What History Taught About Sharon, What the World Chose to Ignore Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 18 April 2002 RHC Viewpoint: *WHAT HISTORY TAUGHT US ABOUT SHARON, WHAT THE WORLD CHOSE TO IGNORE by Simon Wollers Truth, as they say, is the first casualty of war. But when honest historians finally write the truth, their books -- replaced by the revisionist histories of governments -- are often stored away and allowed to gather dust. As the world begins to get a first glimpse into the previously blockaded Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, journalists and aid organizations are unearthing the terrible truth of what has happened there over the past three weeks of Israel's occupation. Leaders across the planet are openly condemning the evident massacre of Palestinian citizens at the camp -- in spite of Tel Aviv's clumsy attempts to bulldoze over mass graves -- but to what avail? The dead are dead, the homeless now in their thousands across the West Bank and the complacency that has always accompanied news relating to -- yes, let's say it -- the Palestinian Holocaust has once again proven why desperate Palestinian youth seek ruthless measures to combat such a ruthless enemy. Although few learn from history, there are plenty of lessons the world should have learned before allowing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to roll his tanks over the lands and lives of the Palestinian people. And make no mistake, the international community DID allow him this freedom. Washington, the voice Sharon would have heeded the most -- for after all, $3 billion is $3 billion -- overtly gave him space to murder in Jenin. The European Community, Israel's most important trade partner and thus not lacking in influence over Tel Aviv, grumbled a little and then sat back to see what would happen. Now, when hundreds, possibly thousands in Jenin lie mangled in the rubble of their homes, the voices of shock and consternation are raised. Well-known English Labor MP and prominent member of the Jewish community in England, Gerald Kaufman, Tuesday attacked Sharon in the House of Commons in the harshest possible terms. Denouncing the Israeli leader as a war criminal whose actions were on a par with the terrorist attacks of Zionists in the 1940s, Kaufman said that Sharon had spilled blood on the Star of David in his barbarous attack on Jenin. Sharon's supporters will, at least, not be able to point the finger - however ethnically inaccurate it usually is - of anti-Semitism in Kaufman's direction, but others should be pointing their own fingers to demand: Why now? Why, when it is too late? Why are people like Kaufman speaking out now and not before? Does anyone remember the televised abomination of seeing a desperate, unarmed Palestinian father try to protect his young son from being deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers in a fire fight a few months ago? The terrified little boy, who was vainly hiding behind a scrap of wall with his father, was murdered in full view of the world. Did this move world leaders to hitch up their belts and barge into Sharon's office to demand an end to the butchery or else they would intervene? History, in the case of Jenin, offered a clear and simple-to-understand lesson. Ariel Sharon, as Israeli Defense Minister in September 1982, oversaw the massacre of up to 1,800 Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla in South Lebanon. As a member of the underground Haganah organization in the 1940s Sharon comes from a history of Zionist terrorism -- the Prime Minister he served in 1982 was Menachem Begin, the leader of the terrorist organization Irgun -- an offshoot of Haganah -- and had practice in how to massacre Palestinian families in his 1948 killing of over 250 peaceful inhabitants of the village of Deir Yassin. The village was strategically important to the emerging Jewish State and so it was decided to occupy it and drive out its residents. A full third of its population was massacred to frighten off the others. Begin's homicidal example served Sharon well with Sabra and Chatilla, except that he didn't have to personally sully his hands with Palestinian blood as had his boss. He just allowed the South Lebanon Army of Christian zealots to do the work for him. Today he has allowed the Israeli Defense Force -- a misnomer if ever there was one -- to do his continued work of slaughtering Palestinians in his clear intention to continue a policy of holocaust, which, considering his people's history, makes his actions even more loathsome. I keep using the word holocaust. Is that an exaggeration? Human rights organizations are this week asking a simple question: Aside from the over 300 confirmed dead, where are the 8,000 to 13,000 Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp who have disappeared? History gives us these words spoken by Philip Habib who was US President Ronald Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East in 1982: "Sharon was a killer obsessed with hatred of Palestinians. I had promised Arafat that his people would not come to any harm. Sharon, however, ignored this commitment entirely. Sharon's word is worth nil." And in case this isn't enough to convince even the most stalwart of those in denial as to Sharon's intentions, you don't have to look very much further in history than Ariel Sharon's own words in an interview he gave to the Israeli newspaper Daval after Sabra and Chatilla and published on December 17th, 1982: "You can call me anything you like. Call me a monster or a murderer... Better a live Judeo Nazi than a dead saint... Even if you prove to me that the present war in Lebanon is a dirty, immoral war, I don't care... We shall start another war, kill and destroy more and more until they have had enough... If anyone even raises his hand against us we will take away half his land and burn the other half... We might use nuclear arms... Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us... And I don't mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me as a war criminal if you want... What you don't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it." Sharon was true to his word in the refugee camp of Jenin, and the frightening truth of what more he has in store for the Palestinian people will one day become part of those dusty history books, if the world doesn't do something about it today. *POWELL RETURNS EMPTY-HANDED You could say that Colin Powell's visit to the Middle East has had irrelevant consequences in the region. That, however, is not the case. His Middle East visit did not improve the situation, but nor did it leave things as they were before his arrival. It did, in fact, leave an even worse scenario. Many people think the only superpower capable of changing the course of the military invasion against Palestine is -- Bush willing -- the USA. But it turns out that the Middle East is a hermetic playground in which Israel does what it pleases without accepting outside influences and thanks to its strategic alliance with Washington, manages to neutralize any attempts by the EU and international organizations to stop the massacres. In its editorial today, the Spanish newspaper El País writes that if the weight of a nation is measured by the influence of events, the superpower is not then the US, but Israel. Of course, American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, did not employ every resource to have Sharon's army withdraw from Palestinian territories, nor did he pressure the Israeli government to end the siege of the Church of the Nativity and the confinement of the President of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Since the beginning, his trip was doomed to failure. The starting point of the visit was based on a cynical rationale, which placed both Palestinians and Israelis on the same level of negotiation as if both contenders had the same forces. If people fight with stones against tanks and then their enemy's best friend comes to tell them that they have to respect the rules of the one who possesses the tanks or they will be responsible for the violent consequences against them, then small wonder Powell left Ramallah empty-handed. Now Colin Powell is calling for a regional conference to analyze the situation in the Middle East to which Yasser Arafat will not be present. Many consider this to be a maneuver to give Sharon more time, as there are sufficient resolutions that already exist to demand an end to the Israeli onslaught. With this in mind, it is not right to say that Powell's visit to the Middle East was a failure. Maybe what he achieved was precisely what he intended from the outset: to give Israel time to finish the job, promote confusion in the international arena so Palestinians are accused of causing and extending the war, and divert public attention from the only solution to the problem: the recognition of a Palestinian free State. This is the only way Israel will have the security it desires and peace in the region. Any other idea is a delaying tactic to buy time for both Sharon and Washington, both interested in keeping the geopolitical status quo of the region just the way it is. (c) 2002 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytact-04.19.02-00:43:41-32663