PERSPECTIVE: WISING UP TO THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION

PALESTINE won full membership of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in Paris, a day before the start of the 2011 World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Doha, Qatar. With the necessary two-thirds vote cast by the 193 UNESCO members needed for membership, Palestine garnered a majority of 107, 14 against, and 52 abstentions.

The decision seemed appropriate given that the Palestinians have been deprived of educational, scientific and cultural rights and opportunities to advance themselves.Those whose land was once occupied and colonised would understand the importance of education because the lack of it would cast a lasting impact long after the colonisers have left.

In that regard, it is difficult to comprehend why there should be any objection at all, on anyone’s part, to the Palestinian desire to be a full UNESCO member.More so an objection led by the United States, a country that has benefited so much from education, scientifically and culturally, and which is very much aware of its importance.

In fact, the US is concerned about losing out following the decline of its educational achievements internationally.It is therefore baffling to learn how the successful Palestinian bid could prove costly to UNESCO because the US has a law that prohibits Washington from funding any UN-affiliated body that accepts Palestinian membership.

The US is likely to withdraw its financial contribution of about 22 per cent of the agenc y’s budget, even though this will damage “core US interests” in a number of key countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq undertaken by UNESCO, as warned by its director-general Irina Bokova in the Financial Times.It is indeed ironic that the US can spare billions of dollars to facilitate the blossoming of the Arab Spring to usher in the future. And trillions were squandered to pursue regime change militarily.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University in the US, who spoke at the summit, cited that the country spent 30 times more militarily than for social development.This has resulted in the widening inequalities in education among the US minorities, namely the Hispanics and African-American population. He described this as a failure on the part of the US. Palestinians need more opportunities to educate themselves and preserve their cultural heritage which goes back thousands of years to the days of antiquities.With the full UNESCO membership, they are better able to seek UNESCO’s assistance in recognising several monuments in the occupied Palestinian territories as world heritage sites that cut across religio-cultural lines.The need for this was highlighted at the summit in the Culture and Learning session, whereby the importance of transmitting traditions from generations to generations is regarded as a crucial part of lear ning.

This is well illustrated by Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui, leader of the Paiter Surui, an indigenous Amazonian tribe in Brazil, whose population, language and way of life are being threatened with extinction. Culture, after all, shapes approaches to education and learning, and provides the basis for identity and diversity.The summit is reminded yet again of the tens of millions of children who are not in school and their dark world without the benefits of education when we fail to provide for them despite the stated target of Millennium Development Goals on access to basic education universally.

Instead, UNESCO director Professor Georges Haddad said that education today is being turned into a “market” that puts “humanity in danger”.In this respect the summit sent a powerful global message when it celebrated a Laureate in Education for the first time. Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder and chair of Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, was honoured with the Inaugural 2011 WISE Prize for Education in recognition of his work that spans four decades to empower millions of poor children worldwide through education by pioneering a system outside the prevailing one.

The US$500,000 (RM1.5 million) prize and a gold medal aim to put education on the same pedestal as the various prestigious international awards in other disciplines so as to raise public awareness of the importance of Changing Societies, Changing Education, the theme of the summit. WISE 2011 was attended by 1,200 participants from 120 nations. It has indeed created another milestone in transforming education globally.

The writer is vice chancellor of Albukhary International University

Source : http://www.nst.com.my/channels/learning-curve/perspective-wising-up-to-the-future-of-education-1.1267?localLinksEnabled=false

Palestine should've got statehood by now - NST

2011/09/20
By W.Scott Thompson


IT doesn't seem rational. The cool-headed American president, seeking rapprochement with the Muslim world, reluctantly makes it clear that his rep at the United Nations will veto a Palestinian bid for statehood. Ah, it's the Jewish lobby in the United States, supporting a nutty state that wants it all, so long as it has its single backer in line.

It must be a bit more complicated. James Rosenau, an American political scientist, 43 years ago presented the world as a series of "systems", in which one variety was a "sub-dominant system" or one where a minority dominates the overall state system. Sounds like Tea Party America.

But his example then, and still could be, was the rabbinical ultra-orthodox Israeli bloc that through constitution, biblical text and emotional sway, dominates the state, and makes deviation from its desired course near-impossible. The 1967 victories in the Six-Day War simply gave them proof of God's will to restore their right to the world of King David, no matter what's happened in the intervening two-and-a- half millennia.

