ZGram - 4/8/2002 - "Ethnic Cleansing Israeli Style - Part II of 3"
irimland@zundelsite.org
irimland@zundelsite.org
Thu, 4 Apr 2002 19:01:27 -0800
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny
April 8, 2002
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
Another example of Ethnic cleansing - Israeli Style:
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Eyewitness Account From
American Student In Ramallah
ElectricIntifada.org
4-3-2
RAMALLAH, Occupied Palestine -
My name is Tzaporah Ryter. I am an American student from the
University of Minnesota. I currently am in Ramallah. We are under a
terrible siege and people are being massacred by both the Israeli
army and armed militia groups of Israeli settlers. They are shooting
outside at anything that moves. I am urgently pleading for as much
outside help as possible to help save lives here. I arrived in
Ramallah last Thursday. I had come back for a visit to the
Palestinian city where I had been previously living and studying.
On Thursday afternoon, the Israeli army began sealing off each
entrance to Ramallah and there were rumors that they planned to
invade. People were rushing back home from across checkpoints and
also people were trying to flee. People were not allowed to go out
and many working people with homes and children to return to were not
allowed in,everyone was trying to take cover. Those traveling in
began desperately searching for alternative ways and traveling in
groups, but the Israelis were firing upon them and everyone was
running and screaming. Women carrying their children were trying
desperately to flee from Ramallah,carrying infants and toddlers, and
their young children were running along in the rain through the
fields, slipping and falling on the rocks, trying to reach safety.
Israeli jeeps were speeding across the terrain pulling up from every
direction and shooting at the women and children, and also at me, as
we ran in opposite directions. They were chasing down people, hunting
them like that in the fields. When I reached Ramallah, people were
panicking and trying to buy bread, rice and milk from corner stores,
but most supplies were already gone. We bought what we could and went
inside to wait for what was coming.
When night fell, Israeli tanks began to invade and also we saw
Israeli troops coming on foot from the valley, and surrounding our
house. I could hear them calling to each other in Hebrew. They were
against our door and all around. They were firing everywhere a
barrage of bullets and there was tank fire. We had to lay on the
floor and keep silent. We stayed there, on the floor, for nearly four
days in the darkness. We knew that our circumstances were better than
others because old people or infants or people with medical emergency
needs had no help. It was very cold, with most families packed all in
one room. Some people are without life sustaining medicines like
insulin, and they are altering their doses dangerously if they have
any medicine left to take. People are becoming dangerously sick from
lack of food and water and heat. The fear and terror only makes
things worse, but it cannot be avoided. In the daytime, we heard them
shooting people in the streets, and could hear them screaming and
screaming. No ambulance was allowed through. Then their screams
stopped and there was just silence.
We had a telephone and would receive calls from all over telling us
what was happening. Everyone is in grave danger and Israeli soldiers
were killing people everywhere. They are arresting medics and
ambulance drivers, including foreign volunteer medical workers. They
keep taking doctors and medics, just now another call. Again, this
time the wife of a doctor telling us her husband has been taken from
the ambulance. Large groups of people have been found in rooms, shot
dead, there are blood marks where they have lined people up on their
knees and shot them, with their ID cards laying on top of them. They
are taking people from their homes, blindfolding them, removing their
clothes, taking them away or lining them up and shooting them against
the wall. People are making phone calls and saying that these
soldiers and militia have come in and are shooting people and then
the line cuts off. The numbers of these killings I fear are much
greater than the numbers confirmed in the press, because the human
rights offices and the media centers have been stormed, and
everything is shut down. No one can move without almost certain
chance of being shot by the Isreali snipers, who are everywhere. The
Israelis are demanding that all journalists leave Ramallah and today
another foreign journalist was shot. They do not want any more
internationals here and are deporting people. It seems quite clear
that they do not want eyewitnesses which is only heightening my own
fears.
The hospitals have also been surrounded and invaded and Israeli
troops are taking the injured people and interrogating them. Today a
woman, a patient, tried to walk out from hospital. The Israelis shot
her in the neck and killed her. The Palestinian Ministry of Health is
saying that they fear the spread of diseases because of the number of
unburied corpses. The numbers are only growing in reports of the mass
killings here and Israeli troops continue to round up people. People
are calling frantically, missing a relative and we do not know where
they have been taken, including children.
