[Mb-civic] Don’t Believe a Word

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article325.html


Don’t Believe a Word

By Uri Avnery

When Ariel Sharon announced his plan for “unilateral disengagement”, the
media reported that the Peace Now movement was preparing a big public
campaign in support. The Prime Minister’s office asked them to desist,
fearing that such a campaign would cause the extreme right to oppose it.

Peace Now was not the only “leftist” group that waxed enthusiastic about
the plan. The chiefs of the Labor Party declared that it was really their
own plan and that, therefore, it was their duty to join the government and
help Sharon to implement it.

I was one of the very few who immediately raised their voice against the
plan. I argued (http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article282.html) that
it was really a right-wing plan for annexing most of the West Bank,
burying the peace process and deceiving public opinion in Israel and
abroad.


I was certain of this, because I know Sharon. I have been watching the man
for 50 years and have written three biographical essays about him. I know
what he thinks and I know how he operates.

Now Dov Weisglass has confirmed everything I said and more. In an
interview with Haaretz, he stated that the sole aim of the plan was to
“freeze” the peace process. The real purpose of the “disengagement” is to
block negotiations with the Palestinians for dozens of years and to
prevent any discussion about the West Bank, while at the same time
extending the Israeli settlements in a way that will put an end to any
possibility of a future Palestinian state.

Dov Weisglass is not just anybody. He reminds one of the “eminence grise”
(“gray cardinal”), the secretary of Cardinal Richelieu, the Prime Minister
of France 400 years ago. It was said at the time that it was the secretary
who was really in charge behind the scenes.

Weisglass has been the legal advisor and a close personal friend of Sharon
for decades. He is Sharon’s special emissary for delicate missions, the
man who can twist Condoleezza Rice around his little finger. In Sharon’s
menagerie, he is the fox.

His frank statement is the final word. It puts to shame not only the
simple souls of Peace Now and the less simple souls like Shimon Peres &
Co. of the Labor Party, but also George Bush and the other world leaders
who for months have taken this piece of deceit as a serious peace plan.
(Poor Colin Powell called it “historic”.)

X X X

Weisglass’ disclosure was vying for media attention with the “stretcher
case” – a story that also reveals Sharon’s methods. It might have been
funny, if it did not threaten such tragic results.

Sharon wants to destroy UNRWA, the special United Nations Relief and
Works Agency that moderates the misery of the four millions of Palestinian
refugees. It is a big organization with some 25 thousand employees,
including teachers, social workers and physicians, almost all of them, of
course, Palestinians. It provides the refugees with food, education,
health services and, in case of need, a roof over their head. Without it,
the refugees would long ago have descended into an abyss of hunger and
despair. At present, while our army is destroying whole Gaza neighborhoods
and their infrastructure, UNRWA is providing food, tents and medical care
to needy Palestinians who are not refugees.

The very existence of this organization disturbs Sharon and his generals,
who want to break the resistance of the Palestinians by turning their life
into hell. After working systematically to smash the Palestinian National
Authority, they are now trying to crush UNRWA. As reported in the media,
Sharon ordered his generals to supply the Foreign Office’s propaganda
department with secret army photos, in order to prove that UNRWA
cooperates with the “terror organizations”.

The next day, all the Israeli TV channels displayed aerial reconnaissance
photos showing a Qassam rocket launcher being loaded into an UNRWA
ambulance. That was the beginning of a wild campaign against the
organization. Israeli diplomats in New York demanded that the Danish UNRWA
director, Peter Hansen, be fired.

Two days later, the whole thing came apart. UNRWA claimed that the man in
the picture was not carrying a rocket launcher but a stretcher. The
generals first issued a denial, than stuttered, then half-heartedly
admitted that, perhaps, a deplorable mistake had occurred: the
professional analysts in the army intelligence department, lowly sergeants
or second lieutenants, may have misinterpreted the pictures.

This answer needs investigating. Did the analysts lie or did they believe
what they said? Each possibility is worse than the other.

If the experts lied, they did nothing unusual. It can be said that they
did what intelligence people do all over the world: supply their bosses
with the information they want to hear. Bush wants to attack Iraq? The CIA
provides information about Sadam’s WMDs. Sharon wants to destroy UNRWA?
Army intelligence provides photos of Hansen’s rocket launchers.

