DON'T SAY YOU DIDN'T KNOW.
Tanya Reinhart
As the media keeps us busy with reports on cease-fire, peace
initiatives,
and 'reduction of violence', Israeli crimes in the
occupied
territories continue undisturbed. To understand the extent
of these daily
crimes we should look at the injuries, not just at
the rapidly growing
number of dead. On Friday, November 3rd, CNN
reported a 'relative calm' in
the territories. By afternoon that day
there were 276 people injured (LAW
report, Nov 3), and by the final
count "Up to 452 Palestinians were hurt
on Friday across the
territories, according to the Red Crescent"
('ha'aretz', Nov 5). On
Saturday, October 4th, as the the media covers in
great length of
Barak's "plea to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to return
to the
negotiating table and stop the Palestinian-Israeli bloodshed for the
sake of peace" (AP), "another 153 were treated for injuries sustained
in
clashes with Israeli troops" ('ha'aretz', there), including "5
school
children from Sa'ir (near Hebron) who are in extremely critical
condition"
(Addameer
- Prisoners' Support and Human Rights
Association,
Report, Nov 4.).
More than 7000 Palestinians are reported injured so far. Several
Palestinian medical sources report that an alarming number of them
are
injured in the head or legs (knees), with carefully aimed shots,
and,
increasingly, live ammunition. (Dr.
Jumana Odeh, Director,
Palestinian
Happy Child Center, Oct 24 report; LAW,
November 2
report.)
Many will not recover, or will be disabled for life.
This pattern of injuries cannot be accidental. Dan Ephron, Boston
Globe
correspondent in Jerusalem reports (Nov 4) on the findings of
the
Physicians for Human Rights delegation: "American doctors who
examined
Israel's use of force in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have
concluded that
Israeli soldiers appeared to be deliberately targeting
the heads and legs of
Palestinian protestors, even in
non-life-threatening situations." Medical
School doctors in the
delegation explained that law enforcement
officials worldwide are
trained to aim at the chest in dangerous situations
(since it is the
largest target), and the fact that Palestinians were hit in
the head
and legs suggests that there was no life-threatening situation,
soldiers had ample time, and were deliberately trying to harm unarmed
people.
In fact, the Israelis are not even trying to conceal their shooting
strategies. Interviews like the following can be easily found in the
Israeli media:
Nahshon
battalion ready for urban warfare
By Arieh
O'Sullivan
JERUSALEM
(October 27) - "I shot two people...
in their
knees. It's supposed to break their bones
and
neutralize them but not kill them," says
Sgt. Raz,
a sharpshooter from the Nahshon
battalion.
"How did I
feel? ...Well actually, I felt pretty
satisfied
with myself," the 20-year-old soldier
confides.
"I felt I could do what I was trained to
do, and
it gave me a lot of self-confidence to
think
that if we get into a real war situation I'd
be able
to defend my comrades and myself."
A common practice is shooting a rubber coated metal bullet straight
in
the eye - a little game of well trained soldiers, which requires
maximum
precision. Reports on eye injuries keep coming daily. "On
October 11, El
Mizan Diagnostic Hospital in Hebron reported
treating 11 Palestinians for
eye injuries, including 3 children. El
Nasir Ophthalmic Hospital in Gaza has
treated 16 people for eye
injuries, including 13 children. Nine of
them lost one of their eyes".
(LAW
report, Oct 19). "From 29 September to 25 October 2000,
Jerusalem's St.
John Eye Hospital has treated 50 patients for
eye-injuries".(LAW,
Nov 2, '...Eye Injuries').
Contrary to the standard 'clashes' reports the victims are not just
demonstrators. Here is just one story, investigated by LAW (there):
Maha Awad, a 36 years old woman lives with her family in Al Bireh
(near
Ramallah) in a flat that faces the Jewish settlement of Psagot.
"On
Wednesday night, 4 October 2000, she was at home... She recalls
that: 'At
about 9 pm, we heard shooting in our neighborhood; it was
intensive random
shooting. We did not know what was going on but we
were very scared.I closed
my room and went to the balcony in order
to shut the door. At that moment I
was hit in my right eye by a bullet,
which entered through the glass door of
the balcony'." "Maha was,
however, not the only person of the family
to be seriously injured
that night. After taking her to hospital, her
54-year-old brother,
who was visiting from the United States, went back to
their home to
get some clothes for Maha. When he went to see the spot where
Maha
had been shot, he himself was shot in the stomach." It is hard to
avoid the feeling of some sort of a hunting game, played cold bloodily,
by well trained sharpshooters with advanced equipment.
