|
ZIONIST TERROR
In the previous chapter, we examined the Zionists' view
that the Jews' return to Palestine is a "holy goal" and that the war launched
to reach this goal would be a "holy war." This idea plays an important
role in the Israelis' education. In fact, prominent Israeli leaders sometimes
express their view that children should be required to undergo a "Zionist"
education. For example, the Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat announced
on one of the most violent days of the al-Aqsa Intifada that "the country's
children would henceforth be required to receive a Jewish-Zionist education"
and that "Schools were part of the internal security of the state of Israel."27
The Old Testament has a special place in this education system, which
the Zionists designed to focus upon certain verses. The book recalls with
pride the acts of brutality inflicted (or allegedly inflicted) by the
Children of Israel, led by Joshua, upon the native Palestinians.
In his classic The Case of Israel:A Study of Political Zionism, Roger
Garaudy explains the attitude like this:
According to Israeli authorities, children
must be indoctrinated with Zionist ideology from a very young age.
As a result, children are raised to believe that they belong to
a superior race. The Israeli soldiers' brutal treatment of Palestinians
is a direct result of this indoctrination. |
The Book of Joshua, so often invoked today
by the army rabbinate in Israel in order to preach holy war, and also
made much of in schoolteaching, dwells upon the sanctified extermination
of conquered populations, putting everyone to "the edge of the sword"
- "both man and woman, yound and old" (Joshua, vi, 21) - as we read in
the story of Jericho and of so many other cities.28
The behavior exhibited by Israeli soldiers raised with
such ideas is consistent with this attitude. Today in occupied Palestine,
some dreadful scenes have become part of everyday life: 18-month-old babies
dying in their beds when their houses are attacked by Israeli helicopter
gunships, young girls working in the olive groves being shot and killed
for no reason, and children returning home from school being wounded and
permanently disabled. The Zionist education system is at the root of these
inhuman, and all-too-common, episodes. Research shows that this education
and brainwashing has been extremely effective. In a test conducted by
Tel Aviv University psychologist G. Tamarin, a statement describing the
Jericho massacre from the Old Testament's Book of Joshua was distributed
to fourth- and eighth-grade students. They were asked: "Suppose the Israeli
Army occupies an Arab village in a battle. Do you think it would be proper,
or not, to act against the inhabitants as did Joshua with the people of
Jericho?" The number who answered "Yes" varied between 66% and 95%, according
to the school attended or the kibbutz or town where the children lived.29
Garaudy emphasizes that the Book of Joshua and the Old
Testament in general are the source of Zionist terror:
This conception of the "promise", together with the means for its
realisation (as the leaders of political Zionism derive these from the
Book wherein Joshua recounts his feats of extermination of the previous
inhabitants, which he carried out at God's command and with his support),
plus the themes of "the chosen people" and of "Greater Israel",
from the Nile to the Euphrates, constitute the ideological foundation
of political Zionism.30
 
Israeli sharp-shooters fire on unarmed Palestinian
civilians, women and children included. |
The memoirs of an Israeli soldier published in the Israeli newspaper
Davar are an important example of this. The soldier in question participated
in an operation to seize the Palestinian village of Ed-Dawayma in 1948,
and described the scenes of brutality he witnessed:
They killed between eighty to one hundred
Arab men, women, and children. To kill the children, they (soldiers) fractured
their heads with sticks. There was not one home without corpses. The men
and women of the village were pushed into houses without food or water.
Then the saboteurs came to dynamite them.
One commander ordered a soldier to bring two women into a building
he was about to blow up... Another soldier prided himself upon having
raped an Arab woman before shooting her to death. Another Arab woman and
her baby were made to clean up the place for a couple of days, then they
shot her and the baby. Educated and well-mannered commanders who were
considered "good guys" ... became base murderers, and this is not in the
storm of battle, but as a method of expulsion and extermination. The fewer
the Arabs who remain, the better.31
This is just one of the many brutal episodes that have occurred over
the last 50 years.
Before the Israeli government was founded,
the Haganah, Irgun, and Stern gangs were responsible for removing Palestinians
from their lands. These terrorist organizations prior to 1948, and the
Israeli army after 1948, conducted a terrorist campaign on Arab civilians.
