Copyright (c) 1997 - Ingrid A. Rimland
"The time has come for us, the Jews, to stop pretending to be a more moral people than other peoples, and especially to stop pretending to have a higher morality than the Arabs. We are not 'a great righteous nation,' and we have never been better than other nations.' From memory and interviews published today, one can understand that in the struggle for our existence we knew quite well not only how to cheat and lie but also how to assassinate and accuse others of acts we ourselves had committed. The time has come for even our prime minister to learn about this." (Translated for WRMEA, October/November 1997, p. 23)
This leads right into a Middle East Realities editorial (September 27, 97)
that I have been saving for you because certain human rights abuses didn't
happen half a century ago for which ancient men have to be hunted right
to the rim of their graves. They were committed by young Israeli soldiers
rather recently:
"The worst massacres in the recent history of the Middle East have not been perpetrated by Arabs, but rather by Israelis. This simple fact is often overlooked in the Western media.
In 1982 thousands of Palestinian refugees were slaughtered in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla -- this on top of the estimated 50,000+ Lebanese and Palestinian civilians killed during Israel's barbarous war on Lebanon.
The responsible person was Ariel Sharon, now one of the senior leaders of the Government of Israel.
The rise of Hezbollah was a direct result of Israel's brutal devastation of Lebanon, killing of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, attempts to install a puppet government in Beirut, and direct military occupation of the southern area of the country.
No one was held responsible, no apologies have been made, no compensation has been paid.
Just last year at Qana, Lebanon, Israel purposefully massacred over a hundred civilians even though they had specifically fled to a camp under U.N. protection. Shimon Peres, Israeli Prime Minister at the time, then repeatedly lied and covered up the atrocity until evidence (of which the Israelis were not aware) surfaced.
No one was held responsible, no apologies have been made, no compensation has been paid.
Israeli "death squads" have been operating in the occupied territories for years. Indeed, the brutal and unprecedented Israeli military occupation of large parts of historic Palestine is itself a form of organized State-sponsored terrorism. And just a few years ago, in 1994, Baruch Goldstein, in Israeli army uniform, massacred Arab worshipers at the Tomb of Abraham in occupied Hebron.
No one was held responsible, no apologies have been made, no compensation has been paid and the meshugana Rabbis of Hebron remain free, guns in hand.
And, by the way, there was no Hamas, and there were no suicide bombers, in occupied Palestine until recent years - after a generation of Israeli occupation and repression, torture and systematic terror."
(NEW MER WEEKLY NEWSLETTER NOW at http://WWW.MiddleEast.Org
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Thought for the Day:
"Bill Clinton and Janet Reno didn't massacre all of those women and children at Waco; they didn't murder them; they didn't even kill them; they just besieged them."
(From a recent Dissident Voices broadcast)