Are
the Israelis Guilty of Mass Murder?
The Scotsman (Scotland), April 19, 2002
"They left as departing heroes, waving victory salutes and grinning
as they went. But even as Israel’s forces pulled out of the Jenin refugee
camp on the West Bank, relief workers were claiming the carnage and destruction
left behind was like an earthquake. They spoke of a war crime on the scale
of the Bosnia and Kosovo wars. The United Nations, allowed access after
12 days during which ambulances were turned away and scores of injured bleed
to death, struggled to find words to describe the devastation. Terje Roed-Larsen,
the UN special envoy, said simply: 'We have expert people here who have
been in war zones and earthquakes and they say they have never seen anything
like it. It is horrifying beyond belief.' The UN was at last beginning to
extract the corpses and search for survivors beneath the rubble, as well
as provide food, water and shelter to camp residents. Its officials were
unable to bring to mind a time when they had been so obstructed as they
had been by the Israelis. Peter Hansen, head of the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency , who had served in the Balkans, said: 'I and my colleagues
working in crisis situations for decades do not recall a situation where
co-operation from the authorities has been less than what we have experienced
from the Israeli government. It is beyond any human decency to let ambulances,
food and water stand outside the camp, as has been the case.' Mr Hansen
said soldiers had shot up the UN clinic in the camp. Destroyed, along with
everything else, was a storage container for vaccines. He was shaken by
what he had seen: 'I today have seen decomposed bodies dug out. One was
an 11-year-old child, judging from the size of his rib-cage.' In a sense,
what Mr Hansen was seeing was the logical outcome of the vow by the prime
minister, Ariel Sharon, to 'wipe out the last terror cell' in the
West Bank. He made similar comments as defence minister before the 1982
Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres."
Amnesty
Accuses Israel of Jenin War Crimes,
Reuters, April 22, 2002
"Amnesty International accused Israel Monday of serious human rights
abuses during its occupation of the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin and
pressed for a full investigation to see if they amounted to war crimes.
Basing its allegations on statements from Palestinians and what it said
was evidence from its own observers who entered the West Bank town minutes
after the Israeli withdrawal, Amnesty said it had clear evidence of serious
crimes. 'We have concluded, on a preliminary basis, that very serious violations
of human rights were committed. We are talking here (about) war crimes,'
Javier Zuniga, the human rights group's regional director, told a news conference.
'We believe that Israel has a case to answer' ...'The claim that only fighters
were killed is simply not true,' [forensic pathologist Derrick]Pounder said.
'In Jenin, there have certainly been mass killings -- both of combatants
and civilians.' Pounder said the refugee camp should now be treated as a
crime scene, and a full international team of investigators similar to The
Hague Tribunal for former Yugoslavia be allowed in to try and piece together
exactly what happened."
Human
Rights Group Find Evidence of War Crimes in Jenin,
Independent (UK), May 3, 2002
"The truth about Jenin is coming out, despite a concerted campaign
by Israel to cover it up and the United Nations decision this week to abandon
a fact-finding mission in the face of Israeli refusal to co-operate. In
a report published today, the Human Rights Watch organisation (HRW) says
it has found prima facie evidence that the Israeli army committed war crimes
in Jenin refugee camp, and calls for criminal investigations of those responsible.
Today's 48-page report is proof that the details of Israel's violations
of the Geneva conventions in Jenin are slowly emerging, despite Israel's
efforts to conceal them. The Independent revealed last week that almost
half the Palestinian dead identified so far in Jenin were civilians. Today's
HRW report contains detailed accounts of those killings, and says several
of them should be investigated as possible war crimes. It identifies 22
civilians among the Palestinian dead – three times the number Israel is
claiming. The report contains disturbing new evidence of the extrajudicial
execution of a civilian by Israeli soldiers – a war crime – and horrifying
new accounts from Palestinian civilians forced to act as human shields by
Israeli soldiers. The report raises serious questions over the Israeli army's
bulldozing of an entire district of the refugee camp, containing many scores
of civilian homes, and whether it constituted the war crime of "wanton destruction"
under the Geneva conventions. HRW spent seven days inside Jenin refugee
camp and interviewed more than 100 residents."