Menachem Begin, the Irgun's leader and a future prime minister, explained
their strategy: "The Arabs fought tenaciously in
defense of their homes, their women and their children."32
In other words, the Zionists' war would be waged against innocent people.
The truth is that since that date, the Palestinians have struggled to
protect their homes, women, and children from Israel's official policy
of terrorizing the entire Palestinian people. Newspaper reporter and Middle
East expert Flora Lewis explains Israeli-style brutality in this article
in the International Herald Tribune:
Israeli officials have now publicly acknowledged
a policy of "targeted attacks" on Palestinians believed to be involved
in terrorism. These are planned assassinations, quite rightly called "criminal
acts... murder" by Moshe Neghi, a respected Israeli journalist... Deputy
Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said on the radio that the policy was unequivocal.
"If anyone has committed or is planning to carry out terrorist attacks,
he has to be hit... It is effective, precise and just."33
EXECUTION ON THE STREET...
 
| For Israeli soldiers,
all Palestinians are targets. They do not care whether the
person in their sights is a child, a woman, or an elderly
man or woman. |
 
| Palestinians
sometimes encounter Israeli bullets at checkpoints, in the
markets, or while just standing on the corner or sleeping
in bed. |
AND SLAUGHTER
| TURKIYE-Turkish
Daily, 7.8.01
BLATANT EXECUTION |
GOZCU,
Turkish Daily, 19.5.01
ISRAEL BOMBS THE CITY OF GAZA |
| MILLI
GAZETE-Turkish Daily, 18.5.01
PALESTINE IS BURNING
Attacking with helicopters, tanks and bulldozers, Israel
has set light to Palestinian lands.
|
| TURKIYE-Turkish
Daily, 13.10.01
Israel Rains Down Missiles
PALESTINE AWASH WITH BLOOD |
| THE
MUSLIM OBSERVER, 2.2002 |
| W.
REPORT, 4-5.1993 |
CRESCENT
INT., 16-31.8.01 |
 
Hardly a day goes by when innocent blood is not
spilled in Palestine. Israeli soldiers are systematically destroying
the Palestinian people. Villages are bombed, homes are demolished,
and fields are burned. While this cruelty appears in the world press
from time to time, it has, sadly, not been enough to move world
leaders to action. An article in Crescent International clearly
presents this situation when it states: "Palestinian deaths mount
as Israelis given freedom to commit atrocities." The Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs, in its article "In Gaza, Israeli
Rockets Replace Human Rights," signals that the violence in Palestine
will only get worse. Other items in the Turkish press also reflect
the gravity of the situation. |
It should be emphasized that, as Sneh reported, Israel's struggle is
not limited to terrorist elements; rather, it targets an entire people.
The details provided here are only a small part of the cruelty perpetrated
by the Israeli government. But this is a practice that the Palestinian
Muslims know all too well, for there are close similarities between the
Qur'an's depiction of Pharaoh and what the Zionist Israeli leadership
has done to innocent Palestinians. In his time, Pharaoh targeted the weakened,
defenseless Jews and brutally murdered them. Also, the leaders of Pharaoh's
tribe had strong feelings for their own land, and so told Pharaoh that
Musa "desires to expel you from your land" (Qur'an,
7:110) The Israeli journalist Uri Avnery has drawn attention to
this similarity. In the article "The Murder of Arafat," he reminds us
that one of Judaism's fundamental tenets is that the period of Jewish
enslavement in Egypt will never be forgotten. According to him, what Israel
is doing to the Palestinians today is merely a variation of the cruelty
meted out to their Jewish ancestors by Pharaoh:
In the new myth that is being born before
our eyes, Sharon is the Pharaoh and we are the ancient Egyptians. In the
story about the Exodus, the Bible lets God say: "I have hardened (Pharaoh's)
heart and the heart of his servants." After every calamity that befell
him, Pharaoh broke his promise to free the Israelites... He (God) wanted
the Israelites to become hardened by the hardship, before they started
on their long march. This is what is happening to the Palestinians now.34
The following verses describe how Pharaoh murdered the defenseless people:
Remember when Musa said to his people: "Remember
God's blessing to you when He rescued you from the people of Pharaoh.
