The Crucifixion of the Palestinian People Part 1, Who Kills the Human Bombers?
Charles E. Carlson
Israeli official sources claim that suicide bombers from
This writer has consistently argued that it is far more accurate to lay the responsibility for deaths on both sides on the doorstep “Christian-Zionist” leaders of American churchesof and “celebrity media Christians” who, we find, are more bloody handed than a handful of young adults with crude homemade bombs. Were it not for these failed religious men of peace there would be no suicide bombers, there would have been no Day 911, Iraq would not have been destroyed and 600 dead American military would still be alive, as would countless Iraqis who been killed. (See Ending Our Plague)
Without Christian-Zionist influence there would be an uneasy peace between the Muslims and secular Jews who were forced long ago to share
An excuse for murder
Observations in Gaza
I will refer to the Gaza Strip because I have contacts there and first-hand observations to rely on, having personally witnessed a missile attack against civilians and interviewed persons and agencies that specialize in the impact of mass terror on an imprisoned society. In
Are the acts of the human bombers a valid reason for the murder of Sheikh Yassin and those who were with him at prayer on a Friday dawn? Statistical reports from American and Israeli media and testimony from mental heath agencies in
The term “suicide bomber” is itself Orwellian. There is nothing suicidal about these humans who carry the bombs. It is doubtful that a single bomber ever “committed suicide” in the sense of carrying out a bombing for the deliberate purpose of killing himself or herself.
According to the Israeli government, most “suicide bombers” are unsuccessful and never detonate a bomb. If the motive was to end their lives, a Palestinian man or woman could hardly pick a less certain way to do it. They face extreme physical challenges and a terrible risk of being taken prisoner. There are easier ways to kill oneself, such as drowning in the nearby
Where are the bombers who lived?
Based on the Israeli claims, the vast majority of human bombs are killed, captured, or arrested in advance. It is reasonable to wonder, based on
People in
The thought of being taken alive by the Israelis while in possession of a bomb must be terrifying, given the knowledge that capture will probably lead to a slow, agonizing death far worse than instant incineration or decapitation. Israeli interrogators are capable of inflicting suffering more painful than even Mel Gibson was able to portray in his movie of Christ’s death on the Cross. Based on
If most human bombers are caught, as Israelis claim, what becomes of these prisoners? Why do we never hear about them again? I have yet to hear of a trial of an “attempted suicide bomber.” What is done to the hundreds of young adults
It is also time we find out about the tens of thousands who have been arrested and who remain in custody sometimes for years without charges, simply because they were suspected of something. Shiakh Yassin lost the use of one eye in a beating he sustained during interrogation before his release from an Israeli prison in 1991. Imagine torturing a quadriplegics in a wheel chairs!
Israel uses incidents it brings upon itself to justify its policies. Thus, when a youth, a man or a woman bomber destroys a bus on which dozens of Israeli soldiers are probably riding,
Greatly exaggerated
In the entire 17-year history of the uprising against the occupation, generally referred to as the Intifada, there have only been about one hundred human bombs exploded; Israeli government reports are somewhat confusing as to exact numbers when it comes to the “suicide bombers.” Ariel Sharon reported in a speech during the 2003 Jenin occupation that there had been 58. Our count is taken from Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports. The Israeli Defense Force also produces slightly conflicting reports in a monthly bar chart listing “attempts” versus “successful suicide bombings.” In February 2004 its charts show a total of 136 explosions from September 2000 through December 2003. Whichever number is correct, 58 or 136, it is a small number indeed. We will use 100, because we have the name, age, and rank of every person killed in those 100 reported bombings.
Each human bomb carries a very small charge of explosives–only the amount one person, sometimes a woman, can carry. Incidents of mass terror by Israelis using warplanes, tanks and helicopters are much greater in number and limited in killing power only by how much
Shootings and beatings at checkpoints and in homes, detainments and harassment never end and do not even make print unless a foreign reporter or photographer happens to be on hand. Palestinian hospital records and records of humanitarian organizations indicate that as many as 2000 of their children have been killed by Israeli since the beginning of the First Intifada in October of 1987, and many more have been wounded and maimed. This is only the children! It is these children of this war who have grown up to be the human bombers.
Torture of Palestinian prisoners
Torture in
The barbaric practice of extracting confessions from “detainees” by torture has always been used in
For a few years
Any Israeli military or policeman may torture detainees as long as it can be passed off as “moderate pressure.” The problem is, nobody is allowed to watch to see how “moderate” the torture really is. Extreme pressure can be applied as long as no one is officially watching and the pressure does not leave extreme and obvious marks on the victim.
