"There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to my evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I had made my discovery. It was a fine, clear January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the Regents Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with Spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself to other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then as in its turn the faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved - the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows." Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
What about Gilad Shalit? asked James Carleton, presenter of Radio National's Breakfast program this morning.
"Israel calls him a hostage," began Dr Ben Knight, the ABC's Gent in Jerusalem, conveying the Israeli party line (which, alas, in the simple retelling of events, couldn't help but crumble): "Hamas, who've been holding him, call him a captured soldier. He was on patrol [!] near the Gaza border [!!] in June 2006 in an armoured vehicle [!!!] when some militants from Gaza popped up out of a tunnel they'd dug underneath the fence, attacked the patrol [!!!!], killed several soldiers [!!!!!] and took Gilad Shalit back through the tunnel into Hamas."
Into Hamas! Yikes! Dr Knight had pulled himself up just in time. For a nanosecond there he had nearly said into Hamastan. It's happening, he shuddered. Mr Regev. And smack bang in a bloody Radio National interview! Shit!
He was helpless, and could only listen appalled as Mr Regev regaled the Breakfast audience with the tale of that "quite awful character" Samir Quntar* who, back in the 70s, for no apparent reason, had leapt into a dinghy, paddled down the Lebanese coast and onto an Israeli beach, and offed the first Israeli "family, including the children" he could lay his evil hands on (a bit like those "militants," who, for no apparent reason, had just decided to dig a tunnel and plug some Israeli soldiers who were quietly going about their usual morning killing spree).
He listened, numb, as Mr Regev went on about how galling it was for Israelis to see that q***(ar) being swapped for some Israeli stiffs in Lebanon, and then receiving a "hero's welcome" in Beirut. "This really did stick in the Israelis' craw," ranted Regev, "and so here they are going through it again, but what you're looking at this time is a far higher price. This is a live prisoner, and what is being asked by Hamas is the release of miltants inside Israeli jails who... the term over here is blood on their hands."
It was at that very point, where Mr Regev was about to say with blood on their hands, that Dr Knight rallied with the words the term over here is blood on their hands. Just in the nick of time, he thought, the sweat in beads on his forehead. The doctor pressed on heroically: "Now for some of them, they may simply have been involved in throwing a rock at a police officer."
But it was no good, Mr Regev was simply too strong. "But for others," rasped Regev, "we're talking about the people who made the bombs during the Second Intifada when we saw Tel Aviv and Jerusalem living in fear when buses were blowing up. So Israel is having this national discussion at the moment and the line seems to be, yes, we'll do it this time, we'll allow this large number of prisoners released to get our soldier back, but never again. But it's certainly not a done deal. It's a very, very high price to pay for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a time when he's got other matters on his hands."
Carleton, clearly taken aback by Dr Knight's increasingly obvious struggle with Mr Regev, tried to toss him a lifeline in the form of a question about Hamas maybe not quite feeling the same way.
To no avail. It was not Dr Knight, but Mr Regev, who responded, "Well, each case on its merits, but you certainly do get the impression that Israelis have had enough of watching these prisoners being released when they certainly feel that they should spend the rest of their lives in jail, and in this case, we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of prisoners."
The rest of their lives in jail? It was too much. Dr Knight fought back valiantly: "Now not all of them were involved in those suicide bombing incidents in the Second Intifada. Some of them are car thieves. Some of them picked up in the wrong place at the wrong time and face an Israeli military court, which is not a court that anyone would want to find themselves in if they were Palestinian. But we're talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds for one Israeli soldier and you just get the sense that there's a very very strong desire to bring Gilad Shalit home but not at any price and after this there's going to be a major rethink of how it's done."
His bacon was saved - for now. But how much longer can I go on like this, he asked himself, before Dr Knight is no more and only the hideous Mr Regev is left?
Pray for the soul of Ben Knight.
[See my 21/7/08 post The Motiveless Malignancy of Samir Quntar]
Showing posts with label Samir Quntar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Samir Quntar. Show all posts
Monday, January 4, 2010
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
When the Tough Gets Going
The Israeli politicians and propagandists who dominate mainstream media coverage of the Middle East conflict are fond of rationalising Israel's barbarous behaviour* by claiming that the Middle East is a tough neighbourhood. Their supposed streetwise rationale is often taken at face value by gullible Western politicians and media practitioners. That Israel is far and away the biggest tough in the Middle East neighbourhood never seems to occur to them.