They were inflicting an evil punishment on you, slaughtering your sons
and letting your women live. In that there was a terrible trial from your
Lord. And when your Lord announced: 'If you are grateful, I will certainly
give you increase, but if you are ungrateful, My punishment is severe."'
(Qur'an, 14:6-7)
With God's help, the Children of Israel finally escaped Pharaoh's brutality
and cruelty. In our time, the radicals of Israel are in Pharaoh's position
and advocate violence. The Palestinians must follow the advice that God
gave the Children of Israel at that time: Be patient, trust in God, and
stay true to His Path.
AN ISRAELI SOLDIER DESCRIBES
THE SAVAGERY
My first Lebanon raid was in 1986. I was a 19-year-old
Israeli conscript, and my paratroop platoon was sent to a village
whose name I can't recall.… We broke down the door of a home, shoved
the family aside, and pulled a middle-aged man outside. After blindfolding
him and tying his hands behind his back, we took him to a secluded
alley, forced him to his knees, and put a gun to his head, threatening
to shoot if he didn't talk. A U.N. peacekeeper appeared and put
an end to that incident, but there was more to come.
The next day we performed a mock execution on a 10-year-old
Lebanese boy. We forced his family into the kitchen and dragged
him to a nearby orchard. My lieutenant pressed the child's face
into the dirt while I jammed my rifle against his skull.
Although the officer threatened to shoot his head off,
the boy did not respond, keeping silent...
I was a recent transfer from another unit, and my colleagues
were more familiar with the drill... The elderly, female, and young
villagers were trapped in their homes, ordered to observe a 24-hour
curfew. Their men were gathered in a central square, blindfolded,
and hauled off for questioning.
Casual brutality was not limited to lower-income recruits.
Omri, child of an intelligence officer, liked to fire bursts toward
villagers peeking through doorways… During the invasion's first
months, Israel killed 12,000-15,000 persons and lost 360. Although
the Israeli casualties were combatants, most of their victims were
civilians.
James Ron, the writer of this article,
assistant professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, is
a field investigator for human rights groups. (Boston Globe, 25
May 2000)
|
Israeli Massacres
Some of the massacres perpetrated by the Israeli army and terrorist organizations
(e.g., Haganah, Irgun, and Stern) between 1948 and 1982 are described
on the following pages. None of these massacres were directed against
armed groups. The history of Israel is full of violent actions against
and massacres of civilians. Just a few examples will suffice: the blowing
up of the King David Hotel in 1946; the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948,
in which innocent villagers were tortured and killed; the inhuman massacre
at Qibya village in 1958; the massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee
camps, conducted by the pro-Israeli Christian Lebanese militias under
the auspices of Ariel Sharon and resulting in almost 3,000 deaths; the
attack on the Masjid al-Aqsa in 1990, which resulted in 11 deaths and
almost 800 injuries; the massacre at Ibrahim's Mosque in 1994 during morning
prayers; the massacre at Qana refugee camp in 1996; and the 1999 seige
of a tunnel by 4,000 soldiers are just a few examples of this violence.
Those who died in these attacks were innocent people who had no means
of protecting themselves. The massacres listed on the following pages
are merely examples of the violence and terror that have continued from
1947 until today. While the figures are important to showing the extent
of Zionist violence, they cannot even begin to describe the resulting
harm, especially since the violence is still ongoing. Indeed, virtually
every day since 1947 has generated news reports of attack, death, torture,
and violence from the territories occupied by Israel. For example, when
all of those who have died since October 2000 are accounted for, the number
comes to almost 2,000. (This figure does not include those killed in Operation
Defensive Shield.) In other words, Israel continues these daily killings
in a systematic way.
Some Examples of Israel's Half-Century Reign of Terror
The King David Massacre, 1946: 92 dead
This attack was carried out by the Irgun terrorist organization and with
the knowledge of David Ben Gurion, the highest-ranking Zionist official
of the period. A total of 92 people, consisting of Britons, Palestinians,
and Jews, were killed, and 45 were seriously injured.
