Palestine Eyewitnesses: Credibility and Denial Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - Bill Koehnlein Palestine Eyewitnesses: Credibility and Denial Recently, a report from Ramallah, authored by someone named Tzaporah Ryter, of Minneapolis, made its way around the internet and wound up on a number of news lists. I too had sent out this report, which I included with several other eyewitness and on-the-scene accounts. One of the lists to which I sent it was the Portside list (the listserv of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism), which in turn re-sent it to Portside subscribers. On Monday, I received a message from one of the Portside list moderators, who asked me if I could verify the authenticity of the Ryter message. Apparently, Portside received a lot of criticism for posting this article, and one reader even claimed that "Tzaporah Ryter" probably does not exist. I checked with a few people who might have known more about her and the report she authored, and did a websearch for Tzaporah Ryter. It turns out that she is very much real, and has spent a considerable amount of time in Ramallah. Her article was reprinted and carried on a number of websites, including Counterpunch (Alexander Cockburn). The Minneapolis Star-Tribune also published an article about her on April 6. I passed along to the Portside moderator several other articles which Ryter had authored or co-authored, as well as some letters or articles that either mentioned, cited or referenced her. This was offered as some kind of verification that Ryter was on the level, that her report was not bogus, and that she has a track record of activism both in Palestine, and in relation to Palestinian issues here in the U.S. On Monday evening, Portside posted to its listserv an edited or condensed version of the comments, mostly critical, it had received regarding the Ryter piece. In its preface to these messages Portside came one step from apologizing for posting her article, yet acknowledged that Ryter is a real person while questioning the truthfulness of her report. None of the people who criticized her article offered any substantial rebuttals to it, nor did Portside itself. Calling the Ryter article a "hate message", one writer implied that it might have been motivated by anti-Semitism and went on to ask if "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" would soon show up on the Portside list. Another offered a very short and sketchy message by an Israeli journalist which denied everything Ryter had written, and said the article was a "hasty and unfounded report." This journalist stated bluntly, "There are no massacres in Ramallah." Portside did not see fit to include any of the documentation or articles I provided, other than a short editorial note from Rabbi Michael Lerner (editor of TIKKUN) that praised Ryter. For your information, here is my reply to the replies. Bill Koehnlein * I am disappointed that Portside responded in such an anemic way to the critics of the article by Tzaporah Ryter, and choose not to post some of the more substantive material about this matter that I had sent to one of the Portside moderators in some private correspondence. Portside's preface to several letters states that "...Tzaporah Ryter is a real person [apparently one Portside reader had doubts about this] and...she has submitted letters from Israel and Palestine to other journals and online lists. However, the truthfulness of what she reported is still in question." A little further down, Vanessa Merton states: "It is irresponsible, I suggest, to 'publish' such a piece, not written by a professional journalist or anyone else who has to maintain credibility and credentials, without some external indicia of reliability." Although the Ryter piece was a more-or-less emotional letter instead of a journalistic dispatch, and although some of her figures regarding the number of deaths and arrests might be reasonably disputed, the events and incidents she describes are clearly consistent with the numerous reports moved from Ramallah and elsewhere in Palestine by "professional" journalists as well as by international observers and human rights activists in the field. Let me cite the specific key points made by Ryter: 1. "We are under a terrible siege and people are being massacred by both the Israeli army and armed militia groups of Israeli settlers." She further states: "On Thursday afternoon, the Israeli army began sealing off each entrance to Ramallah and there were rumors that they planned to invade." 2. Ryter notes that "[p]eople were rushing back home from across checkpoints and also people were trying to flee. People were not allowed to go out and many working people--with homes and children to return to--were not allowed in [to Ramallah]." 3. She states that people were panicking and trying to buy food and other supplies, which had become scarce. 