And whenever the tough gets going, no people, apart from the Palestinians, suffer as much as the Lebanese. That they have the true measure of their neighbour from Hell, emerges from the results of an opinion poll of 800 Lebanese (Sunni, Shi'a, Druze & Christian) on the subject of last month's Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap and the role of armed resistance in defending Lebanon from the bully boy south of the border. The poll, undertaken by the Beirut Centre for Research & Information from 20-24 July, was reported in Lebanon's Al-Akhbar (The News) of 29/7/08. The translation is mine:-
1) Would it have been possible to obtain the release of our prisoners without the capture of Israeli soldiers in July 2006? [75% answered No (62% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 65% Druze, 75% Christian)]
2) If the Lebanese government had undertaken to negotiate the prisoner release, would it have yielded the same result? [62% answered No (40% Sunni, 93% Shi'a, 46% Druze, 58% Christian)]
3) Do you believe that because some of the prisoners, such as Quntar and most of the remains, were not Shi'a, indicates that Hezbollah is non-sectarian? [59% answered Yes (38% Sunni, 94% Shi'a, 39% Druze, 52% Christians)]
4) Do you believe that diplomacy alone, not backed by military force, will enable us to reclaim from Israel that which is our right? [66% answered No (59% Sunni, 93% Shi'a, 57% Druze, 54% Christians]
5) Disregarding what you think of Hezbollah's internal politics, do you consider the armed resistance to be Lebanon's protector until such time as the army is ready to take over? [69% answered Yes (51% Sunni, 96% Shi'a, 52% Druze, 65% Christian)]
6) Has Hezbollah regained its image as a resistance organization following the success of the prisoner exchange? [77% answered Yes (54% Sunni, 99% Shi'a, 61% Druze, 79% Christian)]
7) Do you believe that confronting the ongoing Zionist project requires an ongoing resistance project? [75% answered Yes (64% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 66% Druze, 68% Christian]
8) Do you support what Hasan Nasrallah said regarding the duty of all Lebanese to participate in the resistance? [79% answered Yes ( 71% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 73% Druze, 74% Christian)]
9) Do you believe that closing the prisoner and Shab'aa Farms file will eliminate the Israeli threat to Lebanon? [70% answered No (61% Sunni, 87% Shi'a, 61% Druze, 67% Christian)]
And, in a reference to Lebanon's other neighbour from Hell:
10) Have Hezbollah and the opposition done enough to investigate the fate of the missing in Syria? [67% answered No ( 81% Sunni, 43% Shi'a, 84% Druze, 72% Christian)]
[*To quote the late Israel Shahak: "I don't like to discuss Israeli policies in terms of 'settler states', or 'colonial rule', since I regard Israeli policies as being much worse than those applied by other colonial regimes." (Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear & Foreign Policies, 1997, p 7)]
And whenever the tough gets going, no people, apart from the Palestinians, suffer as much as the Lebanese. That they have the true measure of their neighbour from Hell, emerges from the results of an opinion poll of 800 Lebanese (Sunni, Shi'a, Druze & Christian) on the subject of last month's Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap and the role of armed resistance in defending Lebanon from the bully boy south of the border. The poll, undertaken by the Beirut Centre for Research & Information from 20-24 July, was reported in Lebanon's Al-Akhbar (The News) of 29/7/08. The translation is mine:-
1) Would it have been possible to obtain the release of our prisoners without the capture of Israeli soldiers in July 2006? [75% answered No (62% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 65% Druze, 75% Christian)]
2) If the Lebanese government had undertaken to negotiate the prisoner release, would it have yielded the same result? [62% answered No (40% Sunni, 93% Shi'a, 46% Druze, 58% Christian)]
3) Do you believe that because some of the prisoners, such as Quntar and most of the remains, were not Shi'a, indicates that Hezbollah is non-sectarian? [59% answered Yes (38% Sunni, 94% Shi'a, 39% Druze, 52% Christians)]
4) Do you believe that diplomacy alone, not backed by military force, will enable us to reclaim from Israel that which is our right? [66% answered No (59% Sunni, 93% Shi'a, 57% Druze, 54% Christians]
5) Disregarding what you think of Hezbollah's internal politics, do you consider the armed resistance to be Lebanon's protector until such time as the army is ready to take over? [69% answered Yes (51% Sunni, 96% Shi'a, 52% Druze, 65% Christian)]
6) Has Hezbollah regained its image as a resistance organization following the success of the prisoner exchange? [77% answered Yes (54% Sunni, 99% Shi'a, 61% Druze, 79% Christian)]
7) Do you believe that confronting the ongoing Zionist project requires an ongoing resistance project? [75% answered Yes (64% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 66% Druze, 68% Christian]
8) Do you support what Hasan Nasrallah said regarding the duty of all Lebanese to participate in the resistance? [79% answered Yes ( 71% Sunni, 97% Shi'a, 73% Druze, 74% Christian)]
9) Do you believe that closing the prisoner and Shab'aa Farms file will eliminate the Israeli threat to Lebanon? [70% answered No (61% Sunni, 87% Shi'a, 61% Druze, 67% Christian)]
And, in a reference to Lebanon's other neighbour from Hell:
10) Have Hezbollah and the opposition done enough to investigate the fate of the missing in Syria? [67% answered No ( 81% Sunni, 43% Shi'a, 84% Druze, 72% Christian)]
[*To quote the late Israel Shahak: "I don't like to discuss Israeli policies in terms of 'settler states', or 'colonial rule', since I regard Israeli policies as being much worse than those applied by other colonial regimes." (Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear & Foreign Policies, 1997, p 7)]
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Bulls in Rut
"The generals were in their 40s, family men, but they clung to the Israeli culture of youth; they were like adolescent boys or bulls in rut. They believed in force and they wanted war. War was their destiny. Almost 20 years had passed since the army had won glory in the War of Independence, and 10 years since the victory in the Sinai. They had a limited range of vision and they believed war was what Israel needed at that moment, not necessarily because they felt the country's existence was in danger, as they wailed in an almost 'Diaspora' tone, but because they believed it was an opportunity to break the Egyptian army." (1967, Tom Segev, p 296)
"Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." (Moshe Dayan)
Israel never, repeat never, starts wars. It is the most peace-loving country on the planet. Its bulging arsenal is basically for show, wheeled out only when the Arabs force their hand. Which they're always doing, of course. It's always warmongering Arabs, never peaceloving Israelis, who start wars. Those who read Murdoch fishwrapper, such as The Australian, know this. This is because the hordes of Zionist propagandists that pullulate on its pages have said it, over and over again, of every Israeli blitzkreig from 1948 to 2006. And they're still at it. Here's their Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov (No price too high for Israel to bring home its soldiers, 19/7/08) laying it on with the proverbial trowel over who was responsible for the 33-Day War against Lebanon in 2006:-
"Kuntar... has been recast as a resistance hero; a man in whose name Hezbollah was prepared to go to war... "
"Those who embraced Kuntar... would find it difficult to criticise the decision to force war on Lebanon... "
"Even before the war he sparked with Israel in 2006, Nasrallah... "
Let's see if this particular talking point agrees with the latest (2008) account of the war by Israeli journalists (Haaretz) Amos Harel and Ami Issacharoff - 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah & the War in Lebanon? The excerpts below come from Chapter 5 - Going to War.
