| Author | Message | | Guest | |  | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2002 9:55 am Post subject: REVENGE OF A CHILD |
| Subj: Revenge of a Child by a distinguished and honourable Israeli Journalist Uri Avnery - Splendid!! (How Israel/Sharon produce suicide bombers!)
Date: 11/17/02 1:37:49 AM Pacific Standard Time
16.11.02
REVENGE OF A CHILD
By Uri Avnery
Since last Sunday, a question has been running around in my head
and troubling my sleep: What induced the young Palestinian, who
broke into Kibbutz Metzer, to aim his weapon at a mother and her
two little children and kill them?
In war one does not kill children. That is a fundamental human
instinct, common to all peoples and all cultures. Even a Palestinian
who wants to take revenge for the hundreds of children killed by the
Israeli army should not take revenge on children. No moral
commandment says "a child for a child".
The persons who do these things are not known as crazy killers,
blood-thirsty from birth. In almost all interviews with relatives and
neighbors they are described as quite ordinary, non-violent
individuals. Many of them are not religious fanatics. Indeed, Sirkhan
Sirkhan, the man who committed the deed in Metzer, belonged to
Fatah, a secular movement.
These persons belong to all social classes; some come from poor
families who have reached the threshold of hunger, but others come
from middle class families, university students, educated people.
Their genes are not different from ours.
So what makes them do these things? What makes other
Palestinians justify them?
In order to cope, one has to understand, and that does not mean to
justify. Nothing in the world can justify a Palestinian who shoots at a
child in his mother's embrace, just as nothing can justify an Israeli
who drops a bomb on a house in which a child is sleeping in his
bed. As the Hebrew poet Bialik wrote a hundred years ago, after
the Kishinev pogrom: "Even Satan has not yet invented the revenge
for the blood of a little child."
But without understanding, it is impossible to cope. The chiefs of the
IDF have a simple solution: hit, hit, hit. Kill the attackers. Kill their
commanders. Kill the leaders of their organizations. Demolish the
homes of their families and exile their relatives. But, wonder of
wonders, these methods achieve the opposite. After the huge IDF
bulldozer flattens the "terrorist infrastructure", destroying-killing-
uprooting everything on its way, within days a new "infrastructure"
comes into being. According to the announcements of the IDF itself,
since operation "Protective Shield" there have been some fifty
warnings of imminent attacks every day.
The reason for this can be summed up in one word: rage.
Terrible rage, that fills the soul of a human being, leaving no space
for anything else. Rage that dominates the person's whole life,
making life itself unimportant. Rage that wipes out all limitations,
eclipses all values, breaks the chains of family and responsibility.
Rage that a person wakes up with in the morning, goes to sleep with
in the evening, dreams about at night. Rage that tells a person: get
up, take a weapon or an explosive belt, go to their homes and kill,
kill, kill, no matter what the consequences.
An ordinary Israeli, who has never been in the Palestinian territories,
cannot even imagine the reasons for this rage. Our media totally
ignore the events there, or describe them in small, sweetened
doses. The average Israeli knows somehow that the Palestinians
suffer (it's their own fault, of course), but he has no idea what's
really happening there. It doesn't concern him, anyhow.
Homes are demolished. A merchant, lawyer, ordinary craftsman,
respected in his community, turns overnight into a "homeless", he
and his children and grandchildren. Each one of them a potential
suicide bomber.
Fruit-trees are being uprooted in their thousands. For the officer, it's
just a tree, an obstacle. For the owners, it's the blood of his heart,
the heritage of his forefathers, years of toil, the livelihood of his
family. Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.
On a hill between the villages a gang of thugs has put up an
"outpost". The army arrives to defend them. When the villagers
come to till their fields, they are shot at. They are forbidden to work
in all fields and groves within a one or two kilometers range, so that
the security of the outpost will not be endangered. The peasants
see from afar, with longing eyes, how their fruit is rotting on the
trees, how their fields are being covered by thorns and thistles waist
high, while their children have nothing to eat. Each one of them a
potential suicide bomber.
People are killed. Their torn bodies lie in the streets, for everyone to
see. Some of them are "martyrs" who chose their lot. But many
others - men, women, children - are killed "by mistake",
"accidentally", "trying to escape", "were close to the source of fire" -
and all the hundred and one pretexts of professional spokesmen.
