Posted on 11/10/2001 8:30:35 AM PST by l33t
They have blown up cars and kitchens. They have fired missiles from combat helicopters hovering several miles away. They have picked off their victims from afar with high-powered snipers' rifles. There are even plausible claims that they – or their collaborators – have planted explosive devices in telephone receivers and car headrests that blow off a man's head in an instant.
Israel's death squads have not lacked ingenuity in the manner in which they have pursued their government's policy of assassinating suspects in the 14-month war with the Palestinians.
Exactly a year has elapsed since Israel first restored extra-judicial killings to its repertoire of military tactics in its efforts to suppress what began as a popular uprising, turning slowly into an armed conflict.
The exact numbers of the victims vary – the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who personally approves all such killings, admitted to 20 to 30 in a recent Newsweek interview. But he has stated in the past that Israel will sometimes deny its undercover operations, and refuse to comment on others.
There is little doubt the figure is larger. Statistics collated by the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) show that at least 59 Palestinians have been assassinated in the past year, including 21 passers-by. Even this may be an underestimate.
The international community has repeatedly condemned the killings, saying they are illegal and that, in the long run, they increase violent resistance to Israel's occupation.
Human rights groups have raised many urgent concerns, from the manner in which Israeli intelligence selects targets – which is not open to scrutiny by any judiciary – to evidence that some victims could have been arrested, instead of killed.
"State enforcement of a policy of assassinations is in direct contravention of international human rights law, and especially of the right to life and the right to fair trial," a statement from the PHRMG said yesterday, "People suspected of illegal activities must be arrested and brought to trial, even in a situation of armed conflict."
But Israel has continued. It argues they are pre-emptive strikes against attacks on Israelis – notably suicide bombers, who have killed 56 people in Israel since this intifada began. It makes no secret of its methods – Mr Sharon boasted this week that "not a day goes by in which we do not succeed in striking at the murderers".
On 8 November last year, in Beit Sahour, a Palestinian town on the edge of Bethlehem, Israeli combat helicopters blasted missiles into a pick-up truck. They got their man – Hussein Abayat, 34, a gunman from Fatah, the movement nominally controlled by the Pales-tinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
Posters of Abayat in paramilitary fatigues posing with a large machine-gun still adorn the walls of Bethlehem, where he – like all Israel's victims – is considered a martyr. But the assassins also killed two middle-aged women who happened to be passing, murders that did not discourage the Israel army from congratulating itself on a successful "targeted killing". A monument to the two woman stands where they died.
But the most notorious assassination came at the end of August when Israeli helicopters hovering over the West Bank town of Ramallah fired two missiles through the windows of the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Ali Mustafa, 64, decapitating him as he sat in his swivel chair. As the leader of an established PLO faction – who according to Palestinians was a politician rather than a member of the PFLP's military wing – he was the most senior figure to be picked off by the Israelis.
Seven weeks later, the PFLP sought revenge, by infiltrating a Jerusalem hotel and assassinating Israel's Tourism Minister, Rechavem Zeevi, whose support for ethnically cleansing the West Bank and Gaza of Arabs had long made him an enemy of the Palestinians.
Israel's counter-attack – the largest invasion of Palestinian-run areas in West Bank towns since the Oslo process began – is still unfinished; Israeli troops were still in Jenin and Tulkarm last night. The evidence suggests Israel will now step up the pace of extra-judicial killings.
The pressure from the United States has diminished, not least because America will surely resort to similar tactics in its "war on terror". This week, Raanan Gissin, a spokes-man for Mr Sharon, said Israel will now "be using, when necessary, guerrilla warfare against terrorism rather than large-scale forces moving into the area ... We'll rely more on [military] intelligence." Even Shimon Peres, the Israeli Foreign Minister, who is routinely portrayed in the press as a Nobel peace prize-winning "dove", makes no apology for Israel's methods.
This week Mr Peres was confronted in Paris by a parliamentarian who questioned him over the "murder of Palestinian activists". He retorted that the French had "no experience" of "suicide terrorist attacks", saying that the "the moment a terrorist sets out, it is impossible to stop him. He is ready to die anyway."
But this is unlikely to silence Israel's critics. They say that, in the case of many victims, there was no evidence that they were on a mission to attack Israelis, let alone that they were suicide bombers.
4F
(Copyright 1999)
KIRYAT ARBA, West Bank - Dozens of soldiers and police officers touched a raw nerve in Israel yesterday when they tore down a shrine at the grave of Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish settler who massacred 29 Muslim worshipers in Hebron in 1994. The troops moved in just after dawn and just ahead of a front-end loader that razed a decorative plaza and a prayer-book shelf around Goldstein's lone grave, which had become a pilgrimage site for Jewish extremists.
Several dozen settlers from this suburb of Hebron tussled with police as the shrine was being bulldozed, and some vowed to turn the grave into an even bigger memorial to the gunman.
"This is a barbaric act," declared Tiran Pollock, a leader of the outlawed anti-Arab Kach movement. "We will come back and build it up even more."
Others pledged to seek revenge by defacing the grave of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The bulldozing of the shrine was ordered last year by the Israel Defense Force, but it was held up when Goldstein's father appealed to Israel's Supreme Court. The court rejected the appeal last month, saying that the "fancy monument" was an affront to Goldstein's victims.
On Feb. 25, 1994, Goldstein, a doctor who lived in Kiryat Arba, dressed in army fatigues and entered the Tomb of the Patriarchs, revered by both Jews and Muslims. He then produced an Uzi submachine gun and opened fire on Muslim worshippers. Most of the dead were shot in the back. Goldstein reloaded and fired a number of times before other worshippers bludgeoned him to death.
The massacre was condemned by then-Prime Minister Rabin who outlawed the Kach movement, with whom Goldstein was identified.
The Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Goldstein was buried within the fenced perimeter of Kiryat Arba so that Palestinian protesters could not deface it.
Nothing more need be said.
If something had been said on 9/10, would 9/11 have happened?
Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who personally approves all such killings,
For anyone who cares:
Every single anti-Israel propaganda piece- from Arabs or other known Israel haters- is a lie.
If you read with comprehension- and a little bit of knowledge- the lies are obvious.
Here:
Sharon was not in charge a year ago. He took office in earlier this year and he certainly had no authority in Barak's government.
How do you reconcile the above cited two sentences? Can you trust the article? The source?
The problem, of course, is that the Israelis will never abandon their settlements colonies. The Arabs have long since acknowledged Israel's right to exist. But it's irrelevant because Israel's agenda is the slow conquest of all of Palestine. In this Orwellian world, the people to try to fight that conquest are called terrorists. So-called terrorism would end tomorrow if the Israelis would simply go home.
To anyone with knowledge of certain corners who attempt to always demonize Israel- and Sharon in particular- it is obvious.
Crazy Jews.
They have it. They give it away and now they are dying in a slow re-conquest (which was their plan all along).
Yeah. Makes perfect sense.
PS- What's Palestine?
There are many reasons why the fradulent deal from last year broke down. Surely the most important was the simple fact that it did not create a Palestinian state at all. Rather, it created a bunch of Bantustans criss-crossed by Israeli military roads and checkpoints. This in a tiny country.
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