"At 10:15 AM on Wednesday, July 12, 2006, Hezbollah television station Al-Manar reported a successful 'kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers... We've kept our promise to free our prisoners'. In interviews on Arab satellite TV stations, Hezbollah spokesmen stated that the organization did its natural duty to free Lebanese prisoners and was interested in completing a new comprehensive prisoner exchange... At 12:50 that afternoon [Israeli PM Ehud] Olmert held a joint press conference with his [visiting] Japanese guest [PM Koizumi]. Koizumi asked that Israel respond with restraint to Hezbollah's latest provocation and weigh the consequences. Olmert, however, took an entirely different approach: 'The events of this morning cannot be considered a terrorist strike; they are the acts of a sovereign state that has attacked Israel without cause. The Lebanese government, which Hezbollah is part of, is trying to upset regional stability... We will not give in to blackmail or negotiate with terrorists on any aspect of the lives of IDF soldiers'. Olmert also stated... the Israeli response would be 'thundering'.
"[He] wanted to move quickly, on the assumption that the Hezbollah attack offered him a 'window of opportunity' to receive international support for a tough Israeli response. When Sharon was prime minister, senior IDF officers on more than one occasion tried to curb his anger and postpone impulsive decisions. This time, however, the chief of staff was no less bullish than the prime minister. Olmert's advisors claim that no one broached the question of whether to respond. 'It was clear to all of us that we had to respond', they say. The nature of the response was rooted in the decisions that had been made in March 2006, when a basket of targets had been approved. In previous discussions, all the security agencies had recommended a major military operation in the event of another kidnapping attempt..'."
"As at the government meeting... several of the senior [security] officers [at a meeting with defence minister Amir Peretz] seemed to be competing to see who could come up with the most far-reaching proposals and gutsy declarations, while the chief of staff orchestrated the proceedings. Dan Halutz insisted that the incident had to be seen 'as a watershed in the Israeli-Lebanese dialogue' and that targets linked to the Lebanese government had to be hit hard... 'They are to blame', he asserted... At the end of the meeting... IDF spokeswoman Brigadier General Miri Regev briefed reporters that the chief of staff had stated that Israel 'had to put Lebanon back 20 years'... Halutz came up with the idea of attacking the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon as Israel's main response to the kidnapping... 'We have to put out all the lights in Lebanon. We can shut off their electricity for a year, damage at a cost of billions'...
"At 5:00 pm, [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah held a press conference... 'The only way of returning [the 2 Israeli soldiers] is through indirect negotiations for a prisoner exchange', he said, adding that the operation had been 5 months in the planning. 'We surprised no one. We've been saying for a year that we'd kidnap Israeli soldiers... in order to bring about the release of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners... The prisoners will be returned and we are prepared for a period of quiet, but we are also ready for confrontation. If [you] want confrontation, get ready for some surprises', he threatened.
"In hindsight, Nasrallah's goading words sound like a warning that Israel's leaders should have paid closer attention to. But they also illustrate a missed opportunity on the part of Hezbollah's leadership. Ironically, the person who boasted that he knew how to read the Israelis like the palm of his hand did not dream that their response to the kidnapping would be so devastating. According to Professor Eyal Susser of Tel Aviv University, Nasrallah saw the abduction as a logical move. 'He gambled. Israel was the side that changed the game rules. Nasrallah would have been happy to relinquish the pleasure, but he went to war with his head held high'.
"A Western diplomat posted to Beirut in this period claims that Nasrallah did not forsee war. 'Not even in his worst nightmare. Hezbollah's leaders envisioned a medium-intensity confrontation: heavy shelling for a week immediately followed by negotiations. They believed that the abduction would strengthen their position in Lebanon's political arena... Another Western diplomat holds that Nasrallah's mistake was understandable: 'I know of no state other than Israel that would go to war because of 2 kidnapped soldiers'." (pp 75-84)
Clearly, starting wars is Israel's prerogative.
"Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." (Moshe Dayan)
Israel never, repeat never, starts wars. It is the most peace-loving country on the planet. Its bulging arsenal is basically for show, wheeled out only when the Arabs force their hand. Which they're always doing, of course. It's always warmongering Arabs, never peaceloving Israelis, who start wars. Those who read Murdoch fishwrapper, such as The Australian, know this. This is because the hordes of Zionist propagandists that pullulate on its pages have said it, over and over again, of every Israeli blitzkreig from 1948 to 2006. And they're still at it. Here's their Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov (No price too high for Israel to bring home its soldiers, 19/7/08) laying it on with the proverbial trowel over who was responsible for the 33-Day War against Lebanon in 2006:-
"Kuntar... has been recast as a resistance hero; a man in whose name Hezbollah was prepared to go to war... "
"Those who embraced Kuntar... would find it difficult to criticise the decision to force war on Lebanon... "
"Even before the war he sparked with Israel in 2006, Nasrallah... "
Let's see if this particular talking point agrees with the latest (2008) account of the war by Israeli journalists (Haaretz) Amos Harel and Ami Issacharoff - 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah & the War in Lebanon? The excerpts below come from Chapter 5 - Going to War.
"At 10:15 AM on Wednesday, July 12, 2006, Hezbollah television station Al-Manar reported a successful 'kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers... We've kept our promise to free our prisoners'. In interviews on Arab satellite TV stations, Hezbollah spokesmen stated that the organization did its natural duty to free Lebanese prisoners and was interested in completing a new comprehensive prisoner exchange... At 12:50 that afternoon [Israeli PM Ehud] Olmert held a joint press conference with his [visiting] Japanese guest [PM Koizumi]. Koizumi asked that Israel respond with restraint to Hezbollah's latest provocation and weigh the consequences. Olmert, however, took an entirely different approach: 'The events of this morning cannot be considered a terrorist strike; they are the acts of a sovereign state that has attacked Israel without cause. The Lebanese government, which Hezbollah is part of, is trying to upset regional stability... We will not give in to blackmail or negotiate with terrorists on any aspect of the lives of IDF soldiers'. Olmert also stated... the Israeli response would be 'thundering'.
"[He] wanted to move quickly, on the assumption that the Hezbollah attack offered him a 'window of opportunity' to receive international support for a tough Israeli response. When Sharon was prime minister, senior IDF officers on more than one occasion tried to curb his anger and postpone impulsive decisions. This time, however, the chief of staff was no less bullish than the prime minister. Olmert's advisors claim that no one broached the question of whether to respond. 'It was clear to all of us that we had to respond', they say. The nature of the response was rooted in the decisions that had been made in March 2006, when a basket of targets had been approved. In previous discussions, all the security agencies had recommended a major military operation in the event of another kidnapping attempt..'."
