The Nobel Prize of Literature Jose Saramago compares the
suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation as the same suffering of
the jews in the Nazi boot camps. "The repression from Israel is the
worst form of Apartheid. Nobody has the faintest idea of what is going on here,
even the best informed people. Everything is in pieces, the land is destroyed
and nothing else may be planted. All this smells like a boot camp, like
Auschwitz. The israeli have turned into NAZI JEWS" , he declared after
a visit to Palestina in March, 2002. He is correct. Let us see why:
Although the image that Israel
distributes about herself is that of an oppressed nation, it is with heavy
hearts that we present these crimes that stand for themselves for the brutality
of the Israeli Army and the heartlessness of its soldiers who seem to have a
thirst for blood. It is for the hope that the world may see a clearer picture
that we present these painful facts. It is interesting to notice that today's
media does not dwell on these crimes as they do on the Holocaust. They are
reported in the news for a week or two and then swept into the sea of oblivion.
Those who attempt to revive the true history of Israel are charged of being
anti-Semitic. So with the hope to keep those memories in mind we present this
shameful history of Israel that seems to have found that the role of
Goliath is more interesting than that of David.
The following list of massacres is by no
means exclusive, but they reflect the nature of the Zionist occupation of
Palestine and Lebanon and show that massacres and expulsions were not
aberrations that happen in any war, but organized atrocities with only one aim,
that is to have a Zionist state which is 'goyim rein'.
The King David Hotel explosion of
July 22, 1946 (Palestine), which resulted in the deaths of 92 Britons, Arabs and
Jews, and in the wounding of 58, was not just an act of “Jewish extremists,” but
a premeditated massacre conducted by the Irgun in agreement with the highest
Jewish political authorities in Palestine-- the Jewish Agency and its head
David-Ben-Gurion.
According to Yitshaq Ben-Ami, a Palestinian Jew who spent 30 years
in exile after the establishment of Israel investigating the crimes of the
“ruthless clique heading the internal Zionist movement,”
The Irgun had conceived a plan for the King
David attack early in 1946, but the green light was given only on July first.
According to Dr. Sneh, the operation was personally approved by Ben-Gurion, from
his self-exile in Europe. Sadeh, the operations officer of the Haganah, and
Giddy Paglin, the head of the Irgun operation under Menachem Begin agreed that
thirty-five minutes advance notice would give the British time enough to
evacuate the wing, without enabling them to disarm the explosion.
The Jewish Agency’s motive was to
destroy all evidence the British had gathered proving that the terrorist crime
waves in Palestine were not merely the actions of “fringe” groups such as the
Irgun and Stern Gang, but were committed in collusion with the Haganah and
Palmach groups and under the direction of the highest political body of the
Zionist establishment itself, namely the Jewish Agency.
That so many innocent civilian lives were lost
in the King David massacre is a normal part of the pattern of the history of
Zionist outrages: A criminal act is committed, allegedly by an isolated group,
but actually under the direct authorization of the highest Zionist authorities,
whether of the Jewish Agency
during the Palestine Mandate or of the Government of Israel
thereafter.
The following is a statement made in
the House of Commons by then British Prime Minister Clement
Attlee:
On July 22, 1946,
one of the most dastardly and cowardly crimes in recorded history took place. We
refer to the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
Ninety-two persons lost their lives
in that stealthy attack, 45 were injured, among whom there were many high
officials, junior officers and office personnel, both men and women. The King
David Hotel was used as an office housing the Secretariat of the Palestine
Government and British Army Headquarters. The attack was made on 22 July at
about 12 o’clock noon when offices are usually in full swing. The attackers,
disguised as milkmen, carried the explosives in milk containers, placed them in
the basement of the Hotel and ran away.
The Chief Secretary for the
Government of Palestine, Sir John Shaw, declared in a broadcast: “As head of the
Secretariat, the majority of the dead and wounded were my own staff, many of
whom I have known personally for eleven years. They are more than official
colleagues. British, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Armenians; senior officers, police, my
orderly, my chauffeur, messengers, guards, men and
women-- young and old-- they were my
friends.
“No man could wish to be served by a more industrious, loyal and honest group of ordinary decent people. Their only crime was their devoted, unselfish and impartial service to Palestine and its people. For this they have been rewarded by cold-blooded mass murder.”
Although members of the Irgun Z’vai Leumi took responsibility for this crime, yet they also made it public later that they obtained the consent and approval of the Haganah Command, and it follows, that of the Jewish Agency.
The King David Hotel massacre shocked the
conscience of the civilizedworld. On July 23, Anthony Eden, leader of the
British opposition Conservative
Party, posed a question in the House of Commons to Prime Minister Atlee
of the Labor Party, asking “the Prime Minister whether he has any statement to
make on the bomb outrage at the British Headquarters in Jerusalem.” The Prime
Minister responded:
“…It appears that, after exploding a small bomb in the street,
presumably as a diversionary measure-- this did virtually no damage-- a lorry
drove up to the tradesmen’s entrance of the King David Hotel and the occupants,
after holding up the staff at pistol point, entered the kitchen premises
carrying a number of milk cans. At some stage of the proceedings, they shot and
seriously wounded a British soldier who attempted to interfere with them. All
available information so far is to the effect that they were Jews. Somewhere in
the basement of the hotel they planted bombs which went off shortly afterwards.
They appear to have made good their escape.
“Every effort is being made to identify and
arrest the perpetrators of this outrage. The work of rescue in the debris, which
was immediately organized, still continues. The next-of-kin of casualties are
being notified by telegram as soon as accurate information is available. The
House will wish to express their
profound sympathy with the relatives of the killed and with those
injured in this dastardly outrage.”
