Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Il mondo e' contro la guerra

http://www.urban75.com/Action/news144.html
World opinion opposes the attack on Afghanistan
By Dr. David Miller Stirling Media Research Institute, University of
Stirling 21 November 2001
According to Tony Blair and George Bush respectively, 'world opinion'
and the 'collective will of the world' supported the attack on
Afghanistan. Yet analysis of international opinion polls shows that
with only three exceptions majorities in all countries polled have
opposed the policy of the US and UK governments. Furthermore there
have been consistent majorities against the current action in the UK
and sizeable numbers of the US population had reservations about the
bombing.
World opinion
The biggest poll of world opinion was carried out by Gallup
International in 37 countries in late September (Gallup International
2001).
It found that apart from the US, Israel and India a majority of people
in every country surveyed preferred extradition and trial of suspects
to a US attack. Clear and sizeable majorities were recorded in the UK
(75%) and across Western Europe from 67% in France to 87% in
Switzerland. Between 64% (Czech Republic) and 83 % (Lithuania) of
Eastern Europeans concurred as did varying majorities in Korea,
Pakistan, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
An even more emphatic answer obtained in Latin America where between
80% (Panama) and 94% (Mexico) favoured extradition. The poll also
found that majorities in the US and Israel (both 56%) did not favour
attacks on civilians. Yet such polls have been ignored by the media
and by many of the polling companies.
After the bombing started opposition seems to have grown in Europe. As
only the Mirror has reported, by early November 65 per cent in Germany
and 69 per cent in Spain wanted the US attacks to end (Yates, 2001).
Meanwhile in Russia polls before and after the bombing show majorities
opposed to the attacks. One slogan which reportedly commanded majority
support doing the rounds in Moscow at the end of September was 'World
War III - Without Russia' (Agency WPS 2001).
After the bombing started Interfax reported a Gallup International
poll showing a majority of Moscow residents against the US military
action (BBC Worldwide Monitoring 2001)
Polling companies
The questions asked by a number of polling companies such as MORI,
Gallup and ICM have been seriously inadequate. They have failed to
give respondents a range of possible options in relation to the war.
When polling companies do ask about alternatives, support for war
falls away quite markedly. In the UK prior to the bombing all except
one poll, which asked the question, showed a majority against bombing
if it caused civilian casualties.
After the bombing started UK polling companies stopped asking about
concern for civilians. From the start of the bombing to the fall of
Kabul on 13 November there were only four polls on British opinion (by
ICM (2001a, 2001b) and MORI (2001a, 2001b)) compared with 7 between
the 11 September and the start of the bombing on October 7.
None has asked adequate questions about alternatives to bombing. ICM
did ask one alternative questions about whether bombing should stop to
allow aid into Afghanistan and 54% said it should (Guardian October
30). Where questions about aid or alternatives to bombing are asked
the results have been consistent: Clear and sometimes massive
majorities against the bombing.
In an ignored poll, the Scottish Sunday Mail found that fully 69% of
Scots favoured sanctions, diplomacy or bringing Bin Laden to trial.
Only 17% favoured his execution and a minuscule 5% supported bombing
(21 October).
The Herald in Glasgow also found only 6% favoured the then current
policy of bombing alone (3 November). It is well known that Scottish
opinion tends to be to the left of UK opinion, but not by more than a
few points on average.
Although the Press Association picked up on the Herald poll it was not
reported in the British national press. Between the start of the
bombing and the fall of Kabul, (with the exception of the single
question in the Guardian poll showing 54% in favour of a pause in
bombing) not a single polling company asked the British public any
questions about alternatives to war.
It is not altogether clear whether the lack of options given to poll
respondents is due to the media or the polling companies.
Certainly both UK and US polling companies have been guilty of
misrepresenting their own data almost without exception
overemphasising support for the war. For example Mori claimed that
their polling in late October had 'extinguished any lingering doubt'
that support was 'fading' (Mortimore 2001).
Of course this completely ignores all the poll data which would give
