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The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians - Part Three: November 11-21, 2000
News and Analysis
CONTENTS
1. The Biased Reporting that Makes Killing Palestinians Acceptable
2. Latest developments: Nov. 20, 2000
3. Sharon Calls for Assassination of palestinian Leader
4. Syrian President Likens Israelis to Nazis
5. Jewish Professor Calls for Sanctions Against Israelis
6. Jewish Youths Hate
7. Where Are the Palestinian Children Supposed to Exist?
8. Ehud Barak Assassinated Palestinian Poet Kamal Nasir in 1970
The Biased Reporting that Makes Killing Palestinians Acceptable
When CNN's Cairo bureau chief, Ben Wedeman, was shot in a gun battle in Gaza last month, I waited to hear how his employers would handle the story. Having visited the spot where Wedeman was hit in the back, I realized that the bullet must have been fired by Israeli soldiers at a location on the other side of the nearest crossroads. So, what happened? CNN reported that "most of the bullets" fired came from the Israelis, but - according to a pathetic response from a company spokesman in London. CNN was not going to suggest who was to blame "at this time." Indeed not.
The American Associated Press news agency later reported - a real joke, this one - that Wedeman had been "caught up in crossfire". So much, I thought, for the 150 or so Palestinians shot dead by Israeli troops over the past six weeks. If CNN didn't have the courage to tell the truth about the shooting of its own reporter, what chance did the Palestinians have?
The latest shocking piece of American journalism promises to be an "exclusive" on the American CBS network, whose 60 Minutes news team has been given access to an Israeli army "re-enactment" of the killing - by Israeli troops - of 12-year-old Mohamed al-Dura. The picture of him cowering in the arms of his father and then collapsing dead beside him has become an iconic image of the current conflict in the Middle East. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, whose reporting of the battles outshines anything appearing in the supine American press, has already quoted an Israeli member of the Knesset, Ophir Pines-Paz, who complains that the "60 Minutes" reconstruction sounds "fictitious" and like an attempt to "cover up the incident by means of an inquiry with foregone conclusions... the sole purpose of which is to clear the IDF of responsibility for Al-Dura's death." Lobby groups in the United States, including a few brave American Jews, are demanding to know why the CBS network is filming a partial inquiry that is intended to prove that those who killed a little boy didn't kill him - without, apparently, even asking the Palestinians for their version of events.
It is all part of a familiar, weary pattern of biased reporting, which, over the past few weeks, has started to become dangerous as well as deeply misleading. The Israeli line - that Palestinians are essentially responsible for "violence," responsible for the killing of their own children by Israeli soldiers, responsible for refusing to make concessions for peace - has been accepted almost totally by the media. Only yesterday, a BBC World Service anchorman allowed an Israeli diplomat in Washington, Tara Herzl, to excuse the shooting of stone-throwers - almost 200 of them - by Israeli soldiers on the grounds that "they are there with people who are shooting". If that was the case - which it usually is not - then why were the Israelis shooting the stone-throwers rather than the gunmen?
The murder of Israelis rightly receives much coverage. The killing of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah police station was filmed only through the courage of one camera crew. The Palestinians did their best to seize all picture coverage of the atrocity. Yet when an Israeli helicopter pilot fired an air-to-ground missile at a low-ranking Palestinian militiaman on Nov. 10, it also killed two totally innocent middle-aged Palestinian women.
In its initial reports, BBC World Service Television reported that fact. Yet by Nov. 13, the BBC was able to refer to the "assassination" of the Palestinian without mentioning the two innocent women - 58-year-old Azizi Gubran and 55-year-old Arachme Shaheen - blown to pieces by the same Israeli missile. They had been airbrushed from the story.
