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)