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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chalu2 who wrote (12192)	3/2/2002 9:51:56 PM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

The Palestinians were driven into Lebanon by Israel. And Israel had planned to incite civil war in Lebanon for decades before the Palestinians were driven there. David Ben-Gurion (Israel's first Prime Minister) speaking about Lebanon in May 1948: "A Christian state should be established, with its southern border on the Litani River. We will make an alliance with it." Message 16623998 Message 16231867 Tom (Fateful Triangle p.163)

To: chalu2 who wrote (12192)	3/5/2002 1:30:09 PM
From: Thomas M.	Respond to of 23908

The respected Arab Israeli journalist (himself a Maronite Christian) Attallah Mansour traveled through Southern Lebanon in 1982. He observed that only the Christian extremists like the Phalange and the Guards of Cedars practiced communal exclusivism, i.e. destroying or removing their enemies. This practice was reflected in fact: "lively Christian communities" were found throughout the area of Muslim control, in contrast to the areas of Phalange control, where the Phalange had driven out virtually all of the non-Christian population. The Muslim atrocities such as the one you cite (Damour), "apparently were revenge for similar actions carried out by Christians in Karantina, Tel al-Zaatar, in the Beirut area, and Khiyam". Tom (p.186 Fateful Triangle)

To: chalu2 who wrote (12192)	3/18/2002 12:47:05 AM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23908

More on Damour: <<< In their effort to prove anti-Israel bias, several commentators refer to inadequate coverage of the atrocities of the civil war in Lebanon, specifically, the destruction of the Christian town of Damour by the PLO in 1976, mentioned several times. Charles Krauthammer denounces the media for their failure "to recount the history of the killings by the PLO and their allies of the Christian villagers they drove from their homes." Kondracke recalls "no coverage until after the fact of what happened in Damour where the Palestinians virtually destroyed a Christian town." Wattenberg adds that "those things like Damour, that show the PLO's atrocities, did not get into the media loop as big items." Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post replies that Damour "was a page one story." No one brings up the Muslim Karantina slum, overrun by Christian forces shortly before the Damour attack, then burned and razed with bulldozers, with large numbers massacred -- not a page one story, or a story at all, and forgotten -- or the atrocities of Israel's Phalangist allies against Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims, which brought the PLO into the civil conflict.49 No one brings up the cluster-bomb attack on a U.N. school in Damour by Israeli jet fighters, leaving forty-one children dead or wounded (see chapter 3). Again, partisans of the U.S. and its Israeli ally set the agenda; others respond, within the framework set by the critics. PLO atrocities at Damour are a staple of Israeli propaganda, regularly presented in isolation from the background. The scale of the atrocities during the civil war is unknown, and all estimates must be taken with caution. Yale University political scientist Naomi Weinberger, in a scholarly study, gives the figure of 1,000 Muslim and Palestinian deaths in the Karantina massacre, citing standard sources, and no figure for Damour. Israeli Lt. Col. Dov Yermiya, reporting from Damour with the occupying Israeli forces and (Christian) Phalangist military in June 1982, estimates 250 massacred at Damour, and notes that the town was "partly destroyed by the Syrians and the terrorists [the PLO], and partly by our air force and artillery" in 1976 and 1982 respectively. Others invent figures to suit their fancy. Thus Walter Laqueur states that 600 civilians were killed at Damour, citing no source and avoiding the background; and journalist Eric Silver, citing "reliable Israeli sources," speaks of "the murder of thousands of Lebanese Christians" at Damour. An honest reference appears in a study of Israel's war in Lebanon by Israeli military specialist Ze'ev Schiff and Arabist Ehud Ya'ari, who describe the town of Damour as "the site of one of the many tit-for-tat massacres of that savage conflict" of 1975-76.50 >>> zmag.org Tom