The Zionist Terrorism file - from 1936 to 1996

The Zionist Terrorism file
- from 1936 to 1996

By Dr Anis Sayegh (1996)

A British journalist conducted an interview with Dr. Anis Sayegh regarding Zionist terrorism as he was one of its victims. The interview was done on the occasion of the start of the Israeli aggression on Lebanon on the 11th of April 1996. He gave a thorough research in order that the British public opinion have an insight into the subject. The following study deals with Israeli terrorism since 1936 up until "The Grapes of Wrath".

I should not only draw the attention of the British public opinion to the subject of Zionist terrorism, because it is a subject that should interest the whole human race, specially after the rush of thirty government officials to the meeting of Sharm Al-Shiekh (and what has and will follow in the way of meetings to higher levels) to discuss the protection of "Israel" against Palestinian "terrorism", but there being several minor motivation and one major one. As for the minor motivation, British Governments had in the past, a great deal to do with decisions in deciding the fate of the Arab Palestinian people in reaching their great calamity of being homeless and dispersed, and another being that Britain is the cradle for today’s democracy, and the mother of freedom to the whole world generally and to us Arabs specifically.

And being that the British people who are presently complaining of extreme Irish terrorism should be called upon more than any other to look into the problem of terrorism openly, objectively, fairly and in depth. Another minor motivation is the British media [Press, Radio and television] which helped greatly in the past and still does in publicizing violence.

As for the major and more direct reason is that there is talk that is presently going on in an official level in Britain as to considering (urgently) "Jihad" as being terrorism, therefore the call for Jihad whether it be by the pen or the tongue should be considered as an involvement in terrorism, all this was set off by the Zionist authorities in Palestine and was forced upon the surrendered leadership of the Palestinian people (excuse me if I am using expressions that are no longer common, or even acceptable, during this time that we call evil times. But it has become a thing of the past that the civilized world today wants to forget because he thinks that it contradicts with the festival of peace which is forced upon us to participate in - not forgetting that these expressions are still alive and reflect the true reality while representing clear signs that speak for themselves).

From here I felt for the importance in writing this peaceful tale which I hope the British reader will look into it before he is convinced of the matter of "Arab terrorism". And we shall see that the terrorism is not caused by the Arab. But instead it is Israeli and Zionist from the very start.

And may the reader allow me to try and be brief, as much as a Historian can be, in summarizing a huge file filled with practices of organized political groups for the past sixty years, that being the file of Zionist terrorism: violent practices that was committed by official and semi-official groups against defenseless civilians who were not fighters or military personnel, which is unlawful for government to practice in defending its peace. It is violence that contradicts with treaties that is common among developed countries, which have abided by them at least theoretically, in agreements and treaties between two or more parties or governments and publications and texts that channel into the heading of human rights and specially civilians. And I leave for the British reader, with his conscience of holding on to his deep-rooted values, to judge for himself who really is the terrorist and who is the one who needs protection from terrorism. On the condition that he uses one and the same scale to judge with- for in justice there is only one scale. And not to use different criteria, by seeing a practice correct for one group and wrong for the other.

I choose to start from the 16th of April 1939, exactly 60 years ago, the date these black and bloody record started. That day the Zionist terrorist chose at random by shooting and killing two Arab civilians passing close to Betah Takfe settlement, without them having any military characteristic or military activities. And the terrorist activities continued from that moment nearly without stop until our present day. But we do not mean to specify that particular day in April 1936 that the Zionist did not commit any acts of terrorism on the Arab Palestinian before that date. There are tens of incidents that occurred in the first third of this century. But in all they were separate incidents far apart to draw a chain of events.

The market places, main streets and poor residential areas in cities like Jerusalem, Yafa and Haifa were easy targets for the terrorists specially in the year of 1938. During that year more than a hundred civilians were killed as a result of more than ten incidents using bombs. The terrorists repeated these actions again in the beginning of the forties with their favorite targets being cafes, restaurants, hotels, trading shops, residential homes, offices and Arab schools in most of the cities and villages. Perhaps the most well known incident was the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where most of the Palestinian government’s offices were situated (summer of 1946). As a result of the explosion two hundred civilians were killed, most of them Arab and English. The average of Arab civilians killed in each month of the six months preceding the declaration of the birth of the state of Israel reached a 150 dead.

