I encourage everyone to post evidence of the Israeli war crimes that they are trying to hide. From the Independent 4/16/02 ---------------------------------- Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime Phil Reeves in Jenin 16 April 2002 Internal links Powell finds his path to peace blocked Israel arrests most wanted man in suicide campaign EU dismisses sanctions and backs Powell's peace mission Letter from a Palestinian to an Israeli Iran urges Muslims to halt oil sales to Israeli allies Ann Clwyd: Europe must show its mettle and punish Israel A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a fortnight has finally been exposed. Its troops have caused devastation in the centre of the Jenin refugee camp, reached yesterday by The Independent, where thousands of people are still living amid the ruins. A residential area roughly 160,000 square yards about a third of a mile wide has been reduced to dust. Rubble has been shovelled by bulldozers into 30ft piles. The sweet and ghastly reek of rotting human bodies is everywhere, evidence that it is a human tomb. The people, who spent days hiding in basements crowded into single rooms as the rockets pounded in, say there are hundreds of corpses, entombed beneath the dust, under a field of debris, criss-crossed with tank and bulldozer treadmarks. In one nearby half-wrecked building, gutted by fire, lies the fly-blown corpse of a man covered by a tartan rug. In another we found the remains of 23-year-old Ashraf Abu Hejar beneath the ruins of a fire-blackened room that collapsed on him after being hit by a rocket. His head is shrunken and blackened. In a third, five long-dead men lay under blankets. A quiet. sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis led us across the wasteland, littered now with detritus of what were once households, foam rubber, torn clothes, shoes, tin cans, children's toys. He suddenly stopped. This was a mass grave, he said, pointing. We stared at a mound of debris. Here, he said, he saw the Israeli soldiers pile 30 bodies beneath a half-wrecked house. When the pile was complete, they bulldozed the building, bringing its ruins down on the corpses. Then they flattened the area with a tank. We could not see the bodies. But we could smell them. A few days ago, we might not have believed Kamal Anis. But the descriptions given by the many other refugees who escaped from Jenin camp were understated, not, as many feared and Israel encouraged us to believe, exaggerations. Their stories had not prepared me for what I saw yesterday. I believe them now. Until two weeks ago, there were several hundred tightly-packed homes in this neighbourhood called Hanat al-Hawashim. They no longer exist. Around the central ruins, there are many hundreds of half-wrecked homes. Much of the camp – once home to 15,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war – is falling down. Every wall is speckled and torn with bullet holes and shrapnel, testimony of the awesome, random firepower of Cobra and Apache helicopters that hovered over the camp. Building after building has been torn apart, their contents of cheap fake furnishings, mattresses, white plastic chairs spewed out into the road. Every other building bears the giant, charred, impact mark of a helicopter missile. Last night there were still many families and weeping children still living amid the ruins, cut off from the humanitarian aid. Ominously, we found no wounded, although there was a report of a man being rescued from beneath ruins only an hour before we arrived. Those who did not flee the camp, or not detained by the army, have spent the bombardment in basements, enduring day after day of terror. Some were forced into rooms by the soldiers, who smashed their way into houses through the walls. The UN says half of the camp's 15,000 residents were under 18. As the evening hush fell over these killing fields, we could suddenly hear the children chattering. The mosques, once so noisy at prayer time, were silent. Israel was still trying to conceal these scenes yesterday. It had refused entry to Red Cross ambulances for nearly a week, in violation of the Geneva Convention. Yesterday it continued to try to keep us out. Jenin, in the northern end of the occupied West Bank, remained "a closed military zone", was ringed Merkava tanks, army Jeep patrols, and armoured personnel carriers. Reporters caught trying to get in were escorted out. A day earlier the Israeli armed forces took in a few selected journalists to see sanitised parts of the camp. We simply walked across the fields, flitted through an olive orchard overlooked by two Israeli tanks, and into the camp itself. We were led in by hands gesturing at windows. Hidden, whispering people directed us through narrow alleys they thought were clear. When there were soldiers about, a finger would raise in warning, or a hand waved us back. We were welcomed by people desperate to tell what had occurred. They spoke of executions, and bulldozers wrecking homes with people inside. "This is mass murder committed by Ariel Sharon," Jamel Saleh, 43, said. "We feel more hate for Israel now than ever. Look at this boy." He placed his hand on the tousled head of a little boy, Mohammed, the eight-year-old son of a friend. "He saw all this evil. He will remember it all." So will everyone else who saw the horror of Jenin refugee camp. Palestinians who entered the camp yesterday were almost speechless. Rajib Ahmed, from the Palestinian Energy Authority, came to try to repair the power lines. He was trembling with fury and shock. "This is mass murder. I have come here to help by I have found nothing but devastation. Just look for yourself." All had the same message: tell the world.