Stray bullets do not hit so many people precisely in the eye head,
or
knee. The Israeli army prepared carefully for the present events:
"Established just over a year ago specifically to deal with unrest
in
the West Bank...The IDF has trained four battalions for
low-intensity
conflict, and Nahshon is the one specializing in urban
warfare. Its troops
train in mock Palestinian villages constructed
in two IDF bases." (Jerusalem
Post, Arieh O'Sullivan,Oct 27.00).
Specially trained Israeli units,
then, aim, shoot and hit the target
in a calculated manner: Cripple, but
keep the statistics of dead low.
This is reported openly (and quite proudly)
in the Israeli media.
The same Jerusalem Post article explains that "the
overall IDF strategy
is to deprive the Palestinians of the massive number of
casualties
the army maintains Palestinians want in order to win world
support
and consolidate their fight for independence. 'We are very much
trying
not to kill them...' says Lt.-Col. Yoram Loredo, commander and
founder
of the Nahshon battalion."
The reason is clear enough: Massive numbers of dead Palestinians every
day cannot go unnoticed even by the most cooperative Western media
and
governments. Barak was explicit about this. "The prime minister
said that,
were there not 140 Palestinian casualties at this point,
but rather 400 or
1,000, this... would perhaps damage Israel a great
deal." (Jerusalem Post,
Oct 30). With a stable average of five
casualties a day, they believe that
Israel can continue 'undamaged'
for many more months. In a world so used to
horrors, many feel that
180 dead in a month is sad and upsetting, but it is
not yet an atrocity
that the world should unite to stop.
The 'injured' are hardly reported; they 'do not count' in the dry
statistics of tragedy. Who will pay attention to their fate after
the
injury, in overcrowded and underequipped hospitals? Who will stop
to think
how many of them will die slowly, from their wounds, or
remiain disabled,
blind or maimed for life? Or to think about their
chances to survive the
siege and starvation inflicted on their people?.
Never did Israel dare to respond daily with such brutal massive force
to
demonstrators throwing stones. In the whole six years of the
previous
Intifada (87-93), there were 18.000 Palestinian injuries.
Now in one month
we are already at 7000. What we witness is a new
phase. Israel started
launching a systematic and preplanned destruction
of the Palestinian
infra-structure, towns, and life
The Israeli army provoked and enlarged the escalation into firearms,
by
its massive offensive against angry demonstrators. Under the
circumstances
of fire (and often with no fire pretext at all),
residential neighborhoods
are bombarded almost every night from
helicopters and tanks, using missiles,
machine guns and 'precision'
weapons, while the army calls on residents to
evacuate "for their
own protection". The settlers are given free hand to
attack, shoot
people and destroy property. In Hebron, a particularly massive
Israeli
attack has been launched in what looks like an attempt to enlarge
the Jewish quarters. All combined, there is an enormous pressure on
residents of many areas bordering with Israeli settlements to evacuate,
enabling enlargement of the land seized already by Israel. Indeed,
appropriation of land takes place every day, bit by bit (See
Katriel,
Indymedia/Israel
Oct 30). Desperate Palestinian reports on all this
and much more keep
coming every day. It is up to us to choose to know.
Not long ago, the Western world was shocked and angered at Milosevic
atrocities against the Kosovo Albanians, which were described as ethnic
cleansing. But What Israel has started executing is incomparably worse.
When faced with terrorist attacks (by KLA) on Serbian institutes and
civilians in Kosovo, Milosevic did retaliate brutally, using, no doubt,
'excessive force'. His acts were criminal. But he did not send Apache
helicopters to bombard residential areas, as does Israel. He did not
put
the Kosovar towns under siege; he did not use missiles from tanks,
and he
did not send snipers to wound and kill en-mass.
Israel should be sanctioned.
A copy of this article with links to some of the
references used can be found on IndyMedia/Israel at
http://www.indymedia.org.il/