|
|
A
coalition of individuals and |
Salaam |
Peace |
Shalom |
|
|
Coalition
for Peace with Justice
Letter to Associated Press and CNN by Claiborne M. Clark [to CPWJ Letters page] [ to CPWJ home page] July 8, 2002
The War on Bad Journalism
Dear AP and CNN:
AP- In story #1 (below) a mother and her child are machine gunned by
Israel and you play it down in the story? Have you no shame? Did you cover
story
CNN- Have you covered any of these murders at all? Have you questioned
the deadly silence of George W. Bush at these civilian killings by the
IDF,
Newsflash Regarding the War on Terror: We have met the enemy, and as
Pogo said, he is us! Israel's actions meet my definition of state terrorism,
and
Why don't we turn our sights instead on a war against bad journalism?
Where is the professionalism in US media?
Claiborne M. Clark
******************
Arafat Security Head Choice Rejected
JERUSALEM (AP) - A large group of Palestinian security officers on Saturday
rejected Yasser Arafat ( news - web sites)'s choice for a new West Bank
security chief in the latest challenge to the authority of the Palestinian
leader.
Meanwhile, three Palestinians were killed in two separate shootings
in the Gaza Strip ( news - web sites), including a woman and her 2-year-old
daughter who were hit while riding in a taxi.
Palestinians claimed Israeli troops were responsible for all three deaths.
Israel's army said it was investigating the report concerning the mother
and child and was unaware of another incident.
Arafat has been under Israeli and American pressure to restructure his
overlapping security forces and direct them to stop terror attacks against
Israel. This past week, Arafat dismissed three senior security leaders,
including Jibril Rajoub, head of Preventive Security in the West Bank.
Arafat appointed the governor of Jenin, Zuheir al-Manasra, to replace
Rajoub.
But almost 200 security officers gathered Saturday to object to the
appointment of al-Manasra and demand that Rajoub be given another high-ranking
political or security post.
But Rajoub himself said in a Palestinian radio interview Saturday that
he was not seeking another post, either in security or politics, for the
moment.
"I might change this position in the future, after the elections," he
said, referring to polls for the Palestinian Authority ( news - web sites)
leadership and for the Palestinian legislature, both scheduled for January
2003.
Rajoub's fellow-officers said Manasra was unsuitable because he was
not from Preventive Security, the most powerful security branch.
The officers said Manasra was not suitable because he was not from the ranks of Preventive Security, the most powerful security branch. They met near Ramallah and planned to march to Arafat's battered compound,
which is surrounded by Israeli forces, who control seven of the eight main
Palestinian cities and towns in the West Bank.
The Israeli troops turned back the marchers as they approached Arafat's
compound, but they later allowed a delegation of 10 senior officers to
enter.
After a three-hour meeting with Arafat, Col. Ziyad Habalreah told reporters
the Palestinian leader had listened sympathetically to the group's insistence
that Manasra could not lead the service and that the new commander must
come from within their ranks.
"I can describe the atmosphere of the meeting as positive," Habalreah
said. "President Arafat listened to us and answered that he understands
these points and he promised to study the subject and to meet with us again."
Habalreah added that no date was set for a return meeting and it was
agreed that in the meantime the officers would be under the direct authority
of the Palestinian Ministry of the Interior and not that of Manasra.
Rajoub, one of the most powerful Palestinian figures after Arafat, was
dismissed on Tuesday. But he did not receive Arafat's formal notification
until Thursday ? a perceived snub that riled Rajoub's officers.
Arafat had quarreled with Rajoub in recent months, and no reason for
the dismissal has been made public. It was not clear whether the move was
related to internal Palestinian wrangling, or whether it was part of an
effort to restructure the security forces.
Rajoub has said that despite the dismissal he remains loyal to Arafat
as the Palestinian leader.
Rajoub has been mentioned as a possible Arafat successor and had close
ties with Israeli officials before the Mideast violence erupted in September
2000. However, Israel has consistently criticized the Palestinians for
not cracking down on militants carrying out attacks against Israel.
Saturday's action by the security officers was the latest of several
recent public criticisms of Arafat by Palestinians.
This past week, thousands of Palestinians marched on Arafat's offices
in Gaza City to complain about worsening economic conditions, directing
their anger at the Israeli military closure as well as corruption in the
Palestinian leadership.
Arafat, 72, has been the pre-eminent Palestinian leader for more than
three decades and has not groomed a successor. His position still appears
solid for now, but Palestinians are now criticizing his leadership more
openly than at any time since the Palestinian uprising began in September
2000.
