Number30 $5.00 Special Issue on Israel and the Middle East .~ - • • • • Intifada: The Palestinian.Uprising • ~• . , • ------------------- Editorial lsrael lllld Palestine But what other comparison can be made when an entire Most of this special issue on the Middle East is about the population is subjected to collective punishment and put Palestinians and the Israelis- about a forty-year conflict under curfew or herded into camps, and people are te :<r ­ which is just now searing the conscience of the world gassed to death, and captured prisoners have their bvne; It is impossible to explain Israeli intransigence. lt cannot broken, and houses of suspects are bulldozed to the ground. be a question of "secure borders" in this age of guided mis­ and people are called animals and buried alive, and the an­ siles. Nor can it be seen as a question of religious funda­ nounced policy of the government is one of random beatings mentalism, even though the Israelis justify the land grabs with and general terror and shoot-on-sight orders? Are we sup­ biblical references. posed to exonerate the Israeli government just because it has The Israel.is have themselves united the Palestinian opposi­ not killed as many Palestinians as the Nazis killed Jews? tion by21 years of the daily humiliation of occupation and mi­ The Israelis have ruled the occupied territories for twenty­ litarization, by creating a nat.ion of homeless people, killing one years. Now, by standing up and raising their arms with and maiming tens of thousands and jailing many thousands stones against the occupiers, the occupied have forced even more, in a move to reduce and disperse the Palestinian the most racist Israelis to call them by their rightful name­ population. This policy can be defined, under international Palestinians. Despite Israel's refusal to bend to world pres­ law, as genocide. (Even the New York Times points out that sure, it is only a matter of time before the Palestinian people most Israelis think of Arabs as less than human.) It is unques­ have the nation-state they deserve. tionably a policy of wholesale terrorism. Israel's critics are growing in number, like Albert Vorspan, Afghanistan the senior vice president of the Union of American Hebrew This issue also contains several articles relating to Af. Congregations, who called the conflict " Israel's Vietnam, ghanistan. It is ironic that as the Soviet Union attempts to dis­ Kent State, and Watts rolled into one." (New York 7imes engage, as it attempts to cooperate internationally and Magazine, May 8, 1988.) But Israel's mindless apologists still bilaterally, the Reagan administration sabotages the Afghan abound, and they insist, like New Republic editor Leon Wicscl­ settlement. This is the same reprehensible policy which the tier (New York Times, June 12, 1988), that it is "effrontery" to administration has applied to Nicaragua and Angola. • compare the Israeli military to the Nazis. Table of Contents Editorial 2 Israel in Afr ica Israeli State Terror By Jane Hunter 38 By Naseer Aruri 3 Israel's Nuclear Arsenal The Assassination of Abu J ihad By Meir Vanunu 45 Interview with Gbassan Bishara 7 Israeli Arms to the Contru The "Transfer" Proposal By Jack Calhoun 46 Interview with Israel Sbahak 10 The Buckley AlTair The Intifada and Is rael's Dirty War By Edward J. Dobbins 49 ByEUenRay 13 Destabilizing Afghanistan Israeli Occupation By Steve Galster 52 By Katherine Watjen 22 The Afghan Pipeline Israeli Chemical Warfare By Steve Galster 55 By Louis Wolf 26 The Afghani Contra Lobby The Israeli Arms Bazaar By Sayid Khybar 61 By Jane H unter 29 News Notes 68 Hakim's Connections Disinformlng the World on Ubya By Peggy Adler Robobm 35 By Bill Schaap 76 Cover photo: A rmed Israeli soldiers charge stone-throwing Palestinian demonstraters in Ramallah. Credit Associated Prtss. Cov<rtAction Information Bvllelln. Number 30, Summer t988, copyright C 1988 by Covert Action Public:atioru, Inc., a District of Columbia Nonprofit Corporation; 1'.0. Box 50272, Washington, DC 20004; (202) 737-5317: and c/o Institute for Media Analysis, Inc., 145 W. 4th St., New Yor1<, NY 10012: (212} 2.54-1061. All rights reserved. Staff: Ellen Rlly, William Schaap, Louis Wolf, and William Vomb<rger. Typeset by CA.IB; printed by Farolty Prcs.s, Orooklyn. NY. Indexed in the A/ternalive Pr<:$$lndcx. JSSN 027S-309X. Z Covert Action Number30 (Summer 1988) Israeli State Terror: A Policy of "Might, Force, and Blows" by Naseer Aruri* The U.S. and Israel have an interesting perspective on the pretexts for intervention. For example, the atlack by Israeli meaning of "terrorism." President Reagan often describes Army Unit lOlled by Ariel Sharon on the Palestinian village terrorism as an international conspiracy (similar to his defini· of Kibya in October 1953, causing numerous civilian casual· tion ofcommunism) directed against the U nitcd States and its ties and