# ANTENNA SHARON | 3:17:00 pm |

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Forgotten Massacre: Sept 16, 1982 - Sabra and Shatila Holocoust

Before sunset on Thursday, 16 September 1982, Maronite Christian forces, covered by units of the "Israeli" invasion army, stormed the camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. The massacre continued for approximately 36 hours. During the operation, the "Israeli" army surrounded the camps, preventing anyone from entering or leaving. In addition, the "Israeli" soldiers provided the militia with logistic support, including the setting off incandescent bombs at night to facilitate the militia's mission.

Information about the massacre began to leak out after a number of children and women fled to the Gaza hospital in the Shatila camp, and informed the doctors of what was happening. Likewise, news of the massacre reached some foreign journalists on Friday morning, 17 September 1982, but the bloodletting went on until Saturday noon, September 18. 3297 Palestinian civilians were killed in the massacre.

The massacre was carried out under the supervisions of Ariel Sharon, then the Defense minister and the architect of the invasion. But the "Israeli" military court that investigated the massacre shamelessly claimed, "that the General's commands were misunderstood", and ridiculously fined him an equivalent of 14 American cents!

Umm Ghazi Younes Madhi, one of the survivors of the massacre, said: "they stormed the camp at 5:30 on September 16. We didn't hear any gunfire at first, since they were killing people with axes and knives. They would bury the people alive with bulldozers. We ran away barefooted with bullets on our heels. They slaughtered my husband and three of my children in the massacre. They killed my husband in the bedroom with one of the children. I saw them slaughtering a pregnant woman with her husband. My niece came out of the house and they grabbed her and slaughtered her in the street. They did the same thing to her small son, who was in her arms."

Munir Ahmad al-Doukhi, who at the time was 13 years old, survived three attempts on his life. He says, "I had been placed under the responsibility of armed men wearing filthy clothes, and who didn't speak Arabic well. With me was a group of women and children who had been dragged out of their houses. They fired on the women and children, and I was injured in my right foot. My mother was wounded in her shoulder and in her leg. When they asked the wounded to stand up so that they could take them to the hospital, I pretended to be dead. Then they fired on them all over again. So that's how I survived the second attempt to kill me. But my mother had already died. And on the morning of the next day, they shot at me when they found out that I was still alive. They wounded me and thought I was dead, so they left me alone."

Sumaya Qasim Bashir says, "My husband and my son were killed in the massacre. The most horrible sight I saw was the sight of our neighbor, Hajja Munira Amru. First they slaughtered her four-month-old nursing child before her eyes, then they slaughtered her."

An American nurse by the name of Jill Drew tells of an eyewitness who said that they tied up the children, and then slaughtered them like sheeps in the Sabra and Shatila camps. They would line people up in the sports stadium, then form firing squads to shoot them dead.

Ali Khalil Afana, who was 12 years old at the time, says, "It was 11:30. We heard the sound of a big explosion. It was followed by a woman's voice, then all of a sudden they broke into our house. They came rushing to us like wolves, searching the rooms. My mother screamed for help, and they rained her with bullets. My father reached out his hand in search of something to defend himself with. But their bullets were too fast for him. I didn't have enough strength to scream, since they'd fallen on me with knives. I don't know what happened after that. But I found myself in the hospital the way you see me now: with my head and my legs all wrapped up. A classmate of mine who was visiting his mother in the hospital told me that our house was nothing but a pile of rubble. My aunt came to visit me yesterday, so I asked her what had happened to my three brothers. But she didn’t answer me! They’re all dead. I know it." And with that, hot tears rolled down his little cheeks.

A woman from Sabra camp tells her story by saying "I, my husband, and my baby, were about to sleep on 15 September at night, after we'd finished straightening up the things that had been destroyed by the bombing. At that time we were feeling reassured because the Lebanese - or so we thought - were surrounding the camp. But the horrors were approaching, because [not long after this] scores of soldiers and fighters came in shooting and blowing up the houses. We went out to see what was going on, and when we saw what we saw, we tried to run away. But they stopped us. They pushed my husband, my father and my brother toward a wall and stood them up with their backs to it. Then they made them raise their hands and showered them with a torrent of bullets, and they fell down dead. When my mother and I screamed, they pulled us by the hair toward a deep hole that had been caused by a missile. But just then they received orders to move somewhere else, so they left without firing on us. Then we fled."

