# 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 |

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Sharon proposes Israel, Russia fight terror together

JERUSALEM, Sept. 5 - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proposed Israel and Russia work together to fight terror, Israel Radio reported Sunday.

Sharon is expected to discuss the issue Monday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who will be visiting Israel, the radio said.

In a message of condolence to Russia, Sharon said Israel stands by Russia's side in this difficult period.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom also expressed his condolences, saying the attack on innocent civilians proves that terror has no borders.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday demanded a drastic shakeup of security forces' tactics against terror after a school siege in southern Russia by Chechen militants that ended in the deaths of some 330 people, nearly half of them children.

Putin admitted that authorities had failed to recognize or react effectively to the threats facing his country.

Xinhuanet

AS: Finally, terrorist have spoken to fight terror with another terrorist... Sharon, just take care of urself.

# ANTENNA SHARON | 2:39:00 pm |

Russia Admits It Lied On Crisis

By Susan B. Glasser and Peter Finn,

MOSCOW, Sept. 5 -- The Russian government admitted Sunday that it lied to its people about the scale of the hostage crisis that ended with more than 300 children, parents and teachers dead in southern Russia, making an extraordinary admission through state television after days of intense criticism from citizens.

As the bereaved families of Beslan began to lay their loved ones to rest Sunday, the Kremlin-controlled Rossiya network aired gripping, gruesome footage it had withheld from the public for days and said government officials had deliberately deceived the world about the number of hostages inside School No. 1.

"At such moments," anchor Sergei Brilyov declared, "society needs the truth."

The admission of an effort to minimize the magnitude of a hostage crisis that ensnared about 1,200 people, most of them children, marked a sharp turnabout for the government of President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites). In previous crises with mass fatalities, such as the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk (news - web sites) in 2000 and the 2002 siege of a Moscow theater, officials covered up key facts as well, but afterward never acknowledged doing so.

"It doesn't suit our president," a Kremlin political consultant, Gleb Pavlovsky, said on the broadcast. "Lies, which really acted in the terrorists' favor, did not suit him at all. Lies were weakening us and making the terrorists more violent."

The broadcast included no apology and referred only to the most blatant misstatement by officials, the claim that only 354 hostages were inside the school. It did not acknowledge that the hostage-takers had demanded an end to the war in Chechnya (news - web sites) or that the government continues to give conflicting information about whether any of the guerrillas remain at large, who they were and how many were killed.

Nor did it mention that many residents of Beslan have been outraged that the government now appears to be understating the death toll, which stood officially at 338 Sunday night, although nearly 200 people are still unaccounted for.

As for the hostage-takers, Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said authoritatively on Saturday there were 26 of them, and all had been killed. On Sunday, he said there were 32 -- 30 of them dead -- and bragged about the capture of one "member of the gang" who was to be charged in court on Monday.

Putin made no public comment Sunday on the deadliest terrorist attack of his presidency, and no senior member of his government has commented publicly since the siege began at 9 a.m. Wednesday. A day after the president vowed in a televised address to take unspecified new security measures in response to the killing of "defenseless children," the Kremlin was silent on what those steps would be.

Sergei Markov, a political analyst with close ties to the Kremlin, said the deadly outcome of the school standoff had left Putin at a loss as to how to respond beyond the former KGB colonel's instinct to strengthen police powers and centralize control over government institutions. "They don't know what to do," he said. "Vladimir Putin didn't explain in detail what will be happening."

Speaking before the Sunday night broadcast of the state television news program "Vesti," Markov said it had been clear that the government had engaged in a clumsy coverup. "Everybody understands they are lying," he said. "Everybody can do the math and know there were more than 1,000 people inside the school."

The Kremlin sought to distance Putin from the deceptions through Sunday's broadcast, in which the anchor chided "generals and the military and civilians" for failing to act "until the president gives them ideas of what to do." Pavlovsky, the political consultant, said Putin had given Russia's political system "a no-confidence vote" for its handling of the crisis.

Such statements could never be aired unless the Kremlin directly ordered them, according to political analysts here. Criticism of the president is never broadcast on state television, the continuing war in Chechnya is almost never mentioned, and even mild questioning of government policy is not allowed without approval from the Kremlin.

"Nothing happens on Rossiya television without the permission of the Kremlin," commentator Andrei Piontkovsky said.

