ZGram - 4/7/2002 - Ethnic Cleansing Israeli Style - Part I of 3

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

April 7, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

This essay needs no introduction.  Read for yourself - force yourself 
to read it all the way:

[START]

Geov Parrish

Witness to horror

Nothing excuses the cold-blooded Israeli attacks upon the civilian 
population of Palestine

Eyewitness accounts are pouring out of Ramallah, Bethlehem, and other 
points where the Israeli Army is engaged in a full-scale attack upon 
the civilian population of Palestine.

=46or the moment, one has to go to the Internet (the Jerusalem IMC is a 
good place to start) to get the worst of it; unlike media in the rest 
of the world, U.S. reports are frequently pulling their punches in 
the name of "balance," cowed both by Israeli attacks upon foreign 
journalists and by domestic sensibilities in the United States.

As one Israeli commentator pointed out this week, since the beginning 
of this wave of Palestinian attacks in fall 2000, more Israelis have 
died in car accidents than by suicide bombings. Dying at the hands of 
someone who hates you for your citizenship (or religion) somehow 
feels different. But no matter how horrific Israel's losses have been 
at the hands of Palestinian suicide bombers, nothing -- absolutely 
nothing -- excuses the cold-blooded Israeli attacks upon the civilian 
population of Palestine that continue as you read this. Reports from 
Israel suggest Ariel Sharon's government intends to wage this 
"campaign" until all of Palestine has been subjected to it.

The attacks doubtless seem to many Americans like just another war -- 
more tragic, perhaps, because "they're always fighting over there," 
but basically an unsolvable mess the United States is only 
tangentially related to. We're not, of course.

The United States is inextricably linked -- by weapons sales, aid 
programs, investment, and the eyes of the world -- to whatever Israel 
does. And this is no "ordinary" war; it is not even a war, because 
with few exceptions the "enemy" is not shooting back, is not even 
present. And in the course of the resulting death and destruction, 
Israel is violating just about every known convention for how 
humanity has agreed to conduct itself during its most inhumane 
moments.

Consider these accounts from the last 48 hours:

"The Israeli aircrafts have already started firing at [the] Aida 
Refugees' camp.... The Israeli soldiers do not care anymore at whom 
their guns are pointed." -- George Rishmawi, Bethlehem.

"More than 150 Israeli tanks invaded [the Bethlehem area from all 
directions. Heavy shooting and shelling is regular all morning long. 
The Israeli army is moving towards the Church of Nativity. Bethlehem 
is sliced into a dozen isolated areas. Soldiers and Apaches are 
shooting at any moving target." -- Ghassan, Bethlehem.

"Tonight we have heard numerous reports of 30 Palestinian policemen 
executed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers in a building where they 
sought refuge on Irssal Street in Ramallah. This was after five 
Palestinian officers were executed by being shot [in] the head and 
then had their corpses thrown on the pavement for hours on Friday. 
Ambulances are prevented from reaching their destinations and two 
hospitals have either been broken into [Arabcare] or shot at [Nazer 
Maternity Hospital]...One of the employees of the Sakakini Center 
[said] the Israeli army burst into his village [Kobar] yesterday, 
destroyed belongings and arrested his younger brother, alongside 30 
other young men from the village.

"The cleaning lady of the Center lives in a house with an outhouse 
for toilets. For three days the Israelis have been posted by the door 
to her house and preventing all exit. When the eldest today sneaked 
out to the outhouse, the Israelis caught him and beat him. His school 
teacher father tried to intervene, [and] the Israelis beat him and 
arrested him.

"One of the board members of our center was arrested with all the 
employees of the office building where he was working late Thursday 
night. They were all blindfolded and had their hands tied and placed 
in one room for 16 hours. The Israelis destroyed some office 
furniture and stole hard drives from computers. They all untied 
themselves once they realized the Israelis had gone on to bigger prey.

"My next-door neighbor's 70+-year-old father lives near Yasser 
Arafat's office. The Israelis broke into his home Friday, broke 
everything with the butts of their rifles (TV, sinks, furniture, 
etc=8A) and then stole some money.

"There are reports also of Israeli soldiers breaking into banks and 
change offices and jewelry stores and stealing money and jewelry...." 
-- Adila Laidi, Director, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, Ramallah.

"Israeli tanks were waiting outside the front of the house. Israelis 
have been going into houses taking food and leaving. Also, they have 
been going into houses and taking all men ages 15 to 50. Some have 
been taken away. Others have been stripped and left in the street for 
several hours in the cold and rain.

"This morning the President of the Red Crescent Society [Red Cross] 
[Younis Al-Khatib] was taken from his office by Israeli soldiers, 
made to crawl on his hands and knees in the street in the rain, and 
then arrested. Many medics have been arrested. PRCS officially 
announced that there is no ambulance service for the sick and injured 
in Ramallah. Israelis will not let ambulances pass, and the medics 
are taken away." --Caroline, Ramallah, as told via phone to a Seattle 
friend.

