OCTOBER 2001
Wednesday October 31, 2001
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Tuesday October 30, 2001
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Monday October 29, 2001
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Sunday October 28, 2001
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Saturday October 27, 2001
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Thursday October 25, 2001
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Wednesday October 24, 2001
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Tuesday October 23, 2001
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Monday October 22, 2001
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Sunday October 21, 2001
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Saturday October 20, 2001
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Wednesday October 17, 2001
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Tuesday October 16, 2001
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Monday October 15, 2001
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Saturday October 13, 2001
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Thursday October 11, 2001
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Wednesday October 10, 2001
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Tuesday October 9, 2001
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Monday October 8, 2001
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Sunday October 7, 2001
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** C o m m e n t :
* Nearly Two Decades Later,
Ariel Sharon Is Indicted For
Sabra and Shatila War Crimes
By
Donald Neff
For a terrorist, Ariel Sharon has led a charmed life—at least up to now. Arik King of Israel, as his adoring admirers call him, may some day have to face trial in a Belgian court on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide arising from the 1982 massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. The charges officially were filed on June 18 before investigating judge Sophie Huguet in Brussels and confirmed as admissible by the Brussels Public Prosecutor’s Office on June 29. It ruled the suit should proceed.
If Sharon actually is brought to trial it would be a rare setback for the 73-year-old Israeli in his long and documented career of waging terror against Palestinians. He started out as a young Haganah fighter causing havoc among Palestinians seeking to protect their land against Jewish attacks in 1947 and beyond. He became a legend in the army in the 1950s when he led the notorious Unit 101 in terror attacks against unarmed Palestinians, in one attack alone killing 66 civilians.1 He fought as a tank commander in Israel’s 1956, 1967 and 1973 wars, his units accompanied by reports of brutality.
In 1971, Sharon formed a special assassination unit to combat unrest among Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip. Sharon’s antagonistic biographer, Uzi Benziman, an Israeli newsman, wrote that Sharon conducted “a reign of terror” against Gazans:2 “On his orders, every adult male in Gaza was stopped and subjected to a thorough search. Periodically, curfews were imposed on the refugee camps, and all residents were assembled for hours on end for purposes of identification. Paths through the refugee camps were widened [by razing homes and businesses] and the population thinned out, to make it harder for terrorists to find refuge.”3 In seven months, between July and February 1972, Sharon reported the deaths of 104 and capture of 742 terrorists.4
Such violent feats qualified Sharon to become Israel’s defense minister in 1981. Sharon came to his powerful post with an ambitious plan. It was to completely destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon “in such a way that they will not be able to rebuild their military and political base,” as he told a group of Israeli officers.5
To accomplish his goals, Sharon in 1982 invaded Lebanon, tampered with Lebanon’s politics to assure the election of pro-Israeli Maronite Christian Bashir Gemayel as president, and sought to evict the Syrian army from Lebanon.6 He failed in all three objectives. The PLO remains a viable force, Gemayel was assassinated and the Syrians are still in Lebanon 19 years later. What is different is that thousands of Lebanese and hundreds of Israelis are dead.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon began on June 6. Within a week Israeli troops reached Beirut and launched a merciless siege of the capital. Over the next nine weeks, Israeli planes, ships and guns, all of them made or financed by the United States, lobbed thousands of aerial bombs and 60,000 shells on the city of more than a half-million residents, indiscriminately killing and wounding thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians.7 Actress Jane Fonda proudly posed with the Israeli troops besieging Beirut while U.S. supporters of Israel defended the invasion. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared at the time that the invasion “opens up extraordinary opportunities for a dynamic American diplomacy throughout the Middle East.…Lebanon can be another testing ground for proving that radical Arab regimes and Soviet backing offer no solution to any of the central issues of concern in the area.”8
The Israeli army control of the Beirut area included two teeming Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. On Sept. 16, a company of 150 “special” Lebanese Christian Phalange fighters, who were working closely with Sharon and who hated the PalestinianÅs, moved into the cramped and twisting streets of the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. Darkness was falling and Israeli mortar units and airplanes dropped flares to aid the Phalangists’ progress.9 e Israelis knew the Phalangists were bloodthirsty. They were lusting for revenge because, only two days before, their leader, Israeli-backed President-elect Bashir Gemayel, had been assassinated.10
Now, on Sept. 16, as the massacres were about to begin, U.S. special envoy Morris Draper was told by Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan that “Lebanon is at a point of exploding into a frenzy of revenge. No one can stop them. They’re [the Phalangists] obsessed with the idea of revenge.”11 Afterwards, Israeli leaders claimed they had no idea that violence was near.