In Beslan, many residents have directed their anger not only at Putin but at the regional leader, Alexander Dzasokhov. In an effort to dispel those concerns, Dzasokhov made a televised visit Sunday to hospitalized children and apologized for failing to protect them adequately.

"I fully understand my responsibility," said Dzasokhov, the president of North Ossetia, the region near Chechnya where Beslan is located. "I want to beg your pardon for failing to protect children, teachers and parents."

For many families in the town, there was not yet time for political recriminations as they searched for missing relatives and buried those who have been found. But people have grown increasingly despondent, acknowledging that many bodies were burned beyond recognition in an explosion that caused most of the casualties.

"We keep receiving complaints from relatives saying they haven't found the bodies," said Lev Dzugaev, an aide to Dzasokhov who gave the now-discredited total of hostages during the standoff.

At the Beslan House of Culture, which has been a gathering point for families throughout the crisis, volunteers taking down names of the missing said the figure stood at 190 as of Sunday afternoon. Many families have left not only names but snapshots, such as one of a little girl celebrating the new year wearing a snow princess dress and surrounded by boys in white rabbit costumes.

All along Beslan's Pervomaiskaya (1st of May) Street, people were burying the dead Sunday. The tops of wooden caskets stood upright outside the large ornate gates of walled homes, signaling a house of mourning. Clusters of people, men and women walking separately, hundreds in all, moved up and down the long, potholed street. The wails of those who were grieving joined the cries of those farther down the street until, in some moments, it sounded as if all of Beslan was in tears.

At 103 Pervomaiskaya St., the body of 75-year-old Rimma Kusova, wrapped in plastic and covered by a thin orange blanket, lay on a table in the home she had shared with her husband and two grandchildren. Her husband, Timur, stood outside, inviting visitors to view the badly disfigured corpse.

Kusova had taken her grandson, Azamas, to school when both of them were seized. The boy escaped; she did not.

Timur Kusova, who is a retired factory worker, said he lost his only daughter to renal failure when she was 16 and his son, the boy's father, to an injury he received as a soldier in the Soviet army that fought in Afghanistan (news - web sites). "I'm the only one now," he said.

Across the street, at number 100, the relatives of 42-year-old Irma Zagoyeva had just come back from the morgue after spending more fruitless hours looking for her body. Zagoyeva had accompanied her 6-year-old son, Chermen, to his first day of school. He made it out. "He said his mother fell down and didn't move," Zagoyeva's sister-in-law said. "That's all he remembers."

The body of Elza Guldayeva, 36, was brought home to number 52 on Saturday. Relatives were waiting Sunday afternoon outside a courtyard draped with vines for the body of her daughter, 12-year-old Olesya, to arrive. Guldayeva's husband was at the hospital with the couple's seriously injured second daughter, 11-year-old Alina.

"They killed our women and children," said Felix Guldayeva, a cousin. "Our women and children."

A large crowd stood outside 44 Pervomaiskaya St. Felix Totiyev, the family patriarch, stood with a cane beside two velvet-draped caskets for his two granddaughters, Lyuba, 10, and Anna, 8. Four more of his grandchildren were missing. From within the house, a constant moan of grief emerged.

At number 35, Batraz Tuganov lay dead under a silver and white sheet and dressed in a jacket. His head was still covered with a bandage. A single man, he was executed during the siege. His 72-year-old mother, Valentina, sat by the body, wordlessly accepting the hugs of the women who surrounded her.

Tuganov had driven two children and a mother to the school last Friday morning, relatives said. He decided to walk into the school courtyard with them.

At number 30, the funeral was over. Volodya Khodov, 10, who was shot in the chest, was buried Sunday afternoon, and a series of tents covering tables were set up on a side street for the mourners to drink and eat from. Volodya's mother, Zifa, was one of 25 hostages released during the siege with an infant. But she was forced to leave behind Volodya and his younger brother.

Still, there was one piece of good news for this family to savor: Volodya's younger brother survived.

Finn and correspondent Peter Baker reported from Beslan.

# ANTENNA SHARON | 1:58:00 pm |

Russia Buries Its Dead; Toll Rises To 394, 260 Others Missing

Moscow, Sept. 5 (NNN): Russia on Sunday buried some of the victims of hostage crisis in Beslan in North Ossetia with three more children succumbing to injuries taking the toll in school tragedy to 333 as parents and relatives continued to search for the 260 missing.