Ninety-two people, including some Britons,
were killed in an attack arranged by Zionist terrorists on the King
David Hotel in 1946. |
Baldat Al-Shaikh Massacre, 1947: 60 dead
Sixty Palestinians sleeping in their beds, among them women, children,
and the elderly, lost their lives as a result of this attack, which was
carried out by 150-200 Zionist terrorists. The attack began at 2:00 a.m.
and lasted for 4 hours.
Yehida Massacre, 1947: 13 dead
At Yehida, one of the first Zionist settlements, Zionist assailants dressed
as British soldiers opened fire on Muslims.
Khisas Massacre, 1947: 10 dead
Two cars full of Haganah members entered the village of Khisas on the
Lebanese border and opened fire on everyone who crossed their paths.
Qazaza Massacre, 1947: 5 children dead
Five children lost their lives in this episode, in which Zionist terrorists
attacked a random house.
The Semiramis Hotel Massacre, 1948: 19 dead
In an operation aimed at making the Palestinians uneasy and forcing them
out of Jerusalem, a group of Zionist terrorists directed by Israel's first
president, David Ben Gurion, blew up the Semiramis Hotel. Nineteen people
were killed.
Naser al-Din Massacre, 1948
A group of Zionist terrorists dressed as Arab soldiers opened fire on
those townspeople who left their homes to greet them. Only 40 people escaped
the carnage, and the village was wiped off the map.
The Tantura Massacre, 1948: 200 dead
Tantura, now home to about 1,500 Jewish settlers, was the site of a large
massacre of Muslims in 1948. Israeli historian Teddy Katz described the
attack as follows: "From the numbers, this is definitely one of the biggest
massacres."
The Dahmash Mosque Massacre, 1948: 100 dead
Israeli 89th Commando Battalion lead by the future Minister of Defense
Moshe Dayan, announced to the villagers that they would be safe only if
they assembled at the mosque. However, the 100 Muslims who sought refuge
there were slaughtered. The terrified residents of Lydda and Ramle abandoned
their lands. Approximately 60,000 Palestinians emigrated, and 350 more
died en route due to poor medical conditions.
Dawayma Massacre, 1948: 100 dead
This attack was one of the largest Israeli massacres. A majority of those
killed were assembled at the mosque for Friday prayers. Palestinian women
were raped during the attack, and homes were dynamited with people inside
them.
Houla Massacre, 1948: 85 dead
Israeli soldiers forced 85 people into a house and then set it on fire.
Afterwards, most of the terrified residents fled to Beirut. Of the 12,000
original residents of Houla, only 1,200 remained.
Salha Massacre, 1948: 105 dead
After residents of the village were forced into the mosque, the people
were fired upon until not a single person remained alive.
Deir Yassin Massacre, 1948: 254 dead
The fact that the world agenda is controlled by the Western media, most
of which is pro-Israeli, sometimes prevents events occurring within Israel
from coming to light. But some incidents of such violence and cruelty
have been documented in detail by international organizations. This is
one of those incidents, and was carried out by the Irgun and Stern terrorist
organizations.
On the night of April 9, 1948, the people
of Deir Yassin awoke to the order "evacuate the village" coming from loudspeakers.
Before they understood what was happening, they had been slaughtered.