Phalangists killed civilians indiscriminately in the camps. There were no PLO guerrillas, though Israel had claimed there were, so the women, children and old victims were defenseless. Whole families were gunned down or knifed to death. One infant was stomped to death by a man wearing spiked shoes. Another refugee was killed by live grenades draped around his neck.12 Bulldozers were brought in, mass graves hastily dug and truck loads of bodies dumped in them. Throughout the night, the shooting and the screams did not stop.13 The killing lasted until the morning of Sept. 18.
The official Israeli commission of inquiry into the massacres concluded that 700 to 800 persons had been killed in the two camps.14 Non-Israeli estimates were considerably higher. The Palestine Red Crescent put the number at over 2,000, while Lebanese authorities reported that 762 bodies were recovered and 1,200 death certificates issued.15
When a horrified world demanded an explanation of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who himself had committed indiscriminate terror in his youth, he said without a word of regret: “Goyim kill Goyim and they blame the Jew.”16 A prepared cabinet statement said: “A blood libel has been perpetrated against the Jewish people.”17
Despite Israel’s denials of responsibility, New York Times correspondent Thomas L. Friedman declared without qualification: “The Israelis knew just what they were doing when they let the Phalangists into those camps.”18 Sharon and seven other Israeli officials, including Begin, were found guilty the next year by an Israeli commission of “indirect responsibility” for the massacres. Sharon was also found to have “personal responsibility,” and he was ordered to resign or be removed as defense minister.19
Sharon resigned, protesting his innocence, but he was allowed to stay in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio. He remained near the center of Israeli politics in the ensuing years.
Israelis gave him the country’s highest prize in 2000 by electing him their prime minister. Beyond losing his post as defense minister, Sharon never received any punishment for the massacres. In fact, in the years since he has publicly proclaimed his innocence, acting as though the bloodshed was an internal Lebanese affair. A listless world seemed to agree with him and appeared content to forget the massacres.The Belgian suit against Sharon is the first serious legal attack against him—or anyone else, including the Phalangist killers—for the massacres. It was brought by 28 survivors of Sabra and Shatila under a 1993 Belgian law that allows prosecution of non-Belgian citizens regardless of where or when the atrocity occurred.20
The Belgian suit was followed June 23 by a major human rights group calling for a criminal investigation of Ariel Sharon’s role in the massacres. Hanny Megally, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division, said: “There is abundant evidence that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed on a wide scale in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, but to date, not a single individual has been brought to justice.” He added: “The Israeli government...has a responsibility to conduct an investigation into the actions of its own high officials who knew...that atrocities were likely to occur and did not act promptly to stop them once they knew the killing had started.”21
These actions came after a June 17 showing by the BBC of a documentary on the massacres that examined the question of whether Sharon should be put on trial for war crimes. Several persons in the program suggested Sharon should be charged. One was then-U.S. envoy Draper, who flatly said Sharon should have anticipated the massacres, adding: “You’d have to be appallingly ignorant not to expect a bloodbath. I mean, I suppose if you came down from the moon that day, you might not predict it.”22
Israel’s Foreign Ministry condemned the documentary as “distorted, unfair and intentionally hostile.” Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon, said: “There’s anti-Semitism, there’s deception, there’s malice—all put in one show with a sinister intent.”23
The Israeli condemnations of the BBC program almost sounded like Begin’s old complaint that “Goyim kill Goyim and they blame the Jew.” The difference this time is that Ariel Sharon is officially charged in a court of law. If the Belgians do not buckle under Zionist pressure, he may finally some day have to account for his bloody actions in Sabra and Shatila.
