ZGram - 8/16/2001 - "Orient House" - Part III

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

August 16, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Up-front, please do a bit of cyber activism.  Take the time to write BBC
America and ask them to air "The Accused" (about Ariel Sharon's role in the
bloody Sabra and Shatila massacre) here in the USA.

Just click on the following link, fill out the
form and send it to  "BBC America":

       http://www.bbcamerica.com/contactus_suggestion.html
Now to my series:

This Robert Fisk article is part of my "Orient House" series.  Fisk, as you
will remember, writes for the Independent, but his articles are flooding
the Internet and are distributed by MER.  I know this one will be
particularly meaningful to you in understanding what is going on with the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  It was written on August 11 - five days ago.
Since then, a lot has happened, as you will see in subsequent ZGrams of
this "Orient House" series.

By the way, many more members of the International Solidarity movement have
arrived on location and are offering their lives as "human shields" by
dispersing anonymously into the Palestinian communities and daring the
Israelis to attack the villages, thus creating a public relations nightmare
for them.

[START]

    11 August  2001

    Who trains the Israeli border police? Who, in  heaven's name, taught
them to help sacrifice the world's sympathy for  Israel by sending horses
and baton-wielding police into a crowd of  American, Jewish and Christian
"peace" activists in front of 20  television cameras?

 For, while Israelis were burying their dead  after Thursday's murderous
suicide bombing, the country's police force  was proving how quickly it
could turn into a rabble.

 It  didn't have to be like this. The "Women in Black" and the Jewish and
Christian groups sat on the road the moment the horses advanced, then
linked arms. The Palestinians ran away but none of them was likely to
break through the barricades towards Orient House; there was a legion of
border guards and soldiers, riot visors down, sticks in hand, horses
pawing the ground.

  Earlier, ladies in long frocks and girls  wearing sun hats tried to talk
to the cops in Hebrew. Some of the police  would clearly have preferred to
have left it at that. One of them wanted  to chat about Israel's need for
peace, Arafat's "stupidity" in not  accepting Barak's offers at Camp David.
We chatted about the police  horses, the oldest of them 13 years old. "It's
time for his bar  mitzvah," one of the cops announced. It was like that; a
bit overdone,  far too many policemen, but not really hostile.

 Then a  border policeman wearing shades walked through the barrier and
ordered  the horses forward. The "peace" folk began crying and a horseman
grabbed  a banner which read: "All human life is sacred: end the
occupation."

 And then a kind of mild insanity seemed to grip the  police. One of them
began smashing his baton onto the iron barrier like  a centurion, shouting
and hammering the stick on the metal. Two cops  began pushing and shoving
two middle-aged women, another used his baton  to punch a youth in the
chest.

 And so the cameras  whirred and snapped as European and American ladies,
Christians and Jews  alike, held up Palestinian flags in front of angry
policemen armed with  Galil assault rifles. Five of them were arrested.

 When the  police advanced, the Westerners linked arms and sat on the road
while  the Palestinians present turned and ran. The cops had not
experienced  this before; these odd ladies and rather elderly gentlemen
were not  afraid. They simply waited to be ridden over. The police
stopped.

 Then one of them grabbed the Israeli girl; and when she  reached for his
identity tag, he grabbed her neck and pushed her to the  road. Here, the
cameras moved in - until an officer restrained the  policeman. She shouted
for his ID in Hebrew and she too was  arrested.

 Yes, of course, the Israeli police were fearful;  fearful of
demonstrators, of suicide bombers, of opposition, of anyone  who might
protest the seizure of Orient House. But, in less than two  hours, they
helped to turn Israel's tragedy into a nasty bit of  bullying. An elderly
French tourist watched.  "Why on earth are  they behaving like this?" he
asked incredulously.

 We  left him in his ignorance.

[END]

Zundelsite comment:  The French tourist can be forgiven for his ignorance
because the French mainstream media have never critically examined, much
less reported on Israel's violent birth, its arrogant claim to represent
"God's Chosen People" and its racist doctrine of Jewish superiority
responsible for its apartheid legislation relegating the original
inhabitants of Palestine to second class citizenship having to live in
Israeli occupied Bantustans.

This kind of political set-up can only result in treating all non-Israelis,
non-Zionists as less than they think they are - as "Untermenschen", to use
a term well-known.  "We are all Palestinians to the Jews" - as one of my
Zgram correspondents puts it.

That's what the world is finally finding out!  The gentle Palestinians are
ripping the spin-doctors' veil right off the ugly faces of the   bullying
torturers!  High time!

As Fisk has put it and as many people repeat it, if these Israeli thugs in
uniform behave like this towards people in front of running TV cameras,
what do you think they do to their victims when nobody is there to watch
them?

This is done with American acquiescence - and largely with American and
other Western countries' money.  It is done with the world's acquiencence
and silence.  It will get much worse - unless good people step in and speak
up.