I attended the event and it was great. Everyone should see the movie, "Dispatches: The Killing Zone", which was shown. Very powerful film. Thanks to those who organized this talk!

I was there myself. It was very eye opening to listen to someone who had been through and seen so much. I believe he was making a truly valid statement by encouraging us to wake our neighbors up to what is really going on in Palestine; that this can be just as vital to making a change as an activist who goes to protest in Palestine.

Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Monday caught a 10-year-old Palestinian boy trying to get a large bomb through a roadblock in the West Bank city of Nablus.

Border Police sappers managed to safely detonate the device. The boy was reportedly with a group of school children.

It is reported that the boy told the soldiers that he had been offered a large sun of money to carry the device through the roadblock. It is believed the device was destined for a terror attack inside Israel.

ISM supports the right of the Arabs to resist the occupation.

However, the method of resistance is to board Israeli buses and blow up children or blow up women and children as they stand outside their homes next to temples.

The Arabs resist occupation by entering resturants and killing people as they eat pizza.

The Arabs resist occupation by killing people at boarder crossings.

The Arabs resist occupation by killing 13 year old boys hiking in the desert by hitting them repeadely with rocks on their heads.

The Arabs resist by sending pregnant women to kill people shopping for groceries.

The Arabs resist by entering bedrooms and kill a mother reading a bedtime story to her two boys.

The Arabs resist by not creating any jobs for their people and limit their activities to buying guns, bombs and stolen cars.

What the above poster fails to realize is that this is a small percentage of the Palestinian population. You might say that the Palestinian people or their leadereship don't do enough to stop the violence. You say that the Palestinian people applaud the suicide bombers. This is only true in part. But turn it around. While a small percentage of the Palestinians get caught up in the violence, every single Israeli citizen is conscripted into one of the most well financed armies on the planet. They also go into Palestinian civilian areas and blow stuff up, except usually instead of pizza parlors and buses, its missile fired from 2,000 feet into an apartment. And thats only one example. All the violence must stop. The Israeli Government (note, I did not write "the Jewish people") must begin to withdraw from the Occupied Territories. Then the violence will subside......

"hey also go into Palestinian civilian areas and blow stuff up, except usually instead of pizza parlors and buses, its missile fired from 2,000 feet into an apartment."

Allhu Akbar!!! Allah (swt) has seen fit to make Israel stronger then any of its Arab neighbors!!! Masha'allah!!!!

I attended the Brian Avery event at the RCNV and saw the movie, "The Killing Zone". Here are some highlights. The movie, a documentary of ISM activity in Gaza showed the destruction of a row of houses, one of which Rachel Corrie died defending.

The narrator mentioned the tunnels, very briefly, and without explanation as to why the Israelis were so intent on destroying them. The tunnels were the reason the IDF was destroying the row of houses on the border of Gaza and Egypt. Through those tunnels, the Palestinians smuggle guns, ammo, rockets, bombs, and explosives to be used against Israeli citizens. The Israeli government was faced with the dilemna of what to do. They could 1. Declare war on Egypt and break the peace treaty or 2. They could try to monitor the tunnels and kill people who try to bring munitions though them. 3. They could do nothing and allow the weapons to be used to kill Israeli citizens or 4. They could find and destroy the tunnels with no loss of life. Obviously they chose the last option, and if Rachel Corrie hadn't stood in front of the bulldozer, no one would have died. The driver of the bulldozer thought he was saving lives by destroying the tunnels.

The documentary film crew got a call that a little girl had been shot while sitting at her desk while in school. The film crew raced to the hospital and were lucky enough to be filming just as she emerged from her coma and gleefully greeted her brothers and sisters and her mother.
What a Hallmark moment! But in a bittersweet turn of events, they discover that she is completely blind.

How extremely lucky (as filmmakers) they were to be there just as she came out of the coma!!

The film crew visits the UN school where she was shot. The narrator shows the bullet hole still in the glass and points to the hill nearby which she says is "an Israeli position." Could it have been a bullet from someone other than an Israeli? The narrator does not ask this question. In fact, every bullet is from the IDF according to "The Killing Zone."

Do Palestinians ever fire shots in the air? Do Palestinians ever hit civilians in the crossfire of their gun battles with the IDF? This film does not consider this possibility.

The film shows the account Alice Cox who witnessed Rachel Corrie's death. She said that Rachel was "eyelevel with the bulldozer driver. Her head could be seen above the blade." With her head visible above the blade, how could the driver see her bright orange vest which the ISM has repeatedly maintained is proof the driver purposely ran her over?

The film shows footage of another encounter the ISM has with a bulldozer. Four or five ISM protesters with orange vests virtually surround it, pushing physically at the blade and running right in front of it. One man nearly gets crushed and only at the last second sprints away. If this is a typical ISM bulldozer confrontation, its surprising no one else has gotten killed yet. The film shows how very dangerous this form of protest is.

The filmmaker's interview IDF member Pinky Zoaez at an Israeli outpost in Gaza. While the filmmakers are there, their cameras record images of rocket fire on Israeli positions. Zoaez describes the area as "a combat zone" and the film provides the evidence of this. Poofs of smoke appear on the screens from the surveillance cameras.

The filmmakers move on to document the shooting of Tom Hearndahl who one witness painfully recalls was rescuing children when he was shot.

The film shows an Israeli armored personal carrier drive by and 8 or 10 boys pelt it with rocks. The narrator's voice talks of "children trapped in violence" but the picture shows teenage boys acting violently. No mention was made of their parent's role. Do they not know what these boys are doing? Do they encourage them to engage in this dangerous activity? We don't get a clue from this film except that Israel is to blame for everything. Blame the Jews.

As for Brian Avery, he and his Swedish co-worker with the ISM heard bullets firing outside their office. They went out at night, in a combat zone and during curfew to "see if anyone had been hit or needed medical care." He claims the IDF shot 230 rounds at him and his co-worker. He was hit once and the other worker was not hit at all. That's some pretty poor shooting. One hit and 229 misses?

Avery complains he had to wait one and half hours for an ambulance to cross into a combat zone at night during a gunbattle and during curfew to transfer him to a better equipped and better staffed Israeli hospital. He claims that the Israelis would not do this for him if he were Palestinian. There he has two surgeries which, since medicine is socialized in Israel, was paid for him by Israel. Avery gives no credit to the Israeli doctors and nurses nor does he express his appreciation for the medical bills they paid for. Instead, now that he is better, he is going on tour to spread the word of how bad the Israelis are and how warm and generous the Palestinian people are.

As for Observer's comments that Palestinian violence is only done by a small group of people. The Palestinian Authority (the PA not the PLO)has an armed police force of 40,000 men who are one and the same members of groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah, Hizzbollah, the PLO, etc. Recent opinion polls show that 75% of the Palestinians support the suicide bombings. Even more chilling is a poll of Palestinian mothers which found that one in five want their children to become a suicide bomber. Observer hasn't seen the incitement the PA promotes to hate the Jews, kill the Jews, and the glory of martyrdom even for children.

Avery scoffs at those who claim the Arabs "want to drive the Jews into the sea." For the Israelis, it is not mere paranoia. The Nazi holocaust in the 1940's, four Arab wars of annihilation since 1948 against Israel, two intifadas and 107 suicide bombers coming from the West Bank (or Samaria and Judea if you want to use the non-Jordanian name for the region)are more than enough reason for the Israelis to believe that their very existance is at stake.
For more articles on this topic please visit www.dafka.org www.memri.org (for English translations of Arab newspapers)and for anti-Israeli bias in the press visit www.honestreporting.org

Becky, when you want complain about an event and the way things are presented, it would be a great idea to actually get to the event to hear the speaker give his/her presentation.

Becky, you missed Brian Avery's presentation which he gave from about 6 PM until about 6:45 PM.

Becky, this sentance is misleading, "I attended the Brian Avery event at the RCNV and saw the movie, "The Killing Zone.""

Becky, you missed Brian Avery's presentation, yet you play it off like you were there to listen to what he had to say.

And, you are sending out links to 'honest reporting'

http://www.dafka.org/
Becky....thanks for the Link!!

Oh my GOD!!! I just watcehed the Danny Pearl Video, where peaceloving moslems cut off his head!
These people are simply monsters, ghouls, members of a death cult. FUCK THESE BASTARDS!!! They need to be fought on every front!

First of all, Brian did not go out into the street at night, when he was shot. It was actually late afternoon or early evening, around 5 or 6. It was light out and Brian was wearing a bright orange, reflective vest. Tobias Karlson, who was with him is a Swede and is white and blonde, he was wearing a white t-shirt. ISM volunteers had been working in the area for months and the Israeli troops were well aware of their presence. Brian and Tobias were obviously unarmed and when the APC and the tank approached, they held their arms out to the side, to display their empty hands. The shooting from the tank, that Brian and five other witnesses described as being fired directly at Tobias and Brian, was completely unprovoked. Brian describes the Israeli troops as young, angry men that have a slanted and racist view of the Palestinians whose towns they occupy. It is not unbelievable that young, angry men with guns would shoot at people without provocation, because they view them as assisting the enemy. Even if that assistance is nonviolent.
As for the tunnels that Becky mentions. There was no such tunnels under the house that Rachel was defending. In fact human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch state that these tunnels do exist, but that the demolition of homes is all out of proportion to the number of the tunnels that exist. Hundreds of homes have been demolished in Rafah in which there were no such tunnels. One wonders what the Israeli troops are doing in Gaza in the first place. These are not their towns and cities that they occupy and shoot up. These are Palestinian areas. The only Israelis in Gaza are living in illegal settlements. A couple thousand settlers living illegally next to 1.3 million Palestinians, are the excuse for this massive military assault in Gaza. If these settlers were pulled out, then Israel could defend it's true border, on the Green Line and not waste so many Palestinian and Israeli lives trying to take land and occupy a people that simply want their freedom.

The statement above from Kelly about the ten year old boy trying to smuggle bomb through a road block sounds alot like the completely false claims about pregnant women blowing themselves up to kill Israelis. This has never occurred. Kelly, please offer proof of your claim. I would like to investigate that one.

'Militants wanted to blow up 10-year-old boy'

March 16 2004 at 01:40AM
Cape Times

Nablus, West Bank - A 10-year-old Palestinian boy who was arrested on Monday in the West Bank carrying explosives, was being used by Palestinian militants as a suicide bomber, Israeli security sources said.

Witnesses at the Huwara checkpoint near here said the child, who worked as a porter, was taken into Israeli custody after he was found in possession of up to 10kg of explosives.

"Two Tanzim operatives from Nablus attempted to use his (the boy's) position at the checkpoint, and the fact that the soldiers know him and don't suspect him, to carry out a suicide bombing," the source said.

He was referring to militants from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

"They had planned to remotely operate the explosive in his bag by means of a mobile phone as he was crossing the checkpoint," the source said.

But he stressed the boy had no part in the plan and did not know he was to be used as a suicide bomber.

"He had no idea of what he was doing. He had no idea those people were taking advantage of him," the source said. "He was not part of this."

The checkpoint was closed while a controlled explosion was carried out. - Sapa-AP

* This article was originally published on page 2 of The Cape Times on March 16, 2004

I attended the event. I found Brian sincere and I learned quite a bit about what is actually happening there. People need to attend these events and educate themselves about the reality, because they are not going to get it from the mainstream media here.

In response to "resistance" : If I were to say that: " The way that the Jews settle land, is that they pull people out of their cars and beat them to death with rocks. The way that Jews clear land for settlement, is they indiscriminately massacre towns full of hundreds of women and children. The way that Jews enforce an illegal occupation is by shooting missiles into a crowded street, after they have already hit their target and murder children, who were riding their bike in the street. The way that Jews enforce a curfew in a Palestinian town, is by shooting a woman and her young daughter returning from the store with food in their hands. The way that Jews make way for Jewish only settlments, is they demolish Palestinian homes, making the inhabitants homeless and then refuse to let them move into a home in the settlement because they are not Jewish. " If I wrote these things, as you have written similiar things about Arabs, you would call me a racist, an anti-semite. And, if I meant these things ( I do not ) you would be right. Although these things have happened and continue to happen, it is not because the individuals who commit these acts are Jewish.

There are murderous acts committed by both Israelis and Palestinians. There are religious fundamentalists and killers on both sides. By focusing only on those individuals, you destroy any hope for peace.

There are also peace-loving people on both sides who are working together (nonviolently) to end the illegal occupation of Palestinian towns in the West Bank and Gaza. And to create a compromise, a peaceful solution to this conflict. They are the ones who deserve our support. Let us not be racist and see only the inhuman acts among either people. Let us join with the following groups and individuals to bring a truly peaceful solution to this horrible conflict.

_www.rhr.israel.net (Rabbis for Human Rights )

_www.almubadara.org ( here you can read about Palestinians working for democracy )

_www.btselem.org ( an Israeli human rights group )

_www.gush-shalom.org ( an Israeli peace group )

_www.taayyush.org ( Israelis and Palestinians working together for peace )

_www.icahd.org ( Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions

_www.refusersolidarity.net ( Site about Israeli refuseniks )

_www.yesh-gvul.org/english/ ( Support for Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories )

_www.palsolidarity.org ( Palestinians, Israelis and internationals working nonviolently to end the Occupation. Roughly one-third of the participants are Jewish )

_www.tikkun.org ( Bay area journal devoted to progressive Jewish politics and spirituality )

_www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org ( Bay area jewish peace group)

_www.mideastweb.org/ccrr (Palestinians and Israelis working for Reconciliation )

For some history on the conflict read " The Iron Wall", by Avi Schlaim. You can get this book at the local library. Also see " A History of Modern Palestine", by Ilan Pappe, a professor in Israel.

" There are also peace-loving people on both sides who are working together (nonviolently) to end the illegal occupation of Palestinian towns in the West Bank and Gaza. And to create a compromise, a peaceful solution to this conflict. They are the ones who deserve our support. Let us not be racist and see only the inhuman acts among either people. Let us join with the following groups and individuals to bring a truly peaceful solution to this horrible conflict."

This is correct, but, the basic problem is that there are also those among the Palestinians who want nothing less then the extermination of Israel.
There is no negotiating with these people, and peace, is not an option. The PLO charter has never changed, nor has the Hamas Charter.
The creation of a "palestinian" state will mean defact recognition of Israel...the Arab world will not let this happen- the Islamic world will not let this happen. What is the alternative? Israel must continue to defend her existence, and various groups of islamists and Pan Arabists must continue to attack israel.
Several among the Plaestinians who want peace with Israel can periodically be found haninging in Manger Square, after having been dragged through the steets and gutted...Israel will do the right thing. total disengagement and separation...the insuing palestinian civil war will make Chicago in the 20s look like a picnic...

Again, I say there are those on both sides who are extremists. You can seemingly only see the stubborn extremism on one side. I agree that there are fundamentalist groups that would like to see Israel destroyed. From those that I know who have lived in the West Bank and Gaza ( Jews and Israelis among them ), support for these groups is far less than you imagine. But I agree that those attitudes exist. What you fail to recognize, is that the same type of racist, hateful attitudes exist among Israelis, towards Palestinians. There are many Israelis who want nothing more than the extermination of all the Palestinians. There is openly racist talk and discussion of transfer among Israeli politicians and in the press. There is widespread and overwhelming support in Israel for the terror tactics used by Sharon's military in Palestinian towns and cities. Racism and religious fundamentalism exists on both sides. It exists in a climate of fear, that is a result of this sickening and ever increasing level of violence. Increasing the repression and violence towards the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories will only increase the level of hatred and violence. Likewise, the suicide attacks in Israel only further increase fear and support of the Sharon tactics. The question is how to end the cycle. You and I fundamentally disagree on how to reach peace. Just as I do not believe that the attack on Iraq will make Americans safer, I do not believe that the attacks on Palestinians will make Israel any safer. In fact, it is the violence that fuels the extremists on both sides. The fundamentalists on both sides would run out of support, if the violence ended. They would be pushed to the fringe. So the question is again, how to end the violence? You think more violence is the answer. I disagree. The true path to peace lies with those on both sides who are already working together, to reach a just and lasting peace through a compromise.