As well as the above mentioned areas, the Zionist terrorists also concentrated on Banks and public facility centers, mainly in the petroleum facility of Haifa, from storage tanks to refineries, pipelines and factories. Between 1947 and 1948 these facilities were subject to many attacks. And each attack would result in the death of tens of Arab civilians between workers, technicians and administrators. As for the banks, most of them were British, attacks on increased from the beginning of 1946 till the middle of 1948. Not only would these banks be robbed but the Arab employees would be killed also.

As for the main Zionist terrorist target since 1937 and for more than ten years was the means of transportation: small cars, buses, lorries, trains, roads and bridges, rail tracks and stations. The authorities recorded more than 500 civilian killings in the years of 1937 and 1938 only. As for the years of 1947 and 1948 the danger increased (regarding the number of attacks and the victims) to the extent that movement from one place to another became very dangerous for the ordinary Arab civilian, in the villages and cities or around them. So if the Jews of Jerusalem were afraid of riding buses last spring because of the last two bombings, then all the Arabs of Palestine stayed in their homes for twenty months for fear of the Zionist terror.

Least to say that that violence was going on without any pre warning, and without calculating the number of victims and their ages or whether they were involved in any military role. All those violent acts did not just happen by coincidence. But according to a well organized plan of frightening the Arab people and eventually evicting them.

Realistically we can not look at these operations, and specially the one that happened between the years of 1947 and 1948, only in the context of a planed Zionist operation, to empty Palestine from its original Arab inhabitants, and therefore occupying their land and possessions in order to reoccupy it with the migrating Jews from outside Palestine. This plan is the same age as the age of the Zionist movement itself, which will next year celebrate its hundredth year since its official setup. The founder of the movement Theodore Hertzl had stated openly in his memoirs that the Zionist settlers in Palestine should it from its inhabitants. But, truly, he did not say that eviction was the only means of displacement. He suggested evicting them to Iraq (as what is being said today silently, as an international intention to move hundreds and thousands of Palestinians to Iraq is an idea of Hertzl’s a hundred years ago). For Hertzl had suggested another idea of getting rid of the Palestinians: burning them with the rays of the sun of depression or killing them with the snake bites of the Hula lakes, during our usage of them as slaves for the Jewish settlers to work in hard and dangerous jobs not fit for a Jew to risk his life in doing.

In this chapter in the file of the Zionist terrorism, work was concentrated on terrorizing the inhabitants in order to achieve mass displacement, migration and dispersion. It therefore not strange to witness specially in the six months between the decision to divide Palestine and the rise of the state of Israel. And we will notice by following the terrorist operations at the end of 1947 and the first half of 1948 that they mainly targeted areas that the Zionists planned to have as their state - even if what was stated in the resolution of partition by the UN on 29/11/1947 would be their share, or what they themselves had decided to seize as soon as they had established their state knowing that the said resolution had given it to the Arab state.

These operations started in the second half of December 1947, with viciously programmed attacks on civilians in villages within the Haifa sub-district. Then villages in the sub-district of Safad. Then villages in the sub-district of Tabaraya. The number of dead civilians in those sub-districts reached 170 men women and children. Then followed attacks on residents of Al-Tireh, Saasa, Kfar Husseiniya, Sarafand, Kalounya, Beyt Sourik, Aylaboun, Al-Shajara and Nasser Al-Dine, 250 civilians were killed in these villages. But the main slaughter was in the village of Deyr Yassin, on the night of the 19th of April, with 350 victims (out of 400 of the village’s residents).

