3 March 2003
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
The unconditional support of the
U.S. government for illegal Israeli expansion has raised questions about
popular support for the resistance inside Israel. There are several web
sites assicated with these Important--and courageous--Israeli organizations
that represent the anti-war movement inside the nation :
1. http://www.seruv.org.il/defaulteng.asp/
Israeli soliders and officers,
now numbering over 400 who refuse
to take part in their gov'ts assault on
the Occupied Territories or be a
part of the illegal occuption.
2. Association for Civil Rights in Israel, http://www.nif.org/acri
3. Bat Shalom (Israeli Women for Peace), http://www.batshalom.org
4. B'Tselem (The Israeli Information
Center for Human Rights in the
Occupied Territories), http://www.btselem.org
5. Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc), http://www.gush-shalom.org
6. Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, http://www.icahd.org/eng/
7. Kav La'Oved (Workers' Hotline), http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/index_en.asp
8. Rabbis for Human Rights, http://www.rhr.israel.net/overview.shtml
9. Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit!), http://www.yesh-gvul.org/english.html
10. For a complete list of Israeli
and Palestinian Human Rights and Peace
Groups: http://www.ariga.com/humanrights/
_____________________________________________________________
After reading the report, below,
by Sara Flaunders on the "Jenin Massacre," we invite readers to visit the
above web sites and learn more about the Israeli resistance movements that
have developed around the Zionist-American Middle East policy conducted
by the W. Bush administration in Washington.
Sincerely,
Francis Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
University of Grenoble III
______________________________________________
"Massacre in Jenin, HUMAN RIGHTS
WATCH &THE STAGE-MANAGEMENT OF IMPERIALISM"
by Sara Flounders
copyright CovertAction Quarterly,
Fall 2002
On a fact-finding trip to the West
Bank and Gaza, one of our delegation's
main goals was gaining entry to
Jenin. For most Palestinians a trip to
Jenin during that period would have
been impossible. Even a U.S. passport
didn't guarantee travel through
the numerous roadblocks and closures on the
way. We left the outskirts of Ramallah
on foot at early dawn on May 23,
2002. To avoid Israeli roadblocks
and lines of tanks, we met a driver in a
village, then drove through back
roads and across fields far to the east up
the Jordan valley, headed first
for Nablus.
But an Israeli assassination operation
was under way in Nablus. The city
was under total curfew, tightly
sealed-no exceptions. A call to a doctor in
Nablus confirmed there was no way
in and no way for anyone in Nablus to
move that day.
The call also made clear that Israel
could no longer enforce total
isolation or operate with total
impunity. Cell phones and computers mean
that even in the midst of total
lockdown it is possible to hear exactly
what is happening miles away on
a street corner, from the buzz of an Apache
helicopter to giant bulldozers crushing
cinderblock homes.
Just the day before, the IDF had
swooped into Jenin once again to carry out
an assassination, killing three
Palestinians, Firing a missile from a
U.S.-supplied Apache helicopter,
the IDF executed its target-plus two
innocent bystanders.
As we arrived in Jenin, a funeral
for those assassinated the previous day
was under way. Children with flags
gathered as young girls in pinstripe
uniforms carrying book bags picked
their way home through rubble. Their
uniforms were clean even though
some of the homes they entered had only
three walls.
Rashid Mansur, Director
of the Emergency Committee for the Relief and
Rebuilding of Jenin Camp, took us
atop a mosque overlooking what was tne
center of Jenin Camp so we could
see the scale of destruction. Mansur
pointed to the ruins of a home about
100 feet away. the remains of the roof
lay on the ground. "Everyone fled
that home except one disabled relative.
The IDF bulldozers began their work.
His family pleaded with the IDF to let
them remove him before they bulldozed
the house. They just went on, burying
him alive. The family still has
been unable to retrieve the body." Hardly a
building still standing was, free
of holes gouged by tank rounds.
