or restitution for property. They got "the mere scrap of a sham state" (Edward Said); a Bantustan, like the puppet black states South Africa set up to try to retain control, "cantonized" into four or five parts with Israeli land and forces in between, controlling movement, borders and water resources; with Israeli colonists remaining on the best land. Still, most of them accepted this mingy peace and even rejoiced: It was a victory, and could lead to something better. But the follow-up to the initial agreement was grim. Under governments both left and right, Israel sent hundreds of thousands of new settlers, delayed withdrawals or reneged and confiscated more land. The element of hope that underpinned a crappy peace eroded.
Concessions. As in "Can Barak make any more concessions than he already has?" (CBC Radio's Michael Enright), or "the superlatively generous offers made by Mr. Barak" (National Post). This is the most imaginative and distorted term in recent coverage. It's true at the end that Israel offered concessions on Jerusalem, but they were minor: a few suburbs, one of which could be called Palestine's capital, instead of Israel's earlier insistence on an utterly "undivided" city. It's as if Palestinians had first demanded all of Jerusalem, then "conceded" to Israel a few neighbourhoods. He gave in, in some small measure, on Jerusalem, but in the context of a hideously one-sided "peace" to start with, followed by years of Israeli reneging, then reneged a bit on the reneging, and is hailed as the great conceder. It would have taken something at least a little grander to swallow all the rest. The last straw, wrote a Palestinian, was not Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount on the anniversary of the 1982 Beirut massacre for which he was responsible, but the huge Israeli force that fired on those protesting against his visit. They weren't even allowed to voice their anger. At a certain point, nothing, with hope intact, becomes preferable to something, with all hope foregone.
Rick Salutin, Globe and Mail, (Toronto) October 20, 2000
Israeli Government Refuses to Cooperate With U.N. War Crimes Investigators
Israel on Friday, Oct. 20 refused to cooperate with a United Nations inquiry into alleged war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza after the U.N. Human Rights Commission ordered a war crimes investigation.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement rejecting a resolution passed Thursday, Oct. 19 by the Human Rights Commission, which set up the inquiry and said that the Israelis were guilty of "widespread, systematic and gross violation of human rights" during the protests that have raged since Sept. 28. The resolution, which described some of Israel's actions as war crimes, was passed by 19 votes to 16, with the United States and European nations voting against.
"The resolution is...hostile, unbalanced and unnecessary. Israel will not cooperate in the implementation of the operative part of this resolution," the Israeli foreign ministry said.
Israeli attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem have left more than 100 dead, almost all Palestinian civilians, many of whom have been children.
The UN Human Rights Commission's vote mandates Mary Robinson, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, to lead a team to Palestine to urgently to take stock of rights; violations "by the Israeli occupying power."
Source: Associated Press, Oct. 20, 2000. UN Press Release, Oct. 20, 2000.
Tracking The Dragon of the Double Standard
by Michael A. Hoffman II
The dragon of the double-standard that haunts our dreams in the media monopoly has scorched the commonweal yet again. In mid-October, the Middle East reports of my old employer, the Associated Press, inspired newspaper headlines across the U.S. which read, "Barak calls on Arafat to Stop the Violence."
The operant word in that headline is violence. It is an inaccurate word to use in describing a revolt by colonists against an occupier. An impartial headline would have read, "Barak Calls on Arafat to Stop the Protests."
After more than 50 years of "Holocaust" propaganda one would think the press might be a tad bit sensitized to the lexicon of nationalist chauvinism, war crime and atrocity and occasionally apply that lexicon to something other than Nazis-and-Jews.
But when it comes to reporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine, so hardened is the Jewish jingoism that Deborah Sontag, the NY Times' Middle East correspondent, wrote inthe Oct. 12 Times that there has been a "disproportionate" number of children shot to death by the Israelis. What, pray tell, would be a proportionate number, Miz Sontag, and who would dare wield such proportionality with regard to the deaths of Jewish children anywhere in any era?
When Palestinians attempted to retaliate for the deaths of those children, Clinton, Gore, Lieberman and George W. Shrub all called on Arafat to "stop the violence." But when two heavily armed Israeli soldiers were killed by an Arab crowd and Jewish leaders sought vengeance with helicopter gunship and missile attacks, the Jewish violence became, in a wave of the magic media wand, not violence, but "retaliation."
In the same vein, the attack on the US Navy ship in Yemen is described as a terrorist act. How so? Military targets are legitimate ones in wartime and the Zionists and Uncle Sam(uel) have been at war with Arabs and Muslims since 1948. Our forthcoming "retaliation" will not constitute violence however, but "America standing tall" and "showing our resolve."
When the Serbs publish Wanted posters for war criminals like Albright, Clinton and Cohen, it's dubbed a "propaganda exercise" by the media. But when US mercenaries (oops, I mean "peace-keepers") hunt down Serb "war criminals" it's the pinnacle of humanitarian action. The Nuremberg war crimes trials of Nazis were a lofty example of jurisprudence, but the Palestinian call for war crimes trials for Israelis would amount to the convening of a "kangaroo court."