Since then that slaughter had become one of the symbols the Zionist savagery. (this brings to mind of another terrorist operation that occurred on the same date 25 years later, on the street of Vardun in Beirut, when the terrorists attacked three Palestinian officials, one of them a famous Arab poet, they were killed along with the wife of one of them). These operations opened way for attacks on the Arabs of all the cities and villages in the second half of April in order to evict them: Tabaraya, Safad, Aka, Haifa and Yafa, then Al-lid and Al-Ramla after less than 3 months. Each attack would claim more than a hundred victims, whereas tens of thousands of the survivals would flee to Arab neighboring countries. And so within less than half a year nearly 750,000. Arab Palestinian sought shelter in Lebanon, Syria and East Jordan in order to escape death, where they are living together with their children and grandchildren, evicted from their homes with their number increased many times.

A similar thing happened just less than twenty years later, towards the end of the 1967 war, when the Israeli forces took hold of what was left of Palestine, or what was known since 1948 as Ghaza and the West Bank. Which increased the number of evicted forcibly to another 300,000. Civilian. The only difference between the two evictions, in the forties and the sixties was that the heroes of the forties were members of the unofficial Zionist organizations (in appearance anyway) such as Shtern, Argon, Hagana with its military arm the Balmach which would get direct orders from Jewish Associations. As for the heroes of 1967, they were called Israeli Defense Forces.

But the Zionist terrorism did not stop after the Israeli army occupied all of the Palestinian land (and with it the Gollan and Sinai), exactly as the terrorism of 1948-49 did not stop in order to establish the State. The terrorism continued all through the fifties and the first half of the sixties, in preparation for the 1967 war. A week would not pass without the Zionist committing a terrorist act. i.e. the attack on the camp of Bureig (Gaza), then the village of Kubeiya in the summer of 1953. In those two aggressions 60 fell dead and 90 wounded among the Arab civilians. This was followed by two more aggressions one in the village of Nahalin and the other on the Eastern coastline of Tabaraya lake, the number of dead was 20. As for the 1956 war hundreds of civilians fell in Gaza, most of them died under the ruble of their homes which were bombarded by the Israeli forces by air, land and sea. Plus the death of 450 civilians mainly workers and farmers who were victims of the massacres of Kfar Kassem and Khan Younus (autumn 1956). The massacres continued later on: 30 dead in a raid on Al-Nakib (spring 1967), 20 dead in the attack on Al-Sumu (autumn 1966).

The Israeli terrorism was not confined only to Palestine. It spread across the borders every once in a while, to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt: a couple of hundred Egyptian civilian from Al-Suise, the port of Tawfik and Al-Ismailiya were killed (Sept. 1967). And more than a 100 were killed in raids on Jordan towards the end of 1967. The raids reached the sub-districts of Arbad and Al-Salat the following year, with the excuse that there exited Palestinian fighters in them. The victims there reached 60 Palestinian and Jordanian civilians. And in the summer of 1968 these terrorist acts killed more than 70 civilian in Al-Suise and Al-Ismailiya. And in 1969 more than 60 civilian were killed in raids on Al-Hama and Meysaloon (Syria) and Bour Said (Egypt). And in one incident more than 70 civilians were killed, mainly factory workers at Abi Zubel in Egypt (Feb. 1970). Within less than two months a massacre was committed: the terrorists killed 50 children in a raid on Baher Al-Bakar school in Egypt.