Thursday October 4, 2001
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Sharon's government sent its occupation troops into Gaza and are still there destroying Palestinian property and terrorizing Palestinian civilians. Six Palestinians were murdered yesterday including a Palestinian farmer and a taxi driver. In Jerusalem and Hebron, the Israeli occupation forces on orders from Sharon and his Nazi lieutenants Landau and Mofaz are preventing Palestinians from entering the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron altogether and Muslim above the age of 40 from entering the Aqsa Mosque.
Sharon's occupation army calls the destruction of Palestinian homes, the uprooting of trees and the deliberate squashing and tearing Palestinian land apart as 'shaving'. They shave the land turning it into ugly heaps of rubble, sending more and more Palestinian men , women and children into hopelessness and homelessness.
Sharon and his government and the Israeli people will only reap what they plant, in the fifties, Sharon committed massacres and genocide against the Palestinian population, in the sixties, the Israeli government chose to construct Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land and is still doing that. The tragedy of the situation is that the Israeli government is deliberately avoiding seeing the truth, seeing that there is an Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and that the price of peace is a total withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces back to the pre 1967 borders. What Israel did after 1967 on occupied Palestinian land is illegal, is against Geneva conventions, against UN resolutions, against normal human behavior and is against peace. The Palestinian people, 4 million of them on the historical land of Palestine and 4 million others in the Palestinian Diaspora on the gates of Palestine will not make peace with Israel as long as it is still occupying the West Bank including Arab Jerusalem and Gaza. 8 million Palestinians will continue to struggle against the Israeli occupation and for freedom and independence and Israel will never have peace until it makes the long overdue decision to terminate its occupation and leave.
The Palestinian leadership holds Israel responsible for the escalating violence. The state terrorism exercised by Israel and its occupation army against 3.2 million Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories have reached unprecedented levels, Israeli atrocities reached every single Palestinian family, reached every Palestinian home and affected if Palestinian individual be they children, old or young. Sharon never learned the lesson of history, he and his people will find out sooner rather than later that they have no choice but to leave the occupied Palestinian territory, let us hope the price which is being paid will not go higher.
Sharon's government gave its occupation army free hand to deal with the Palestinian people and Palestinian resistance to occupation and settlers.
Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories are planning demonstrations against Sharon because he could not deliver security for them.
Sharon will never deliver security or peace. Sharon can only deliver destruction and war, Sharon can give his army free hand, and Mofaz can order his range of weapons including tanks, helicopter gunships, fighter jets, missiles, stun grades , rubber coated steel bullets and use them to murder to uproot trees to destroy homes , but he will never deliver peace or security to Israel. Peace can be delivered through political dialogue, through diplomatic means, through acknowledging that occupation can not last, through telling the Israeli people that peace and occupation do not go together, through making the courageous step and announcing the intention to evacuate the occupied Palestinian territories to the last centimeter, no spoils of war.
The Palestinian public could demand that president Arafat does not resume negotiations with Israel until Israel remove it siege, until Israel stops its daily murder of Palestinians that averaged 4 Palestinians killed every day last week, until, Israel pay back Palestinian money kept in Israeli treasury bank accounts, until Israel remove its tanks and bulldozers destroying Palestinian property , homes and fertile land.
The US administration call for stooping 'violence' and provocative actions. Bush's statement on a Palestinian state is not taking seriously by many Palestinian intellectuals unless it takes the shape of tangible steps that changes the 'vision' into reality.
Wednesday October 3, 2001
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Tuesday October 2, 2001
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Monday October 1, 2001
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