Looting
by Israeli troops widespread, report says,
Globe and Mail (UK), August 26, 2002
"The Israeli army came under fire yesterday after Israel Radio broadcast
an investigative report finding that the looting of Palestinian property
by Israeli troops earlier this year was more widespread than previously
thought. Lieutenant-Colonel Ilan Katz, deputy chief military prosecutor,
told Israel Radio after its report was broadcast that seven soldiers had
been convicted for looting offences and five others had been indicted and
were awaiting trial. The army spokesman's office said its military police
were investigating 35 reports of looting. 'Danny,' a recently discharged
soldier interviewed under an assumed name, told the station that troops
stole widely from Palestinian homes during the six-week-long sweep for militants
launched after suicide bombings killed scores of Israelis. 'During each
search, the head of the family was meant to accompany the soldiers to every
room. What we would do is take the man to one room as the soldiers searched
other rooms, and they would pocket things while out of his sight,' he said."
Amnesty
report accuses Israeli military of war crimes,
New Zealand Herald, November 4, 2002
"Amnesty International has accused the Israeli military of crimes against
humanity and war crimes in its operations in the West Bank cities of Jenin
and Nablus earlier this year, in a report published today. The report comes
after Britain's Scotland Yard opened an investigation into Lieutenant-General
Shaul Mofaz, who was head of the Israeli army until his retirement
in July, on allegations of war crimes. Lt-Gen Mofaz over the weekend accepted
a new job as Defence Minister in Ariel Sharon's government. The charges
of war crimes are not going away, despite repeated attempts by the Israeli
authorities to brush them under the carpet. Today's report includes detailed
evidence that Israeli soldiers unlawfully killed Palestinians civilians,
blocked medical access to the wounded, used Palestinians as human shields,
tortured prisoners, and unnecessarily destroyed civilian houses. Many of
these crimes are not isolated incidents, says Amnesty, but 'committed in
a widespread and systematic manner, in pursuit of government policy', which
means they can be prosecuted as crimes against humanity under the statute
of the newly formed international criminal court. The report calls on the
international community to bring those responsible to justice. Though it
was Jenin that grabbed the world's attention after Israeli army bulldozers
levelled an entire neighbourhood of more than 100 civilian houses, the city
was not unique. In addition to the already widely known witness accounts
of atrocities committed by the Israeli army in Jenin in April, Amnesty's
report describes similar crimes committed at the same time in another West
Bank city, Nablus. Among the dead were eight members of a single family,
the al-Shu'bis, who were buried alive when Israeli soldiers bulldozed their
house on top of them, including three children, their pregnant mother and
their 85-year-old grandmother. The soldiers continued to demolish the house
even though neighbours told them people were inside. The report quotes Ahmad
al-Najjar, who told Amnesty: 'I saw the house tilt over. Without even thinking
I yelled to the soldier in the bulldozer, 'Let the residents leave the house.'
At this point the soldier came out of the bulldozer, took his weapon and
started to fire in my direction.'"
[The Amnesty International report may
be found here]
Israelis
fear war crimes arrests,
Guardian (UK), November 12, 2002
"The Israeli government has ordered an urgent assessment of whether
its politicians and soldiers could face arrest and trial for war crimes
while travelling abroad. The move follows a report by the justice ministry
that singled out Britain, Spain and Belgium as the most likely to prosecute
Israeli officials who breach international law. But the government fears
there is a growing trend towards global justice that could see Israelis
effectively barred from visiting a host of states. 'We are building a map
of all those countries that might give us a headache,' said Ra'anan Gissin,
spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon."