Then came Lebanon’s turn. A turn that has still not end. We shall not talk about the Israeli occupation of large parts of this peaceful Arab country. But instead we shall mention the terrorist acts practiced on the civilians. Acts which are difficult to compile in the past 18 years. It is enough to mention the massacres of Bint Jubail, Al-Arkoub, Majdal Silim and Hasbaya (1972) were more than 100 peaceful civilian were killed. As well as continuos raids on Palestinian camps were tens of civilians would be killed in each raid. All that occurred before the striking attacks on the South of Lebanon and the Western Bekaa in 1978 and then in 1982 which resulted in the permanent occupation of a large quantity of Lebanese land. And if the civilians of Egypt, Syria and Jordan suffered from great Zionist terrorism then the suffering of the Lebanese people is greater than can be described, and is impossible to list the daily aggressions in detail: rocket and artillery shelling, air raids, naval bombing, road bombs and mines, car bombs, assassinations, destruction of homes, schools and hospitals on top of its inhabitants, blowing up cars with passengers still in it, shelling market places, gatherings and public places, as well as new official pirating: kidnapping and incarcerating civilians, laying siege to the coastline for long periods of time and preventing the entry of goods and medical assistance as well as cutting off electricity and water supplies, bombing the international airport and burning what’s in it along with its civilian planes. The victims of these terrorist acts exceed thousands in number. Yes. Tens of thousands dead, wounded, missing, abducted, incarcerated and disabled civilians, men, women, children, elderly, religious figures and journalists. It is interesting to note that among the weapons used are those which are banned by international treaties. Even new words have entered the dictionary of the resident’s daily life, words such as cluster bomb, vacuum bombs, shrapnel, phosphoric and napalm, as well as booby trapped dolls. For that reason it will be enough to mention a limited amount of massacres commited by the Israelis in the past years with victims exceeding thousands among the Lebanese and Palestinian community, with the British media having great credit in exposing its mask: the slaughter at Saida, Al-Zahrani, Zreyriye, Bir Al-Abed and Amarat Al-Sanayeh etc. … as for the massacres of Sabra and Shatila camps which was commited by Israeli soldiers with the assistance of Lebanese agents trained and armed by Israelis the victims there reached according to various sources: between 1000. and 3000. Palestinian and Lebanese civilian, if we look at the archives of the UN and the reports of their representatives together with UNIFIL’s reports one can find the actual size of that atrocity. A brave photographer caught on film an Israeli tank squashing a civilian car with its five passengers still in it. Perhaps just by looking at this ugly photo would be much more effective than reading tens of articles. We should also not forget to mention the Israel conspiracy on Lebanon during the civil war between 1975-1990 which resulted in over one hundred thousand mainly civilian victims. Israel was had the main role in planting discord in this war by training and arming many to be involved in the civil war.

Along side what we already mentioned, there were various terrorist operations that we should mention in brief: the shooting down of the Libyan civil aircraft over Sinai and killing all its 106 civilian passengers (1973). The raid on the Tamuz nuclear plant in Iraq which resulted in its complete destruction over the heads of the workers, technicians and experts that were in it (1981). Not to mention that the Zionist terrorist a few years earlier had sent letter bombs to a number of Egyptian scientists as well as foreign ones. A number of them died while the rest were either maimed or disabled. Then came the raid on Tunis which resulted in the death of tens of civilians, Tunisian and Palestinian, families of the Fidaen (1985). Last but not least, the slaughter of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil (1994) were 50 Arab Muslims were killed while praying. Places of worship were always loved as target by the Zionist terrorist during the past 50 years, in Palestine, Lebanon and Sinai.

We should mention before turning over the page of the bloody Zionist file, the official violence that the Israeli army practices on the Intifada of the Palestinian and the Resistance of the Lebanese against the occupation within the past few years. Even when the Palestinian Intifada is known to use stone as its weapon since its rise in 1987, the answer would be with bullets, bombs and all kinds of violence: the killing of children, torturing inmates, expelling active citizens, arresting tens of thousands of suspected citizens, blowing up the homes of the families of the Fidain and confiscating their belongings, closing down schools, universities and delaying educational programs, announcing curfews for long periods of time, blocking off roads between cities and villages, laying sieges to drive people to hunger. All that would go on legally with official resolutions from high ranking offices of the government. Laws have been passed recently regarding the way in which the Intifada should be dealt with that have not been witnessed anywhere in the world or during our era, like giving the police or interrogators the right to break the bones of the inmates, and firing live bullets on unarmed peaceful demonstrators. And many of these steps are practiced by the Israelis in the south of Lebanon since the rise of the Islamic Resistance which is practicing its right, since the mid-eighties against the Israeli occupation. To the extent that the Israeli detention centers could not take in more on top of the thousands it already has and was forced to build new ones, where it practices in them the ugliest kinds of torture that is internationally banned. And the Israelis still practice the means of eviction on residents with the use of arms. And if the number displaced Palestinians reaches thousands then the number of displaced Lebanese reaches hundreds of thousands from their homes in the south of Lebanon and the west Bekaa region, not forgetting to point out what such displacement causes in the way of personal, political, economical educational and social problems and suffering, confusion for the government, threatening of public disorder, halting the road to self recovery.