It's justified and in fact essential
to learn from every possible source
-even how the German army fought
in theWarsaw Ghetto, said one IDF officer
Mansur informed us that there had
been 55 funerals with burials. Of the
known dead, 17 were fighters the
rest were civilians. Another 40 to 50
people are unaccounted for and presumed
under the rubble. "The stench of
death hung over the camp for many
days." he told us.
This description corresponds to an
April is CNN interview by Christianne
Amanpour with Terje Roed-Larsen,
the UN special envoy to the Middle East.1
The smell was horrible-decaying corpses
below the rubble. And we saw, for
instance, a 12-year-old boy being-with
some people digging with their
hands-they were digging him out,
and his completely demolished body. We
saw, for instance, two brothers
who were digging out their father and their
other brothers below the rubble,
the corpses in pieces. It was horrible, an
absolutely unbelievable scene.
What happened in Jenin was no isolated
incident. it is part of a systematic
policy for the Sharon government.
A few days earlier in Jabalya refugee
camp in Gaza at the AI-Awda Hospital
run by the United Health Work
Committee, Dr. Abu Sitta had explained
to us Sharon's policy. In 1971,
General Ariel Sharon
attacked Jabalya. Camp wit tanks and bulldozers.
Hundreds of homes in the narrow
streets of the cam: were bulldozed to
create broad avenues that would
allow Israeli tanks to move with ease
through the center of the camp.
The occupiers allowed no rebuilding on the
avenues. Today they are called "Sharon's
boulevards."
TWO STORIES OF JENIN
The story of Jenin can be told two
ways. One is of the resistance of poorly
armed guerrillas who fought to the
death rather than surrender to a
powerful occupation army. Their
heroism was such that Israeli. progressive
journalist Uri Avnery wrote that.
"the Palestinian nation was born in Jenin."
The other way -and equally true-
is of a civilian population trapped by the
fire of that occupation army, massacred
by it. The IDF the Israeli regime
of Ariel Sharon, the U.S. government
and the powerful corporate media did
their best to insist there was "no
massacre" in Jenin and to prevent an
investigation. Why was this so important
to them? How did they do it?
Israel and the U.S. feared the impact
of an international condemnation. For
example. the Guardian of London
wrote on April 17:
"Israel's international reputation
slumped to its lowest point for two
decades yesterday, amid condemnation
in Britain and Europe of the Israeli
army's behavior at the Palestinian
refugee camp in Jenin in the West Bank."2
Under Jordanian rule in 1953, Jenin
Camp was established as a refugee
center within the municipal boundaries
of the city of Jenin. Its
inhabitants gradually replaced the
emergency tents that once provided
shelter with cement homes, most
the size of the original small UNRWA tent.
They dug basements in some places
adding second, third and even fourth floors.
As we walked through this wasteland
and along narrow alleys, people, drawn
by the camera and microphone, told
us their stories. An elderly woman said,
"I was made a refugee in 1948. l
was driven out in 1967. I'm not moving
again." She was camped with her
whole family in front of the two remaining
walls of her home, tending a cooking
pot over an open fire.
A young woman, a student, called
us over. "This was my home," she said as
she pointed to a pile of rubble.
We saw two boys, 9 and 11 years old,
sorting through wreckage on the
ground. "This was where we lived," they
said. "We go to school near where
we are sleeping now, but we come here
every day to look for our things."
School was five miles away. "My mother's
sister was inside," we heard. "My
cousin was trapped." Again and again in
places of packed earth or rubble,
we heard descriptions of homes that had
been demolished with someone still
inside.
A man who walked with a cane described
his terror as Israeli troops used
him as a human shield. They forced
him to enter buildings and rooms in
front of the troops to check for
fighters. As he backed out of a room, the
troops would toss in a grenade.
Four members of one family described
how they crawled from building to
buildmg seeking an exit as the Israeli
bulldozers moved in unannounced in
the middle of the night to clear
houses. Their own home was pushed over
just as they entered the basement
of the small cmderblock home next door.