From London Times of 4/16/02 April 16, 2002 Inside the camp of the dead from janine di giovanni in jenin refugee camp BASHIR died in agony. The hands of the 23-year-old Palestinian are clenched into tight fists, his body charred. He lies buried under rubble and cement, his head twisted towards the door as if crying out for help. His tomb is a wasted house that crashed around him after the Israelis tried to bulldoze it to make a road. Next door, up a blackened stairway and across shards of glass, is the body of Ashran Abu Hadel, also 23. Someone tried to pull him out of the rubble but gave up. His arm lies straight out, as though he tried to push himself away from the cement as he lay dying. Elsewhere in the Jenin refugee camp I saw bodies of men who were clearly fighters, replete with ammunition belts and other paramilitary trappings. Bashir and Ashran had nothing. The refugees I had interviewed in recent days while trying to enter the camp were not lying. If anything, they underestimated the the carnage and the horror. Rarely, in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life. This was not only a town of fighters, as Israeli soldiers told me. It was a town of women, children and old men, who have seen the camp grow into a warren of ramshackle homes over half a century. Amnesty International called for an immediate investigation into “the killings of hundreds of Palestinians”, saying crucial evidence may be destroyed as Israel “continues to impede access”. Throughout the camp, which the Israelis called a production line for terrorists, there is the stench of death, of bodies that have been rotting in the sun for days. Everyone who survived the fiercest battle of Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield has a terrible story to tell. They take your hand and lead you into their houses across bulldozed mounds of rubble including photo albums, clothing, toys and pillowcases. There, there are more bodies, burnt or twisted grotesquely, caught off guard by sudden death. Nothing prepares you for the smallness of a dead body. The dead are everywhere. Kamal Anis, a labourer, leads us to an area called Harat al-Hawashim, a mound of rubble the size of four football pitches where 200 houses once stood. He says the Israelis levelled the place; he saw them pile bodies into a mass grave, dump earth on top, then ran over it to flatten it. There are still bulldozers and tanks at work, sending us fleeing into destroyed buildings. There is the sound of children crying. There are people looking for survivors under rubble. “We have passed dark days,” says Aisha, whose house was turned into a snipers’ nest and base for 50 soldiers. “What we have passed through, I cannot describe to you but I will remember all of my life.” “What my son told me is that when they get older, they will resist occupation because they have seen this,” says Aisha, a mother of five. For five days since the last Palestinian fighters surrendered the Israelis have prevented us from entering this camp, saying it was booby-trapped. Thirteen Israeli soldiers died in an ambush in its narrow alleys last week. The Army is still seeking to keep us out. I write this, hiding from an Israeli tank 50 metres away, inside the home of a man called Jamal who, in a state of shock, shows the destruction of his once-grand home. “Israelis broke down this wall so they could shoot from here,” he says. He touches the head of his young son. “I do not want to think how he will survive these memories.” Yoni Wolff, 26, an Israeli lieutenant who has spent weeks here, told me that no deliberate destruction had taken place and that the soldiers had killed only terrorists. But the hundreds believed dead were not all fighters. Buried under the rubble are the bodies of women and children whose houses caved in around them. “We destroyed the infrastructure of terror,” Yoni boasted. He said the camp was empty, that civilians had fled and that it was booby-trapped. He said he saw no bodies of civilians, and that it was a successful operation. To reach this “successful operation” we had to run through olive groves, dodging from tree to tree because of an Israeli sniper. I have seen demolished houses before. I have seen wells stuffed with bodies. I have seen civilians terrorised and living under siege. But what remains of Jenin camp is a wasteland of death that once housed 13,000 people. Sofas and satellite dishes hang from the crevices of third floors of what once were family villas. A red curtain, peppered with bullet holes, flaps in the breeze. This is what war does: it leaves behind imprints of lives. A sewing