Horrors the censors try to hide
Israel launches scorched-earth policy
By Leslie Feinberg
April 9--The Zionist settler regime has unleashed a vicious
war against Palestinians in the West Bank. So much ink and
airtime is used to present this state terror against a people
without an army as "defensive" that only inklings of the
reality of this martial rampage glimmer through media
coverage.
Even journalists from the pro-Israel monopoly media outlets
in the United States are barred from towns, villages and
refugee camps as helicopter warships swoop down and tanks
rumble in. And now Tel Aviv is demanding that all news reports
must be run past Israeli censors before they can be printed or
aired. (CNN, April 8)
But some of the following particulars, culled from diverse
sources, offer a more complete picture of the horror and
destruction that Palestinians at ground zero are enduring under
the boot heel of re-occupation.
Major West Bank towns have been militarily sealed up. The
shoot-on-sight curfew keeps an estimated 80 percent of the West
Bank population--some 1 million residents--under tight
lockdown. When curfews are briefly lifted, there's no food on
store shelves. (Palestine Red Crescent Society, April 5)
"There have also been reports of looting of food and
personal items by Israeli soldiers carrying out house-to-house
searches," said an April 5 BBC account. Charges have been made
that troops have raped Palestinian women and girls.
(nileMedia.com)
The military has wrecked the civilian infrastructure with
pinpoint accuracy, destroying telephone lines, electricity
pylons, water pipes and roads.
What little food people have is decaying and inedible. Aid
agency workers say they are unable to provide humanitarian aid
because they are obstructed by the army and come under fire.
There's little medicine and no garbage collection. Under these
conditions, the risk of epidemics is growing.
Health care workers have been beaten, shot and detained. The
PRCS documented cases of Israeli troops using paramedics as
human shields. The agency noted that the army uses wireless
devices seized from detained medics to interfere with ambulance
services. (April 4)
Since many ambulance drivers and health workers are being
detained and barred from working inside the military cordons,
it is difficult to accurately determine the scope of human
casualties.
On April 7 Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz
stated that about 200 Palestinians had been killed and 1,500
wounded over the previous 10 days. Hassan Abdel Rahman, the
Palestinian representative to the United States, had put the
Palestinian death toll at 250 and pointed out that many were
women and children. (CNN, April 8) But the number of dead and
wounded is mounting, particularly in Jenin and Nablus.
Dr. Rania Masri of Al-Awda--the Palestine Right to Return
Coalition--denounced the Israeli terror in an interview with
Scott Harris for Between the Lines, a nationally syndicated
radio newsmagazine. "We have found out they killed 25
Palestinians. The way they killed them was they undressed them
and ... tortured them to such an extent that when the
ambulances picked them up, they cannot even identify their
bodies. And there have been more and more of these
massacres."
QALQILYA, TULKAREM & DORA
When Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew troops and
tanks from the center of two West Bank towns--Qalqilya and
Tulkarem--on April 8, it was a calculated maneuver for world
public opinion that made headlines.
According to the Palestine Monitor, however, the Israeli
army forces "have withdrawn from the town centers, but remain
in complete control of the towns with a ring of tanks and other
armed vehicles around them. People in Qalqiliya and Tulkaram
remain isolated from the surrounding villages and towns, and no
one is able to leave the cities." (RamallahOnline.com, April
9)
Schools and institutions in Tulkarem have been converted
into prisons and military encampments. (PRCS, April 8)
The brutal attempt to crush Palestinian resistance was not
ending on April 8. Hours after the "pullback," before dawn,
residents of Dora awoke to gunfire as Israeli troops, tanks and
armored personnel carriers invaded their town, which is
southwest of Hebron in the southern West Bank. (Associated
Press, April 9)
Meanwhile, Sharon's army carved deeper into Nablus and
Jenin, bombarding the populations.
JENIN
Helicopters gunships swarmed into airspace over the northern
West Bank town of Jenin at daybreak on April 8, firing dozens
of missiles into the crowded refugee camp there. The camp on
the western edge of Jenin, less than a square mile in size, is
home to some 15,000 Palestinians. Residents who refused to
leave were reportedly evacuated by force, but most were still
inside the camp when the rocket attack began. (CNN)
"Palestinians say huge armored bulldozers knocked down homes
on top of people living in them, to widen narrow alleys so
tanks could pass." (New York Times, April 9)
Many witnesses have described how the men were rounded up,
stripped to their underwear, separated from the women and
children, and taken away to an unknown location. One woman
recalled the soldiers spat on their prisoners.
On that day in Jenin alone, Israeli troops reportedly
massacred at least 100 Palestinians. (New York Daily News,
April 9) The Palestinian Authority said that "another Sabra and
Shatila massacre" is taking place at the refugee camp. (The
Guardian, April 9) Sharon is hated throughout the Arab world
for the 1982 massacres of several thousand Palestinians in the
Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut.
The exact number of fatalities in Jenin is not known. Many
may die from their wounds. The Israelis had already blocked
ambulances, aid workers, food and water from the area for five
days. "Palestinians in the refugee camps described bodies lying
in the streets and people bleeding to death because ambulances
could not reach them." (British Broadcasting News, April 8)
An April 8 news update from the Palestine Red Crescent
Society related that Israeli forces raided the clinic run by
the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees and surrounded and shelled the Jenin Ministry of
Health Hospital. There's no electricity or water in the camp
and a lack of food and milk. The injured drink urine to
hydrate.