Mansur recounted his 15-year-old
son's arrest and detention, with hundreds
of other camp residents, saying
this made him the 4th generation in his
family to spend time in Israeli
jails. He also told us the Israelis used
25,000 IDF troops and 270 Israeli
tanks against 13.000 refugees, very few
of whom were armed.
The New York Times described
the scale of the attack in Jenin and the type
of weapons used: "The mismatch in
force of arms was stark." The Israeli
Army used:
Vulcan antiaircraft guns, able to
shoot 3,000 rounds a minute, inside the
camp. It used Cobra helicopters
with thermal detection capability to fire
TOW missiles-intended for use against
tanks on open battlefields-through
walls of houses, some with noncombatants
inside. It deployed scores of
Merkava tanks and armored vehicles
equipped with machine guns. It used
bulldozers to raze civilian homes,
crushing more and more of them with less
warning, Palestinians said. Buzzing
drones and balloons carrying cameras
monitored the fighting from above,
and from a hilltop encampment just
outside Jenin, officers coordinated
the combat, using detailed mass and
sophisticated communications.3
But a statement published in the
major Israeli daily Ha'aretz, more than
two months before the attack on
Jenin, shows that Israeli military planners
intended exactly the scale of destruction
that unfolded:
In order to prepare properly for
the next campaign, one of the highest
Israeli officers in the territories
said not long ago, it's justified and
in fact essential to learn from
every possible source. If the mission will
be to seize a densely populated
refugee camp, or take over the Casbah in
Nablus... then he must first analyze
and internalize the lessons of earlier
battles -even, however shocking
it may sound, even how the German army
fought in the Warsaw Ghetto.4
The quote shows how Israel now seeks
to learn the tactics of the Nazi Army
of occupation in Poland, while recognizing
that Palestinians would choose
the resistance of the besieged Jewish
community of the Warsaw ghetto.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising began
on Quarterly April 19, 1943, when 2,000 SS
troops entered the Jewish ghetto
of Warsaw, home to 60,000 people. The Nazi
troops met machine-gun fire and
Molotov cocktails and suffered 200
casualties on the first day. In
a month of fighting, the Nazis totally
leveled the ghetto.
Helicopters are strafing civilian
residential areas, systematic shelling by
tanks has wounded hundreds, bulldozers
are razing refugee homes...
The scale of the Israeli Army's destruction
of Jenin was hardly an isolated
incident. During the same days,
the OF forces in Nablus had carried out a
similar offensive. As they had planned,
large sections of the ancient
Casbah of Nablus were reduced to
rubble. Tanks, giant bulldozers and
helicopter gunships were used in
the center of 'Old Nablus.' The entire
West Bank was under military occupation.
Tanks
patrolled city streets
in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Tulkarm.
Again the New York Times, April 11,
2002, reported conditions throughout
the West Bank. "It is safe to say
that the infrastructure of life itself
and of any future Palestinian state-roads,
schools, electricity pylons,
water pipes, telephone lines-has
been devastated."
But the Israeli offensive in Jenin
became a focus of international
attention because there was such
protracted and fierce resistance that the
siege lasted for ten days. The IOF
shut off water and electricity,
prevented access to hospitals, fired
on ambulances, and denied access to
journalists and aid agencies. Desperate
residents pleaded over cell phones
for water, food, or help in moving
the injured.
Pressure on the UN to act escalated
quickly because Israeli forces were
shelling refugee camps that the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency had
administered for 54 years. UNRWA,
a UN agency, was issuing almost daily
press releases describing the horror
in the refugee camps as the IDF
assault destroyed its schools and
health clinics and fired on its
ambulances and food trucks, turning
them away from West Bank camps. Even
members of its staff were rounded
up.
By April 7, UNRWA Commissioner General
Peter Hansen said the IDF had made
the Jenin and Balata refugee camps
...a hellish battleground... we are
getting reports of pure
horror-helicopters are strafing
civilian residential areas, systematic
shelling by tanks has wounded hundreds,
bulldozers are razing refugee
homes... food and medicine are running
out, ambulances don 't have
passage... a humanitarian disaster
is in the making.