Finally, I find a voice articulating precisely what is wrong in Israel. Carlo Strenger, a professor of psychology, writing in the International Herald Tribune, notes that while 87 per cent of the population supports the demonstrators for social justice et al., the "national-religious parties in the governing coalition... are based on the belief that the Jewish people have a God-given right to what they call the Greater Land of Israel". 

Their bet is Israeli demography ultimately, with patience, leads to an "Orthodox Jewish majority", just so long as the state doesn't give up the West Bank, with its numerous Israeli holy sites of the pre-Common era. Got that?

I won't bother to refute their conviction, since it's all but self-explanatory in its fallacies. The important part is the depth of their conviction and their unwillingness to negotiate one iota of any of this away. The pressures of the outside world can be left to that world to deal with on its own. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who may not technically be of their number, shares their belief, if only out of bullheadedness and (for now) the desire to show his ability to knock Barack Obama into his own self-dug hole.

But on the American side, it's also a bit more complicated. There is a tendency in human relations for backers of a leader, an idea, an ideology to outflank that idea in its own predilections.

The famous lobby backs positions in America that Israeli defence planners consider absurd. After George W. Bush's election, the neo-cons of America fancifully laid out plans of redrawn borders in the Middle East ludicrously favourable to Israel. That suited the rabbinate in Israel, though it didn't fit the majority of American Jews who argued for "reasonable" behaviour by Israel, peace and settlement (as opposed to "settlements") over intransigence or defiance of world opinion and the American presidency itself.

Read the "J Street" studies in Washington and you see the work of highly intelligent American Jews who see the ultimate fatuity of the lobby's implicit endorsement of the rabbinical position. Instead of seeing an orthodox "majority", they realise the demographic inevitability of an apartheid Israel swamped by Muslim majorities when you include the occupied territories that Netanyahu can't envisage giving up.

The "debate" in America has now become ludicrous, as analysts try to justify the "necessity" of an American veto to head off the Palestinian authority's drive for statehood.

To my astonishment, a former National Security Council official, writing no less for the Council on Foreign Relations, has argued that even if such a state were to gain recognition it would sacrifice much of its long-term goals.

Robert Danin thus says that while achievement of some United Nations status might enhance leverage in bargaining with Israel, "accession to the UN would undermine Palestinians' moral and historical claims to being a stateless people, a status that has kept their plight at the top of the international agenda for decades.

In the international community's eyes, moreover, the conflict with Israel would effectively become a border dispute -- one of scores around the world -- not an existential challenge to the Palestinians. This would reduce the saliency and centrality of the Palestinian issue for many".

Let me see if I got this right. Gaining international recognition and a rightly deserved place at the table lowers Palestinian legitimacy, because there's no "diplomatic framework" that has sanctioned the new position, as if the UN is not the highest one of all.

But, of course, that place at the table precisely enshrines some of the Palestinian agenda. Has any historical grouping of people ever preferred a moral high position to hard-grounded realities, like statehood? Ask the heirs of Mahatma Gandhi. He used the moral high ground not for an "existential position", but for the leverage it provided for nationhood.

In my lifetime of watching politics, I've never seen such meretricious and specious argument by supposedly smart people.

In the real world most of us inhabit, Palestine will win some sort of international recognition that manifestly ups the ante and puts Israel even more on the defensive, however much the rabbis may not give a hoot. America looks ridiculous, and the Muslim world, far from preferring some theoretical statelessness for Palestine, is further inflamed.

It may be worth noting that it wasn't just the Israeli ambassador that was rescued from the mobs in Cairo; it was his whole 80-strong embassy. And it took six hours of negotiations among the authorities in Cairo, Netanyahu and Obama himself to achieve even that. So Netanyahu expects Obama to pull his chestnuts out of the fires he's lit all over the world?

There just may be some limits to the recklessness of the Israeli leader, imposed by realities all around him, however much the rabbinate will put its collective head in the sand. As I write, the International Herald Tribune headlines "Israel at Sea, Adrift and Alone" by Thomas Friedman, a most influential Jewish-American writer.