machine with a girl’s dress still under the needle inside a house with the walls blown out. A goosedown pillow ripped, the feathers fluttering. A photograph of a child with a bird hangs on a partly demolished wall. “I saw some children who were wounded take four days to die, bleeding to death because there was no one here to tend them,” says Fahdi Jamal, a 30-year-old labourer. Soraya and Harej, small sisters living in a ruined house with electrical wires hanging from the ceiling and a tank round through the living room wall, do not know their father is dead. Their mother does not know either but their aunt does; she heard it on the radio. “They stripped him and shot him,” she says. “We can’t tell his wife, she is too sick. She thinks he may still be alive.” Ramsey, 28, who returned from Germany to be with his family, leads us to where five fighters lie dead inside a house, shot in the head. Flies swarm around and the smell is overpowering. For Muslims, whose custom dictates burial within 24 hours, this is the ultimate degredation. “There is no justice, no ethics to this war,” says Abu Bashir who is 70 years old. He points at a photo album heaped with the other trash. “This was someone’s life, now it is gone, do you understand?” he shouts. Down the road, near Harat al-Hawashim, Abu Salim, who has passed 50 years in this camp, wanders though the rubble in shock. “What did they do?” he asks. “What did they do?” London Times
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56773-2002Apr15.html Thousands Rally for Israel Crisis Generates Impassioned Support for Offensive By Steve Twomey Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, April 16, 2002; Page A01 The cause of Israel drew a multitude of Americans yesterday to the historic West Front of the U.S. Capitol, where Israeli flags fluttered by the score, thousands of signs signaled support, and speakers at the podium and in the crowd voiced vigorous defenses of the country's right to strike back against Palestinian bomb attacks aimed at its civilians. Descending upon Washington from near and far for a rally only a week in the planning, demonstrators urged the United States to stand with Israel at a time when its military actions in the West Bank have been denounced in Europe and the Bush administration has urged it to withdraw its army from Palestinian towns. "People feel the survival of Israel is at stake," said Paul Jacobs, who led a busful of supporters who traveled all night from the Boston suburb of Framingham, Mass. "They felt they had to do something." Rabbi David Nelson, who rode a bus from Woodcliff Lake, N.J., said the people aboard were "suburban Jews who generally don't get agitated about these things." But with Israel confronting a procession of suicide bombers, and with much of the world unhappy with its counterstrikes, "we are now at the point of a crisis where even the Jews who normally don't get involved are pulled in," Nelson said. Under pristine skies and amid cell phone chatter in the crowd, there were printed and home-scrawled signs boasting that Ohio supported Israel, that Hoosiers did, that Atlanta did, and many other places as well. One sign likened Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Winston S. Churchill, who led Britain during World War II; another expressed love for the Israeli army; a third equated Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, with Osama bin Laden. There were bands of children in identical T-shirts, released for the day from Jewish schools and helping to fill the area from the Capitol's West Front to the Capitol Reflecting Pool. There were so many charter buses -- 1,200, organizers said -- that many demonstrators were not delivered to the rally site in time for the 1 p.m. start, and so many demonstrators that nearby Metro stations overflowed, prompting hundreds to walk. "This day will be remembered in the history of American Jewry," Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize-winning author and philosopher, told the audience from the podium, adding that those in attendance would have something to tell their grandchildren one day. Metro said that by 3 p.m., its trains had carried 387,077 passengers, which is 63,943 more than last Monday, and the transit authority attributed the increase to the rally. As a matter of policy, U.S. Capitol Police and D.C. police do not provide official estimates of the size of crowds that gather for political causes or issues, but a local official said authorities believed that 100,000 people attended the National Rally in Solidarity With Israel, as organizers called it. With temperatures