A website that I neglected to mention earlier: www.parentscircle.israel.net ( bereaved families on both sides of the conflict working together to create understanding )

In the first intifada, the resistance was largely nonviolent, involving strikes and civil disobedience. What followed was Oslo, a joke. While the "peace process" was under way, settlement building continued unabated. And at the end, what was offered was not a state, but a facade of a state. Barak's "generous offer" was, in reality, limited control of a little over eighty percent of the West Bank, with no control over airspace, water or borders within the West Bank. And a suburb of East Jerusalem as the capital. Oslo improved nothing. It was a charade to maintain the status quo, continued theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank. Israel is not defending her existence. Israel is trying to take most of the West Bank and to continue to put a stranglehold on the rest. It is conquest of land, plain and simple. Israel has one of the most powerful and sophisticated militaries in the world and the complete backing of the U.S., as well as nuclear weapons. If all Israel was doing was disengaging and seperating, there would not be a problem. Let them build their wall on their border, the Green Line. Fine. That is not what is happening. Large areas of the West Bank are being grabbed by Israel, through this wall and are cutting people off from their families, their fields, their livelihoods, breeding more resentment and rage.
Palestinians can and do work for peace with Israelis every day. Those who are killed as "collaborators" are those who are thought to have worked with the Israeli military, not those who work with peace groups. We have executed so called traitors in this country and most people would consider this fine. I don't, I am just pointing out that it is not unique to Palestinians. ( Rabin was killed by a Jewish extremist ) It is actually inevitable in such a fractured and destroyed society, where there is virtually no law, other than the Israeli occupiers, who did not help matters when they deliberately destroyed the government offices and all other infrastucture in the West Bank close to a year ago. The PA is no longer holding power. Israel holds all the cards.
The reality is, that the majority of Palestinians would accept a state in the West Bank and Gaza, with peaceful relations with Israel. All Israel would have to do is pull out all illegal settlements and return to the Green Line. Then Israel could much more easily defend it's people, because they would not be living scattered about in the West Bank. International peacekeepers and observers could come in, as Palestinians and some Israelis have called for, to keep the sides working peacefully, as the transition occurred. As for right of return, refugees who want to return, could move into the new Palestinian state and for those who could not, compensation for their loss, could be negotiated. This may not eliminate violence altogether, because their is much hatred and racism between the two groups, but there is also a shared history of working together. And as life becomes more liveable on both sides, the acceptance of the use of violence will diminish and be edged out. As for neighboring Arab states, some already have full peaceful relations with Israel and all the Arab nations have agreed to the same, if Israel simply pulls out of the West Bank and Gaza. (this with no right of return) Israel refused this proposal. Israel needs to stop trying to take the land in the West Bank and Gaza and compromise. They cannot have it all. They must learn to share and to treat Palestinians like human beings, instead of collectively punishing the whole population. Until Israel ceases to relentlessly pursue a policy of conquest, with no concern to the loss of life, there will be no peace.

In response to Ilan. It is true that I missed the first part of Brian's talk, and I arrived just as the movie had begun. But I had been listening to Brian Avery on Free Radio Santa Cruz for about an hour and a half earlier that day on George's show so I got a pretty good impression of his rap. Did he thank the Israeli doctors and nurses for the care he was given in the Israeli hospital? Did he thank the socialist state of Israel for paying for his first two surguries and the ambulance service that took him there? If he did, I do apologise.

You say that the Jewish settlements in Gaza are illegal? Did you know that Netzarim, a Jewish community in Gaza has been there over 900 years?

Your claim that every Jewish community in Gaza and the West Bank is "illegal" is not based on fact. The West Bank and Gaza have had a continuous Jewish presence for over 3000 years! In fact, the only time no Jews lived on the West Bank was between 1948 and 1967 when Jordan moved in (without any UN authorization at all) and occupied the West Bank. They declared that no Jew could live there!!! No wonder, Jewish people wanted to move back after 1967. Neither resolution 242 (passed after '67) nor the Oslo Accords forbid the building of Jewish communities on the West Bank. Besides--you certainly are not advocating the area be entirely cleansed of Jews are you? Why can't Jewish people and Palestinian Arabs live side by side in peace in the same land?

I was not at the event. You are thinking of another response.
What I said was that there are no Israelis living in Gaza, other than settlers. I did not say Jews. Of course there has been a Jewish presence in Palestine for thousands of years. However, it was in the late 1800's when Zionists began immigrating to Palestine en masse. At that time, there were very few Jews living there. The few that were living there, mostly in and around Jerusalem, were very religious Jews. The vast majority of those Jews, who were living peacefully side by side with their Palestinian Arab neighbors, did not support the Zionist enterprise. They believed that it would damage relationships with those neighbors, because of it's exclusionism.
To say that in 67' all that the Israelis did was move back into the West Bank and Gaza is misleading. They seized that land preemptively by military force, taking all of Jerusalem and illegally occupying the land. Many Israeli political and military leaders have admitted openly, in the Israeli press, that this was a war of conquest, to take that land. International law dictates that when land is seized and occupied by military force, the occupying power cannot move in their civilian population and settle them there. Moreover, it states that the occupying power must protect the people that they occupy, Israel is doing the exact opposite. Israel is attempting to make life so utterly miserable for the Palestinians, that they will leave. You have a supercharged, racist situation, where one side ( the Israelis ), has almost all of the military might and wields it very aggressively, with little regard for civilians. Yes, the suicide bombings are absolutely wrong, this does not justify massive collective punishment. In fact, collective punishment and home demolitions are both forbidden by international law.
Oslo stated that neither side should try to effect facts on the ground, that neither side should try to actively predetermine the outcome of process. Israel ignored that, by actually increasing settlement activity. They totally disregarded the spirit of Oslo by accelerating the takeover of the West Bank.
Of course, I do not support the cleansing of all Jews from the area. What I want is for Israel to be a good neighbor. Palestinians have stated that they would have no problem with Jews living in a Palestinian state, in the West Bank and Gaza. Those who need to be removed, are the illegal settlers who have a fundamentalist religious agenda of taking that land through force and are a paramilitary, hostile force. Jews who want to stay and live peacefully, as citizens in a Palestinian state are free to remain, if they choose. I think that for now, a two state solution, with the sides being monitored by an international presence, is the only way to reach a peaceful outcome. Maybe in the future, when the trust has returned ( Palestinian Arabs and Israelis and Jews do have a history of living peacefully side by side, for the most part. ), there can be one democratic state, where everyone there shares all the land together. We are not there yet. There is too much hostility right now, and the sides need to be seperated. That seperation needs to be fair, though and not enforced by the military might of Israel. The only fair solution right now, is the two state solution, which the majority of Palestinians are perfectly willing to accept.

I am constantly amazed that Becky Johnson can see the moving of a railing on a public planter as a gross violation of human and homeless rights, yet the bulldozing of homes is fine, because the end will justify the means. To put it differently, you support the homeless in Santa Cruz and the creation of homelessness in the Middle East. This inconsistency is remarkable, and I honestly had to re-read earlier posts that were so pro-military occupation because I thought they were posted as a joke. Can you please explain this huge, huge, huge hypocrisy? How the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is fine and dandy, but the occupation of Iraq is the worst thing that has ever happened (I'm being glib, I know). I know for me that the ends justify the means in trying to make Santa Cruz less attractive to elements that are not desirable, so moving a rail seems rather modest. Look around the area- you do NOT see the huge amount of non-local homeless people in the downtown areas of any other local city (Salinas has 150,000 people, yet I have never seen congregations of several dozen homeless people just sitting around). The fact is, Santa Cruz is an attractive place for homeless people. If it wasn't why would people flock from around the country to be homeless here? But I digress; I still want to hear the justification for the fight against the "fascist" policies of our city, but the acceptance of the "reasonable" actions of the Israeli military?

" ISM supports the right of the Arabs to resist the occupation."

How come they're not helping the Lebanese resist OCCUPATION? 20 years of Brutal Military OCCUPATION of Lebanon by Syria....

In response to Melissa. Palestinian women have masqueraded as pregnant women to smuggle bombs, guns, and ammo to the terrorists. I think I remember a case of a female suicide bomber who masqueraded as a pregnant woman before blowing herself up along with as many Jewish civilians as possible. (they do keep score and more dead Jews is better) I am not aware of any pregnant Palestinian suicide bomber. Nor have I ever heard of a Jewish suicide bomber killing Palestinian civilians. Ever.

Response to George: You spoke of educating the public about things not portrayed in the corporate media. But I found some of the things you said to be a mis-education.

You claimed (at the RCNV talk with Brian Avery) that 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted in 1948 and displaced from their ancestral homeland (I am para-phrasing here). You claimed that most of the Palestinians (actually they were Arabs) were driven out by the Israelis at gunpoint.

How can this be? There were only 650,000 Jews in Israel in 1948. They were not heavily armed. They had to invent little one-bullet guns made out of pipes on the spot. The Arab countries of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Libya all sent troops to "drive the Jews into the sea" one day after they had declared independence. The Jews, who had no IDF at the time, were out-numbered 10 to one. How did they take the time to drive 750,000 Arab Palestinians out of the one-day old country of Israel.

Your assertions strain the bonds of reason. Obviously they fled or were forced out by other Arabs. In fact, the most egregious treatment of the Palestinian-Arab refugees in 1948 was by the Egyptians. Invest in a history book.

p.s. While you are at it, buy a map. There is currently no country called "Palestine."

Jerry, when was the last time you saw armed gunmen coming over your fence to kill you? They ARE coming over the fence to kill the Israelis. The situation is different for them than it is for us or for most people, unless they live in a war zone.

My views on homeless civil rights in Santa Cruz and home destructions in Israel are completely consistant. The Israelis have no desire to make anyone homeless--even the Palestinians. They are bulldozing the homes as a desparate measure to try to stop the killings by the suicide bombers as a deterrent to future bombings. Even you must agree that a house is not as important as a life. If Israeli merchants moved a railing so "the wrong kind of people" wouldn't gather there, I would be against that too. The railing is in my own home town so I feel more responsible for it. If I had not fought against it, its the same as compliance, acceptance, and even approval.

Please do a google search and look for how many Jewish and Israeli organizations there are out there that support homeless people. Then do a google search and find how many Palestinian organizations support homeless people. Get back to me. Okay?

Becky, you do not have to resort to condescension just because we disagree. I actually own many history books on the subject of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Most of these books were written by widely respected Israeli historians, such as Tom Segev and Benny Morris. I have also taken a semester of Middle East history at Cabrillo College and received an A. I have interviewed many professors on my radio program, for example Jeff Halper, an Israeli and Joel Beinin, professor of Middle East history at Stanford, an American Jew.

You refer to some things that I actually said on my radio show, not at the event. But you got them wrong. What I said was that roughly 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were driven out of Palestine in 1948. I stated that they did not leave because their leaders called on them to leave, which is a myth that has been proven false, even by Israeli historians. I then said that most of them fled the fighting, but that many left because they were forced out by Jewish terrorist organizations who perpetrated massacres and then broadcast them to the Palestinian populace, in an effort to frighten them into leaving. Don't take my word for it. Benny Morris has researched it. You can get his books at the main library. When I said Palestine, I refer to what the area was called at the time. Even today, many Israeli historians refer to the area as modern Palestine. It is actually predominantly Israeli historians who have exploded the myths around the creation of Israel. The David and Goliath fight myth has been totally debunked. Actually the Israeli armies were better organized and stronger than their invading neighbors in 1948. The Arab nations were at odds with each other and failed because of this. Read "The Iron Wall" by Jewish professor Avi Schlaim for the full story, also available at the main library.

Becky, it seems that you get all your information from right wing extremists, such as dafka.org and other extreme groups. What history books have you read. Please let me know. I will check them out. Sincerely..

When you say to Jerry that the home demolitions are a desperate measure to stop suicide bombers, you are wrong. Acoording to The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions www.icahd.org , 94% of the roughly ten thousand Palestinian homes which have been demolished since 1967, were not connected in any way to terrorists. In fact home demolitions are not a new practice and have been going on since 1948. Here is a quote from Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, in his book, "A History Of Modern Palestine" : Pgs. 138-139 "By the winter of 1949, the guns were silent. The second phase of the war had ended, and with it the second, but not the last, stage of the 'cleansing' of Palestine was over."; "While in the first phase it was urban Palestine that was subjected to expulsions and massacres, the bulk of the population living in the rural areas became victims of this policy after May 1948. Out of about 850,000 Palestinians living in the territories designated by the U.N. as a Jewish state, only 160,000 remained on or nearby their land and homes. Those who remained became the Palestinian minority in Israel. The rest were expelled or fled under the threat of expulsion, and a few thousand died in massacres. Thus, when the winter was over and the spring of 1949 warmed a particularly frozen Palestine, the land as we have described it in this book-reconstructing a period stretching over 250 years-had changed beyond recognition. The countryside, the rural heart of Palestine, with it's colourful and picturesque villages, was ruined. Half of the villages had been destroyed, flattened by Israeli bulldozers which had been at work since August 1948 when the government had decided either to turn them into cultivated land or to build new Jewish settlements on their remains." ; "Three quarters of a million Palestinians became refugees. This was almost 90 percent of those living in what was designated as the Jewish state. By the winter of 1948, they were already in tents provided by international charity organizations, warmed only by the U.N. resolution promising them a quick return to their homes. Those living in the Gaza Strip became acquainted with Egyptian military rule, harsh at the time, but mostly indifferent, in a packed area that included the largest segment of the refugee community."
Also on pgs. 139-140, Pappe says, " Palestine was lost to the Palestinians in the 1948 war, as much on the diplomatic front as on the battlefield. The tacit understanding reached between Israel and Jordan on the eve of the war over the partitioning of post-Mandate Palestine neutralized the Arab legion, Jordan's efficient, British led army, which confined its activity to the area around Jerusalem. This was a stategic decision that determined the balance of power in the 1948 war. In all, apart from a short period of parity, the Jewish side had more, but not significantly more, soldiers and ammunition as the war continued. It was highly mobilized compared to its opponents, and far better organized. The Hagana could draw from a reserve of Western-trained and homegrown officers with military expeience. It had an effective centralized system of command and control and fought over a relatively small area, enabling it to operate swiftly and more efficiently than the Egyptian or Iraqi armies, fighting a long way from home. The settlement policy of the Jewish Agency left many settlements in isolated positions and the general balance of power was not reflected around these spots. There were, according to the official Israeli foundational mythology, a few Jews against many Arabs in several battles, and Jewish acts of heroism were indeed performed on these killing fields, but this was not universal. Nonetheless, the 660,000-strong Jewish community suffered 6,000 deaths, of which 2,000 were civilians: in all, 1 percent of the population." Ilan Pappe teaches politics at Haifa University in Israel. He has written extensively on the politics of the Middle East. His books include "A History of Modern Palestine. One Land,Two Peoples", The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,1947-1951" and "The Palestine Question" (1999)
Another author to check out: Tanya Reinhart, Israeli scholar and author of "How To End the War of 1948". Also check out the Frontline video, "Journey to the Occupied Lands" available at the Santa Cruz public library.

Dude, I always wanted to watch that Daniel Pearl beheading video! Where did you find it? Is it on the internet?

George. The "historians" you put so much faith in are actually history revisionists who are peddling the Arab anti-Israeli viewpoint which is based on a foundation of lies. You present yourself as so educated, but you are going exclusively to these questionable sources for information. You discard sources that dispute your "facts" and call them "right-wing extremists."

You claim Israel has committed many massacres against the Arabs, but you completely mis-represent what happened in Deir Yassin (the ONLY Jewish massacre in its 54 yr history) and claim "there were many more." Of course you never mention Arab massacres of Jews. Or Arab massacres of Arabs. It is so obvious that you are only interested in points of view that put the Jewish State of Israel in a bad light. And you have really gone out of your way to court and foster the worst of the lot---Wendy Campbell, Alison Weir, Adam Shapiro, historian Edward Said, Stephen Zunes, Tanya Reinhart and others.

I am not saying that the Israelis are perfect or that human rights violations have not been committed by them or by individual Israelis. I'm sure that they have. But when you compare these violations with what goes on almost every day in most Arab countries ---the cloistering of women, the banning of all synagogues, the lack of gay rights, the lack of freedom of speech, the unchecked incitement such as mainstream Egyptian newspapers publishing news articles about how Jews use the blood of baby Palestinians to make their matzos, the lynchings, the honor killings, the suicide bombings, the lack of freedom of the press, etc. Israel looks like a shining light of decency and freedom by comparison.

I only wrote about the home demolitions of suicide bombers in my last posting. There are three other categories of home demolitons. The biggest is homes that were built without a permit, sometimes on land owned by others. This is almost epidemic in Israel and the territories because the Palestinians refuse to cooperate with the Israeli authorities. Its not that they were denied a permit--its that they never applied for one in the first place from "the Racist Zionist State of Israel".