Subsequent Red Cross and United Nations investigations conducted at the
scene showed that houses were first set on fire
and that all people trying to escape the flames were shot dead. During
the attack, pregnant women were bayoneted in their abdomens while still
alive. The victims' organs were mutilated, and even children were beaten
and raped. Throughout the Deir Yassin massacre, 52 children were maimed
under the eyes of their own mothers, and then they were slain and their
heads cut off. More than 60 women were killed and their bodies
mutilated.35 One woman who escaped alive related the
following atrocity that she had witnessed:
I saw a soldier grabbing my sister, Saliha
al-Halabi, who was nine months pregnant. He pointed a machine gun at her
neck, then emptied its contents into her body. Then he turned into a butcher,
and grabbed a knife and ripped open her stomach to take out the slaughtered
childe with his iniquitious Nazi knife.36
Not satisfied with just the massacre, the terrorists
then rounded up all the women and girls who remained alive, removed all
their clothes, put them in open cars, driving them naked through the streets
of the Jewish section of Jerusalem. Jacques Reynier, the Red Cross representative
of Palestine at the time, who saw the mutilated bodies during his visit
to Deir Yassin the day after the attack, could only say: "The situation
was horrible."37
During the course of the attack, 280 Muslims,
among them women and children, were first paraded through the streets
and then shot execution-style. Most of the girls had been raped before
their execution, and the boys' genitals had been cut off.38
  
Those who arrived at the site of the
Deir Yassin massacre the following day discovered gruesome scenes:
decapitated bodies, mutilated children, and women whose bellies
had been slit open. |
It should be pointed out that the terrorists who carried out this atrocity
were not members of radical organizations acting outside the law or beyond
the government's control; rather, they were controlled directly by the
Israeli government. The Deir Yassin massacre was
carried by the Irgun and Stern gangs, under the direct leadership of Menachem
Begin, the future prime minister of Israel.
Begin described
this inhuman operation, merely one example of the official policy of Israeli
brutality, in these words: "The massacre was not
only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without
the 'victory' at Deir Yassin."39 Zionists used
such attacks to terrorize the Palestinians and drive them from their land
so that the immigrating Jews would have a place to settle. Israel Eldad,
a famous Zionist leader, expressed this truth openly when he said:
"Had it not been for Deir Yassin - half a million Arabs would be living
in the state of Israel [in 1948]. The State of Israel would not have existed."40
The Zionists considered this type of ethnic cleansing as vital to establishing
the state of Israel. Indeed these operations, which continued after the
Deir Yassin attack, caused many Palestinians either to abandon their land
and flee, or to suffer the same fate as the residents of Deir Yassin.
The Massacre at Qibya, 1953: 96 dead
Another Zionist attack designed to "encourage" the Palestinians
to flee occurred in Qibya, a village of 2,000 on the Jordanian border.
Later investigations at the scene conducted by quite a few observers clearly
revealed the nature of this atrocity. The Qibya massacre, which occurred
on October 13, 1953, consisted of demolishing 40 houses and murdering
96 civilians, a majority of them women and children. The "101" unit was
led by Ariel Sharon, another future prime minister of Israel. Its approximately
600 soldiers first cordoned off the village and severed its contact with
all other Arab villages. Entering it at 4:00 a.m., the Zionist terrorists
began to systematically demolish houses and kill the residents. An unperturbed
Sharon, who personally led the attack, made the following announcement
after the massacre: "The orders were utterly clear: Qibya was to be an
example to everyone."41
Dr. Yousif Haikal, Jordanian ambassador to the United Nations at that
time, explained the massacre in his report to the Security Council:
The Israelis entered the village and systematically
murdered all occupants of houses, using automatic weapons, grenades,
and incendiaries; and dynamited houses over victims' heads... Forty houses,
the village school, and a reservoir were destroyed. Twenty-two cattle
were killed and six shops looted.42
The famous Catholic journal The Sign, published
in the United States, also reported on the atrocities perpetrated during
this attack. Editor Ralph Gorman explained his thoughts as follows: "Terror
was a political weapon of the Nazis. But the Nazis
never used terror in a more cold-blooded and wanton manner than the Israelis
in the massacre at Kibya."43
Those who later came to the massacre site encountered horrifying images.
Most of the dead bore bullet wounds to the back of the head, and many
had been decapitated. Along with people who died beneath the wreckage
of their houses, many innocent women and children also were brutally murdered.
Kafr Qasem Massacre, 1956:49 dead
In the Kafr Qasem attack, Israeli soldiers
once again murdered innocent babies. |
The attack on Kafr Qasem, during which 49 innocent people, without regard
to women or children, young or old, were brutally murdered, occurred on
October 29, 1956. On this very day, Israel also launched its assault on
Egypt. Israeli frontier guards went on security rounds at about 4:00 p.m.,
claiming that they were securing the borders. They told local officials
in the border towns that curfew from that day onwards was to start from
5:00 p.m. instead of the usual 6:00 p.m. One of these towns was Kafr Qasem,
near the Jewish settlement of Betah Tekfa.
