Showing posts with label Ariel Sharon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ariel Sharon. Show all posts
Thursday, November 22, 2012
“Flatten” Gaza like Hiroshima
“Flatten” Gaza like Hiroshima and “mow” the population, Israeli public figures urge
Ali Abunimah on Sun, 11/18/2012
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/flatten-gaza-hiroshima-and-mow-population-israeli-public-figures-urge
Among the latest horrifying examples of incitement to mass murder by Israeli public figures, Gilad Sharon, the son of former prime minister and notorious war criminal Ariel Sharon, has called for the Israeli army to “flatten” Gaza as the US flattened the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 with an atomic bomb.
“The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas. The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences,” wrote Sharon in the extremist publication The Jerusalem Post. Sharon elaborated:
We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.
There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.
Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be unpleasant – but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and civilians spared.
Sharon added that “There is no middle path here – either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip.”
As of Sunday night, the end of the fifth day of Israel’s air assault on Gaza, more than 70 Palestinians, half of them civilians, had been killed in hundreds of Israeli airstrikes.
“Don’t give a hoot about Goldstone”
Meanwhile in a message to soldiers, Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari of the National Union party exhorted soldiers to kill without thought or mercy.
“Brothers! Beloved soldiers and commanders - preserve your lives! Don’t give a hoot about Goldstone! There are no innocents in Gaza, don’t let any diplomats who want to look good in the world endanger your lives[;] at any tiniest concern for your lives - Mow them!,” Ben-Ari was quoted as saying by the website HaKol HaYehudi.
Ben-Ari was referring to the UN-commissioned Goldstone report that documented war crimes and crimes against humanity during Israel’s 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza which left more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, dead.
“We love you alive and smiling, not, heaven forefend, ‘just’ and dead in Gaza - Sodom [-] there are no righteous men, turn it into rubble. Paint it red! We are worried about you and rely on you. We all do, all of the Nation of Israel,” Ben-Ari added.
The phrase “the Nation of Israel” refers to all members of the Jewish religion, not to citizens of the State Israel, notes Dena Shunra who translated Ben-Ari’s comments.
On 15 November, the second day of an Israeli assault, Ben-Ari addressed a hate rally in Tel Aviv, calling for more bloodshed in Gaza. New video of that rally, which this blog reported on previously, shows Ben-Ari in action.
Ben-Ari is also notorious for his incitement against Africans and for his hatred of Christians. In July he tore up a New Testament, calling it “abominable” and threw it in the trash.
Read more examples of incitement to violence by Israeli public figures, for example the prominent rabbi who says the Israeli army “must learn from the Syrians how to slaughter the enemy.”
All of these inciters will no doubt be pleased that in the bloodiest attack of Israel’s assault so far, 11 Palestinians from a single family, including four young children and an 81-year-old woman, were killed on Sunday when an Israeli bomb flattened their home.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
The real tragedy: Who killed Arafat and why?
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4947.shtml
The real tragedy: Who killed Arafat and why?
By Ramzy Baroud
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jul 27, 2009
Who killed Yasser Arafat? When the Palestinian leader was declared dead in a French hospital on Nov. 11, 2004, there was no way of knowing how questions related to his death should be phrased. Was he killed or did he die from old age? If he was killed, then who killed him and why?
The “mysterious” nature of his symptoms gave birth to a theory that he was poisoned over a period of time, provided enough evidence that foul play was involved, even accusing some of those closest to him. Although the man’s story has been recorded in the ever-growing chronicle of the Palestinian struggle and Palestinians have somehow moved on, recent breaking news has blown his story wide open once again, breeding new controversy and stories of conspiracy.
Nearly five years have passed since Arafat died. During those years, a number of high-ranking Palestinian leaders, especially from the Hamas movement, have been assassinated by Israel in various and consistently gory methods. Among Palestinians, Arafat is referred to, like all those killed by Israel, as a “martyr,” an indication of the widespread belief that his death was hardly the result of natural causes.
If Arafat was indeed killed and since his death was not caused by an Israeli airstrike or an assassin’s bullet, a key question has been lingering, giving rise to all sorts of answers: Who killed Arafat and how?
Israelis made little secret of their desire to see Arafat dead. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expressed regret in a newspaper interview on Feb. 1, 2002, that he hadn’t killed Arafat decades earlier when he had had the chance. Sharon told the Israeli newspaper Maariv that he should have “eliminated” Arafat during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. “Do you regret it (not killing Arafat)?” he was asked. “Certainly, yes,” he replied.