In Santa Cruz county, if you built a house without permits, what would happen to it?

There are a much smaller number of homes demolished which are for security reasons such as the building of the security barrier or for some other strategic defense need of Israel. In these cases, the rightful owners are compensated. That is, IF they have deeds and title to the property.

The last category of home destruction, such as occurred in the homes Rachel Corrie was defending, are hiding tunnels used to smuggle in bombs and arms. In this category are also the homes that are continually used for snipers and other forms of murderous attacks on the Israelis. Israel does not compensate for these.

You claim it was false that the Arab Muftahs called for the Arabs to flee the Palestine of 1947-48, and insist it was "Jewish terrorists" who drove them out.

This is all Arab propaganda.

Thats because all the "historians" who you put so much stock in have called any evidence Israel has of these historical events "Zionist fabrications."

When you say "end the occupation of Palestine" are you talking about ancient Palestine, declared by the Roman conquerors of Israel who destroyed the Jewish temple in 70 A.D. and after a massive campaign to uproot the Jewish resistance, renamed Israel "Palestina" after a Roman word and a pun on the Phillistines, the Israelis mortal enemy? Or are you talking about the British mandate set up after the Brits took over control from the Turkish Ottoman empire who had made the poor choice of backing Germany in WWI? Or are you talking about the nation of Palestine which the UN resolution in 1947 voted in, but was unanimously rejected by all the Arab countries including the Arab Palestinians living in what is now Israel? Or are you talking about the areas given to the Palestinian Authority in the Oslo Accords in 1993? Or are you, as many leftists such as Steve Argue claiming, that the entire nation of Israel is actually "Palestine" and hence you do not recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish nation?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not about Palestinian independence, its not about Israel's land grab (of 0.1% of the mideast!), its not about Israel's humiliation and subjugation of the indigenous Palestinian people. Its not about Israeli "ethnic cleansing". The conflict is about whether a tiny Jewish nation has the right to exist at all. Your efforts seem to be dedicated at making sure it doesn't.

as an impartial observer, who has read this entire thread, it seems to me that becky is the one who is selectively using information and grasping at straws trying to make any arabs seem like devils. you seem like youve got a real problem with the palestineans as a whole, and not just terrorists. but IDF terrorists are just fine and dandy. is it because the IDF terrorists are jewish? i dont know, you seem like a bigot to me. george seems like hes put out quite a bit of reliable information.

George: My collegue, Lee Kaplan,(and editor of www.dafka.org) recently published an article on the mainstream online website "Front Page Magazine" about Illan Pappe who you put so much stock in. Here is an excerpt from his article:



One such “Israeli� who appeared at Fresno State’s “Palestine Day� was Illan Pappe, a University of Haifa history professor in Israel, who Americans, especially young college students, know nothing about other than he is an “Israeli peace advocate.� Pappe, who ran for Israel’s parliament as a Communist and was soundly rejected in Israel’s democracy then embarked on an ignominious campaign attacking Israel. As a tenured history professor (and a marginally recognized one in normal historical circles), Pappe found his niche and fortunes touring the world as an Israeli for the PLO. His most recent notoriety came about in Israel over a libel trial in which one of his protégés presented a thesis describing a massacre of Palestinians in 1948 that never occurred. [2] The Israeli soldiers accused of the atrocities sued and Pappe’s student, Theodore Katz, was forced on the witness stand to admit he fabricated the whole thing under Pappe’s direction as his faculty advisor. It later turned out the student was paid $8,000 by the PLO to do the story. The University of Haifa pulled the degree; Pappe still insists all is authentic, of course.

This was only one of several articles which questioned the content and practises of Illan Pappe which I was easily able to find on a google search. You have insisted Israel has committed these atrocities and massacres against Palestinian Arabs but your sources are highly suspect. To repeat these questionable events is to be guilty of spreading misinformation.

Noam Chomsky wrote the indroduction to Pappe's book 'Searching Jenin' March 2003. They have also spoken together (with Robert Fisk).

This lends him some credibility in my opinion.

Becky, your colleague Lee Kaplan of www.dafka.org is a right wing extremist, who has called me in the radio station on several occasions. Some of the claims that he made while berating me, were that the Bay Area peace group, Jewish Voice For Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org) is funded by Arab terrorists and that Tanya Reinhart, an Israeli scholar and author of the book, "How To End The War of 1948", was only saying what she does, in order find a niche and a fortune by profiting off of Israel's destruction. (All of her sources for her book were from the Israeli media, by the way ). Lee Kaplan is not a historian or a respected expert. He attacks anyone who disagrees with his extreme point of view, as aiding Arab terrorists. ( Sounds alot like Bush's rhetoric when he addresses antiwar protestors ) He denies the very existence of Palestinians, as do you. And of course Israel can do absolutely no wrong. Every criticism is a lie coming from those who wish to destroy the state of Israel, even Israelis or Jews who report on facts that don't cast Israel's government in a favorable light. He rejects offhand, anything that does not fall in line with his line, then conjures up "facts" to support his extreme views.
You did not tell me what history books that you have read. I will read what books you recommend. Sincerely. I will also investigate Lee's claims about Ilan Pappe.
The facts that I have stated and written about the Palestinian refugees, are widely accepted in Israel as historically accurate. Only extremists fail to accept the real history. Even right-wing Israeli historians, such as Benny Morris have researched and written about these things. His conclusions are very similar to Mr. Pappe's. There were massacres, there was a quarter of a million Palestinian refugees, they were refused the right to return home and their homes and lands were seized.
I suggest that you read widely respected historians such as Benny Morris ( a conservative in Israel ), Tom Segev ( a historian and reporter in Israel ) and Avi Schlaim ( author and Professor in the U.S. ). The reason that these historians are widely respected in Israel and in the world, is because they pursue the facts. Most of the information that they rely upon, comes straight out of Israeli government historical archives.
Some books by Benny Morris: "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949" ( a new book ) and "Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001" ( this one is at the main library ). He also contributed a segment to the book, "Rewriting The War of 1948" ( also available at the main library )
Some of Tom Segev's books are available at the main library, such as " One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under The British Mandate"
As I mentioned above another respected historian is Avi Schlaim, you can get his book, "The Iron Wall" at the library, as well.
And again the Frontline video, "Journey to The Occupied Lands" is also interesting and is at the library.
The thing that I like so much about Morris, Segev and Schlaim, is that they do not blame only one side and they report facts. They are honest about the Arab nations actions and faults, as well as Israel's. They are respected because of their honesty and objectivity, unlike your colleague Lee Kaplan.
I would encourage anyone reading this to investigate all points of view, look into the sources that are suggested by both Becky and myself and make up your own mind which sources are the most reasonable and which are based on fact or on agendas.

P.S. Ilan Pappe's book "A History of Modern Palestine; One Land, Two Peoples" is very well sourced, relying on Israeli government archives, the Israeli media, and other Israeli historians ( such as Morris ). His book is very even-handed and addresses myths in the Palestinian narrative, as well as the traditional Israeli narrative. I encourage people to check out his books, look into his background and make up your own mind.

Becky sounds like a real reactionary to me.

Becky, You still haven't told me what history books that you have read. You say that I only read certain books and historians who represent my view. I want to read the history books that you have used to get your information. Please tell me what they are. I sincerely will read them and let you know what I think. (Maybe you should read some of the Israeli historians that I have suggested before you just write them off) Let me know what YOU think of the books, not what someone else told you to think.

There were some miscommunications going on in this string, I'd like to clarify that there were not 230 shots fired at myself and Tobias Carlsson but rather 20-30. Also the comments about there being a "fighting zone" at the border when the ambulance trying to get through is false. There was no combat activity at the time and the detention of the ambulance is standard policy against Palestinian medical crews.

George: Here is one source I have used extensively.(I will get you a few more later) He lives in Palo Alto so perhaps you could have him as a guest on your radio show?
--- Becky

David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli currently living in Palo Alto, CA. He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA in Near Eastern Studies from Brandeis University. He taught Archaeology and Near Eastern History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the University of Tel Aviv in the 60's and 70's, during which time he completed his service in the
Israeli military. Upon returning to the USA, Mr. Meir-Levi has worked as a professional Jewish educator, most recently in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Since the outbreak of the second Intifada (9/28/00), he has lectured throughout northern California and abroad at synagogues, churches,
universities, and service organizations on topics related to the history of the Arab-Israel conflict and the roots of terrorism in the Arab world. He has most recently taught a series of courses at Cal-Poly Institute, the Monterey Institute for International Studies, and for the Evangelical and Catholic communities in Guatemala, on the history of the Israel-Arab
conflict.

He has a weekly radio show, "Mid-East Media Watch" at KZSU Stanford (90.1 fm, Tuesdays, 11:00-11:30 am); and a monthly column on Zionist history in the Jewish Community News (newspaper of the San Jose Jewish community).

In his "day job", Mr. Meir-Levi is an insurance agent and investment professional, with offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco.

Mr. Meir-Levi is the Director of Research and Education at the Israel Peace Initiative (IPI), a grass-roots not-for-profit organization in the San Francisco Bay area working to educate the American public and its leaders in to the history of the Arab-Israel conflict and realistic options for resolution. For more information about IPI, check out its website: www.ipi-usa.org. He serves as an advisor for Speaking for Democracy,
another grass-roots not-for-profit organization in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he also works with the Northwest Region's Republican Jewish
Coalition as Director of Educational Outreach.

Mr. Meir-Levi lectures and teaches in English, Hebrew, and Spanish. He can be reached at David_meirlevi (at) hotmail.com

to: Peace is what we need
Israel wants peace too. Don't forget that.

While Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk are brilliant and probing writers and researchers, they share a blind spot with many on the left who see only oppression, humiliation, occupation, apartheid, torture, and human rights violations when they look at Israel, but rarely condemn Palestinian violence or human rights abuses. Fisk got a shocking surprise one day when he witnessed a mob of Palestinians dragging one of their own off to a lynching for "collaborating" with Israel. When he tried to take a photo, he was told that would get him killed. Generally, he uses the word "occupation" to describe areas that rightfully should be called disputed territories. This is only one example of his anti-Israel bias.

I am not surprised that either of them wrote the forward to Ilan Pappe's book--searching for Jenin.

Regarding Pappe's book ---which says "we may never know how many were killed in Jenin" lets look at what was reported early on by the Palestinian Authority. First their spokesman said 1500 Palestinians had been killed. Then he said "1000" had been killed. Then he said "500" had been killed. When the final list was presented by the PA, it had 56 names. The IDF had said 52 Palestininans had been killed in the battle of Jenin in 2002 all along. BTW 32 IDF were also killed and the Palestinians used a 12 yr-old suicide bomber there as well.

So when such an outrageous exaggeration of a death toll which had been trumpted by leftist sources (including by George on her Free Radio Santa Cruz show)was exposed for the lies they were, what does a leftist "expert" do? He reports "We may never know..." to continue the emotional inertia that Israel committed a massacre in Jenin. BTW the Jenin camp was home to more suicide bombers than any other place in the PA.

Response to Mike: Think what you will about my opinions and points of view and possible motivations. I do not consider myself anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian. I am definitely pro-Israel.

I encourage you to do your own investigation of facts which are in dispute. Do you support honor killings, lynchings, lack of women's rights, lack of gay rights, lack of freedom of religion, a totally state-controlled press or nations which forbid any Jew to live there? Of course you don't! But see if at any point in this thread anyone mentioned these profound human rights violations other than me?

And these people call themselves human rights activists.

Becky, I will look into Mr.Meir-Levi. Please let me know what books you have read by historians on the history of Israel/Palestine. Still interested.
If Mr. Meir-Levi is advocating a peaceful approach to resolving the conflict, then I may invite him to be a guest on my show. For those of you who have not heard my radio program, it is on Sunday afternoons from 3 to 6 pm. on Free Radio Santa Cruz at 96.3 fm. (on the West side)and 101.1 fm. (on the east side)of Santa Cruz. My show is about peaceful solutions to conflict. I do not interview people who promote violence as the answer. I also present views not often heard in the mainstream media. A few exanples of interviews that I have done on this subject are, Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun (www.tikkun.org) and author of several books, most recently, "Healing Israel/Palestine- A Path to Peace and Reconciliation"; Jeff Halper and Salim Shawamreh of Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (www.icahd.org); Noah Salameh of The Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation (www.mideastweb.org/ccrr) and Liad Weingart of Jewish Voice For Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org). I have also interviewed professors and authors, whose views are rarely heard in the mainstream media. I do not have guests that are racist or promote Sharon's violent tactics or Palestinian fundamentalist's suicide bombings. I am openly biased against such "solutions" to the conflict.
Becky, you claim that I trumpeted an outrageous exxageration of a death toll in Jenin. The only two times that the actual numbers of a death toll in Jenin were mentioned on my show were: 1) When I interviewed a Palestinian man whose name had been given to me by an Israeli woman here in Santa Cruz ( she had worked with him while working with Peace Now in Israel ). I called him in Nablus while he was living under seige from the Israeli military. He stated that he had heard reports that hundreds of people were being killed in Jenin (this was during the attack on Jenin). 2) When I interviewed Stephen Zunes a short while later abd asked him about the figure of 1500, he stated that it was more likely to be a couple of hundred dead, but that we would not know until an investigation had taken place.
In fact it was Israeli military sources who first told the media that 100-200 people may have been killed in Jenin. And it was an Israeli official who first used the word massacre to describe what had occurred there. Please back up your statements about what Palestinian officials had to say with quotes, sources, times and dates.

Media Distortions and the UN Report on Jenin
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 1 August 2002

The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on August 1, 2002 published his report, mandated by the United Nations Security Council, into the Israeli attack on Jenin refugee camp in the Occupied West Bank last April.


Kofi A. Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations
Israel is crowing that the report exonerates it from charges that there was a "massacre" in the camp. As we shall see, the Palestinian claims against Israel have been deliberately exaggerated and misrepresented in such a way as to diminish and obscure ample evidence that Israel committed serious breaches of international law. The most important thing about the new UN report on Jenin is that it is not an investigation into the events at the camp last April: none of the authors visited Jenin, since the UN Security Council-mandated investigation was blocked by Israel, which refused all cooperation.

The text states:
"The report was written without a visit to Jenin or the other Palestinian cities in question and it therefore relies completely on available resources and information, including submissions from five United Nations Member States and Observer Missions, documents in the public domain and papers submitted by non-governmental organizations."
Israel not only blocked the Jenin investigation, but refused repeated requests by Annan for it to submit written testimony for inclusion in the report. Hence while having done everything possible to block, discredit and undermine an investigation into Jenin, the Israeli government is today citing the same report as vindication. The Israelis cannot have it both ways. If Israel claims that UN reports are not credible when they criticize Israel, it cannot then claim that they suddenly regain legitimacy when they appear to "exonerate" it.

The UN report does repeat the findings of several international aid and human rights agencies that Israel used excessive and disproportionate force in civilian areas, blocked medical treatment for wounded civilians for days, and prevented access to the camp to humanitarian aid and journalists.

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which unlike the UN team, actually sent investigators to Jenin, reported that these actions by Israel may constitute "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" among other serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

Media Distortions: The Myth that Palestinians claimed that 500 were killed in Jenin

'There was no massacre' is the main headline coming from most media organizations reporting about UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's report about the Israeli attack on Jenin refugee camp last April.

In fact, Annan's report does not use the word "massacre" at all. The report does state:


"Fifty-two Palestinian deaths had been confirmed by the hospital in Jenin by the end of May 2002. IDF also place the death toll at approximately 52. A senior Palestinian Authority official alleged in mid-April that some 500 were killed, a figure that has not been substantiated in the light of the evidence that has emerged."
Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat was widely cited in press reports as having said that 500 people were killed in Jenin. Yet, despite an extensive search, I have been unable to find any directly quoted statement from any Palestinian official, including Erekat, using that figure for the death toll in Jenin. None of the reports which cited Erekat said where he allegedly made the claim, and some provided conflicting accounts of when he allegedly said it. For a claim that is so widely cited, it should not be so difficult to find a direct quote.

Nevertheless, Israeli officials, commentators and journalists alike repeated constantly that Erekat or sometimes other Palestinian officials had put the Jenin death toll at over 500. So what did Erekat actually say?

On April 10, 2002, Erekat did tell CNN that he believed that up to 500 people had been killed throughout the West Bank, not just in Jenin, since Israel had begun its "Operation Defensive Shield" at the end of March.