Then we have that old bugbear, the "clash". Palestinians die "in clashes" - as if they are accidentally shot rather than targets for Israeli snipers. The use of that word - and the opportunity it affords journalists of not stating that Israelis killed them - is little short of a scandal. Take Reuters' report from Jerusalem on 30 October by Howard Goller, which referred to five Palestinians "wounded in stone-throwing clashes" and the funerals of Palestinians "killed in earlier clashes". Yet, in a report on the same day, Goller wrote of an Israeli shot dead by a "suspected Palestinian gunman", while his colleague on Reuters, Sergei Shargorodsky, referred to "Palestinian shooting attacks on Jewish settlements" and an Israeli man stabbed to death, "presumably by Palestinians". Funny, isn't it, how the responsibility for the killing of Israelis tends to be so explicitly - and rightly - apportioned, while blame for the killing of Palestinians is not?
But on we go, reporting the Middle East tragedy with all our own little uncontroversial cliches and amnesia and avoidance of "controversial" subjects. Such journalism is already leading - despite the extraordinary casualty figures - to a public view that the Palestinians are solely responsible for the bloodbath, that they are generically violent, untrustworthy murderers. I think this kind of reporting helps to condone the taking of human life.
Robert Fisk | The Independent (London, England) |14 November 2000
Latest Developments Monday 20 November 2000, Ramallah, West Bank
Ra'fat Muhib Ibrahim Joudeh, 22 years old from Zawatah, Nablus, was killed late last night as a result of tank shrapnel to his chest, neck and hand, which was completely severed from his body, during attacks by the Israeli military with heavy machine gun fire and tanks in the Zawatah area.
Ibrahim Ahmad Hassan Othman, 16 years old from Tel Al Sultan, near Rafah, Gaza was shot and killed this afternoon by live ammunition to his heart at Rafah.
Gaza
Late last night and well into this morning, the Israeli military bulldozed hundreds of dunums of land in Deir Al Balah, near Kfar Darom Settlement, also completely destroying a number of homes after evicting residents. Later in the morning, two Israeli military jeeps and a bus travelling to Kfar Darom settlement was attacked with explosive devices, killing 2 Israelis on the bus.
Mass demonstrations at Mentar Crossing were dispersed this afternoon by the Israeli military by firing tank shells into the crowd of protesters, injuring at least 30 Palestinians, many of which are reported to be in critical condition. CBS cameraman Marwan Al Ghoul was also shot in the leg by live ammunition while covering the clashes. Clashes also erupted at the Toufah Junction, with at least 8 Palestinians reported to be injured by live ammunition, one of which is in critical condition.
At approximately 6pm this evening, electricity throughout Gaza was cut, following which the Israeli military attacked with helicopter gunships, boats and tanks the Gaza City, Jabalya Refugee Camp, Beit Lahiya, Deir Al Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah. Over 100 Palestinians were injured in the attack lasting over three hours, which resumed shortly afterwards. Residents reported that an average of one missile per minute was shot into the areas. A large number of homes were damaged in the attacks. In Shate Refugee Camp, a missile fired from Israeli helicopter gunships landed directly in the middle of a home in the refugee camp, injuring the entire family of four. The parents and two children are reported to be in critical condition, with their home completely destroyed.
All hospitals in the Gaza Strip have declared a state of emergency alert
in order to treat all those injured during the attack. A state of panic
amongst residents as a result of the continuous attacks on central areas
and residential areas was reported, with residents attempting to find safe
places in the area.
Sharon recommends assassination of Arab Leader
Likud Chairman Ariel Sharon yesterday, Nov. 20 proposed that the Israeli prime minister order the assassination of the head of the Palestinian police force, Mohammed Dahlan.
"Dahlan lives? In light of [the events of] Saturday, after the attack at Kfar Darom, this is what he should have done. That's all," Sharon said at a meeting with the heads of the opposition parties as the IDF was shelling Gaza yesterday evening. Barak was stony-faced in response to Sharon's comments...
Source: Yossi Verter, Ha'aretz Nov. 21, 2000
Syrian President Likens Israelis to Nazis
Syrian President Bashar Assad on Nov. 12, 2000 told the Islamic summit in Qatar that Israelis are perpetrating a "new Nazism."
"The Israelis kill, and the Arabs and Muslims are accused of terror and anti-Semitism," Assad said in his speech to the ninth summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. "While they are trampling the principles of human rights, we are denounced and described as inhumane and backward. They curse the old Nazis, but they are implementing a new Nazism with no precedent in history."