Arafat has been confined to his Ramallah headquarters for most of the
past seven months by the Israeli forces. The Israeli occupation of Palestinian
cities and towns means the Palestinian Authority that Arafat heads has
all but ceased to function. And Arafat has not made clear how he intends
to lead the Palestinians out of their current predicament.
In the Gaza shootings, Randa Hindi and her 2-year-old daughter, Noor,
were killed by machine gun fire from an Israeli tank while traveling in
a taxi in central Gaza, according to Dr. Ahmed Rabeh, spokesman for al-Aqsa
hospital in Deir Balah.
A passenger in the taxi, Jamal Ismail, 29, said the car came under fire
just after passing the Netzarim junction near a Jewish settlement that
is heavily guarded by the army. Hindi screamed, and the driver sped away.
The other passengers included two more of Hindi's children, but no one
else was hurt.
An army statement said a preliminary investigation indicated that troops
in the area fired at "figures which appeared suspicious." It added that
investigations were continuing, to try to determine if there were Palestinian
casualties in the incident.
Also, a 44-year-old Palestinian man, Subhi Shurab, was killed by Israeli
gunfire while walking from the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis to his
home just outside, Palestinian security officials said. The army spokesman's
office said it was unaware of any shooting in the area.
Since the Israeli forces took over Palestinian areas in the West Bank
more than two weeks ago, 20 Palestinians and no Israelis have been killed.
******************
From Ha'aretz Weekend Magazine 7-5-02
Buried with chocolate in his hand
The three children took their bikes to buy candy. A tank chased them
and fired two rounds at short range. Two brothers were killed! , and the
third brother was severely wounded. It's all there on the video
By Gideon Levy
The video shows it all: Here are the three kids on their bikes, three
black dots on the slope of the road, two on the right, close together,
the third on the left, and a white car passes between them. A woman calls
out something unclear, maybe a warning to the children about the tank;
the car disappears down the hill,and then the tank suddenly appears from
the corner on the left. First you see the tank's turret gun, then the base
of the turret and then the tank itself, charging after three little kids
on their bicycles a few dozen meters ahead. The picture freezes for a second
to show the details better. Then suddenly the screen goes dark. Sound of
firing. Boom. Lots of noise, dust and smoke everywhere, an that's it. The
anonymous photographer stopped filming.
And now, the bicycles lie there in the yard, covered by a heavy woolen
blanket as if to preserve them fro! m the night's chill. Three bicycles.
The large black bike is Jamil's; the medium-sized red one is Tareq's; and
the little purple one is Ahmed's. The seat on the smallest bike is bent
awry, the rubber that covers the handlebars on the big bike is torn, and
there's a hole in the seat-covering on the medium-sized bike. Damaged only
slightly, one might say. Black-beribboned pictures of two of the children
are stuck on the handlebars of their bikes, photographs of the dead Jamil
and Ahmed. Tareq, who's lying wounded in the hospital, his body torn by
shrapnel, was riding with them on that black Friday on the way to the grocery
store. His bike has no picture attached.
The boys' father sits in the house. A tall man with a mustache. For
eight years, before the outbreak of the first intifada, he drove a bus
for Egged, the Israeli bus company. Tears threaten to overwhelm him, again
and again. On the table in front of him is a straw basket with a pile of
the colored memorial pla! cards with pictures of his two sons. A keepsake
for every mourner. No organization's name is inscribed on these. The bereaved
father refused to let anyone - Hamas, the Popular Front, Islamic Jihad,
the Brigades P put their mark on the two innocent children riding their
bicycles to the neighborhood grocery store to buy themselves some candy,
during a break in the curfew, until the soldiers in the tank shot them
from up close, killing two of them and wounding the third. They buried
Ahmed with the chocolate bar he'd bought for himself clutched in his hand.
A north Jenin neighborhood among the orchards, Al Basatin. Relatively
well-kept homes in neglected surroundings. Yusef Abu Aziz, the bereaved
father, was born in Rafiah to a family that fled in 1948 from Sidni-'Ali
on the coast at Herzliya. His wife, Hamda, was born in Jenin and he moved
there to be with her. Hamda, her face downcast, hurries to her room and
closes the door as one of the children turns on the video to! show yet
once more the dreadful film of her children's death, and she doesn't come
out again.
Since leaving Egged, Abu Aziz has worked as a truck driver for UNRWA.
The couple had seven children. Ra'ad, the eldest, a 22-year-old medical
student at Cairo University, was called home when his brothers were killed.
Ahmed, six, who was killed, was the youngest, born to his parents relatively
late
in life. Two sons work in construction in Ramallah, one had a stall at
the market in Jenin, and the others are in school, except little Ahmed
who was still in preschool.
On Friday, June 12, just two weeks ago now, they got up in the morning
around seven as usual. All the children were home; there was a curfew on.
