- Kafir Kassem 1956

After 45 years have passed, Rafael Rosenthal published his book Kafir Kasem: The Events and Legend. The book was not a matter of compunction; it was written for profits. “2000 copies sold,” said Ma'areef, “the moment it was released.”

It was sunset on 29 October 1956, and later that night three hostile actions against Egypt would occur. Knowing nothing about a curfew, some 49 men, women, and children, while heading home from the fields and gardens, where they worked, were ordered to step down from their trucks by Israeli soldiers. The Israeli soldiers then shot the workers down.

This cold-blooded massacre was but a small signal of the torrential flood of serial massacres that are still being committed by Israelis against the Palestinian people.

“Knowing not what to do with the pregnant women,” said Rosenthal's book, “some of the soldiers hesitated; and some suggested not to touch them, except for Major Shalom Aufir, the commander of this group, who ordered them shot down.” Along with the pictures, the book stated names such as “Safaa Harhour, Fartima S. Harhour, Amina Thau, Khamisa Amer, Jalil Issa, Helwa Budair, Fatima D. Harhour, Rashika Budair, and Zohaira Taha. After the description of the brutal massacre, the book says, “Soldiers stepped on the bodies to be certain of their death.”

Rosenthal's book contains several articles about this particular massacre, one of which is by Elan Chief, the ex-military general prosecutor, and another by Ibraheen Harhour, the ex-mayor of Kafr Kasem. A full chapter of the book discusses and tries to answer a relevant question: What happened to the perpetrators of this massacre?

Having heard, personally, the confession of Lieutenant Gibrael Dahhan, who killed 43 civilians in one day and who later became the military attaché, along with the confession of Lieutenant Makhl Haroush, who killed only 22 civilians and was awarded with a high position in the Israeli spy agency Mossad, the author reveals, “Yes, it was us who committed the massacre.”

“Do you sleep peacefully?” asked the author Rosenthal.

“Everything passes and could be forgotten… I have no problems with my heart or eyes… I haven't had any nightmares about this event… I was but a soldier who carried out orders.”

As for Captain Edmond Nahmani, who killed 20 Palestinians inside the village and demolished its Mosque, he said, “They used to take off my shoes and take my sandwiches when I was only a boy in Morocco. Since then, I have hated them and feel eager to kill them.” Nahmani is now working as the General of M.P.

Some kids took his sandwiches; in return he killed 20 Palestinians that day.

Shalom Aufir, the leader of this operation, who killed but 41 Arabs, perhaps a little more according to his memory, says: “It was exactly as had happened in Germany to us… I cheerfully made them step down from the wagons and then, very pleasantly, killed them. The Prime Minister Ben Gurion, while congratulating and saluting us, said, `It doesn't matter what rumors say about your reputation; the more important thing is what you have really done.'”

General Shamuel Malinki, the main person responsible for a series of terrorist actions that were perpetrated against Arab citizens by Israeli gangs, said, “It is ridiculous to be asked by someone about a certain thing I had done, which is completely forgotten and worthless to be remembered.”

Worthless to be remembered... words that'll echo in my ears forever.

Khan Younes 1956

3/11/1956 (Palestine): Another massacre is committed on November 3, 1956 when the Israelis occupy the town of Khan Yunis and the adjacent refugee camp. The Israelis claim that there was resistance, but the refugees state that all resistance had ceased when the Israelis arrived and that all of the victims were unarmed civilians. Many homes in Khan Yunis are raided at random. Corpses lie everywhere and because of the curfew no one could go out to bury them. (An UNRWA investigation later found that the Israelis at Khan Yunis and therefugee camp had murdered 275 civilians that day ).

After the Israelis withdrew from Gaza under American pressure, a mass grave was unearthed at Khan Yunis in March 1957. The grave contained the bodies of forty Arabs who had been shot in the back of the head after their hands had been tied.

("IMPERIAL ISRAEL", Michael Palumbo; London; Bloomsbury Publishing; 1990 pp. 30 - 32, citing UN General Assembly: Official Record, 11th session supplement, nop.)

- Dair Yassin 1948

9/4/1948(Palestine): The forces of the Zionist gangs Tsel, Irgun and Hagana, fitted out with the Zionist terrorist strategy of killing civilians in order to achieve their aspirations, began stealing into the village on the night of April 9, 1948. Their purpose was to uproot the Palestinian people from their land by coming upon the inhabitants of the village unawares, destroying their homes and burning them down on top of those inside, thereby making clear to the entire world to what depths of barbarism Zionist had sunk. The attack began as the children were asleep in their mothers' and fathers' arms. In the words of Menachim Begin as he described events, "the Arabs fought tenaciously in defense of their homes, their women and their children." The fighting proceeded from house to house, and whenever the Jews occupied a house, they would blow it up, then direct a call to the inhabitants to flee or face death. Believing the threat, the people left in terror in hopes of saving their children and women. But what should the Stern and Irgun gangs do but rush to mow down whoever fell within range of their weapons. Then, in a picture of barbarism the likes of which humanity has rarely witnessed except on the part of the most depraved, the terrorists began throwing bombs inside the houses in order to bring them down on whoever was inside. The orders they had received were for them to destroy every house. Behind the explosives there marched the Stern and Irgun terrorists, who killed whoever they found alive. The explosions continued in the same barbaric fashion until the afternoon of April 10, 1948.7 Then they gathered together the civilians who were still alive, stood them up beside the walls and in corners, then fired on them.8 About twenty-five men were brought out of the houses, loaded onto a truck and led on a "victory tour" in the neighborhood of Judah Mahayina and Zakhroun Yousif. At the end of the tour, the men were brought to a stone quarry located between Tahawwu'at Shawul and Dair Yasin, where they were shot in cold blood. Then the Etsel and Layhi "fighters" brought the women and the children who had managed to survive up to a truck and took them to the Mendelbaum Gate.8 Finally, a Hagana unit came and dug a mass grave in which it buried 250 Arab corpses, most of them women, children and the elderly.