in the low 80s and little shade available, almost 200 people sought help to cope with heat, said D.C. fire department spokesman Alan Etter; 27 were taken to hospitals. To reach the West Lawn area immediately in front of the podium, demonstrators had to pass through U.S. Capitol Police checkpoints, where backpacks, coolers and bags were searched. When the lawn area reached capacity, which law enforcement officials said is 42,000, they refused to allow more people to gather there, angering some. By and large, though, "everything worked really well," said Lt. Dan Nichols, spokesman for Capitol Police, although three people were charged with disorderly conduct after brief encounters between some at the rally and several pro-Palestinian demonstrators. In a theme oft-heard yesterday, Len Sausen, who arrived on one of three dozen buses from Elizabeth, N.J., compared Israel's West Bank actions to the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks Sept. 11. In both cases, Sausen said, a nation is using its armed forces to thwart additional terrorist attacks on its civilians. Israel, in fact, should have acted months ago to prevent more suicide bombings by Palestinians, he said. "Words don't work here," said Sausen, 56, a businessman, who said he was "overjoyed" with Sharon's decision to get tough. "I think he should be tougher," he said. Renata Kadoe, 33, who immigrated to the United States from Russia, said Israel's decision to move military forces into West Bank towns and refugee camps was "a desperate measure for a desperate situation." In Israel, Kadoe said, "It's 9-11 every day, to some degree." Paula Gris, 64, a part-time adult education teacher in Atlanta, said she decided to come on Friday not only to support Israel but also to support the United States, "which is also waging a war against terrorism." Israel, she said, "could no longer turn its cheek" to the suicide attacks that have killed or injured hundreds of its citizens. "How could any country stand by and watch its civilian population be attacked by terrorist bombers?" she said. "If Mexico were attacking Texas, or Canada attacking Michigan, we would want our government to go in there and clean them out." In a similar vein, Binyamin Netanyahu, a former Israeli prime minister, said in formal remarks to those gathered for the rally that Israel and the United States were two nations fighting the same war on terrorism, merely in different places. "An enemy that openly preaches the destruction of our state is not a partner for peace," Netanyahu said, referring to the Palestinian Authority. "With such evil, there can be no negotiations and no concessions. . . . The only way to defeat it is to destroy it." A plethora of U.S. politicians joined Netanyahu in addressing the rally, including former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R); New York Gov. George E. Pataki (R); and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo). The only speaker who elicited any hostility was one of Israel's most reliable supporters, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz. He condemned suicide bombers as "murderers" and not martyrs but also said Israelis "are not the only victims of violence in the Middle East." "Innocent Palestinians are suffering and dying in great numbers as well," Wolfowitz said, to a symphony of boos. "It is critical that we recognize and acknowledge that fact." Overall, however, the crowd seemed pleased with Wolfowitz's boss, President Bush, although some expressed concern that U.S. policy has wavered slightly in recent weeks. "I'm not a Republican, but President Bush has been supportive of Israel overall," said Bill Marcus, 34, who came from Columbus, Ohio, as part of a caravan of four buses. "Unfortunately, he has given in recently to pseudo-coalition pressures telling Israel to pull back before the job is done. If we are going to stand for freedom, for truth and for democracy, we can't give in to the Arab dictatorship." Marcus said that he had never been a Sharon supporter but that the policies of negotiation advocated by previous Israel governments have led "to a dead end." With the collapse of talks at Camp David in 2000, "there's just nothing to talk about," Marcus said. Likewise, Rob Gordon, 52, a lawyer from Michigan, said he no longer saw a political solution. "I've always felt there was some hope and optimism that peace could be achieved, but there is such animosity and hatred and fear now. . . . I'm afraid it will be generations before Palestine and Israel can live together peacefully." One of the three arrests occurred after a woman held up a sign