The Massacre at Baldat al-Shaikh:
January 30-31, 1947(Palestine) : This
massacre took place following an argument which broke out between Palestinian
workers and Zionists in the Haifa Petroleum Refinery, leading to the deaths of a
number of Palestinians and wounding and killing approximately sixty Zionists. A
large number of the Palestinian Arab workers were living in Baldat al-Shaikh and
Hawasa, located in the southeast of Haifa. Consequently, the Zionists planned to
take revenge on behalf of fellow Zionists who had been killed in the refinery by
attacking Baldat al-Shaikh and Hawasa.1
On the night of January 30-31, 1947, a mixed force
composed of the First Battalion
of Palmakh and the Carmelie brigade (estimated at approximately
150 to 200
Zionist
terrorists) launched a raid against the two towns under the leadership
of
Hayim Afinu'am.]2
They focused their attack on the outskirts of Baldat al-Shaikh and
Hawasa. Taking the outlying homes by
surprise as their inhabitants slept, they pelted
them with hand grenades, then went inside,
firing their machine guns.3 The terrorist
attack led to the deaths of approximately
sixty citizens inside their homes, most of
them women, elderly and children.4 The attack
lasted for an hour, after which the
Zionists withdrew at 2:00 a.m., having attacked a large number of
noncombatant
homes.5
According to a report written by the leader of the terrorist operation,
"the
attacking units
slipped into the town and began working on the houses. And due to
the fact that gunfire was directed
inside the rooms, it was not possible to avoid
injuring women and children."6
5/7/1948(Palestine): The Jewish Agency
escalated their terror campaign against Palestinian Arabs.
They decided to perpetrate a
wholesale massacre by bombing the Semiramis Hotel in the Katamon section of
Jerusalem, in order to drive out the Palestinians from Jerusalem. The massacre
of the Semiramis Hotel on January 5, 1948, was the direct responsibility of
Jewish Agency leader David Ben-Gurion and Haganah leaders Moshe Sneh and Yisrael
Galili. If this massacre had taken place in World War II, they would have been
sentenced to death for their criminal responsibility along with the terrorists
who placed the explosives.
A description of the massacre of the Semiramis Hotel from the
United Nations Documents follows, as well as the Palestinian Police report on
the crime sent to the Colonial Office in London:
January 5, 1948. Haganah terrorists made a
most barbarous attack at one o’clock in the early morning of Monday…at the
Semiramis Hotel in the Katamon section of Jerusalem, killing innocent people and
wounding many. The Jewish Agency terrorist forces blasted the entrance to the
hotel by a small bomb and then placed bombs in the basement of the building. As
a result of the explosion the whole building collapsed with its residents. As
the terrorists withdrew, they started shooting at the houses in the
neighborhood. Those killed were: Subhi El-Taher, Moslem; Mary Masoud, Christian;
Georgette Khoury, Christian; Abbas Awadin, Moslem; Nazira Lorenzo, Christian;
Mary Lorenzo, Christian; Mohammed
Saleh Ahmed, Moslem; Ashur Abed El Razik Juma, Moslem; Ismail Abed
El Aziz, Moslem; Ambeer Lorenzo, Christian; Raof Lorenzo, Christian; Abu Suwan
Christian family, seven members, husband, wife, and five children.
Besides those killed, 16 more were
wounded, among them women and children. The following is a text of a cable by
the High Commissioner for Palestine to the Colonial Office about the
massacre:
Jerusalem.
0117 hours, Urban. At approximately 0117 hours, a grenade was thrown into the
Semiramis Hotel, Katamon Quarter, causing superficial damage but no casualties.
During the ensuing confusion, a charge was placed in the building and it
exploded about one minute later, completely demolishing half the hotel.
Witnesses have stated that the perpetrators arrived by way of the Upper Katamon
Road in two taxis. Four persons are reported to have alighted from the first
taxi, and one person, who apparently covered the main party, from the second.
All were wearing European clothes…
9/4/1948(Palestine): The forces of the
Zionist gangs Tsel, Irgun and Hagana, fitted out with the Zionist
terrorist strategy of killing civilians in order to achieve their aspirations,
began stealing into the village on the night of April 9, 1948. Their
purpose was to uproot the Palestinian people from their land by coming
upon the inhabitants of the village
unawares, destroying their homes and burning them down on top of those
inside, thereby making clear to
the entire world to what depths of barbarism Zionist had sunk. The attack began as the children were asleep
in their mothers' and fathers' arms. In the words of Menachim Begin as he described events, "the Arabs
fought tenaciously in defense of
their homes, their women and their children." The fighting proceeded from house to house, and whenever the Jews
occupied a house, they
would
blow it up, then direct a call to the inhabitants to flee or face death.