The IDF does not apologize, officers and soldiers are never
convicted, because "that's how things are in war". But each of the
people killed has parents, brothers, sons, cousins. Each one of
them a potential suicide bomber.
Beyond these are the families living on the fringes of hunger,
suffering from severe malnutrition. Fathers who cannot bring food to
their children feel despair. Each one of them a potential suicide
bomber.
Hundred of thousands are kept under curfew for weeks and months
on end, eight persons cooped up in two or three rooms, a living hell
difficult to imagine, while outside the settlers have a ball, protected
by the soldiers. A vicious circle: yesterday's bombers caused the
curfew, the curfew creates the bombers of tomorrow.
And beyond all these, the total humiliation which every Palestinian,
without distinction of age, gender or social standing, experiences
every moment of his life. Not an abstract humiliation, but an
altogether concrete one. To be dependent for life and death on the
whim of an 18-year old boy in the street and at one of the
innumerable checkpoints that a Palestinian has to pass wherever he
goes, while gangs of settlers pass freely and "visit" their villages,
damage property, pick the olives in their groves, set fire to the trees.
An Israeli who has not seen it cannot imagine such a life, a
situation of "every bastard a king" and "the slave who has become
master", a situation of curses and pushes at best, threats with
weapons in many cases, actual shooting in some. Not to mention
the sick on the way to dialysis, the pregnant women on the way to
hospital, students who don't get to their classes, children who can't
reach their schools. The youngsters who see their venerable
grandfather publicly humiliated by some boy in uniform with a runny
nose. Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.
A normal Israeli cannot imagine all this. After all, the soldiers are
nice boys, the sons of all of us, only yesterday they were
schoolboys. But when one takes these nice boys and puts them in
uniforms, pushes them through the military machine and puts them
into a situation of occupation, something happens to them. Many try
to keep their human face in impossible circumstances, many others
become order-fulfilling robots. And always, in every company, there
are some disturbed people who flourish in this situation and do
repulsive things, knowing that their officers will turn a blind eye or
wink approvingly.
All this does not justify the killing of children in the arms of their
mother. But it helps to grasp why this is happening, and why this will
go on happening as long as the occupation lasts. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2002 7:41 pm Post subject: Militants kill top colonel in Hebron ambush |
| Subj: Militants kill top colonel in Hebron ambush by Justin Huggler, The Independent from Hebron (Honest reporting of a rare kind!)
Date: 11/17/02 8:32:01 AM Pacific Standard Time
Militants kill top colonel in Hebron ambush
By Justin Huggler in Hebron
The Independent, 17 November 2002
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=352981
Israeli armoured vehicles poured into Hebron last night,as it emerged that nine of the 12 Israelis killed in an ambush here on Friday were soldiers or members of the paramilitary border police.
Among them was the Israeli army commander in Hebron, Colonel Dror Weinberg – the most senior officer to die in the two-year intifada. The other three dead were armed Jewish settlers who had rushed to the help of the soldiers.
The killings, the work of Palestinian militants most Israelis thought were all but beaten by sheer military force, are a body blow to the Israeli army. It appears it may have been the work of only three gunmen, who were all killed in the fighting. The hardline militant group Islamic Jihad took responsibility.
In Hebron yesterday it was clear that the ambush was meticulously planned. Palestinian gunmen first attacked a border police jeep patrolling the area, the Israeli army said. Then, when soldiers ran after the gunmen, they fell back into the narrow lanes, leading the army into a trap. The fighting went on for more than an hour and a half.
Blood was still smeared across the road in Wadi Nasara, the Valley of the Christians, where the ambush took place. Surgical gloves lay on the streets where ambulance crews had tried to save the wounded.
The road here is popularly known as "Worshippers' Lane" among Jews, because it is used by Jewish settlers to walk through Palestinian districts of Hebron to pray at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, one of the holiest sites in the West Bank, sacred to both Jews and Muslims.
The road runs through a narrow valley. Up the steep slope on one side lies Hebron's Old City and the Tomb. On the other are the modern blocks and security fence of the Jewish settlement of Qiryat Arba, with Palestinian houses close by. It is a prime spot for an ambush.