"As at the government meeting... several of the senior [security] officers [at a meeting with defence minister Amir Peretz] seemed to be competing to see who could come up with the most far-reaching proposals and gutsy declarations, while the chief of staff orchestrated the proceedings. Dan Halutz insisted that the incident had to be seen 'as a watershed in the Israeli-Lebanese dialogue' and that targets linked to the Lebanese government had to be hit hard... 'They are to blame', he asserted... At the end of the meeting... IDF spokeswoman Brigadier General Miri Regev briefed reporters that the chief of staff had stated that Israel 'had to put Lebanon back 20 years'... Halutz came up with the idea of attacking the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon as Israel's main response to the kidnapping... 'We have to put out all the lights in Lebanon. We can shut off their electricity for a year, damage at a cost of billions'...
"At 5:00 pm, [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah held a press conference... 'The only way of returning [the 2 Israeli soldiers] is through indirect negotiations for a prisoner exchange', he said, adding that the operation had been 5 months in the planning. 'We surprised no one. We've been saying for a year that we'd kidnap Israeli soldiers... in order to bring about the release of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners... The prisoners will be returned and we are prepared for a period of quiet, but we are also ready for confrontation. If [you] want confrontation, get ready for some surprises', he threatened.
"In hindsight, Nasrallah's goading words sound like a warning that Israel's leaders should have paid closer attention to. But they also illustrate a missed opportunity on the part of Hezbollah's leadership. Ironically, the person who boasted that he knew how to read the Israelis like the palm of his hand did not dream that their response to the kidnapping would be so devastating. According to Professor Eyal Susser of Tel Aviv University, Nasrallah saw the abduction as a logical move. 'He gambled. Israel was the side that changed the game rules. Nasrallah would have been happy to relinquish the pleasure, but he went to war with his head held high'.
"A Western diplomat posted to Beirut in this period claims that Nasrallah did not forsee war. 'Not even in his worst nightmare. Hezbollah's leaders envisioned a medium-intensity confrontation: heavy shelling for a week immediately followed by negotiations. They believed that the abduction would strengthen their position in Lebanon's political arena... Another Western diplomat holds that Nasrallah's mistake was understandable: 'I know of no state other than Israel that would go to war because of 2 kidnapped soldiers'." (pp 75-84)
Clearly, starting wars is Israel's prerogative.
Monday, July 21, 2008
The 'Motiveless Malignancy' of Samir Quntar
The corporate media, especially the Murdoch branch, thrives on colonial delusions. Take the recent Israeli-Hezbollah prisoner swap. The overwhelmingly pro-Israel reportage and opinion focused almost exclusively on the figure of the demonic native Samir Quntar.
To adapt Frantz Fanon, Quntar is "insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil. He is the corrosive element, destroying all that comes near him; he is the deforming element disfiguring all that has to do with beauty or morality; he is the depository of malificent powers, the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces":
"Kuntar was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Front squad that infiltrated northern Israel by sea on April 22, 1979. In the middle of the night they broke into a residential building, taking Danny Haran and his 4-year old daughter Einat hostage as the rest of the family hid. When they arrived at the seashore, Kuntar made little Einat watch as he shot her father at close range, then murdered her by smashing her head against a rock with his rifle butt. Meanwhile, Haran's wife Smadar, who had hidden in a closet with their 2-year old toddler Yael, accidentally suffocated the child while trying to stifle her cries and preventing Kuntar from finding them. Kuntar bears responsibility for this death as well. This is the child-killer that Hezbollah is greeting with cheers and parades. This is the brutal murderer whose release will be called a victory by extremists throughout the region." (Prisoner deal that had to be made, Dor Shapira, The Australian, 17/7/08)
"Samir Kuntar was sentenced to 3 life terms for killing an Israeli man in front of his 4-year old daughter, then killing the little girl by smashing her skull with his rifle butt." (Editorial, The Australian, 18/7/08)
"Kuntar shot an Israeli man in front of his 4-year old daughter, then killed the little girl by smashing her head with his rifle butt. Kuntar is the kind of disturbed individual who gravitates to violent extremist groups." (Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald, 18/7/08)
"... Samir Kuntar the face of Israeli nightmares for almost 30 years. Kuntar was the type of figure mothers across the country - but especially in the north - had warned their children about. In 1979, he had set out in a boat from Lebanon and rowed ashore in Nahariya, 15 km south of the border, with a gang of Palestinians who had aimed to kidnap, or kill, the first Jews they found. Kuntar was convicted of killing first a policeman, then a father and his 4-year old daughter. The slain man's 2nd daughter, aged 2, was inadvertently smothered by her mother minutes later as the terrified pair hid in an attic... Kuntar, by any measure a child-killer..." (No price too high for Israel to bring home its soldiers, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 19/7/08)
What a beast! - if you automatically believe the Israelis, that is. And believing the Israelis is the way of the corporate media in this country. (The SMH may mock the "monochromatic opinion pages" [Editorial, 19/7/07] of The Australian, but when it comes to their own editorials on the Middle East conflict, they could just as easily have been written by The Australian's foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan: "Israel's armed forces are its pride, the guarantor of the nation's existence and the symbol of a people's determination never again to be herded to their doom by oppressors." (Snipping at Samson, 18/7/08)
The only deviation from the official story I could find was this from the SMH, lifted from The New York Times: "At his 1980 trial Kuntar said Haran had been killed by Israeli soldiers' bullets, according to the court transcripts published this week by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. He testified he had been injured, had passed out and not seen what happened to the child. Witnesses contradict his story." (Many set to welcome 'reviled' prisoner, 17/7/08)
Yediot Aharonat's account (The Kuntar File, Exposed by Nir Gontarz, 14/7/08) seems to have the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs' seal of approval, appearing on its website (http://www.mfa.gov.il/). Classified for almost 30 years, says Yediot Aharonat, it was authorized for publication on 13/7/08 at the newspaper's request.