Believing the threat, the people
left in terror in hopes of saving their children and women. But
what should the Stern and Irgun gangs do but
rush to mow down whoever fell within range of their weapons. Then, in a picture of barbarism the likes of
which humanity has rarely
witnessed except on the part of the most depraved, the terrorists
began throwing bombs inside the
houses in order to bring them down on whoever was
inside. The orders they had received were for them
to destroy every house. Behind the explosives there marched the Stern and Irgun terrorists, who killed
whoever they found alive. The
explosions continued in the same barbaric fashion until the afternoon of April 10, 1948.7 Then they gathered
together the civilians who were still alive, stood them up beside the walls and in corners, then fired on
them.8 About twenty-five men
were brought out of the houses, loaded onto a truck and led on a
"victory tour" in the neighborhood of
Judah Mahayina and Zakhroun Yousif. At the end of the tour, the men were brought to a stone
quarry located between Tahawwu'at Shawul and Dair Yasin, where they were shot in cold blood. Then the
Etsel and Layhi "fighters"
brought the women and the children who had managed to survive up to
a truck and took them to the
Mendelbaum Gate.8 Finally, a Hagana unit came and dug a mass grave in which it buried 250 Arab corpses,
most of them women, children
and the elderly.9
A woman who survived the massacre by the
name of Halima Id describes what happened to her sister. She says, "I saw a soldier grabbing my sister,
Saliha al-Halabi, who was nine
months pregnant. He pointed a machine gun at her neck, then emptied its contents into her body. Then he
turned into a butcher, and grabbed a knife and ripped open her stomach to take out the slaughtered child
with his
iniquitous Nazi
knife."10 In another location in the village, Hanna Khalil, a girl at
the time, saw a man unsheathing
a large knife and ripping open the body her neighbor Jamila Habash from head to toe. Then he murdered
their neighbor Fathi in the same way at the entranceway to the house.11 A 40-year-old woman named
Safiya describes how she was
come upon by a man who suddenly opened up his trousers and pounced on her. "I began screaming and wailing.
But the women around me
were all meeting the same fate. After that they tore off our clothes so that
they could fondle our
breasts and our bodies with gestures too horrible to describe."12 Some
of the soldiers cut off
women's ears in order to get at a few small earrings.13 Once news of the massacre had gotten out, a
delegation from the Red Cross tried to visit the village. However, they weren't allowed to
visit the site until a day after the
time they had requested. Meanwhile the Zionists tried to cover up
the evidence of their
crime. They gathered up as much as they could of the victims'
dismembered corpses, threw
them in the village well, then closed it up. And they tried to change
the landmarks in the area
so that the Red Cross representative wouldn't be able to
find his way there.
However, he did find his way to the well, where he found 150
maimed corpses belonging
to women, children and the elderly. And in addition to the
bodies which were found in
the well, scores of others had been buried in mass graves while
still others remained strewn over
street corners and in the ruins of houses.14
Afterwards, the head of the terrorist Hagana
gang which had taken part in burying the Palestinian civilians wrote saying that his group
had not undertaken a military operation against armed men, the reason being that they wanted to plant
fear in the Arabs' hearts.
This was the reason they chose a peaceable, unarmed village,
since in this way they
could spread terror among the Arabs and force them to flee.15
May 15, 1948 (Palestine): "From testimonies and information I got from Jewish and Arab witnesses and from soldiers who were there, at least 200 people from the village of Tantura were killed by Israeli troops...
"From the numbers, this is definitely one of the biggest massacres," Teddy Katz an Israeli historian said Tantura, near Haifa in northern Palestine, had 1,500 residents at the time. It was later demolished to make way for a parking lot for a nearby beach and the Nahsholim kibbutz, or cooperative farm.
Fawzi Tanji, now 73 and a refugee at a camp in the West Bank, is from Tantura
he said:
I was 21 years old then.They took a group of 10 men,lined them up
against the cemetery wall and killed them.Then they brought another group,
killed them, threw away the bodies and so on, Tanji said. I was waiting for my
turn to die in cold blood as I saw the men drop in front of me.
Katz said other Palestinians were killed inside their homes and in other parts of the village. At one point, he said, soldiers shot at anything that moved.
BEIT DARAS
MASSACRE:
21 May
1948(Palestine): after a number of failed attempts to occupy this village, the
Zionists mobilized a large contingent and surrounded the village. The people of
Beit Daras decided that women and children should leave. As women and children
left the village they were met by the Zionist army who massacred them despite
the fact that they could see they were women and children fleeing the
fighting.
The following are excerpts of a
description of the massacre published in the
Israeli daily ‘Al ha Mishmar, quoted in All
That Remains:
The children they killed by breaking
their heads with sticks. There was not a house
without dead…one commander ordered a sapper to
put two old women in a certain
house…and to blow up the house with them. The sapper refused…the
commander then ordered his men to put in the old women and the evil deed was
done. One soldier boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot
her…
A former mukhtar (head of a village) of Dawayma interviewed in 1984 by the Israeli daily Hadashot, also quoted by Mr. Khalidi, offered another description:
The people fled, and everyone they
saw in the houses, they shot and killed. They
also killed people in the streets. They came
and blew up my house, in the presence of eye-witnesses…the moment that the tanks
came and opened fire, I left the village immediately. At about half-past ten,
two tanks passed the Darawish Mosque. About 75 old people were there, who had
come early for Friday prayers. They gathered in the mosque to pray. They were
all killed.
About 35 families had been hiding in
caves outside Dawayma, according to the
mukhtar, and when the Israeli forces
discovered them they were told to come out, line up, and begin walking. “And as
they started to walk, they were shot by machine guns from two sides…we sent
people there that night, who collected the bodies, put them into a cistern, and
buried them,” the mukhtar told the Israeli daily.
26/10/1948 (Lebanon) :Houla is located in southern Lebanon, only a few kilometers from the Israeli border. When Arab volunteers gathered to liberate Palestine from "Israeli" occupation, they established their headquarters in Houla, on hills overlooking Palestine. The force was successful in fending off major attacks on Lebanese villages, but the fighters suddenly withdrew on October 26, 1948." "Jewish militants attacked the town to avenge the residents' support of Arab resistance forces. On October 31, Jewish militants dressed in traditional Arab attire entered the border village. Residents gathered to cheer the men, thinking Arab volunteer fighters had returned. They were wrong. The militants rounded up 85 people and detained them in a number of houses, firing live ammunition at the civilians and killing all but three. That was not enough. Jewish militants blew up the houses with dead corpses inside. They confiscated property and livestock. The three who survived the massacre, of whom one is still alive, and other town residents fled to Beirut. Following the armistice agreement between Lebanon and "Israel" in 1949, village residents returned to find their houses in rubbles and their farms burnt. Houla remains under Israeli occupation today, and has suffered the brunt of "Israeli" animosity towards Lebanon. Only 1,200 out of 12,000 people remain in the village. The Houla massacre was one of a series of massacres committed by "Israel" against Lebanese civilians.