In the context of a discussion about the entire Israeli offensive and the announced visit of US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region, Erekat told CNN Anchor Jim Clancy:
"What we're saying, we see an opportunity in the secretary's visit. We want to help in order to insure the success of the secretary's visit, because insuring the success of implementing [UN resolution] 1402 means stopping the killing fields out there, and you know as the numbers I am receiving today is that the numbers of killed could reach 500 since the Israeli offensive began. Thousands of wounded. You know, the Jenin refuge camp is no longer in existence, and now we've heard of executions there."
Later the same day, CNN News Anchor Bill Hemmer stated on air, apparently in reference to Erekat's earlier appearance:
"Also a heavy war of words today, Saeb Erekat the Chief Palestinian negotiator, live on CNN earlier today said, Palestinians have lost now 500 people between the battles in Jenin and Nablus."
It is clear from a comparison of Hemmer's claim with Erekat's actual statement, that Erekat said nothing of the kind, and yet inaccurate though he is, even Hemmer does not state that Erekat was referring only to Jenin. Amongst others, Xinhua news agency reported accurately that
"Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Wednesday [April 10] that at least 500 Palestinians had been killed since Israel launched the military offensive in the West Bank on March 29." ("Military operations bolster Palestinian militant spirit: Israeli source," Xinhua, April 12, 2002)
Since Annan's just published report put the actual Palestinian death toll in the period from March 1 to May 7 at 497, and since the Palestinian Red Crescent places most of those deaths squarely in the period of the Israeli invasion, Erekat's estimate, which he had stated at the time was unconfirmed, was far from unreasonable. Most of the comments from Palestinian officials such as Erekat about Israeli actions in Jenin were premised on the notion that urgent UN intervention and investigation was necessary precisely because no one knew exactly what was really going on in the camp.

Yet, on April 11, the day after the CNN interview, The Jerusalem Post reported that
"The actual number of Palestinian casualties in Jenin is unknown. IDF sources estimated it at between 100 and 200. But Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told CNN that Israel had "massacred" 500 people in the Jenin camp." ("Hundreds of gunmen surrender in Jenin," by Arieh O'Sullivan, April 11, 2002)
Erekat did not even use the word "massacre" in this interview, although the Jerusalem Post quoted him as having done so. The false claim about Erekat appears to have originated here. Yet while the Jerusalem Post misreports what Erekat said it does highlight that at the same time that Erekat allegedly claimed 500 were killed, even Israeli sources were putting the death toll at up to 200. There are numerous contemporaneous press reports that Israeli Major General Ron Kitrey had put the death toll in Jenin alone at up to 300, but had later issued a statement saying that figure included dead and wounded.

Thus, the myth of Erekat's claim that 500 were killed in Jenin had begun. It has become so durable that it even made it into the report of the United Nations Secretary General.

Without the claim that Palestinians explicitly accused the Israelis of killing 500, the main accusation from supporters of Israel and the media is that Palestinians alleged a "massacre."

Although Erekat and several other Palestinian officials did later use the term "massacre," the first person to whom it was publicly attributed is Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres in an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on April 9, 2002, under the headline "Peres calls IDF operation in Jenin a 'massacre'". Peres is also quoted saying "When the world sees the pictures of what we have done there, it will do us immense damage."

There is no scientific or precise definition of a massacre, and no rule that says that hundreds must be killed before an event qualifies as such. "Massacre" is a subjective term and certainly for those who live through it the killing of 'only' dozens would qualify. Perhaps it is for this reason that Israeli officials routinely refer to Palestinian attacks which kill 20 or fewer people as "massacres."

In conclusion, the UN report provides no new information to those who are seriously interested in the truth of what happened in Jenin last April. To the Israelis it provides another propaganda coup and plenty of misleading headlines clearing it of any fault, to Kofi Annan and the UN it provides a welcome end to an embarrassing and politically awkward chapter, and to Palestinians it proves yet again that for Israel impunity, not law, is the rule.

This interview was first published in Yediot Aharonot, Israel's most widely circulated tabloid paper, on 31 May 2002. It is an eyewitness testimony concerning what happened in Jenin, as told by a member of the Israeli military who was proud of his actions. Shortly after publication, the unit to which the man belongs received an official citation from the army command for outstanding service. Courtesy of Gush Shalom.

Moshe Nissim, nicknamed "Kurdi Bear[1]", the D-9 operator who became the terror of the Jenin refugee camp inhabitants, speaks with no censorship about his time of glory.

"I entered Jenin driven by madness, by desperation, I felt I have nothing to loose, That even if I 'get it', no big deal.

I told my wife: "If anything happens to me, at least someone will take care of you!".

I started my reserve service, in the worst conditions possible. Maybe this is why I didn't give a damn. Not about explosive charges, not about gun fire.

"My life was in deep shit for the past one and a half years. For almost half a year I am suspended from work as a senior inspector in the Jerusalem municipality.

I worked there for 17 years, till that cursed day, January the 20th, exactly my 40th birthday, when the police came and arrested me.

They said that I and my colleagues in the inspection unit are suspected for being bribed by contractors and other business owners, that in fact, we are a corrupted bunch.

"This is a terrible injustice. I am a very friendly guy, and in this job you mix with people you inspect. But bribery? Me?

I am in debt for hundreds of thousands of Shekels long before all this story. Had I taken bribes, I would have money, but I couldn't even pay the lawyer. Since then I am suspended. My wife was fired as well, and I have four children to keep.

"This was not the first blow. A few months earlier, I was injured badly in my back, my wife was fired, and my son got run over and had to be operated to save his leg.

Today he is OK, but his big dream, and mine, that he will once be a player in the Beitar Jerusalem team, this dream is probably gone forever. Pity. He was really talented. I have already promised him to get him into the children's Beitar team.

"For two years, it is just one blow after another. I haven't got a cent, but I love people. I cannot be indifferent. Every holiday, I distribute food packages for the needy. The same at Passover. I ran around like crazy. And just then, I started getting phone calls from the guys: "Kurdi", they said, "we are all being recruited to do reserve service, but you are not called."

"Truth is, that I understood my commanders. Hey, I've been doing my reserves duty for 16 years now, and I was useless. I did nothing but make trouble.

"During my obligatory military service[2] I was constantly sentenced to prison, because I refused to be a vehicle electrician. In my unit as well, in the bulldozer unit, I was supposed to be an electrician, but actually, I did nothing, just messed around. I would come to the unit, and immediately open a card table, open a bottle. If any officer would dare send me to guard duty, I would send him first. Kurdi always did his thing.

If I felt like going to a Beitar football match, or going home, no one could stop me. I would just start the car and go.

"Truth is, they didn't even know me. When I am given responsibility, I can act differently, In the "Versailles" disaster[3] I was in charge of all the inspection team on location. When I was seen by one of the guys of my military unit, he was shocked.

He said: "In the army you can't tie your shoelaces, and here you are a big chief!"

The truth is that when I finally decide to do something, I am one stubborn guy. I will go for it till the end. This time was one of those moments. What haven't I done for them to take me? I sent the guys to twist the battalion commander's arm, I phoned the company commander, I drove them mad. "I promise to work", I pleaded with the battalion commander. Finally, he agreed to give me a chance.

"I said to myself: "Kurdi, you can't let them down. No more running wild!".


The speaker is Moshe Nissim, AKA "Moshe Nissim Beitar Jerusalem".

In the Jenin refugee camp, he was called, over the military radio: "Kurdi Bear".

Kurdi, because this is the name he insisted on. Bear, after the D-9 he was driving, demolishing house after house.

There was not one soldier in Jenin that did not hear this name. Kurdi Bear was considered the most devoted, brave, and probably the most destructive operator.

A man that the Jenin camp inquiry committee would want very much to have a word with.

For 75 hours, with no break, he sat on the huge bulldozer, charges exploding around him, and erased house after house.

His story, which he tells openly and with no inhibitions, is far from being a regular war myth. Medals, so it seems, will not be awarded for it. [Gush Shalom notes here that his company was later awarded a citation for outstanding service.]



The experience

"The funny bit is, I didn't even know how to operate the D-9. I have never been an operator. But I begged them to give me a chance to learn.

Before we went into Shekhem [Hebrew name for the Palestinian town of Nablus], I asked some of the guys to teach me. They sat with me for two hours. They taught me how to drive forwards and make a flat surface.

"I took it on with no problem and told them: 'That's it. Move aside and let me work.'.

This is what happened in Jenin as well. I have never demolished a house before, or even a wall. I got into the D-9 with a friend of mine, a Yemenite. I let him work for an hour, and then told him, 'OK. I got the idea.'

"But the real thing started the day 13 of our soldiers were killed up that alley in the Jenin refugee camp.

"When they brought us in, I knew that nobody wanted to work with me. They were afraid to be with me on the bulldozer. Not only did I have a reputation of a troublemaker, but also of a man who knows no fear, and they were right about that. I really have no fear. They knew I had no fear, that I don't give a damn, and that I can go anywhere, without asking questions, without an escort of tanks or APC's or anything. Once, in Jenin, I left the tank that escorted us everywhere. I wanted to have a spin around the camp, see what's going on. Gadi, the other operator who was with me, nearly fainted. He started going mad: 'Get back,' he shouted, 'we have no escort!', but I had to get to know the place better, to find an exit, just in case we needed one. I was not afraid to die. At least I was insured. This would have helped my family.



The Flag

"When we got into the camp, the D-9's were already waiting. They where hauled from Shekhem [Nablus]. I got the big D-9 L, me and the Yemenite, my partner. First thing I did was to tie the Beitar team flag. I had it prepared in advance. I wanted the family to be able to identify me. I told the family and the kids: 'you will see my bulldozer on television. When you see the Beitar flag, that will be me'. And this is exactly what happened.

"I know it sounds crazy, but for me, to hang this flag was completely natural. Like eating. Here, look at this Beitar pendant around my neck. It never comes off. Not off me, and not off the kids. I carry the Beitar flags everywhere I go. Look at my car, all covered with these flags. This is the way I am. I always go to the Beitar matches, in a Beitar colored Galabia (an Arab man's dress), and a big drum of the Kurds from the C. Once, after our first national championship, I took a ride on the roof of a car, carrying the drum, all the way to Jerusalem.

"Beitar is a kink in my brain. There is no other way to explain it. After my family, it is the most important thing in my life, and the only thing that can kill me. In Jenin, I was not scared for a moment, but I cannot go to the Beitar matches for half a year now. The suspense kills me, and I am constantly afraid of getting a heart attack. Sometimes, I can walk around 'Teddy' (the main Jerusalem stadium) with a ticket in my hand, and I can't go in. In one match, in Beit Shean, I fainted after they scored a goal. I know how this sounds, but that's the way it is. Incurable. At home, they know better than to talk to me if Beitar lost a match.

"So now you understand why the Beitar flag was on the bulldozer in Jenin. Someone told me that my commander wanted to take it off. But no way. If I had a say in the matter, there would be a Beitar flag on the top of the mosque in the camp. I tried convincing the Golani (an infantry brigade of the Israeli army) officer I worked with to let me go up there and hang it, but he refused. He said I would be shot if I tried. Pity.

"The flag was the most outstanding object in the camp. Reservists who went home on short leave came back with Beitar flags, just to imitate me. It made a lot of noise, my flag. The Golani soldiers were stunned. 'You brought Beitar here,' they told me. And I said: 'I am going to make a Teddy stadium here. Don't you worry.'.

"On the radio, they wanted to call me 'Moshe-Bear', but I insisted on Kurdi. I told the Golanis, I am Kurdi, and I won't answer if you call me by any other name.' That is how 'Kurdi Bear' was born. This is my name, and I am stubborn.

"In the reserves, they already got used to my signature: 'Moshe Nissim Beitar Jerusalem'. For a while they asked me to stop it, but finally they just gave up.



Going in

"The moment I drove the bulldozer into the camp, something switched in my head. I went mad. All the desperation, caused by my personal condition, just vanished at once. All that remained was the anger over what had happened to our guys. Till now I am convinced, and so are the rest of us, that if we were let into the camp earlier, with all our might, twenty-four soldiers would not have been killed in this camp.

"The moment I went into the camp, for the first time, I just thought of how to help these soldiers. These fighters. Children the age of my son. I couldn't grasp how they worked there, were a charge blows up on you, with every step you take.

"With the first mission I was given, to open a track inside the camp, I understood what kind of hell this was.

"My first mission, voluntarily, was to bring the soldiers food. I was told: 'The only way to get food in there, is with the D-9'. They haven't eaten in two days. You couldn't poke your nose out. I filled the bulldozer till the roof, and drove the bulldozer right up to the door of their post, so that they would not have to take even one step outside their shelter. One step was enough in order to lose an arm or a leg.

"You could not tell where the charges were. They (the Palestinian fighters) dug holes in the ground and planted charges. You would just start driving, and you would hit a 3" pipe, welded on both ends. As you touch them, they go off. Everything was booby trapped. Even the walls of houses. Just touch them, and they blow up. Or, they would shoot you the moment you entered. There were charges in the roads, under the floor, between the walls. As you make an opening, something goes off. I saw a bird cage blow up in some pet shop, where we opened a track. A flying birdcage. I felt sorry for the birds. They just planted charges everywhere.

"For me, in the D-9, it was nothing. I didn't mind. You would just hear the explosions.

Even 80 Kilos of explosives only rattled the bulldozer's blade. It weighs three and a half tons[4]. It's a monster. A tank can get hit in the belly. It's belly is sensitive. With the D-9, you should only look out for RPG's or 50 Kilos of explosives on the roof. But I didn't think about it then. The only thing that mattered was that these soldiers must not risk themselves just to eat or drink something."

"I fell in love with those children. I was willing to do with my bulldozer anything they would ask for. I begged for work: 'Let me finish another house, open another track.'

They, in return, protected me. I would leave the bulldozer without weapons, nothing. Just walked in. They told me I am mad, but I said: 'Leave me alone. Anyhow, the armored vest will not save me.' This is how I worked. Even without a shirt. Half naked.

"Do you know how I held out for 75 hours? I didn't get off the bulldozer. I had no problem of fatigue, because I drank whisky all the time. I had a bottle in the bulldozer at all times. I had put them in my bag in advance. Everybody else took clothes, but I knew what was waiting for me there, so I took whisky and something to munch on.

"Clothes? Didn't need any. A towel was enough. Anyhow I could not leave the bulldozer. You open the door, and get a bullet. For 75 hours I didn't think about my life at home, about all the problems. Everything was erased. Sometimes images of terror attacks in Jerusalem crossed my mind. I witnessed some of them."


The purity of our weapons

"What is 'opening a track'? You erase buildings. On both sides. There is no other choice, because the bulldozer was much wider than their alleys. But I am not looking for excuses or anything. You must 'shave' them. I didn't give a damn about demolishing their houses, because it saved the lives of our soldiers. I worked where our soldiers were slaughtered. They didn't tell all the truth about what happened. they drilled holes in the walls, holes for gun barrels. Anyone who escaped the charges, was shot through these holes.

"I had no mercy for anybody. I would erase anyone with the D-9, just so that our soldiers won't expose themselves to danger. That's what I told them. I was afraid for our soldiers. You could see them sleeping together, 40 soldiers in a house, all crowded. My heart went out for them. This is why I didn't give a damn about demolishing all the houses I've demolished - and I have demolished plenty. By the end, I built the 'Teddy' football stadium there.

"Difficult? No way. You must be kidding. I wanted to destroy everything. I begged the officers, over the radio, to let me knock it all down; from top to bottom. To level everything. It's not as if I wanted to kill. Just the houses. We didn't harm those who came out of the houses we had started to demolish, waving white flags. We screwed just those who wanted to fight.

"No one refused an order to knock down a house. No such thing. When I was told to bring down a house, I took the opportunity to bring down some more houses; not because I wanted to - but because when you are asked to demolish a house, some other houses usually obscure it, so there is no other way. I would have to do it even if I didn't want to. They just stood in the way. If I had to erase a house, come hell or high water - I would do it. And believe me, we demolished too little. The whole camp was littered with detonation charges. What actually saved the lives of the Palestinians themselves, because if they had returned to their homes, they would blow up.