Yediot Aharonot reports that Quntar initially "confessed that he had bludgeoned Einat to death with the butt of his rifle. Later, however, when testifying in court, Kuntar denied the charges... 'I was hit by 5 bullets. Then Haran got to his feet and signaled to the army forces with his hand to stop them from firing. He was hit by the bullets being shot at him by the soldiers... I lost a lot of blood and passed out. I didn't know what else was happening with me until I woke up in the morning and found myself in the military's hands. I didn't hurt the girl at all and I didn't see how she met her death'. However, in court, prosecution witness no. 4 testified that he saw Danny Haran stand up and shout, 'Cease your fire, don't shoot. My little girl is here'. Immediately thereafter he saw Danny shot by Kuntar. Testimony was also given in court by a doctor who ruled that Einat's death had been caused by a direct blow with a blunt instrument, something like a stick or a rifle butt... 'Kuntar went over to Einat Haran and hit her head twice with the butt of his rifle, with the intent of killing her', wrote the judges in their verdict... As a result of the blows, Einat suffered skull fractures and fatal brain damage causing her death. They murdered the hostages - a helpless father and daughter, in cold blood'. They wrote in the sentence, 'By these acts the defendants reached an all-time moral low... an unparalleled satanic act... the punishments we are about to impose on the defendants cannot begin to match the brutality of their actions... "
End of story? Not quite. Before you abandon your critical faculties entirely, consider the following data about what happens to Palestinians when they enter the Kafkaesque world of Israeli 'justice':-
"His name is Muhammad Ali Khalil Hasan... There are 2 charge-sheets against him, one at Nablus and the other at Lydda. But the prosecutor comforted me: 'If he gets a life term in Lydda, that'll be enough for us and we won't put him on trial at Nablus...'
"He is an educated man. The first time he had been arrested was 2 years before. At that time he was badly beaten, so much so that he could hardly move, but he was later released for lack of proof. The second time he was arrested was on 22 July 1971, charged with being the leader of a large Fatah group... His mother was arrested with him. He told me later that his interrogators started beating him in her presence, and told her that if she didn't say everything she knew about her son, they would go on beating him. His poor mother, who really did not know anything, denied any knowledge about her son. She was arrested, held at the Nablus prison, and received a very light sentence at the trial because of her age. She asked me to help her son. I explained to her that it was an almost hopeless case. She understood.
"Muhammad talked about his family and about himself: he was a teacher and the director of an UNRWA school in Nablus. He had brothers in various Arab countries, who in spite of being refugees like him, had acquired academic education. One of his brothers had come to Nablus after the [1967] war and had been killed in the street by Israeli soldiers; this had left a deep impression in Muhammad: 'He was a civilian. He had come to his home and family. Why did they kill him?'
"To his judges in Lydda he said: 'It was not I who came to you in Tel-Aviv, but you who came to me in Nablus. So who should be trying whom?' He was transferred to the Ramleh prison. All those who act proudly during their trial pay the price for it. Whoever dares to express his credo during trial, talking of his homeland, of the Palestinians, of the revolution, gets his due in prison when the sentence is pronounced.
"When I visited him at the Ramleh prison, he told me that he had been put in solitary confinement for 31 days, and for many months his mother had not been allowed to visit him. It is hard for the patriot to learn 'good manners'." (With My Own Eyes: Israel & the Occupied Territories 1967-1973, Felicia Langer, 1975, p 93)
"The Landau Commission [1987] report [into the General Security Services] confirmed what had long been alleged by Palestinian detainees, their Palestinian and Israeli lawyers, and local human rights organizations: that GSS agents had used violent interrogation methods routinely on Palestinian detainees since at least 1971 and that they had routinely lied about such practices when confessions were challenged in court on the grounds that they had been coerced." (Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank & Gaza, Lisa Hajjar, 2005, p 70)
"It is clear that this is not a natural and ordinary court system, but some solution that the military administration found for the purpose of enforcing the occupation regime. The job that is done there is not purely jurisdictional. In fact, the situation in the military court in Gaza does not look like something of this world. Hundreds of families are outside, dozens of prisoners are inside, most very young. The impression is that they have lost faith in the system and do not even try to defend themselves. They confess to everything. The defense counsels, who are in many cases pathetic characters, also accept the situation and act, in fact, as mediators for the purpose of punishment. I found there a total symbiosis between the prosecution, the judges and the lawyers, while the accused are at the side. And everything is taking place in stoic agreement." (Israeli Judge Aryeh Cox, quoted in Courting Conflict, p 102)
"Another advantage prosecutors enjoy is the tendency of judges to favour the testimony of their witnesses over those of the defense... [A] Gazan lawyer told of a soldier who testified in a case against one of his clients, saying he had witnessed the man throwing stones at 9:15 am in Jabalya refugee camp. The client was found guilty. Several days later, the same soldier testified against another client, reporting that he had seen the man throwing stones at 9.30 am (on the same day as the earlier case) in Rafah refugee camp. The lawyer questioned the soldier about how long it would take to get from Jabalya to Rafah, to which the soldier responded that the trip would take about 45'... The lawyer then asked the judge to dismiss this case because the soldier could not possibly have been in both places as he had testified. Rather than acknowledging that the soldier was perjuring himself in at least one of the cases, the judge ordered that the lawyer be thrown out of court because his line of questioning had insulted the soldier." (ibid pp 112-113)