Assad added that Israeli "arrogance and actions... contradict the moral principles and sacred teachings of every Godly faith...The world sees the death of two "murderous Israeli soldiers" as far more important than the deaths of "dozens of innocent Arabs," he said. Similarly, the kidnapping of three Israeli "occupiers of Lebanese land" had caused an international outcry, "while the kidnapping of dozens of Syrians and Lebanese and the imprisonment of hundreds of Palestinians and Arabs has produced no response from the international community."
Ha'aretz, Nov. 14, 2000
Jewish Professor Calls for Sanctions Against Israelis
DON'T SAY YOU DIDN'T KNOW
By Prof. Tanya Reinhart
In the whole six years of the previous Intifada (1987-1993), there were 18,000 Palestinian injuries. Now in one month we are already at 7000. An alarming number of them are injured in the head or legs (knees), with carefully aimed shots, and, increasingly, live ammunition. Many will not recover, or will be disabled for life. As the media keeps us busy with reports on cease-fire, peace initiatives, and 'reduction of violence', Israeli crimes in the occupied territories continue undisturbed. To understand the extent of these daily crimes we should look at the injuries, not just at the rapidly growing number of dead.
On November 3rd, CNN reported a 'relative calm' in the territories. By afternoon that day there were 276 people injured and by the final count "Up to 452 Palestinians were hurt on Friday across the territories, according to the Red Crescent" (Ha'aretz', Nov 5). On Saturday, October 4th, as the the media covers in great length Barak's "plea to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to return to the negotiating table and stop the Palestinian-Israeli bloodshed for the sake of peace" "another 153 were treated for injuries sustained in clashes with Israeli troops" including "5 school children from Sa'ir (near Hebron) who are in extremely critical condition."
More than 7000 Palestinians are reported injured so far. Several Palestinian medical sources report that an alarming number of them are injured in the head or legs (knees), with carefully aimed shots, and, increasingly, live ammunition. Many will not recover, or will be disabled for life. This pattern of injuries cannot be accidental. Dan Ephron, Boston Globe correspondent in Jerusalem reports (Nov 4) on the findings of the Physicians for Human Rights delegation: "American doctors who examined Israel's use of force in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have concluded that Israeli soldiers appeared to be deliberately targeting the heads and legs of Palestinian protestors, even in non-life-threatening situations."
In fact, the Israelis are not even trying to conceal their shooting strategies. Interviews like the following can be easily found in the Israeli media:
Nahshon battalion ready for urban warfare By Arieh O'Sullivan JERUSALEM (October 27) - "I shot two people... in their knees. It's supposed to break their bones and neutralize them but not kill them," says Sgt. Raz, a sharpshooter from the Nahshon battalion. "How did I feel? ...Well actually, I felt pretty satisfied with myself," the 20-year-old soldier confides. "I felt I could do what I was trained to do, and it gave me a lot of self-confidence to think that if we get into a real war situation I'd be able to defend my comrades and myself."
A common practice is shooting a rubber coated metal bullet straight in the eye - a little game of well trained soldiers, which requires maximum precision. Reports on eye injuries keep coming daily. 'On October 11, El Mizan Diagnostic Hospital in Hebron reported treating 11 Palestinians for eye injuries, including 3 children. El Nasir Ophthalmic Hospital in Gaza has treated 16 people for eye injuries, including 13 children. Nine of them lost one of their eyes". (LAW report, Oct 19). "From 29 September to 25 October 2000, Jerusalem's St. John Eye Hospital has treated 50 patients for eye-injuries".(LAW, Nov 2, '...Eye Injuries').
The Israeli army prepared carefully for the present events: "Established just over a year ago specifically to deal with unrest in the West Bank...The IDF has trained four battalions for low-intensity conflict, and Nahshon is the one specializing in urban warfare. Its troops train in mock Palestinian villages constructed in two IDF bases." (Jerusalem Post, Arieh O'Sullivan,Oct 27.00).