The media fatcats in America are enveloped in a cocoon of sacrosanct awe as "guardians of the people's right to know" and are invulnerable to sanction or attack. Yet in most cases this behemoth condoned and indeed applauded the NATO bombing of a Serbian TV news station last year and the recent Israeli bombing of a Palestinian radio station.
And so it goes. Anne Frank's solitary death from typhus is mourned in museums throughout the world. My own state of Idaho is building an ostentatious "human rights" palace in her name in Boise, but you can bet your last shekel there will be no photos of the bullet-riddled cadavers of Palestinian kids. After all, it's not the Israelis' fault that Palestinians put children "in harm's way" (never mind that all of occupied Palestine is a danger zone for Palestinian children). When Palestinian children are killed, it's their parent's fault. Anne Frank's death however, was the Germans' fault.
How does one account for this Wonderland logic, this immunity from responsibility? At bottom it comes down to the myth, assiduously promoted in everything from the Indiana Jones movies to the Tom Brokaw books and the pulpits of most churches, that so-called "Jews" are Holy People whose blood is redder and upon whom a presumably racist god smiles from the precincts of some celestial ghetto.
Hence, the Zionists and their American lodge-brothers may "humanely" and "with precision" bomb and rocket Arab civilians, to avenge the deaths of American and Jewish sailors and soldiers. Palestinians however, as mere sand fleas and camel-riding towelheads, do not have any corresponding right to fight for their land or avenge themselves on their oppressors.
The only memory worth polling high school students about concerns whether or not they're aware of what happened to you-know-who in World War Two.
Reporting on Palestine presupposes a loss of memory regarding the Israeli holocaust against Arab civilians. From Ariel "the Butcher of Beirut" Sharon's attacks on schools, apartment blocks and hospitals in Lebanon in 1982, to the Israeli massacre of women and children at Qana in 1996, to the routine executions of Arab children and their mothers for the capital crime of protesting the Israeli occupation; all this is down the memory hole.
The media want us to believe that everything would be fine if the Palestinians would only peacefully coexist with the Israelis, under an apartheid regime that has stolen their land, reduced them to penury and summarily killed and expelled them at will. Two million native-born Palestinians are denied re-admission to the land of their birth, which is just fine with the Zionist human rights partisans who protest when "racist" European nations balk at taking any more immigrants from foreign lands. The Jewish racism that refuses immigration rights to Palestinian natives is simply not an issue.
When Israelis shoot Palestinian civilians the media paint the murders in terms of shades of moral gray and hues of existential ambiguity- "it was a mistake," the "troops couldn't see well through the slits in their bunker," the "chldren are a cover for Palestinian snipers." The message is that the Jewish people cannot commit war crimes and atrocities. Israelis are decent even when they must engage in the unpleasant task of child murder.
But watch the obsession with what the Palestinian crowd did to the two Israeli soldiers who invaded the funeral of yet another Arab civilian. Adjectives like "brutal" and "depraved" will be bandied about. The details of the deaths will be examined to a minute degree almost never accorded Palestinian victims.
The point the media are making is that the Arabs are basically twisted and tainted people --as, we are told, all opponents of Jews have been throughout time--who gang up on the poor, persecuted Israeli army.
In the face of this cant, it would be interesting to pay a call on the seismic fault that is the American public school, where Hillary and her legions of do-gooders are attempting to avoid another Columbine by instilling in millions of American kids the important lesson that "violence is not an acceptable way to solve a problem."
Unless of course the problem is 900 million Muslims, in which case the
rockets and missiles must fly, in tandem with the dragon of the double-standard,
whose job it is to ensure that "Holocaust" parallels are never
drawn with regard to the atrocities of the Holy People and their partners
in war crime in the good ol' USA.
By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent, The Independent, 13 October 2000
This is a story about lies, bias, hatred and death. It's about our inability -- after more than half a century -- to understand the injustice of the Middle East. It's about a part of the world where it seems quite natural, after repeatedly watching on television the funeral of 11-year-old Sami Abu Jezar - who died two days after being shot through the forehead by Israeli soldiers -- for a crowd to kick two Israeli plainclothes agents to death. It's about a nation that claims "purity of arms" but fires missiles at civilian apartment blocks and then claims it is "restoring order". It's about people who are so enraged by the killing of almost a hundred Palestinians that they try to blow up an entire American warship.
When I walked into the local Arab photocopy shop yesterday afternoon, the boys there greeted me with ecstatic smiles. "Did you hear that an American ship has been attacked?" one of them asked. "There are Americans dead." All I saw around the room were smiles. In a corner, on a small television screen, an Israeli Apache aircraft was firing a missile at Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Gaza.
Seven years ago, CNN showed us the Israeli prime minister shaking Yasser Arafat by the hand, live on the White House lawn. Now, live from Gaza, we watch a pilot carrying out an order from the Israeli prime minister to kill Arafat by bombing his headquarters.