A woman who survived the massacre by the name of Halima Id describes what happened to her sister. She says, "I saw a soldier grabbing my sister, Saliha al-Halabi, who was nine months pregnant. He pointed a machine gun at her neck, then emptied its contents into her body. Then he turned into a butcher, and grabbed a knife and ripped open her stomach to take out the slaughtered child with his iniquitous Nazi knife."10 In another location in the village, Hanna Khalil, a girl at the time, saw a man unsheathing a large knife and ripping open the body her neighbor Jamila Habash from head to toe. Then he murdered their neighbor Fathi in the same way at the entranceway to the house. A 40-year-old woman named Safiya describes how she was come upon by a man who suddenly opened up his trousers and pounced on her. "I began screaming and wailing. But the women around me were all meeting the same fate. After that they tore off our clothes so that they could fondle our breasts and our bodies with gestures too horrible to describe."12 Some of the soldiers cut off women's ears in order to get at a few small earrings.13 Once news of the massacre had gotten out, a delegation from the Red Cross tried to visit the village. However, they weren't allowed to visit the site until a day after the time they had requested. Meanwhile the Zionists tried to cover up the evidence of their crime. They gathered up as much as they could of the victims' dismembered corpses, threw them in the village well, and then closed it up. And they tried to change the landmarks in the area so that the Red Cross representative wouldn't be able to find his way there. However, he did find his way to the well, where he found 150 maimed corpses belonging to women, children and the elderly. And in addition to the bodies which were found in the well, scores of others had been buried in mass graves while still others remained strewn over street corners and in the ruins of houses.14 Afterwards, the head of the terrorist Hagana gang which had taken part in burying the Palestinian civilians wrote saying that his group had not undertaken a military operation against armed men, the reason being that they wanted to plant fear in the Arabs' hearts. This was the reason they chose a peaceable, unarmed village, since in this way they could spread terror among the Arabs and force them to flee.