an alternative view and the fact that the polling questions have been
inadequate. Furthermore, according to Bob Worcester of MORI, (in an
address to an London School of Economics meeting on the media and the
war on 15 November) the text of press reports on their polls are
'approved' by MORI itself before they are published.
This is clearly a matter of good practice and should be applauded. But
the benefit is fairly marginal, if MORI are content for the press to
distort the level of opposition by concentrating on the 'overwhelming'
support for the war and relegating opposition to the war to the end of
reports.
Media reporting
It comes as a surprise to many in the UK and US to discover that
opinion is so markedly opposed to or ambivalent about the current
action. One key reason is that the polls have been systematically
misreported in the media.
Both television and the press in the US and UK have continued to
insist that massive majorities support the bombing. Senior BBC
journalists have expressed surprise and disbelief when shown the
evidence from the opinion polls.
One told me that she didn't believe that the polling companies were
corrupt and that she thought it unlikely that the Guardian would
minimise the opposition to the war.
This was days after the Guardian published a poll purporting to show
that 74% supported the bombing (Travis 2001, 12 October). What the BBC
journalist hadn't noticed was that the Guardian's polls had asked only
very limited questions and failed to give respondents the option of
saying they would prefer diplomatic solutions.
In the poll on 12 October one question was asked but only if people
thought enough had been done diplomatically. Given that the government
and the media had been of the opinion that enough had been done and
alternative voices were marginalised, it is surprising that as many as
37% said that enough had not been done.
 Furthermore the Guardian's editorial position has offered (qualified)
support for the war and it did not cover the demonstrations in London
and Glasgow on 13 October.
As a result of a 'flurry' of protests this was raised by the readers'
editor at the Guardian's editorial meeting on 14 October and the
editor agreed that this had been a 'mistake'.
But, the readers editor revealed that it is the papers 'general
policy' not to cover marches (Mayes 2001), thus condemning dissent to
the margins of the news agenda and leaving the field open for those
with the resources to stage 'proper' news events.
Elsewhere in the media, almost every poll has been interpreted to
indicate popular support for the war. Where that interpretation is
extremely difficult journalists have tried to squeeze the figures to
fit. One Scottish newspaper was so concerned at the low numbers
supporting bombing that they phoned me to ask how best to interpret
the findings.
Another paper, the Sunday Mail showed only 5% support for bombing and
69% favouring conflict resolution. Nevertheless the closest they got
to this in their headline was that Scots were 'split' on bombing (21
October 2001).
 TV news reporters have routinely covered demonstrations in Britain
and the US as if they represent only a small minority of opinion. The
underlying assumption is that demonstrators only represent themselves
rather than seeing them as an expression of a larger constituency of
dissent.
Thus BBC reporters claim that 'the opinion polls say that a majority
of UK public opinion backs the war' (BBC1 Panorama, 14 October 2001)
or in reporting the demonstrations in London that 'Despite the
strength of feelings here today those opposed to military action are
still very much in the minority' (BBC1 News 13 October 2001 21.50).
These reports are at best naĎve, at worst mendacious, and a clear
violation of the legal requirement of the BBC to be balanced. In the
US dissent has been markedly harder to find in the news media (Solomon
2001). The pictures of dead children featured in the rest of the world
press been hard to find (Lucas 2001) and the debate on the use of
cluster bombs and the 'daisy cutter' bombs (a weapon of mass
destruction) which were debated in the mainstream UK media in late
October were almost non existent on the television news in the US.
CNN continued to report under the heading 'America Strikes back' which
is of itself a woefully partial version of what was happening. Polling
companies in the US have given their respondents little choice of
policy options.
 Where they have asked a variety of questions answers opposing US
policy have been downplayed in media reports. The New York Times
reported on 25 September that 92% of respondents agreed that the US
should take military action against whoever is responsible for the
attacks'.
But the text of the report belied the 'support for war' headline
indicating that fully 78% felt that the US should wait until it was