14-15/10/1953 (Palestine): On the night of
October 14-15, 1953 , this village was the object of a brutal "Israeli" attack
which was carried out by units from the regular army as part of a
pre-meditated plan and in which a variety of weapon types were used. On
the
evening of October
14, an Israeli military force estimated at about 600 soldiers
moved toward the village. Upon
arrival, it surrounded it and cordoned it off from all of
the other Arab villages. The attack
began with concentrated, indiscriminate artillery
fire on the homes in the village. This
continued until the main force reached the
outskirts of the village. Meanwhile, other
forces headed for nearby Arab towns such
as Shuqba, Badrus and Na'lin in order to
distract them and prevent any aid from
reaching the people in Qibya. They also
planted mines on various roads so as to
isolate the village completely. As units of
the Israeli infantry were attacking the village
residents, units of military engineers were
placing explosives around some of the
houses in the village and blowing them up with
everyone in them under the protection
of the infantrymen, who fired on everyone who
tried to flee. These acts of brutality
continued until 4:00 a.m., October 15, 1953,
at which time the enemy forces
withdrew to the bases from which they had begun.16 There was a
particular sight the
memory of which remained in the minds of all who saw it: an Arab
woman sitting on a
pile of debris and casting a forlorn look into the sky. From
beneath the rubble one
could see small legs and hands which were the remains of her six
children, while the
bullet-maimed body of her husband lay in the road before
her.17
This vicious
terrorist attack resulted in the destruction of 56 houses, the
village
mosque, the
village school and the water tank which supplied it with water.
Moreover,
67 citizens
lost their lives, both men and women, with many others wounded.18
Terrorist Ariel Sharon, the
commander of the "101" unit which undertook the terrorist
aggression, stated that his leaders'
orders had been clear with regard to how the
residents of the village were to be dealt
with. He says, "The orders were utterly clear:
Qibya was to be an example to
everyone."19
Meanwhile, the officers positioned
themselves at the village entrance. At about 4.55 PM, unaware of the
ambush awaiting them, the innocent farmers started flocking in after a hard day
of work. The Israeli soldiers started stepping out of their military trucks and
ordered the villagers to line up. Then the officer in charge screamed "REAP
THEM," and the soldiers
riddled the bodies of the Palestinian villagers with bullets in cold
blood. With the massacre practically over, the soldiers moved around finishing
off whoever still had a pulse in him.
The government of Israel took great pains
to hide the truth, but after the investigation was concluded, Ben Gurion, the
Israeli Prime Minister, announced that some people in the Triangle had been
injured by thefrontier guards. The press also was part of the conspiracy to
cover up the incident. The Hebrew press wrote about a "mistake?" and a
"misfortune" , when it mentioned the victims, and it was difficult to tell whom
it meant.
More absurd than
the trial of accomplices was their light sentences. The court found Major
Meilinki and Lt. Daham guilty of killing 43 people and sentenced the former to
17 years and the latter to 15 years. What was remarkable about the Israeli
official attitude was that various authorities competed to lighten the killer's
sentences. Finally, the committee for the release of prisoners ordered the
remission of a third of the prison sentence of all those who were convicted. In
September 1960, Daham was appointed in the municipality of the city of Ramle as
officer for the Arab Affairs.
3/11/1956 (Palestine): Another massacre is
committed on November 3, 1956 when the Israelis occupy the town of Khan Yunis
and the adjacent refugee camp. The Israelis claim that there
was
resistance, but the
refugees state that all resistance had ceased when the Israelis arrived and that
all of the victims were unarmed civilians.
Many homes in Khan Yunis are raided at random.
Corpses lie everywhere and because of the curfew no one could go out to bury
them. (An UNRWA investigation later found that the Israelis at Khan Yunis and
therefugee camp had murdered 275 civilians that day ).
After the Israelis withdrew from Gaza under
American pressure, a mass grave
was unearthed at Khan Yunis in March 1957. The grave contained the
bodies
of forty Arabs who
had been shot in the back of the head after their hands
had been tied. ("IMPERIAL ISRAEL", Michael Palumbo; London; Bloomsbury Publishing;
1990 pp. 30 - 32, citing UN General Assembly: Official Record, 11th
session supplement, nop.)
5/4/1956 (Palestine): On the evening
of Thursday, April 5, 1956, Zionist occupation forces fired 20-mm mortar
artillery on the city of Gaza. The shelling was concentrated against the
city center, which was teaming with civilians going about their day-to-day
affairs.29 Most of the shelling was directed against Mukhtar Street,
Palestine Square and nearby streets, as well as the Shuja'iyya district.30 As a
result of this terrorist massacre carried out by gangs belonging to the Zionist
Army against the Palestinian people, 56 people were killed and 103 were injured,
the victims including men, women and children. Some of the wounded died
subsequently, bringing the death toll to 60,
including 27 women, 29 men and 4
children.31
1975 (Lebanon) :The 1sraelis perpetrated this massacre starting with a booby-trapped bomb. Then Israeli's detained three brothers, and killed them. They threw Their bodies on the road. 9 cicvlians were killed, 23 were wounded.
