|
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. |