By April 10, UNRWA described "catastrophic
conditions" in Jenin. Its April
16 report to the UN used the term
"monumental destruction."
The major media reported casualty
figures on Jenin from Israeli military
figures. CBS Evening News reported
April 12: "The Israeli army estimates
that it killed 100 to 200 people
in eight days of fighting. ABC Nightline
reported April 11 that the IDF "estimates
100 Palestinian fighters were
killed there but refused to say
where the bodies are, and they continue to
bar news people from the camp."
By Israel's own admission, thousands of
Palestinian men had been rounded
up throughout the West Bank. UN Special
Envoy Roed-Larsen in an interview
at Jenin Camp described the situation as,
"horrific beyond belief."5 Some
of the most damning reports came from the
UN's own agencies and from Israeli
military forces.
DISTRACT, DELAY, DERAIL
Arab members of the UN Security
Council, pressed to act by the exploding
mass movements in their own streets,
as a bloc proposed a resolution that
called for sending a multinational
force to defend the Palestinians from
the Israeli onslaught throughout
the occupied West Bank. They also proposed
organizing an inquiry into Israeli
occupation crimes in the West Bank.
Clearly the resolution would be
a major embarrassment unacceptable to the
United States.
The U.S. government financially,
militarily, politically and diplomatically
supports Israel and its continuing
attacks on the Palestinian people.
That's because Washington considers
Israel one of the best defenders of
U.S. corporate interests in the
region.
On April 4, the U.S. pushed through
UN Security Council Resolution 1403,
"welcoming the mission of the U.S.
Secretary of State to the region as well
as efforts by others., .to bring
about a comprehensive, just and lasting
peace in the Middle East."
Washington claimed it was brokering
a deal to end the Israeli siege. U.S.
Special Envoy General Anthony Zinni
was in Israel during the entire
Israeli offensive. Secretary
of State Colin Powell was in Israel
supposedly to discuss 'peace' as
news coverage of Jenin reached world
attention. Although both U.S. officials
attended commemorations of Israeli
casualties, neither made any attempt
to go to Jenin. Israel could hardly
have denied either of them the access
it denied the UN.
Arab countries called on the Bush
administration to intervene to restrain
Israel. Washington did not want
to be in the position of publicly vetoing
an Arab resolution in the UN Security
Council that called for strong UN
action at a time of international
outrage. So a back-room deal was made to
avoid a U.S. veto, give the appearance
of some movement and yet ensure that
no significant action was authorized.
The stronger Security Council
resolution of the Arab Group was
withdrawn and the U.S. crafted the
watered-down Resolution 1405 that
passed with unanimous support on April 19.
Israeli leaders initially claimed
they welcomed the U.S.-worded resolution
because their hands were "clean,"
they had acted in "self-defense." While
Israel stalled, Secretary of State
Colin Powell publicly backed up the
Israeli claim that no massacre had
taken place. On April 24, speaking
before the U.S. Senate Appropri-ations
Foreign Operations Subcommittee,
Powell said, "clearly people died
in Jenin...I've seen no evidence that
would suggest a massacre took place."6
This became the official position.
No investigation was needed because no
massacre had taken place. While
the outside world, even relief agencies,
were barred from the camp the Israelis
began a series of demands. They
demanded further changes in the
composition of the delegation for
"balance," the addition of military
personnel, and insisted that no
interviews or interrogation of any
Israeli troops could take place. Finally
they decreed that the fact-finding
team could reach no conclusions, nor
call for any specific action, While
these Issues were debated, all members
of the expanded fact-finding team
were put on hold.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan acquiesced
to each new Israeli demand. Yet
Israel still denied the UN team
entry into the refugee camp. Israel could
not have taken any of these actions
without the full support of Washington.
Even UN members who had initially
made very strong reports, such as UN
Special Envoy Terje Roed-Larsen
began to backtrack under heavy pressure.