15/10/1975(Lebanon): An Israeli tank deliberately ran over a car carrying 16
people, and none of them escaped death.
16/10/1976(Lebanon): After a two- month siege and hours of shelling, the occupation forces stormed the village and turned it into a bloodbath. 20 perosn were mrtyred.
21/10/1976(Lebanon):The crowded market was the target of a sudden barrage of Israeli bombs, slaughtering a lot of people. 23 were killed, 30 were wonded.
17/3/1978 (Lebanon): During the invasion of 1978, the Israeli warplanes
destroyed the
mosque of the town on the heads of the women,
children and the elderly who used the holy place as a shelter from
the heavy Israeli shelling.80 perosn were martyred.
17/3/1978 (Lebanon): At Adloun on march 17, two cars carrying 8 passengers came under Israeli fire while they were on their way to Beirut. One passenger only escaped death.
4/4/1981 (Lebanon) :One of Saida’s residential areas was targeted by the Israeli artillery which resulted in killing of many civilians and damaging to many buildings.20 perosn were kiled, 30 were wounded.
17/7/1981 (Lebanon):A horrible massacre took place when Israeli warplanes raided a crowded residential area using the most developed weapons killing and wounding many citizens. 150 perosn were killed, 600 were wounded.
17/7/1981 (Lebanon)Israeli warplanes staged several raids on many parts of
Beirut, Ouzai, Ramlet Al baida, fakhani, chatila and the area of the Arab
University, killing many citizens. 150 person were killed, 600 were
wounded
.
A number of events led to the
decision of an extremist terrorist group of the Lebanese kata'ib forces and
forces belonging to the Zionist Army to carry out massacres against the
Palestinians. From the beginning of the Zionist invasion of Lebanon, the
Zionists and their agents were working toward being able to extirpate the
Palestinian presence in Lebanon. This may be seen from a number of
massacres of which the world heard only little, carried out by Israeli forces
and militias under their command in the Palestinian camps in south Lebanon
(al-Rushaidiya, 'Ayn al-Hilu, al-Miya Miya, and others).32 This massacre was
thus the outcome of a long mathematical calculation. It was carried out by
groups of
Lebanese
forces under the leadership of Ilyas Haqiba, head of the kata'ib intelligence
apparatus and with the approval of the Zionist Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon
and the Commander of the Northern District, General Amir Dawri. High-level
Israeli officers had been planning for some time to enable the Lebanese forces
to go into the Palestinian camps once West Beirut had been
surrounded.33
Two days
before the massacre began - on the evening of September 14 - planning and
coordination meetings were held between terrorist Sharon and his companion,
Eitan. Plans were laid to have the kata'ib forces storm the camps, and at dawn,
September 15, Israel stormed West Beirut and cordoned off the camps. A
high-level meeting was held on Thursday morning, September 16, 1982 in which
Israel was represented by General Amir Dawri, Supreme Commander of the Northern
Forces.
The job of
carrying out the operation was assigned to Eli Haqiba, a major security official
in the Lebanese forces. The meeting was also attended by Fadi Afram, Commander
of the Lebanese Forces.34
The process of storming the camps began before sunset on Thursday,
September 16,35 and continued for approximately 36 hours.
The Israeli Army surrounded the camps,
providing the murderers with all the support, aid and facilities necessary for
them to carry out their appalling crime. They supplied them with bulldozers and
with the necessary pictures and maps. In addition, they set off incandescent
bombs in the air in order to turn night into day so that none of the
Palestinians would be able to escape death's grip. And those who did flee -
women, children and the elderly - were brought back inside the camps by Israeli
soldiers to face their destiny.36 At noon on Friday, the second day of the
terrorist massacre, and with the approval of the Israeli Army, the kata'ib
forces began receiving more ammunition, while the forces which had been in the
camps were replaced by other, "fresh" forces.37 On Saturday morning,
September 18, 1982, the massacre had reached its peak, and thousands of Sabra
and Shatila camp residents had been annihilated.
Information about the massacre began to leak out
after a number of children and women fled to the Gaza Hospital in the Shatila
camp, where they told doctors what was happening. News of the massacre also
began to reach some foreign journalists on Friday morning, September
17.38
One of the
journalists who went into the camps after the massacre reports what he saw,
saying, "The corpses of the Palestinians had been thrown among the rubble that
remained of the Shatila camp. It was impossible to know exactly how many victims
there were, but there had to be more than 1,000 dead. Some of the men who had
been executed had been lined up in front of a wall, and bulldozers had
been
used in an
attempt to bury the bodies and cover up the aftermath of the
massacre.
But the hands and
feet of the victims protruded from the debris."
Hasan Salama (57 years old), whose 80-year-old
brother was killed in the massacre, says, "They came from the mountains in
thirty huge trucks. At first they started killing people with knives so that
they wouldn't make any noise. Then on Friday there were snipers in the Shatila
camp killing anybody who crossed the street. On Friday afternoon, armed men
began going into the houses and firing on men, women and children. Then they
started blowing up the houses and turning them into piles of
rubble."40
Author Amnoun Kabliyouk [p. 10] writes in his
book about the tragedy of a young Palestinian girl who, like the rest of the
children in the camp, faced this horrific massacre. Thirteen years old, she was
the only survivor out of her entire family (her father, her mother, her
grandfather and all her brothers and sisters were killed). She related to a
Lebanese officer, saying, "We stayed in the shelter until really late on
Thursday night, but then I decided to leave with my girl friend because we
couldn't breathe anymore. Then all of a sudden we saw people raising white flags
and handkerchiefs and coming toward the kata'ib saying, 'We're for peace and
harmony.'