Eyeless in Israel,
by Gideon Levy,
rense.com (from Ha'aretz), December 15, 2002
"Is it too much to ask Israelis to take a look, even a glimpse, at
what's going on in their backyard? Are we even capable of dropping our relentless
preoccupation with primaries and the battle between Tnuva and Strauss over
cottage cheese, to pay attention to what is happening in the territories
under our occupation? A foreigner who happened to find himself here wouldn't
believe his eyes: A few weeks before the general elections - a period that
is supposed to be marked by an airing and sharpening of views - Israel continues
to close its eyes, not to see, not to hear and not to know what it is doing
to three million people who live less than an hour from our homes. If this
crass disregard is hard to accept in normal times - the approach being that
what doesn't interest me doesn't exist - on the eve of elections that are
considered (as always) critical, it is nothing short of criminal. Here are
a few updates from the past few days: Five unarmed Palestinians, probably
desperate workers who were using a ladder to enter Israel from the Gaza
Strip to find work, were shelled by a tank and killed on Thursday. On Monday,
soldiers killed a Palestinian who was mentally handicapped. On Sunday, soldiers
shot two women and three children in Rafah, on the border with Egypt. One
of the women, a mother, was killed along with her two children, aged four
and 15, and the other woman suffered serious injuries. The soldiers said
they thought the women and children were terrorists. A week ago Friday,
10 people were killed, including one woman and two employees of UNRWA, the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency, in a failed liquidation operation
in Al-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Earlier that week, a 95-year-old
woman who was traveling in a taxicab near Ramallah was shot to death by
a soldier. And a couple of days before that, soldiers demolished a building,
burying under the rubble a 70-year-man who was inside. All told, more than
30 Palestinians were killed in the first 10 days of December, at least half
of them innocent civilians. What was once an 'anomaly' has become a daily
event, and what the army used to investigate, it no longer even reviews.
Does anyone care? Innocent victims - women, children, the aged - exist only
on our side. Most Israeli media outlets report these events cursorily, if
at all, and no politician makes any reference to them. To this bloody harvest
we need to add the mass arrests. According to data of the IDF Spokesman's
Office, 3,094 Palestinians are currently incarcerated in military facilities
alone; 932 of them have been placed in administrative detention (arrest
without trial). In other words, there are nearly a thousand individuals
detained for a six-month period without any prospect of trial, many of them
in two makeshift detention facilities, Ketziot and Ofer, in which the conditions
are apparently particularly difficult. Otherwise, it is hard to explain
why the IDF has prevented reporters from visiting these sites for months.
These are facts and statistics that should be of great concern to public
opinion, even if the public in question is constantly threatened by terrorism.
Daily killing of innocent people and mass arrests without trial are issues
that should at least be the subject of public discussion, but here no one
takes an interest, as though the matter doesn't have a decisive influence
not only on the victims themselves, of course, but also on security and
on the character of the regime and society in Israel. But that is not enough.
If the acts of killing and the arrests are marginally reported by the media,
the imprisonment of the entire Palestinian people is continuing uninterrupted
and unreported. Whole cities, parts of which lie in ruins, are under almost
unceasing curfew; an entire population is unable to move from one village
to the next or from city to city without the authorization of the occupation
army - but within the Israeli public there is not even an echo of this.
No one asks why, or for how long, or whether this state of affairs does
not induce terrorism rather than prevent it. The security experts say in
an appallingly uniform voice that this is the only way, and hardly anyone
protests. It is more than likely that the majority of the public doesn't
know (and couldn't care less) whether the Palestinians are now under curfew
or just closure or maybe encirclement. The focus is exclusively on our own
difficulties and pain, which are certainly grave enough. Are Israelis afraid
to sit in cafes? It's been a long time since Palestinians could even dream
of that. Is it scary to travel on a bus in Israel? There is no longer any
such travel in the territories. Afraid to fly? Most Palestinians have never
flown. Unemployment is rising? That is nothing compared to the malnutrition
and near hunger in the territories, where the great majority of the residents
are not terrorists. A few weeks remain before the elections. No one is mentioning
the responsibility of Ariel Sharon, Shaul Mofaz and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer
for the killing and destruction. The Labor Party leader, Amram Mitzna, talks
a lot about separation and about what's good for Israel's security - but
not a word about morality or justice."
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