The townspeople were informed of the new curfew only at 4:45 p.m. The
local official told the Israeli soldiers that most of the townspeople
worked outside the town and, as they would just be returning from work,
they could not possibly be informed of this change. At the same time,
Israeli soldiers started to erect a barricade at the town's entrance.
Meanwhile, those working outside the town started returning home. The
first group soon reached the border of the town. What follows is eyewitness
Abdullah Samir Bedir's account of what happened next:
We reached the village entrance at about 4:55 p.m. We
were suddenly confronted by a frontier unit consisting of 12 men and an
officer, all occupying an army truck. We greeted the officer in Hebrew
saying 'Shalom Katsin' which means 'Peace be unto you officer,' to which
he gave no reply. He then asked us in Arabic: 'Are you happy?' and we
said 'Yes.' The soldiers started stepping down from the truck and the
officer ordered us to line up. Then he shouted to his soldier this order:
'Laktasour Otem,' which means 'Reap them!' The soldiers opened fire…44
Bedir, who escaped this terrifying ordeal only by playing dead, was certainly
not the only witness of this brutality. From this moment on, Israeli soldiers
stopped every vehicle attempting to enter the town and executed those
inside. Among them were 15- and 16-year-old boys, young girls, and pregnant
women. Those who heard the noise and went outside to see what was going
on were shot for violating the curfew the moment they stepped outside.
The Israeli soldiers were ordered not to arrest, but to execute, all who
violated the curfew.
This incident, reported in full detail in official Israeli Parliament
records, is one of the most striking examples of official Israeli policy.
| When they are told: "Do not cause
corruption on Earth," they say: "We are only putting things right."
No indeed! They are the corrupters, but they are not aware of it.
(Qur'an, 2:11-12) |
Khan Yunis Massacre, 1956:275 dead
The Israeli soldiers who attacked the refugee
camp in Khan Yunis murdered 275 people. UN officials who conducted an
on-site investigation discovered victims who had been shot in the back
of the head after their hands had been tied.45
The Massacre in Gaza City, 1956: 60 dead
In this attack, Zionists killed 60 people, including women and children.
Fakhani Massacre, 1981: 150 dead
As a result of Israeli air attacks on this
Lebanese region, 150 people died and 600 were wounded.46
The Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre, 1994: 50 dead
On Friday, February 25, 1994 a terrible massacre occurred in Palestine.
In an attack carried out by a Zionist Jew on Muslims gathered for Friday
prayers at the Ibrahimi Mosque, more than 50 Muslims died and almost 300
were wounded. Some of the wounded later died from their injuries.
The massacre was perpetrated by a Jew living in the Kiryat Arba Jewish
settlement in Hebron. This terrorist also turned out to be a reserve officer
in the Israeli army and a member of a Zionist terrorist organization.
Israeli sources reported that he wore military clothing during the attack.
The attacker sneaked into the mosque and hid behind a column as the Muslims
were performing their dawn prayers. As they bowed their heads in unison,
he opened fire on them with a machine gun. According to eyewitness accounts,
he did not act alone - he was simply busy pulling the trigger. As his
clips emptied out, his accomplices replaced them.
Following this incident, Israeli soldiers
surrounded the mosque and prevented reporters from reaching it. Many more
people died when these soldiers opened fire on Palestinian Muslims who
had gathered around the mosque to protest the attack.47
Qana Massacre, 1996: 109 dead
More than 100 people, mostly women and children, lost their lives in
the Qana refugee camp when it was bombed by the Israeli air force. The
terrible scenes of carnage, including those of decapitated children, have
never been forgotten. A UN inspection team determined that the massacre
was deliberate.