"For three days, I just destroyed and destroyed. The whole area. Any house that they fired from came down. And to knock it down, I tore down some more. They were warned by loudspeaker to get out of the house before I come, but I gave no one a chance. I didn't wait. I didn't give one blow, and wait for them to come out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible. Others may have restrained themselves, or so they say. Who are they kidding? Anyone who was there, and saw our soldiers in the houses, would understand they were in a death trap. I thought about saving them. I didn't give a damn about the Palestinians, but I didn't just ruin with no reason. It was all under orders.

"Many people where inside houses we stto demolish. They would come out of the houses we where working on. I didn't see, with my own eyes, people dying under the blade of the D-9. and I didn't see house falling down on live people. But if there were any, I wouldn't care at all. I am sure people died inside these houses, but it was difficult to see, there was lots of dust everywhere, and we worked a lot at night. I found joy with every house that came down, because I knew they didn't mind dying, but they cared for their homes. If you knocked down a house, you buried 40 or 50 people for generations. If I am sorry for anything, it is for not tearing the whole camp down.


Satisfaction

"I didn't stop for a moment. Even when we had a two-hour break, I insisted on going on. I prepared a ramp, to destroy a four-story building. Once I steered sharply to the right, and a whole wall came down. Suddenly I heard shouting on the radio: 'Kurdi, watch it! It is us!' Turns out there where our guys inside, and they forgot to tell me.

"I had plenty of satisfaction. I really enjoyed it. I remember pulling down a wall of a four-story building. It came crashing down on my D-9. My partner screamed at me to reverse, but I let the wall come down on us. We would go for the sides of the buildings, and then ram them. If the job was to hard, we would ask for a tank shell.

"I couldn't stop. I wanted to work and work. There was this Golani officer who gave us orders by radio - I drove him mad. I kept begging for more and more missions. On Sunday, after the fighting was over, we got orders to pull our D-9's out of the area, and stop working on our 'football stadium', because the army didn't want the cameras and press to see us working. I was really upset, because I had plans to knock down the big sign at the entrance of Jenin - three poles with a picture of Arafat. But on Sunday, they pulled us away before I had time to do it.

"I bitched them to give me more work. I would tell them, over the radio: 'Why are you letting me rest? I want more work!' All this time, I was really sick. I had fever. I got back from Jenin wiped out. Torn to bits. The next day, I went up again. One of the guys was ill, and I volunteered to help. I got back there. The battalion-commander was in shock when he saw me. The other operators all cracked up and needed rest, but I refused to leave. I wanted more.

"I had lots of satisfaction in Jenin, lots of satisfaction. It was like getting all the 18 years of doing nothing - into three days. The soldiers came up to me and said: 'Kurdi, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot'. And I hurt for the thirteen[5]. If we had moved into the building where they were ambushed, we would have buried all those Palestinians alive.

"I kept thinking of our soldiers. I didn't feel sorry for all those Palestinians who were left homeless. I just felt sorry for their children, who were not guilty. There was one wounded child, who was shot by Arabs. A Golani paramedic came down and changed his bandages, till he was evacuated. We took care of them, of the children. The soldiers gave them candy. But I had no mercy for the parents of these children.

I remembered the picture on television, of the mother who said she will bear children so that they will explode in Tel Aviv. I asked the Palestinian women I saw there: 'Aren't you ashamed?'

"After I finished the work, I got out of the bulldozer, piled up some clothes on the side of the road, and fell asleep. They looked after me, so that I won't get run over by a tank or something. All the fatigue of the past 75 hours just landed on me. There was a lot of excitement in what I did. The fact that I did a good job operating the bulldozer, the soldiers who came to me, after it was all over, and said: 'thank you'. This was enough for me. I miss them. I've invited all of them for Kubeh at my place. Their commander, Kobi, the one I worked with throughout the 75 hours, was amazed by the invitation.

'Do you want the entire company to come over to your house?'

I told him: 'As far as I am concerned, bring the whole battalion.'

I phoned my mother, from the D-9, and told her that the whole battalion was coming. She said: 'no sweat'. I am waiting for them".


Politics

"I know many people will think that my attitude stems from me being a 'Beitar' and 'Likud' member[6]. It is true. I am heavily on the right. But this has nothing to do with what I have done in Jenin. I have many Arab friends. And I say, if a man has done nothing - don't touch him. A man who has done something - hang him, as far as I am concerned. Even a pregnant woman - shoot her without mercy, if she has a terrorist behind her. This is the way I thought in Jenin. I answered to no one. Didn't give a damn. The main thing was to help our soldiers. If I had been given three weeks, I would have had more fun. That is, If they would let me tear the whole camp down. I have no mercy.

"All the human rights organizations and the UN that messed with Jenin, and turned what we have done there into such an issue, are just bullshitting, lying. Lots of the walls in those houses just exploded by themselves, at our slightest touch. It is true, though, that during the last days we smashed the camp. And yes, it was justified. They mowed our soldiers down. They had a chance to surrender.

"No one expressed any reservations against doing it. Not only me. Who would dare speak? If anyone would as much as open his mouth, I would have buried him under the D-9. This is the reason I didn't mind seeing the hundred by hundred[7] we've flattened. As far as I am concerned, I left them with a football stadium, so they can play. This was our gift to the camp. Better than killing them. They will sit quietly. Jenin will not return to what it use to be."


Epilogue

Two days after getting out of Jenin, 'Kurdi Bear' was admitted into hospital, suffering from pneumonia. As it turned out, the 75 straight hours in the D-9 took their toll. Some days after he had returned home, a phone call woke him up in the middle of the night.

"I got home one night, and for some reason, I couldn't sleep. I was uncomfortable.

Till 4 AM I just wandered about, suddenly the phone rings: 'Are you Nati's father?'

I sked what happened. 'Get over here, to the hospital.' 'Tell me the truth' I told her.

'I must know'. She said that: 'Things are not good. Come'. I speeded to Tel Hashomer hospital. A nurse and a social worker waited for me there. They wanted to tell me that my son had died. That he came in, dead already. Finished. Serious brain damage. They had planned to ask me to donate his organs.

"Suddenly she ran to the surgery, came back and said that they drained blood from his brain, and that she hopes he will survive. We will know within 72 hours. We hurried to get an amulet from Rabbi Caduri. It helped with the Beitar team, when we almost dropped to a lower league. On Friday, they called us back to the hospital. They were in shock: The kid just tore the respiration tubes off. He woke up."

20 year old Nati Nissim is lying on a bed, in the fifth floor of the Beit Levinstein hospital, draped from head to toe in the black-yellow uniform of the Beitar football team. "Daddy," he says suddenly "Don't forget. I need to get to the semi finals." Kurdi Bear, with a bristly chin and red eyes, freezes for a second, and tries to get his son back into reality. "Nati", he says softly, "I've already told you, Beitar has lost."

Nati laughs. "No way! I am going to the match!" he says and tries to get up. The father suppresses his frustration, gives up the struggle. The accident has caused the son to lose his short-term memory. Just like in the movie "Momento", he can recall, with astonishing precision, any Beitar goal going ten years back or even more, but forgets within minutes who he is talking with. "Why am I here?" he asks his parents again and again, and bows his head with embarrassment when an acquaintance reminds him of a conversation they had just the day before.

Kurdi sits in the ward and tries to look as optimistic as possible. The doctors are talking about a lengthy recovery process. They say that there is no telling if and when Nati's memory will return to normal. The financial situation is not brieither. He and his wife, Ronit, can hardly buy gas for his battered Subaru that tries to make the journey from the Castel neighborhood to the hospital. Kurdi wants to build himself a tent in front of the hospital. For the time being, he sleeps in the car.

"Jenin has strengthened me," he says. "It helped me forget my troubles. I had hoped it would be some turning point, until this hit me. But what happened to Nati taught me what really is important. I am living now for my son. The rest is really not important."

The friends from his reserves unit are helping him.

"He stood up when it really counted. He was there, in the most trying moment", says Haim Tamam, a soldier serving with him. "No one has functioned like he has. And I don't know if any of us could go through the nightmare he went through without putting a bullet through his head. We are all amazed by him."

Yeffet Damti, his bulldozer partner from Jenin, says that one thing is certain: "On the next mission, I am only going with Kurdi".

Kurdi, for his part, thanks his commanders that gave him the chance.

For the time being, they are wrapping him with attention and sympathy. They came here, to the hospital, just to be with him. Just so he won't be lonely. They are talking about raising funds to help him. When they meet him next to his son's bed, back come the memories from those 75 hours.

The chats around the son's bed continue till the management of the hospital called and begged them to stop bragging about destroying Jenin. There are Arab therapists who might be hurt, and one of the Arab patients has already complained.

----------------------------------

Gush Shalom Commentary

This is the incredible, self-told story of Moshe Nissim, a fanatic football fan and a permanent troublemaker, who begged his commanders in the reserves unit for a chance to take part in "the action".

By "action" he was referring to the wide scale destruction carried out by the Israeli army in many Palestinian locations, especially in the Jenin Refugee camp.

He was sent into Jenin, riding a 60 ton demolition bulldozer - and equipped with 16 years of pent-up personal frustration, plenty of whisky and only two hours of training on that armored tool.

"Enough training to drive forwards and make a flat surface", as he himself testifies in the interview.

His story may be extreme, and this man must answer to many serious questions, but Moshe Nissim is not much different from thousands of other frustrated and violent football fans, who terrorize cities in Europe after a football match.

But then again, Of course, it is unconceivable, that the British army would send a drunken and frustrated Manchester fan into Belfast riding a D-9 bulldozer.

Therefore, the really troubling questions must be directed at the system that sent him into Jenin on this mission of destruction. This system is the Israeli army.

* What kind of army puts a 60 ton, multimillion dollar demolition bulldozer in the hands of such a person, who has not operated one before?

* How could his rampage go on, without being stopped by any of the officers, at any rank?

* How can such an army insist it is "the most moral army in the world"?

* Does this interview shed more light on Israel's refusal to have it's actions in Jenin investigated?

* What did happen in Jenin?

We hope that after reading this sickening interview, you will find ways of sending these questions, and others you might have, to the Israeli government through it's ambassadors, to the Israeli army, who, we are sure, will not tolerate it's fine tools being used in such a brutal and unlawful manner.


Gush Shalom Endnotes

1. "Bear" is the army code for the D-9 bulldozers. Kurdi means a person of Kurdish origin.

2. In Israel, men are recruited at the age of 18 for 3 years of obligatory military service. After being released, at the age of 21, they enter the reserve corps. The reserve duty usually demands 30 days of service each year, till the age of 45.

3. In January 2001, a building in Jerusalem collapsed during a wedding in a hall named Versailles. Some 25 people were killed.

4. The D-9 actually weighs 48.7 tons, without Armor. The armor brings the weight closer to 60 tons.

5. The operator is referring to the day in which 13 Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinian fighters in an ambush in Jenin.

6. Two right-wing movements. Beitar, the youth movement, is more nationalistic. Likud is the major right-wing party.

7. This is the size, in meters, of the part of the camp that was totally demolished.

Amnesty International, among others, has sent experts to Jenin, and they reported evidence of 'serious war crimes,' not the least of which was deliberately denying medical aid to the injured for almost two weeks. This alone constitutes a serious breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

It was an Israeli general who first said that hundreds were killed in Jenin, and Palestinians have always said that the full story will not be known until it is investigated. Unfortunately that investigation is unlikely to take place now, as Israel has simply refused to allow the UN team in. After accomodating all of Israel's demands about the make up of the fact-finding mission, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan simply gave up as Israel kept adding conditions.

_www.ai.org ; www.hrw.org ; www.btselem.org

"This alone constitutes a serious breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention."

Suicide bombers don't honor any conventions..
There were 56 killed, mostly armed combatants.
My favorite victim of the "Jenin Massacre" was the guy who fell off of his funeral gurney three times, before finally getting up and running away...
(Have you forgotten what the immediate cause of the Jenin incursion was? 29 Jews slaughtered during a Passover sedar, by "brave warriors" from jenin...

The website for Amnesty International is www.amnesty.org or www.aiusa.org

Robert Fisk is an award winning journalist precisely because of his objective reporting on the Middle East. He does not champion Arab governments,the PA, or Israel, and he reports honestly on the facts on the ground.
It was pointed out that Jenin was home to many suicide bombers. I ask why? The only way to stop these attacks is to understand and address the root cause of the anger. The root cause is not simply blind hatred. It is oppression. Look into the history of the 35 year occupation of the West Bank by Israel. Israeli human rights groups might help for understanding the reality of life under occupation.
After the Israeli army demolished the center of the camp, killing a still unknown number of civilans, a suicide bomber from Jenin blew themself up in Israel in retaliation. I say the numbers are still inknown, because there are still hundreds of people that are unaccounted for. They might be in Israeli jails or they might be dead, their families do not know. Also there were many people who were torn into so many pieces that they could not be identified and there were many who were buried by their families, because they were decaying, and were never taken to the morgue. Under the attacks by the Israeli army, people were not permitted to take dead family members to the morgue or dying people to the hospital. Ambulances were not allowed in, nor was the Red Cross. Many were also buried under the rubble and decayed, never to be counted. Human rights workers and internationals who arrived in the camp immediately after the invasion, stated that the smell of corpses decaying was overpowering and that there were body parts visible in and around the demolished houses. A huge area in the center of the camp, was nothing but an enormous mountain of rubble. The death toll could easily have been in the hundreds, as the IDF originally stated.
There was never a U.N. investigation into what happened in Jenin, because the Israeli government blocked one. I wonder what they had to hide. If there was no massacre in Jenin, then this investigation could have proved that.
Arguing about the exact numbers and whether or not it could be called a massacre is almost beside the point. There were war crimes committed in Jenin. Go to websites that others have suggested above to read about it.

" After the Israeli army demolished the center of the camp, killing a still unknown number of civilans, a suicide bomber from Jenin blew themself up in Israel in retaliation"

Yeah..the cause of the Jenin incursion, was the suicide bombing that massacred 29 people, including some American citizens celebrating Passover...AKA "The Passover Massacre", which was carried out by your buddies from jenin...

I don't have any "buddies" in Jenin. I have spoken with Americans who were there and who witnessed some of what I described above.

The Passover bombing that you refer to was also a crime. A violation of the Geneva Conventions and an abomination. I look forward to the day when such violence ends. I also look forward to the day that acts of state terror end, such as the acts by the Israeli army in Jenin.

There is no evidence, to my knowledge, that the Passover suicide attacks were conducted by someone from the Jenin refugee camp. That aside, the action of attacking and demolishing a huge area of the camp and killing at least 55 people, half of them civilian, is collective punishment. There is no evidence that the Israeli military killed anyone there that had any connection to the bombing you mention. Furthermore, the war crimes that were committed there upon the civilian population will not make Israel any safer. In fact, much like the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan will make Americans less safe, Sharon's aggression will make Israelis less safe. Many Israelis agree with me. And the suicide bombing that I refer to, which took place after the Israeli army invaded Jenin, illustrates that.

Becky, I went to the website that you suggested and I could not find any books authored by Mr. Meir-Levy. Can you let me know the titles and where I might find them?

My Palestinian Wife by Charley Reese

"There is no evidence, to my knowledge, that the Passover suicide attacks were conducted by someone from the Jenin refugee camp. That aside, the action of attacking and demolishing a huge area of the camp and killing at least 55 people, half of them civilian, is collective punishment."

The suicide murderer was from Tulkarem. The area of the "camp" in Jenin wasn't all that large. The Israelis were met by heavy resistence...what was that a few old ladie in burqas screaming? You do remember the ten year old boy that blew himself up (more likely the brave warriors of Islam detonated the explosive from behind cover) killing 13 brave soldiers who risked their lives trying to minimize civilian casualties...Killing armed combatants is NOT collective punishment...it's war...

One of the issues that came up at the discussion was why Israel funded Hamas to begin with, instead of supporting more democratic and presumably less violent Palestinian organizations. The answer is simply that Hamas makes it easier for Israel to wage war rather than negotiate peace. It is noteworthy that as long as Hamas threatened to continue the suicide bombings, its leader was allowed to live. As soon as he "threatened" to stop the suicide bombings in response to full withdrawal of the occupation forces from Gaza, he had to be killed in the most dramatic, hate-inspiring manner possible. Anyway, Israeli fuding for Hamas is well-documented, as for example by the UPI here: http://tinyurl.com/3bpqt

" Israeli funded Hamas"

Yes, they did, as a balance to the murderous PLO...That was when Yasser was allowed back...
Since its founding however Hamas, in true Islamic fashion...created a military wing, with the goal of destroying Israel, and creating another Islamic Hellhole! Just what the world needs...anohter Fascist nation, where the people are ruled by a theocracy, and can never vote...and where women are treated like shiite...

