Ali is a third-year physiological science student.
By Mujtaba Ali
In their submission “Palestinian
leader fosters global terrorism“ (Daily Bruin, Viewpoint,
Dec. 6, 2001), Benjamin Nabati and Jacob Zakaria suggest that the
leadership of Yasser Arafat is the only obstacle impeding hopes of
peace in the Middle East.
What they fail to acknowledge, however, is the sadistic nature
of and history of atrocities committed by Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon. The writers state, “If (Arafat) had delivered,
the attacks of the intifada of the past 15 months would not have
occurred.” What the writers do not mention is that Sharon
himself provoked the recent onset of violence when he and an armed
entourage visited a site holy to both Arabs and Israelis last
September.
Over the years, Sharon has acquired an infamous reputation as a
violent man who feels the military is the only solution to
political issues. Sharon, with his involvement in the Israeli
Defense Force, has been practicing state-sponsored terrorism for
the past 50 years.
In the summer of 1953, Sharon built the notorious IDF terrorist
group, known as Unit 101, whose main purpose was to conduct
“retaliatory strikes” against the neighboring Arab
states. Unit 101 was generally independent from the regular IDF
forces and was responsible for many atrocities, including the
massacres of civilians and the destruction of villages in the
Jordanian West Bank. Most notorious was the raid and destruction of
the Qibya village on Oct. 14, 1953 in which 40 homes occupied by
Arab families were blown up without warning. More than 50
innocent men, women and children lost their lives.
In the 1956 Suez War in Egypt, Sharon employed ruthless tactics
and was charged with committing war crimes in his execution of
Egyptian POWs. His actions led IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan to
force Sharon’s withdrawal from Egypt.
Sharon was recalled to military service in the October 1973 War,
where he led several operations. During the Great Bitter Lake
Battle, which led to the crossing of the Suez Canal towards
mainland Egypt, Sharon again committed war crimes against
Egyptians, and once again clashed with the chief of staff and
defense minister, resulting in his dismissal from the IDF.
Upon being appointed Israeli Defense Minister in 1981, Sharon
was held responsible for his involvement in the infamous massacre
at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in southern Lebanon on
Sept. 16, 1982. Sharon and then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem
Begin called for the murderous rampage of innocent, unarmed
Palestinian refugees ““ mostly women, children and the
elderly.
Western journalists who reported the incident described in
horrifying detail the piles of dead men, raped and mutilated women,
and murdered children. The International Committee of the Red
Cross reported 2,400 fatalities in the massacre. This figure was a
modest estimate of the true number of lives lost, since many of the
victims were buried in mass graves dug by the Israeli army and its
ally, a Lebanese-Christian militia.
On Dec. 16, 1982 the United Nations General Assembly condemned
the massacre and declared it to be an act of genocide. The
rape of Sabra and Shatilla earned Sharon the condemnation of the
world as well as denunciation by the Israeli parliament, the
Knesset. He was forced to resign as Defense Minister in
1983.
The number of times Israel has been condemned by the United
Nations should serve as an indication of the type of belligerent
activity it carries out. Many of the U.N. resolutions against
Israel were passed unanimously ““ the United States,
Israel’s longtime ally, was among the few countries opposing
the resolutions.
Nabati and Zakaria state: “Israelis do not intentionally
go after Palestinian civilians. The Israeli Defense Force gives
more than 48 hours of warning time before a building verified as
housing terrorist functions is destroyed, to clear away.”
This statement does not explain the death of 11-year-old Khalil
al-Mughrabi who was playing soccer with a group of children on July
7, 2001, when a burst of gunfire hit him in the head, killing him
and wounding two of his friends, ages 10 and 12.
The IDF terrorist who committed this murder was vindicated by
the Israeli Military Advocate General’s office as having
“acted with restraint and control” in an attempt to
disperse nearby protesters by “firing live gunfire into an
open area distant from the rioters.” Those bullets fired
by the soldier somehow found their way to a playground and into an
innocent boy’s head. This is not an isolated
incident. It is among the hundreds of terrorist acts committed
by the IDF on a regular basis.
The aforementioned quote neither explains the numbers of
fatalities since the start of the present conflict, statistics
which speak for themselves. Of the approximately 961 people
who have died in the past 15 months, 739 have been Palestinian; 152
of whom were under the age of 18.
So, after this dose of easily verifiable evidence, employ some
rational thought and decide who the aggressor in this conflict
really is: Sharon ““ a sadistic butcher, currently on trial in
Belgium for war crimes, condemned by the international community as
well as the Israeli people; or Arafat, who had arrested 180 people
in the week following the Jerusalem suicide bombing in December,
and who (along with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin) won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1994?