The writer is emeritus professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, United States

Source : Palestine should've got statehood by now http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/19sct/Article/#ixzz1ZgbnH3f9

Tony Blair: Time to go? - Al Jazeera

Tony Blair has been a political salesman since he first made his debut at the British Labour Party conference. And he is good, no doubt about that. Not only because he speaks coherently; he is Scottish after all. Nor is it because he's often compared with George W Bush. It's because Tony could peddle ideas and sell economic and military agendas better than most. The question is: Would you buy a used car from Tony? The Palestinians and the Arabs in general have concluded enough is enough. Nabil Sha'ath, the Palestinian Authority's first ever foreign minister, told me last year: "Forget Tony Blair. I think Mr Blair is at the wrong time at the wrong place and he’s just making it easier for Mr Netanyahu to deceive us, really, in more ways than one." Despite their suspicion that Blair betrayed them on more than a few occasions - siding with Israel behind their backs - he remained set in his position shuttling between Jerusalem, London and Washington. And last week, Blair was dispatched to sell US and Israeli arguments for rejecting the Palestinian request for membership to reluctant UN Security Council members. He went beyond the call of duty. There is always something for Tony in what Tony does, and nowadays he's trying to renew his tenure as the international Quartet's point man on Palestine. The Quartet, composed of the US, EU, UN and Russia, is supposedly responsible for making peace between Israel and the Palestinians. If I remember correctly, Blair negotiated his salary with Condi Rice at the State Department in 2007 when he was first appointed to the post. And he has one particular asset there. For all practical purpose, Tony has been the public face of Dennis Ross, Israel's man at the White House. Ross has been a behind-the-scenes architect of the Obama administration's policy shift over the past year, leading to Washington's veto of the UN Security Council draft resolution on the illegality of Israeli settlements, and Obama's Zionist speech, at the UN last week.


History of salesmanship

Blair started his career with the Labour Party in the mid 1980s as a junior parliamentarian and became its spokesman for six years. Three years later, he was the party's candidate for prime minister under the slogan: "Things can only get better." And things did get better - for him, but not necessarily for the country. He won the elections in a landslide and changed the rebranded the party "New Labour". During his tenure, public relations superseded reform in government, promoting "Cool Britannia" against the backdrop of mounting nepotism and financial discrepancies. Blair's so called Third Way (with selected ideas from British sociologist Anthony Giddens) left the British economy in shambles and its society in a terrible malaise. The liberalisation of the banking sector and financial services left London far more exposed than its European partners when the financial crisis hit. Things got much worse during his second term when Blair turned to foreign affairs. He sold George W's "global war on terror" after 9/11, earning him the title of "Bush's poodle". The low point of British politics came against the backdrop of Blair's enthusiastic support for Bush's invasion of Iraq. Despite the terrible fiasco of the occupation and the revelation that the war's justifications were false, Tony continued to sell the expired and rotten policy without shame.

 From selling war to peddling peace

 Many demanded that he be put on trial for war crimes. But in the age of empire, he was appointed as the point man for the Middle East peace process. He went on to defend Israel's policy in the West Bank. He promoted its "humane occupation" each time Israel removed one of its several hundred roadblocks and checkpoints that choke life and living in Palestine. Tony Blair was nowhere to be seen during the first nine days of Israeli's 2008 war on Gaza. He was on holiday. Even today's British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was irritated: "People in the Middle East are entitled to ask themselves, 'Where is Tony Blair?'" When 500 people were getting killed in the impoverished Gaza strip, Blair - according to his aide - was working tirelessly (at the private opening of an Armani store in London) to mediate a ceasefire. Arguably, Blair's part time job as Quartet special envoy says as much about his capacity to rebound as it does about Washington's disrespect for the Arabs; about a humiliated and divided Middle East, or about the nature of the "peace process" itself. It also says much about the so-called international Quartet, that the Bush administration appointed the body to prelaunch its sponsored negotiations in 2002, which were, of course, an utter failure. Why would the Secretary General of the United Nations that represents the whole community of nations accept being a junior partner in a geopolitical configuration? It is beyond me. Or, for that matter, why should Europe or Russia have their own seats at the negotiating table? Who said these hypocritical, cynical entities could deliver peace in the Middle East? Be that as it may, the Arabs can't fire President Obama or Russian Prime Minister Putin. They cannot ask Ban Ki-moon to step aside. They could, however, end the Quartet's mission. They could at least tell the Quartet to fire its special envoy before he becomes persona non grata. He is already unwelcome in Palestine. In retrospect, Palestinians reckon it's unfair to call Tony a poodle. Poodles are harmless.