Well, since the individual who mentioned this at the meeting was roundly denounced for making up spurious propaganda, I thought it might be interesting to check the veracity of the claim. Now, when confronted with the evidence, the tune changes.

"Hamas are Islamofascists."

Oh. I hear water is wet, too. The point is that they didn't just evolve into that subsequent to Israeli funding. If they wanted to keep the corrupt FATAH from having too much power, why not then fund non-murdersous, democratic secular alternatives? Clearly, they can't do that, because the worst thing in the world would be to have a Palestinian state run as a secular democracy. Far better to have Hamas in charge to provide the justification for exterminating and ethnic cleansing the "disputed" territories of all Palestinians.

Support a peaceful, democratic movement in Palestine. Learn more at www.almubadara.org

There were at least twenty non-combatants killed in Jenin. A few examples, A disabled man that was run over in his wheelchair by an Israeli tank, another handicapped man that was crushed in his home when the Israeli army demolished it on top of him ( despite the pleas of his family, to be allowed to go in and get him out ), a nurse who was shot to death by the Israeli army, although she was obviously un-armed and was wearing a white nurses uniform with a red cross on it. The nurse was trying to help a wounded and dying civilian. After she was gunned down, her sister tried to drag her into their house and she was also shot repeatedly. Her sister, the nurse, died beneath her and her husband had to drag her into the house to save her life. He was almost killed doing so. This woman is so depressed after this incident that she no longer wants to live. I guess the loss of these lives is "just war". Let's move beyond such callous attitudes and see the suffering of human beings in these debates. We all want an end to the violence. More violence and repression will not end the violence.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have investigated and documented incidents such as those that I mention above. Of course they have also strongly condemned suicide bombings because they are also terror against civilians. See their websites at www.hrw.org and www.amnesty.org. Also see www.btselem.org , an Israeli human rights group.

" A disabled man that was run over in his wheelchair by an Israeli tank, another handicapped man that was crushed in his home when the Israeli army demolished it on top of him"

Another example, proving that the palestinians will stoop to new lows given the opportunity...that poor man was forced to stay in his home by brave warrirs, despite warnings that the home was to be demolished...

Reply to James: Your assertions about hundreds still missing in Jenin is hogwash. The PA reported 56 dead in Jenin whose names they had. They submitted no long list of missing persons, presumed dead. There was so much press about Jenin claiming war crimes and massacres while the incursion was happening, that the authors couldn't give up on the story even after the evidence came out to the contrary.

You can't claim a "massacre" when 56 mostly armed gunmen were killed along with 32 IDF members. Or, you can if you are stupid.

I notice you did not mention either the booby-trapped buildings left for the advancing IDF which resulted in destroyed buildings and accounted for some of the damage-including explosions with Palestinian residents in the upper levels---nor did you mention the 12 yr.old suicide bomber sent in to kill, I believe, 13 IDF.

Since Jenin was home to many who had attacked Israel and were planning further attacks, what would you have Israel do?

Also: If the Palestinians are only responding to the "brutal occupation" how do you explain the attacks on Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973? Why didn't the Palestinians struggle for statehood between '48 and '67 when Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza?
When did the Palestinians stop wanting to kill the Jews and start wanting a free and independent state? Can you name that date?

It might be worth looking at what some of these horrible anti-semites in the foreign press actually reported:

Examples from the Independent of London.

 

1.  'Thirty dead' in heavy fighting as Israelis storm refugee camp.  By Justin Hugglerin Jerusalem.   Independent .  07 April 2002.

Dr Ziad Ayaseh, the hospital director in Jenin, claimed ambulance crews had been warned by Israeli forces they would be fired on if they went to the aid of the injured, and that shots had been fired at one ambulance driver. His claim could not be verified, but the International Red Cross has publicly accused Israel of preventing ambulances from reaching the injured.

2.  Israeli helicopters pound Jenin refugee camp.  By Mohammed Daraghmeh, AP Writer.   Independent .  08 April 2002.

Israeli helicopter gunships pounded a West Bank refugee camp with dozens of rockets this morning, and fire broke in the compound of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity during a gunbattle between Israeli soldiers and armed Palestinians who have been holed up there for a week.

3.  Witnesses tell how elderly were used as human shields for tank forces.  By Justin Huggler and Said Ghazali.   Independent .  09 April 2002.

The accounts are chilling: stories of Israeli forces using the elderly as human shields in front of their tanks, of women and children being rounded up, of homes being demolished, of bodies littering the streets.   ...  The Israeli authorities have been refusing to allow ambulances access to the wounded, which is a war crime under the Geneva conventions. The Red Cross said yesterday it was working to get the Israelis to allow ambulances in. Eventually, three ambulances were permitted. Each was only allowed to bring out one person.  The Red Cross said five ambulances were fired on in the area around Jenin and Nablus yesterday.

4.  Jenin: 'My mother ran for help. A soldier shot her in the head.'   By Justin Huggler in the West Bank.   Independent .  11 April 2002.

Abdullah Washai had to watch his 17-year-old brother, Munir, slowly bleed to death. He took several hours to die. A hole had been ripped in his shoulder by a round from an Israeli helicopter.  When the boy's mother, Mariam, ran into the street screaming for help, Mr Washai says, Israeli soldiers shot her dead.  These are typical of the claims of those who have managed to escape the carnage of Jenin refugee camp, the scene of the worst fighting of Israel's onslaught in the West Bank.

5.  Israel to bury dead from 'massacre' camp.   Independent.  12 April 2002.

Israel will bury Palestinians killed in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin, the army said today, prompting Palestinian allegations that Israel had killed hundreds of civilians and was trying to hide the bodies. ...  Brig. Kitrey told Israel Army radio today that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed in Jenin. But the army subsequently contacted news organisations to say that he meant hundreds had been killed and wounded.  He said the bodies from the Jenin fighting would be buried at a special cemetery in the Jordan Valley where Lebanese fighters killed in cross–border clashes have been buried in unmarked graves.

6.  World finally gets glimpse of refugee camp devastation.  By Justin Huggler outside Jenin.   Independent .  12 April 2002.

The Palestinians are claiming that far more than 100 of their number were killed in Jenin. Many of those who fled say they saw civilians, including women, carelessly cut down. The last thing Israel wants the world to see are the bodies of women in the streets. Rumours abound that the bodies are being hidden, taken away in trucks and buried by Israeli soldiers.  But local Palestinians say they are not going to allow the Israelis to hide the evidence. They have painstakingly documented the stories of those who have fled the camp. They claim their notes account for about 200 dead. The Independent has seen the detailed handwritten notes.

7.  Israel buries the bodies, but cannot hide the evidence.  By Justin Huggler in Jenin and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.   Independent.  13 April 2002.

Israel was trying to bury the evidence in Jenin refugee camp yesterday, but it cannot bury the terrible crime it has committed: a slaughter in which Palestinian civilians were cut down alongside the armed defenders of the camp.  Israeli tanks circled journalists menacingly as foreign reporters tried to get into the camp, cutting off their approach. But a man who had just fled the camp said he had seen Israeli soldiers burying the bodies of the dead in a mass grave.  "I saw it all with my own eyes," said the man. "I saw people bleeding to death in the streets. I saw a 10-year-old child lying dead. There was a big hole in his side and his arm had been blown away. I saw them burying the bodies. They started work on the grave a few days ago. I recognised some of the bodies in it. I can give you the names."

8.  The bloody evidence of the tragedy that is Jenin.  By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem and Raymond Whitaker and Colin Brown in London.   Independent .  14 April 2002.

Palestinians escaping from the West Bank camp, which has been sealed off by the Israeli army for the past 11 days, have spoken of hundreds of deaths, including many who slowly bled to death because ambulances were prevented from entering. But no photographic evidence of the ferocity of Israel's attack had emerged until yesterday, when a Reuters photographer managed to enter the camp briefly before being chased out again by an Israeli armoured vehicle.  His two snatched photographs show a house in Jenin which is littered with three-day-old corpses. Most are covered by blankets, and it is impossible to tell whether they are Palestinian fighters or civilians. But when the US Secretary of State meets Yasser Arafat today, the Palestinian leader is sure to tell Mr Powell that Israel is preventing access to Jenin to cover up evidence of a massacre.

9.  The camp that became a slaughterhouse.  By Justin Huggler.  Independent .  14 April 2002.

A woman with her leg all but ripped off by a helicopter rocket, the mangled remains hanging on by a thread of skin as she slowly bleeds to death. A 10-year-old boy lying dead in the street, his arm blown off and a great hole in his side. A mother shot dead when she ran into the street to scream for help for her dying son. The wounded left to die slowly, in horrible agony, because the ambulances were not allowed in to treat them.  A terrible crime has been committed by Israel in Jenin refugee camp, and the world is turning a blind eye. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, visited the scene of a suicide bombing that murdered six Israelis in Jerusalem, but he did not visit Jenin, where the Israelis admit they killed at least 100 Palestinians. The Israel army claims all of the dead were armed men, that it took special care to avoid civilian casualties. But we saw the helicopter rockets rain down on desperately crowded areas: civilian casualties could not have been prevented.

10.  Israel's war of words gets dirty.  By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.  Independent.  14 April 2002.

We cut straight to the question of Jenin. "Believe me, we would love to let you guys into Jenin, but unlike the Palestinian terrorists, we respect the dignity of the dead," he said. "They want to gather up the bodies and show them off to the international media as evidence of a massacre ­ that is typical of the sort of PR tricks they play."  The press was also not being allowed into Jenin because of the "abundance of terrorists" looking for "Western targets". The Israeli army has frequently shot at journalists, injuring more than 40 and killing one. Suddenly, it was concerned for our safety. A journalist himself, Joel seems to know all about "PR tricks". Asked why the Israeli army is refusing to allow ambulances from the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter the camp and evacuate the wounded, he urged The Independent on Sunday to investigate. "You are on to a good story there. Go to the Red Cross and find out if they are using drivers from Sweden, or Palestinians."

11.  Robert Fisk: Mr Powell must see for himself what Israel inflicted on Jenin.   Independent.  14 April 2002.

Why doesn't Colin Powell go to Jenin? What has happened to the world's moral compass – indeed to the United States – when America's most famous ex-general, the Secretary of State of the most powerful country on earth, on a supposedly desperate mission to stop the bloodshed in the Middle East, fails to grasp what is taking place in front of his nose? The stench of decaying corpses is wafting out of the Palestinian city. The Israeli army is still keeping the Red Cross and journalists from seeing the evidence of the mass killings that have taken place there. "Hundreds'' – on Israel's own admission – have died, including civilians. Why, for God's sake, can't Mr Powell do the decent thing and demand an explanation for the extraordinary, sinister events that have taken place in Jenin?

12.  Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime.  From Phil Reeves in Jenin.   Independent.  16 April 2002.

A quiet. sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis led us across the wasteland, littered now with detritus of what were once households, foam rubber, torn clothes, shoes, tin cans, children's toys. He suddenly stopped. This was a mass grave, he said, pointing.  We stared at a mound of debris. Here, he said, he saw the Israeli soldiers pile 30 bodies beneath a half-wrecked house. When the pile was complete, they bulldozed the building, bringing its ruins down on the corpses. Then they flattened the area with a tank. We could not see the bodies. But we could smell them.

13.  Grieving survivors say the Israelis buried war crimes in heaps of reeking rubble.  By Phil Reeves in Jenin.   Independent .  17 April 2002.

A senior UN official said: "Given the deplorable and unprecedented refusal to allow international relief organisations in to the camps while people were slowly dying in the rubble of their wounds and thirst, the onus is definitely on the state of Israel to account for the missing thousands of refugees who lived in that camp until a few weeks ago.  "I have not met one person in the international community who had any other explanation for this refusal other than the fact that they were hiding a war crime, in fact, two war crimes: the mass killing and the denial of humanitarian relief."  The Palestinian minister for planning and international cooperation, Nabil Shaath, called for an inquiry into the "massacre" in Jenin. Amnesty International also called for a full investigation by the UN Security Council. A spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said the camp "looks as if it has been hit by an earthquake". Barred entry for a week, the Red Cross found and rescued a badly injured man trapped under rubble. The Israelis appear to have made no efforts to use heat-seeking equipment, or dogs, to find survivors, aid workers said.  Amnesty investigators in Jenin have taken dozens of witness statements covering the past fortnight. People say they saw bodies being buried in individual graves. One claims Israeli soldiers buried 32 corpses in a trench. They have also interviewed many refugees who fled the camp after their houses were demolished. Derrick Pounder, a professor of forensic medicine from Dundee University working with the Amnesty team, said a "pattern of credible evidence" is emerging from witnesses that residents were not warned by the army before bulldozers crashed into their homes. "The only warning was their house collapsing," he said.  Professor Pounder, who has worked in Sarajevo and Kosovo, believes the Israeli tactics inevitably means large numbers of dead civilians. "Sooner or later those bodies will be discovered and the facts will become absolutely clear."

14.  Fresh evidence of Jenin atrocities.  By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.  Independent .  18 April 2002.

Palestinians who survived the long battle – in which Israeli helicopters fired rockets and machine-guns into a densely populated area – have said the Israeli army committed many atrocities. Witnesses have described people being shot as they surrendered; houses being bulldozed with people inside; the use of human shields; the burial of 32 bodies in a trench, and one case of Israeli soldiers turning on the household gas supply before tossing a stun grenade into a room full of people.

15.  There should be a UN inquiry into the deaths at Jenin.   Editorial in the Independent .  19 April 2002.

This week, however, it has become clearer and clearer that terrible things have indeed happened there. European opinion recognises the full potential horror of the situation. The Independent, for example, remains deeply sympathetic to the situation of the Israeli people, but it can see that to answer terrorism with atrocity is only to recruit new volunteers for Palestinian martyrdom.  Yet the United States has barely registered the possibility of anything untoward. Indeed, President Bush's conduct of the "war against terrorism" has given Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, implied permission to inflict collateral damage on civilians in rooting out terrorists.

16.  Families scrabble in the dust to find their dead.  By Justin Huggler in Jenin.   Independent.  19 April 2002.

When they found the body it was in pieces and so they gathered it all up out of the rubble, great chunks of blackened, rotting flesh with bits of bone sticking out, and piled them up on a blanket. The smell made us retch and stumble away, gasping for clean air. The Palestinians said the putrefying flesh and bone was Mohammed Massoud Abu Sb'a.

17.   Israel completes withdrawal from Jenin.  A.P.   Independent.  19 April 2002.

Israel completed its withdrawal from the West Bank town of Jenin but armed forces maintained a blockade of the town and refugee camp where conditions were described by a UN envoy as "horrifying beyond belief."

18.  From the ruins of Jenin, the truth about an atrocity.  By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem and Justin Huggler in Jenin.   Independent.  20 April 2002.

All the dead in Jenin refugee camp have yet to be collected from the putrid ruins, but a new battle has already begun. It is being fought not with bullets, but words.  Israel has launched a huge publicity drive to counter the international community's anger over the events of the last fortnight. The prize – ultimately – is history itself.

19.  'The soldier shouted, kill them, kill them.'  By Justin Huggler in Jenin refugee camp and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.   Independent.  21 April 2002.

Fathi Shalabi watched his son die. The two men were standing side by side with their hands up when Israeli soldiers opened fire on them. Mr Shalabi's son, Wadh, and another man who was with them died instantly, but the 63-year-old Mr Shalabi survived. He lay on the ground pretending to be dead for more than an hour while his son's blood gathered around him.

20.  Barring aid to Jenin is 'a war crime.'  By Justin Huggler in Jenin refugee camp and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.   Independent.  21 April 2002.

Horrific stories continued to emerge from Jenin yesterday as journalists, aid workers and human rights officials dodged Israeli troops still ringing the West Bank site to learn what happened in the military assault earlier this month.

21.  Amnesty [International] demands war crimes inquiry into Jenin invasion.  By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem and Cahal Milmo.   Independent.  23 April 2002.

International pressure on Israel to explain its army's conduct during the invasion of Jenin's refugee camp grew yesterday after Amnesty International accused it of "very serious human rights abuses", and called for a war crimes investigation.