destruction of homes, was condemned by Sharett. He "way oflifc. "1 The State oflsrael uses a similar definition when writes, "(In the cabinet meeting) I condemned the Kibya af. justifying its repression of Palestinian aspirations. While Is· fair that exposed us in front of the whole world as a gang of rae! and the U.S. share a similar definition of"terrorism," bow blood-suckers, capable of mass massacres resardless, it they usc the term depends very much upon to whom they are seems, of whether their actions may lead to war.' referring. In his 1984speech before the Jonathan Institute? Secretary lsraeU State Terrorism of State Shultz quoted the words of the late Senator Henry More recent accounts by Israeli writers show how earlier Jackson, who addressed the same forum in 1979. Senator acts of terrorism provided a historical background to the 6 Jackson had said: adoption of a policy of state terrorism by lsrae1. Benny Morris's explanation of the Palestinian exodus in 1948, based The idea that one person's "terrorist" is another's on state, military and Zionist archives, refutes the official Is· "freedom fighter" cannot be sanctioned. Freedom raeli version that the Palestinians bear responsibility for their fighters or revolutionaries don't blow up buses contain· own expulsion. An earlier work by Irish journalist Erskine ing non-combatants; terrorist murderers do. Freedom Childers demonstrated that, contrary to the official Israeli ver· fighters don't set out to capture and slaughter school sion, there were no Arab radio broadcasts ordering the Pales· children; terrorist murderers do. Freedom fighters tinians to leave.' And Israeli journalist Tom Segev reveals in don't assassinate innocent businessmen, or hijack and his book how instrumental was Zionist terrorism in the crea • bold hostage innocent men, women, and children; ter· tion of the Palestinian refugee problem. Sixteen months after rorist murderers do. It is a disgrace that democracies 250 Arab civilians were massacred in the village of Deir Yas· would allow the treasured word "freedom" to be as· sin (April 9, 1948) by the combined forces of ETZEL (known sociated with the acts of terrorists.3 as Menachem Begin's Irgun) and LEHI (known as Yitzhak Shamir's Stern Gang) there was a debate in the Israeli Knes· However, in his personal diary, which was published set in which, according to Segev, a member of Begin's Herut 8 against the wishes of the Israeli establishment, former Israeli Party had boasted: "Thanks to Deir Yassin, we won the war.'' Prime Minister Moshe Sharett reveals that Israeli military Another account by Lenny Brenner9 reveals that Israeli operations against Arab civilian populations were designed to Prime Minister Shamir was a convert to the pre-Mussolini terrorize them and create fear, tension and instability4 Betar (Zionist Brownshirts) in the late 1930s and that his Stern Sharett's documentation shows that Israel's territorial expan· Gang had attempted to strike a deal with the Nazi regime in sion (such as in the Suez in 1956) was facilitated by Israeli acts Germany in 1941 in which the establishment of a Jewish state of provocation, which generated Arab hostility and created in Palestine on a "totalitarian basis" would be bound by a treaty with the German Reich. • Naseer Aruri is Pro£essor o£ Political Science at Southeastern Mas· Shamir's commitment to rightwing causes and to terrorism sachueus University in North Dartmouth. His most recent book is entitled: Occ-upation Israel over Palestine. was unmistakably revealed in an article he wrote in the LEHI 1. Demonstrating a powerful oommand of the English language and journal Hehazit (The Front) in the summer of 1943. This ex- characteristic opcn-mlndcdness, Reagan once described Nicaragua, North Korea, Libya, Cuba and Iran, as a ''confederation of terrorist states" who 5./bid. make up "the strangest collection of misfits, looney Tunes and squalid 6. See Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem criminals since the advent of the Third Reich." (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Universiry Press, 1988); Tom Segev, 2. For more on the Jonathan Insritutesee CAm, No. 22 (Pall1984). p. 5. The First Israelis (New York: The Free Press. 1986); Simha Flapan, The 3. Address by George Shultz, Secretary of Stale, "fcrrorism: The Chal· Birth of Israel: Myths and Rcalities(New York: Pantheon Press, 1987). lenge to the DcmocracitS." Washington: Bureau of Public Affairs, Depart· 7. Erskine C11ilders, "TTie Other Exodus," TbcSpcctator(London), May men! of Stare (Current Policy No. 589), June 24, 1984. 12, 1961 . Reprinted in Walid Khalidi, ed., From Haven to Conquest 4. Prom the personal diary ol Moshe Sharett discussed in Livia Rokaeh, (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1987). Israel~ Sacred Terrorism, 3nl ed. (Belmont, Mass.: AAUG Press, 1986), pp. 8. Segev, op. cit., n. 6. 28-33. 9.