 Marwan Bishara is Al Jazeera's senior political analyst. He was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris. An author who writes extensively on global politics, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on the Middle East and international affairs.

  Source : http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/2011929183947664140.html

Palestine & UN: History of a double standard - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Failure to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israel's 40-year occupation, in the words of UN former Secretary General Kofi Annan, would “continue to hurt the reputation of the United Nations and raise questions about its impartiality”.

No cause has consumed as much UN paper work as the plight of the displaced and occupied Palestinians. But hundreds of its resolutions on Palestine have not been respected let alone applied for over half a century.

Nowhere has the UN ideals and mechanisms been more mired in power politics than in Palestine. The efforts to neutralise UN intervention have been championed mainly by the United States. This week’s efforts by the Obama administration working on behalf of Israel took advocacy into a whole new level.

Washington has vetoed more than 40 UN Security Council resolutions critical of its policies some of which were drafted by its European allies. A quick look at today’s Middle East makes it clear that such obstructions worked for the interest of neither party, nor for peace and security in the region.

Cold-War rivalries have also contributed to UN paralysis in the Israeli Palestinian-Arab conflict, which explains why more than half of the 690 resolutions adopted by the General Assembly from 1947-1990 have been ignored.

But what justifies sidelining the UN ever since, while keeping it at an arm’s length from a two decades of Peace Process?

The short answer is a double standard.

All major post-Cold War conflicts have seen direct UN involvement including, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and of late, Lebanon, South Sudan. Not the Palestine problem. It was deferred to the US sponsored diplomatic process even though Washington’s close relations with Israel rendered it anything but an impartial broker.

Not only was Palestinian Israeli conflict snatched out of the world body, most relevant US resolutions critical of Israel were ignored by the US sponsors.

Only after the peace process failed to yield a solution a decade later, did the Bush administration allow the United Nations to join, and even then, only as a junior partner in a newly formed International Quartet that includes the European Union and Russia, all of whom are members of the UN!

Meanwhile, Israel has disregarded tens of resolutions, “censuring”, “calling”, “urging”, “recommending”, or “condemning” its attacks, settlement, deportations, occupation, etc.

Likewise, all pleas and demands for humanitarian and political interventions fell on deaf ears. The only time the UN was allowed to act, was in 1997 when it sent few international unarmed observers to the occupied city of Hebron. Alas, they weren’t mandated to speak publicly about the ongoing violations.

For the past four decades, Israel has violated all relevant UNSC council resolutions such as the resolution 465 of 1980 that strongly deplored all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure of status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.

It also rejected Resolution 476, which reaffirmed the necessity to end the Israeli occupation of Arab territories ongoing since the 1967 war. The only UN Security Council Resolution that was accepted by the US and Israel as the basis of the diplomatic process, i.e. 242 of 1967, was also systematically violated. Israel has been expanding its settlement activity when the resolution notes the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force".

Paradoxically, Israel was created by a UN recommendation for Partitioning Palestine in 1947, and was accepted as a new UN member on the basis of its commitment to respect its resolution, and specifically UNGA 194 regarding the return of the Palestinian refugees.

Now that all other venues have been tried and failed, including 18 years of bilateral negotiations, the UN Security Council must carry its responsibilities by demanding that Israel carry its obligations under UN charter and by recognising the Palestinian right for self-determination in a state of their own. Period.

Marwan Bishara is Al Jazeera's senior political analyst.

He was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris. An author who writes extensively on global politics, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on the Middle East and international affairs.

Source : http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/2011921105321715717.html

Gaza's real humanitarian crisis

By Gregg Carlstrom

The Israeli government has, for weeks, insisted that the 10,000 tonnes of supplies on board the Gaza aid flotilla are not necessary. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister, reiterated that claim on Friday, telling reporters "there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza".

"Israel is conducting itself in the most humanitarian manner, and allowing the entrance of thousands of tonnes of food and equipment to Gaza," he told reporters on Friday.