Palestinians in Hebron seethe with resentment. They are often forced to remain under curfew in their houses, so that settlers can walk safely through the streets. About 450 settlers have moved into the Old City, and are slowly taking over more and more of it as Palestinians are forced out.(blatant racism, criminal collective punishment and constant human rights abuses repeatedly condemned in no uncertain terms by Amnesty International, Human Right Watch and other international humanitarian organizations AJGY)
To protect the settlers, there was a routine. On Friday nights, when they went to pray at the Tomb, security forces were stationed in Wadi Nasara to protect the settlers, while border police vehicles patrolled the streets of Palestinian houses to the side.
It was a routine that had taken place many times before, and the gunmen must have known it well. At 7.30pm, the border police jeep was attacked by two men. Hamoud Jabr, a local Palestinian, said he heard the gunmen throw a grenade at the jeep. The blast broke through its armour plating, killing the four border police inside.
Meanwhile, the army said, a third gunman started firing on "Worshippers' Lane". Colonel Noam Tibon, who took over from the dead Col Weinberg, recounted yesterday how soldiers ran after the gunmen into a carefully laid trap.
This was not a "Sabbath Massacre" of civilians, as the Israeli Foreign Ministry claimed on Friday. None of the dead were worshippers. Most would have returned to Qiryat Arba before the attack took place, which would explain why only soldiers and those helping them were killed.
Islamic Jihad have often targeted, and mercilessly killed, Israeli civilians, but the deaths of so many uniformed men will be much more of a shock to ordinary Israelis than an massacre of unarmed settlers. Many Israelis resent the extremist behaviour of settlers in Hebron, which they believe is damaging chances of peace, and many soldiers resent being forced to guard them.
"The Palestinians definitely have reason to worry about the response of the settlers," said Jonathan Stern, a resident of Qiryat Arba. There were murmurings that the settlers were planning their own revenge; it would not be the first time settlers have attacked Palestinian civilians in Hebron. "This is a huge problem. We will do whatever we can to bring law and order," Colonel Tibon said yesterday.
But the first Israeli retribution was already visible. As the colonel spoke, a Palestinian woman shouted angrily from the rubble of her house nearby. The Israeli army demolished it, he said, because the gunmen had fired from its windows. When asked whether the family who lived in the house had anything to do with the attack, his answer was revealing. "Yes and no," he said. "This war is an ugly war. Sometimes both sides take steps" – he hesitated – "which are really tough".
There was no immediate reaction from the Israeli government last night because of the Jewish Sabbath, but Ariel Sharon's government will come under pressure to retaliate harshly.
There are already renewed calls for Yasser Arafat to be expelled – something the United States has made clear it does not want at the moment. But with the army already in most West Bank cities, the Israelis are running out of options. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 6:26 am Post subject: New Settlement Rises at Ambush Site in Hebron |
| Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 6:23 am Post subject: New Settlement Rises at Ambush Site in Hebron
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END ALL USA AID TO ISRAEL - NOW!!
New Settlement Rises at Ambush Site in Hebron
By James Bennet - New York Times
In San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, November 18, 2002, front page story
HEBRON, West Bank - It is because they believe Abraham bought a cave to entomb himself and his family here 4,000 years ago that religious Jews feel they must live in Hebron now.
It was because 12 Israelis ere killed in an ambush here Friday night that Naaman Menachan, a 20-year-old yeshiva student, came to a recently bulldozed Palestinian orchard Saturday evening with a submachine gun across his chest and a sleeping bag slung over his shoulder.
In Hebron, where the political and religious division are animated by death, a new settlement was born Saturday. following the tradition of their tenacious movement, settlers converted sorrow and anger into territorial gain, building a rough outpost near the site of Friday's ambush.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon endorsed the settlers' aims during a visit to Hebron on Sunday. The prime minister called for a half-mile long corridor of Jewish settlements between the shrine and the settlement of Kiryat Arba on the outskirts of Hebron-one of the most volatile and divided cities in the West Bank -as a way to boost security. [Emphasis added]
In the first 24 hours of the settlement's life, the builders went from pitching tents to hooking up water lines and a generator and, on Sunday night, to discussing where to get closets and carpeting. By dusk, Israeli boys were laughing and playing soccer on a field where they had never dared venture before, as soldiers set up a 7-foot-high cement barrier around the new community.
Held under curfew for a second day, Palestinians watched the bustle silently from surrounding rooftops, and then withdrew into their houses as night fell.
Nowhere in Israel and its occupied territories do Israelis and Palestinians live as close together and as far apart as in Hebron. This is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict's frontier, and perhaps its future.