The numbers we have now exceed 600, and we are estimating between 700
and 800. All human rights groups and legal advocates are being denied
any information of where the detained are being held. From what we
know confirmed is that 10% of those taken so far have been children
under age 18. On the fourth day I decided to try to move. People were
running out of supplies and I also was so worried about people, and
had to check to see if they were okay. If I didn't, I feared panic
would overtake me so badly that I really had no other choice but to
try and go. It was not safe where I was in any case and at least if I
left I would still have my sanity. It was really terrifying as there
are some internationals here, usually traveling in groups, and the
Israelis are saying on the radio that they will arrest or shoot the
internationals. They did shoot some yesterday and regardless, it's
not as if snipers differentiate and they are everywhere. My friends
told me not to go, and were really scared for me, but I had to go.
When I went outside, there were cars all shot up and hit by multiple
bullets and shells in the middle of the road, unparked. There must
have been people in them but I dont know where their bodies are.
There are no reports of them, but they must exist I got to the corner
trying to go to the bakery for bread and food for people. Some people
were calling and calling with only one cup of rice left. I made it to
the corner but they opened fire on my first try, and shot at me,so I
had to turn back. After that I tried again and it took me one day to
make it a block because I had to start over again and again. I had to
climb through the valley, and as I passed house by house, people were
warning me and pointing out what path seemed safest for these two
minutes. In the next two minutes, it would be something different.
They really helped to keep my path safe.
Today is Day Five and they are still rounding up people like this and
we hear them shooting all day long. This afternoon the Israelis
suddenly lifted the curfew, suddenly announcing that everyone had two
hours to go out to get food. However, the Israeli soldiers also took
food from many of the stores, looted, and there is no bread or
things. People went to get whatever they could. Even though the
Israeli army said it had lifted the closure for two hours in which we
still were not able to transfer medical supplies and still was not
long enough to everything that was badly needed the Israelis
continued shooting people in the streets indiscriminately on their
way, so people were running around trying to make it to the store or
find a safe route only to have to run back home again. It was an
added cruelty and terror tactic inthis macabre situation, a sick
joke: starve people and then shoot them when they try to find food
with your permission.
In an apartment building in Beitunia neighborhood where I used to
live, they took 60 people who were my neighbors, including several
familes, and pushed them into one room since last night. The Israelis
told them that they are to be used as an human shields' as the
apartment building is across from a building that they were invading.
One child needs to go to the hospital since last night and,
initially, the families were able to call outside. Now, the Israelis
have taken their phones.
There are reports that they are rounding up men between the ages of
14 and 45 in that neighborhood, and these civilians, from these same
Palestinian families trapped in that building, were just used to walk
in front of an Israeli tank as it invaded the Preventative Security
Compound. Reports also have alleged that the Israelis were saying
that some could leave but shot them when they attempted to leave. The
buildings there are burning, and people are trapped inside. We keep
calling to try to find people but there has been no electricity and
most people's phones are dead now. I do not know what is happening to
many people. The only solution to this is to try to brave the deadly
streets in order to check, but its almost impossible and terrifying
to leave the house at all. Each place I come to, I am afraid to leave
not only for myself but for everyone else in this horrifying position.
Israeli death squads have been yanking people into the street. I also
hear only shooting and shooting, with no return fire. This suggest
that unarmed civilians are being gunned down mercilessly everywhere
and I am so scared for everyone. I feel like maybe if I leave one
place, one area or neighborhood I will never see the people again
alive. There are more explosions outside now and more shooting.
Another explosion. More firing, it just doesnt't stop. This is a
massacre.
The foreign delegations tried to get in but were turned back, the
International Committee of the Red Cross is trying to help but they
are being ignored. Please help. I am not only scared for myself and
for people here, but if this cannot be stopped, I am truly scared for
all of humanity, for a world in which we send men to the moon but
cannot stop ethnic cleansing. On the news in America, we see hardly
anything of demonstrations. What are you doing over there?
There do not seem to be any reports of what is happening. In truth,
it's got to stop. Please go out to the streets, please demand a
response from your representatives. Be loud, march up to the
capitals, refuse to leave until the Israelis withdraw.
Act now! Tell them the Israelis are murdering innocent people whose
only crime is being born in their own homeland, a Palestinian under a
military occupation. Demand international protection for the
Palestinian people, scream that this is an affront to humanity and
that it is time that the US not only stop supporting Israel, but that
the US stop its abuse of human rights within its own borders. This is
about all of our struggles.
For the love of God, please stop this slaughter. Please help.
http://www.electronicintifada.org/diaries/index.html
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Thought for the Day:
"Truth is the cry of all, but the game of the few."
(George Berkeley)