TERRORIST
MASTERS OR NATIONAL HEROES?
In the absence of a democratically governed world, where
all the People are represented both globally and locally, and where the well-being
of all is the concern of all, our Earth will continue to be wracked by assaults
against human beings, sometimes in the form of "terrorism," sometimes
in "fighting terrorism."
Today the U.S.Government conducts a "War on Terrorism" with the cooperation
of a number of other countries. Israel's government claims that it, too, is fighting
terrorism. But aren't there different kinds of terrorists?
As Ariel (Bulldozer) Sharon tries to reconquer Palestine and destroy
the Palestine Authority and its efforts to create the long overdue State of Palestine,
Gil Jonas of New York calls Palestinian suicide bombing "acts of desperate
people with little left to lose." But are terrorists limited to such desperate
persons, and are the terrorist masters all on "the other side"? Consider
the following:
On 22 July 1946 with the agreement of the Jewish Agency, Irgun, a Jewish
paramilitary, bombed the Secretariat of the British Mandate for Palestine in Jerusalem,
massacring 92 mostly civilian British, Arabs, and Jews, and wounding another 58.(1)
The Jewish Agency was headed by David Ben- Gurion; Irgun, by Menachem Begin.
Both later became Prime Ministers of Israel (Ben-Gurion, 1948-53/1955-63 and Begin,
1977-83).
During World War II, as head of the Swedish Red Cross Count Folke Bernadotte
had saved thousands of Jews from concentration camps. The United Nations,
having in 1947 devised the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states,
sent him as its Mediator after the Israeli military invaded and occupied half
of the territory planned for the new Arab state in 1948. Since the original "partition"
resulted in six different enclaves, he proposed a simplified partition into two
intact parts. On 22 July 1948, when traveling by armored car, Bernadotte was stopped
by gangsters from the ultra-Zionist LEHI or Stern Gang, who assassinated him and
his French UN observer companion.(2) Fortunately, his assistant, the young American
diplomat Ralph Bunche (a fighter against colonialism who later was to become
U.N. Under Secretary General) had failed to join them on that trip. Yitzhak
Shamir, the Stern Gang leader, became Prime Minister, 1983-84/1986-92.
Shamir's predecessor and mentor, the racist Avraham Stern, was so anti-British
and anti-Arab that he sought alliances with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in
1940-41. The Gang offered to accept the Nazi "New Order" in Europe in
alliance with "a state of the Jews to be established on nationalist and totalitarian
foundations." He offered to fight alongside the Nazis against the British
both inside and outside Palestine. The Nazis rejected this proposal.(3)
On 9 April 1948, a month before the Mandate ended, Irgun militants carried out
the slaughter of peaceful Arab inhabitants of Deir Yassin on land near Jerusalem
planned for the Arab state. They lined men, women and children up against the
walls and shot them. Although the Jewish Agency attempted to cover up the crime,(4)
word got out, and the ruthlessness panicked the Arab population, leading to "the
Disaster" -- the flight of some 700,000 unarmed native Palestinian civilians
from their homes all over the country.
General Ariel Sharon, Israeli Defense Minister in 1982, launched a war
into Lebanon, chasing the Palestinians and by July killing up to 20,000, mostly
unarmed Palestinian and Lebanonese civilians, serious wounding many more. Then
in September he organized the massacre of up to two thousand unarmed Palestinians
in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps.(5) After an official inquiry
he was forced resign.
As Prime Minister since 2001, Sharon has resumed bull-dozing homes and other buildings
with their inhabitants, as Israel reconquers Palestine in his "war on terrorism."
-- By John O. Sutter.
"I think an accepted national government has a higher duty to act with
restraint and in a civilized way, than the duty of individuals and sub-national
movements." --Robert T. Haines, Littleton, CO.
Notes:
(1) "The Bombing of the King David
Hotel" in www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/King_David.
(2) Shira Schoenberg, "The Assassination of Count Bernadotte"
www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/folke.
(3) Israel Shahak, "YitzhakShamir, Then and Now" in Middle East Policy
Council'sJournal, www.mepc.org/journal/emails/shahak39.
(4) "Red Cross Eye-Witness Report on the Deir Yasin Massacre" in www.abbc.com/islam/english/toread/deiryas.
(5) Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, "Return of the Terrorist: The
Crimes of Ariel Sharon" in CounterPunch (7 Feb 01) www.counterpunch.org/sharon