"Israel's military court system for Palestinian suspects in the West Bank produces almost automatic convictions, an Israeli human rights group charged Sunday. The group, Yesh Din, said in a new report that in 2006 more than 99.7% of those accused were convicted, 95% in plea bargains." (Report: Israeli military courts automatically convict Palestinians, Haaretz, 6/1/08)
Whatever the truth in this matter, there was no avoiding the media's exclusive focus on Israeli suffering. The only deaths that matter are Israeli deaths. Quntar, it seems, was just one more monster from the Dark Side, aka Lebanon, where death is a way of life. His sole purpose was to afflict Jews (or, in the words of the Herald editorialist, an "oppressor" bent on herding Jews to their "doom"). The one reference in all the coverage I could find which might suggest that another side to the story were these 2 sentences in the Herald: "In 1978 Kuntar went to the Israel-Lebanon border after Israel invaded southern Lebanon. His stepmother and brother said he returned deeply affected by the deaths he witnessed." (Many set to welcome 'reviled' prisoner, 17/7/08) What was it that so affected Quntar? Consider the following testimonies:-
"It may be pertinent... to mention that provocative as the Palestinians had often been on the Lebanese border, it was Israel that had, as it were, called the shots there since the border became a 'hot' one in 1968. According to the tally of the Lebanese army (before its disintegration in 1976), Israeli violations of Lebanese territory in the period 1968-1974 occurred at the rate of 1.4 violations per day. This increased to 7 violations per day during 1974-75. In the 8 months' period between 1 January 1975 and 21 August 1975 (when the Lebanese army's tally ended), the following Israeli violations were recorded: air space 1,101; territorial waters 215; artillery shellings 2,180; machine-gun firing 303; air and naval raids 40; temporary installation inside Lebanese territory 193; road building 3; land incursions 151. This averages out to 17 violations per day." (Conflict & Violence in Lebanon: Confrontation in the Middle East, Walid Khalidi, 1979, p 124)
"London Guardian correspondent Irene Beeson reports that '150 or more towns and villages in South Lebanon... have been repeatedly savaged by the Israeli armed forces since 1968'. She describes the history of the village of Khiyam, bombed from 1968. By the time Israel invaded 10 years later, only 32 of its 30,000 inhabitants remained. 'They were massacred in cold blood' by the Haddad forces that Israel had established in the south... By October 1977 it was estimated that the total number of refugees from the south (mostly impoverished Shiite Lebanese Muslims) had reached 300,000." (The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians, Noam Chomsky, 1983, p 191)
"Thousands of people are now on the move northwards to Beirut... displaced by what is simply a campaign of military terror conducted against them by the Israeli army, navy and airforce and its Lebanese Christian allies. People are being bombed, rocketed, shelled and shot all over South Lebanon but their sufferings have been almost entirely ignored... The Israelis in fact seem to have the same attitude towards the Arabs of South Lebanon as Hopalong Cassidy did towards Indians - namely that the only good ones are dead ones. Over the years I have seen dozens of dead women and children killed by Israeli attacks in the south - and very few corpses of young men, let alone young men in the green fatigues that Palestinian militia groups now almost always wear." (Where bombs still fall, Christopher Bourne, New Statesman, 3/8/79)
As Ben Hecht once said, "Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock." But just when you think it couldn't get worse, you get the letter writers from Planet Zion:-
Notwithstanding 197 nameless (as far as the corporate press is concerned) Arab bodies, Howard Hilton of Alexandria, NSW had this to say: "Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah was the condition of the prisoners. The Palestinian prisoners were all alive and healthy, the 2 Israelis were dead. No matter one's view of this conflict, the choice of one's captors would be a no-brainer." (The Australian, 19/7/08)
Under the Orwellian heading "The truth about Kuntar", Dov Midalia of Bondi Junction, NSW thought he'd outdo The Australian in grand guignol: "After finding his way into a sleepy Israeli town, Kuntar killed the policeman, broke into an apartment and took the man and his daughter at gunpoint to a beach. Here, in full view of eyewitnesses, he shot and then drowned the man in front of his little girl, and then picked her up, swung her head against the rocks and smashed her skull in with his rifle-butt." (The Australian, 21/7/08) Apparently the witnesses were so transfixed by Quntar's murderous acrobatics they forgot to shoot.
Of course, while we're in the late 70s, I guess no one out there in mass media land would be interested in the 'motiveless malignancy' of Israeli Lieutenant P, would they? Lt P? Well, he and his mates in the Israeli army invaded south Lebanon in 1978, with the results you see above. He and two corporals, feeling a tad bored, "decided to go on a man-hunting (accepted Israeli army jargon) expedition and brought back 4 villagers including a youth of 16. The 4 were put in separate rooms and their hands and feet were bound with nylon cords. Lieutenant P then tortured them before strangling them with the cord, and the bodies were disposed of in a nearby well." (Furore in Israel over army murders, The Middle East, September 1979)
Initially sentenced to 8 years in the clink, Lt P had his sentence reduced by Israeli Chief of Staff General Raphael Eitan to 2 years.