Massacre of Sabra and Shatilla
"I had to take the babies and put them in
buckets of water to put out the flames. When I took them out half an hour
later, they were still burning. Even in the mortuary, they smouldered
for hours." Dr. Amal Shamaa of the Barbir hospital, after Israeli phosphorus
shells had been fired into West Beirut, 29 July, 1982.48
The Zionist terrorist operations to intimidate Palestinians and drive
them off their land following WWII resulted in the deaths of thousands
of innocent people. But Israel's attack on the refugee camps of Sabra
and Shatilla during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 will go down in history
as one of the worst acts of Zionist genocide ever committed. During the
attack by Lebanon's Christian Phalangist groups, with the support and
direction of Israeli soldiers, more than 3,000 people, most of them women
and children, were murdered. Subsequent research and investigation showed
that Ariel Sharon, at that time Israel's defense minister and now prime
minister, was responsible for the operation. Due to this bloody attack,
he is still known as "The Butcher of Lebanon."
 
The horrible massacre at the Sabra and Shatilla
refugee camps was carried out under the orders and instructions
of then-Defense Minister and current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. |
Journalist and Middle East expert Robert Fisk
reported on the horrifying scenes he saw immediately after the attack
in an article written after Sharon was elected prime minister:
For everyone who stood in the Sabra and Chatila
refugee camps in Beirut on 18 September 1982, his (Ariel Sharon's) name
is synonymous with butchery; with bloated corpses and disembowelled women
and dead babies, with rape and pillage and murder... Even when
I walk these fetid streets today, more than 18 years after… the ghosts
haunt me still. Over there, on the side of the road leading to the Sabra
mosque, lay Mr Nouri, 90 years old, grey-bearded, in pyjamas with a small
woollen hat still on his head and a stick by his side. I found him on
a pile of garbage, on his back… Just up the lane, I came across two women
sitting upright with their brains blown out, next to a cooking pot...
One of the women appeared to have had her stomach slit open. A few metres
away, I discovered the first babies, already black with decomposition,
scattered across the road like rubbish… The flies racing between the reeking
bodies and our faces, between dried blood and reporter's notebook, the
hands of watches still ticking on dead wrists. I clambered up a rampart
of earth - an abandoned bulldozer stood guiltily nearby - only to find,
once I was atop the mound, that it swayed beneath me. And I looked down
to find faces, elbows, mouths, a woman's legs protruding through the soil.
I had to hold on to these body parts to climb down the other side. Then
there was the pretty girl, her head surrounded by a halo of clothes pegs,
her blood still running from a hole in her back.49
In another article, Fisk describes what he
saw while touring the hospitals where the injured were being treated:
"What we saw here we would not easily forget. Visiting the Barbir hospital
was to see what gunfire does to flesh."50
SABRA
AND SHATILLA MASSACRE
 
  
 
|
The brutality that these pitiful and innocent people were subjected to
should serve as a warning of the Israeli leadership's ideology. Most of
the murdered women had been raped. Pregnant women had been sliced open
so that their babies could be ripped out. Children barely 3 or 4 years
old had been murdered in front of their parents. Many of the men had had
their ears and noses cut off before being shot execution-style.
 A
news report about the massacres appeared in the French Le Monde newspaper
on February 13, 2001. Nihad Hamad, a now-42-year-old survivor, describes
what happened:
The Israeli Armed Forces spent Wednesday
night and Thursday morning surrounding the camp. They wanted to seal off
the east side. Our mujaheddin had left. Around here there was no one left
but some boys of 15 or 16… On Thursday night, the bombing got twice as
intense. We realized our light weaponry wouldn't be of any use. Everyone
in the shelters was a refugee. Everyone was afraid. The elders of the
group, those that people listened to, decided to go to the Israelis and
tell them that the camp would surrender. With white flags in their hands
they got in the car and headed out. They never came back. Some young men
left with weapons and went in the same direction. They never came back
either, nor the ones who went looking for them. Then we realized much
better that we had to get out of here right away… Hundreds of people were
fleeing to the same common salon in the northern part of the camp. There
were so many of us that we almost suffocated. At daybreak there was the
silence of death everywhere; this place was a ghost town now. The bombing
had stopped. Every once in a while we could hear single shots being fired.