As usual last night, the television news broadcasts -- those most obsequious and deforming of information dispensers -- were diverting our minds from the truth. They did not ask why the Palestinians should have lynched two Israeli undercover men. Instead, they asked why Palestinian police had not protected them. They did not ask why a suicide bomber in a rubber boat should have bombed the USS Cole. Instead, they asked who he was, who he worked for, and they interviewed Pentagon officials who denounced "terrorism". Always the "who" or the "what"; never the "why".
It is of course possible that Osama bin Laden, one of the more recent American hate figures, could have inspired -- by sermons rather than direct instruction -- the attack on the USS Cole. Bin Laden's family originally came from Yemen. And it was Yemen that demanded the right earlier this week to fly arms direct to the Palestinians of the occupied territories -- provoked, it seems, by slow-motion footage of yet another boy, a 12-year-old, dying on top of his father in Gaza after being shot by the Israelis. Yet many of the attacks on Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon were carried out by young men, unconnected with the corrupt Arab political élite but enraged by the injustice of their lot. Maybe it was the same in Yemen.
When Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo agreement seven years ago, only a very few asked how soon this raddled, flawed, hopeless "peace" would collapse. I thought it would end in violence because the Palestinians were being forced by Americans and Israelis to sign a peace that would give them neither a state nor an end to Jewish settlements on Arab land, nor a capital in Arab east Jerusalem.
I wrote that Arafat had been turned from "super-terrorist" into a "super-statesman" but could easily be turned into a "super-terrorist" again. And so it came to pass. Yesterday, the Israeli spokesman Avi Pasner shared a BBC interview with me -- and called Arafat a "terrorist".
Alas, none of it was surprising -- none save our continued inability to grasp what happens when a whole society is pressure-cooked to the point of explosion. A Pentagon official was saying last night the US government was trying to find out if the attack on the USS Cole was "related" to "violence" in the Middle East. Come again? Related? Violence? Who can doubt that the attempt to sink the Cole and all her 360 American crew was directed at a nation now held responsible for Israel's killing of scores of Palestinian civilians? The United States -- despite all the claptrap from Madeleine Albright about "honest brokers"-- is Israel's ally.
Ever since Arafat tried to leave the US ambassador's residence in Paris two weeks ago, the Palestinians have placed this responsibility on America's shoulders. If the US wants to go on supporting an ally that shoots down Palestinians in the streets of the occupied territories, then the United States will be held to account. And will pay for it.
No, of course this does not excuse the killing of armed Israeli agents or the desecration of the Tomb of Joseph in Nablus, or, indeed, the murder of Jewish settlers. But the cruelty of the Palestinians can be explained by the cruelty of the Israelis.
The death toll among Palestinians now is almost exactly equal to that at Qana in 1996 when Israeli gunners butchered 106 Lebanese civilians. We called it a massacre. The Israelis said it was a mistake. True, it's scarcely 5 per cent of the death toll at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, when Israel's militia allies killed up to 2,000 Palestinian civilians. We called that a massacre. Israel said this, too, was a mistake. Like they called the death of two 12-year-old children and a seven-year-old child and Sami Abu Jezar a mistake.
And yesterday -- with no institutional memory to guide them -- journalists were taking at face value Israel's extraordinary claim that they fired "only at military targets", that the civilian population of Gaza had been "told to evacuate" the areas to be bombed. Do I not seem to remember how the Israelis said in 1982 that in Lebanon they "only fired at military targets" -- and left more than 17,000 civilians dead in two months?
Do I not recall that the Israelis ordered the villagers of Mansouri to "evacuate" before they shelled it in 1996, then attacked their cars on the road and fired a missile into the back of an ambulance, killing four children and three women -- the missile made, of course, by the Boeing company of America?
And was not the CIA supposed to be training the Palestinian policemen now being derided by Mr Pasner as "terrorists" (his own country having personally vetted which of them should carry arms)? And was not the United States the guarantor and broker of the disastrous Oslo agreement? So is it really surprising that the Palestinians -- indeed, the Arabs -- blame the United States for the tragedy unfolding in the Holy Land?
And is it any less surprising that the Israelis have now turned on the man with whom they thought they would conclude a peace that would turn "Palestine" into a Bantustan? The man who was supposed to "control" the Palestinians, who was supposed to lock up opponents of the "peace process"-- whether they be peaceful or violent -- is not doing what he was told. He walked out of Camp David because it was a surrender too far. So President Clinton blamed him for the conference's failure -- on Israeli television, of all places -- and ordered Arafat not to declare a state. Or else.
And now, when two US presidential contenders -- Messrs Bush and Gore -- try to out-do each other in their love and loyalty for Israel, can America comprehend what is happening?
I suppose it's the same old story. The Israelis only want peace. The unruly, riotous, murderous Palestinians -- totally to blame for 95 of their own deaths -- understand only violence. That's what Israel's military spokesman said last night. Force, he said, "will be the only language they understand". Which is about as near to a declaration of war as you can get.
news & analysis part two: Oct. 28-Nov. 10, 2000
news & analysis part three: Nov. 11-14, 2000
israeli army shoots muslim worshippers
israeli army fires on medical personnel and ambulances
israeli child murder documented
israeli holocaust against palestinians / archives / bookstore / news bureau