certain who is responsible', before responding. As Edward Herman,
leading critic of US foreign Policy has written of the inadequacy of
polls which do not ask about extradition, civilian casualties, or
whether they would support action which breaches international law
(Herman 2001).
One little reported poll for Newsweek in early October showed that '58
percent of respondents said the U.S. government's support for Israel
may have been the cause' of the attacks, thus indicating that America
may have struck first rather that simply striking back as CNN would
have it.
Furthermore there is evidence that dissent in the US is being
underrepresented in responses to opinion polls. In a Gallup poll 31%
agreed that the attacks on the US had made them 'less likely to say
things that might be unpopular?'
(
http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/
). And opposition to the war is
pretty unpopular in media coverage of the war.
When Bill Maher, host of the Politically Incorrect chat show
criticised remarks by Bush describing the WTC attackers as 'cowards',
the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said: 'There are reminders to
all Americans that they need to watch what they do, and this is not a
time for remarks like that' (Usborne 2001). His show lost advertisers
and was dropped by some networks.
Conclusion
The most fundamental problem with the polls is that they assume the
public has perfect information. But, notwithstanding some dissent in
the press, the media in the UK, and even more emphatically in the US,
have been distorting what is happening in Afghanistan especially on
civilian casualties and alternatives to war.
To ask about approval of what is happening assumes that people
actually know what is happening.
But given that a large proportion of the population receives little
but misinformation and propaganda (especially on TV news which is most
peoples main source of information) then it is less surprising that
some should approve of what they are told is happening - that the US
and UK are doing their best to avoid civilian casualties, that Blair
exercises a moderating influence on Bush.
When they are asked their own preferences about what should happen
(rather than approval questions about what is happening) then there is
much less support, even in the US.
In other words there is no world support for the attack on Afghanistan
and public opinion in the US and UK is at best dubious and at worst
flatly opposed to what is happening. If Bush and Blair were really
democrats, they would never have started the bombing.
David Miller is a member of the Stirling Media Research Institute.
http://staff.stir.ac.uk/david.miller
*Author's observation. The author spent 10 days in the US between 26th
October and 4th November
and compared the news in the US with the debates taking place in the
media in the UK.
References
Agency WPS (2001) 'What the papers say. Part I', October 1, 2001,
Monday 'RUSSIANS WON'T SUPPORT PUTIN IF HE INVOLVES RUSSIA IN
RETALIATION' Zavtra, September 27, 2001, p. 1
BBC Worldwide Monitoring (2001) 'Public poll sees threat to Russia
from US military action' Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 1137
gmt 9 Oct 01. October 9, 2001, Tuesday, Gallup International (2001)
'Gallup International Poll on terrorism in the US',
http://www.gallup-international.com/surveys.htm
ICM (2001a) ' ICM RESEARCH / GUARDIAN POLL OCTOBER 2001', published in
the Guardian, 12
October.
http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/2001/guardian-afghan-poll-oct-200
1.htm
ICM (2001b) ' ICM RESEARCH / THE GUARDIAN AFGHAN POLL - OCTOBER 2001',
published in the
Guardian, 30 October.
http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/2001/guardian-afghan2-poll-oct-20
01.htm
Herman, E. (2001) 'Nuggets from a nuthouse', Z Magazine, November.
Lucas, S. (2001) 'How a free press censors itself', New Statesman, 12
November, 14-15.
Mayes, I. (2001) 'Leading lights', The Guardian, Saturday review, 20
October: 7.
MORI (2001a) 'First poll on the Afghanistan War: Britons fully support
Blair but fear retaliatory Strikes'
Poll for Tonight with Trevor McDonald, 11 October, 10.20pm, ITV.
http://www.mori.com/polls/granada.shtml
MORI (2001b) 'War of Afghanistan Poll' for the Mail on Sunday, 4
November 2001,
http://www.mori.com/polls/2001/ms011104.shtml
Mortimore, R. (2001) 'Commentary: Britain at war' 26 October,
http://www.mori.com/digest/2001/c011026.shtml
Solomon, N. (2001 'TV news: a militarised zone', Znet, 9 October,
http://www.zmag.org/solomonzone.htm
Usborne, D. (2001) 'Jokers and peaceniks face patriotic wrath',
Independent on Sunday, 30 September: 7. Yates, N. (2001) 'War on
Terror: the World questions America', The Mirror, 9 November.
This article sourced from 
http://www.mwaw.org

