Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Sharon ...50 anni di atrocita'...

From Qibya to Rafah : Sharon's 50 year War Against the Palestinian
People
By Casey Patrick Reilly  - Palestine Centre
http://www.palestinecenter.org/
Fifty years ago today, Ariel Sharon, Israel's current prime
minister, first leapt into history's spotlight. Although his
name was probably not yet widely known, his actions earned
the condemnation - in the strongest terms - of the United
Nations, the United States State Department and huge segments
of enlightened world opinion. His own government denied knowledge of
his activities. Sharon's career, and his journey into international
infamy, began on the night of 14 October 1953 , as he and an 'elite'
commando squad designated Unit 101 crept into the sleepy village of
Qibya in the West Bank (then under Jordanian administration.) They had
orders calling for "blowing up a number of houses...and hitting the
inhabitants" that eventually evolved into a blanket exhortation for
"maximum killing." (Israeli Defense Force orders in IDFA 644/56//207
cited in Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims, New York , NY : Vintage
Books 2001 pp. 278)
Today, although his modus operandi remains the same, Sharon can be
called a 'man of peace' by the leader of the 'free world' without
raising a public outcry. How is a man who has made a career out of
perpetrating atrocities that appall the world still able to hold onto
power, even winning elections by a wide margin in a 'civilized'
country?  Why was his madness not contained half a century ago, in
order to save countless lives?
Sharon 's Unit 101 had been created and put under his command by the
'activists' in Israel 's first government. This was the faction that
included such luminaries as David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan who
shared the belief that Arabs only understand force, and felt that
Israel needed to use that force as often and as aggressively as
possible. Sharon 's unit was meant to provide a semi-clandestine means
to deliver devastating 'retaliatory' attacks against Palestinians and
neighboring Arab populations.
The attack on Qibya was ostensibly in retaliation for an attack that
had occurred two days earlier inside the Green Line in which a woman
and two children had been killed by a grenade. Despite the fact that
"the murderers had no know or suspected connection with Qibya"
(Chomsky, Noam. The Fateful Triangle, Boston : South End Press, 1983
pp. 383) the village was targeted and Sharon 's men were readied. The
UN body that oversaw the border condemned the action, and the
Jordanian representatives to this body "took it upon themselves to
prevent such atrocities in the future." (Moshe Sharret's journal,
cited in  Hirst, David. The Gun and the Olive Branch, New York, NY:
Nation Books 2003 pp. 307) The commander of the Jordanian armed forces
requested Israeli bloodhounds to help track the perpetrators into
Jordan, but was met with silence. Moshe Sharret , Israel 's foreign
minister at the  time, noted these occurrences in his journal and
wondered whether it was "wise to retaliate." But it was too late.
Sharon and his men carried out their mission with aplomb. The UN
observers who arrived at the scene only two hours after Unit 101 had
finished its murderous attack described "bullet-riddled bodies near
the doorways and multiple bullet hits on the doors of the demolished
houses" which "indicated that the inhabitants had been forced to
remain inside until their homes were blown up over them." Sharon later
tried to claim that he and his men were unaware that people were in
their houses in the middle of the night and that the inhabitants
should be blamed for their own deaths for hiding in "cellars and
attics" (Morris pp. 278) from the Unit 101 attackers. But Jordanian
pathologists reported that most of the deaths had been caused by
bullet wounds. (Ibid .)
The UN observer continues: "Witnesses were uniform in describing their
experience as a night of horror during which Israeli soldiers moved
about in their village blowing up buildings, firing into doorways and
windows with automatic weapons and throwing hand grenades." Estimates
differ, but no credible source has counted fewer than 60 innocent
civilians murdered that night by Sharon and those under his command.
According to the official history of the Israeli paratroopers, of
which Sharon 's Unit 101 was a subsidiary, "the operation at Qibya was
to be distinguished from other operations by its purposes and its
effects. The dynamiting of dozens of houses in Qibya was an ambitious
undertaking surpassing anything in the past. Once and for all, it
washed away the stain of the defeats that Zahal (the Israeli army) had
suffered in its reprisal operations." ( Paratroopers' Book cited in
Hirst pp. 308) The language is stunning when one considers it is
written about a massacre of civilians in an undefended village in the
middle of the night that the New York Post at the time compared to the
Nazi massacre at Lidice . It is less shocking however, when put next
to Sharon 's statements about the 'assassination' of Sheikh Salah
Shehadeh of Hamas, which took the lives of a dozen sleeping children
as well. Sharon described that operation as a "great success." He has
never been inspired enough by the values that he claims to be
defending to even adopt the conventional hypocritical Western
expressions of regret for deliberate ('collateral') murder of innocent
civilians. Compare Sharon's - and official Israeli history's - gleeful
celebration of massacres and terror with the repetitive abject
condemnations and denunciations that any Arab, Muslim or other enemy
of the week is forced to make after any operation carried out by any
other Muslim or Arab. Witness the double standard. Sharon can lead a
death squad into a village and slaughter civilians wholesale, or order
a bombing of an apartment building that leads to a slaughter of
civilians, congratulate himself publicly and unapologetically and
still stand as a staunch defender of Western civilization - i.e. a man
of peace. But a minute's delay in the ritual denunciation of the most
minor Hamas operation on the part of Yasser Arafat - despite the fact
that Arafat does not personally participate in these operations nor
order them carried out, and has in the past actually ordered Hamas
members attacked and killed - proves his inveterate love of terror,
bloodshed and mayhem.
By the morning of 15 October 1953 it should have been clear to any
independent observer that a man like Ariel Sharon would have no place
in forging a peaceful future for the people of Palestine, Israel and
the neighboring countries. If operations similar to his were carried
out today - by an Arab or Muslim - there would be no hesitation in
describing them as terrorism of the most condemnable character. In
allowing and even encouraging this man to continue his climb to the
highest levels of power in Israeli society all those involved, in
Israel and the United States, are responsible for the tens of
thousands * of deaths he has caused since his Qibya days. It is only
to be hoped that some force, preferably the people of Israel , can end
his career of violence and murder and bring the region one step closer
to peace.
*Credible estimates of the number of dead during Israel 's invasion of
Lebanon in the summer of 1982, led by Sharon as Defense Minister,
reach 20,000.
*********************************
Casey Patrick Reilly is a writer and researcher at the Palestine
Center.
The above text may be used without permission but with proper
attribution to the Palestine Center and the author.

caused by bullet wounds. (Ibid .)
Il che non dimostra che sapevano che erano nelle case e che sono stati
costretti a restare all'interno delle stesse.
-Stefano