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"I know that you people will not understand easily, but you are my friends, so I tell you that I am a Jew, and I will not accept this fractiousness to torpedo the conference."
MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 8/30: Talk about humiliation. When the U.N.'s top human rights official was in occupied Palestine last year her car was shot at by Israeli settlers -- the Israeli army doing nothing to stop them. Now we learn that the very same Mary Robinson is herself Jewish and has been using her position to head off the urgently needed world censorship of Israel for its racist and apartheid-like policies.
That occupation army has however managed on its own to shoot and threaten dozens of international journalists in the past year, even wounding a top CNN reporter though the network chose to hush up the whole affair. And that occupation army made a point a few days ago of taking over at gunpoint Lutheran Churches and schools in the Palestinian town of Beit Jala, not far from Jerusalem, apparently to show the Lutherans of their distain for the church's recent resolution in the U.S. calling on the American Congress to stop the funding that makes Israel's occupation possible.
Yesterday that same Israeli occupation army threatened the top U.N. official of UNRWA, the organization in existence for nearly as long as the U.N. itself whose mission is to help Palestinian refugees.
As for Mary Robinson. The problem is not that she is Jewish. The problem is that she has not revealed this in the past and that she can now be understandably accused of having a personal "conflict of interest" because of the way she has conducted herself and especially because she has been leading the charge to prevent Israel being vilified at the Durban Conference as so many others think is both fitting and necessary.
BEIT JALLA, West Bank (AP - 30 August) - Israeli tanks and troops withdrew early Thursday from this Palestinian town, ending a two-day takeover after Palestinian gunmen said they would stop firing at a nearby Jewish neighborhood.
The understanding was reached in intense Israeli-Palestinian phone diplomacy, with help from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and European Union officials.
Israeli tanks and jeeps drove out of Beit Jalla just before dawn Thursday. After daybreak, residents gathered in the streets in celebration. Masked gunmen shot in the air, and women clapped and cheered. One gunman in a ski cap had ammunition belts draped across his chest and fired burst from a machine gun.
Also Thursday, an Israeli man sitting in a restaurant in a Palestinian village was killed by a shot to the head by a Palestinian militant, police said. The masked assailant fled, said police spokesman Rafi Yaffe.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops barred a convoy with senior U.N. officials, led by Peter Hansen, commissioner of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, from passing a roadblock. Hansen was on his way to the Rafah refugee camp to inspect homes demolished by Israeli army bulldozers a day earlier.
Israeli troops have been blocking the main access road to Rafah since Wednesday, with a tank parked across it and more armored vehicles positioned nearby. When the five-car U.N. convoy, accompanied by journalists, approached the roadblock Thursday, Israeli troops did not let it pass.
Hansen got out of his vehicle, wearing U.N. uniform and a bulletproof jacket. A soldier atop the tank shouted at him in English: ``Go back immediately, or we are going to shoot.'' The U.N. convoy eventually turned back and Hansen said it would try to reach Rafah on backroads.
The army said it permitted Hansen to pass, but that he declined. Journalists witnessing the scene said no such offer was made.
Earlier in the day, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's convoy was permitted to pass along that road, with his armored limousine weaving through the barriers. Arafat was en route to Durban, South Africa, to attend a U.N. conference on racism.
The Israeli pullout from Beit Jalla came two days after Israeli tanks and troops entered the West Bank town, following a heavy exchange of fire between Palestinian gunmen there and Gilo, a Jewish neighborhood built on war-won land and annexed to Jerusalem.
Witnesses said the tanks and armored personnel carriers withdrew after the shooting stopped around midnight, five hours before the withdrawal began.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said troops would remain near the town to ensure that the gunfire would not resume, but stopped short of threatening another raid in the event of renewed shooting.
``If the shooting is resumed, we will consider our steps. We have to act with presence of mind, judiciously,'' he said. ``I don't want to threaten, but hope that this time Arafat will keep his word.''
The withdrawal followed a late-night meeting of top government officials, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Ben-Eliezer. Peres raised the possibility that once calm was restored in Beit Jalla and Gilo, he could begin talks on a comprehensive truce with Arafat next week.