 to a US attack. 
cioè, la maggioranza dell'opinione pubblica mondiale preferirebbe
un'estradizione dei sospetti, alla guerra.
La scoperta dell'acqua calda!
Certamente se la domanda fosse stata:
"preferisci vivere in eterno o morire prima di compiere cent'anni?"
la maggioranza avrebbe optato per la prima possibilità. Io senz'altro
l'avrei fatto. Ma credo che a nessuno sfugga che le probabilità di ottenere
un'estradizione di Bin Laden da parte dello stato (si fa per dire) che lo
ospitava erano pressapoco le stesse di poter vivere in eterno.
Caro Giorgio Torrieri, ti rivelo una cosa: a parte i pazzi, nessuno vuole
mai la guerra. A volte però, ci sono dei realisti che si rendono conto che
in certi casi è inevitabile, mentre ci saranno sempre degli illusi che non
lo capiscono.
Saluti,
Marco

 to a US attack.
 
:cioè, la maggioranza dell'opinione pubblica mondiale preferirebbe
:un'estradizione dei sospetti, alla guerra.
: 
:La scoperta dell'acqua calda!
: Ma credo che a nessuno sfugga che le probabilità di ottenere
:un'estradizione di Bin Laden da parte dello stato (si fa per dire)
che lo
:ospitava erano pressapoco le stesse di poter vivere in eterno.
Boh, allora "nessuno" deve essere un pochino piu' aggiornato.
Come puoi vedere, ad esempio, a 
http://mirror.icnetwork.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=11427607&method=full
un'accordo che prevedeva l'estradizione di Bin Laden in Pakistan E'
stato
raggiunto fra i partiti islamici pachistani e Mullah Omar.
A rifiutare questo accordo e' stato il dittatore Pakistano, con
l'accordo
del dipartimento di stato USA, appunto perche' se questo accordo fosse
riuscito, la guerra ,che come dice pure Bush ha scopi ben diversi
dall'estradizione di Bin Laden, si sarebbe evitata.
:Caro Giorgio Torrieri, ti rivelo una cosa: a parte i pazzi, nessuno
vuole
:mai la guerra. A volte però, ci sono dei realisti che si rendono
conto che
:in certi casi è inevitabile, mentre ci saranno sempre degli illusi
che non
:lo capiscono.
in questo caso, gli illusi sono quelli che si bevono le favolette
propagandistiche.
GT

 World opinion opposes the attack on Afghanistan
ECCHISENEFOTTE???????????????
Tanto ormai sta tutto per finire, è solo questione di due-tre settimane.

 to a US attack.

:cioè, la maggioranza dell'opinione pubblica mondiale preferirebbe

:un'estradizione dei sospetti, alla guerra.

:

:La scoperta dell'acqua calda!

: Ma credo che a nessuno sfugga che le probabilità di ottenere

:un'estradizione di Bin Laden da parte dello stato (si fa per dire)

che lo

:ospitava erano pressapoco le stesse di poter vivere in eterno.

Boh, allora "nessuno" deve essere un pochino piu' aggiornato.

Come puoi vedere, ad esempio, a

http://mirror.icnetwork.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=11427607&method=full


un'accordo che prevedeva l'estradizione di Bin Laden in Pakistan E'

stato

raggiunto fra i partiti islamici pachistani e Mullah Omar.


Ehi, per chi non l'avesse letto vi posto la chicca più bella
che vi ho trovato

Yet in late September and early October, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamic
parties

                      
negotiated bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the September
11

                      
attacks. The deal was that he would be held under house arrest in Peshawar.

                      
According to reports in Pakistan (and the Daily Telegraph), this had both
bin

                      
Laden's approval and that of Mullah Omah, the Taliban leader.

 

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH


 propagandistiche.
Se ti bevi questo, mi sa che alle favolette propagandistiche
ci credi tu.
Junker

 propagandistiche.
 
:Se ti bevi questo, mi sa che alle favolette propagandistiche
:ci credi tu.
Senti un'attimo la mia, di favoletta propagandistica:
Gli Americani hanno rifiutato il compromesso perche' NON vogliono
processare
Bin Laden.  Lo vogliono semplicemente togliere di mezzo.
Tanto e' vero che le misure prese dall'inizio della guerra a oggi,
primo fra
tutti i tribunali militari, riguardano TUTTO furche' un processo
giudiziario.
E lo sai perche'?   Perche' in un vero processo forse Bin Laden
risulterebbe
colpevole.
Ma CERTAMENTE verrebbero alla luce i legami di Bin Laden non solo con
la CIA & co, ma con la stessa famiglia del presidente Bush.
Da' un'occhiata, per esempio, a
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1017-10.htm
http://www.rense.com/general14/BLolderbrother.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0928-11.htm
Qua', la ricerca di giustizia per le vittime del WTC c'entra come il
cavolo a merenda.  Se fosse quello il problema, non sarebbe stato
necessario ammazzare
neanche un civile.
GT

 dall'estradizione di Bin Laden, si sarebbe evitata.
Che l'estradizione di Bin Laden non basti e` evidente, ed e` sempre stato
evidente.  Non e` nemmeno lo scopo principale.  Gli scopi principali sono
di distruggere completamente Al Qaeda, e di rovesciare il governo Taliban
che l'ha tollerato.
Questi fini sono piu' che giustificati, e mi sarei opposto a qualsiasi soluzione
che li scambiasse per l'opportunita` di vedere Osama sull lettino coll'ago
nel braccio, cosa che in fondo non mi interessa.