I have been totally misrepresented
in parts of the Israeli media, evidently
quoting me wrongly saying that I
stated that there was a massacre in Jenin.
I said nothing of the sod.... There
was a stench of decaying bodics there
whith was absolutely av#uI. But
that does not imply that l said that there
was a massacre there. These are
horrors of war, and l cannot judge if there
was a massacre or not. And this
is why everybody should now be relieved
that there till be a fact- finding
mission which viii find out vtat
happened there, And after that we
will all judge.7
Finally, on May 3, two weeks after
the unanimous passage of the
U.S.-drafted resolution, Kofi Annan
officially disbanded the "fact-finding"
team because Israel would not allow
entry even after every Israeli demand
had been accepted.
Tunisian representative to the UN
Noureddine Mejdoub stated in a special
Security Council session on May
3,
Let us imagine that an Arab state
had committed an act many times less
grave than those perpetrated by
Israel. immediately a coalition force would
have been formed, the rule of law
would have been invoked, the binding
nature of council resolutions would
have been reaffirmed and sanctions
would have been imposed.8
The Bush administration,
which scripted and then dropped its mild
resolution on Jenin after just two
weeks, is nevertheless still demanding
full enforcement of sanctions resolutions
imposed on Iraq -12 years after
Iraqi troops left Kuwa't.
Yet even after the UN disbanded the
fact-finding team and dropped any
implementation of its resolution,
the U.S. was faced with a political
problem. It was beyond dispute that
the Palestinian refugees in the densely
populated cinder block housing in
the center of Jenin had been attacked
with tanks and missiles and their
hones then bulldozed into rubble. And
there was still the stench of the
charge that Israeli troops had committed
"massacres" in Jenin and in other
camps. This is where another arm of U.S.
policy comes in.
ENTER HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
On the very day that the UN Secretary
General moved to disband the
fact-finding team, it was hardly
treated as news. All the corporate media
were conveniently running banner
headlines stating that "no massacre had
taken place in Jenin. They gave
as the objective authority for this finding
the organization Human Rights Watch.
This let the IDF and the U.S. -which
was author of the Security Council
resolution and primary supporter
of Israel- off the hook.
In fact, the Human Rights Watch report
identifies 52 Palestinians killed
during the Israeli operation and
devotes 42 pages to describing a whole
series of "possible" war crimes
and violations of international law that
the Israeli forces committed. But
all this is buried in a report on their
web site that few will ever see.
The story that CNN, BBC, AP, AFP,
network TV, news magazines and all the
other corporate media reported globally
in bold headlines and sound bites
was that a Human Rights Watch investigation
had confirmed "No Jenin
massacre." As CNN reported on May
3. "Human Rights Watch found no evidence
that Israeli troops massacred Palestinian
civilians in Jenin.. said Peter
Bouckaert, senior researcher for
the group and a member of the
investigative team." This was the
news in a sound bite. It was reinforced
in countless articles.
Graffiti found on the walls of Jenin : "Sharon, you only make us stronger."
The news reports were based on an
interview which Peter Bouckaert gave to
the Washington Post on April 26,
live from Jenin as he released the report.
His words exactly echoed Colin Powell's
statement the week before and
Israel's position.
In the news coverage this sounded
like it was the finding of an "official"
inquiry, with no further investigation
needed. This was not the first time
HRW has stepped in to reinforce
U.S. policy with a veneer of apparently
unbiased non-governmental judgment.
Who is Human Rights Watch and how
were they able to gain access to Jenin
for an inquiry at the very time
that Israel was denying entry to a
delegation chosen by the UN Security
Council?
Human Rights Watch was supposedly
created to monitor "human rights abuses"
worldwide. In reality, it is an
institution that has acted at every turn to
reinforce the policies of the United
States and justify its "humanitarian
interventions." It is composed almost
entirely of U.S. citizens and
its board includes multimillionaires,
former U.S government officials and
mainstream academics.
Human Rrghts Watch began as
Helsinki Watch in 1975. It was a powerful
Cold War instrument against the
Soviet Union and the socialist bloc
countries of Eastern Europe. Its
network became a web of support for
pro-capitalist forces and political
dissidents in every country.