In Beit Jalla, Palestinians celebrated the withdrawal as a victory. ``Our people taught the Israeli occupation a big lesson,'' said Hassan Abed Rabbo, the local leader of Yasser Arafat's Fatah group.
Families whose houses had been occupied by the Israeli soldiers were visited by well-wishers. ``My house was the first to be occupied and the last to be liberated,'' said Bishara Kharouf, 56. ``I cannot describe my feelings, but it is freedom.''
Israel's two-day presence in Beit Jalla marked the longest incursion into Palestinian territory since the fighting began 11 months ago. The United States sharply criticized the raid, and the withdrawal highlighted the relative limitations in Israel's array of reprisals for Palestinian attacks.
Heavy shooting on Gilo earlier this week had been triggered by the killing of a senior PLO official, Mustafa Zibri, in a pinpointed Israeli missile attack.
In the two days when Israeli forces held positions in the town, Palestinians continued to fire on Gilo. For the first time, the Palestinians fired 50-caliber machine-guns and 60mm mortars at the Jewish neighborhood.
In the exchanges of fire in Beit Jalla, one Palestinian policeman was killed and at least 20 people were injured, Palestinians said. An Israeli was wounded in Gilo just before the incursion began.
JERUSALEM, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- Israeli security authorities said Wednesday they believe one or two squads of Israeli militants have killed five Palestinians in drive-by attacks in the West Bank in recent months.
"We aren't seeing any beginning of an underground, but a squad or two definitely carried out four attacks," a senior security source told United Press International on condition of anonymity.
The latest incident occurred early Wednesday when three Palestinians -- a father and his two sons -- were traveling by car from Hizmeh near Jerusalem toward the Jordan Valley.
"Apparently a car passed them and (someone in it) fired on it," Superintendent Rafi Yaffe of the Israeli police in the West Bank said. The driver, Hader Kanan, 26, of Hizmeh, was killed. His father and brother were injured.
The commander of the Israeli police in the West Bank, Brig. Gen. Shahar Ayalon, said the car bore Palestinian license plates. "It was difficult to make a mistake about its identity," he said.
The Palestinian Authority claims several groups of Jewish militias and death squads are very active in the West Bank, especially in Hebron, Jerusalem and Ramallah. The PA says it has warned the Israeli government several times that the groups carry out daily attacks on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank and Gaza.
A group calling itself the Committee to Secure Roads claimed responsibility three months ago for killing four family members from Hebron, among them a four-month old baby boy. After Wednesday's shooting, the group contacted several foreign reporters claiming responsibility for the attack.
Palestinian security officials said they gave U.S. and Israeli officials a list of 60 people who are alleged members of an Israeli terrorist group responsible for murdering Palestinian citizens in Gaza and the West Bank in the last few years.
In earlier attacks on Palestinian motorists, a truck driver was shot and killed by unknown assailants in June. Three members of one family were killed in the southern West Bank in July, and recently a taxi driver was killed south of Nablus by a stone thrown at him from a passing car.
The Palestinian security source told UPI the attackers probably belong to "a very small squad."
"The modus operandi was quite similar in all incidents," he said, and evidence at the scene of the killings shows a connection, though some elements of the killings differ leading security officials to believe there are multiple Israeli hit squads.
The source suggested settlers might be behind the attacks. "It is someone who lives in the area who (would also have) the motive," he said.
The settlers' leaders have strongly condemned the assassinations. "Murder is murder and innocent people must not be hit be they Jews or Arabs," a leader said in a recent statement.
Police, the army and the Israel Security Agency have no clue as to who has been behind the attacks, but the security source told UPI: "It's a question of time until they make a mistake and when they do, we'll be there to discover it." (with reporting by Saud Abu Ramadan in Gaza)
Jerusalem Post - JERUSALEM -August 30: Waving a book of anti-Semitic cartoons distributed at the anti-racism conference in Durban, UN High Commissioner Mary Robinson - in a dramatic act of identification with the Jews vilified in the pamphlet - declared "I am a Jew" at an NGO dinner there last night.