 ... è solo questione di due-tre settimane.
Io ti crederei anche sulla parola, ma allora ti spiacerebbe spiegarmi
per quale motivo il figlio di papa' Bush continua a ripetere che questa
sara' una guerra lunga e faticosa?
Andrea
salo...@mediacomm.it

 
Come questa dell'accordo di "estradizione"? Questa sì che è una favoletta.
Marco

 nel braccio, cosa che in fondo non mi interessa.
Boh, io direi che i responsabili per i crimini dell'11/9 devono
sicuramente essere giudicati e puniti (non con la pena di morte, a cui
sono contrario).
Non so se sia possibile (dopotutto, i responsabili piu' diretti sono
tutti
morti) ,ma so che con questa guerra la giustizia c'entra pochissimo.
GT

 morti) ,ma so che con questa guerra la giustizia c'entra pochissimo.
Ma dimmi te quale guerra c'entra con la giustizia...
Ciao,
Filippo

 Ma dimmi te quale guerra c'entra con la giustizia...
   con la giustizia quella della S maiuscola nessuna guerra (ma neanche 
qualunque pace) puo' ovviamente "c'entrare". Nel senso che i morti 
innocenti rimarranno morti comunque vada, sia che domani Bin Laden venga 
ammazzato nella piu' dolorosa maniera possibile o che decida di pentirsi 
delle sue azioni e si faccia frate trappista. Esiste pero' una giustizia 
che e' alla nostra portata e cioe' quella che ci obbliga moralmente a 
rimuovere i pericoli per chi verra' dopo di noi o vive al nostro fianco. 
Solo un demente come Torrieri puo' pensare che Bin Laden (o regimi come 
i Talebani) non siano un "clear and present danger" per tutti e quindi 
vadano rimossi... al piu' presto possibile. Dopo, semmai, ci si siede e 
si parla ma adesso il tempo dei negoziati e' finito.
   Ciao,
   Emanuele

 neanche un civile.
E se vivessimo nel mondo perfetto non moriremmo neppure,
ma questi sono solo sogni...
Regards, Junker

salo...@mediacomm.it
 ha scritto:

Penso intendesse la guerra globale contro il terrorismo.

 2) i civili afgani sono piů civili di quelli nel WTC?
Ma guarda che nell'ottica dei c.d. anti-global quelli morti nelle torri non sono esseri umani.
Essi sono i perpetuatori di un sistema che compie il piů grande crimine che gli anti-global
subiscono ogni giorno sulla loro pelle. E cioč costringere un uomo a lavorare per trovare
i mezzi necessari alla sua sussistenza. Altrimenti non si spiega perchč durante il G-8 di
Genova uscě fuori che la gran massa dei protestatari viveva piů o meno di sussidi sociali
e lavoricchi.

 Henry Kissinger in Vietnam e Milosevic ridato ai Serbi.
 
:Il massacro di Sabra e Chatila è un fatto interno Libanese, a Sharon
:si imputa il non esser intervenuto, non di aver compiuto il massacro;
Davvero?  'Azzz... leggiti l'articolo sotto.
La Sersawi e' la tizia che ha iniziato il processo contro Sharon in Belgio.
------------
From: 
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=10710
 
Another war on terror. Another proxy army. Another mysterious
massacre. And now, after 19 years, perhaps the truth at last...  The
eyes of the world are on Afghanistan, but today a Belgian appeals
court is due to consider a case with disturbing contemporary
parallels. Robert Fisk reveals shocking new evidence that the full,
horrific story of the Sabra and Chatila massacres of 1982 has not yet
been told.
28 November 2001
Sana Sersawi speaks carefully, loudly but slowly, as she recalls the
chaotic, dangerous, desperately tragic events that overwhelmed her
just over 19 years ago, on 18 September 1982. As one of the survivors
prepared to testify against the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon
 who was then Israel's defence minister  she stops to
search her memory when she confronts the most terrible moments of her
life. "The Lebanese Forces militia [Phalangists] had taken us from our
homes and marched us up to the entrance to the camp where a large hole
had been dug in the earth. The men were told to get into it. Then the
militiamen shot a Palestinian. The women and children had climbed over
bodies to reach this spot, but we were truly shocked by seeing this
man killed in front of us and there was a roar of shouting and screams
from the women. That's when we heard the Israelis on loudspeakers
shouting, 'Give us the men, give us the men.' We thought, 'Thank God,
they will save us.'" It was to prove a cruelly false hope.
 