Abu Aziz would always keep the door locked during curfews to make sure
the kids didn't go out. Around 11:30 A.M., someone knocked on the door.
It was Abu Aziz's young nephew, Wahel, who arrived on his bicycle from
the city's eastern quarter with the news: The cur! few had been lifted
for a few hours. The father, skeptical, hurried to look out the window
of the next room on the second floor. Indeed, the street was full of people
and there were cars moving again. Yusef told the children there was no
curfew now.
Ahmed asked for a shekel to buy some candy. The grocery store is about
200 meters from the house. Jamil, 13, and Tareq, 11, wanted some, too.
Each of them received a shekel. Each one took his bicycle. "Buy it and
come back quickly," the worried father instructed them, and went back to
the television, where Brazil was playing England in the World Cup. A few
minutes went by. It was Brazil 2, England 1, and suddenly the father heard
a huge explosion from the direction of the street. Immediately there was
shouting: "Get an ambulance, get an ambulance!" He rushed to the phone
to call the Red Crescent. It never occurred to him that his children had
been hurt, and he went back to watch the roundup of the game on television.
This! week he remembered only that Brazil had been playing, he didn't remember
against whom. Another few minutes passed and someone from the street came
to the door to tell him that his children were injured and had been taken
to the hospital. No one mentioned deaths.
Outside, the curfew was reinstated and it was impossible to go anywhere.
Abu Aziz phoned a friend, an ambulance driver with UNRWA, to come get him
out of the house and take him to the hospital, a few minutes' drive away.
When he got there, Ahmed was already dead, his little body shredded. Jamil
was in the operating room, his body also torn up. The father saw only Tareq
alive. Jamil died a few minutes later, on the operating table. Tareq also
underwent an operation. At three in the afternoon, the curfew was lifted
again and Abu Aziz went home with the bodies of his two sons. Their mother
and siblings took their leave of the boys. The two of them were buried
that evening in the Jenin cemetery. Together. The children's ward at the
hospital in Jenin: Tareq, 11, is in bed in a double room, tubes attached
to his skinny, scarred body. No one was at his bedside when we arrived,
accompanied by his oldest brother Ra'ad. Tareq has a hole in his abdomen
and a hole in his lungs and a hole in his kidney, and a large hole in his
left leg and a small hole in his right leg and another
Tareq speaks weakly. What happened? "The doctor's car ran away from
the tank and the tank shot at the car and we were riding our bikes and
the shell exploded and threw me and my two brothers. I don't remember the
rest." Ten days afterward, Tareq still didn't know that his two brothers
had been killed. His father and his remaining brothers warned us not to
let that slip. Ra'ad strokes Tareq's hand. In the last three years they've
hardly seen one another, because Ra'ad is studying in Cairo. Jamil loved
soccer, books and computers. He wanted to study ! medicine like Ra'ad who
says now that Jamil was smarter than he is. Ahmed was in kindergarten.
Tareq just finished fifth grade.
Friday of the previous week, Dr. Samer Al-Ahmed was released from the
hospital and now he lies in bed in his spacious home, surrounded by friends
taking advantage of a lull in the curfew to come and visit him. A week
earlier, on that same black Friday, he was also in a hurry to get to the
market and buy food, having heard that the curfew had been lifted.
On his way home, he was stopped by two military Jeeps at the town's
refugee camp, and he and two hundred other people gathered there were told
not to leave the camp. After about half an hour, the soldiers permitted
him to go. Ahmed thought he was safely on his way home - "The captain told
me I could go home" - when suddenly he saw a tank rumbling after him, a
few hundred meters behind. Just to be on the safe side, he turned right
at the next corner. Shots were fired from the directio! n of the tank at
his car and Ahmed saw that he was bleeding from the abdomen. He stopped
alongside a house and threw himself from his car into the street, calling
for help. The tank came closer. Suddenly he heard a deafening roar. More
than that he doesn't remember. He saw the children on their bicycles before
the tank fired, but not afterwards. He says the tank shot two shells in
the children's direction. A look at his Opel Astra station wagon suggests
that only a miracle saved his life: The driver's seat is completely bullet-ridden
and there's blood all over it.
The IDF spokesman, on the day of the incident: "An IDF force conducting
house-to-house reconnaissance in the city of Jenin while looking for a
munitions factory came upon a group of Palestinians disobeying the curfew
and approaching them. The force fired two tank shells as a deterrent. Three
Palestinians were killed by these shells and ten more wounded. An initial
investigation reveals that the force acted ! in error. The IDF investigation
of this incident is continuing."
The IDF spokesman, this week: "The incident is still being dealt with."
|