Then, from the direction of the mosque, a woman's screams pierced the
silence. Her hair was a tangled mess, her tattered clothes covered
in blood. She had the manner of someone who had lost her mind. At her
feet were children whose throats had been slit... They behaved
brutally, and they used their knives and other incisive tools to carry
out the murders in silence. After the militias finished their work at
the camps, they finished their dirty work at the Gaza Hospital. They dragged
the doctors, nurses, and wounded out of the hospitals and killed them.
Along with those who were missing, we learned that between 3,000 and 3,500
people had been killed.51
Sharon is known by Arabs and throughout the
world as "The Butcher of Lebanon," and displays his ruthlessness
at every opportunity. |
This frightful scene was the work of Ariel
Sharon, known for such remarks as "The Arabs know me, and I know them"
and for describing the Arabs in such disparaging terms as "bugs."52
Following the 1967 War, Sharon caused 160,000 Palestinians to leave East
Jerusalem and become refugees. His punishment techniques include bombing
houses, bulldozing refugee camps, and arresting hundreds of youths for
no reason and subjecting them to torture. When Sharon was responsible
for security in the Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians were assassinated,
thousands were arrested and deported, and in Gaza alone 2,000 homes were
destroyed and 16,000 people were exiled for the second time. Aside from
the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, 14,000 people (including 13,000 unarmed
civilians) died within the space of a few weeks, and about half a million
people were made homeless.
The cruelty and brutality described here has occurred continuously on
Palestinian soil for the past 50 years. Moreover, the examples cited above
are merely those massacres during which many Palestinians lost their lives
on a single day. Similar events, among many others, are as follows: 8
people in al-Sammou, 1966; 9 people in Aitharoun and 16 people in Kawnin,
1975; 20 people in Hanin and 23 in Bint Jbeil, 1976; 7 people in Adloun,
1978; 80 people in Abbasieh, 1979; and 20 people in Saida, 1980. Beyond
these, several people have been killed or maimed every day for years.
And every day houses are still destroyed and people are still driven from
their homeland. Clearly, Israel's ultimate goal is to intimidate the Palestinians,
drive them off their land, and bend them to their will through a systematic
policy of ethnic cleansing.
 The
entire world looks on as this community is murdered, as it is subjected
to blatant genocide. For some reason, most governments have - and continue
to - ignored these brutal and inhumane practices and apply no sanctions
other than the occasional "condemnation."
In his classic work World Orders: Old and New, Middle East commentator
Noam Chomsky describes the Israeli government's view of the Palestinian
people and how American strategists evaluate this view:
As for the Palestinians, U.S. planners had
no reason to doubt the assessment of Israeli government specialists in
1948 that the refugees would either assimilate elsewhere or "would be
crushed": "some of them would die and most of them would turn into human
dust and the waste of society, and join the most impoverished classes
in the Arab countries." Accordingly, there was no need to trouble oneself
about them. These basic interpretations have remained stable until today,
taking concrete form as events unfolded.53
The prophecy of American and Israeli authorities has been fulfilled today.
Moreover, the policy of violence and intimidating Palestinians practiced
during Israel's founding period and early years continues unabated.
The Palestinian Muslims are facing trials and tribulations similar to
those faced by Muslims throughout history. In the Qur'an, God reminds
the believers of that time (the Children of Israel) about Pharaoh's violence:
Remember when We rescued you from the people of
Pharaoh. They were inflicting an evil punishment on you - slaughtering
your sons and letting your women live. In that there was a terrible trial
for you from your Lord. (Qur'an, 2:49)
Indeed, God helps those who are patient, and, according to His law, salvation
is always for genuine believers, even if they are few in number, weak,
or downtrodden. But, we also should realize that this trial is not only
for the Muslims of Palestine; rather, it is for all who witness or know
of this cruelty. For wherever they are and no matter what their condition,
Muslims are obligated to help the wronged and the oppressed. And the greatest
help they can give is to deal with this evil from its roots. In other
words, the greatest help people can offer the Palestinians who continue
to fight for their lives amid the ongoing chaos and strife is to wage
an intellectual struggle against the Zionism's fundamental Social Darwinistic
attitude, which engenders strife, chaos, and anarchy. |