Multibillionaire George
Soros has played a ma1or role in the development
of Human Rights Watch and in linking
it with his own personal NGO network.
Open Society Institute. Aryeh Neier,
the director first of Helsinki Watch
and then Human Rights Watch moved
on to head the Open Society Institute.
Many other directors share positions
and change titles within a small world
of U.S.-based NGOs.
HRW's Middle East North Africa division
has used its position to build
support for the continuing U.S.
war and sanctions against Iraq. According
to the reports of four major UN
agencies (WHO, FAQ, UNlCEF, WFP), UN
Security Council sanctions, kept
in place at U.S. insistence, have caused
the deaths of over 1.5 million Iraqis.
Withholding food and civilian
supplies is a war crime. However,
Human Rights Watch has proposed that to
help weaken Saddam Hussein and "encourage
Iraqi officials to overthrow him.
Saddam Hussein be indicted by an
international court for war crimes." (HRW
press release, January 5, 2000).
If the U.S. objective is an invasion of
Iraq. Human Rights Watch is only
too happy to oblige with reports and
suggestions.
Human Rights Watch claims its reports
are objective, balanced and
evenhanded. When it comes to Palestine
this has meant equating the violence
of the illegal Israeli occupation
with the resistance of Palestinians to
overwhelming military force. Once
Human Rights Watch declared that "no
massacre" had occurred in Jenin,
the demand for an inquiry and
international action against Israeli
crimes virtually disappeared. Media
coverage shifted sharply. The Bush
administration made a new round of
demands on the Palestinians to condemn
violence while calling Ariel Sharon
"a man of peace" and expressing
sympathy for Israeli "self-defense"
measures. HRW statements echoed
these shifts.
WHAT IS A MASSACRE?
The word "massacre" cannot be trivialized
into an argument over semantics
The decision to reject evidence
of a massacre at Jenin was a political
decision to immunize Sharon, the
105 Israel, and ft 'r U.S. backers from
responsibility Webster's Unabridged
(1998) defines massacre as :
"killing with indiscriminate violence,
killing a number of people where
much resistance can not be made
and reckless murders."
This is an apt description of IDF
actions at Jenin: precisely the truth
that the UN, "Human Rights Watch,
Israel and the U.S. government are so
anxious to
dispel.
_________________
SOME UNDISPUTED MASSACRES :
POSTSCRIPT
In "Colombia Human Rights Certification
III," HRW quotes without comment the definition used by the office of Public
Advocate (Defensoria del Pueblo) of Colombia : "the killing of three or
more people at the same place and at the same time." <www.hrw.org/press/2002/02/colombia0205.html>.
When Israeli tanks rolled back into
the cities of the West Bank after a two-week pullback from the siege of
President Yassir Arafat in his compound in Ramallah, HRW was silent. Twenty-four
hour curfews lasted for days;
targeted assassinations took place
with increasing frequency. Human Rights Watch was silent.
After the shift by the Bush administration to more open support of Israel, HRW's condemnation of violence on the part of Palestinians became far stronger and more prominent than its mild rebuke of Israel.
No statement was made condemning
the concrete wall under construction dividing the entire West Bank. New
walls and trenches filled with barbed wire surround whole towns, Palestinians
cannot move in or out. New Israeli
regulations deny Palestinians the
right to leave their village or town of residence for any reason. Visits
to an aged parent, work or a medical emergency are rejected. The accelerating
land expropriations, house demolitions, the continuing mass arrests, and
the hundreds in detention received no investigation or condemnation from
Human Rights Watch.
HRW's statement released June 19
makes no criticism or even any mention of Israeli violence or occupation.
The entire statement is a condemnation of Palestinian actions. It opens:
"Yesterday's suicide bombing attack on a bus
in Jerusalem is an atrocity for
which there is no justification, Human Rights Watch said today.. .Human
Rights Watch has repeatedly called on Palestinian leaders to stop the attacks
and bring those responsible to
justice."
