From: perlman@qso.Colorado.EDU (Eric S. Perlman)
Subject: Re: Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian boy
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 04:59:57 GMT

In article <23061@venera.isi.edu> arens@ISI.EDU (Yigal Arens) writes:
>In article <1992Dec15.182856.23705@colorado.edu> perlman@qso.Colorado.EDU (Eric S. Perlman) writes:
>>
>> ...  I do know that numerous
>> PLO-affiliated activists who've stated even slightly non-standard
>> opinions have been forced to seek protection from Israeli authorities
>> not for being collaborators - which they're not - but just for speaking
>> something that some party or other doesn't approve of.
>
>This often repeated claim is absolute nonsense, completely untrue.  But
>here's Mr. Perlman's chance to redeem himself: Please post the names and
>circumstances under which PLO-affiliated activists who've stated
>"slightly non-standard opinions" have "sought protection from Israeli
>authorities".  Come on.  Let's see you do it.  You say "you know" of
>"numerous" such cases.  Describing ten (10) cases would be enough.  OK,
>five (5).  Alright -- just two (2).  Can you provide us ONE (1) example
>of a PLO-affiliated activist who did no more than state a slightly
>non-standard opinion, and as a consequence was forced to seek protection
>from Israeli authorities?
>--
>Yigal Arens
>USC/ISI                                                TV made me do it!
>arens@isi.edu

OK, Dr. Arens, here we go.  Go ahead and eat your words:

From the New Republic, November 23, 1992, p.28 (Article "The Palestinian
Meltdown" by Steven Emerson): "The first Palestinian to openly criticize
the internal killings was Adnan Damiri, a Fatah activist who had served
in an Israeli jail for training in a Palestinian terrorist camp in
Lebanon.  In a June 1991 article in Al-Fajr, the second-largest
Palestinian newspaper, Damiri wrote that 'the revolution has started to
swallow its children.'  He criticized the roving groups of teenage
executioners.  'One cannot tolerate such punishment by people who were
not elected ... many of those who were killed were innocent of
collaboration ... the dream of the intifada has turned out to be a
nightmare ... if this continues, we're going to leave the country like
Rechavam Ze'evi [the ultra-right-wing Israeli Knesset member who
advocates "transfer" of the Palestinians to Jordan].  Almost immediately
after he published his article, Damiri was threatened by the death
squads and forced to seek protection from Israeli security forces on the
West Bank."

There are others, we can be sure.  Even Faisal Husseini admits that many
Palestinians who've been killed, supposedly for "collaboration," were
killed for other reasons.  In an interview cited in Ma'ariv this August
7, he wrote "We know that some of them were killed for reasons
unconnected to our struggle - family disputes, legal disputes, criminal
disputes, and the mafia."  Others have gone even further in their
criticism.  Emerson (p.29) quotes Gazi Abu Jiab, a high-ranking member
of the PFLP, as having written in Al-Quds that "We cannot ignore the
daily reality of the masked squads being out of control .... Today,
every ordinary criminal can don a mask, wield a weapon, take money, and
commit violent crimes against the residents under the guise of a masked
intifada activist .... The intifada does not justify the collection of
protection money, donations, or threats.  It does not mean setting fire
to their shops or endangering the lives of the innocent."  How large a
proportion of those who are killed are innocent?  Zuheir Daba'ai, one
pro-PLO activist, estimates approximately 60%.  I think that a closer
estimate would be well over 80%.


-- 
"How sad to see/A model of decorum and tranquillity/become like any other sport
A battleground for rival ideologies to slug it out with glee." -Tim Rice,"Chess"
     Eric S. Perlman 				 <perlman@qso.colorado.edu> 
  Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, University of Colorado, Boulder