Mrs Sersawi, three months pregnant, saw her husband Hassan, 30, and
her Egyptian brother-in-law Faraj el-Sayed Ahmed standing in the crowd
of men. "We were told to walk up the road towards the Kuwaiti embassy,
the women and children in front, the men behind. We had been
separated. There were Phalangist militiamen and Israeli soldiers
walking alongside us. I could still see Hassan and Faraj. It was like
a parade. There were several hundred of us. When we got to the Cité
Sportif, the Israelis put us women in a big concrete room and the men
were taken to another side of the stadium. There were a lot of men
from the camp and I could no longer see my husband. The Israelis went
round saying 'Sit, sit.' It was 11am. An hour later, we were told to
leave. But we stood around outside amid the Israeli soldiers, waiting
for our men."
 
Sana Sersawi waited in the bright, sweltering sun for Hassan and Faraj
to emerge. "Some men came out, none of them younger than 40, and they
told us to be patient, that hundreds of men were still inside. Then
about 4pm, an Israeli officer came out. He was wearing dark glasses
and said in Arabic: 'What are you all waiting for?' He said there was
nobody left, that everyone had gone. There were Israeli trucks moving
out with tarpaulin over them. We couldn't see inside. And there were
jeeps and tanks and a bulldozer making a lot of noise. We stayed there
as it got dark and the Israelis appeared to be leaving and we were
very nervous. But then when the Israelis had moved away, we went
inside. And there was no one there. Nobody. I had been only three
years married. I never saw my husband again."
 
Today, a Belgian appeals court will begin a hearing to decide if Prime
Minister Sharon should be prosecuted for the massacre of Palestinian
civilians at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982.
(Belgian laws allow courts to try foreigners for war crimes committed
on foreign soil.) In working on this case, the prosecution believes
that it has discovered shocking new evidence of Israel's involvement.
 
The evidence centres on the Camille Chamoun Sports Stadium  the
"Cité Sportif". Only two miles from Beirut airport, the damaged
stadium was a natural holding centre for prisoners. It had been an
ammunition dump for Yasser Arafat's PLO and repeatedly bombed by
Israeli jets during the 1982 siege of Beirut so that its giant,
smashed exterior looked like a nightmare denture. The Palestinians had
earlier mined its cavernous interior, but its vast, underground
storage space and athletics changing-rooms remained intact. It was a
familiar landmark to all of us who lived in Beirut. At mid-morning on
18 September 1982  about the time Sana Sersawi says she was
brought to the stadium  I saw hundreds of Palestinian and
Lebanese prisoners, probably well over 1,000, sitting in its gloomy,
dark interior, squatting in the dust, watched over by Israeli soldiers
and plain-clothes Shin Beth (Israeli secret service) agents and men
who I suspected were Lebanese collaborators. The men sat in silence,
obviously in fear. From time to time, I noted, a few were taken away.
They were put into Israeli army trucks or jeeps or Phalangist vehicles
 for further "interrogation".
 
Nor did I doubt this. A few hundred metres away, inside the Sabra and
Chatila Palestinian refugee camps, up to 600 massacre victims rotted
in the sun, the stench of decomposition drifting over the prisoners
and their captors alike. It was suffocatingly hot. Loren Jenkins of
The Washington Post, Paul Eedle of Reuters and I had only got into the
cells because the Israelis assumed  given our Western
appearance  that we must have been members of Shin Beth. Many
of the prisoners had their heads bowed. But Israel's Phalangist
militiamen  still raging at the murder of their leader and
president elect Bashir Gemayel  had been withdrawn from the
camps, their slaughter over, and at least the Israeli army was now in
charge. So what did these men have to fear?
 
Looking back  and listening to Sana Sersawi today  I
shudder now at our innocence. My notes of the time, subsequently
written into a book about Israel's 1982 invasion and its war with the
PLO, contain some ominous clues. We found a Lebanese employee of
Reuters, Abdullah Mattar, among the prisoners and obtained his
release, Paul leading him away with his arm around the man's
shoulders. "They take us away, one by one, for interrogation," one of
the prisoners muttered to me. "They are Haddad [Christian militia]
men. Usually they bring the people back after interrogation, but not
always. Sometimes the people do not return them." Then an Israeli
officer ordered me to leave. Why couldn't the prisoners talk to me, I
asked? "They can talk if they want," he replied. "But they have
nothing to say."
 
All the Israelis knew what had happened inside the camps. The smell of
the corpses was now overpowering. Outside, a Phalangist jeep with the
words "Military Police" painted on it  if so exotic an
institution could be associated with this gang of murderers 
drove by. A few television crews had turned up. One filmed the
Lebanese Christian militiamen outside the Cité Sportif. He also filmed
a woman pleading to an Israeli army colonel called "Yahya" for the
release of her husband. (The colonel has now been positively
identified by The Independent. Today, he is a general in the Israeli
army.)
 