The April 8 Palestine Monitor said that the camp had been
under sustained military attack for the past five days. The
Israeli army used U.S.-supplied Apache helicopters, tanks and
missiles.
NABLUS
Israeli troops are laying siege to the Palestinian
population in the largest West Bank town of Nablus. At least 14
Palestinian bodies were killed and left sprawled amidst the
rubble of narrow alleyways on April 7 alone. (AP, April 7)
Israeli troops tried to invade a makeshift field hospital
set up on April 7, "but doctors at the scene prevented them
from entering." Ambulances and their teams are being detained.
Tanks blockade the Nablus ambulance station. (PRCS, April
8)
The military noose around the city tightened and the
shelling intensified on April 8.
"Scores of wounded Palestinians lay on the floor of a mosque
waiting hopelessly for doctors to come." (Daily News, April
9)
Some 400 to 500 tanks and armored vehicles had invaded
Nablus late on April 3. Nineteen Palestinians were reported
killed that day, including a girl who died in her home when
troops shelled it from a tank. (CNN.com)
By April 5, some 180,000 people had no running water and
electricity was cut in most quarters.
RAMALLAH
Ramallah, 10 miles north of Jerusalem, is a city of 200,000
and the base of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is trapped inside several
rooms of what is left of his compound, without electricity,
water or phone. Arafat is literally being held prisoner in the
debris of his headquarters, surrounded by overwhelming military
force. The British imperialists built the walled compound,
known as the Muqataa, as a prison complex in the 1920s. It was
historically used to jail Palestinians before Palestinians took
control of it in 1994. (BBC, March 30)
French anti-globalization activist Jose Bove, arrested for
trying to bring food and medicine to Yasser Arafat's besieged
compound, described what he witnessed while he was briefly held
at a detention camp for Palestinians rounded up by Israeli
troops. "We saw 300 people kneeling down and blindfolded,
waiting to be interrogated in the cold and the night. It was
unbearable to behold." (Common Dreams News Center)
Manal Issa, administrative and finance officer of the Khalil
Sakakini Cultural Center, transcribed a chilling account by a
prisoner who described how he and the other men were tied up
and blindfolded on the ground, heads ordered bowed, in the
pouring rain. "We were detained like that for 13 continuous
hours in the same position. They would beat us brutally, yell
at us and urinate on our heads. The blows were coming from all
sides, on our faces and genitalia."
Many people from around the world rushed to Palestine in
solidarity when Israel invaded. These "internationals" have
tried to get the news out, risking their own lives. Those
trapped inside Ramallah with the Palestinians issued an
eyewitness report over the Internet that the population is held
captive under tight curfew. Apache helicopters blast rockets
into the city. Gunfire by Israeli snipers crackles day and
night. Civilians are used as human shields. The grind and roar
of tanks throughout residential areas is constant. Soldiers
have taken over family homes, locking scores of people inside
single rooms.
The army permits no food deliveries to the city. Large parts
of the city are without electricity and heat. And risk of
spreading disease is very high. Because the military bars
access to the cemetery, health workers have been forced to dig
up the hospital parking lot to bury dozens of bodies.
(Indymedia)
Adila Laidi, director of the Sakakini Center, got this
eyewitness account out on the Internet. He said that on April
7, "we have heard numerous reports of 30 Palestinian policemen
executed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers in a building where
they sought refuge on Irssal Street in Ramallah. This was after
five Palestinian officers were executed by being shot to the
head and then had their corpses thrown on the pavement for
hours on Friday."
Another Internet report: "My name is Tzaporah Ryter. I am an
American student from the University of Minnesota. I currently
am in Ramallah. We are under a terrible siege and people are
being massacred by both the Israeli army and armed militia
groups of Israeli settlers."
Hundreds of detainees released in the middle of the curfew
were unable to reach their homes, according to an April 8 PRCS
update. An emergency worker described how soldiers fired two
bullets near his head in a "mock execution." Two PRCS medics
were thrown out of their ambulance and beaten. Troops overran
the PRCS maternity hospital, blindfolded two doctors, two
nurses and one other worker and took them away.
The Israeli military seized Watan television station on
April 5 and began airing pornographic films to deliberately
offend Muslim viewers.
Bethlehem
The military onslaught and curfew trap all of Bethlehem.
More than 250 tanks and armored personnel carriers, backed up
by F16s and Apache helicopters, have a chokehold on Bethlehem,
on Beit Sahour, the village east of the city, and on Beit Jala,
the high ground on the western side of Bethlehem.
Several hundred Palestinians escaping army tanks took
sanctuary in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, revered
by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus.
On April 8 a fire broke out on a second floor meeting hall
overlooking the Basilica of St. Catherine, adjacent to the
Church of the Nativity. Israeli soldiers reportedly ignited the
blaze when they fired a smoke grenade into the building.
The Israelis claim they shot a Palestinian during a gun
battle in which the grenade was discharged. But a priest inside
the church, Father Amjad Sabbara, told the BBC, "The
Palestinian killed was a police officer who had been trying to
douse the flames." (April 8)
Reprinted from the April 18, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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