THE HANDSTAND

OCTOBER 2003

Recently, many Israelis with nostalgic personalities bought a best-seller entitled The Sabra - A Profile (An Oved Tel-Aviv 2000) which was written by a young scholar and sociologist, Oz Almog. It is a unique distinguished pioneer research of this topic. Indeed Israel was the sabra state but it is no more. Almog discussed the roots of this myth. He discussed the typology of this myth. He described the posture, the dress, the habits and the unique characteristics of the sabra generation. He argued that this myth crystallized in the 1930’s, before World War II. Almog pointed out that the sabra was the young hero whose task was to produce the ‘Hebrew Revolution’ or the ‘Zionist Revolution’. He had to be completely a ‘new Jew’: physically, mentally and a person who dedicated his life for the collective, for the success of this revolution.

The sabra had to ignore his personal life. Of course, he had to dedicate his life to the security needs of the majority. These young zealous sabras were the core of the paramilitary organizations such as the ‘Palmach’ (Hagana), the ‘Irgun’ and the ‘Lehi’ (Stern group). They were the ones who volunteered to the Jewish Brigade in 1944 in order to fight against the Nazis.

It is not surprising to find that Massada became a must for every sabra. The tradition is still alive and well. It is the idea of back to nature, a Zionist idea which contributed to the myth. The sabra goal was to link himself to mother nature and to the urban lifestyle. Therefore, he had to learn many secrets from the Bedoine or the Arab. The sabra loved the nights in which he convened with friends around the fire and had black coffee from an Arab ‘Fingan.’ We still sing the songs which linked us to this mythic fire and the beautiful skies of Cannan. By the way, many of these songs have Hebrew-Sabra lyrics but the music came all the way from Russia…(Indeed our classical composers such as Paul Ben-Haim or Tzvi Avni always have tried to compose original Palestinian music influenced by the Arab or the Middle Eastern music.) Around the fire the sabras used to sing and play with Palestinian-Arabic ancient musical instruments such as the flute and the tambourine. Some even loved to dress like the Arabs. And Ben-Gurion believed that the Bedoines were ancient Jews. These guests, naturally, manifested themselves in the belief that the best sabra life should always be in a Kibbutz. This was the climax of the sabra’s idealism and his quest for perfection. Kibbutz meant: you live modestly like hermits. Women do not wear jewelry. The best shirt is the ‘blue shirt.’ On Friday night you dress with a white shirt. As to sex: Puritanism, abstainism. You must contain yourself!

Almog remarked that the sabra’s culture was indeed a military Spartan culture. The sabra culture was also a youth culture. Arik Sharon and Meir Harzion commanded ‘101 Unit’ (special forces) which was another epitome of the sabra superiority. And the I.D.F. has been a great 101 unit. The myth was also the rise of a new sabra military culture.

It is not surprising that this sabra mechanism was presented as the counter-behavior of the Jews in the Holocaust era. The sabra were educated on the notion that Jews were murdered like cattle. Why did they not resist? Only Jewish partisans were welcomed by the sabras and their leaders.... Today we assess the Holocaust in a different approach.

."The claim that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is Israeli propaganda, and its very well-oiled branches of the pro-Israel lobby across the world." Tania Reinhardt.Aug.2003

Previously, in the 1940’s and the 1950’s, the sabra was depicted as the new true Jew: he was everything which the Diaspora Jew was not. The sabra spoke about the ‘ghetto mentality’ which helped the Nazis to launch their final solution.

Almog concluded his great, illuminating research by sharing with the reader his revisionist thesis: that essentially, the sabra myth was the epitome of the quest of the Jewish religion! (without yarmulke and without Kosher food, a religion without a synagogue, a new Hasidic religion).This myth, this nostalgia, this idealism, this belief that the collective comes before the individual, is gone with the wind. Of course, Israel is a sabra state but the sabra myth of superiority disappeared. The socialist idea disappeared. The Kibbutz as an idea is in a crisis situation. The Israeli society is a normal society, a society without a myth. The state exists for the individual and not vice versa. The idealists must defend themselves. We live in a consumption society, in a global village. We have been Americanized for good. But we still are motivated in Israel by some traditions which are originated in the sabra myth. Some of them are positive, some are negative, but they are ours.After 1948, they became a minority in Israel Aliyah State. Where an Israeli modern country with a political establishment, with governmental agencies and with capitalist economy has been developed according to wish of David Ben-Gurion the myth’s role in the life of the Israeli society, in its set of values, began to erode. Today, this myth is almost dead.