Along the main road opposite the stadium there was a line of Israeli
Merkava tanks, their crews sitting on the turrets, smoking, watching
the men being led from the stadium in ones or twos, some being set
free, others being led away by Shin Beth men or by Lebanese men in
drab khaki overalls. All these soldiers knew what had happened inside
the camps. One of the members of the tank crews, Lt Avi Grabovsky
 he was later to testify to the Israeli Kahan commission
 had even witnessed the murder of several civilians the
previous day and had been told not to "interfere".
 
And in the days that followed, strange reports reached us. A girl had
been dragged from a car in Damour by Phalangist militiamen and taken
away, despite her appeals to a nearby Israeli soldier. Then the
cleaning lady of a Lebanese woman who worked for a US television chain
complained bitterly that Israelis had arrested her husband. He was
never seen again. There were other vague rumours of "disappeared"
people.
 
I wrote in my notes at the time that "even after Chatila, Israel's
'terrorist' enemies were being liquidated in West Beirut". But I had
not directly associated this dark conviction with the Cité Sportif. I
had not even reflected on the fearful precedents of a sports stadium
in time of war. Hadn't there been a sports stadium in Santiago a few
years before, packed with prisoners after Pinochet's coup d'etat, a
stadium from which many prisoners never returned?
 
Among the testimonies gathered by lawyers seeking to indict Ariel
Sharon for war crimes is that of Wadha al-Sabeq. On Friday, 17
September 1982, she said, while the massacre was still (unknown to
her) underway inside Sabra and Chatila, she was in her home with her
family in Bir Hassan, just opposite the camps. "Neighbours came and
said the Israelis wanted to stamp our ID cards, so we went downstairs
and we saw both Israelis and Lebanese Forces [Phalangists] on the
road. The men were separated from the women." This separation 
with its awful shadow of similar separations at Srebrenica during the
Bosnian war  were a common feature of these mass arrests. "We
were told to go to the Cité Sportif. The men stayed put." Among the
men were Wadha's two sons, 19-year-old Mohamed and 16-year-old Ali and
her brother Mohamed. "We went to the Cité Sportif, as the Israelis
told us," she says. "I never saw my sons or brother again."
 
The survivors tell distressingly similar stories. Bahija Zrein says
she was ordered by an Israeli patrol to go to the Cité Sportif and the
men with her, including her 22-year-old brother, were taken away. Some
militiamen  watched by the Israelis  loaded him into a
car, blindfolded, she claims. "That's how he disappeared," she says in
her official testimony, "and I have never seen him again since."
 
It was only a few days afterwards that we journalists began to notice
a discrepancy in the figures of dead. While up to 600 bodies had been
found inside Sabra and Chatila, 1,800 civilians had been reported as
"missing". We assumed  how easy assumptions are in war 
that they had been killed in the three days between 16 September 1982
and the withdrawal of the Phalangist killers on the 18th, that their
corpses had been secretly buried outside the camp. Beneath the golf
course, we suspected. The idea that many of these young people had
been murdered outside the camps or after the 18th, that the killings
were still going on while we walked through the camps, never occurred
to us.
 
Why did we not think of this at the time? The following year, the
Israeli Kahan commission published its report, condemning Sharon but
ending its own inquiry of the atrocity on 18 September, with just a
one-line hint  unexplained  that several hundred people
may have "disappeared" at about the same time. The commission
interviewed no Palestinian survivors but it was allowed to become the
narrative of history. The idea that the Israelis went on handing over
prisoners to their bloodthirsty militia allies never occurred to us.
The Palestinians of Sabra and Chatila are now giving evidence that
this is exactly what happened. One man, Abdel Nasser Alameh, believes
his brother Ali was handed to the Phalange on the morning of the 18th.
A Palestinian Christian woman called Milaneh Boutros has recorded how,
in a truck-load of women and children, she was taken from the camps to
the Christian town of Bikfaya, the home of the newly assassinated
Christian president-elect Bashir Gemayel, where a grief-stricken
Christian woman ordered the execution of a 13-year-old boy in the
truck. He was shot. The truck must have passed at least four Israeli
checkpoints on its way to Bikfaya. And heaven spare me, I realise now
that I had even met the woman who ordered the boy's execution.
 