reading "Sharon has blood on his hands" as she stood in a small, grassy park. As several pro-Israeli protesters taunted her, she was joined by a half-dozen other pro-Palestinian demonstrators, one of whom waved a Palestinian flag and blew kisses. U.S. Park Police moved in, wrapping police tape around trees at each corner of the park to create a perimeter around the dissenters. "Get out of here with that flag! Put it on your head, where it belongs!" a man yelled at them. The factions began spitting at each other, and the man threw an ice cream sandwich, prompting police to arrest him. The two other people arrested -- one pro-Israel and the other pro-Palestinian -- were involved in a scuffle that began when the supporter of Israel ripped an anti-Sharon sign from the pro-Palestinian marcher, a witness said. Such counter-demonstrators were few, a fact noted by one of them, Tim Flanagan. "This is overwhelmingly one-sided," said Flanagan, 24, a high school teacher from New Orleans who had come to Washington to visit his sister. As the rally ended about 4:30 p.m., thousands crammed into Metro stations, asking anyone with a uniform which lines led to Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, or how to buy 50 tickets for their group. "This is just another Fourth of July," said Ronald Harris, a Metro mechanic who found himself directing traffic at Federal Center SW. Many crowded into corner stores to buy cold drinks. Several East Capitol Street residents stood at their fences with garden hoses, offering drinks to the overheated. Staff writers Justin Blum, Petula Dvorak, David A. Fahrenthold, Manny Fernandez, Avram Goldstein, Lyndsey Layton, Sylvia Moreno and Debbi Wilgoren contributed to this report. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And I urge everyone who cares about freedom, truth and democracy to come to the pro-Israel rally at the Jewish Community Center in Houston, 5601 S. Braeswood, at 6PM Wednesday April 17th.
A Startling Revelation New News from the Front Lines Shocks by I.M. Obvious The Daily Duh EVERYWHERE -- Both sides in the Palestinan and Israeli conflict are ridiculous and need to get over themselves. That is all. ------------------------------------------- And I urge everyone to note that killing people in their houses with AK47's is no better than blowing yourself up in a street cafe. The constant tit for tat that is Israel and Palestine should be an embarrassment for both of them.
Jeff, this is true. If I were a Palestinian I would probably emphasize the violence of Palestinians and urge a decrease since I feel I could have some effect on my own people.. However, since I live in the militantly Zionist USA, which funds the violence on the Israeli side I emphasize that. A neutral pox on both sides doesn't help with the problem of US funding Israel so that it feels like it is bullet proof and can avoid a real land for peace deal forever. I can certainly understand the disgust with both sides. As US citizens our best bet, if we are to actually help with this problem, is to erode support in the USA for Sharonism and Israeli militarism. I'm advocating the use of nonviolent pressure beginning with a cutoff in military aid. Interestingly those who always support Israel but claim to abhor violence, and many of those who claim they support Israel but not Sharon, are always urging that the Palestinians use nonviolent resistance. Defunding the Israeli military is a simple yet efective nonviolent technique. Unbelievably yesterday Netanyahu had the gall to preach about Ghandi and how the Palestinians should use non-violent resistance. Well here is the chance to do so , though Netanyahu and his supporters at the rally yesterday would have a fit if it was actually done.
From RocketManTex's Article: " The only speaker who elicited any hostility was one of Israel's most reliable supporters, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz. He condemned suicide bombers as "murderers" and not martyrs but also said Israelis "are not the only victims of violence in the Middle East." "Innocent Palestinians are suffering and dying in great numbers as well," Wolfowitz said, to a symphony of boos. "It is critical that we recognize and acknowledge that fact." " What an understanding Humanitarian Crowd that Boos a statment saying that innocent Palestinians are dying! And I Actually Saw a Rally on the corner of Post Oak and Westheimer near the Galleria last night. There was a huge pro-palestinian group waving flags with about 150 people. There was also about 15-20 people holding Israeli flags and about 10 policemen to quell any violence.
