LL:ART: ISRAELI HORROR: STOP THE BLOODBATH

[Communist Party of Australia]

ISRAELI HORROR:  STOP THE BLOODBATH

The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper
of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday,
October 4th, 2000. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills.
Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795.
CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au>
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  Israel Horror: Stop the bloodbath

I wrote this last night when I got home from Jerusalem. It's
neither clever nor analytical. But it's what I saw. And what I
saw was heartbreaking.

by Monica Tarazi

I was with a group of Palestinians from Haifa and its surrounding
area. We were there for a conference which was cancelled because
of the "incidents" as the conference organisers put it with
ironic understatement. We decided to venture into Jerusalem and
go to the Makassed hospital in East Jerusalem to donate blood.

I bumped into L., a German girl who lives and works at the
Lutheran hospital down the street from the Makassed.

"This has been going on all night", she told me. "They (the
soldiers) came into the hospital last night and were shooting
inside ... we had several boys die in here."

We finally reached the Makassed. We could hear shooting. The
Israeli occupation forces were apparently getting bored just
standing there and decided to take things up a notch.

More shots, and an ambulance zoomed past sirens wailing.

We were greeted at the hospital by an official looking man who
guided us up the stairs to rooms where the injured were being
treated.

A 25 year-old-man shot in the head ... another young man shot in
the hand. The room after that housed a man who had been shot in
the stomach. "It's not good to be shot in the stomach", said our
guide.

Downstairs it was worse ... a 13-year-old girl shot in the
stomach. A man shot in the head. Another had been shot in the
heart. They didn't think he would last the night. I stopped
listening after that.

All the while, we could hear the sirens screaming and we could
still hear the shooting.

This time the ambulance was a white service taxi van. Out came a
girl about 14 years. I guessed she was suffering from tear gas
inhalation. Then another, and another. Five ambulances in the 20
minutes we were there.

By this point I was shaking. Adrenalin, stimulated by horror and
rage, was attacking my legs and arms. I felt weak. I was
selfishly relieved when we were told that the outpouring of
donations from the local community meant they had no room for our
blood.

We talked to Dr Khalid, Director of the hospital. He smiled
warmly at us and welcomed us warmly. It's nice to see '48
Palestinians here in the West Bank. No, we are not the '48
Palestinians. We have always been here. "They are the Jews of
'48'', explained one of our group.

We asked him about the casualties. "High velocity bullets", he
said in English. He told us the Israelis have no respect for
ambulances, that they shoot at them and won't let them help or
transport people.

We finished our coffee and went outside for our bus. We watched
the boys throwing stones and the soldiers staring back at them.

Suddenly all the Palestinians, about 200 in all, started running.
We realised the soldiers had formed a line and were running
towards us, their guns raised and shooting wildly in our
direction.

Lots of gunfire. Terrified youths raced past us. We ducked back
into the hospital compound. My whole body shook in fury and fear.

Half of me wanted to run for cover. The other half, the part of
me that was furious at the brutality of the soldiers and
exploding with rage at the injustice of the situation, wanted to
go out and join the shabab, wanted to pick up stones and hurl
them at the animals shooting at us ... shooting at us because
Palestinian youths have the audacity to demand their freedom, the
gall to remind the world that they are human beings too with
rights and pride and the desperation to risk everything in the
pursuit of justice.

I didn't join them though. I cowered behind the gate until it
seemed calmer and the youths started to return. We just resumed
our places when the soldiers started attacking again.

Our bus was outside but the gunfire was too heavy to reach it
and, anyway, our driver was smarter than we were -- he was
nowhere to be found.

The youths were still there, the soldiers were still there but
the shooting paused long enough for us to get to the bus and
drive away. In three minutes we were at the Garden of Gethsemeny.

Tourists were giggling as they chatted to each other and
marvelled at the buildings and the trees. I fought the urge to
get out of the bus and shake them.

I wanted to shout: "Don't you realise that they are KILLING
teenagers less than 1km from here? Don't you care about anything
but old stones and buildings?

Of course I didn't say that at all. I watched silently from the
bus and listened to the radio ... clashes in Jerusalem, Ramallah,
Nablus, Hebron, Gaza ... an ambulance worker shot in the head
in vain to shelter themselves from the soldier's fire ... another
child killed in Gaza ... another in Nablus.

A 16-year-old in Ramallah. They were firing on demonstrators from
helicopters and armoured tanks in Gaza ...

And then I realised that I hadn't seem a single Western
journalist all day. I wondered where they were and cursed them
for their absence. I cursed the soldiers for their brutality and
I cursed the Israeli Government for putting them there and the
world for not caring.

Maybe one day I will decide whether they are convinced by their
own pathetic excuses, whether they are motivated by anything
besides pure, unadulterated evil.

Maybe eventually I will know if Israel honestly thinks that in
oppressing and brutalising a civilian population, a people whose
gravest crime is to exist at all, they are serving the interests
of peace. Maybe, maybe not.

This weekend is the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. Israel
brought in the New Year by killing Palestinians. Start as you
mean to continue. And they call this peace.

(This eyewitness account received by email has been substantially
abridged for reasons of space.)

Stop the blood bath

The bloodbath follows the deliberate government supported
provocative invasion of Al-Haram Al-Sharif which houses the Al-
Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock -- the Al-Aqsa Mosque being
the third most holy Muslim sanctuary.

Head of the General Palestinian Delegation to Australia Ali Kazak
reports that Prime Minister Ehud Barak sent in 3000 heavily-armed
soldiers with Likud opposition leader Ariel Sharon into the
Mosque in occupied Jerusalem, "despite his full awareness of the
dangerous consequences of this provocation and the Palestinian
leadership's warning and call on Barak not to support and
encourage Jewish extremism and the escalation of the conflict
which would have devastating results for everyone".

In its aggression against unarmed civilians, Israel is using
helicopters, tanks, 500mm machine guns which are normally used
against armoured vehicles, "Lao" rockets, live ammunition,
rubber-coated steel bullets and the internationally-prohibited
dumdum bullets which explode after entering the body.

A statement issued by the Israeli Communist Forum "demands that
the Israeli Government immediately stop the bloodbath [in which]
dozens of Palestinians have been killed and hundreds wounded,
among them a 12-year-old boy, who was cold-bloodedly murdered by
bullets shot by Israeli occupation forces.

"We demand that the government immediately stop the killings and
murders which are the most severe ones in the occupied
territories for years.

"We express our deepest sympathy to the heroic Palestinian people
in face of the murderous onslaught of the Israeli occupation
authorities. We condemn also the US administration which did not
use its influence in order to put an end to the bloodbath.

"The sole way to end the bloody vicious circle is, first of all,
to stop the murderous onslaught upon the Palestinian people and
to go for a truly just peace, based upon withdrawal of Israel
from the occupied Palestinian territories, including from Eastern
Jerusalem, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian
state in the West Bank, including Eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza
strip alongside Israel in its pre-1967 borders."


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