To adapt Frantz Fanon, Quntar is "insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil. He is the corrosive element, destroying all that comes near him; he is the deforming element disfiguring all that has to do with beauty or morality; he is the depository of malificent powers, the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces":
"Kuntar was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Front squad that infiltrated northern Israel by sea on April 22, 1979. In the middle of the night they broke into a residential building, taking Danny Haran and his 4-year old daughter Einat hostage as the rest of the family hid. When they arrived at the seashore, Kuntar made little Einat watch as he shot her father at close range, then murdered her by smashing her head against a rock with his rifle butt. Meanwhile, Haran's wife Smadar, who had hidden in a closet with their 2-year old toddler Yael, accidentally suffocated the child while trying to stifle her cries and preventing Kuntar from finding them. Kuntar bears responsibility for this death as well. This is the child-killer that Hezbollah is greeting with cheers and parades. This is the brutal murderer whose release will be called a victory by extremists throughout the region." (Prisoner deal that had to be made, Dor Shapira, The Australian, 17/7/08)
"Samir Kuntar was sentenced to 3 life terms for killing an Israeli man in front of his 4-year old daughter, then killing the little girl by smashing her skull with his rifle butt." (Editorial, The Australian, 18/7/08)
"Kuntar shot an Israeli man in front of his 4-year old daughter, then killed the little girl by smashing her head with his rifle butt. Kuntar is the kind of disturbed individual who gravitates to violent extremist groups." (Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald, 18/7/08)
"... Samir Kuntar the face of Israeli nightmares for almost 30 years. Kuntar was the type of figure mothers across the country - but especially in the north - had warned their children about. In 1979, he had set out in a boat from Lebanon and rowed ashore in Nahariya, 15 km south of the border, with a gang of Palestinians who had aimed to kidnap, or kill, the first Jews they found. Kuntar was convicted of killing first a policeman, then a father and his 4-year old daughter. The slain man's 2nd daughter, aged 2, was inadvertently smothered by her mother minutes later as the terrified pair hid in an attic... Kuntar, by any measure a child-killer..." (No price too high for Israel to bring home its soldiers, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 19/7/08)
What a beast! - if you automatically believe the Israelis, that is. And believing the Israelis is the way of the corporate media in this country. (The SMH may mock the "monochromatic opinion pages" [Editorial, 19/7/07] of The Australian, but when it comes to their own editorials on the Middle East conflict, they could just as easily have been written by The Australian's foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan: "Israel's armed forces are its pride, the guarantor of the nation's existence and the symbol of a people's determination never again to be herded to their doom by oppressors." (Snipping at Samson, 18/7/08)
The only deviation from the official story I could find was this from the SMH, lifted from The New York Times: "At his 1980 trial Kuntar said Haran had been killed by Israeli soldiers' bullets, according to the court transcripts published this week by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. He testified he had been injured, had passed out and not seen what happened to the child. Witnesses contradict his story." (Many set to welcome 'reviled' prisoner, 17/7/08)
Yediot Aharonat's account (The Kuntar File, Exposed by Nir Gontarz, 14/7/08) seems to have the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs' seal of approval, appearing on its website (http://www.mfa.gov.il/). Classified for almost 30 years, says Yediot Aharonat, it was authorized for publication on 13/7/08 at the newspaper's request.
Yediot Aharonot reports that Quntar initially "confessed that he had bludgeoned Einat to death with the butt of his rifle. Later, however, when testifying in court, Kuntar denied the charges... 'I was hit by 5 bullets. Then Haran got to his feet and signaled to the army forces with his hand to stop them from firing. He was hit by the bullets being shot at him by the soldiers... I lost a lot of blood and passed out. I didn't know what else was happening with me until I woke up in the morning and found myself in the military's hands. I didn't hurt the girl at all and I didn't see how she met her death'. However, in court, prosecution witness no. 4 testified that he saw Danny Haran stand up and shout, 'Cease your fire, don't shoot. My little girl is here'. Immediately thereafter he saw Danny shot by Kuntar. Testimony was also given in court by a doctor who ruled that Einat's death had been caused by a direct blow with a blunt instrument, something like a stick or a rifle butt... 'Kuntar went over to Einat Haran and hit her head twice with the butt of his rifle, with the intent of killing her', wrote the judges in their verdict... As a result of the blows, Einat suffered skull fractures and fatal brain damage causing her death. They murdered the hostages - a helpless father and daughter, in cold blood'. They wrote in the sentence, 'By these acts the defendants reached an all-time moral low... an unparalleled satanic act... the punishments we are about to impose on the defendants cannot begin to match the brutality of their actions... "
End of story? Not quite. Before you abandon your critical faculties entirely, consider the following data about what happens to Palestinians when they enter the Kafkaesque world of Israeli 'justice':-
"His name is Muhammad Ali Khalil Hasan... There are 2 charge-sheets against him, one at Nablus and the other at Lydda. But the prosecutor comforted me: 'If he gets a life term in Lydda, that'll be enough for us and we won't put him on trial at Nablus...'
"He is an educated man. The first time he had been arrested was 2 years before. At that time he was badly beaten, so much so that he could hardly move, but he was later released for lack of proof. The second time he was arrested was on 22 July 1971, charged with being the leader of a large Fatah group... His mother was arrested with him. He told me later that his interrogators started beating him in her presence, and told her that if she didn't say everything she knew about her son, they would go on beating him. His poor mother, who really did not know anything, denied any knowledge about her son. She was arrested, held at the Nablus prison, and received a very light sentence at the trial because of her age. She asked me to help her son. I explained to her that it was an almost hopeless case. She understood.
"Muhammad talked about his family and about himself: he was a teacher and the director of an UNRWA school in Nablus. He had brothers in various Arab countries, who in spite of being refugees like him, had acquired academic education. One of his brothers had come to Nablus after the [1967] war and had been killed in the street by Israeli soldiers; this had left a deep impression in Muhammad: 'He was a civilian. He had come to his home and family. Why did they kill him?'
"To his judges in Lydda he said: 'It was not I who came to you in Tel-Aviv, but you who came to me in Nablus. So who should be trying whom?' He was transferred to the Ramleh prison. All those who act proudly during their trial pay the price for it. Whoever dares to express his credo during trial, talking of his homeland, of the Palestinians, of the revolution, gets his due in prison when the sentence is pronounced.