However, reports quoting morgue officials said the toll in the bloody drama in Beslan city climbed to at least 394.

In a parallel development North Ossetia's Interior Minister Kazbek Dzantiyev has resigned accepting the responsibility for flaws in security leading to the Beslan school siege.

President Vladimir Putin has declared national mourning on Monday and Tuesday, when most of the other terror victims would be buried.

Flags will fly at half-mast and all the entertainment programmes will be cancelled throughout the country, the Kremlin press office said.

The authorities have nabbed three suspected accomplices of school hostage-takers in Beslan,, including a woman. One of them was on wanted in connection with two terror blasts in North Ossetia earlier this year and daring militant raid on the capital of neighbouring Ingushtia's capital Nazran on June 22, ITAR-TASS reported.

The number of dead hostages in Beslan has reached 333, ITAR=TASS quoted the North Ossetian Public Health Ministry as saying. Three children died in hospital on Saturday night, it added.

Earlier the ministry noted that the bodies of 323 people were carried out by rescuers from the school building while another seven victims died in hospitals.

Parents and relatives of 260 hostages of the bloody drama in Beslan school are still unable to trace their dear ones.

In all there were 1,184 hostages inside the school. Four forty eight are still in hospitals of which 69 were in critical condition, official spokesman for the North Ossetian administration Lev Dzugayev said.

Dzugayev did not rule out that many injured were still unconscious and they could not be identified. Scores of dead bodies, taken away to nearby regional capital Vladikavkaz for forensic analysis are also yet to be identified.

Meanwhile, first hostage victims were buried in Beslan today.

Addressing the nation on television yesterday, a day after the school hostage crisis in southern Russia ended in carnage, Putin admitted failings by law enforcement agencies and said he would act to bolster the country's security.

"We have shown weakness in the face of danger and the weak get beaten up," said Putin, who had flown to the North Ossetian town of Beslan.

"We have not paid due attention to defence and security issues. we will, in the near future, take steps aimed at strengthening the unity of the country," the President said in the 10-minute address shown on both state television channels on Saturday.

Putin asked his people to repulse terrorism and announced a three-pronged approach in strengthening security of the multiethnic nation.

"This is not a challenge to the president or Parliament, it is a challenge to Russia... This is an aggression on our country," he said.

Putin blamed the disintegration of the USSR and collapse of the Soviet security machinery for modern Russia's inability to cope with "intervention of the international terrorism".

He said international terrorism wanted "to disintegrate the unity of the country".

The president announced introduction of a system of interaction and coordination of the whole defence and security structures in the North Caucasus, and installation of anti-crisis governance, including functioning of law enforcement bodies on new principles.

He, however, said that it would be done strictly within the framework of the constitution. "The terrorists think... they can scare us with their cruelty, that they will be able to paralyse our will," he said, adding: "We are faced with a choice -- either to fight them off or to agree with their claims."

It is worth mentioning here that children at the school had been celebrating the start of the new school year with parents and staff on Wednesday morning when they were seized by an armed group demanding independence for Chechnya.

The crisis ended in carnage on Friday as Russian troops moved in to end the siege after explosions were heard inside the building.

# ANTENNA SHARON | 1:54:00 pm |

The mystery of the Russia hostage-takers

MOSCOW: Names, nationalities and ethnic origins have been suggested, but the burning question about the militants who took 1,000 children, parents and teachers hostage in southern Russia remains unanswered: Who were they?

So far only tantalising details have been released over the possible identities and demands of over 30 heavily-armed militants who surged into the school on the morning where whole families were gathering for the first day of term.

Russian television has not flinched from showing the corpses of the hostage takers killed in a vicious shootout with security forces. A long black beard, a thick ring, a pale-skinned arm, but the dead do not reveal their secrets.

One of the few confident assertions came from the local security service chief, Valery Andreyev, who said ten Arab hostage-takers had been killed, igniting talk about the role of international terror networks in the events.

"There were 10 Arabs, including one African, there was an Ossetian, a Russian as well as Ingush and Chechens," said North Ossetian interior ministry spokesman Ismel Chaov.

A link to Chechnya seems indisputable, given the proximity of the school to the strife-torn republic and comments by local officials. The identities of the hostage-takers have been floated but never substantiated.

