http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/IsraelSacredTerror_Herman.html
Israel's Sacred Terrorism
Excerpted from the book The Real Terror Network
by Edward S. Herman, South End Press
Among the recipients of U.S. military and economic aid and diplomatic
support, Israel occupies a unique place. Israel is generally portrayed by
the U.S. mass media as the victim of terrorism, a characterization that is
in part correct. Its own role as a major perpetrator of state terrorism is
consistently downplayed or ignored, in accordance with the general
principle, discussed earlier, that violence employed by ourselves or by our
friends is excluded from the category of terrorism, by definition. The
record of Israeli terrorism, however, is substantial, far too extensive even
to attempt to sample here. A small glimpse into the reality was given by
Prime Minister Menahem Begin in a letter published in the Israeli press in
August 1981, written in response to what he regarded as hypocritical
criticism of the Israeli bombing of Beirut, which killed hundreds of
civilians Begin offered a "partial list" of military attacks on Arab
civilians under the Labor governments, which included over 30 separate
episodes that left many civilians dead. He concluded that "under the
Alignment government, there were regular retaliatory actions against
civilian Arab populations; the air force operated against them; the damage
was directed against such structures as the canal, bridges and transport."
"The picture that emerges," former UN Ambassador and Foreign Minister Abba
Eban wrote in response, "is of an Israel wantonly inflicting every possible
measure of death and anguish on civilian populations in a mood reminiscent
of regimes which neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare to mention by name."
Eban is harshly critical of Begin's letter because of the support it gives
to Arab propaganda; he does not contest the facts. He even defends the
earlier Israeli attacks on civilians with the exact logic which orthodox
analysts of terrorism attribute to-and use to condemn-retail terrorists
namely, that deliberate attacks may properly be made on innocent parties in
order to achieve higher ends. Eban writes that "there was a rational
prospect, ultimately fulfilled, that afflicted populations [i.e., innocent
civilians deliberately bombed] would exert pressure for the cessation of
hostilities."
Begin's list is indeed "partial." It is supplemented by former Chief of
Staff Mordechai Gur, who stated that "For 30 years, from the War of
Independence until today, we have been fighting against a population that
lives in villages and cities," offering as examples the bombardments that
cleared the Jordan Valley of all inhabitants and that drove a million and a
half civilians from the Suez Canal area in 1970, among others. The Israeli
military analyst Zeev Schiff summarized General Gur's comments as follows:
"In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because
they deserved it...the importance of Gur's remarks is the admission that the
Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and
consciously...the Army, he said, has never distinguished civilian [from
military] targets... [but] purposely attacked civilian targets even when
Israeli settlements had not been struck."
There are other examples that might be cited, among them, the terrorist
attacks against civilian targets (including U.S. installations) in Cairo and
Alexandria in 1954 carried out in an effort to poison relations between the
United States and Egypt; the murderous attacks on the villages of Qibya,
Kafr Kassem, and others; the shooting down of a Libyan airliner in 1973 with
110 killed as it was attempting to return to Cairo after having overflown
the Sinai in a sandstorm; and many others. Lebanon has been a regular target
of Israeli terrorism, including direct invasion and systematic bombardment
of cities, villages and rural areas that has caused hundreds of thousands of
refugees and many thousands of casualties. Still another dimension of state
terrorism is the brutal treatment of the civilian population in the occupied
territories, and the murder of Palestinians in the interchange of terror
that has been proceeding in Europe for many years. Terrorism in the
pre-state period was also extensive, another story that is largely unknown
in the United States, where commentators like to pretend that terrorism is
an invention of the Palestinians.
The Diary of former Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett is a major source
of evidence for a conscious policy of deliberate, unprovoked cross-border
attacks, in which advantage was taken of superior military power and a
servile western propaganda machine, with the intent of destabilizing
neighboring states and provoking them into military responses. Sharett was a
footdragger in these enterprises, often shaken by the ruthlessness of the
military establishment-"the long chain of false incidents and hostilities we
have invented, and so many clashes we have provoked;" the "narrow-mindedness
and short-sightedness of our military leaders" [who] "seem to presume that
the State of Israel may-or even must-behave in the realm of international
relations according to the laws of the jungle." Sharett himself referred to
this long effort as a "sacred terrorism."
Where Israeli state terrorism is acknowledged in the United States, it is
almost invariably described as "retaliatory," hence not criminal even if
regrettable. To cite only one example, consider the laudatory article by
Amos Perlmutter on General Ariel Sharon in the New York Times Magazine.
Commenting on Sharon's exploits as the commander of Unit 101 in the early
1950s, Perlmutter writes that "Every time terrorists were captured in
Israel, they would be interrogated to determined where they had come from.
Then an Israeli force would return to the terrorists' villages and retaliate
against them, an eye for an eye- or, more often, two eyes for an eye."
Perlmutter is a knowledgeable military historian, who certainly knows that
this is an outrageous falsehood. The "retaliatory actions" of Unit 101 were
characteristically directed against completely innocent civilians in
villages that had no known relation to terrorist acts, for example, Qibya,
where 66 civilians were massacred in October 1953 in the first major
operation of Sharon's Unit 101. There was no known connection between the
villagers of Qibya and any terrorist actions against Israel. Israel angrily
denied charges that its military forces were responsible for this massacre,
pretending that the "retaliation act" was carried out by "border settlers in
Israel, mostly refugees, people from Arab countries and survivors from the
Nazi concentration camps..." Commenting on this fabrication in his diary,
Prime Minister Moshe Sharett observed that "Such a version will make us
appear ridiculous; any child would say that this was a military operation,"
as was tacitly conceded much later. He writes that in the cabinet meeting
following the massacre, "I condemned the Qibya affair that exposed us in
front of the whole world as a gang of bloodsuckers, capable of mass
massacres regardless, it seems, of whether their actions may lead to war. I
warned that this stain will stick to us and will not be washed away for many
years to come." Sharett was wrong in thinking that "this stain will stick to
us." The typical response is falsification of the sort practiced by
Perlmutter in the New York Times. A critical commentary on Perlmutter's
whitewash of the bloodthirsty General Sharon in The Nation fails to mention
this remarkable suppression and distortion of the historical record. This
single example is, unfortunately, quite typical of a long and ugly story of
atrocities and cover-ups.