It's true that Israel allows basic necessities - which Israeli officials often term "humanitarian aid" - to enter the blockaded Gaza Strip. But it tightly controls both the type and quantity of goods allowed into the territory.

Navi Pillay, the United Nations' human rights chief, called the blockade devastating in an August 2009 report. Pillay said it constituted collective punishment, illegal under international law.

Israel usually allows 81 items into Gaza, a list which is subject to revision on a near-daily basis. It is riddled with contradictions: Zaatar, a mix of dried spices, is allowed into the territory; coriander and cumin are not. Chick peas are allowed, while tahini was barred until March 2010.

"Luxury goods," things like chocolate, are prohibited altogether.

So are most construction materials, though Israel has relaxed this prohibition slightly over the last few weeks. The United Nations refugee agency has resorted to constructing houses out of mud because other building material are unavailable.

And those products allowed to enter Gaza are permitted only in modest quantities.

In January 2007, Gaza received more than 10,000 truckloads of goods each month; by January 2009, that number was down to roughly 3,000.

A 2008 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) found that 70 per cent of Gaza's population suffered from "food insecurity." As Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reported last week, the Israeli authorities allow little meat and fresh produce into Gaza, leading to widespread malnutrition in the territory.

Medical goods, too, are in short supply. The World Health Organisation says dozens of basic medicines are unavailable in Gaza because of the blockade.

In 2008, Gaza had only 133 hospital beds per 100,000 people, less than one-fourth the hospital capacity of Israel. That capacity was further reduced during Operation Cast Lead - Israel's three-week war in Gaza, launched in December 2008 - which damaged a number of hospitals.

"The situation is deteriorating due to the closure - there are restrictions of movement, restrictions of food - it causes problems in areas of health, water, [and] sanitation," Cecilia Goin, a spokeswoman for the ICRC, said on Monday.

"The ICRC is especially concerned about the health situation of the people."

Fuel, too, is heavily restricted, with many Gaza residents facing hours of power cuts each day. The blackouts force many families and businesses to buy generators, and their widespread use has serious consequences: An Oxfam report released in March concluded that 15 Gazans have died from "generator-related accidents" since January.

All of this creates a scenario in which, according to Amnesty International's latest annual report, Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants are "cut off... from the rest of the world."

Amnesty concluded that four out of five Gazans - 80 per cent of the population -depend on external aid to survive.

source : http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/20105319333613851.html

Children behind Israeli bars

By Nour Odeh in

Middle East

on May 30th, 2010

.

With a timid smile, 16 year-old N twiddles his thumbs as he tells me his frightening story. Israeli soldiers came to his house a year ago at dawn. He was blindfolded, handcuffed, and taken away without any explanation.

When the military jeep finally stopped, the soldiers took him to a room with chairs. They began cursing at him and using derogatory terms against his mother and female siblings. The soldiers then put sunglasses on N's eyes and a female headband on his head.

"They took pictures of me; they were laughing," he told me.

"Aren’t you going to confess?" the soldiers kept asking him… "To what?" he would reply. "To throwing stones," they would say.

Afraid of ending up in jail, N refused to confess to the alleged offence.

"I kept telling them: I didn't do it. I didn't do anything," he recalled.

Until this point, N's story sounded familiar to someone like me, who's been covering the conflict in Palestine for years. Beatings,humiliation, and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees, including minors, are regularly documented by human rights organisations.

But N's story was just beginning.

"There was a dog barking outside the room… The soldier told me he would bring it in to f**k me if I didn't confess… I was so scared… The guy then took out a stick; he whipped it forward and it got longer. He told his friends, who were looking on and laughing at me: "This boy doesn't want to talk. Let's pull down his pants so I can shove this stick up his a**."

"I tried to hold on to the chair; he kept poking me, groping my privates with the stick, trying to get me off the chair," N said while avoiding eye contact with me.

The Palestine Chapter of Defence for Children International (DCI) has collected 100 sworn affidavits this year of Palestinian children, under the age of 18, who said they were mistreated by their Israeli interrogators. Fourteen of them say they were eithersexually abused or threatened with sexual assault, including rape, if they didn't confess to what their interrogators accused them of.

N is one of these children… His confession landed him a three month sentence in an Israeli jail.

Because of the stigma attached, there are fears that many more children may have suffered similar abuse but have been afraid to come forward.