Gazing at the darkened Palestinian houses, Menachan tried to envision the city in 20 years. "What I hope is, no Arabs," he said, as a fire made of brambles and olive branches crackled nearby. "If they continue to make trouble, no Arabs, and a Jewish city. if they're good people - if they know this is our land, that God gave it to us - they can stay.
"If they behave like animals," he added, nodding at the site of the shooting, "then not."
About 130,000 Palestinians live in Hebron. Inside the city, near the cave venerated by Jews and Muslims as Abraham's tomb, 450 devout Jews live in an intently guarded settlement, which was started in 1979. About 7,000 Jews live in Kiryat Arba, a religious settlement established at the edge of Hebron after the 1967 war, when Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan.
Friday's ambush took place along an exposed road between those two settlements, in the Israeli-controlled section of the city. The Israeli army initially said the attack was on Jewish worshipers, but it appears to have been directed at security forces that guard setters. Three security guards from Kiryat Arba were killed, along with five border police and four soldiers, including the commander of forces in Hebron.
[Emphasis added]
If Sharon's proposal to expand settlements pleased hard-liners here, it infuriated Palestinians and Israel's dwindling peace block.
Dror Etkes, who monitors settlement expansion for Peace Now, an Israeli group that opposes settlements, called Sharon's proposal outrageous. he pointed out that thousands of Palestinians live in the area Sharon wants to expropriate.
Polls show that the vast majority of Israelis do not support settlements expansion and want most settlements dismantled, saying they are a key barrier to peace with the Palestinians and a lightning rod for violence against Israeli civilians.
Saeb Erkat, a Palestinian Cabinet minister, warned that "if they carry out this settlement expansion or linkage, it's just adding fuel to the fire that will lead to a major explosion (of violence) in that area. It's crazy."
In Hebron, settlers gathered where a Palestinian olive orchard had recently been bulldozed after an earlier attack. The dirt had been graded as though in preparation for building.
A man in running shoes, jeans and prayer shawl strode to the edge of the clearing and began praying intensely, bending rapidly back and forth at the waist over his prayer book. The outpost took shape around him in the next four hours, as midnight approached.
A truck pulled up and, without a word, the driver unloaded a water tank the size of a Volkswagen beside the praying man, who did not look around.
Steps away, two dozen young people formed a bucket brigade and began pulling stones from an old wall beside another orchard, passing them along to build an enclosure behind a green trailer.
First a lean-to appeared, and then three silver tents were pitched. Benches were set up, and a rabbi began leading a group in prayers and songs. A flatbed truck arrived carrying a red container for conversion into a shelter.
The work proceeded even though the group did not have a formal permit to build a new settlement and did not even know who owned the land. [Emphasis added]
Children gathered by the olive-tree bonfire to watch. "Because people died here, we must be here," said Sophie Guveri, 15.
The Palestinian mayor of Hebron, Mustala Ntshe, said the settlers, "have no intention at all to coexist with our people."
Natsheh seemed unsurprised by the new encampment. "The settlers are not the original Jews of Hebron, and these people are trying to create tension and chaos," he said. "They look on us as their enemy."
Settlers expressed no doubt that God had deeded them this land. This belief is something of a negotiation stopper, for who could compromise on what they are certain is the will of God?
"This is more ours than Tel Aviv," said Meir Menachem, a 43-year-old teacher of history and Judaism and a leader at Kiryat Arba. "This is the land of the bible, not Tel Aviv."
He said the settlement would survive if the creators were stubborn enough. "We are a very stubborn nation," he said.
End | | | | Jefferson Davis | | Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 6:39 am Post subject: |
| The illegal settlements on the West Bank is the great stumbling block and barrier to any compromise. That Israel has chosen to fight a war of attrition then it is doomed to lose. They will have no one to blame but themselves.
The preceeding article is so infuriating that when rational people express concern about how anti-Jewish sentiments aka anti semitism and how it is prevalent and continues to rear its ugly head need look no futher than that article. Sharon and Likud and the far right bear responsibility.
The writing is on the wall, the Palestinians have stopped the dreaded Israeli tanks, have ambushed highly trained IDF soldiers. The learning curve is shortening and I fear the bloodshed on all sides to be terrible.
It will be Israel's final battlefield. | | | | Guest | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