glynch: I get it. My problem is that neither side will listen. A recent CNN article noted that Powell attempted to discuss the problems of each country with their respective leaders but rather than stating what problems they might have, they were insistent upon complaining about the other and not willing to accept any blame. The cartoon below is one that pretty much sums it up for me: <img src="http://salon.com/comics/tomo/2002/04/15/tomo/story.jpg" width="500">
It's good to see that somebody else here reads This Modern World, it's my favorite political comic strip and internet cartoon. Now to the middle east. I think one of the main problems is that terrorism is now painted with too broad a stroke. I mean, when we dropped to atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, how was that not terrorism? I don't agree at all with the suicide, or "homocide" as they are called on fox news, bombings. But I think the world is to blame for not stepping in long ago and really helping all the Palestinian rufugees. Does Isreal have a right to protect itself, yes, but that isn't a license for genocide and squatting on other people's land. People say terrorist are religious extremist, well what does that say about he Jewish settlers who claim that God wants the Jewish people to have the palestinian's land? Ask a Jewish settler what they think about a Palestinian state, they usually tell you "that's what Jordan is." They basically are advocates for expelling the Palestinian people to other Muslim states. I think now that the eyes of the world are completely on this conflict, the suicide bombings should end. Of course I could sit here and say that this and that should happen and who is right and who is wrong. I just know this is never going to end and if does, it will be as the result of something more terrible than what is already happening over there.
Yes, they are understanding. They understand that Palestinian terrorists target innocent civilians. I guess that fact is too difficult for you to comprehend. And I Actually Saw a Rally on the corner of Post Oak and Westheimer near the Galleria last night. There was a huge pro-palestinian group waving flags with about 150 people. There was also about 15-20 people holding Israeli flags and about 10 policemen to quell any violence. [/QUOTE] I guess you were not in the Galleria area on Sunday. Over 1,500 people came out for a demonstration in support of Israel. I was there. Also, Jeff...great cartoon. I also am of the opinion, as I've stated in other threads on this BBS, that there is no chance of peace in the Middle East until both Arafat and Sharon are replaced.
The Irony is that whenever Innocent Israeli's are killed, every political leader, every muslim, everyONE says it was a wrong, vile act by cowards. I say its wrong over and over and over. But EVERY Palestinian that is killed is a militant. The number of individuals that strap on a bomb and blow themselves up and others is a minority and it seems that your statement RocketManTex, states that you don't mind if innocent Palestinians are dying?? I truly hope I am misinterpreting you for your own sake. How can a crowd "boo" when a supporter says that innocent Palestinians are dying?? Does that mean that no Palestinian is innocent and that they are all inherently evil?? That is utter ignorance and the fact that they booed that statement doesn't say much to the intelligence and decency of your "1500" people crowd. A lot of people watch Jerry Springer and think the WWF is real, numbers of supporters does not equal the moral truth.
This is disgusting. They are showing it on CNN right now. The entire city/camp is basically just bulldozed over. 3,000 people made homeless. Dead people lying buried in the rubble. But hey, they might have gotten a terrorist or two along with a few hundred innocents.
Call me crazy but if every political leader and every Muslim says it's wrong then it wouldn't happen again and again and again so your ironic statement is just incredibly flawed.
It certainly looks like very little was done to protect Palestinian civilians and their homes in Jenin. Both sides have to be honest and human if this is ever going to end.
Ok Timing, not EVERYONE, but a sizable majority of people whether its the Muslim Societies of the US, Houston, yet I hear not a drop of condemnation for the innocents killed in Palestine. Are their lives worth less?