"A war has been declared on us, where the foe is invisible and where there is no frontline," Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said, commenting on the unprecedented series of terror attacks to hit Russia in the past days.

A woman released by the captors told the Izvestia newspaper she recognised among them Doku Umarov, a notorious Chechen rebel field commander said to have led a daring raid in Ingushetia that left almost 100 dead.

Ria-Novosti news agency cited an unnamed source as saying Chechen warlord Magomed Evloev -- known under the nom de guerre of Magas -- had been killed by security forces after the siege. But the only evidence it cited were the back epaulettes sewn in with gold thread found on a corpse.

Other unnamed officials told news agencies that the mastermind of the whole operation was Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord who has organised a series of deadly hostage takings and is Russia's most wanted man.

"You can assume it was Basayev because Basayev is behind most of the terrorist acts," said Chaov, echoing the suspicions of most Russians, rather than stating facts.

Even the claims of the hostage takers remain murky, although they held telephone negotiations with officials in the course of the siege. Some sources said they wanted Russian troops out of Chechnya, others full independence for the republic.

"I asked one of them how they could place children under such danger," one survivor told the Kommersant newspaper. "He answered that when his own children were killed nobody had asked him about anything."

The unsettling doubt contrasts with the hostage seizure at a Moscow theatre in 2002 -- when television pictures confidently showed the female Chechen rebels who stormed in during a performance, slumped in the stalls, shot dead.

Perhaps this time, the truth is simply too disturbing to ever come out.

AFP

# ANTENNA SHARON | 1:30:00 pm |

Israel targets Hamas training camp

Israeli tanks have shelled a Hamas training camp in the central Gaza Strip killing at least 14 militants and wounding 45 people, witnesses and hospital sources said.

Tanks stationed at a border crossing between Israel and Gaza fired into the outskirts of the town of Shijaia, a stronghold of Hamas, the militant group behind two suicide bombing that killed 16 people on buses in southern Israel last week.

Witnesses said explosions tore through a Hamas training ground after an exchange of fire with Palestinian gunmen in the area.

Hospital sources said all of the dead were Hamas members but that the wounded included civilians.

An Israeli spokesman said the military had "targeted a training field during trainings of Hamas terrorists".

"The targeted location was known as a gathering field of Hamas terrorists to be trained in the planting and activating of explosive devices, launching of RPG and Qasam rockets and practising infiltration into Israeli communities and military posts," he said in a statement.

Israeli leaders had pledged harsh reprisals, including the resumption of a campaign to assassinate Hamas leaders, in response to the Beersheba bombings, the first suicide attacks in the Jewish state in nearly six months.

The dead and wounded from the Israeli attack, most of them wearing combat uniforms, were taken to Gaza's Al Shifa hospital where hundreds of Hamas activists, some of the armed and masked, as well as onlookers gathered as the news of the attack spread.

"Vengeance, vengeance", the crowd shouted.

Hamas is one of the main militant groups leading a campaign of suicide bombings against Israelis during a nearly four-year-old Palestinian uprising.

"This ugly Israeli crime... will not pass unpunished," Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri told Reuters.

"It is an open war between the Zionists and us."

Reuters/AFP

AS: Another open war between another what else "terrorist"...

# ANTENNA SHARON | 11:47:00 am |

Thursday, September 02, 2004

The Emergence of Zionism

Zionism is a relatively modern movement whose early beginnings are traced to the 17th century, but it became an important movement only since the 19th century, especially towards its end. Zionism presented itself mainly as a solution for the “Jewish Question”, which is a modern phenomenon as well. To understand Zionism, we need to comprehend the Jewish question, the environment within which it emerged and the strategic considerations that facilitated its international recognition.

A- The Jewish Question:
In simple terms, the Jewish Question refers to the status of the Jews of the world in their countries, and the future of the worldwide Jewish minority. Most world countries, especially in Europe, were not considered as part of the nations where they lived. European nations regarded the Jews an alien group, who do not care for their national interest or national cause. On the other hand, should we refer to the religious background discussed in the previous topic, Jews had as well conceived themselves different from the local people, although, most of the time, they spoke the same language and practiced the same customs. This led to making the Jews a second-class, or even less, citizens in those countries.

