Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Terrorist Sharon

It is no doubt redundant to assert that Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel 
Sharon, is a terrorist. After all, the evidence is displayed on the 
television news almost every night.

He has in fact always been a terrorist — at least since his early teens, 
at any rate. At 14 Sharon joined the secret right-wing Zionist paramilitary 
"underground", the Haganah.

Organised originally in the 1920s to combat the revolts of Palestinian 
Arabs against the Zionist-organised settlement of Palestinian lands by 
Jewish immigrants, Haganah ("Defence") emerged after WW2 as an openly 
terrorist outfit, bombing bridges, railway lines, and ships used to deport 
"illegal" Jewish immigrants.

It was the Haganah that organised the mass migration of Jews from Europe to 
British-controlled Palestine in the first years after the Second World War. 
This strategy was intended to force Britain's hand on the Zionist dream of 
creating a "Jewish state" on the territory of multi-ethnic, religiously 
diverse but largely Arabic Palestine.

It's a policy Sharon's government still pursues, with over a hundred Jewish 
settlements being aggressively developed on the sites of Palestinian 
villages and farms, under the protection of occupying Israeli troops.

Before the War, Haganah had claimed to be opposed to the tactics of the 
openly terrorist Zionist groups Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang. 
Fascist-nationalist organisations, they carried out numerous bombings, 
murders and terrorist raids on the British administration during WW2.

They also bombed Arab bus stops and carried out other terrorist actions 
against the Arab population, while claiming to be fighting for 
"independence from Britain".

On July 22, 1946, Irgun Zvai Leumi bombed the King David Hotel in 
Jerusalem, with the loss of 91 lives. Numerous other post-war acts by Irgun 
included the hanging of two British sergeants in July 1947.

In 1946 there were 1,269,000 Arabs and 678,000 Jews in Palestine. By 1947, 
although the Arabic majority and some of the historical Jewish population 
opposed partition of the country, the UN decided to do just that.

The UN decision was a major Zionist victory. Not only did it affirm the 
Zionist right to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, but it also gave 
the state a territory that was far out of proportion to the relative 
numbers of Jews to Arabs in Palestine.

It comprised more than half the territory of Palestine, including the 
greater part of the valuable coastal area, leaving the narrow coastal strip 
of Gaza, half of Galilee, the Judaean and Samarian uplands, and a bit of 
the Negev to the Arab state.

This decision was partly influenced by awareness of Hitler's genocidal 
policy towards European Jewry over the previous decade, and partly by 
pressure from the US and British Governments seeking their own strategic 
advantage in the Middle East.

It was also felt that something had to be done to stop the killing. In 
addition, pressure was put on some smaller UN members by Zionist 
sympathisers in the United States.

The partition plan inevitably left a substantial Arab population within the 
borders of the proposed Jewish state. This the Zionists did not want. In 
fact they were not content with receiving only part of Palestine — even 
the larger part — at all.

In early 1948, Irgunists and members of the Stern Gang joined forces to 
massacre the 250 civilian inhabitants of the Arab village of Deir Yasin. 
This gruesome act was successfully intended to sow panic among the Arab 
population and begin an exodus.

The Zionist leadership then proclaimed the creation of Israel and set about 
the process of militarily seizing the rest of Palestine and driving 
hundreds of thousands of Arabs into exile.

It's a set of policies that Israeli Governments, including that of Ariel 
Sharon, have consistently pursued since. Not surprising, really: Israeli 
Prime Minister Menachem Begin had been a leader of Irgun Zvai Leumi and 
another PM, Yitzhak Shamir, had been a leader of the Stern Gang.

And Ariel Sharon had fought with the Haganah. The Haganah actually became 
the Israeli army, officially known today as Tzva Haganah le-Yisra`el (" 
Israel Defence Forces").

Sharon despises Arabs and has no compunction about killing them. In 1950 he 
led bloody "reprisals" against Jordanian villages which Israel claimed had 
harboured Palestinian "terrorists".

It was unimportant whether Palestinian fighters had used the villages or 
not. The Israeli attacks were terror raids intended to make Israel's 
neighbours afraid to support Palestinian resistance.

Similarly, following Israel's seizure of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip 
in 1967, Sharon pursued another ruthless hunt for "terrorist bases", 
destroying hundreds of Palestinian homes. This policy too his government 
also pursues today.

In 1982, Sharon was Defence Minister when Israel invaded Lebanon. He gave 
the nod for Israel's allies, the fascist Christian Falangists, to carry out 
yet another massacre of Palestinians, this time the inhabitants of the 
Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps.

Israel's involvement was so blatant that Sharon had to be dropped as 
Defence Minister. But he knew it would only be a temporary "punishment".

At the time, Sharon gave an interview to the daily Davar. In it he said: 
"Even if you prove to me that the present war in Lebanon is a dirty immoral 
war, I don't care."

"Let them [the Arabs] understand that we are a wild country, dangerous to 
our surroundings, not normal, that we might go crazy if one of our children 
is murdered, just one!

"If anyone even raises his hand against us we'll take away half his land 
and burn the other half, including the oil. We might use nuclear arms.

"Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to 
kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to 
have everyone hate us."

"To have everyone hate us" — well, he is certainly succeeding there.