Specially trained Israeli units, then, aim, shoot and hit the target in a calculated manner: Cripple, but keep the statistics of the dead low. This is reported openly (and quite proudly) in the Israeli media. The same Jerusalem Post article explains that "the overall IDF strategy is to deprive the Palestinians of the massive number of casualties the army maintains Palestinians want in order to win world support and consolidate their fight for independence. 'We are very much trying not to kill them...' says Lt.-Col. Yoram Loredo, commander and founder of the Nahshon battalion."
The reason is clear enough: Massive numbers of dead Palestinians every day cannot go unnoticed even by the most cooperative Western media and governments. Barak was explicit about this. "The prime minister said that, were there not 140 Palestinian casualties at this point, but rather 400 or 1,000, this... would perhaps damage Israel a great deal." (Jerusalem Post, Oct 30). With a stable average of five casualties a day, they believe that Israel can continue 'undamaged' for many more months. In a world so used to horrors, many feel that 180 dead in a month is sad and upsetting, but it is not yet an atrocity that the world should unite to stop.
The 'injured' are hardly reported; they 'do not count' in the dry statistics of tragedy. Who will pay attention to their fate after the injury, in overcrowded and underequipped hospitals? Who will stop to think how many of them will die slowly, from their wounds, or remiain disabled, blind or maimed for life? Or to think about their chances to survive the siege and starvation inflicted on their people?.
Never did Israel dare to respond daily with such brutal massive force to demonstrators throwing stones. In the whole six years of the previous Intifada ('87-'93), there were 18,000 Palestinian injuries. Now in one month we are already at 7000. What we witness is a new phase. Israel started launching a systematic and pre-planned destruction of the Palestinian infra-structure, towns, and life.
The Israeli army provoked and enlarged the escalation into firearms, by its massive offensive against angry demonstrators. Under the circumstances of fire (and often with no fire pretext at all), residential neighborhoods are bombarded almost every night from helicopters and tanks, using missiles, machine guns and 'precision' weapons, while the army calls on residents to evacuate "for their own protection". The (Jewish) settlers are given free hand to attack, shoot people and destroy property. In Hebron, a particularly massive Israeli attack has been launched in what looks like an attempt to enlarge the Jewish quarters. All combined, there is an enormous pressure on (Palestinian) residents of many areas bordering with Israeli settlements to evacuate, enabling enlargement of the land seized already by Israel. Indeed, appropriation of land takes place every day, bit by bit (See Katriel, Indymedia/Israel Oct 30). Desperate Palestinian reports on all this and much more keep coming every day. It is up to us to choose to know.
Not long ago, the Western world was shocked and angered at Milosevic atrocities against the Kosovo Albanians, which were described as ethnic cleansing. But What Israel has started executing is incomparably worse. When faced with terrorist attacks (by KLA) on Serbian institutes and civilians in Kosovo, Milosevic did retaliate brutally, using, no doubt, 'excessive force'. His acts were criminal. But he did not send Apache helicopters to bombard residential areas, as does Israel. He did not put the Kosovar towns under siege; he did not use missiles from tanks, and he did not send snipers to wound and kill en-mass. Israel should be sanctioned.
Tanya Reinhart is a professor of linguistics and cultural studies at Tel Aviv University and the University of Utrecht.
Jewish Youths Hate
A 1996 poll conducted among Israeli high school students noted 30% consider themselves racist, and 70% owed to holding a Jewish supremacist, chauvinist view of Israeli Arabs. Poll results were published in the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot and reported by Agence France Presse (AFP):
JERUSALEM, Dec 2 [1996] (AFP) - Thirty percent of Israeli high school students consider themselves racist and more than 70 percent want to rescind Arab Israelis' right to be represented in parliament, according to a poll published Tuesday.
The survey, conducted by Jerusalem's Hebrew University and an educational institute affiliated with the Israeli kibbutz movement, found that the number of students who defined themselves as racist reached 45 percent among recent immigrants....Concerning Israel's 850,000 Arab citizens, just 50.1 percent of the Jewish high school students questioned agreed with the principle that "Arabs are citizens who have equal rights in the state."
