The Coastal Post - June, 1996
Love Thy Neighbor
BY EDWARD W. MILLER
On the eighth day of Israel's latest violent attack on Lebanon, her gunners shelledthe UN refugee shelter at Qana, killing almost 200 women and children. RobertFisk, British reporter at the scene described in The Nation: "When I reached thecompound the blood was flowing in streams, running down the road near me.Inside I found heaps of bodies, a baby without a head, a dismembered woman, aFigian UN soldier holding in horror a headless child."Responding to international anger, the Security Council sent Netherland'sMajor-General Frank van Kappen with other experts to the scene. Van Kappenreported to the UN that Israel's slaughter "was purposeful." Her military had beeninformed the day before that the UN shelter was full of refugees. Established in1978 after Israel's invasion, this UN command compound was identified on everyIsraeli military map. Moreover, Israel's artillery was being directed by a pilotlessdrone plane delivering TV images to the gunners, visible even on video tapesreplayed on CNN. The first salvo of four regular detonation bombs just missed thecamp, whereupon the Israeli gunners switched to M-732 proximity fuses(anti-personnel bombs) that explode seven feet above the ground, expresslytargeting the shelters within the compound, and accounting for that mass of mangled bodies and decapitated children. At the UN the U.S. and Israel soughtwithout success first to deny and then to buy the report.Israel's disregard for the lives of non-Jewish civilians repeatedly criticized by theInternational Red Cross, the Red Crescent, Amnesty International and the UN wasdiscussed by Israeli author, holocaust survivor and emeritusProfessor, IsraelShahak, in his recent book:Jewish History, Jewish Religion. Professor Shahak
quotes from the soldier's handbook issued by the Israeli Army Central RegionalCommand:
"When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or in a raid, so long as there is no certainly that these civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakkah [legal system of classical Judaism] they may and even should be killed. Under no circumstance should an Arab be trusted,even if he makes the impression of being civilized. In war when our forces stormthe enemy, they are allowed, and even enjoined by the Halakkah, to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good."
The Second and Fourth Geneva Conventions signed by 140 nations, includingIsrael, instructs armies do their best to preserve civilian lives. Americans, weremember, punished their officers responsible for the civilian massacre at Mai Laiduring the Vietnam War.Two years ago when Professor Shahak was on a lecture tour, I had the privilege of interviewing him in San Francisco for local papers and he discussed this Jewishattitude toward non-Jewish life.
Shahak pointed out that in the religious schools in Israel the supremacy of the Jew as contrasted with other races is emphasized,and children are taught that even the Jewish embryo is different from embryos of non-Jews.
Professor Shahak said this teaching effects Jewish attitudes at all levels of contactbetween Jews and their neighbors, and even relates to the dead. In his book henotes:
"Jews have a tremendous reverence towards Jewish corpses and Jewishcemeteries, but have no respect towards non-Jewish corpses and cemeteries.Thus hundreds of Muslim cemeteries have been utterly destroyed in Israel...but there was great outcry when one Jewish cemetery...was damaged under Jordanian rule."
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please read a great primer to the book "Israel Shahak: Blowing the lid off the Talmud and Jewish fundamentalism" http://800poundgorilla.100webspace.ne...