Another woman speaks of how they came into her house when a neighbor boy was visiting her. They fell upon him with an axe and split his head in two. She says, "When I screamed, they tied me up with a rope that they had with them. Then they threw me onto the floor and three of them took turns raping me. By the time they left I was unconscious, and when I finally woke up, I was in a civil defense ambulance."

Some militiamen would crush Palestinians to death under the wheels of their military vehicles. And at the same time they would make the sign of the cross over bodies of the victims. A Danish television cameraman by the name of Pederson filmed a number of army trucks filled with women, children and elderly people, headed toward some unknown destination.

People in Sabra and Shatila were killed indiscriminately, and a large number of women were raped. There were many people who raised white flags as a sign of surrender, especially children and women. However, they were among the first victims of the massacre. Among them were more than fifty women who went to surrender, but were all killed.

The attack on the cAkka (Acre) hospital took place on Friday morning at 11:30. It involved the murder of doctors and patients. A Palestinian nurse by the name of Intisar Isma'il (19 years old), whose disfigured corpse was found later, was raped ten times, then killed. The attackers killed many sick and wounded, as well as some of the hospital workers and local residents who had come to the hospital for refuge. Then they forced forty patients to get into trucks. They were not seen again. During the massacre, the terrorists killed physicians Ali Uthman and Samiya al-Khatib inside the hospital. And they emptied their cartridges into the head of a fourteen-year-old wounded boy named Muwaffaq Ascad as he lay in bed.

Bulldozers set about digging mass graves in broad daylight in south Shatila with the help of the "Israelis".

Roberto Soro, a Beirut correspondent for the American magazine Time, relates what he saw after entering the camps as follows "There was nothing but piles of debris and corpses. The bodies were piled on top of one another, including children, women and men. Some of them had been shot in the head, and some of them had had their heads cut off. Some of them had their hands tied behind them, and some of them had their hands tied to their legs. Parts of some heads had flown off in different directions, and there was the body of a woman holding her child to her bosom; both of them had been killed by the same bullet. The bodies had been removed from one place to another with "Israeli" bulldozers. One woman stood over a maimed corpse screaming, "My husband! Oh Lord, who will help me now? And all of my children have been killed! My husband, they've slaughtered him! What will I do? Oh Lord, Oh Lord!"

A report submitted by a correspondent of the Washington Post, recorded what he saw as follows: "Entire houses had been destroyed by bulldozers, turned into piles of bodies atop more bodies as if they were so many dolls. And over the corpses, the holes which appeared in the walls of the houses indicated that they had been shot to death. On a short dead-end street we came across two girls, one of them about 11 years old and the other only a few months!!! They were both lying on the ground with their legs tied up, and there was a small hole in each one's head. A few steps away from them, on the wall of a house bearing the numbers 422 and 424, they had fired on eight men. Every street, no matter how small, had its story to tell. On one street there were sixteen corpses piled on top of each other in peculiar positions, and nearby there lay a 40-year-old woman with a bullet between her breasts. Near a small shop an elderly man about 70 years old had fallen, with his hand still extended in a gesture as if to plead for mercy. His dust-covered head looked toward a woman now beneath the rubble."

Husayn Racd, 46, states, "the terrorists beheaded people with cleavers, and while they were at it they hurled curses and insults at their victims. They were slaughtering women and children right and left." And he adds, "The residents started running away in the direction of the multinational forces. But they didn't protect them, especially in the Hamra area."

Mahmoud Hashim, a 15-years old witness of the massacre relates, "It was a Friday night and I was sleeping with some friends of mine in the camp. At about 11:00 we heard gunfire, but we didn't think anything of it. So we slept through till the next morning, but we woke up to find nothing in the camp but dogs and cats. We went out to see what was going on, and when we came near the Galilee School, we found a pile of corpses.

