New York Daily News
Wednesday, June 27, 2001

Dagger Aimed at Sharon Really Meant for Israel

By Zev Chafets

Nineteen years ago, during the war in Lebanon, Christian militiamen massacred Palestinians at two refugee camps. Israel controlled the area, and its defense minister, Ariel Sharon, was accused of allowing the slaughter to take place.

Within a year, he was tried by an Israeli commission of inquiry, found guilty of "indirect responsibility" for the killings and forced to leave his post.

This week, Human Rights Watch, a New York-based organization, said that Sharon — now Israel's prime minister — should be put on trial as a war criminal for what happened in 1982. "There's no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity," says Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

At this point, I need to mention my personal involvement in the aftermath of the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila camps. At the time, I was director of the government press office of Israel. I thought then (and still think) that Sharon bore a measure of responsibility for what happened.

As a government spokesman, I couldn't defend what he did or his defiant, unapologetic posture. And so I quit. The massacre cost me my job.

I suppose this should make me sympathetic to the campaign to brand Sharon a war criminal.

But I'm not, because I don't think Human Rights Watch is acting in good faith.

The timing makes me suspicious.

Roth says his organization is going after Sharon now simply because earlier this month a group of Palestinians from Sabra and Shatila lodged a criminal complaint in a Brussels court.

In other words, it's just a coincidence.

But that is, to be polite, disingenuous.

The Belgian law allowing foreigners to file war crime charges has been on the books since 1993.

The Palestinian plaintiffs came forward now as part of a well-coordinated international campaign (including a BBC documentary) to demonize Sharon and Israel.

On the very week Sharon is visiting the White House, Human Rights Watch uses the occasion to call on President Bush to "urge Sharon to cooperate in any investigation."

In other words, the President of the United States should tell the prime minister of Israel to arrest himself and turn himself over to the authorities.

At least that's the theory. "Obviously," Roth says, "this isn't going to happen."

Obviously. And just as obviously, the timing and intent were to embarrass Israel.

This isn't the first time Human Rights Watch has intervened in the Mideast propaganda war.

A few months ago, it came out for the Palestinian right of return, a scheme by which millions of Arabs would be eligible to immigrate to Israel. "Right of return" is well-understood code for the nullification of Israel as a Jewish state.

No Israeli government could accept the right of return, but it does have its supporters.

Internationally, they include Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Syria's Bashar Assad, Libya's Moammar Khadafy and terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden.

In America, the "right" to replace Israel with an Arab state is championed most prominently by two groups: Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam and Human Rights Watch. This is the foreign and domestic coalition that wants Sharon tried as a war criminal.

There are people I respect who say Human Rights Watch does important work. Maybe, but in this case it is engaged in something perverse — and dangerous.

After all, human rights law is an evolving field. Someday the government of Belgium may decide that it's a war crime to have engaged in propaganda on behalf of terrorists and thugs.

When that day comes, I bet Ariel Sharon will be down at the courthouse with a warrant for Kenneth Roth's arrest.

E-mail: zchafets@aol.com

Xionist reprints from the capitalist press are inappropriate here. These independent media sites are supposed to be for original news and are an alternative to the lying capitalist press.

Covering the points of this piece of trash:
(1) Israel can never be embarassed as it has no shame. It is simply a pawn of oil imperialism, which is why the US gives it $4 billion above the table and $4 billion below the table to smash all progressive struggle that could be construed as threats to oil profits.
(2) We do not need any theocratic, and thus by definition, anti-democratic states, whether they be Jewish states, Christian states, Moslem states or the like. The only hope for peace in Israel is that it become a secular, socialist state, and that inevitable achievement will occur as the workingclass of Israel, Arab and Jewish, participate in the daily class struggle, demanding decent wages, hours and working conditions, which no capitalist state is capable of delivering.
(3) Israel is a settler colony, having stolen Arab land. To oppose the right of return of those whose land was stolen is to defend genocide.
(4) For this former Israeli government press official to condemn people, who correctly call Ariel Sharon a war criminal, as terrorists and thugs, is the height of hypocrisy. It is of course the Israeli government, and its senior partner, the US government which is a gang of terrorists and thugs. Today, the fascists can no longer get away with screaming anti-communist epithets, so the code words for anti-communist ranting are "terrorists and thugs." The defenders of the evil deeds of the Israeli government need only look in the mirror to see who the terrorists and thugs are: They are the terrorists and thugs.

This writer is of Jewish descent and from a Holocaust family as well as an American taxpayer. There will be no more genocide in our name. Israel never has been and never will be a refuge from anti-Semitism for it is the greatest perpetrator of anti-Semitism, both against Jews who question their imperialist motives, and against Arabs, for Arabs are also Semites.

We are witnessing the end of an era, that is, the end of the sellout politics of the post-World War 2 era. The liberation of Palestine is well on its way and will be realized soon. No defense of Sharon, Israel or oil imperialism can turn back the clock of history.

I disagree, ":Justice." What's inappropriate here is the kind of
incoherent diatribes and self-absorbed babblings that are
all too common, whether we agree with the (poorly articulated)
sentiments of the contributor or not. I think it's quite interesting to read pieces like Chafets's. It shows us just how desperate the defenders
of Sharon are and what lengths they will go to to defend this
miscreant. Amy Goodman's interview and debate recently with
the professor and the Jerusalem Post editorialist was in the same
vein. Would you excoriate Goodman for having the Jerusalem Post
guy on her show?

We have to figure out what indymedia is for. Is it to make ourselves
feel good by wallowing in self-congratulation, or is it to understand
the world around us better, including the views of our opponents who
wield power, in the media and society? At least I know why I'm here.