The Jewish question was not a global issue as may be assumed, but a European phenomenon, particularly in Eastern Europe, that emerged there for reasons that will be clarified throughout the discussion.

Some imposing questions with regard to the Jewish Question had thus to be asked. Since the Jews had lived for a relatively long time in Europe, why did their problem suddenly appear? Why is it that by the end of the eighteenth century their presence became unwelcome? And if they were unwanted right from the beginning, why had the problem become so prominent, and why hadn’t Zionism start earlier than it did?

Answers to these questions may be summarized in the following points:

Before the fifteenth century, most of the World’s Jewry lived in the Muslim World, especially in Andalusia, and they are referred to as Eastern Jews, or Sephardim, who continued to form most of the world’s Jewish population until the 16th century. By then other Jewish group, known as the German Jews or Ashkenazim, increased dramatically in number, especially in Poland, constituting 50% of the world’s Jewry by the end of the 17th century. (See more in the Jews of the world). This population explosion among the Ahkinazim, which happened long before the industrial revolution, was due to the immigration of the Khazar Jews of the Khazar tribe that lived in southern Russia, who accepted Judaism in the 8th century, and were considered Ashkenazim. After the fall of their Kingdom, these Jews started a massive migration to Poland then under Russian control. The Ashkenazim, unlike the Sephardim, tended to live in isolation and avoided integration, thus they were unwelcome immigrants. By 1900 the World’s Jewish population reached 10.5 millions, of whom 90% were Ashkenazim, thanks to the Khazars.

At the same time nationalism was emerging and spreading throughout Europe, taking an aggressive shape most of the time. Russia was no exception; romantic Russian nationalism was emerging and expanding slowly. It was Slavic nationalism which did not welcome other ethnicities, and consistently and aggressively swallowed neighboring countries like Poland, that had regarded the Ashkenazim Jews an alien group and excluded them from the national boundary. In the peak of these developments, European Jews discovered that they would have no place if they did not assimilate into the societies in which they lived.

The above developments led to the emergence of what is known as anti-Semitism that reached its climax after the assassination of the Russian Tsar Alexander II in 1881, for which the Jews were unconvincingly blamed. Nonetheless, a massive anti-Jewish campaign spread, popularly known as anti-Semitism because the Jews descended from the Semitic race, and which the reflected the national trend that laid much emphasis on the genetic purity of the nation. The campaign involved some massacres and extreme hardship that triggered a massive Jewish migration of 2,367,000, Jews predominantly to Western Europe and the U.S, during the period 1881-1914. However, only 55,000 of them went to Palestine, a fact that shows how marginal was Zionism at that time, and, to some extent, how effective were the Ottomans restriction against Jewish migration to Palestine. The anti-Semitic policies of Nazi Germany (1932-1945), before and during World War II, caused another wave of migration, but to Palestine this time. The anti-Semitic campaign, undertaken first by Russia and then by Germany, had thus created a bulk of homeless people who became a fertile ground for Zionism, and from whom appeared its pioneers.

Religious reformation and the emergence of Protestantism, which considered the Old Testament a main source for the Christian faith, had directly exposed more people to the Old Testament and therefore to Judaic tradition. Ideas of the Messiah, the chosen people and the Promised Land became widespread. Protestant Christians looked at the Jews as “Palestinian strangers” living in Europe, but should return to “their” country. The existence of a Palestinian people living then in Palestine was totally off their minds that were very much shaped by the religious propaganda. Many Christian Protestants believe in the Millennial Reign when Jesus will come back to earth, marking the beginning of a thousand years of happiness in the world. But for him to come, “Israel” must be restored because the Prophecy stated that he would come to “Israel” and descend from heaven on the Temple (which means that the Temple has to be rebuilt replacing Al Aqsa. Indeed, abundant funds were sent by believers in this notion to “Israeli” Jewish organizations that adhered to this belief). Together with nationalism, this development persuaded most of Europe to think of the Jews as a “nation” with a land, that is Palestine. Historical sources, indeed, indicate that non-Jewish Zionism started before Jewish Zionism, and, in a way, caused it.