N kept telling me he felt awkward talking about his experience. "It feels bad to talk about this. I mean, what a thing to talk about… It's shameful," he told me.

So I asked this shy teenager why he mustered the courage to speak out. "I want justice," he said. "I wish these people could be tried in a court so that they don't do this to other guys."

N told me that at prison, he met many boys who had suffered similar abuse.

Israeli forces arrest approximately 700 Palestinian minors every year. During interrogation, these minors are not allowed to have contact with their lawyers or families. Human rights organisations say the alleged abuses happen during this period of isolation.

"These practices are meant to break the children. In a way, when you break the spirit of these children, you're breaking the spirit of the nation," Rifaat Kassis, the director general of DCI, told me.

And it's because of the powerful impact sexual abuse has on these children that DCI has sounded the alarm at the highest possible international levels. The organisation has communicated affidavits to the Special UN Rapporteur on Torture, hoping to galvanise enough international pressure to bring these abuses to an end.

This step is a reflection of the stonewalling human rights organisations usually face from Israeli authorities.

"Most of the time, the Israelis, they just dismiss our allegations and say this is not correct, this is not true; so if this is the case, we challenge them to record these interrogations and let the interrogations happen with the lawyer," Kassis told me.

This time was no different. We tried to request a response from the Israeli army but all our requests were turned down. The army told us they would only comment if they had more specific details about these cases, which is a demand the children's lawyers say could jeopardise their clients.

But after the report aired on Al Jazeera, the Israeli military issued a statement rejecting the allegations and the DCI report. The army also said its practices were consistent with international law; a claim hotly contested by all human rights organisations working in Israel and the Occupied West Bank.

The Israeli army's response to these allegations also proves what DCI admits: this is a long-term battle.

So is recovery - N still struggles with his experience

"I'll never forget his eyes; the way he looked at me," he said, referring to his interrogator.

N still has nightmares and struggles to curb the fear he feels when the army is on patrol nearby.

But he's relatively lucky, having a supportive family that has encouraged him to talk about his experience. And N has received counselling from the torture victims' centre of the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association).

Still, this is a frustrating battle, requiring endless patience.

The director general of DCI told me his organisation's petitions and campaigns within the Israeli military system have generally yielded very limited results, if at all. That's why these child rights advocates are hoping that outside pressure will eventually help prevent further instances of abuse and afford children like N the basic rights and protection they should be entitled to.

The tormenting part of this battle, however, is knowing that until success is achieved, there is nothing these activists can do for the children now detained by Israeli soldiers on a regular basis.

They can only hope that counselling, after the fact, can help them recover.

source : http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2010/05/30/children-behind-israeli-bars

Deir Yassin Remembered

Red Cross Eye-Witness Report On The Deir Yassin Massacre

April 9, 1948

On the night of April 9, 1948, the Irgun Zvei Leumi surrounded the village of Deir Yassin, located on the outskirts of Jerusalem. After giving the sleeping residents a 15 minute warning to evacuated, Menachem Begin's terrorists attacked the village of 700 people, killing 254 mostly old men, women and children and wounding 300 others. Begin's terrorists tossed many of the bodies in the village well, and paraded 150 captured women and children through the Jewish sectors of Jerusalem.

The Haganah and the Jewish Agency, which publicly denounced the atrocity after the details had become public several days later, did all they could to prevent the Red Cross from investigating the attack. It wasn't until three days after the attack that the Zionist armies permitted Jacques de Reynier, chief representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jerusalem, to visit the village by the surrounding Zionist armies.

Ironically, the Deir Yassin villagers had signed a non aggression pact with the leaders of the adjacent Jewish Quarter, Giv'at Shaul and had even refused military personnel from the Arab Liberation Army from using the village as a base.

Deir Yassin is described as one of Menachim Begin's finest moments.

Following is the translation from French of the report de Reynier filed with his office (Published in de Reynier's book "Jerusalem Un Drapeau Flottait Sur La Ligne de Feu", 1950, Geneva). Immediately after de Reynier's account are two public statements made by an Haganah witness to the devastation, Col. Meir Pa'el (retired) and by Zvi Ankori, the Haganah commander who occupied Deir Yassin after the Irgun's evacuation.

de Reynier's statement:

"On Saturday, April 10, in the afternoon, I received a telephone call from the Arabs begging me to go at once to Deir Yassin where the civilian population of the whole village has just been massacred.