For all its many declarations of
support for democracy and democratically elected governments, HRW had not
a word of criticism for Bush's demand that democratically elected President
Yassir Arafat be replaced with a
politician more to the U.S. and
Israel's liking. In 1996 President Arafat was elected by 87% of the popular
vote in an election that international observers, including former U.S.
President Jimmy Carter, declared to be free and fair. Needless to say,
HRW made no statements concerning voting irregularities in George W. Bush's
election.
After having played a pivotal role in U.S.-Israeli damage-control operations by declaring "No Massacre" at exactly the moment that the UN Security Council fact-finding delegation was disbanded because of Israeli intransigence, HRW swung back into action for some late mop-up work in early August by publicly attacking what it called weaknesses in the UN General Assembly Report on Jenin.
United States policymakers have many
instruments at their disposal. The most effective are those organizations
that seem to have an independent voice. However, these organizations have
on their boards the directors of
major corporations, policy think
tanks, media outlets and academic institutions. Such organizations are
thoroughly committed not to human rights but to U.S. corporate rule of
the world.
Those corporations have a big stake in total U.S. domination of the Middle East. The oil of the Gulf region and the military contracts that subsidize the largest U.S. corporations are the largest source of profit. The consumer and labor markets are huge and growing.
The abandoned UN resolution-and hundreds
more passed and then ignored-together with the Human Rights Watch whitewash,
confirm once again that the future of Palestine depends heavily on the
commitment of solidarity activists around the world. Palestinians are paying
the ultimate price for their basic human rights. History will record whether
they paid in vain, or whether we stood with them in their struggle.
NOTES :
1. CNN, April 18, 2002.
2. Guardian (London), April 17,2002.
3. New York Times, April 21,2002.
4. Ha'aretz(TeI Aviv), January 25,2002.
5. CNN, April 18, 2002.
6. Arutz Sheva. israel National
News, April 25, 2002.
7. CNN, April 22,2002.
8. United Nations Press Release,
<www.un.org/Newslpres&'doc/2002/5c739.doc.htm>.
FURTHER READING :
For an insightful look at how Amnesty
International failed to deal with
Jenin, see:
Dennis Bernstein and Francis Boyle,
"Massacre at Jenin," CovertAction
Quarterly, no.73, Summer 2002.
_______________________
Sara Flounders took part in the
International ANSWER delegation to Gaza, Bethlehem,East Jersusalem, Ramallah,
and Jenin, May 17-24. Flounders has edited and co-authored several books
on international affairs, and is
presently organizing an inquiry
into U.S. -backed Israeli occupation crimes. She is Co-director of the
International Action Center.
__________________________________________________________________________
"U.S. Aid to Israel : Profits to the Merchants of Death"
U.S. aid to Israel has averaged $15
million daily for the last 50 years -one third of the foreign aid budget.
Less widely understood is that over 60% of U.S. aid to Israel goes to U.S.
armaments corporations. From 1997 to
2002, over $5 billion in U.S. aid
to Israel went to Lockheed Martin, including $2.5 billion for 50 F-16 fighters,
and $2 billion for support contracts, spare parts, low altitude and infrared
night targeting systems, and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems. Boeing sells
Israel Apache helicopters.
United Technologies sells Blackhawk helicopters. Raytheon sells Patriot missiles. Northrop Grumman sells radar. Exxon/Mobil sells jet fuel. The list goes on and on and on. The last thing U.S. corporations need is peace.
SOURCE :
Jordan Green, "Arming the Occupation:
A Chronology of U.S. Military Aid and Weapons Contracts to Israel, 1995-present,"
Institute for Southern Studies (Durham, North Carolina) April 4, 2002.
Francis McCollum Feeley
Research Center Director <http://www.u-grenoble3.fr/ciesimsa>
and Professor of North American
Studies
UFR d'Anglais
Université Stendhal
Grenoble, France
Tel: 04.76.82.43.00