4. Ryter describes the invasion, at nightfall, by foot soldiers and tanks, and the subsequent firing of weapons by both. 5. She reports that "large groups" of people have been shot dead or have been arrested, and then says that "[t]he numbers of these killings I fear are much greater than the numbers confirmed in the press, because the human rights offices and the media centers have been stormed, and everything is shut down." 6. "The Israelis are demanding that all journalists leave Ramallah and today another foreign journalist was shot. They do not want any more internationals here and are deporting people. It seems quite clear that they do not want eyewitnesses...." 7. Ryter says that the hospitals "have been surrounded and invaded" and notes that a patient had been shot while leaving the hospital. 8. Ryter states: "The numbers [of deaths] we have now exceed 600, and we are estimating between 700 and 800." 9. For several paragraphs, Ryter describes her wanderings around the city, the activities of residents, and the conditions in the streets prior to and shortly after the temporary lifting of the curfew. She claims that Israeli soldiers looted stores and shot people in the street while the curfew had been lifted. 10. She says that civilians have been rounded up and used as human shields. She states again that people are being shot in the streets. 11. Ryter notes that foreign observer delegations are being denied entry into Ramallah, and that the International Red Cross is helpless. 12. She concludes with a plea for international solidarity and human rights action. More concisely, the major points Ryter addresses have to do with the immobility of a population held hostage by the military and the fear this engenders, and the indiscriminate shooting of civilians by Israeli soldiers, as well as widespread random arrests of civilians and their use as human shields. It is true that Ryter does not confirm with accuracy or authenticity some of her figures (eg, 600, or 700, or 800 dead) and that some of her reportage is based either on guesswork or things she had heard. Yet, on the whole, her general description of the scene in Ramallah is probably accurate; similar reports have been written by "professional" journalists with "credibility and credentials", and the international observers from Germany, Italy, France, the U.S. and elsewhere have all corroborated, to one degree or another, the essential veracity of Ryter's report. Number of civilian deaths in Ramallah? Who can say? Does it matter if it's 10, or 100, or 800 or more? Whatever the figure, it is an outrage committed by the state of Israel against a civilian population. And for those who would like to quibble about the exact numbers, let me note that at least 100 civilians were killed in the Jenin refugee camp in the last five days; these are the figures provided by the Israeli government itself, and reported by the NGO Palestine Monitor. The atrocities in Jenin were carried out through the use of 150 tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery, and backed by F-16 fighter jets, reported LAW. (LAW is the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, a non-governmental organization "dedicated to preserving human rights through legal advocacy. LAW is affiliated with the International Commission of Jurists [ICJ], the Federation Internationale des Ligues de Droits de l'Homme [FIDH] and the World Organisation Against Torture [OMCT]", for those who will demand confirmation from sources with "credibility and credentials".) Similarly, the Washington Post, a "professional" newspaper that is credentialed and credible, reported on April 5 that B'Tselem--an Israeli, not Palestinian, human rights group--charged that Palestinian prisoners are being routinely tortured. The preferred method currently is the breaking of toes. Israel has long used torture against Palestinian prisoners, the Post noted. The article also reported that "Israel has clamped curfews on areas where its troops are operating, so that Palestinian families are trapped in their homes for days at a time", a charge similarly made by Tzaporah Ryter as well as other observers and journalists. Not only have homes been ransacked, bombed, looted or destroyed by the Israeli army, but so have the offices of the Palestinian Ministry of Education (if one chooses to regard a Ministry press release as not lacking in credibility). The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem has been fired upon by Israeli troops; despite some press claims that "Palestinian gunmen" are holed up inside, most of the people in that church are women and children who took refuge there during the early stages of the invasion. News reports state, variously, that one or several civilians inside have been killed. Father David Jaeger, spokesman for custodians of Catholic sites in the Holy Land, said, "This is an act of indescribable barbarity. It is a violation of every law of humanity and civilization." Journalists and international observers have not been immune to the violence perpetrated by the state of Israel. CNN reported that reporters attempting to visit Arafat's mostly-destroyed administrative compound were repelled by Israeli soldiers, who fired weapons and threw stun grenades at them. One