“Torture” is a terrifying word in the English language, too horrible to contemplate. It is truly an instrument of terror. It is a word we associate with the sadist Henry the 8th. It is the kind of terrorism perfected in the gulag in
Among the common forms of extreme torture used by Israelis is the breaking of bones of boys caught throwing rocks. We reported one such incident three years ago. A 10 year old boy named Kamal Ali As’idah who lives with his parents and four sisters in
Young Kamal happened to be photographed by a Reuters photographer while being dragged away by six soldiers much larger than him. So frightened was the boy that his jeans were visibly soaked with his own urine. Israelis contemptuously referred to Kamal as “the piss child.”
Kamal is one of many thousands
What is unique about Kamal’s detention is that some Americans actually went to the trouble to see what happened to Kamal in detention. His father later told the Editor of Washington Report that his son was released after eight hours, badly beaten to the head and legs and with his throwing arm was broken. But this brutality against the child was not the end of it. As retribution for his son’s act, Kamal’s father was fired from his job with an Israeli tour bus company when the employer learned of the incident. Israelis beat and break the bones of 10 year olds all the time and the media ignores it. Mid-eastern doctors have told me that men are often raped with sharp instruments and on every body part, particularly the genitals. Electric shock leaves few outward marks. Women prisoners are not excluded from torture.
Selective execution is another form of the systematic physiological torture inflicted on the entire population of
Bombing where least expected is a form of psychological torture that implants fears in the minds of innocent civilians, especially the children, who learn their parents cannot hide or protect them. Bombings and the constant threat of bombings are forms of torture inflicted on every Gazan mother, father and child. They live with the knowledge that a bomb or tank shell could come through a wall any time. Children in the camps are killed on their doorsteps by rubber-coated zinc bullets shot by soldiers who will be held blameless regardless of circumstances.
I did not feel “awe” at the enormous show of American firepower as I watched hovering Apaches pounding away from over my rooftop; I felt anger and frustration that there was no way to resist it. It did not make me want to leave
I began to resent the Israelis at the checkpoints and the American government’s ongoing gifts of guided bombs to be fired from Apaches and F-16s supplied and paid for by American taxpayers. I resented the night vision magic that allows the men in the Apaches to see me on my rooftop without me being able to see them. I resented the churches back home for their blind enabling of the genocide they support and faun over but refuse to look at. There is no room for disbelief in
The effect of mass torture on the people of
Dr. Sarraj also stated that his organization systematically tracks down the families of “suicide bombers,” whose homes are always immediately destroyed. He stated that in every case, without exception (this was in March 2002) every bomber had witnessed one or more acts of abuse against his father by the Israelis, such as a severe beating or a long period of imprisonment. What father’s son cannot understand such an emotion? I wanted to go out with them and throw rocks.
According to a 1993 British Medical Journal study of 1500
In another study of 477 former “detainees” it was found that 29.14% required psychiatric intervention, 24.72% had some form of organic brain damage, and 41.9% had trouble adapting to family life. This study went on to say, “70% of the children in the Gaza Strip had been exposed to 4 or 5 traumatic experiences.”
(Source:
Torture of Detainees
“Detainee” is an Israeli euphemism for someone who is taken away without arrest or charge, to be tortured and held indefinitely without contact with the outside world. The detainee disappears just as the Russians described by Solzhenitzyn disappeared into the “Black Mariahs” (prison vans) of the gulag. The detainee is allowed no lawyer or phone call. Some are never seen again, and of those who are, most report they were questioned and systematically tortured both mentally and physically.
By torture I do not mean the mild inconvenience and discomfort one might encounter in any police station in
Everyone in
If you debate an Israeli about the bulldozer driver who purposely mashed an American college student named Rachel Corrie to a pulp, your opponent will invariably respond that she was defending suspected “suicide bombers” and deserved her punishment, as did the homeowners of the house being bulldozed. If you ask about the deliberate starvation of Gazan children by locking down the Gaza Strip, just as the
The separation “wall” that is a functional replica of the Berlin Wall is, we are told, in response to the “bombers.” The raping of men with sharp instruments while under interrogation, or the crushing of reproductive organs with batons and boots are all needed because of the “bombers.” Never mind that there were no “suicide bombers” for the first 39 years of the Israeli conflict and that torture was at it worst in those early years because there was so little international interest or concern.
Torture is carried on against mothers and dads by the constant din of nighttime bombings and the hunger that threatens many. Every act of brutality, be it the breaking of 10 year old Kamal’s arm, the murder of aged religious leader Sheik Yemeni, the assassination of human rights protesters or photographers who photograph the wrong scenes, the building of a wall that encroaches on and cuts up still more Palestinian land and deprives Palestinians of still more water–all are excused as responses to the acts of less than 100 young people who knew they and their people had little or no future.
End Part 1, Crucifixion