"I learned that the Irgun extremists hold this sector, situated near Jerusalem. The Jewish Agency and the Haganah's General Headquarters say that they know nothing about this matter and furthermore it is impossible for anyone to penetrate an Irgun area.

"They advise me that I not become involved in this matter as my mission will run the risk of being permanently cut short if I go there. Not only can they not help me but they also refuse all responsibility for what will certainly happen to me. I answer that I intend to go there at once, that the notorious Jewish Agency exercises its authority over the territory in Jewish hands and that the agency is responsible for my freedom of action within the bounds of my mission.

"In fact, I do not know at all how to do it. Without Jewish support it is impossible to reach that village. After thinking I suddenly remember that a Jewish nurse from a hospital here had made me take her telephone number, saying with a strange look that if I ever were in a difficult situation I could call her. On a chance I call her late in the evening and tell her the situation. She tells me to be in a predetermined location the following day at 7 o'clock and to take in my car the person who will be there.

"The next day on the hour and in the location upon which we agreed, an individual in civilian clothes, but with pistols stuffed in his pockets, jumps into my car and tells me to drive without stopping. At my request, he agrees to show me the road to Deir Yassin, but he admits not being able to do to much more for me. We drive out of Jerusalem, leave the main road and the last regular army post and we turn in on a cross road. Very soon two soldiers stop us. They look alarming with machine guns in full view and larger cutlasses at the belt.

"I recognize the uniform of those I am looking for. I must leave the car and lend myself to bodily search. Then I understand that I am a prisoner. All seems lost when a very big fellow ... jostles his friends, takes my hand ... He understands neither English nor French, but in German we arrive at a perfect understanding. He tells me his joy at seeing an ICRC delegate, for having been a prisoner in a camp for Jews in Germany he owes his life to nothing else but our intervention and three reprieves. He says that I am more than a brother for him and that he will do anything I ask. ... We go to Deir Yassin.

"Having reached a ridge 500 meters from the village which we see below, we must wait a long time for permission to go ahead. The shooting from the Arab side starts every time somebody tries to cross the road and the Commander of the Irgun detachment does not seem willing to relieve me. Finally he arrives, young, distinguished, perfectly correct, but his eyes have a strange, cruel, cold look. I explain my mission to him which has nothing in common with that of a judge or arbiter. I want to help the wounded and bring back the dead.

"Moreover, the Jews have signed a pledge to respect the Geneva Convention and my mission is therefore an official one. This last statement provokes the anger of this officer who asks me to consider once and for all that here it is the Irgun who are in command and nobody else, not even the Jewish Agency with which they have nothing in common.

"My (guide) hearing the raised voices intervenes ... Suddenly the officer tells me I can act as I see fit but on my own responsibility. He tells me the story of this village populated by about 400 Arabs, disarmed since always and living on good terms with the Jews who encircled them. According to him, the Irgun arrived 24 hours previously and ordered by loudspeaker the whole population to evacuate all the buildings and surrender. There is a 15 minute delay in the execution of the command. Some of the unhappy people came forward and would have been taken prisoners and then turned loose shortly afterwards toward the Arab lines. The rest did not obey the order and suffered the fate they deserved. But one must not exaggerate for there are only a few dead who would be buried as soon as the `clean up' of the village is over. If I find a bodies, I can take them with me, but there are certainly no wounded.

"This tale gives me cold chills. "I return to Jerusalem to find an ambulance and a truck that I had alerted through the Red Shield ... I arrive with my convoy in the village and the Arab fire ceases. The (Jewish) troops are in campaign uniforms with helmets. All the young people and even the adolescents, men and women, are armed to their teeth: pistols, machine guns, grenades, and also big cutlasses, most of them still bloody, that they hold in their hands. A young girl with the eyes of a criminal, shows me hers still dripping. She carries it around like a trophy. Thisis the `clean up' team which certainly has accomplished its job very conscientiously.

"I try to enter a building. About 10 soldiers surround me with machine guns aimed at me. An officer forbids me to move from the spot. They are going to bring the dead that are there, he says. I then get as furious as ever before in my life and tell these criminals what I think about the way they act, menacing them with the thunder I can muster, then I roughly push aside those who surround me and enter the building.