"When I visited him at the Ramleh prison, he told me that he had been put in solitary confinement for 31 days, and for many months his mother had not been allowed to visit him. It is hard for the patriot to learn 'good manners'." (With My Own Eyes: Israel & the Occupied Territories 1967-1973, Felicia Langer, 1975, p 93)
"The Landau Commission [1987] report [into the General Security Services] confirmed what had long been alleged by Palestinian detainees, their Palestinian and Israeli lawyers, and local human rights organizations: that GSS agents had used violent interrogation methods routinely on Palestinian detainees since at least 1971 and that they had routinely lied about such practices when confessions were challenged in court on the grounds that they had been coerced." (Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank & Gaza, Lisa Hajjar, 2005, p 70)
"It is clear that this is not a natural and ordinary court system, but some solution that the military administration found for the purpose of enforcing the occupation regime. The job that is done there is not purely jurisdictional. In fact, the situation in the military court in Gaza does not look like something of this world. Hundreds of families are outside, dozens of prisoners are inside, most very young. The impression is that they have lost faith in the system and do not even try to defend themselves. They confess to everything. The defense counsels, who are in many cases pathetic characters, also accept the situation and act, in fact, as mediators for the purpose of punishment. I found there a total symbiosis between the prosecution, the judges and the lawyers, while the accused are at the side. And everything is taking place in stoic agreement." (Israeli Judge Aryeh Cox, quoted in Courting Conflict, p 102)
"Another advantage prosecutors enjoy is the tendency of judges to favour the testimony of their witnesses over those of the defense... [A] Gazan lawyer told of a soldier who testified in a case against one of his clients, saying he had witnessed the man throwing stones at 9:15 am in Jabalya refugee camp. The client was found guilty. Several days later, the same soldier testified against another client, reporting that he had seen the man throwing stones at 9.30 am (on the same day as the earlier case) in Rafah refugee camp. The lawyer questioned the soldier about how long it would take to get from Jabalya to Rafah, to which the soldier responded that the trip would take about 45'... The lawyer then asked the judge to dismiss this case because the soldier could not possibly have been in both places as he had testified. Rather than acknowledging that the soldier was perjuring himself in at least one of the cases, the judge ordered that the lawyer be thrown out of court because his line of questioning had insulted the soldier." (ibid pp 112-113)
"Israel's military court system for Palestinian suspects in the West Bank produces almost automatic convictions, an Israeli human rights group charged Sunday. The group, Yesh Din, said in a new report that in 2006 more than 99.7% of those accused were convicted, 95% in plea bargains." (Report: Israeli military courts automatically convict Palestinians, Haaretz, 6/1/08)
Whatever the truth in this matter, there was no avoiding the media's exclusive focus on Israeli suffering. The only deaths that matter are Israeli deaths. Quntar, it seems, was just one more monster from the Dark Side, aka Lebanon, where death is a way of life. His sole purpose was to afflict Jews (or, in the words of the Herald editorialist, an "oppressor" bent on herding Jews to their "doom"). The one reference in all the coverage I could find which might suggest that another side to the story were these 2 sentences in the Herald: "In 1978 Kuntar went to the Israel-Lebanon border after Israel invaded southern Lebanon. His stepmother and brother said he returned deeply affected by the deaths he witnessed." (Many set to welcome 'reviled' prisoner, 17/7/08) What was it that so affected Quntar? Consider the following testimonies:-
"It may be pertinent... to mention that provocative as the Palestinians had often been on the Lebanese border, it was Israel that had, as it were, called the shots there since the border became a 'hot' one in 1968. According to the tally of the Lebanese army (before its disintegration in 1976), Israeli violations of Lebanese territory in the period 1968-1974 occurred at the rate of 1.4 violations per day. This increased to 7 violations per day during 1974-75. In the 8 months' period between 1 January 1975 and 21 August 1975 (when the Lebanese army's tally ended), the following Israeli violations were recorded: air space 1,101; territorial waters 215; artillery shellings 2,180; machine-gun firing 303; air and naval raids 40; temporary installation inside Lebanese territory 193; road building 3; land incursions 151. This averages out to 17 violations per day." (Conflict & Violence in Lebanon: Confrontation in the Middle East, Walid Khalidi, 1979, p 124)
"London Guardian correspondent Irene Beeson reports that '150 or more towns and villages in South Lebanon... have been repeatedly savaged by the Israeli armed forces since 1968'. She describes the history of the village of Khiyam, bombed from 1968. By the time Israel invaded 10 years later, only 32 of its 30,000 inhabitants remained. 'They were massacred in cold blood' by the Haddad forces that Israel had established in the south... By October 1977 it was estimated that the total number of refugees from the south (mostly impoverished Shiite Lebanese Muslims) had reached 300,000." (The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians, Noam Chomsky, 1983, p 191)
"Thousands of people are now on the move northwards to Beirut... displaced by what is simply a campaign of military terror conducted against them by the Israeli army, navy and airforce and its Lebanese Christian allies. People are being bombed, rocketed, shelled and shot all over South Lebanon but their sufferings have been almost entirely ignored... The Israelis in fact seem to have the same attitude towards the Arabs of South Lebanon as Hopalong Cassidy did towards Indians - namely that the only good ones are dead ones. Over the years I have seen dozens of dead women and children killed by Israeli attacks in the south - and very few corpses of young men, let alone young men in the green fatigues that Palestinian militia groups now almost always wear." (Where bombs still fall, Christopher Bourne, New Statesman, 3/8/79)
As Ben Hecht once said, "Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock." But just when you think it couldn't get worse, you get the letter writers from Planet Zion:-
Notwithstanding 197 nameless (as far as the corporate press is concerned) Arab bodies, Howard Hilton of Alexandria, NSW had this to say: "Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah was the condition of the prisoners. The Palestinian prisoners were all alive and healthy, the 2 Israelis were dead. No matter one's view of this conflict, the choice of one's captors would be a no-brainer." (The Australian, 19/7/08)
Under the Orwellian heading "The truth about Kuntar", Dov Midalia of Bondi Junction, NSW thought he'd outdo The Australian in grand guignol: "After finding his way into a sleepy Israeli town, Kuntar killed the policeman, broke into an apartment and took the man and his daughter at gunpoint to a beach. Here, in full view of eyewitnesses, he shot and then drowned the man in front of his little girl, and then picked her up, swung her head against the rocks and smashed her skull in with his rifle-butt." (The Australian, 21/7/08) Apparently the witnesses were so transfixed by Quntar's murderous acrobatics they forgot to shoot.
Of course, while we're in the late 70s, I guess no one out there in mass media land would be interested in the 'motiveless malignancy' of Israeli Lieutenant P, would they? Lt P? Well, he and his mates in the Israeli army invaded south Lebanon in 1978, with the results you see above. He and two corporals, feeling a tad bored, "decided to go on a man-hunting (accepted Israeli army jargon) expedition and brought back 4 villagers including a youth of 16. The 4 were put in separate rooms and their hands and feet were bound with nylon cords. Lieutenant P then tortured them before strangling them with the cord, and the bodies were disposed of in a nearby well." (Furore in Israel over army murders, The Middle East, September 1979)
Initially sentenced to 8 years in the clink, Lt P had his sentence reduced by Israeli Chief of Staff General Raphael Eitan to 2 years.
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