Fifty years ago, when foreign correspondents asked me about the
credibility of official IDF statements, I used to answer that our army
does not lie. One should believe its communiques, without a good reason to
the contrary. Those days are long passed. When asked the same question
nowadays, I advise not to believe a single word of army announcements,
without good reason to the contrary.

So it is not surprising that army intelligence is lying. In countless
appearances before the cabinet and the Knesset foreign-and-security
committee, the intelligence chiefs have peddled outright lies and false
assessments. That’s nothing new.

But there is also the possibility that the analysts did believe that they
were providing accurate information. And that is even more frightening.

One does not have to be an expert to see that the man in the photo is not
carrying a rocket launcher. No one carries a heavy object in one hand like
the person in the photo. Clearly, what he is carrying is light. A second
glance also shows that, without doubt, it is indeed a stretcher. It looks
like a stretcher and the man is carrying it like a stretcher. (“If it
walks like a duck and squawks like a duck
”)

If the experts made a mistake, why is that so awful? It’s awful because
the air force has often hit “rocket launcher squads” identified as such by
the same photo analysts, a finding that is transmitted within seconds and
that results in death within seconds. Afterwards the army spokesmen
announce with great satisfaction that another deadly squad has been
“eliminated”. How many human beings, children including, have been killed
by this kind of “certain identification”?

Even worse, this particular “mistake” practically invites soldiers to
shoot at ambulances carrying the wounded.

I have met Peter Hansen only once, at a UN conference about the refugees.
He struck me as a decent and principled person. I hope he will stay in his
post .

X X X

One case of killing caused by “certain identification” this week should
have shocked the world.

Iman Alhamas, a 13-year old girl from Rafah, was on her way to school,
following the same route she took every day. Suddenly deadly fire
enveloped her. The doctors extracted 20 bullets from her body. Since not
every bullet hits its target and some pass right through, it may be
assumed that at least 100 bullets were fired at her from several army
positions – one hundred bullets for one little girl. In her bag, only
schoolbooks were found.

The army spokesmen issued the standard mendacious statement: the girl had
entered a “forbidden zone”, the soldiers took her for a “terrorist”, the
bag looked as if it contained explosives, etc. etc.

So what happened in reality?

The simplest explanation is that the soldiers shot as if they were at a
shooting range as revenge for the two children killed by a Quassam rocket
in the Israeli town Sderot. But that is not easy to believe.

Another explanation, no less alarming, is that the soldiers are in a
perpetual state of panic. I have personally seen soldiers in panic
shooting at everything that moves. Perhaps this is what happened here,
too: the girl threw her bag away and started to flee after a warning shot
was fired, and the soldiers, instead of shooting at the bag, shot at her.

X X X

The skeptical attitude of the Israeli public towards announcements of the
security apparatus caused another tragedy this week.

On the eve of the Jewish New Year, the General Security Service advised
the public not to cross into Sinai because of urgent security warnings.
The people voted non-confidence with their feet. In spite of the repeated
warnings, tens of thousands spent the Jewish holiday season there. They
believed that the warning was politically motivated and that, anyhow, if
the threat were serious, the authorities would have closed the border.

This time, however, the warnings were justified. Many dozens were killed
and wounded in mass attacks.

No Palestinian organization would have thought of provoking the Egyptian
government. Therefore, it appears that something new has happened.

We have warned many times that the young Arab and Muslim generation in the
world will not stand aside forever while the TV brings reports every day
that show how the Arab nation is humiliated. The apathy of the Arab and
Muslim governments towards the events in the occupied Palestinian
territories looks to them like humiliating cowardice or rank treason.

The mistreatment of the Palestinian people by Sharon and his predecessors
has created an explosive situation. The invasion of Iraq by Bush has
provided the spark. An Arab-Muslim resistance movement is coming into
being, a resistance that sees no difference between Iraq and Palestine,
between Israel, the US and the Arab governments.

That, it seems, is the message of Taba.

***
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Action is the antidote to despair.  ----Joan Baez
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