Britain was the friend of Zionism, now, she is the victim of Zionism, specially between 1942 and 1948. And that was because the Zionist movements accused the British authorities for not doing enough in converting Palestine to Judaism, and for not allowing hundreds of Jews emigrating from Europe to enter Palestine. This accusation was paid for with a large number of British soldiers, officers, policemen, judges, employees and administrators inside and outside Palestine, the whole of Britain paid a high price of indignity and abuses- when at the same time the British were fighting the German Nazis for many various reasons one of which was the ill treatment the Jews suffered by the Nazis, also while the British 8th regiment fought to death to prevent Rumel’s forces which reached close to Alexandria from reaching Palestine and exterminating the Jews that had emigrated there. The Zionists used their well known tactics (assassinations, car bombs, mines, bombs, hostage taking, raids), they also used tactics to disrepute the British name, such as hangings on tree trunks and electrical poles, crucifixions, whipping hostages and blowing up their bodies, some of the kidnapped bodies would be blown up using sticks of dynamite which would be inserted in a barbaric manner inside the victims bodies.

In short, this was the way the Zionists behaved in the forties towards the help of the British which lasted over a century, political and diplomatic, military and financial aids that made Britain the first and strongest supporter to the greed of the Zionists in Palestine since the middle of the past century. That is what we call in our Arabic language with the expression of "Sanmar’s reward" (a king gave the job of building his castle to an architect, after the architect completed the job skillfully, the King killed the architect). The ally is then treated as the number one enemy, and is rewarded with evil deceit.

If the attempt to assassinate Sir Harold McMichel in Jerusalem after the assassination of the British Minister in the Middle East Lord Mowin in Cairo were the two most important Zionist Terrorist operations against the British from the point of the importance of the victims, then the terrorist activities also spread to high ranking employees, amongst them chairmen of large companies, officers and judges. These activities even tried to reach ministers in London and Ambassadors by sending letter bombs, some of which exploded. The Zionist terrorism kept on following the British in Palestine until every single British soldier left Palestine in May 1948. And we advise our reader to look into the Zionists conspiracy in Palestine specially against the British (or on the civilians in general) from sources and files of the CID. Which are now kept and properly filed in the public library at Kew in London, and most of these papers are accessible to the public since a couple of years back, after the end of the legal prohibition period. Maybe this talk is an invitation to our scholars to choose this subject for their Masters or Ph.D. degrees following the availability of the files and sources for this subject.

This does not mean that only the British and Arabs were targets of the Zionist terrorists, we can mention the assassination of Count Folk Bronadot and his assistant the French Colonel named Sirout, in mid September of 1948, four months after announcing the rise of the State created by force, because the Count dared to suggest modifications in the resolution to devide Palestine which of course did not please the Zionists. Later on to Prime Ministers of that country were involved in the terrorist act (Menahim Begin and Yitzak Shamir).

There is no need to go far. Let us open a new page in the files of the Zionist terrorism against unarmed civilians. And the victims this time being the Jews themselves. and we do not mean by that the victims of the internal civil war, either political, racist or sectarian which occurs sometimes inside a single community. But we mean a special terrorist act: controlled gangs that practices group assassinations against its own people to achieve their own special goals, then tries to wash away its humiliation with crocodiles tears it gains from its victims.