But when asked if Arabs should continue to be represented in the Knesset (Israeli parliament), 72 percent said 'no' on the grounds that their presence could endanger the security of the state and its Jewish character. The survey was carried out among 1,488 students in 25 high schools around Israel. Its results were published in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
Orest Slepokura Nov. 13, 2000
Where are the Palestinian children supposed to exist?
Palestinian children are gunned down with impunity, yet Israeli propaganda sugests they got what they deserved. Wahida Valiante wants a reality check
By Wahida Valiante
When I hear a Canadian ask why the Palestinian children are out in the streets in these times of violence, my heart sinks. Overwhelmed by the absurdity of the question, I find myself sad and fearful. As is so often the case where Israel is involved, the victim is labeled as the villain. The real question is, "Where are the Palestinian children supposed to exist?"
They cannot go to school. According to The Jerusalem Post, more than 30 Palestinian schools have closed in the past month, and three have been transformed into Israeli military installations. Approximately 13,000 Palestinian students and 500 teachers are unable to get to school because Israeli authorities have imposed closure on Palestinian areas.
Palestinian homes are targets of Israeli shelling and have become places of physical, psychological and emotional trauma. Bethlehem, Beit Sahur, Beit Jala and Jericho have all been struck with missiles from Israeli helicopters aiming at houses. Samir Tabanja, aged 12, was killed by an Israeli helicopter gunship while playing in the "safety" of his backyard on Oct. 1.
While Palestinian children are virtually imprisoned in their own homes, the children of their Jewish settler neighbours play under the protective gaze of Israeli soldiers stationed on Palestinian land.
I recently observed the effects of the "peace process" when I visited the children of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Gaza, and east Jerusalem. These children know first-hand the effects of military and economic oppression. There is hardly a family that has not experienced torture, imprisonment or economic hardship.
Most of these children live in refugee camps in houses with corrugated roofs and cramped living spaces. Often, they do not have running water. The children lack adequate schools, health-care facilities, hospitals, social services, public parks, swimming pools, or recreation facilities. In the camps, the streets are their playgrounds, often with open sewers and waste flowing freely. They have seen no other reality.
The relegation of Palestinian and Arab to nothing more than "animals" (as at least one Canadian columnist has described them), makes the atrocities that are occurring more acceptable. For the past two generations, the people of Palestine have been stripped of their history, their livelihood, and their future. Now it seems as if Israel wants their lives, so it can ultimately take their land.
What strikes me as even more absurd is the blind approval which many Jews give Israel's current actions. This was demonstrated recently by the convergence of more than 1,200 delegates who have travelled there to show their support.
The Canadian Jewish community "feels angry and betrayed," according to Moshe Ronen, CJC president, over Canada's support of a UN resolution condemning "excessive use of force against the Palestinians, resulting in injury and loss of human life."
Yet, in effect, what Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was being told in a recent visit with 30 representatives of the Jewish community was: "Look away. It is better for us and it will be better for you. And if you don't, Mr. Prime Minister, we are going to hurt you at the polls."
Surely, the Jewish community cannot dictate what is right and wrong. Or can it?
If Canadians try to rationalize the organized oppression and killing of a civilian population because these are the actions of a country that is considered to be the only "democratic" country in the Middle East, then I am very afraid. I am afraid that it is only a matter of time before I will be considered the "other" here in Canada, simply because of my ethnic and religious affiliations.
Toronto | Globe and Mail | November 6, 2000
Ehud Barak Assassinated Palestinian Poet Kamal Nasir in 1970
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak bragged in his autobiography of personally shooting Kamal Nasir, the spokesman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, during Holy Week in 1970, according to The Right Rev. Samir Kafity, emeritus Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem. Nasir was a Christian-Palestinian, a poet and scholar as well as one of Bishop Kafity's parishioners. Bishop Kafity presided at Nasir's funeral.
Cf. Dale Neal, "Arab Christian Says More Understanding Needed," Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times, quoted in Christian News, (New Haven, MO), Nov. 6, 2000, p. 21.
news & analysis part one: Sept.28-Oct. 27 2000
news & analysis part two: Oct. 28- Nov.10, 2000
news & analysis part four: Nov. 22- Nov.30, 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