Up-front, please do a bit of cyber activism. Take the time to write BBC America and ask them to air "The Accused" (about Ariel Sharon's role in the bloody Sabra and Shatila massacre) here in the USA.
Just click on the following link, fill out the form and send it to "BBC America":
http://www.bbcamerica.com/contactus_suggestion.html
Now to my series:
This Robert Fisk article is part of my "Orient House" series. Fisk, as you will remember, writes for the Independent, but his articles are flooding the Internet and are distributed by MER. I know this one will be particularly meaningful to you in understanding what is going on with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was written on August 11 - five days ago. Since then, a lot has happened, as you will see in subsequent ZGrams of this "Orient House" series.
By the way, many more members of the International Solidarity movement have arrived on location and are offering their lives as "human shields" by dispersing anonymously into the Palestinian communities and daring the Israelis to attack the villages, thus creating a public relations nightmare for them.
[START]
11 August 2001
Who trains the Israeli border police? Who, in heaven's name, taught them to help sacrifice the world's sympathy for Israel by sending horses and baton-wielding police into a crowd of American, Jewish and Christian "peace" activists in front of 20 television cameras?
For, while Israelis were burying their dead after Thursday's murderous suicide bombing, the country's police force was proving how quickly it could turn into a rabble.
It didn't have to be like this. The "Women in Black" and the Jewish and Christian groups sat on the road the moment the horses advanced, then linked arms. The Palestinians ran away but none of them was likely to break through the barricades towards Orient House; there was a legion of border guards and soldiers, riot visors down, sticks in hand, horses pawing the ground.
Earlier, ladies in long frocks and girls wearing sun hats tried to talk to the cops in Hebrew. Some of the police would clearly have preferred to have left it at that. One of them wanted to chat about Israel's need for peace, Arafat's "stupidity" in not accepting Barak's offers at Camp David. We chatted about the police horses, the oldest of them 13 years old. "It's time for his bar mitzvah," one of the cops announced. It was like that; a bit overdone, far too many policemen, but not really hostile.
Then a border policeman wearing shades walked through the barrier and ordered the horses forward. The "peace" folk began crying and a horseman grabbed a banner which read: "All human life is sacred: end the occupation."
And then a kind of mild insanity seemed to grip the police. One of them began smashing his baton onto the iron barrier like a centurion, shouting and hammering the stick on the metal. Two cops began pushing and shoving two middle-aged women, another used his baton to punch a youth in the chest.
And so the cameras whirred and snapped as European and American ladies, Christians and Jews alike, held up Palestinian flags in front of angry policemen armed with Galil assault rifles. Five of them were arrested.
When the police advanced, the Westerners linked arms and sat on the road while the Palestinians present turned and ran. The cops had not experienced this before; these odd ladies and rather elderly gentlemen were not afraid. They simply waited to be ridden over. The police stopped.
Then one of them grabbed the Israeli girl; and when she reached for his identity tag, he grabbed her neck and pushed her to the road. Here, the cameras moved in - until an officer restrained the policeman. She shouted for his ID in Hebrew and she too was arrested.
Yes, of course, the Israeli police were fearful; fearful of demonstrators, of suicide bombers, of opposition, of anyone who might protest the seizure of Orient House. But, in less than two hours, they helped to turn Israel's tragedy into a nasty bit of bullying. An elderly French tourist watched. "Why on earth are they behaving like this?" he asked incredulously.
We left him in his ignorance.
[END]
Zundelsite comment: The French tourist can be forgiven for his ignorance because the French mainstream media have never critically examined, much less reported on Israel's violent birth, its arrogant claim to represent "God's Chosen People" and its racist doctrine of Jewish superiority responsible for its apartheid legislation relegating the original inhabitants of Palestine to second class citizenship having to live in Israeli occupied Bantustans.
This kind of political set-up can only result in treating all non-Israelis, non-Zionists as less than they think they are - as "Untermenschen", to use a term well-known. "We are all Palestinians to the Jews" - as one of my Zgram correspondents puts it.
That's what the world is finally finding out! The gentle Palestinians are ripping the spin-doctors' veil right off the ugly faces of the bullying torturers! High time!
As Fisk has put it and as many people repeat it, if these Israeli thugs in uniform behave like this towards people in front of running TV cameras, what do you think they do to their victims when nobody is there to watch them?
This is done with American acquiescence - and largely with American and other Western countries' money. It is done with the world's acquiencence and silence. It will get much worse - unless good people step in and speak up.