LA Times Robert Scheer: Sharon Wears Oppressor's Cloak What is the fundamental difference between Slobodan Milosevic and Ariel Sharon? The former is on trial for war crimes, while the latter still leads an occupying army. For those already loosing angry e-mails from their quivers, I ask you to take a few minutes to consider the comparison before rushing to defend Sharon's scorched-earth march through the West Bank as a necessary response to the terrorists that Yasser Arafat either condones or has been too gutless to stop. Milosevic, like Sharon, cited the terror tactics of neighboring peoples--Croatians, Bosnians and ethnic Albanians who stood in the way of his vision of a secure Yugoslavia--as a rationale for preemptive use of massive military force against them. An occupied people can get ugly in their resistance, unless a near-saint such as Mohandas Gandhi or Nelson Mandela leads the movement away from mayhem while winning political victories. Arafat is anything but a saint, and there is much blood on his hands. But it is always the occupier, with the big guns and control of the real estate, that holds the real keys to reconciliation. Rarely does such an occupation end voluntarily; land is exchanged for peace only when the occupiers feel there is no other choice. Both the plan laid out by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell and the recent Saudi-inspired Arab League peace proposal offered such an option, but Sharon would not accept it anymore than Milosevic would the compromises presented to him up to the end of the Yugoslavia wars. Instead, both have sought to destroy any momentum toward peace by waging war. Sharon has humiliated President Bush, not only by ignoring his demand for a withdrawal but by co-opting the president's war-on-terrorism code phrases as cover for his drive to prevent--forever, if possible--a Palestinian state. How simple it would be if only the "axis of evil" targeted civilians, but from Saddam Hussein to Hamas to Sharon, nobody in the Mideast conflagration has a monopoly on such cruelty. By blasting through West Bank towns, possibly burying children in their wake, the once-proud Israel Defense Forces is heading down toward the moral level of suicide bombers. Whatever is ultimately discovered about the carnage committed by Israel's forces, enough is known to implicate Sharon for a form of ethnic cleansing--purposefully destroying the Palestinians' ability to govern themselves. The systematic destruction of the signposts of nascent Palestinian statehood--statistics bureaus, education ministries, electricity and water supplies--is aimed at further uprooting a refugee population. Despite stereotypes, Serbs did not start out as oppressive occupiers any more than did Israelis; both their peoples suffered terribly during World War II and sought peace within secure borders. However, the historical insecurity of both peoples has led them into the role of oppressor, feeding a cycle of resistance and repression. This is the opposite of what the idealistic Zionists who founded Israel had in mind. They always knew that the ultimate test of the new state would not be merely its ability to survive but rather its ability to survive with democratic values intact. Almost 70% of Israel's officer corps in the 1967 Six-Day War had been raised in the idealism of the kibbutz movement. They deemed justice a universal right--even for Palestinians. Of course, an Arab world that long refused to accept and guarantee Israel's right to exist did much to kill that idealism. Yet Israel's decision to keep the captured territories has ultimately boomeranged, drastically undermining its democracy and stability. "If Israel does not find the way to disengage from the Palestinians, its future might resemble the experience of Belfast or Bosnia--two communities bleeding each other to death for generations," said former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak this week in an op-ed article. "Alternatively, if we do not disengage from the Palestinians, Israel might drift toward an apartheid state." Unfortunately, under the heavy hand of Barak's successor Israel already is an apartheid state. This may be what Sharon and Arafat prefer to the Camp David compromise, but it represents the deepest betrayal of the interests of both the Palestinians and Jews.
Good question... I won't answer that question, but should they value their lives more? Maybe if they did, they wouldn't blow themselves up. As for "evidence of war crimes." I won't believe it until they are convicted. I'm sure there is a lot of "evidence" on arabicnews.com. If this is true however, I will be ashamed of those INDIVIDUALS who carried out the acts charged.
The key here is that blowing yourself up is sensational in the eyes of most of the world but we are de-sensitized to filling someone full of AK47 rounds. Whether you kill someone by blowing yourself up in the process or in a calculated military maneuver, it is still seriously screwed up when you are talking about Israel and Palestine. As for "evidence" on arabicnews.com, the BBC, The Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, LA Times, CNN and NPR have all reported that Israel has been guilty of many of the things of which they are accused. The fact remains that both sides need to find an alternate solution. Repeating the same behavior over and over and wondering why you aren't getting a different result is just plain stupid.
What does it matter to Israel that US Muslims condemn terrorism? US Muslims aren't the ones walking into cafes to blow them up. It basically boils down to if Israel left the occupied territories tomorrow would the bombings stop? The answer is clearly not only no but hell no. Glynch and yourself are on the destroy Sharon trek and yet it's Arafat who is the one constant in this conflict over the last 20+ years. How many different leaders has Israel had that Arafat has failed to reach an agreement with? Who really wants peace here and who is just trying to maintain power and status? Also, I don't know the specifics of what Israel is doing but innocents do die in military action. They certainly died in the US bombings of Afghanistan. The goal of our military action was not to kill innocent civilians and unless you want to present some evidence I seriously doubt the goal of Israel's military action is to kill innocent civilians. The goal of suicide bombers is precisely to kill innocent civilians. Suicide bombers prepare themselves with the direct intention of murdering as many innocent civilians as humanly possible.