B- Strategic and Political Reasons:
Zionism emerged almost concurrently with the drive of imperialism, the great powers were competing for colonies and spheres of influence in the Middle East, and the Zionists had thus formulated their strategy in close cooperation with this imperialist trend. It has to be pointed, however, that Napoleon Bonaparte was the first statesman who viewed Zionism as a strategic force for colonizing the Middle East. On 20 April 1799, during his siege of cAkka (Acre), and in a desperate attempt to gain support for his campaign in Greater Syria, Napoleon issued a statement in the French official newspaper calling the world’s Jewry to support the French war effort in Palestine in return for a Jewish home there. Later on, when Britain controlled this area that was crucial for the safety of its imperial communications to the East (through Suez Canal), the Zionists quickly presented their project as a part and parcel of this Grand imperial project. British cooperation with the Zionists was thus motivated, inter alia, by this factor.

The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, and the drive of European powers to divide its territories among themselves provided another impetus for the Zionist project. It was in the imperialist London conference of 1905-1907 that the notion of a “buffer state” in Palestine appeared, and promptly communicated to the British premier Campbell Bannerman. The idea was essentially the formation, in the eastern Mediterranean, of a pro-West alien entity that would constitute a human shield against the anti-West Muslim peoples of the region. The Jews were, no doubt, the best tool for the implementation of this imperialist project. Thus, the underlying factor behind the formation of this “buffer state” in the heart of the Muslim World was to isolate its Asian and African wings from each other, and obstruct, or, if necessary, crush any attempt for unity between them. The hostile Zionist entity was, programmed to engage the Muslims in a long and complex dispute that would drain their military and economic resources, and paralyze their political will vis-à-vis the Western superpowers. While the West guaranteed the continuity of the Zionist entity, the latter’s survival has been crucial for the realization of the Western imperialist aims in the region. The Christian West has apparently never forgot its eleven centuries long conflict with the successive powerful Muslim Caliphates: Al Rashidah, the Umayyad, the Abbasid, the Mamluk, and the Ottoman, who had all imposed their supremacy on the world. Nonetheless the progressive erosion of the Ottoman’s power since the 18th century inspired European imperialist powers, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, to look for ways and means to prevent, by force if deemed necessary, any revivalism of the Muslim World. Hence was the notion of the “buffer state”, the codename for the establishment of a Zionist entity in the land of Palestine.

Wide range political changes took place in Europe that became dominated by secular national ideologies that propagated such values as human rights, freedom of speech, of belief, and universal suffrage. These developments, accompanied with the process of Jewish emancipation, enhanced the position of the Jews and allowed them more space to organize political activities and run organizations like the World Zionist Organization . In short, spheres of influence that had previously been largely closed to the Jews of these countries had now become available for their activities and influence.

C- Changes inside the Jewish groups:
This topic had been discussed in the previous part on Zionism and Judaism. Suffice to record here that most of the modern trends in Judaism appeared among the Ashkenazim, who formed the major subject of the Jewish Question. Two main trends, with totally different approaches, tried to deal with this question. The first was the Reformatory trend, known as the Haskalah, that was a form of enlightenment among the Jews. It called for making rational thinking superior to all considerations, including religious dogmas. All the Jewish texts should be judged in the light of rationalism that should dominate Jewish life. It called for purifying the Jewish faith from its ethnic and cultural content, and to take it as a faith, not an ethnicity or a blend of both. Based on the above, Haskalah movement called the Jews to assimilate in the societies in which they lived and be loyal to their nations not to Judaism. They should simultaneously adopt the culture of their societies and keep the Judaic faith, as this had become possible in the new relaxed political environment of Europe that allowed freedom of belief. The Haskalah achieved some success, especially by taking the Jews out of their isolation, in their ghettos, to the larger society, a development that had later on significantly contributed to increasing the Jewish influence, and thus eventually served the Zionist cause rather than the enlightenment. This success continued until 1880 when anti-Semitism strongly emerged, especially after the Jews were accused of assassinating the Russian tsar in 1881. Millions of Jews were subjected to extreme hardship and thus provided a fertile ground for the opposite force, Zionism.

The other important movement that presented itself as a solution for the Jewish Question was Zionism. It viewed the Jews as a nation without land, and capitalized on the Jewish concept of the Promised Land, Palestine the would-be home for this “homeless nation”. In total contrast with the Haskalah, Zionism found an interested audience in the frustrated Jews of Poland, and, later on, Germany. (For a detailed discussion of Zionism see Zionism and Judaism )

# ANTENNA SHARON | 4:25:00 pm |