Even before the slaughter inside the camps had ended, Shahira Abu
Rudeina says she was taken to the Cité Sportif where, in one of the
underground "holding centres", she saw a retarded man, watched by
Israeli soldiers, burying bodies in a pit. Her evidence might be
rejected were it not for the fact that she also expressed her
gratitude for an Israeli soldier  inside the Chatila camp,
against all the evidence given by the Israelis  who prevented
the murder of her daughters by the Phalange.
 
Long after the war, the ruins of the Cité Sportif were torn down and a
brand new marble stadium was built in its place, partly by the
British. Pavarotti has sung there. But the testimony of what may lie
beneath its foundations  and its frightful implications 
might give Ariel Sharon further reason to fear an indictment.
------------
:Kissinger era segretario di stato di un paese già in guerra e non è
:accusato di nulla,
A parte il piccolissimo dettaglio dei Bombardamenti contro la Cambogia.
GT

 sono contrario).
Anch'io sono contrario alla pena di morte.  Le punizioni formali mi
interessano poco.  Voglio che sia permanentemente tolta ad Al Qaeda la
possibilita` di fare piu' questi scherzi.  Concesso cio`, bin Laden ed
i suoi, come *individui*, possono anche andare in pensione in qualche bel
posticino.  Che giova a me che marcino in carcere?
E` chiaro che non e` possibile impedirgli di rompere i coglioni mentre
la maggior parte resta libera ed inerme; dico solo ipoteticamente, se
fosse possibile.

 La Sersawi e' la tizia che ha iniziato il processo contro Sharon in Belgio.
Ehi Torrieri hai sentito che il processo Marta Russo si rifà?
Cioè quei due PM  erano veramente convinti che i due avessero ammazzato la ragazza, ma
un altro giudice ha detto che forse hanno sbagliato.
Hanno sbagliato magari perchè sono esseri umani, sai che gli esseri umani sbagliano.
Tu invece sei al di sopra di ogni giudizio, tu non puoi sbagliare, infatti non sei un essere umano,
tu sei un porco.

 Penso intendesse la guerra globale contro il terrorismo.
Questo mi inquieta un po', perche' allora non si sara' mai certi che
la guerra sia veramente finita. Intendo dire: potrebbe esserci sempre,
chissa' tra quanti anni, il Presidente USA (che sia il figlio di papa'
o un altro) che salta su e dice: "Sapete che c'e', siamo ancora in
guerra, stavolta il nostro nemico e' la Brontolovia". Situazione
di discreta incertezza, non credi?
Andrea
salo...@mediacomm.it

 è rifiutando il confronto armato che necessariamente si ottiene la pace...
Tutte belle parole, purche' siamo noi ad essere dalla parte del piu' forte.
Ma in realta' tutti possono ragionare in questo modo:
I giovani Palestinesi che si uccidono pur di far saltare un'autobus pieno
di Israeliani la pensano piu' o meno nei termini che esponi tu.
"Gli Israeliani ci ammazzano ogni giorno, i negoziati non hanno prodotto
nulla, c'e un solo linguaggio che questi mostri capiscono".
Ovviamente, non avendo i mezzi, attaccano nell'unico modo loro disponibile.
GT

 sara' una guerra lunga e faticosa?
Secondo me si tratta di un equivoco. Lui intende dire che trova questa
guerra lunga e faticosa perche' lo ha obbligato a studiare la geografia,
materia che lui, notoriamente non molto dotato, trova tremendamente ostica e
noiosa.
ciao
andrea

 wrote in message
9ce9c325.0112...@posting.google.com...

Queste non sono risposte: a parte lo shifting di argomento che è puramente
strumentale e cmq non pertinente, ti faccio osservare che qui nessuno è
andato a dar fastidio ai Taleban fino a quando LORO non hanno ospitato
e difeso OBL che certamente non mi sembra un gran campione della
libertà, da cui è la parte più debole (perchè tu hai associato gli afgani
alla parte più debole, mentre nella realtà nel ginepraio ci sono entrati
da loro) ad aver attaccato la più forte.
In quanto alle belle parole non sono più belle dei vari piagnistei che
ho sentito circa le vittime civili del conflitto: ma, ripeto, le vittime del
WTC erano meno civili?
Circa quello che pensano i giovani palestinesi concordo: l'errore è
stato abbandonare il sud del Libano e fornirgli la convinzione di poter
ottenere con il terrorismo molto di più di quello che potrebbero ottenere
al tavolo negoziale; personalmente ritengo che l'atteggiamento di
Sharon sia quello giusto: pagerete molto più caro dei danni che
provocherete.
Non sarà bello ma, non so se te ne sei accorto, il mondo non è perfetto.
Bye, Junker