- Sabra and Shatila Camps 1982

A number of events led to the decision of an extremist terrorist group of the Lebanese kata'ib forces and forces belonging to the Zionist Army to carry out massacres against the Palestinians. From the beginning of the Zionist invasion of Lebanon, the Zionists and their agents were working toward being able to extirpate the Palestinian presence in Lebanon. This may be seen from a number of massacres of which the world heard only little, carried out by Israeli forces and militias under their command in the Palestinian camps in south Lebanon (al-Rushaidiya, 'Ayn al-Hilu, al-Miya Miya, and others).32 This massacre was thus the outcome of a long mathematical calculation. It was carried out by groups of Lebanese forces under the leadership of Ilyas Haqiba, head of the kata'ib intelligence apparatus and with the approval of the Zionist Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon and the Commander of the Northern District, General Amir Dawri. High-level Israeli officers had been planning for some time to enable the Lebanese forces to go into the Palestinian camps once West Beirut had been surrounded.
Two days before the massacre began - on the evening of September 14 - planning and coordination meetings were held between terrorist Sharon and his companion, Eitan. Plans were laid to have the kata'ib forces storm the camps, and at dawn, September 15, Israel stormed West Beirut and cordoned off the camps. A high-level meeting was held on Thursday morning, September 16, 1982 in which Israel was represented by General Amir Dawri, Supreme Commander of the Northern Forces.
The job of carrying out the operation was assigned to Eli Haqiba, a major security official in the Lebanese forces. The meeting was also attended by Fadi Afram, Commander of the Lebanese Forces.
The process of storming the camps began before sunset on Thursday, September 16, and continued for approximately 36 hours.
The Israeli Army surrounded the camps, providing the murderers with all the support, aid and facilities necessary for them to carry out their appalling crime. They supplied them with bulldozers and with the necessary pictures and maps. In addition, they set off incandescent bombs in the air in order to turn night into day so that none of the Palestinians would be able to escape death's grip. And those who did flee - women, children and the elderly - were brought back inside the camps by Israeli soldiers to face their destiny. At noon on Friday, the second day of the terrorist massacre, and with the approval of the Israeli Army, the kata'ib forces began receiving more ammunition, while the forces which had been in the camps were replaced by other, "fresh" forces.37 On Saturday morning, September 18, 1982, the massacre had reached its peak, and thousands of Sabra and Shatila camp residents had been annihilated.
Information about the massacre began to leak out after a number of children and women fled to the Gaza Hospital in the Shatila camp, where they told doctors what was happening. News of the massacre also began to reach some foreign journalists on Friday morning, September 17.
One of the journalists who went into the camps after the massacre reports what he saw, saying, "The corpses of the Palestinians had been thrown among the rubble that remained of the Shatila camp. It was impossible to know exactly how many victims there were, but there had to be more than 1,000 dead. Some of the men who had been executed had been lined up in front of a wall, and bulldozers had been used in an attempt to bury the bodies and cover up the aftermath of the massacre. But the hands and feet of the victims protruded from the debris." Hasan Salama (57 years old), whose 80-year-old brother was killed in the massacre, says, "They came from the mountains in thirty huge trucks. At first they started killing people with knives so that they wouldn't make any noise. Then on Friday there were snipers in the Shatila camp killing anybody who crossed the street. On Friday afternoon, armed men began going into the houses and firing on men, women and children. Then they started blowing up the houses and turning them into piles of rubble." Author Amnoun Kabliyouk [p. 10] writes in his book about the tragedy of a young Palestinian girl who, like the rest of the children in the camp, faced this horrific massacre. Thirteen years old, she was the only survivor out of her entire family (her father, her mother, her grandfather and all her brothers and sisters were killed). She related to a Lebanese officer, saying, "We stayed in the shelter until really late on Thursday night, but then I decided to leave with my girl friend because we couldn't breathe anymore. Then all of a sudden we saw people raising white flags and handkerchiefs and coming toward the kata'ib saying, 'We're for peace and harmony.' And they killed them right then and there. The women were screaming, moaning and begging [for mercy]. As for me, I ran back to our house and got into the bathtub. I saw them leading our neighbors away and shooting them. I tried to stand up at the window to look outside, but one of the kata'ib fighters saw me and shot at me. So I went back to the bathtub and stayed there for five hours. When I came out, they grabbed me and threw me down with everybody else. One of them asked me if I was Palestinian, and I said yes. My nine-month-old nephew was beside me, and he was crying and screaming so much that one of the men got angry, so he shot him. I burst into tears and told him that this baby had been all the family I had left. That made him all the more angry, and he took the baby and tore him in two."
The massacre continued until noon on Saturday, September 18, leaving between 3,000 and 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians dead, most of them women, children and elderly people

- Qana 1996

18 April 1996, the "ethnic cleansing" operations carried out by the Zionist terrorist army have encompassed not only Palestinian civilians, but Lebanese civilians in south Lebanon as well.
In an attempt to break the power of the Lebanese Hizbollah organization, Zionist forces undertook a military operation against south Lebanon. This operation was likewise based upon the Zionist mentality, supportive as it is of blood-letting and terrorism and based upon the belief that "exercising pressure against Lebanese citizens . . . will lead in practical terms to comprehensive, overall pressure on account of which the Hizbollah organization will be obliged to adhere to a ceasefire." Given this reasoning, the Zionist forces bombed the shelter which was providing refuge to approximately five hundred Lebanese, most of whom were children, elderly and women who had been forced out of their homes by Israeli raids on their villages, and who had been unable to get to Beirut. This bombing led to the deaths of 109 Lebanese civilians and seriously wounded 116 others. During the attack, Israeli forces used between 5 and 6 advanced bombs designed to explode above their target in order to cause the largest possible number of casualties. Moreover, international investigations confirmed that the Israeli forces had deliberately targeted the shelter. Ali, one of those wounded in the attack, says, "I fled in the morning with two friends and went for refuge to the emergency forces in Qana. I had my wife and my four children with me. They led us into a shelter where there were about fifty people. Then suddenly the sound of bombing rang out. A first shell, then a second fell near the shelter, and as we were trying to get out, another shell hit the shelter directly. I don't know what happened to my wife and children."61 Fadi Jabir weeps as he talks about things he saw after the Israeli bombs fell on those who had left their homes to come to the base for the UN Fayjiya peace-keeping forces. He says, "I heard people shouting 'Allahu akbar!', and a woman fell down unconscious. I reached out to get an idea what had happened to her, and her brain fell into my hand."62 As for Sa'd Allah Balhas, who was wounded by a piece of shrapnel in the Zionist massacre, he says, "In one second I lost everything: my children, 14 of my grandchildren, and my wife. I don't want to live anymore. Tell the doctors to let me die.

- Bahr Al Baqar 1970

30 Egyptian primary school students.

- Qana 2006 - I believe you've already followed that

Should I go on? The list keeps growing and growing...

"Destroy all of the land; beat down their pillars and break their statues and waste all of their high places, cleansing the land and dwelling in it, for I have given it to you for a possession" Torah : Numbers 33:52,53

Posted by Яαgιи Яαvєи on Saturday, August 05, 2006 at 8/05/2006 05:40:00 PM | Permalink