In November 1940 the Zionist gangs blew up the ship "Patria" on the coast of Palestine, that was carrying 1,900. illegal Jewish emigrants into Palestine, in order to embarrass the British government which did not allow the ship to off load its passengers. 240 Jews drowned. In February 1942 the Zionist gangs blew up the ship "stroma" near the shores of Turkey which carried 770 illegal Jewish emigrants, they all drowned. And in the beginning of 1948 the Jewish terrorists blew up a number of Jewish residential buildings in Baghdad, houses, schools, temples and trading establishments, in order to stir up the peaceful security that the Jewish community enjoyed so that they may seek to emigrate to the new state that was being established on the land of Palestine. These violent actions bore their fruit and most of the Iraqi Jewish community emigrated to Palestine, in the operation called "Ali Baba" that was named after an Eastern folklore. Another name from the Eastern folklore was used for a similar operation calle "Magic Carpet" that nearly emptied Yemen from its Jews and migrated them to occupied Palestine by force, deceit and terror.

I do not think that there is a need to continue in listing the facts and going into details of them to show that the "perfect example" of terrorism (if we can use such a description) in our present history in this region was set by the Zionists and not by the Palestinian or Arabs at all. And yet, with all this, we have not heard of one single meeting within the past 60 years that was held to discuss and condemn this terrorism, and to put an end to it, in order to protect the human race from this terror. Where as officials of some thirty countries stood crying at the fate of the world because of a few young men driven by their desire to free their country and protect their families from the official and unofficial Zionist terrorism gave their lives in four operations by blowing themselves in three occupied Palestinian cities. Their wish not being revenge but seeing that their actions could put a limit to the terrorism that their people face daily. Not one of the gentlemen asked, in the meeting at Sharm El-Sheikh, then in Washington, of the reason of why each of the young men blew himself up as if he were going to his wedding. Not one official questioned the motives that led the Arab nation, from the ocean to the gulf, meaning the whole Arab world, a nation that is peaceful and believes in human rights, celebrated these actions, whether openly or secretly knowing that they do not get joy from innocent bloodshed as is enjoyed by their enemy, the Zionists. It would have been better if they had gone into depth about the essence of the problem: that being the revolution of the people against the oppressors and leading them into freedom and justice.

More dangerous than the British reaction to what was called fundamental terrorism in the Sharm El-Sheikh meeting, is what we hear of serious talks in the surroundings of the British government in passing a bill that prohibits jihad and the call for it, as a criminal act.

Jihad is an Islamic and Arabic expression meaning to work towards righteousness and justice with whatever means available, such means as political, intellectual, publicity, cultural and financial, and this is not limited to military means alone. Jihad, in its true meaning, is to strive towards the better, towards values that are similar if not the same as most of the heavenly books and human civilizations. Therefore, the choice of a Mujahid towards his high values are very wide, such as the tongue, the pen, money, knowledge and the military strength if the other choices are not helpful.

To prohibit the call for Jihad in Britain is a stab against public freedom, to prohibit a person from practicing his right (writing or speech) in expressing his views and beliefs, contradicts with the British understanding of freedom and democracy.

Perhaps the best way to explain the meaning of Jihad according to the Islamic understanding is to translate for our reader two of our prophet’s speeches. The first: "he who witnesses misdeeds should change it with his hands, if it is not possible then with his tongue, if it is not possible then with his heart, and that is the weakest of faiths". This clarifies to the believer the number of choice that he has in front of him in order to ratify the misdeed and achieving the message. The second speech: "the best Jihad is a righteous word said in front of a wicked tyrant". It is therefore clear here, in this guidance, that the goal is to declare righteousness and refuse tyranny.

The Israelis made clear, and the decision makers in the new (American) world order approved, a new and strange balance: they issued artificial criteria and standards and went on to release resolutions and regulations according to these artificial standards which are baseless, false and oppressive.

They considered the Palestinian Israeli agreement to be a good example. They even considered it to be the most perfect peace agreement. And they ignored the fact that it is a political plan which might or might not be useful. With some people opposing and some approving- a situation which arises from any plan, resolution or agreement that has restricted situations such as the time or place which such an agreement is being made. And because they considered their "Peace" being the one and only peace (no one, therefore, should be against real peace), opposing it (the agreement)is therefore considered opposition to peace in all its forms, in other words to oppose all human values that is based on our civilization and religious backgrounds. The conclusion is that anyone who refuses this agreement in an enemy of the human race and history! And because the West understood the word Jihad to mean acts of killing, it is therefore considered that whom so ever calls for Jihad against a particular plan (such as the Oslo agreement) is a killer or a person who incites killing and is therefore a partner in the murder. And this is how a normal and peaceful person is transformed into a bloody terrorist and an enemy of the human race, because of his refusal to the Oslo agreement and his call for its opposition.