"The first room is dark, completely in disorder, and empty. In the second, I find among smashed furniture covers and all sorts of debris, some cold bodies. There they have been cleaned up by machine guns then by grenades. They have been finished by knives.

"It is the same thing in the next room, but just as I am leaving, I hear something like a sigh. I search everywhere, move some bodies and finally find a small foot which is still warm. It is a little 10 year old girl, very injured by grenade, but still alive. I want to take her with me but the officer forbids it and blocks the door. I push him aside and leave with my precious cargo protected by the brave (guide).

"The loaded ambulances leaves with orders to return as soon as possible. And because these troops have not dared to attack me directly, it is possible to continue.

"I give orders to load the bodies from this house on the truck. Then I go on to the neighboring house and go on. Everywhere I encounter the same terrible sight. I only find two persons still alive, two women, one of whom is an old grandmother, hidden behind the firewood where she kept immobile for at least 24 hours.

"There were 400 persons in the village. About 50 had fled, three are still alive, but the rest have been massacred on orders, for as I have noticed, this troop is admirably disciplined and acts only on command.

...[De Reynier continues that he returns to Jerusalem where he confronts the Jewish Agency and scolds them for not exercising control over the 150 armed men and women responsible for the massacre.]...

"I then go to see the Arabs. I say nothing about what I have seen, but only that after a first quick visit to the spot there seems to be several dead and I ask what I shall do or where to bring them ... they ask me to see that a suitable burial be given them in a place which will be recognizable later on. I pledge to do so and on my return to Deir Yassin, I find the Irgun people in a very bad mood. They try to stop me from approaching the village and I understand when I see the number and above all the state of the bodies which have been lined up on the main street. I demand firmly that they proceed with the burial and insist on helping them. After some discussion, they begin actually to scoop out a big grave in a small garden. It is impossible to verify the identity of the dead, for they have no papers, but I wrote accurately their descriptions with approximate age.

"Two days later, the Irgun had disappeared from the spot and the Haganah had taken possession. We have discovered different places where the bodies have been piled up without either decency or respect in the open air.

"Back in my office I received two gentleman in civilian clothes, very well dressed who had waited for more than one hour. It is the commander of the Irgun detachment and his aide. They have prepared a text they ask me to sign. It is a statement according to which I have been received courteously by them, that I have obtained all the help needed to accomplish my mission and I thank them for the aide they gave me.

"As I hesitate, I begin to discuss the statement, and they tell me that if I care for my life I should sign immediately."

...[Calling the statement contrary to fact, de Reynier refuses to sign. Several days later in Tel Aviv, de Reynier says he approached by the same two men who ask the ICRC to assist some of their Irgun soldiers.]...

Former Haganah officer, Col. Meir Pa'el, upon his retirement from the Israeli army in 1972, made the following public statement about Deir Yassin that was published by the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot, April 4, 1972:

"In the exchange that followed four [Irgun] men were killed and a dozen were wounded ... by noon time the battle was over and the shooting had ceased. Although there was calm, the village had not yet surrendered. The Irgun and LEHI men came out of hiding and began to `clean' the houses. They shot whoever they saw, women and children included, the commanders did not try to stop the massacre .... I pleaded with the commander to order his men to cease fire, but to no avail. In the meantime, 25 Arabs had been loaded on a truck and driven through Mahne Yehuda and Zichron Yousef (like prisoners in a Roman `March of Triumph'). At the end of the drive, they were taken to the quarry between Deir Yassin and Giv'at Shaul, and murdered in cold blood ... The commanders also declined when asked to take their men and bury the 254 Arab bodies. This unpleasant task was performed by two Gadna units brought to the village from Jerusalem."

Zvi Ankori, who commanded the Haganah unit that occupied Deir Yassin after the massacre, gave this statement in 1982 about the massacre, published by the Israeli paper Davar on April 9, 1982:

"I went into 6 to 7 houses. I saw cut off genitalia and women's crushed stomaches. According to the shooting signs on the bodies, it was direct murder."

The 12 March cartoon by South African cartoonist Zapiro that was later attacked by David Saks of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and which sparked debate in the country.




Source : www.radioislam.org/islam/english/toread/deiryas.htm