And they
killed them right then and there. The women were screaming, moaning and begging
[for mercy]. As for me, I ran back to our house and got into the bathtub. I saw
them leading our neighbors away and shooting them. I tried to stand up at the
window to look outside, but one of the kata'ib fighters saw me and shot at me.
So I went back to the bathtub and stayed there for five hours. When I came out,
they grabbed me and threw me down with everybody else. One of them asked me if I
was Palestinian, and I said yes. My nine-month-old nephew was beside me, and he
was crying and screaming so much that one of the men got angry, so he shot him.
I burst into tears and told him that this baby had been all the family I had
left. That made him all the more angry, and he took the baby and tore him in
two."41
The massacre
continued until noon on Saturday, September 18, leaving between 3,000 and 3,500
Palestinian and Lebanese civilians dead, most of them women, children and
elderly people.42
27/3/1984(Lebanon): The occupation forcers’ tanks and helicopters fired at a crowded people killing many civilians. 7 perosns were martyred, 10 were wounded.
19/9/1984 (Lebanon): The occupation forces stormed the town with tanks, and
military
vehicles and ordered the inhabitants to congregate at the town's
mosque where they fired at them. 13 martyrs, 12 wounded.
23/3/1985 (Lebanon): The massacre took place at Al- Husseinieh building where people took shelter from the shelling of the Israeli soldiers who stormed the town with a huge number of military vehicles.7 persons were martyred.
5/3/1985(Lebanon): The occupation forces planted an explosive device in the Husseinieh building of the town .It was detonated during the distribution of aid to the citizens who lost their lives. 15 perosns were killed.
11/3/1985(Lebanon): Following heavy shelling the occupation forces stormed the town with about 100 vehicles and perpetrated a butchery, killing children, women and the elderly. 22 civlians were slaughtred.
21/3/1985(Lebanon): After attacking the village with 140 army vehicles, the occupation forces ordered the inhabitants to gather at the school of the village. They then destroyed it over their heads. 20 incoent person were martyred.
30/3/1985(Lebanon): A huge enemy force attacked the town and put it under siege, .When some people tried to escape the siege, the enemy soldiers fired at them, killing and wounding a lot of them. 5 perosn were killed, 5 were wounded.
Tiri massacre :
17/8/1986
(Lebanon): Merciless crimes against civilians increased in the town with the
occupation forces cutting the hands and ears from the head. 4 perosns were
killed, 79 were crippled and wounded.
20 May 1990, an Israeli soldier lined up Palestinian labors and murdered seven of them with a sub-machine gun. 13 Palesinians were killed by Israeli forces in subsequent demonstrations at the massacre.
Siddiqine Massacre:
25/7/1990(Lebanon): The Israeli warplanes bombed a house, among the 3 killed
a four years old child.
AL-AQSA MOSQUE MASSACRE:
October 8, 1990:
As an extension of the Zionist policy
based upon exercising control over the city of Jerusalem and emptying it of its [Arab] residents
by various and sundry means, such as Zionist terrorism and shedding the blood of the Palestinian people -
a policy which Zionists
have acted upon on numerous occasions - Zionist
authorities undertook on
Monday, October 8, 1990 to carry out this heinous massacre
against Palestinian
worshippers.
Several
days before the events of the massacre began, the "Temple Trustees"
group distributed a
statement to the media on the occasion of a religious festival of
theirs which they call
"the Throne Festival". In the statement the organization
announced that it intended
to stage a march to the Temple Mount (or so they call it).
The statement called upon
Jews to participate in this march since, according to
the statement, it would
involve the decisive act of placing the foundation stone for what
is
called "the Third
Temple." In addition, the founder of the organization,
Ghershoun Salmoun,
announced that "the Arab-Islamic occupation of the temple area
must come to an end, and
the Jews must renew their profound ties to the sacred
area." The march, in which
200,000 Jews took part, headed toward al-Aqsa Mosque in order for "the foundation stone" of the so-called
"Third Temple" to be put in place.43 At the same time, that is, at 10:00 a.m. and a
half-hour before the beginning of the
massacre, Israeli occupation forces began
placing military barriers along various roads leading to Jerusalem in order to prevent
Palestinians from getting to the city.
They also closed the doors of the mosque itself and forbid Jerusalem residents to go in. However, thousands had already gathered inside the mosque before this time in response to calls from the imam of the mosque and the Islamic movement to protect the mosque and to prevent the "Temple Trustees" from storming it and perhaps even imposing Jewish control over it.44 When the Muslim worshippers began resisting the Zionist group to prevent them from placing the "foundation stone" for their so-called temple, Zionist occupation forces began carrying out the massacre, using all the weapons at their disposal: poison gas bombs, automatic weapons, military helicopters, etc. The soldiers,
[Israeli] intelligence men and Jewish
settlers resorted to firing live ammunition in the form of a continuous spray of machine-gun fire
which came from all directions and in a well planned and coordinated fashion. The result
was that thousands of Palestinian worshippers of various ages and nationalities found themselves in a
mass death trap.
Twenty-three Palestinians were killed, and 850 others were wounded to
varying degrees.45 The
Israeli soldiers began firing at 10:30 a.m. and stopped 35
minutes later. They opened
fire on the Palestinian worshippers randomly and in cold blood.