"Things here are shifting again slightly, but not enough. there are 
still large numbers of wounded in Manger Square in the center of the 
old city, and many dead lying in the streets or in houses from which 
they cannot be removed [update this second: the family who had two 
members killed by a tank shell have managed to get them out]. The 
mosque, in which people were hiding, was shelled by tanks, and there 
are 150-200 holed up in the Church of the Nativity; we've just spoken 
to one of them and no medics have been allowed through but nuns have 
been attending the injured. Injured in [the] Deheishe refugee camp 
have also been denied access to [a] hospital, and we've just watched 
from our window as Israeli troops surrounded and searched a Red 
Crescent ambulance.

"Another ambulance was crushed by a tank this morning in Beit Kala. A 
group of internationals attempted to accompany an ambulance to Manger 
Square to get humanitarian aid to those trapped, but they were fired 
on; apparently the Israelis had chosen (without telling anyone) that 
they would use their clocks and not Palestinian time to time the 
curfew and thus decided to shoot at people....

"In Ramallah, a group of 2,000 Israelis [Gush Shalom] and Arab 
Israelis attempting to deliver food and medical supplies were stopped 
and heavily teargassed. One truck of aid was allowed through, but the 
soldiers then emptied it and stamped on the medical supplies, leaving 
the food on the ground." --Sarah Irving, International Solidarity 
Movement, Bethlehem.

And so they come in, account after account, endlessly detailing a 
systematic attack by a marauding army upon a helpless, impoverished 
civilian population: denying food, denying medical supplies, denying 
care for the wounded, stealing what they like and destroying the 
rest, arbitrarily arresting, beating, torturing, and even executing 
large numbers of people for the crime of being Palestinian and male, 
and specifically attacking neutrals -- not just medics, but 
journalists and internationals who can tell the world what Israel is 
doing.

All of these are violations not just of the Geneva Convention, but 
just about any international law or standard relating to warfare that 
can be imagined. This is not an invasion, but an attack upon 
civilians who have already lived under Israeli military rule for 35 
years. That military is now carrying out calculated actions thought 
by many to be unimaginable in the 21st century. For much of the 
world, the United States -- which, to the extent it has said anything 
at all, still seems to blame Yassar Arafat for this spectacle -- is 
equally culpable.

=46or the last two days, I have been trying to distill what needs to be 
written about these atrocities, and U.S. complicity in them; instead, 
the list keeps expanding. This is due, in part, to the presence of 
the "internationals," courageous activists from around the world 
bearing witness and acting as shields in the worst of the attack 
areas. (They will be the subject of tomorrow's column.)

As it happens, I know no less than four of them. Two, in fact, are 
volunteers (and personal friends) with the community newspaper I help 
publish in Seattle, Eat the State!; they had offered ahead of time to 
write of their experiences for ETS!. One was in the group shot at on 
Monday; the other is waiting, nervously, in the Azza refugee camp 
near Bethlehem, having refused a U.S. embassy offer of evacuation. 
Another international is a former intern at Seattle Weekly, where I 
work.

Personally knowing people who are in the midst of this catastrophe 
makes a difference, but it shouldn't. Another ETS! volunteer went on 
a similar delegation in January; here's what happened to his host 
family in Ramallah:

"Our friend Mahmoud (47 years old) and his son Majd (18 years old) 
were arrested and taken out of their apartment in Ramallah this 
morning....All the other Palestinian males in their building were 
also arrested. Israeli soldiers have been going from house to house 
for days arresting all Palestinian males under 45 -- and apparently 
some that are older.

"At this writing [Tuesday] there have been at least 14 summary 
executions of prisoners in Ramallah, with reports of many more than 
that. One report describes prisoners in a large room being roughly 
divided into two groups, one group to be held, one group to be shot.

"Mahmoud...was released tonight. Mahmoud is currently in too much 
pain to stand up. After being beaten and kicked in the back while in 
custody, he was released and allowed to walk home -- about seven 
miles....Several older men were released with him. Mahmoud's son Majd 
is still in custody, along with all the other young men. It is Majd's 
first arrest. The family is hoping he will come home alive."

=46or all of the Palestinian families hoping their sons, husbands, and 
fathers will survive, there is something we can do. The United States 
still has, if it so chooses, tremendous influence over this 
situation. If these scenes, and countless more like them, do not fit 
your idea of civilized behavior -- let alone democracy -- call the 
White House. Call your Congresspeople. Call your local talk shows, 
write and e-mail letters to the editor, get in touch with 
international aid groups.

This is a horror unfolding before our eyes, and the United States, 
alone among international actors, has the power to make it stop; we, 
alone among outraged people around the world, have the power to 
petition a government (outside Israel) that can make it stop. Let's 
use it.

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle 
Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the weekdaily 
Straight Shot for WorkingForChange.

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Thought for the Day:

"We come too late to say anything which has not been said already."

(Jean de la Bruyere)