The fruit vendor where my family lives after our house in the Sabra and Shatila camp was destroyed by "Israeli" shelling at the beginning of the invasion. It was there that I first heard about the massacre." Then he continued to say, "I met up with a British journalist who asked me to go with him to the camp entrance on Saturday morning, 17 September 1982 so that he could record the events of the massacre with his camera. I agreed to go with him. When we got to the western end of the camp, we were surprised to find a pile of corpses near the al-Doukhi shop. The shop owner had been beaten on the head with an ax, and beside him there was a young man. All the rest were elderly people. We kept on going until we reached the Haraj crossroads, where the journalist saw nine corpses under a truck. Some of them had their hands tied, and bullets had penetrated the surface of a nearby wall. The scene indicated that they had been subjected to a mass execution. About ten meters from this appalling sight, we found an elderly woman holding a Lebanese identity card. It appeared that she had been trying to convince her killers that she was Lebanese and not Palestinian. And twenty meters further on, we found a number of horses that had been killed, among them the corpse of a man with his head cut off. It turned out later to be my uncle, Abdul Hadi Hashim, 49. After we'd gone a little farther we came upon six cadavers that had been tied together with chains. The heads of two of them looked as though they had been hollowed out, as if they had been beaten with axes. We were so at a loss and overcome with horror, we decided to go back the way we'd come. By this time the British journalist had taken scores of photos of these scenes. Meanwhile we heard a sound nearby. The journalist became distraught and hurried to get us out of the camp on the motorcycle we'd come in on. As we were leaving sprays of bullets were fired at us, which made him drive all the faster."

Recalling memories from inside the camp, the eyewitness goes on saying, "We saw cadavers piled up in a corner to our right, only fifty yards from the entrance to the Shatila camp. There were more than twelve bodies of young men whose feet and hands had been tied around each other, and they were still in the throes of death. Every one of them had received a bullet near his temple that had gone through his brain. On the right side of the necks of some of them there were bright red and black scars. I saw a little girl no more than three years old who had been thrown into the road as though she were some doll someone had thrown away. Her white dress was spattered with mud, blood and dirt, and a bullet had blown away the back of her head.

"When the armed men stormed the camp, families had gone to sleep and were in their bedrooms. I saw bodies lying on the floors or piled under chairs. And it appeared that many women had been raped, since their clothes were found strewn on the ground. I saw a mother holding her little boy, both of them with bullets through their heads, naked women whose hands had been bound behind their backs, a suckling child with a shattered head and floating " a suckling child, and they lined them up carefully in a circle, placing the head in the middle. At Sabra and Shatila the prevailing impression is that the killers deliberately aimed to kill children in particular."

After the terrorists had withdrawn, survivors wandered frantically about in search of relatives whose bodies were now somewhere among the piles of cadavers or buried beneath the rubble. Of course, they were still living the nightmare of the massacre they had just been through.

Three thousand two hundred ninety-seven (3,297) men, women and children (out of a total of 20,000 residents in the camps at the beginning of the massacre) were killed within forty hours, between September 16-18, 1982. Among the dead bodies, 136 Lebanese were found; 1,800 victims were killed in the streets and alleys of the camp, while 1,097 were killed in the Gaza Hospital and 400 others in the cAkka Hospital.

Commenting on the massacre in the "Israeli" Knesset, Menachem Begin described the Palestinian resistance fighters as "animals that walk on two legs". And after the announcement of the news of the massacre, an officer of the Lebanese Maronite Kata'ib forces maintained: "the swords and rifles of the Christians will stalk the Palestinians wherever they go. And ultimately, we'll do away with them."

Another Kata'ibi officer told an American journalist, "We've waited long years to be able to storm the camps of West Beirut. The "Israelis" chose us because we're better than they are at this sort of 'house to house' operation." And when the journalist asked him if they had taken prisoners, he replied, "These operations aren't the kind in which prisoners are taken."

Radio London reported via one of its correspondents that while the killings were going on, "Israeli" soldiers surrounded the camps with tanks, shooting anything that moved.

AS: "They" tried to make us forget this by "creating" Sept 11... what a bloody September right.

# ANTENNA SHARON | 5:59:00 pm |

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

World Zionist Organization (WZO)

Introducing WZO: World Zionist organization is the international body that represented the Zionists, and took upon its shoulders achieving their goals. The organization was found by Theodore Herzl, an Austrian Jewish Journalist, who organized the Foundation Congress, the First Zionist Congress, in Basle, Switzerland in the year 1897, that declared the establishment of WZO. WZO was not the first Zionist body, but it was the most sophisticated, well-organized and most capable one that had succeeded, by the end of the day, to unite all the Zionist efforts under its flagship. Hibbat Zion (Lovers of Zion) was established before WZO, and pioneered the settlement activity in Palestine, but it was unable to become a pan-Jewish movement, Herzl had indeed, done nothing more than capitalizing on the efforts and ideas of this body, though in a much organized manner. Soon after the establishment of the WZO, all the branches of Hibbat Zion became members in the new larger organization.