22.  Once upon a time in Jenin: What really happened when Israeli forces went into Jenin? Just as the world is giving up hope of learning the truth, Justin Huggler and Phil Reeves have unearthed compelling evidence of an atrocity.   Independent.  25 April 2002

The rubble in Jenin reeked, literally, of rotting human corpses, buried underneath. But it also gave off the whiff of wrongdoing, of an army and a government that had lost its bearings. "This is horrifying beyond belief," said the United Nations' Middle East envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, as he gazed at the scene. He called it a "blot that will forever live on the history of the state of Israel" – a remark for which he was to be vilified by Israelis. Even the painstakingly careful United States envoy, William Burns, was unusually outspoken as he trudged across the ruins. "It's obvious that what happened in Jenin refugee camp has caused enormous suffering for thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians," he said.

23.  Human rights group finds evidence of war crimes in Jenin.  By Justin Huggler and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.   Independent .  03 May 2002.

The truth about Jenin is coming out, despite a concerted campaign by Israel to cover it up and the United Nations decision this week to abandon a fact-finding mission in the face of Israeli refusal to co-operate. In a report published today, the Human Rights Watch organisation (HRW) says it has found prima facie evidence that the Israeli army committed war crimes in Jenin refugee camp, and calls for criminal investigations of those responsible. Today's 48-page report is proof that the details of Israel's violations of the Geneva conventions in Jenin are slowly emerging, despite Israel's efforts to conceal them.

24.  Gaza assault will be bloodier than Jenin.  By Robert Fisk Middle East Correspondent.   Independent  12 May 2002.

Officially, the Israeli offensive has been postponed because the element of surprise – thrown away by extensive reporting on the plans on Israeli television – has been lost. This, according to Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli defence minister, would have cost his army more lives. Pressure, of the usual modest kind, has also come from Washington. The Israelis know that civilian casualties in Gaza would far outnumber those in Jenin last month. And lastly, there is a growing suspicion that the Hamas suicide bomber who killed 16 Israelis in an explosion at a gaming hall at Rishon Lezion last Tuesday may not, as was thought, have come from Gaza. He has still to be identified.

---

25.  On the 1 August 2002 UN Report:  UN issues 'seriously flawed' report on Jenin killings.  By Justin Huggler in Jerusalem.

Independent 2 August 2002.

Yesterday's report was carefully worded not to offend Israel or its allies. It only came into being after Israel refused to cooperate with a UN fact-finding mission mandated by the Security Council to visit Jenin and establish what happened there – a mission Israel had originally said it would co-operate with.

The UN relied entirely on evidence from secondary sources. Despite being invited to, the Israeli government did not provide any evidence.

Israel did not allow the UN to visit Jenin but [Human Rights Watch's] investigators did visit the site and found prima facie evidence of war crimes – including evidence that Palestinian civilians were used as human shields by Israeli soldiers. An investigation by this newspaper reached the same conclusions.

Of the many victims whose stories were published on 3 May in The Independent, only Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse who was shot through the heart while trying to tend a wounded man, is mentioned by the UN. She was in full uniform and could be clearly seen.

Fourteen-year-old Faris Zeben, who was shot dead by an Israeli tank when he went shopping for groceries when the curfew was lifted, is not mentioned.

Nor is Afaf Desuqi, who was killed when Israeli soldiers blew open the door of her house as she tried to open it for them. Nor Kemal Zughayer, shot dead as he tried to wheel himself up the road in his wheelchair.

The report notes that 150 buildings were destroyed in the Jenin camp – it does not note that a residential area measuring 400 metres by 500 metres was completely bulldozed by the Israeli army.

European diplomatic support led to the 1947 U.N partition which created the state of Israel, despite the fact that almost every Asian and African state voted in opposition. The state was created on over half of the Palestine mandate, when the Jewish immigrants made up less than half of the population. The indigenous population was about as happy with this U.N. decision as any other indigenous people in the world anywhere would have been. That is, they were not pleased. Even Ben Gurion compared the creation of the state of Israel to the creation of the U.S. He recognized the many parallels. Just as the "Indians" opposed the European immigrants, many Palestinian Arabs (and even Palestinian Jews) opposed the creation of a Zionist state in land that they had inhabited for thousands of years. Prior to this insertion of Zionism by European powers, there was little conflict among Arabs and Jews. The present conflict began with the first waves of European immigrants in the 1880's. A good and balanced history textbook on the History of the modern Middle East is "A History of the Modern Middle East" by William Cleveland.

The Arabs started all the wars: 1948
Written by Arjan El Fassed. Edited by Laurie King-Irani.
Myth
Since the establishment of Israel there have been five major wars between
Arabs and the Israelis. These wars occured in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and
1982. Israel claims that the Arabs started all the wars. Although there has
been low-intensity conflict in the intervening years and major
conflagrations during the "War of Attrition" in 1969-1970 and the 1978
invasion of Lebanon, massive civil disobedience during the Uprising of 1988,
and in 2000-2001 during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, it is these five wars Israel
refers to when it makes its claims, creating the impression that Israel has
only acted "in self-defence".
The roots of the 1948 war go as far back as the first recognition on the
part of the Palestinians that the Zionists wished to establish a Jewish
state on their land. In late 1947 the United Nations proposed that Palestine
be divided into a Palestinian Arab state and a Jewish state. The UN
Partition Plan recommended that 55 percent of Palestine, and the most
fertile region, be given to the Jewish settlers who compromised 30 percent
of the population. The remaining 45 percent of Palestine was to comprise a
home for the other 70 percent of the population who were Palestinians. The
Palestinians rejected the plan because it was unfair.
Israel and its supporters claim that the Arabs first attacked in Janurary
1948 and then invaded Israel in May 1948.

Facts
The truth is that by May 1948 Zionist forces had already invaded and
occupied large parts of the land which had been allocated to the
Palestinians by the UN Partition Plan. In January 1948 Israel did not yet
exist.
The evidence that Israel started the 1948 war comes from Zionist sources.
The History of the Palmach which was released in portions in the 1950s (and
in full in 1972) details the efforts made to attack the Palestinian Arabs
and secure more territory than alloted to the Jewish state by the UN
Partition Plan (Kibbutz Menchad Archive, Palmach Archive, Efal, Israel).
Already, Zionist forces were implementing their "Plan Dalet" to
"control the area given to us [the Zionists] by the U.N. in addition to
areas occupied by Arabs which were outside these borders and the setting up
of forces to counter the possible invasion of Arab armies after May 15"
(Qurvot 1948, p. 16, which covers the operations of Haganah and Palmach, see
also Ha Sepher Ha Palmach, The Book of Palmach).
1. Operation Nachson, 1 April 1948
2. Operation Harel, 15 April 1948
3. Operation Misparayim, 21 April 1948
4. Operation Chametz, 27 April 1948
5. Operation Jevuss, 27 April 1948
6. Operation Yiftach, 28 April 1948
7. Operation Matateh, 3 May 1948
8. Operation Maccabi, 7 May 1948

9. Operation Gideon, 11 May 1948
10. Operation Barak, 12 May 1948
11. Operation Ben Ami, 14 May 1948
12. Operation Pitchfork, 14 May 1948
13. Operation Schfifon, 14 May 1948
The operations 1-8 indicate operations carried out before the entry of the
Arab forces inside the areas allotted by the UN to the Arab state. It has to
be noted that of thirteen specific full-scale operations under Plan Dalet
eight were carried out outside the area "given" by the UN to the Zionists.
Following is a list drawn from the New York Times of the major military
operations the Zionists mounted before the British evacuated Palestine and
before the Arab forces entered Palestine:
· Qazaza (21 Dec. 1947)
· Sa'sa (16 Feb. 1948)
· Haifa (21 Feb. 1948)
· Salameh (1 March 1948)
· Biyar Adas (6 March 1948)
· Qana (13 March 1948)
· Qastal (4 April 1948)
· Deir Yassin (9 April 1948)
· Lajjun (15 April 1948)
· Saris (17 April 1948)
· Tiberias (20 April 1948)
· Haifa (22 April 1948)
· Jerusalem (25 April 1948)
· Jaffa (26 April 1948)
· Acre (27 April 1948)
· Jerusalem (1 May 1948)
· Safad (7 May 1948)
· Beisan (9 May 1948).
David Ben-Gurion confirms this in an address delivered to American Zionists
in Jerusalem on 3 September 1950:
"Until the British left, no Jewish settlement, however remote, was entered
or seized by the Arabs, while the Haganah, under severe and frequent attack,
captured many Arab positions and liberated Tiberias and Haifa, Jaffa and
Safad" (Ben-Gurion, Rebirth and Destiny of Israel (N.Y.: Philosophical
Library, 1954, p. 530).
Although late PM Ben-Gurion speaks of "liberating" Jaffa it was alloted to
the Palestinians by the UN Partition Plan.
Late PM Menachem Begin adds:
"In the months preceding the Arab invasion, and while the five Arab states
were conducting preparations, we continued to make sallies into Arab
territory. The conquest of Jaffa stands out as an event of first-rate
importance in the struggle for Hebrew independence early in May, on the eve
[that is, before the alleged Arab invasion] of the invasion by the five Arab
states" (Menachem Begin, The Revolt, Nash, 1972, p. 348)
On 12 December 1948 David Ben Gurion confirmed the fact that the Zionists
started the war in 1948:
"As April began, our War of Independence swung decisively from defense to
attack. Operation 'Nachson'...was launched with the capture of Arab Hulda
near where we stand today and of Deir Muheisin and culminated in the
storming of Qastel, the great hill fortress near Jerusalem" (Ben Gurion,
Rebirth and Destiny of Israel (N.Y.: Philosophical Library, 1954, p. 106).
Israeli historians have themselves refuted the claim that the Arabs started
the 1948 war. Benny Morris uncovered a report from the Israeli Defense Force
Intelligence Branch (30 June 1948) that shows a deliberate Israeli policy to
attack the Arabs should they resist and expel the Palestinians (Benny
Morris, "The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: the
Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Branch Analysis of June 1948", Middle
Eastern Studies, XXII, January 1986, pp. 5-19).

Conclusion
In sum, it is not true that the Arabs "invaded Israel" in 1948.
First, Israel did not exist at the time of the alleged invasion as an
established state with recognised bounderies. When the Zionist leaders
established Israel on 15 May 1948 they purposely declined to declare the
bounderies of the new state in order to allow for future expansion.
Secondly, the only territory to which the new state of Israel had even a
remote claim was that alloted to the Jewish state by the UN Partition Plan.
But the Zionists had already attacked areas that were alloted to the
Palestinian Arab state.
Thirdly, those areas which the Arab states purportedly "invaded" were, in
fact, exclusively areas alloted to the Palestinian Arab state proposed by
the UN Partition Plan. The so-called Arab invasion was a defensive attempt
to hold on to the areas alloted by the Partition Plan for the Palestinian
state.
Finally, the commander of Jordan's Arab Legion, was under orders not to
enter the areas alloted to the Jewish state (Sir John Bagot Glubb, "The
Battle for Jerusalem", Middle East International, May 1973).

Israel invaded Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded with the backing of France and Britain, both of whom were angered by Nasser's decision to nationalize the Suez Canal in Egypt. The Suez Canal was built by Egyptian labor but was operated by a French company and was used as the lifeline of the British Empire and was seen as a symbol of Western exploitation in Egypt. The reaction in Western capitals was one of extreme hostility. Prime Minister Anthony Eden of Britian regarded the nationalization as theft and threatened to teach Nasser a lesson. Throughout the late summer of 1956, special international conferences were held to seek a resolution to the matter. Although Nasser offered to pay compensation to the Suez Canal Company, he refused to compromise on the Egyptianization of the canal. His position was strengthened by the ability of Egyptian technicians to keep the waterway operating smoothly, something that Britain had claimed would be impossible. While efforts to reach a negotiated settlement of the crises were under way, Britain, France, and Israel concluded a secret agreement for joint military action against Egypt. Their agreement was activated on October 29, 1956, with an Israeli strike on the Sinai. On October 31, the British airforce began heavy bombing raids on targets near Cairo and along the canal zone, and Israeli ground forces raced to the east bank of the canal. British and french paratroops dropped on Port Said on November 5, and on the following day the main Anglo-French force landed at the northern end of the canal and began to advance on Suez City. The advance was halted when, at midnight on November 6, Britain and France agreed to a UN sponsored cease-fire. The tripartite attack was condemned by the US.


1956

Israel blames the 1956 Sinai war on Egypt's aggressive behavior, including the closing of the Suez Canal.

Facts

The facts concerning the Sinai war come from Israeli sources. A decisive and authoritative contribution exploding the myth of Israel's accusations are the revelations from former Prime Minister Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary (Moshe Sharett, Yoman Ishi, Ma'ariv, 1979, in Hebrew with portions trans. in Livia Rokach, Israel's Sacred Terrorism: A Study Based on Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary and Other Documents, AAUG, 1980).

The main reason often given for the origin of the 1956 war was Egypt's closing of the Suez Canal. Moshe Sharett reveals that the Israeli leadership was planning the territorial conquest of the Sinai and Gaza as early as the fall of 1953. The Israeli attack on Gaza in February 1955 was undertaken as a conscious preliminary act of war. David Ben-Gurion became Prime Minister and Israel soon became very aggressive.

On 28 February 1955 Israeli troops invaded Gaza killing 37 Egyptians and wounding 31. The attack came out of the blue. Egyptian President Gamal Nasser said it "was revenge for nothing. Everything was quiet there" (Kennett Love, Suez: the Twice Fought War, McGraw-Hill, 1969, p. 83). The Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation, Swedish General Carl von Horn, confirmed Nasser's claim, asserting that there had been

"comparative tranquility along the armistice demarcation lines during the greater part of the period November 1954 to February 1955" (Report to the Security Council, UN Doc. S3373, 17 March 1955).

In the 1950s few people believed that Nasser had aggressive intentions towards Israel. Richard Grossman, a British Zionist, wrote in 1955 that:

"not only Egypt, but the whole Middle East must pray that Nasser survives the assassin's bullet. I am certain that he is a man who means what he says, and that so long as he is in power directing his middle-class revolution, Egypt will remain a factor for peace and social development" (Richard Grossman, New Statesman and Nation, 22 January 1955).

The Gaza raid changed everything. Arab public opinion was outraged and demanded action, as it was intended to. Nasser needed arms to equip his army which was hopelessly outgunned by Israel. Western Intelligence was convinced that Egypt had no intention of attacking Israel. The Americans rebuffed Nasser in any case and Egypt turned to the Russians who orchestrated the famous Czech arms deal which was used by Israel for feigned outrage. The Russians had also used the Czechs to supply arms to Israel in 1948.

Nasser did not realise that he was being set up for the Israeli invasion, although he did recognise that the situation was heating up. In October 1955, a year before the war, Israeli PM David Ben-Gurion ordered his Chief of Staff, General Moshe Dayan, to prepare invasion plans. Ben Gurion was determined, according to Dayan,

"not to miss any politically favorable opportunity to strike at Egypt" (Moshe Dayan, Diary of the Sinai Campaign, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966, p. 37).

Dayan expressed the hopes of the Israeli leadership when he said in December 1955:

"One of these days a situation will be created which makes military action possible" (Kennet Love, Suez: The Twice Fought War, McGraw-Hill, 1969, p. 106).

The opportunity to make war against Egypt came in July 1956 when Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, an act within the legal right of the Egyptian state. The Suez Canal was controlled by foreigners in 1956 and represented an important vestige of colonialism affronting the Arab people. Nasser's action was popular although, in hindsight, politically cataclysmic. France and Britain, in one of the last spasms of European colonialism, colluded in a secret alliance with Israel to invade the Sinai and destroy Nasser.

On 29 October 1956 Israel attacked Egypt and occupied the entire Sinai. French war equipment poured into Israel and French and British warships bombarded the Egyptian coast. French and British troops landed and helped the Israeli armed forces. Eisenhower, who had been in the dark about the invasion plans and the secret alliance, demanded that Israeli forces withdraw from Egyptian territory. Israel refused, leading Eisenhower to exclaim:

"Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of U.N. disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its own withdrawal? If we agree that armed attack can properly achieve the purpose of the assailant, then I fear we will have turned back the clock of international order..." (Address to the nation, 20 February 1957).

1967

Israel claims that its attack against Egypt in June 1967 was a defensive measure to prevent Gamal Abdel Nasser from attacking.

Facts

Israel began planning the re-conquest of the Sinai soon after its forced withdrawal in 1956. In 1967, as in 1956, Israel waited for favorable circumstances to put its plan into action.