Then they pursued them with clubs
and rifles [outside the mosque].46 Nurse Fatima Abu Khadir, who was wounded by a bullet which
fractured her wrist, states, "We went into the mosque precincts in an ambulance. I saw a
large number of injured who had fallen on the ground. Then I saw lots of soldiers, hundreds of
soldiers. They were about
30 meters from the ambulance and kneeling on one knee the way snipers
do, and their weapons were
aimed inside the ambulance. After that I couldn't see anything."47
News agencies described the blessed precincts
of al-Aqsa Mosque saying that blood had covered "the entire two hundred meters between the Dome of
the Rock and al-Aqsa
Mosque. Blood was flowing everywhere, all over the wide steps,
and had stained the white
tile the length of the broad courtyard, as well as the doors
of both mosques. The walls
of the two mosques had long, crimson lines etched onto them by bleeding hands, and blood had stained the
white uniforms of the woman
first-aid workers. Everyone - the wounded and the more fortunate,
first-aid workers,
journalists, and Israeli soldiers - all of them looked as though they were
swimming in
blood.48
Physician
Muhammad Abu 'Ayila relates what happened to him and to a
wounded man to whom he had
been trying to administer first aid, and how the Zionists' glee
at the sight of
Palestinian blood spilled in the precincts of the holy mosque had
blinded their eyes so much
that they couldn't distinguish between a young child and an
old man, between a man and
a woman, between a wounded man and one seeking to treat him. He says, "I got out of the ambulance
carrying a first-aid kit. I was wearing a
white uniform. The soldiers saw me and knew I
was a doctor. But when I got to the wounded person nearest me and bent down to treat him, I got three
bullets in my back in the
region of the kidney. At that very moment, the wounded man near
me died. But he could have
been saved if I hadn't been hit."49 Most of the wounds,
in fact, were in the head
and in the heart.50
Then, in a farce designed to justify the crime which had been
committed by Zionists'
hands now stained with Palestinian blood, terrorist Yitzhaq Shamir, Prime
Minister of the Zionist
entity at that time, hastened to form a fact-finding committee which
he called the "Zamir
Committee" after its head, Tu'fi Zamir, former head of the
Israeli Mossad. As for the
outcome of the committee's investigation, it was announced
by Moshe Almert, head of
the Media Office of the occupation government, who said,
"The report confirms clearly that the
responsibility and fault for escalating [the conflict] lies on the side of the thousands of Muslim
extremists, who were attacking the holy place of the Jews."51
On 13 April 1996, at about 1:30 P.M., an IDF helicopter fired rockets at a vehicle carrying thirteen civilians fleeing the village of al-Mansuri, killing two women and four young girls. The vehicle was a Volvo station wagon with a blue flooding light, a red crescent painted on the hood and the word “ambulance” written in Arabic. Reporters at the scene filmed the incident. The film footage shows, and testimony of UN soldiers who arrived immediately after the car was hit corroborate, that there were no weapons or any other type of military equipment in the car, only some food and clothes. Amnesty’s investigation revealed that none of the passengers were connected to Hizbullah.
18 April 1996, Eleven persons were killed and ten injured in an IDF air attack on a house in Nabatiyya al-Faqwah, some three kilometers north of Nabatiyya, in South Lebanon. Eight of those killed were from one family: a mother and her seven children, including a four-day-old baby. Around 6:30 a.m., IDF helicopters fired rockets at three buildings in the village, demolishing one totally and severely damaging the other two. Lebanese families were living in the buildings. The IDF Spokesperson claimed that the helicopters fired at the building in which the eleven were killed because Hizbullah was hiding there after firing the mortars. Investigations conducted by Amnesty and HRW did not confirm this contention The IDF's statement ignored the fact that the IDF fired at two other buildings during the same attack. Back to top
Trqumia
Massacr:
March 10 1998
:Israeli Occupied West Bank, March 10--Israeli soldiers opened fire with
automatic
weapons on a van
full of unarmed Palestinian workers, killing Adnan Abu Zneid, 34, and two other
Palestinians. Two more laborers were wounded as the group returned from helping
to construct a building near Tel Aviv. Eyewitnesses described the Israeli
gunfire as "indiscriminate."
Israeli Army Maj. Uzi Dayan said that the soldiers acted "according to
regulations" in opening fire on the van with automatic weapons at a checkpoint
outside Hebron.
Ali Abu
Zneid, 37, a cousin of the deceased, was in the van and fell uninjured under the
others' bodies. He said that the Jewish soldiers, "shot to kill."
Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai
described the killings as an "accident"
24/6/1999 (Lebanon)
Martyrs: 8
Injures: 84
Target: Under
Building in
Beirut
In an interview with the "kolhaer" magazine, five Israeli soldiers said that
the artillery commander had said to his soldiers "We are skilled marksmen.
Anyhow, there are millions of Arabs... It's their problem. Whether Arabs become
one more or less is just the same...We have accomplished our duty.
The whole
issue is not about more than a group of "Arabosheem" (a racist term
hostile to Arabs used by the Israelis). We should have launched more shells to
kill more Arabs.
IT IS WRITTEN IN TORAH:
"Destroy all of the land; beat down their pillars and break their statues and waste all of their high places, cleansing the land and dwelling in it, for I have given it to you for a possession" Numbers 33:52,53
"And they
utterly destroyed all that was in the city both men and women, young and old and
ox and sheep and ass with the edge of the sword."
Joshua 6:21
References:
1.
The Palestinian Encyclopedia, Part I, op. cit., p. 413,
paraphrased.
2. Ghazi al-Sa'di, Massacres and
Practices, 1936-1983, Amman, Dar al-Jalil
lil-Nashr wal-Dirasat
[The Galilee House for Publication and Research] , June
1985, p.
43.
3. The Palestinian Encyclopedia, op.
cit., p. 413.
4. al-Sa'di, op. cit., p.
43.
5. The Palestinian Encyclopedia, op.
cit., p. 414.