On the day of Arafat’s death, BBC news carried comments by then Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres, saying it is “good that the world is rid of him . . . The sun is shining in the Middle East.” Held hostage in his bullet-riddled West Bank office for years, Arafat represented an international embarrassment for Israel. He was not “moderate” enough to concede all Palestinian rights, but ‘moderate’ enough to maintain an aura of international attention and support among Arab, Muslim, European and other nations.
Still, in the minds of some, Arafat was determined, and often declared to represent an ‘obstacle.’ The PA’s truly “moderate” camp disliked him for his tireless compromises aimed at preventing factional infighting, thus blocking their attempts at dominating Palestinian society. Israel despised him for numerous reasons, not least his refusal to “concede” issues of paramount importance, such as refugees and Jerusalem. The Bush administration took every opportunity to discredit, discount and insult him, constantly propping up an “alternative” leadership, namely, Mahmoud Abbas, Mohammed Dahlan and others.
Strangely enough, even Abbas and other high-ranking PA officials refer to Arafat as a “martyr,” especially whenever they need to capitalize on his legacy among low-ranking Fatah members and ordinary Palestinians. But the story was meant to end here, with Abbas and Dahlan, carrying the torch of Arafat the “martyr” as they continue with their rhetoric-based “revolution” to liberate Palestine. That was the case until the second highest-ranking Fatah member and one of the PLO’s most visible leaders, Farouk Qaddoumi, went public with a document that contained some unanticipated surprises: that Abbas and Dahlan, along with Sharon, US Undersecretary of State William Burns, and others jointly plotted the assassination of Arafat. Qaddoumi’s document contained the minutes of that meeting, in 2004.
Qaddoumi broke the news in a press conference in Amman, Jordan on July 12, 2009, asserting that Arafat had entrusted him with the minutes of that secret meeting involving top Israeli, Palestinian and American leaders and officials. The plot, according to Qaddoumi included the assassination of other Palestinian leaders, some of them have indeed been assassinated since while others are still alive, thanks to the failure of Israeli missiles and car bombs.
Expectedly, the Ramallah-based Fatah leaders launched fierce verbal attacks against Qaddoumi, questioning his objectives, timing and even his sanity. Abbas accused Qaddoumi of wanting to torpedo the Fatah faction’s long-delayed congress, scheduled to convene in Bethlehem on Aug. 4. “He (Qaddoumi) knows full well that this information is false; he has released it to undermine the convention but we are continuing with the preparations,” Abbas said. Qaddoumi had in fact criticized the convention of a supposedly ‘revolutionary’ movement held with Israeli consent, if not support.
The fact is, we may never know the authenticity of Qaddoumi’s report without an independent investigation or irrefutable evidence. However, just as with Arafat’s death, conclusive evidence is not always required for the public to formulate an opinion. Considering Israel’s threats to Arafat, Palestinians have no reason to believe that Israel did not kill him. Similarly, ordinary Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, have little reason to trust that corrupt Palestinians were not involved in Arafat’s death. A clique of the Palestinian elite have made it clear that their personal interests surpass those of the Palestinian people; Dahlan openly advocated the toppling of an elected government in Gaza as the Ramallah-based “revolutionary” movement, was dispatching US-armed and trained Palestinian fighters to crack down on Israel’s enemies in various West Bank towns.
As bizarre as all of this may sound, it is at least enough to explain why Palestinians are willing to believe the recent statements made by Qaddoumi, a respected figure among all Palestinian factions. True, Qaddoumi’s accusations have yet to be authenticated by an independent investigation, but they are made in a fractious, if not peculiar political context that makes them most plausible and, in a sense, that is the real tragedy.
Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London,) and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza The Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).
The real tragedy: Who killed Arafat and why?
By Ramzy Baroud
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jul 27, 2009
Who killed Yasser Arafat? When the Palestinian leader was declared dead in a French hospital on Nov. 11, 2004, there was no way of knowing how questions related to his death should be phrased. Was he killed or did he die from old age? If he was killed, then who killed him and why?
The “mysterious” nature of his symptoms gave birth to a theory that he was poisoned over a period of time, provided enough evidence that foul play was involved, even accusing some of those closest to him. Although the man’s story has been recorded in the ever-growing chronicle of the Palestinian struggle and Palestinians have somehow moved on, recent breaking news has blown his story wide open once again, breeding new controversy and stories of conspiracy.
Nearly five years have passed since Arafat died. During those years, a number of high-ranking Palestinian leaders, especially from the Hamas movement, have been assassinated by Israel in various and consistently gory methods. Among Palestinians, Arafat is referred to, like all those killed by Israel, as a “martyr,” an indication of the widespread belief that his death was hardly the result of natural causes.