Because of this strange sequence to the mistaken understanding of terrorism, we no longer have in our democratic organizations (that is built on freedom of speech and belief) a place for a writer his only crime being his refusal along with his people’s of a plan in which he sees injustice for their legal rights.

Let me be more specific. The Palestinian leader (Mr. Yasser Arafat) signs on an agreement with the government of Israel. But Mr. Arafat is unable to get a majority for its approval in his present parliament (the Palestinian National Council). This means that the agreement is refused according to democratic understandings. Is it therefore, correct in condemning whom so ever opposes or calls for its opposition, by way of writing a book, or delivering a speech, or by enlightening the people? If we allow that to happen then we would have turned upside down our understandings, by considering whom so ever wishes to achieve the goals of the majority an enemy of democracy, and a terrorist that should be killed, while we witness that an opposer of democracy and faking the views of the majority to be a heroic act that is awarded the Nobel prize for peace and deserves an international meeting for its protection from the "terror" of the opposition.

May the British reader allow me to address him bitterly. I was, personally, one of the first writers who wrote an analysis regarding the Oslo agreement, and I tried to stick to the limits of objectivity and impartiality, and I called for the fall of the Oslo agreement through democratic means. Is it right to consider what I wrote (and what I still write) to be a terrorist act or an act to incite terrorism?

May the British reader also allow me to talk more about myself. I am a person who is skilled in writing and research. I never carried a gun in my hands (not even a child’s gun) or a bomb (not even Christmas fire crackers) or a sword, dagger or bayonet. Believe it or not. But I run away from the sight of bloodshed, even an animal’s, or the sight of fire or even a lighter! This peaceful person was put by the Israelis (they probably still do I do not know) on the list of terrorism, and was followed by their terrorist, who tried to assault me twice, with explosives and rockets, and on the third time they succeeded, with a letter bomb, they took away my hearing and sight and left me disfigured. With his only crime being writing, teaching, publications, educating the coming generation on writing and criticizing Zionism as a thought and practice, exposing, opposing and resisting it, within the limits of scientific research.

My crime being that I lived in Britain for five years. During that period I studied Arab relations, and I learned from its people the essence of freedom, justice and righteousness. I then returned to my country to practice what I had gained. And I find myself a victim in practicing what I had learnt at Cambridge.

Let us return to the files of the Zionist terrorist so that I do not talk more about myself. Perhaps in comparing between the Israeli’s understanding for the philosophical and cultural efforts and our Arab understanding, may clarify the image to the British reader who is used to seeing it up side down.

The Israeli terrorist has killed (or tried to kill), in less than two decades, more than ten highly educated Palestinian and Arab personalities, in Beirut, Nablus, Ramalah, Nicosia, Rome, London, Paris, Bruxel and New York. Most of their victims were teachers, poets, historians, journalists, artists and writers. I shall suffice in mentioning only a few names that might be unknown to the British reader but which are well known to the Arab people: Majed Abu Sharar, Bassam Abu Sharif, Saadat Hassan, Said Hamami, Naim Khodor, Karim Khalaf, Wael Zaieter, Bassam Al-Shikaa, Naji Al-Ali, Ez El-Dine Kalak, Basil Kabisi, Ghasan Kanafani, Hana Mokbil, Kamal Nasser, Mahmoud Al-Hamshari and Hani Al-Hindi. All died while carrying the pen not the machine gun.

And the research center, the largest cultural organization of the Palestinian people, was attacked by the Israeli terrorists three times with explosives (1970-74), and on the fourth time they robbed it, on the fifth time they destroyed it and killed and disfigured a large number of its researchers and experts (1982). And there was nothing in this center except for books and files.

