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| Israel...we didn't know?! |
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| amatullah |
| 03/28/02 at 17:35:28 |
| Ha'aretz Thursday, March 28, 2002 Nisan 15, 5762 Israel Time: 08:08 (GMT+2) You won't be able to say, `we didn't know' By Gideon Samet It's no longer a matter of reports from people obsessed with how the good boys in the army treat the Palestinians. The oppressive descriptions made it to the Friday night TV news magazines on both channels last weekend. Those who averted their eyes when a few stubborn people brought in such stories, can no longer hide behind their denial and rage in their living rooms. It was on TV. The programs only showed what could fit into short items. There were the soldiers who "love" to see the bodies of terrorists and to have (as one soldier so graphically demonstrated with a deep inhale) the smell of their bodies. The small screen carried descriptions of how soldiers abuse Palestinians at checkpoints, and the inner torment of embarrassed soldiers who just followed orders. And there was a mention of the babies who died while their mothers, asking to reach a hospital, remained stuck in those traffic jams of the horror's routine. It was impossible to include a lot from the past. For example, the discussion last summer in the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee about the deaths of three women in Khan Yunis, who were killed by a shell. Representatives of the Israel Defense Forces in that meeting at first denied that the shell carried a payload of flechettes: a particularly lethal cluster bomb of small darts that are released over a large radius. Using them against people is a violation of the Geneva Convention. But bits of metal don't evaporate from a body. Amos Harel of Ha'aretz reported that the army uses those shells in Gaza, but - because of a tiny nuance of distinction - not in the West Bank. The IDF Spokesman, who has given the army's word a very bad reputation over the past year, was forced to explain the next day that "the IDF and its officers don't lie"; they were misinformed, by the field. In other words, the General Staff's officer in charge of operations, Brig. Gen. Eli Amitai, didn't lie to the committee. Other officers lied to him. Despite the proliferating exposes, there was nothing on TV or in the press about another FAD Committee meeting last Wednesday, to discuss flechettes again. A blanket of secrecy was hung over that discussion, as usual. This time the IDF couldn't but show, among other things, an operational film about tank fire in Gaza. The shells carried flechette cluster bombs. If there was any doubt in the minds of the MKs, Prof. Yehuda Hiss, head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir, brought with him some of the metal darts he had removed from bodies in the Gaza Strip. In such cases, the IDF tends to explain that the dead were hit by nail bombs of their own making, exploding in a "work accident." Yet, the darts on the Knesset committee table now rendered that evasive answer impossible. Mounting evidence of such things happening routinely in the army was also offered by Amir Oren in this weekend's Ha'aretz. He reported about attempts by the army to benefit from past combat operations in avoiding harm to civilians. One of the General Staff commanders, Oren wrote, said lately that the army could learn from the way the German troops operated in the Warsaw Ghetto. No doubt, he only meant well. That's the kind of erosion scrambling the minds within the officer corps. MK Yosef Lapid also has fallen victim to that syndrome. When he said last week, apropos the song "You Aren't" by Mizrachi crooner Amir Benayun, that Tul Karm is occupying Israel, and not the contrary, he apparently didn't realize he was comparing Benayun to the Arabs whom Lapid detests so much. But this wasn't merely a vulgar, racist simplification. Beyond it, Lapid hasn't had a word to say about what the occupation of the Tul Karms is doing to Israeli values. His exclusive interest seems to rest in how the residents of the territories are occupying us through their proxy, Benayun. No wonder. Lapid, born in Serbia, expressed sympathy for the Serbs in Bosnia, whose leader is now on trial for war crimes. These are difficult times. Israelis are being hurt, again just yesterday. It's almost impossible to control the urge to wave the terrorist attacks in the air and to dismiss that the IDF assassinations only increased the number of terror victims this month. The urge is also to shake out of our heads cases of Israeli aberrations. But despite everything, pay attention to our moral faults. Time will come when you won't able to say, `we didn't know.' |
| Re: Israel...we didn't know?! |
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| amatullah |
| 03/31/02 at 19:07:06 |
| Read online: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/2941139.htm Posted on Wed, Mar. 27, 2002 Author compares Palestinian city to Nazi death camp JERUSALEM - (AP) - Portuguese author José Saramago, a Nobel laureate, set off a storm in Israel on Tuesday after he compared a Palestinian city blockaded by the Israeli army to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Holocaust survivors and intellectuals, including leftists who are highly critical of the Israeli government's policy toward the Palestinians, condemned Saramago's statement as false, wicked and anti-Semitic. Saramago is visiting the Palestinian areas with members of the International Parliament of Writers, including Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, also a Nobel laureate, and American film director Oliver Stone. Saramago toured an Israeli military checkpoint on the outskirts of the West Bank town of Ramallah and met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Monday. Afterward, Saramago told reporters: ``What is happening in Palestine is a crime which we can put on the same plane as what happened at Auschwitz, at Buchenwald. Even taking into account the differences in time and place, it is the same thing.'' Saramago said that ``from the point of view of the [Israeli] army, all of Ramallah is an enormous barracks, and you [the Palestinians] are confined, prisoners.'' When a reporter noted that there are no gas chambers in Ramallah, as there were in Nazi death camps, Saramago answered: ``There are no gas chambers yet. But that does not mean there will never be gas chambers . . . one can kill without having gas chambers.'' While touring the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the convoy of writers was held up at an Israeli military checkpoint for four hours, a typical example of the delays Palestinian residents often have to deal with. Israel says the checkpoints and the closures are necessary to prevent attacks on Israelis by Palestinian militants. The Palestinians say the blockades, which have badly disrupted daily life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, amount to collective punishment. Commenting on Saramago's comparison of Auschwitz and Ramallah, Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, a survivor of the Holocaust, said that ``it is terrible that a man at whose feet generations will be educated, whose books are an object lesson and a model, could tell such a coarse lie at a time when people with numbers printed on their arms are still among us.'' The Nobel laureate also infuriated leading Israeli authors who are themselves critical of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policies toward the Palestinians. Dovish novelist Amos Oz said Saramago, author of Blindness, had himself shown blatant moral blindness. ''He who fails to distinguish between different levels of evil becomes a servant of evil,'' Oz wrote in a front-page commentary in the Yediot Ahronot daily. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/2941139.htm |
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