If Arafat was indeed killed and since his death was not caused by an Israeli airstrike or an assassin’s bullet, a key question has been lingering, giving rise to all sorts of answers: Who killed Arafat and how?
Israelis made little secret of their desire to see Arafat dead. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expressed regret in a newspaper interview on Feb. 1, 2002, that he hadn’t killed Arafat decades earlier when he had had the chance. Sharon told the Israeli newspaper Maariv that he should have “eliminated” Arafat during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. “Do you regret it (not killing Arafat)?” he was asked. “Certainly, yes,” he replied.
On the day of Arafat’s death, BBC news carried comments by then Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres, saying it is “good that the world is rid of him . . . The sun is shining in the Middle East.” Held hostage in his bullet-riddled West Bank office for years, Arafat represented an international embarrassment for Israel. He was not “moderate” enough to concede all Palestinian rights, but ‘moderate’ enough to maintain an aura of international attention and support among Arab, Muslim, European and other nations.
Still, in the minds of some, Arafat was determined, and often declared to represent an ‘obstacle.’ The PA’s truly “moderate” camp disliked him for his tireless compromises aimed at preventing factional infighting, thus blocking their attempts at dominating Palestinian society. Israel despised him for numerous reasons, not least his refusal to “concede” issues of paramount importance, such as refugees and Jerusalem. The Bush administration took every opportunity to discredit, discount and insult him, constantly propping up an “alternative” leadership, namely, Mahmoud Abbas, Mohammed Dahlan and others.
Strangely enough, even Abbas and other high-ranking PA officials refer to Arafat as a “martyr,” especially whenever they need to capitalize on his legacy among low-ranking Fatah members and ordinary Palestinians. But the story was meant to end here, with Abbas and Dahlan, carrying the torch of Arafat the “martyr” as they continue with their rhetoric-based “revolution” to liberate Palestine. That was the case until the second highest-ranking Fatah member and one of the PLO’s most visible leaders, Farouk Qaddoumi, went public with a document that contained some unanticipated surprises: that Abbas and Dahlan, along with Sharon, US Undersecretary of State William Burns, and others jointly plotted the assassination of Arafat. Qaddoumi’s document contained the minutes of that meeting, in 2004.
Qaddoumi broke the news in a press conference in Amman, Jordan on July 12, 2009, asserting that Arafat had entrusted him with the minutes of that secret meeting involving top Israeli, Palestinian and American leaders and officials. The plot, according to Qaddoumi included the assassination of other Palestinian leaders, some of them have indeed been assassinated since while others are still alive, thanks to the failure of Israeli missiles and car bombs.
Expectedly, the Ramallah-based Fatah leaders launched fierce verbal attacks against Qaddoumi, questioning his objectives, timing and even his sanity. Abbas accused Qaddoumi of wanting to torpedo the Fatah faction’s long-delayed congress, scheduled to convene in Bethlehem on Aug. 4. “He (Qaddoumi) knows full well that this information is false; he has released it to undermine the convention but we are continuing with the preparations,” Abbas said. Qaddoumi had in fact criticized the convention of a supposedly ‘revolutionary’ movement held with Israeli consent, if not support.
The fact is, we may never know the authenticity of Qaddoumi’s report without an independent investigation or irrefutable evidence. However, just as with Arafat’s death, conclusive evidence is not always required for the public to formulate an opinion. Considering Israel’s threats to Arafat, Palestinians have no reason to believe that Israel did not kill him. Similarly, ordinary Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, have little reason to trust that corrupt Palestinians were not involved in Arafat’s death. A clique of the Palestinian elite have made it clear that their personal interests surpass those of the Palestinian people; Dahlan openly advocated the toppling of an elected government in Gaza as the Ramallah-based “revolutionary” movement, was dispatching US-armed and trained Palestinian fighters to crack down on Israel’s enemies in various West Bank towns.
As bizarre as all of this may sound, it is at least enough to explain why Palestinians are willing to believe the recent statements made by Qaddoumi, a respected figure among all Palestinian factions. True, Qaddoumi’s accusations have yet to be authenticated by an independent investigation, but they are made in a fractious, if not peculiar political context that makes them most plausible and, in a sense, that is the real tragedy.
Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London,) and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza The Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Cartoon film stirs Israel's conscience
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-death-and-animation-cartoon-film-stirs-israels-conscience-1021732.html
War, death and animation: Cartoon film stirs Israel's conscience
An acclaimed new cartoon film has stirred Israel's conscience about its responsibility for the notorious 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Ben Lynfield reports from Jerusalem
Monday, 17 November 2008
Until a matter of months ago, very few Israelis realised that their army fired flares to light up Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps while Lebanese Christian militiamen committed the notorious massacre of Palestinian civilians there in 1982.
