Racist mass murderer elected Israeli prime minister
By Richard
Becker
Ariel Sharon, leader of the Likud party, was elected on
Feb. 6 as Israel's new prime minister. He won more than 60
percent of the vote against incumbent Ehud Barak of the
Labor/One Israel bloc.
The Western corporate media have treated Sharon in a most
kindly fashion, cleaning up his image with descriptions like
"a portly old warrior," or a "tough veteran of Israel's many
wars." But there are many who are not deceived by this
whitewash.
Sharon, an extreme racist right-winger, has a long and
bloody history of murder and repression against the
Palestinian people. In the early 1950s, he commanded Unit
101, a special forces battalion that carried out massacres
against Palestinian exiles in Gaza and Jordan. Following the
1967 war of conquest, he was the military governor of Gaza,
and renowned for a policy of systematic assassination and
extreme brutality.
But Sharon is best known--and universally hated in the
Arab world--for the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the
massacres of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee
camps in Beirut. As Israel's defense minister, Sharon
organized and led, with full U.S. backing, the massive
assault on Lebanon. For three months in the summer of 1982,
Israeli bombers, supplied by the U.S., relentlessly pounded
Beirut and other cities and towns, killing more than 20,000
Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. Lebanon had no air
defense system.
The stated objective of the invasion was to drive the
Palestine Liberation Organization out of Lebanon. There are
400,000 Palestinian refugees--those driven from their
homeland to make way for the state of Israel in 1948 and
their descendants--living in Lebanon. Altogether, more than
4.5 million Palestinians today live in exile.
In early September 1982, the PLO fighters were forced to
evacuate Beirut. As part of the cease-fire agreement
requiring them to leave, the remaining Palestinian civilian
population was to be placed under international
protection.
Sharon, however, publicly stated that 2,000 "terrorists"
remained in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps
in west Beirut. In reality, those remaining in the camps were
almost all children, women and elderly men. Virtually all of
the young men had been evacuated.
Israeli tanks surrounded the camps in violation of the
cease-fire agreement. Then, on Sept. 16, 1982, with the full
knowledge and consent of Sharon and the Israeli occupiers
then in control of the area, Lebanese Phalangist militias
were allowed to enter Sabra and Shatila in west Beirut.
The fascist Phalange--open admirers of Adolph Hitler who
took their name from Franco's party in Spain--were Israel's
closest allies in Lebanon. The Phalangists wore
Israeli-supplied uniforms and carried Israeli-supplied
weapons.
For three days, they rampaged through the Palestinian
camps, torturing, raping and murdering. Many of the victims
were disemboweled or decapitated. No one was spared-- neither
the very old nor the very young. By the end, more than 1,900
Palestinian children, women and men lay dead.
There were many witnesses, including some Israeli military
officers who testified before an Israeli official commission
of inquiry in February 1983. Throughout the three-day
slaughter, the Israeli high command was repeatedly informed
in detail of the bloodbath taking place under their
supervision. (See Robert Fisk's account in the Feb. 6 London
Independent. Fisk was one of the first Western correspondents
in Sabra and Shatila on Sept. 18, 1982.)
Using the most diplomatic and mildest language possible,
the commission led by Yitzhak Kahan, head of Israel's High
Court, stated: "It is our view that responsibility is to be
imputed to the Minister of Defense [Ariel Sharon] for danger
of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the Phalangists against
the population of the refugee camps, and having failed to
take this into account when he decided to have the
Phalangists enter the camps.
"In addition, responsibility is to be imputed to the
Minister of Defense for not ordering appropriate measures for
preventing or reducing the danger of massacre as a condition
for the Phalangists' entry into the camps. These blunders
constitute the non-fulfillment of a duty with which the
Defense Minister was charged."
Of course "these blunders" were not "blunders" at all, but
rather intentional acts. Sharon was as guilty of murder and
all the other crimes committed in Sabra and Shatila as any
knife-wielding Phalangist. In fact, he was far guiltier,
because it was Sharon's orders that opened the way for the
bloodbath.
But despite being found "responsible" for the Sabra and
Shatila massacres, and forced to resign as defense minister,
Sharon was never charged with any crime.
Even more remarkably, it did not end his political
career.
Sharon served in several cabinet positions in the 1980s
and 1990s in both Labor and Likud governments, and in 1999 he
became the head of the Likud party.
Now he is prime minister. Only in a racist settler society
could a practitioner of racist mass murder be elected as the
top leader. Not only elected, but with a sweeping
majority.
What Sharon stands for
Sharon stands for Israeli domination of all of historic
Palestine. His positions were made clear in a July 21, 2000
interview in the Jerusalem Post newspaper in which he called
for Israel to retain "greater Jerusalem, united and undivided
. . . under full Israeli sovereignty." This refers to the
Palestinian Old City and all of the surrounding areas that
Israel illegally annexed after the 1967 war.
"Israel will retain, under its full control sufficiently
wide security zones--in both the East and West. The Jordan
Valley, in its broadest sense, as defined by the Allon Plan,
will be the eastern security zone of Israel." Here, Sharon
calls for large areas of the illegally occupied West Bank to
be annexed.
"Jewish towns, villages and communities in Judea, Samaria
and Gaza, as well as access roads leading to them . . . will
remain under full Israeli control." "Judea and Samaria" is
the Israeli settler name for the West Bank.
"Israel does not accept under any circumstances the
Palestinian demand for the right to return. Israel bears no
moral responsibility for the refugees' predicament."
Sharon continued with colonialist arrogance: "As a vital
existential need, Israel must continue to control the
underground fresh water aquifers in western Samaria . . . The
Palestinians are obligated to prevent contamination of
Israel's water resources."
Under Sharon's plan, the broken-up and scattered pieces of
Palestinian territory would bear little resemblance to a real
state: "All the territories under control of the Palestinian
Authority will be demilitarized. The Palestinians will not
have an army, only a police force. Israel will maintain
complete control of the whole air space over Judea, Samaria
and Gaza."
Israel, meanwhile, will continue to have what is
considered the world's fourth most powerful military.
Sharon's plan blatantly denies the Palestinian right to
self-determination. But it is does not diverge much, in
reality, from the Oslo "peace process" as a whole. This is
illustrated by the fact that negotiations between Sharon and
the victorious Likud party and his defeated Labor party
opponents are close to forming a "national unity"
government.
It has recently come to light that out-going Prime
Minister Barak--a supposed liberal advocate of peace--gave
more funding to the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza
than did his Likud predecessor Netanyahu. At the top, both
Labor and Likud--with full backing from the U.S., which
heavily funds Israel--are united in seeking to deny the
Palestinians true statehood and independence.
But the Palestinians are continuing the struggle. Since
Sharon's victory, Palestinian street demonstrations and
resistance have intensified. All over the Arab world and the
Middle East as a whole Sharon's ascendancy has evoked anger
and revulsion. And it is not just in the Middle East.
Radio Havana Cuba, in a viewpoint commentary entitled "War
Criminal Ariel Sharon is New Prime Minister of Israel,"
stated, "Sharon has a huge criminal record against the
Palestinian people."
The Radio Havana editorial reiterated that "Cuba has
always been in solidarity with the Palestinian people and
other Arab nations, who hold the oil needed for capitalist
industry to function . . . The new Israeli rulers will not be
able to wreck the future of those who are determined to
struggle until their last breath."
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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