WZO opened its doors for individuals and institutions, every Jewish individual who paid the Shekel (the name they gave for their membership fee) was eligible of membership, and of the right to be represented in the Zionist Congress. Each 100 members were represented by one envoy to this Congress that convened annually to take all the important decisions, including electing the organization’s president. Later on, with the growth of membership, the representation rules changed from one envoy for each 400 to one for each 2000, or one for 1000 of those living inside Palestine. Currently the membership is opened only to organizations and institutions, and no longer for individuals.

The Congress used to convene in centers of Jewish demographic concentration, in major cities like Basle, Hamburg, London, Vienna, Zurich, Geneva, and finally in Jerusalem. The mode of communication initially was German, the language of most Jewish leaders, of whom very few spoke Hebrew, then an almost extinct language. The Congress convened every year, then every two years and finally every four years. Currently the Zionist Congress convenes only in Jerusalem once every four years, and the mode of communication is Modern Hebrew.

The first Zionist Congress, that declared the establishment of WZO, had also established the “Colonial Jewish Trust”, mainly from membership fees, contributions and donations, to provide funds for the Zionist colonial activities. Later, other financial bodies were established until a very complex system of interconnected large funds was established for the WZO.

The history of WZO is composed of two important phases. The first was before the establishment of the Zionist state “Israel” when it acted as a virtual government of the Jewish people worldwide. After the formation of the Zionist State, many Zionists, had, however, believed that the WZO fulfilled its mission and should be dissolved. But others maintained that while the “Israeli” government represents the Jews in Palestine, the WZO should continue to play the role of the representative of the Jews worldwide, and as such back up the efforts of the “Israeli” government. For some of its history, WZO was tied to another entity, the Jewish Agency, which was almost synonymous to WZO for most of the time. Most prominent figures of the WZO were Theodore Herzl, the founder, Chaim Weizman who reconciled political Zionism with Pragmatic Zionism in a trend known as Synthetic Zionism, and David Ben Gurion, the declared founder of “Israel”.

Structure of WZO: As we have seen, membership of the WZO, previously opened to individuals, is currently limited to organizations. Each organization should have at least 20,000 members to become a qualified member represented in the Zionist Congress, where seats are divided as follows: 38% for Zionist Organizations inside “Israel”, mainly “Israeli” political parties; 29% for the American Zionist Organization AZO, and the rest, 33%, for Zionist organizations around the world.

The Main administrative bodies of the WZO are:
1.The Zionist Congress: is the supreme authority of the organization. It was established in 1897 and initially convened annually, but later once every two years and now once every four years. Its permanent headquarter is in Jerusalem (Al Quds). The Congress had enacted the constitution of WZO, and is now the only qualified body to amend it. Members of the Congress are elected based on certain quota arrangement. Currently, every member organization chooses its representatives according to its own procedure. Until today, the Zionist Congress convened 32 times, 22 of them were in various European cities and, and the remaining 10, since the establishment of “Israel” in 1948, in Jerusalem (Al Quds). During difficult times, especially during the first and second World Wars, the congress was unable to convene regularly, but important decisions were still taken by whoever of the Zionist leaders that can be physically present. The two most important of those was the 1920 Conference of London that shifted the strategic attention of the Zionists from the Ottomans and Germany to Britain, and brought Chaim Wiezman to the Presidency of the organization, and that of Biltmore in 1942, which decided to have the U.S.A. as the new major ally. Baltimore conference had also succeeded in achieving reconciliation within the Zionist body itself, giving a strong momentum to the WZO.

2.The Zionist General Council: It carries on all the duties of the Congress when it is not in session, including important decisions and the supervision of their implementation. The Zionist General Council convenes at least once a year and is headed by a Presidium that convenes every 4-6 weeks. The General Council played a key role in times of war, and was the body that organized the Zionist Conferences.

3.The Zionist Executive Committee: It represented the Congress and the General Council, and formed the executive authority of the WZO. Before the establishment of “Israel”, this body acted as the government of the Jewish people around the world, and its members constituted the 1948 first “Israeli” cabinet. The Executive Committee was composed of 5 members during the time of Herzl, but progressively increased to 7, 15, 19, 26, and was finally standardized to 14 members in the year 1968.