But Ari Folman, who as a 19-year-old soldier fired some of the flares, makes their descent through the sky over Beirut's beachfront one of the recurring images of Waltz With Bashir, his "animated documentary" that premiers in Britain this week.
In Israel, the film has rekindled discussion about the divisive invasion of Lebanon that was initially billed by Ariel Sharon, who was defence minister at the time, as a limited push to halt PLO rocket attacks, and the extent of Israeli responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre where the estimated number of victims ranged from 700 to more than 3,000. Folman has said he had no idea the massacre was being committed when he shot the flares.
The killings by Phalangist militiamen dispatched into the camps by Israel came after their leader, Bashir Gemayel, president-elect of Lebanon, was assassinated in a bombing wrongly blamed on Palestinians. An Israeli state commission of inquiry set up as a result of a tide of public protest in the massacre's wake found that Mr Sharon, today comatose from a stroke nearly three years ago, bore "personal responsibility" for not having foreseen the danger that the Phalangists would commit the slaughter. He was forced to give up the defence portfolio, something that did not prevent him from being elected as premier in 2001 and re-elected in 2003. Lebanon, for its part, has never seriously investigated the massacre.
The film has been widely acclaimed in Israel. One reviewer, Eitan Weitz, writing for the website Parshan (Commentator), termed it "required viewing" for those aged 16 and 17 nearing their mandatory military service, for army reservists in their thirties and for mothers of soldiers. But not everyone is happy about the film's screening abroad. Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Bar Ilan University with right-of-centre views, voiced concern even though he has not seen the film. "The Israeli audience knows the atrocities were committed by Lebanese Christian militiamen and can sort out how much responsibility is ours and how much is theirs. Foreign audiences will be blaming Israel for everything and this could reinforce that."
A flaw in the movie is that it gives the impression that the massacre lasted only one night and was stopped the following morning. It began the evening of 16 September 1982 and ended on 18 September. Some Israeli viewers say Folman lets Israel off too easily. "The Israeli soldiers are shown as being good, as being people who are tormented by what is going on," says Ronit Shpiner, 35, a psychologist from Jerusalem. "Ultimately, the moral responsibility is taken off of them even though those who saw the slaughter should have stopped it."
She added: "The movie depicts the soldiers as the victims of the massacre because they were traumatised by it." A bartender, Lidya Ophir, 26, said: "I think the movie is saying that probably the Israeli army is just as responsible as the people with the guns inside the camps."
Folman says the movie aims to dissuade young people from fighting in wars. "I hope that young people, when they watch Waltz With Bashir will see how stupid all wars are, a useless idea, a creation of tiny little leaders with big egos," he wrote in an email response to The Independent. "They will see in Waltz With Bashir that there is no glory in war, no bravery in war, nothing. They will never want to be the guy in the movie. And that is unlike a lot of American anti-war movies, where they show you that war sucks, but the guys in the movie are so cool."
Mr Sharon is shown only briefly in the film, wolfing down steak and eggs, his nose twitching as he talks on the phone to the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and to a commander in Lebanon.
His former spokesman, Raanan Gissin, takes issue with the depiction. "He never gave orders while eating," he said. Mr Gissin denied Israel had any responsibility in the killings, saying they were "probably a Syrian-instigated plot" and recalled a statement by Mr Sharon that the inquiry's findings put "a mark of Cain" on Israel's forehead.
For many people, the most powerful part of the film is the recollection by an Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Ishai of a conversation he had with Mr Sharon during the massacre. Mr Ben-Ishai, stationed in Beirut as Israel Television's war correspondent, had heard from army officers at a dinner he hosted that a massacre was being committed. Disturbed by the reports, he called Mr Sharon at his ranch in southern Israel but the defence minister showed little interest and did not act to stop it. Regarding Israel's degree of responsibility, Mr Ben-Ishai says: "It is like the Allies in the Second World War who could have stopped the slaughter in the death camps but didn't."
For the Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg, the movie brought back memories of the protest in which he participated to press Mr Begin to implement the inquiry commission's findings. "The fact that under public pressure Israel created a commission of inquiry and Sharon was dismissed indicates there was a significant degree of a country insisting on an accounting," Mr Gorenberg said. "The movie raises for us the question of whether that accounting went far enough."