A large number of the Palestinian civilians that were evicted from their homes during 1967 and 1992 were mainly of the educated. Among them were nearly 200 with Ph.Ds and higher level degrees, engineers doctors, pharmacists, artists and writers. This case shows the intentions of the Zionists which is to empty the Palestinian community of its elite which are able to lead that society politically and culturally.

The Zionists dealt with the Arab intellect in the same way it dealt with the Arab weapon. And they fought them in the same way they fought the resistance fighters of the Palestinians and Arabs who are defending their people’s right. They saw a gun in the book, an ammunition depot in the school, condemnation in the files and a time bomb in the open truth. The terrorist organizations (such as the Mossad and the Shin Bet) nearly lost their balance and mind in dealing with the Palestinian-Arab determination for struggle. Many innocent Arabs paid valuable blood for the cause of the Palestinian struggle. A Moroccan waiter at a coffee shop in Stockholm was killed just because he resembled a Palestinian official. Another was disfigured, a Lebanese bank manager, just because his name was identical with another official, a doctor. The terrorists however, managed at last in killing the two officials, the first by bullets and the second by poison. As if what was needed was to end this file with blood the same way it started. I am writing these lines on the 6th day of April 1996, exactly 60 years after the beginning of this organized terror. I am writing while the Israeli rockets and bombs shell tens of positions crowded with civilians, and in various places in Lebanon, its capital, the south and the Bekaa, for the sixth consecutive day, after the killing of just one Israeli soldier who is an occupier. I write while I hear the sounds of the explosions about one or two kilometers away from where I live in the center of the capital which was a peaceful place just a week ago. As if the Zionists wanted to refuel this file with more barbaric images in his way of dealing with the human Arab, the unarmed civilian, before I finish these last lines.

It is an organized aggression with the full meaning of the word. Continuous shelling of residential areas, streets, squares, parks, markets and offices, even industrial areas and power stations, schools, mosques, hospitals, shelters, ambulances and the fire brigades. Approximately 200 air raids in one single day. Continuous shelling from war ships and artillery positions from the occupied zone since 1978. Laying siege to the coastal front stretching from Al-Nakura to Beirut, forbidding the entry of medical and nutritional supplies. Sporadic shut down of the airport. Disablement of electricity and water supplies, telephones, roads and transportation. War on human beings and on the infrastructure of the country. Forty dead and two hundred wounded up until today (the sixth day), all of them civilians, and most of them women and children. Amongst them who killed inside the ambulance. And on top of all this intentional displacement of residents of 55 Southern villages, the number of the displaced reached 350,000. They were displaced not only to flee death and destruction but because the enemy forced them to do so. And if the Israeli put a lot of effort in the past to deny their responsibility in the displacement of the Palestinian people in 1948, by saying that they left according to resolutions of the Palestinian leadership and of advise by Arab governments, but this time they order hundred of thousands of the Lebanese civilians to evacuate their homes openly and rudely.

The destruction of a country, and forcing human and material losses, and disrupting its growth, is the price that reflects on its growth, it is a price that "Israel" considers to be equal to the death of one occupying soldier. And the Arab wonders: does the price of an Israeli occupier increase, while the price of the Arab people becomes cheap to this extent? And does the world expect, and specially the ones at Sharm Al-Sheikh, that the Arab will agree to this "pricing"? and can Israel secure together with its great protector (USA) and their allies (including our Arab world) that there will not rise a few young men from beneath the rubble to run towards death and embrace it in order to give dignity to their families?

Can the British reader after all that has been said, answer this simple question: who is the terrorist: the Arabs or the Zionists? And can he dare tell the answer to his government?

Shame on our world from the curse of history that equaled between the oppressed and the oppressor, between good and evil, and between the righteous and the offender. And if our world cannot respect its values then history will not respect them, then today’s decision makers will be added to the list of enemies of humanity from Hulagu to Hitler and Himmler.

Beirut
16/4/1996