6. al-Sa'di, op. cit., p.
43.
7. The Palestinian Encyclopedia, Part II,
op. cit., p. 434.
8. Dr. Hamdan Badr, The Role of the
Hagana Organization in the
Establishment of Israel, Amman: Dar
al-Jalil lil-Nashr wal-Dirasat, 1985, p.
303.
9.
Ibid.
10. Arafat Hijazi, Dair Yasin: The Roots
and Dimensions of the Crime in Zionist
Thought, p.
63.
11. Roget Delurme [sp?], trans. by Nakhla
Kallas, I Accuse, no place of
publication: Dar al-Jurmuq lil-Tiba'a wal-Nashr
[The Jurmuq House for Printing
and Publication], no date, pp.
52-53.
12. Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins,
O' Jerusalem, 1972, p. 275.
13. Hijazi, op. cit., p.
63.
14. al-Sa'di, op. cit., p.
60.
15. Salih al-Shar', op. cit., p.
201.
16. The Palestinian Encyclopedia, Part
III, p. 502.
17. Jawad al-Hamad, The Palestinian
People: Victim of Zionist Massacres
and Terrorism, Markaz Dirasat al-Sharq
al-Awsat [Center for Middle East
Studies], 1995, p.24.
18. The
Palestinian Encyclopedia, Part III, op. cit., pp. 502-503.
19. The
Memoirs of Ariel Sharon, trans. by Antoine Abir, Beirut, Maktabat
Bisan,
1991, p. 110.
20. Emile Habiby, Kufr Qasim: the
Political Massacre, Haifa: Manshourat
Arabask [Arabask
Publications], 1976, p. 82.
21. The Palestinian Encyclopedia, Part
III, op. cit., p. 653.
22. Habiby, op. cit., p.
17.
23. al-Sa'di, op. cit., pp.
85-86.
24. The Palestinian Encyclopedia, Part
III. op. cit., p. 653.
25. Habiby, op. cit., p.
37.
26. al-Hamd, op. cit., p.
29.
27. al-Sa'di, op. cit., p.
87.
28. Among the Most Important Terrorists,
Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Dirasat
al-Filistiniya [The Foundation for
Palestinian Studies], 1973, pp. 37-38.
29. Husayn Abu
al-Naml, The Gaza Strip, 1948-1967: Economic, Political,
Social and Military
Developments, Beirut: Center for Research, PLO, 1979, p.
121.
30. Ghazi
al-Sourani, The Gaza Strip, 1948-1993, Beirut: Dar al-Mubtada',
1993, p.
27.
31. Abu al-Naml, op. cit., p.
121.
32. Abd al-Hafiz Muhammad, The Massacre:
Beirut, Sabra and Shatila, the
Invasion of Lebanon, Amman, the Akhbar
al-Usbu' [Weekly News] newspaper,
1982, p. 111.
33. The Qatar News
Agency, The Invasion, the Massacre: Crime of the
Twentieth Century, no
date of publication, 1982, p. . . . [?].
34. al-Hamad, op.
cit., p. 36.
35. Amnoun Kabliyouk [sp?], trans. by the
Arab Translation Center, Sabra and
Shatila: The Investigation of a Massacre,
Paris: Manshourat al-Maktab al-Arabi
[Arab Office Publications], 1983, p.
34.
36. Muhammad, op. cit., p.
89.
37. al-Sa'di, A Document of Crime and
Condemnation, Amman: Dar al-Jalil
lil-Nashr, 1983, p. 262.
38.
Kabliyouk, op. cit., p. 79.
39. The Qatar News Agency, op. cit., p.
134.
40. Muhammad, op. cit., pp.
119-120.
41. Kabliyouk, op. cit., pp.
51-52.
42. al-Hamad, op. cit., p.
38.
43. Sahifat al-Muslimun al-Sa'udiya (the
Saudi newspaper, The Muslims),
March 5, 1993.
44. al-Hamad, op.
cit., p. 55.
45. Nawaf al-Zaru, Jerusalem: Between
Zionist Judaization Plans and the
Palestinian Struggle and Resistance,
Amman: Dar al-Khawaja lil-Nashr
wal-Tawzi' [Khawaja House for Publication
and Distribution], 1991, p. 115.
46. The Jordanian newspaper, Al-Dustour,
October 9, 1990.
47. al-Zaru, op. cit., p.
129.
48. Al-Dustour, op. cit.
49.
al-Zaru, op. cit., p. 129.
50. Ibid., p. 128.
51.
Al-Muslimun newspaper, op. cit.
52. The Jordanian newspaper, Al-Ra'y
[Opinion], February 26, 1994.
53. Usama Mustafa, "Goldstein: Settler,
Soldier, or the Forbidden Fruit of
Peace?" the Filastin al-Muslima [Muslim
Palestine] magazine (London), April
1994, p. 9.
54. Al-Ra'y, op.
cit.
55. Mustafa, op. cit., p.
9.
56. Al-Dustour, op. cit., Feb. 26,
1994.
57. The Jordanian newspaper, Al-Aswaq
[Markets], February 27, 1994.
58. Mustafa, op. cit., p.
9.
59. A team of analysts, "The Israeli
Campaign Against the Hamas Movement
and the Hizbollah Organization: Programs,
Goals, Outcomes and Implications",
the periodical Qadaya Sharq Awsatiya
[Middle East Issues], No. 2, Amman,
Markaz Dirasat al-Sharq al-Awsat [Center
for Middle East Studies], pp. 84-85.
60. Ibid., p. 84.
61. Filastin
al-Muslima (London), May 1996 issue, p. 9.
62.
Ibid.
63. Ibid.
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