War, death and animation: Cartoon film stirs Israel's conscience
An acclaimed new cartoon film has stirred Israel's conscience about its responsibility for the notorious 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Ben Lynfield reports from Jerusalem
Monday, 17 November 2008
Until a matter of months ago, very few Israelis realised that their army fired flares to light up Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps while Lebanese Christian militiamen committed the notorious massacre of Palestinian civilians there in 1982.
But Ari Folman, who as a 19-year-old soldier fired some of the flares, makes their descent through the sky over Beirut's beachfront one of the recurring images of Waltz With Bashir, his "animated documentary" that premiers in Britain this week.
In Israel, the film has rekindled discussion about the divisive invasion of Lebanon that was initially billed by Ariel Sharon, who was defence minister at the time, as a limited push to halt PLO rocket attacks, and the extent of Israeli responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre where the estimated number of victims ranged from 700 to more than 3,000. Folman has said he had no idea the massacre was being committed when he shot the flares.
The killings by Phalangist militiamen dispatched into the camps by Israel came after their leader, Bashir Gemayel, president-elect of Lebanon, was assassinated in a bombing wrongly blamed on Palestinians. An Israeli state commission of inquiry set up as a result of a tide of public protest in the massacre's wake found that Mr Sharon, today comatose from a stroke nearly three years ago, bore "personal responsibility" for not having foreseen the danger that the Phalangists would commit the slaughter. He was forced to give up the defence portfolio, something that did not prevent him from being elected as premier in 2001 and re-elected in 2003. Lebanon, for its part, has never seriously investigated the massacre.
The film has been widely acclaimed in Israel. One reviewer, Eitan Weitz, writing for the website Parshan (Commentator), termed it "required viewing" for those aged 16 and 17 nearing their mandatory military service, for army reservists in their thirties and for mothers of soldiers. But not everyone is happy about the film's screening abroad. Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Bar Ilan University with right-of-centre views, voiced concern even though he has not seen the film. "The Israeli audience knows the atrocities were committed by Lebanese Christian militiamen and can sort out how much responsibility is ours and how much is theirs. Foreign audiences will be blaming Israel for everything and this could reinforce that."
A flaw in the movie is that it gives the impression that the massacre lasted only one night and was stopped the following morning. It began the evening of 16 September 1982 and ended on 18 September. Some Israeli viewers say Folman lets Israel off too easily. "The Israeli soldiers are shown as being good, as being people who are tormented by what is going on," says Ronit Shpiner, 35, a psychologist from Jerusalem. "Ultimately, the moral responsibility is taken off of them even though those who saw the slaughter should have stopped it."
She added: "The movie depicts the soldiers as the victims of the massacre because they were traumatised by it." A bartender, Lidya Ophir, 26, said: "I think the movie is saying that probably the Israeli army is just as responsible as the people with the guns inside the camps."
Folman says the movie aims to dissuade young people from fighting in wars. "I hope that young people, when they watch Waltz With Bashir will see how stupid all wars are, a useless idea, a creation of tiny little leaders with big egos," he wrote in an email response to The Independent. "They will see in Waltz With Bashir that there is no glory in war, no bravery in war, nothing. They will never want to be the guy in the movie. And that is unlike a lot of American anti-war movies, where they show you that war sucks, but the guys in the movie are so cool."
Mr Sharon is shown only briefly in the film, wolfing down steak and eggs, his nose twitching as he talks on the phone to the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and to a commander in Lebanon.
His former spokesman, Raanan Gissin, takes issue with the depiction. "He never gave orders while eating," he said. Mr Gissin denied Israel had any responsibility in the killings, saying they were "probably a Syrian-instigated plot" and recalled a statement by Mr Sharon that the inquiry's findings put "a mark of Cain" on Israel's forehead.
For many people, the most powerful part of the film is the recollection by an Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Ishai of a conversation he had with Mr Sharon during the massacre. Mr Ben-Ishai, stationed in Beirut as Israel Television's war correspondent, had heard from army officers at a dinner he hosted that a massacre was being committed. Disturbed by the reports, he called Mr Sharon at his ranch in southern Israel but the defence minister showed little interest and did not act to stop it. Regarding Israel's degree of responsibility, Mr Ben-Ishai says: "It is like the Allies in the Second World War who could have stopped the slaughter in the death camps but didn't."
For the Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg, the movie brought back memories of the protest in which he participated to press Mr Begin to implement the inquiry commission's findings. "The fact that under public pressure Israel created a commission of inquiry and Sharon was dismissed indicates there was a significant degree of a country insisting on an accounting," Mr Gorenberg said. "The movie raises for us the question of whether that accounting went far enough."
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