In 1967, however, Israel had a greater appreciation of the necessity and utility of a sophisticated publicity campaign, waged through the international media, to convince Western opinion that any Israeli military actions could only be construed as acts of self-defense. This publicity campaign was two-pronged: stressing that the Arabs attacked Israel and that Israel was in danger of annihilation. Both presuppositions were patently false.

In the early hours of 5 June 1967, Israel announced to a credulous Western world that the Egyptian Air Force had initiated hostile actions. In fact, it was the Israelis who had attacked the Egyptians and destroyed virtually the entire Egyptian Air Force while its fleet was still on the ground.

General Matityahu Peled, one of the architects of the Israeli conquest, committed what the Israeli public considered blasphemy when he admitted the true thinking of the Israeli leadership:

"The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war" (Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972).

Israeli Air Force General Ezer Weizmann declared bluntly that "there was never any danger of extermination" (Ma'ariv, 19 April 1972). Mordechai Bentov, a former Israeli cabinet minister, also dismissed the myth of Israel's imminent annihilation: "All this story about the danger of extermination has been a complete invention and has been blown up a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territories" (Al Hamishmar, 14 April 1972).

After the 1967 war Israel, claimed it invaded because of imminent Arab attack. It claimed that Nasser's closing of the Straits of Tiran constituted an act of war. It also cited Syrian shelling on the demilitarized zone of the Syrian-Israeli border. The claim that the Arabs were going to invade appears particularly ludicrous when one recalls that a third of Egypt's army was in Yemen and therefore quite unprepared to launch a war. On the Syrian front, Israel was engaging in threats and provocations that evidenced many similarities to its behavior in the lead up to the Gaza raid of 1955.

The demilitarized zone on the Syrian-Israeli border was established by agreement on 20 July 1949. Israeli provocations were incessant and enabled Israel to increase and extend its sovereignty by encroachment over the entire Arab area. According to one UN Chief of Staff, Arab villagers were evicted and their homes destroyed (E.L.M. Burns, Between Arab and Israeli, Ivan Obolensky, 1962, pp. 113-114). Another Chief of Staff described how the Israelis ploughed up Arab land and "advanced the 'frontier' to their own advantage" (Carl von Horn, Soldiering for Peace, Cassell, 1966, p. 79).

Israel attempted to evict the Arabs living on the Golan and annex the demilitarized zone. When the Syrians inevitably responded, Israel claimed that "peaceful" Israeli farmers were being shelled by the Syrians. Unmentioned was the fact that the "farmers" were armed and using tractors and farm equipment to encroach on the demilitarized zone (David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: the Roots of Violence in the Middle East, Faber and Faber, 1984, pp. 213-15). This was part of a "premeditated Israeli policy [..] to get all the Arabs out of the way by fair means or foul."

Shortly after the Syrian response on 7 April 1967, the Israeli Air Force attacked Syria, shooting down six planes, hitting thirty fortified positions and killing about 100 people (Hirst, op. cit., p. 214). It was unlikely that any Syrian guns would have been fired if not for Israel's provocation.

Israel's need for water also played a role in the 1967 attack. The invasion completed Israel's encirclement of the headwaters of the Upper Jordan River, its capture of the West Bank and the two aquifers arising there, which currently supply all the groundwater for northern and central Israel.

The Israelis followed-up their massive retaliation with stern warnings. On 11 May 1967, General Yitzhak Rabin said on Israeli radio: "The moment is coming when we will march on Damascus to overthrow the Syrian Government" (Godfrey Jansen, "New Light on the 1967 War", Daily Star, London, 15, 22, 26 November 1973). Syria sought Egypt's assistance under their Mutual Defense Pact of November 1966. Nasser could not afford to stand idly by. He ordered the removal of the small UN force stationed in Sinai and closed the Straits of Tiran. This action provided the casus belli that Israel soon invoked.

Nasser's move was a gesture of solidarity with Syria and no threat to Israel's economy or its security. The closure of the Straits did not force Israel into war. Claims of economic strangulation were absurd since only 5 percent of Israel's trade depended on free movement through the Straits of Tiran. No Israeli merchant vessel had passed through the Straits during the previous two years (Michael Howard and Robert Hunter, Israel and the Arab World: the Crisis of 1967, Adelphi Papers 41, Institute for Strategic Studies, 1967, p. 24).

In sum, the threat to Israel's survival in 1967 was non-existent. According to the British newspaper The Observer, Nasser's purpose was clearly "to deter Israel rather than provoke it to a fight" (The Observer, London, 4 June 1967). New York Times columnist James Reston reported that "Egypt does not war [...] certainly is not ready for war" (New York Times, 4 and 5 June 1967).

The Israelis themselves were perfectly aware of this, given their sophisticated military intelligence capabilities. Later, in the first few days of the war, they were so concerned that their plans for attacking Syria would be discovered that they deliberately attacked the USS Liberty, killing 33 American sailors, in an attempt to prevent it from monitoring war preparations.

A few months after the war, Yitzhak Rabin remarked: "I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to the Sinai on 14 May would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it" (Le Monde, 29 February 1968).

Israeli General Peled was even more frank: "To pretend that the Egyptian forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Zahal [Israeli army]" (Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972).

Finally, in 1982, the Israelis admitted that they had started the war (although official Zionist propaganda in the United States still does not acknowledge this fact). Prime Minister Menachem Begin, in a speech delivered at the Israeli National Defense College, clearly stated that: "The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him" (Jerusalem Post, 20 August 1982).

1973

Written by Arjan El Fassed.

Facts

After coming to power in late 1970, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat indicated to the United States that he was willing to negotiate with Israel to resolve the conflict in exchange for Egyptian territory lost in 1967. In February 1971 he offered a full peace treaty to Israel, which it rejected, although international consensus supported the Sadat offer which conformed to the US position (John Kimche, There Could Have Been Peace, Dial, 1973, p. 286). When these overtures were ignored by Washington and Tel Aviv, Egypt and Syria launched an coordinated action in October 1973 against Israeli forces occupying the Egyptian Sinai and Syrian Golan Heights.

The devastating defeat of 1967 left Israel in control of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and the Sinai. Israel rapidly moved to incorporate these occupied territories into its domain. Israel illegally annexed Jerusalem and began establishing colonial settlements in all the occupied territories.

It was clear that the Arab World could not go on indefinitely watching the Israel expel Egyptians, Syrians and Palestinians while installing Jewish settlers in their thousands. By 1973 nearly 100 settlements had been established and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been displaced, expelled, imprisoned or deported.

On 6 October 1973 the Egyptian and Syrian armies attacked Israeli positions in the Sinai and on the Golan Heights in an attempt to liberate their territory occupied by Israel. The Secretary-General of the Arab League explained the Arab action:

"In a final analysis, Arab action is justifiable, moral and valid under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. There is no aggression, no attempt to acquire new territories. But to restore and liberate all the occupied territories is a duty for all able self-respecting peoples" (Sunday Times, 14 October 1973).

1982

In 1982, Israel claimed that its military objective was to attack, not Lebanon, but the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in Lebanon in order to 'safeguard the Galilee region from enemy artillery and infiltration'.

Facts

The facts are that Israel invaded Lebanon on 6 June 1982 in order to totally destroy the PLO, not only its insignificant military capability, but also all of its civilian functions. The other basic war aim was described by Israeli Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon:

"The bigger the blow and the more we damage the PLO infrastructure, the more the Arabs in Judea and Samaria, [the Biblical name for the West Bank used for obvious political reasons by Israel] and Gaza will be ready to negotiate with us"
-- The Times, 5 August 1982 --

Israel had hoped that, with the destruction of the PLO, Lebanon could be ripped from its Arab moorings in order to create an Israeli puppet regime of pro-Israeli Maronite Christian Lebanese, a minority of the population. As early as 1954, David Ben-Gurion had urged that one of the "central duties" of Israel's foreign policy should be to push the Maronite Christians to "proclaim a Christian state". Moshe Dayan had said that:

"[the] Israeli army will enter Lebanon, will occupy the necessary territory, and will create a Christian regime which will ally itself with Israel"
-- Livia Rokach, Israel's Sacred Terrorism, op.cit., pp. 24-30.
Also see, Laura Zittrain Eisenberg: My Enemy's Enemy: Zionist Intentions in Lebanon.

The Israeli claim that it had invaded Lebanon "in self-defense" is false. Between August 1981 and May 1982 the PLO maintained a truce, sponsored by the United States and Saudi Arabia, on Lebanon's southern border. Israel, on the other hand, violated the truce 2,777 times (United Nations records cited by Robin Wright in the Christian Science Monitor, 18 March 1982; Alexander Cockburn and James Ridgeway, Village Voice, 22 June 1982). [For the most thorough, as well as the most compelling treatment of Israel's invasion of Lebanon, see Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation]

Once again Israel only needed an excuse to make war. This time the casus belli was the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London, an act determined by Scotland Yard to have been conducted by the PLO-dissent Abu Nidal group. In any case, Israel's excuse was so flimsy that, for the first time in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israeli propaganda was not taken on board without question by the international community.

At first the Israelis operated under the pretense that they were only securing their borders and stated that they did not intend to go beyond a 25 mile limit. But the truth was very different as described by the former chief of Israeli military intelligence, Aharon Yariv:

"I know in fact that going to Beirut was included in the original military plan"
-- Jerusalem Post, 24 September 1982.

Israel's invasion of Lebanon has no validity in international law. Israel thus had no grounds to rely on the provision of the Charter of the United Nations concerning self-defense, while the means used to effect the invasion clearly lacked proportionality. The cease-fire of July 1981 had been observed scrupulously. The objective of the 1982 invasion and war, therefore, was to achieve certain political and strategic aims at a high cost, which included breaches of some of the most fundamental rules of international law.

As for the Israeli justification for the conduct of hostilities, the principle of military necessity cannot excuse the massive number of civilian casualties which resulted from Israeli attacks on refugee camps, hospitals, schools, cultural, religious and charitable institutions, commercial and industrial premises, Lebanese government and PLO offices, diplomatic premises and urban areas generally.

Particularly heinous was the August 8th bombardment of Beirut by the Israeli Air Force, which some correspondents compared to the WWII bombing of Dresden in its ferocity. Hundreds of innocent Beiruti civilians died as a result of this war crime. [See Thomas Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem; Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation; Jean Said Makdisi, Beirut Fragments; Chris Giannou, Besieged: A Doctor in Lebanon.]

This comment is for George who attacks Becky Johnson;

I rarely write to indymedia. The website is really just a forum for for people who support totalitarian and socialist movements who prefer to live in the safety of a capitalist democracy and who are so really of little value in changing the world.

And George, forgive me for saying this, but I do make a living doing research about the Middle East and am a professional journalist. People do drop a dime to read me, unlike yourself who runs
an illegal radio station with the power of a 40 watt lightbulb behind it. I have appeared internationally on radio as a commentator.

George, you know I have never berated you. I have however asked you to invite me on to present the other side in your unending diatribes and propaganda fests against Israel. Let's face it, sweety, you're scared because I know my stuff and can shoot your "learned guests" down like I did Stephen Zunes who even has come out against the Right of Return after I called him on it.

As for Becky Johnson: You know what? Becky is a true socialist. She and I may not agree on everything political, but she cares for the homeless. She doesn't tie her desire to help people into some anarchist brainless ideology of driving the Jews out of the Middle East like you do. Nor does she support totalitariansim.By the way, I am not a right wing extremist because I support the United States and Israel in the war on terror and know the Palestinians were and are Saddam Hussein's closest allies. Their polls show 88% of their population support terror attacks and they ahe yet to arrest terrorists. They even pay rewards to them.

As for your great Israeli historians: Illan Pappe
was a history professor of little note in Israel
who tried to run for the Knesset on the Communist Party ticket and got maybe three votes. He then found his fortune traipsing all over the world for the PLO. He was involved in Israel in a libel trial where it was found he was behind payoffs by the PLO of hard cash to create fictitious massacres in 1948. You can read about him in my article CAL State Palestine on the web. Benny Morris has recanted and said Israel did exactly what Israel was forced to do; I think he finally figured out if he carried his anti-israel stuff far enough he'd cook in the ovens with the rest of Israel's Jews (plus making a 180 degree turn when you're in the media means more speaking engagements and money). For you see, that's the deal for these guys who are only esteemed historians by dint of Arab money jetsetting them around the world to talk to closet wannabe communists like those who live in the real safety of a seaside resort like Santa Cruz and under the protection fo the US military. The Israeli historians you guys love to cite all make millions as Quislings for the PLO. Uri Avnery's mom, an Iraqi Jewish refugee from 1948, called her son a liar and cut him out of her will. George, if you, who are of perhaps Jewish ancestry, but know nothng about Judaism or Zionism, can attack a Jewish refuge in the Middle East for fun and attention, why can't some Israelis make millions at it by being rich communists?

Ah yes, and the house demolitions. Uda Walker of MECA, who I debated once, claimed 36,000 hosues were demolished by the IDF. One writer here says 16,000. B'tselem, run by Anat Biletzski, the head of Israel's communist party says only 550. It really doesn't matter, because lying has become indemic in the "Palestine propaganda wars." The PA
has 19 propaganda ministries, sweety, the mainstay of totalitarian regimes.

You know why houses are destroyed? Because it's proven it prevents MORE bombings. Parents in the PA have turned their kids in for making bombs at home for fear of losing their houses. And that's why Israel demolishes homes: because they are bomb factories or housed terrorist cells and weapons caches (Oops! I forgot! that's unfair cause they are used to kill Jews!)

Let's face it George. YOU have issues tht do not revolve round "justice" for the Palestinians. Most of them from 1948 are dead. Their ancestors live less than 15 miles from where their relatives lived in 1948. Yet somehow they can't be given their own country, a new home, reparations, whatever nonsense, they must displace those nasty Jews who were equally displaced by the Arab world in 1948. Israel must be "Palestine." by any means necessary including lying and misinforming. Let's face it, George, the real desire here is to be anarchistic. If you really love the totalitarian revolutionary movements of the Arab world, how about renouncing your comfy beachfront life in Santa Cruz and living in the true land of misogyny, the Arab world instead of condemning Jews to live in it? The fact is being anti-authoritarian is your being. Hence a woman of Jewish descent who knows nothng about Judaism or Zionism makes a passion out of destroying a Jewish refuge in the world. The mere fact you changed your name to a man's name tells a lot.

I'm sure the next thread will say my facts are incorrect and cite reams of concocted history about how Israel must be destroyed. The fact is,
these "socialists" here, unlike Becky Johnson who gives some intelligence to socialism, are of the mind that they love humanity so much that they would gladly kill any human being to prove it.
And that, sadly, is the truth.

And Brian Avery is an idiot. He did nothing to help humanity, or Palestinians. He did find a new career making speeches for the PLO. Rachel Corrie
was not even protecting a house. An ISM video shows she was killed by a bulldozer demolishing a tunnel in an open field. The lying knows no end.
And that is why all these impassioned writings damning Israel on Indymedia won't amount to a hill of beans. Because there are more rational intelligent people in th world who can distinguish between terrorist murderers and true social justice and action. Sadly, it is lacking here.

Keep up the struggle, Becky!!!

And thanks for the plug for www.dafka.org.

Lee Kaplan,

Your name calling precedes anything of value you might say like a rancid stench.

To Alexi;
There was no name calling. And any stench you smell is most likely your upper lip.

Thanks to Michael for his very personal perspective from a point of view none of us have--as a former IDF soldier and Israeli police officer. One one hand, it doesn't matter who started the conflict as long as we find a way to resolve it. But on the other hand, it is dangerous and immoral to rewrite history so that your side can "win" if not in reality then in the perceived histories written for those who don't know any better.

Bad information will inevitably lead to bad decisions. I refer to Illan Pappas, Edward Said, Uri Averny, and Benny Morris as four such culprits (although Morris has since recanted). Noam Chomsky is also a culprit despite his learned positions on other issues.

The reason the conflict cannot be solved (in the immediate future anyway) is that it is not about Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the security fence, or encroachment past the Green line. It is not even about Palestinian statehood. It is not even about land. The conflict continues because it is about whether the State of Israel has a right to exist as Jewish State. Israel's enemies are still hell-bent on bringing about the next Jewish holocaust and anyone who doesnt realize this is guilty of wishful thinking. Israel will NEVER stop defending itself. The Arabs, on the other hand, COULD grant that tiny piece of land with no oil or natural resources to the Jewish people. Those who long for peace should devote their resources on convincing the Arab population that peace with Israel will benefit them, their children, and the world in general.

Please don't be too hard on Lee Kaplan, the poor guy isn't playing with a full deck...