Shimon Samuels, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris, said that after he showed Robinson the booklet, she stood up, waved it and said, "This conference is aimed at achieving human dignity. My husband is a cartoonist, I love political cartoons, but when I see the racism in this cartoon booklet, of the Arab Lawyers' Union, I must say that I am a Jew - for those victims are hurting. I know that you people will not understand easily, but you are my friends, so I tell you that I am a Jew, and I will not accept this fractiousness to torpedo the conference."
Samuels, head of the Jewish caucus at the anti-racism conference, said that the booklet, which he said contained vile anti-Semitic cartoons, was handed out at registration, and that several of the Jewish groups in Durban had complained about it.
Meanwhile, less than 24 hours before the Israeli delegation's plane to the UN anti-racism conference in Durban is scheduled to take off, no decision has yet been made on whether it will participate, or at what level.
"We'll have to decide in the morning, because our last plane out is tomorrow evening," one Foreign Ministry official scheduled to attend the conference said last night.
The US announced yesterday it is dispatching Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Michael Southwick and a small delegation to South Africa to try to amend language in a proposed final communique that is offensive to Israel and Jews, before the conference opens tomorrow.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Southwick could leave Durban before the conference's official opening, if the language singling out Israel is not taken out.
The State Department announced earlier this week that Secretary of State Colin Powell would not attend the conference because of the anti-Israel clauses.
President George W. Bush said last week that the US would not take part at all if the conference "picks on" or denigrates Israel for its treatment of Palestinians.
"We felt it was necessary for us to have representatives out there to do what the president asked us to do, and that's to work to eliminate this language," Boucher said yesterday. "If we can do that, then we can make the further decisions on how we participate." If Southwick remains, Israel will have to decide whether to send Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior or dispatch a lower-level official.
Some American Jewish leaders, who lobbied Powell not to attend, are said to have urged Melchior not to go.
One Foreign Ministry source said if a delegation is sent, it should be at a level that will enable it to be as effective as possible.
Attempts by the US to have the anti-Israel language taken out of the proposed resolutions have not yet yielded any fruit, Israeli officials said.
A source briefed on the US plans said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had persuaded Powell that the language - including clauses describing Zionism as a movement based on racial superiority and others describing Israeli actions as ethnic cleansing - could be struck from the document only if an American delegation were present to support such a move.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley said he still hasn't decided whether to attend and that Canada has "very serious" concerns about a push to single out Israel.
Echoing earlier comments by Powell, Manley said, "The purpose of this conference should be to set a mark for countries to observe in trying to eradicate racist practices. It shouldn't be targeted at any countries. The text such as it is that I've seen goes much too far in singling out one country, in this case Israel."
According to a report received by the Foreign Ministry, a group from the World Union of Jewish Students, which set up a booth yesterday at the non-governmental organization part of the conference, was confronted by Palestinian students chanting anti-Israeli slogans.
According to the ministry, the Jewish students sang: "All we are saying is give peace a chance." The Palestinians responded by chanting, "We will redeem Palestine through blood and fire." This was only one of many complaints registered by Jewish groups about harassment at the conference, though conference director Moshe More said no serious incidents have been reported so far.
"I feel besieged, there's anti-Semitism and hate literature at the world racism conference. It couldn't get much worse," said Anne Bayefsky, a professor from New York's Columbia University Law School. "Some of the Jewish delegates are hiding their accreditation badge because it identifies them as from Israel or as Jewish. Some are considering leaving Durban altogether." More said "protesters can express their views, but we have a strong contingent of police. There have been no physical attacks on anyone." Stacy Burdett, representing the Anti-Defamation League, said some of the 200 Jewish representatives in Durban were shocked by their treatment, and felt unfairly singled out.
Pamphlets circulated at the NGO meeting caricatured Jews, and posters carried slogans overlapping the Star of David with the swastika. Many pro-Palestinian delegates wore T-shirts with a slogan equating Israel with apartheid and colonialism, and calling it an occupying power that kills civilians.
"There is a real sense of hostility toward Jewish people," said Karen Pollock, director of the London-based Holocaust Education Trust. "We are being intimidated." The South African police have said that the safety of the 7,000 delegates attending the meeting is a high priority, and more than 3,000 police and soldiers have been deployed.
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| Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/8/368.htm |