U.S. observer, Zaid Khalil of New York, was hit in the leg by a bullet; this incident was reported in the U.S. media, including WINS radio in New York. On April 6, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior issued a directive that would allow the deportation of any foreigner attempting to make contact with Palestinians, and which gives customs officials unlimited authority to block human rights activists from entering the country. Among those deported was Henri Leclerc, Honorary President of the French League for Human Rights. Minus the specific details, these charges were made by Tzaporah Ryter, and have been confirmed by presumably more "reliable" sources. Palestinian hospitals have been besieged by Israeli soldiers, and both the International Red Cross and the Palestine Red Crescent have charged that Israeli troops are preventing ambulances from reaching wounded civilians, many of whom are left to die in the streets. Indeed, one hospital in Ramallah, citing concerns of disease spread by rotting corpses, was forced to bury 25 murdered people on the hospital grounds because the Israeli army would not allow hearses to transport the bodies to the local cemetery for proper burial. This is not a homespun anecdote concocted by Tzaporah Ryter. Finally, George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian (UK) of April 9, has reported--as have Ryter and others--that the Israeli army is using civilians as human shields, a cowardly and morally repugnant act in violation of all conventions of war, not to mention basic human decency. The problem with the Tzaporah Ryter article might be that it is not cool, dispassionate journalism; in fact, it might not be journalism at all. Instead, it might be a plea to stop this madness, an emotional appeal to the international community to take decisive action. But does that alter the facts about what the Israeli state is doing to the Palestinian people? Is she that far off base? I think not. Unfortunately, there are many people who do not want reality to intrude on their cozy vision of Israel as a noble cause. The state of Israel was the result of the vivisection of Palestinian land by British and French imperialism; much of that land was taken from the Palestinians, sometimes by force, sometimes by guile, sometimes by the implementation of unfair treaties or agreements. The end result? Millions of Palestinians pushed out of their homes and off their land, forced into refugee camps or into a diaspora across the globe. Israel is now the world's only bona fide apartheid state, and with its government and so many institutions of civil society taken over by the extreme right, Israel as a state, society and culture now borders precariously on fascism. The Israeli left and progressive sectors seem impotent in the challenge to the right, and the Labor Party has capitulated completely--and probably irrevocably--to the forces of reaction. Although it seemingly appears hopeless, peace can come to Israel/Palestine, but for this to happen both Israeli and Palestinian society must be transformed, and the Israeli state similarly, and necessarily, must also transform. Such a transformation must include the Palestinian Right of Return, and I am aware that such a Right would entail a complete reassessment of the nature of a Jewish state. This does not mean that what is culturally and positively unique about Israel should be abandoned and thrown by the wayside. On the state level, Israel/Palestine must be shaped into a democratic and secular one, where full political, social and economic inclusion is guaranteed to all residents/citizens, and on the societal level a democratic state must act to insure that the cohesiveness of both Arab and Jewish culture remain intact and be allowed to develop as it will. Will this happen? I doubt it. Not now, anyway. As long as the Palestinians remain under siege, with second-class (non) citizenship, this will remain an eternal conflict. In the meantime, let's not take pot shots at the messengers who carry the bad news about Israel. Tzaporah Ryter is a courageous young woman. She is courageous for standing with the Palestinian people, on their turf, facing the full brunt of the Israeli army unleashed. And she is equally courageous for daring to stand up to prevailing sentiment, to face certain ostracism and enmity, or worse (as the Shapiro family has), for daring to speak truth to power. I salute her. For the record, I have never met Tzaporah Ryter, have never corresponded with her, and, in fact, had never heard of her until her article came to me on the Internet. Bill Koehnlein New York, April 9, 2002 ********************************************************************* "The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated." --José Martí ********************************************************************* The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory http://www.toplab.org ********************************************************************* ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= nytmid-04.10.02-02:13:54-13237