# ANTENNA SHARON | 7:40:00 pm |

The myth of Gandhi and Palestinian reality

# ANTENNA SHARON | 7:25:00 pm |

Thursday, September 09, 2004

MORE PICTURES ON BESLAN SCHOOL SEIGE

# ANTENNA SHARON | 11:24:00 am |

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Russian nationalists do not believe Putin's propaganda

This is what kind of doubts about the official version of the events in Beslan, North Ossetia, they expressed on the website of the Slavic Union:

«The storm did take place, and it was planned; it is evident to anybody whose brains have not yet turned sour under the influence of the well-known substance or under the slow speeches of mister president. And this is actually what the authorities are saying indirectly too. Listen to the mass media – nothing but discrepancies between what one bureaucrat says after another. ORT TV says that the second blast was when Spetznaz (special forces) blew up a wall for the hostages to get out. NTV says that the second blast was when the gunmen detonated a bomb to kill the people. ORT again (some FSB agent) says: 3 terrorists were captured and in the morning they took part in identification of the bodies of other terrorists who were killed. NTV (Deputy Prosecutor General Fridinsky) says: there were 26 terrorists, all of them were eliminated, so far no one has been captured (yeah, right! -- and it’s followed by Putin’s order to block all borders) :)).

The version about an 'accidental blast' is laughable, and its 'confirmations' are even more laughable: about 5 testimonies of former hostages, when EACH ONE OF THEM is saying a totally different thing compared to what other ones were saying (one says: a bomb fell from a basketball backboard; another one says: a female suicide bomber blew herself up; the third one says: the gunmen were messing with a tripwire mine and it went off, etc.).

The version about an «argument among the gunmen» about whether to leave or to stay is a total idiocy and I’m not going to comment on it. The only thing I can say is that blowing up bombs 'right near you' is a good way to express a disagreement :).

There are a few reasons why the version about an intentional blast inside the school is swept aside as well. First, why the hell would the gunmen need to blow up hostages at that moment? One o’clock in the afternoon is a very wrong time for breaking out of the surrounded perimeter, it’s even hard to imagine anything worse than that. Second, after the school compound was stormed, sappers and a couple of top FSB (KGB) officers were hanging around the TV cameras and expressing their surprise at the scale and the quality of how the school was mined. At the same time they were claiming that all explosives were connected with multi-channel wires, which allowed setting off all bombs from many locations inside the school. So why didn’t the gunmen set them off, since they decided to kill the hostages? And here is even more interesting question: how did they manage to detonate just one bomb without detonating the rest of them? And finally, in a confined space the rest of the explosives would have probably gone off by themselves from the shockwave.

So, it must have been a pinpoint blast from the outside, which can be confirmed by the way the building was damaged. In order to bring down the roof from the inside, the gunmen would have had to fasten several kilograms of explosives right under it and set them up along one of the walls (judging by the damages done to the roof). Why would they bother doing it in the first place, while they could just kill most of the hostages by using handmade explosive devices set up in the gym (while effect of collapsed roof would be doubtful in this case)?

The blast that did take place would have had to make one of the gym’s walls collapse if the explosive devices were set up correctly (and if they were more powerful). Why would the gunmen even need something like that? But most likely, this is exactly what Spetznaz (special forces) wanted to do, so that some of the hostages could leave the building before a presumed detonation of explosive devices by the terrorists.

The second blast was from the outside as well, but that time it was in the lower part of the same side wall. It can be confirmed by the fact that the hostages, who were right at the wall at that moment, were not harmed (and afterwards they were one of the first ones to get out of the building).

Most likely, that blast was either an addition to the first one (i.e. the mission was to make the wall collapse, but for some reason both blasts were not synchronized and did not occur simultaneously), or it was made in order to let the hostages escape through the windows that were blocked by the gunmen (which is what happened).

Russian Emergencies Ministry was used solely for the purpose of diverting the attention of the gunmen (the storming unit had the reasons to assume that most of the militants would concentrate near the school entrance to control the emergency units). However, some of the militants still remained at their positions and on the second floor and opened fire on the Spetznaz units, who attempted to break into the building right after the windows were unblocked. And by the way, the big question still remains: who killed more hostages in the middle of that turmoil – gunmen, special forces, or armed locals, who started shooting at the 'gunmen' running out of the gym?

Sure, the government does not want to claim responsibility for the deaths among the hostages; this is why the government made up a script about «forced offensive to defend hostages» (exactly the way it happened during the Moscow theater siege).

KAVKAZ Center

# ANTENNA SHARON | 1:33:00 pm |

Video shows first hours of school siege

A hostage filmed by captors in the Beslan school. (NTV)

# ANTENNA SHARON | 10:48:00 am |