A lifetime credo

Kill unarmed civilians then lie through your teeth: Ariel Sharon's been doing it for half a century. Azmi Bishara examines the career of Israel's prime minister
Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 4 - 10 September 2003, IssueNo.654.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/654/op2.htm

Sofia Mohamed Mahmoud Shamasna,
Amina Isa Abdel-Halim Al-Faqih,
Halima Hassan Ahmed Taha
...............three women from the village of Qatana in north western Jerusalem, gunned down in an ambush while on their way to the village water well. Their names have never been published, and few people know, as perhaps no one knew at the time, that the person who gave the order to shoot them 50 years ago was Ariel Sharon.

In 1952-1953 Sharon was enrolled at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, about to become a student when he was recalled into the army to head a reserve regiment in the area of Jerusalem. Shortly after his appointment he assembled his officers and told them that the village women from Qatana were, without realising it, crossing into Israel when they went to fetch water from the well. The boundary between the Israeli settlement Ma'aliya Hahmishah and Qatana was not clearly demarcated, "Eric" told them, and in order to "correct that mistake" they would lay an ambush. "Eric" also instructed his officers to keep the plan secret so that it would not come to the attention of Central Area Command or General Staff.

Ariel (“Arik”) Sharon was born at Kfar Malal on February 27, 1928. He served in the IDF for more than 25 years, retiring with the rank of Major-General. He holds an LL.B in Law from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1962).Google Biog.

"At the convention of the Likud party in Tel Aviv when Sharon was challenged by Bibi Netanyahu, his admirers shouted: 'Arik, King of the Jews.' The origin of this battle cry is the 'Yom Kippur War' (Oct. 1973), when Gen. (Ret.) Arik Sharon saved Israel by crossing the canal. He then demonstrated his military genius, his original thinking. Sharon had a history of challenging Israel's military establishment."...... Sharon published his own autobiography Warrior (1989) but the book did not make the news…Gad Nahshon in a Book Review

The scenario was carried out precisely as "Eric" planned. Four marksmen were put into position at night and shot and killed two out of four women making their way to the village well. The Jordanian artillery opened fire on the Israeli villages in the vicinity and the Israeli artillery retaliated. The incident drew to a close with the intervention of UN observers in charge of monitoring the ceasefire. Later, when explaining the incident to his superiors, "Eric" expounded on the difference between shooting targets from a stationary position and taking aim at them while in motion during combat.

This account of events appears in Uzi Benziman's He Does not Stop at Red (Adama Books, Tel Aviv 1994, pp. 35-36). When I contacted the author to confirm the story he told me his sources were soldiers who had served in the same unit as Sharon.
.  "Sharon invented this method in the early `50s: When he was commander of a battalion of reservists in the Jerusalem Brigade, he instructed a number of his officers to shoot women at the village of Katana when they were drawing water. The reason for this was that, on the way to the well, the women crossed the border. Already thinking the killings would result in an artillery response by the Arab Legion, he set in place teams with mortars. And so it was: A quiet area exploded and the UN observers had to intervene...Uzi Benziman
I then went to Qatana where residents corrected my information: three women were shot that night, not two. I asked what the names of the victims were. I had been unable to find them in any Israeli sources. I felt it important to record their names in this article.

Special Commando Unit 101:....
."The chapter of 'Unit 101' is boring and too small. The Israeli Army (I.D.F.): what was Arik's contributions to this army? Unit 101 is the Israeli army today!" Gad Nahshon in a Book Review
.Contrary to the impression among inhabitants of the villages of north western Jerusalem this atrocious crime was carried out before the creation of Special Commando Unit 101 in August 1953. Led by Sharon from the outset the purpose of Unit 101 was to mount retaliatory raids against Palestinian villages along the border with Jordan, against civilian targets in Gaza and along the ceasefire lines with Syria. Sharon personally engineered the merger of his unit with the 890 Paratrooper Brigade in January 1954, which was then incorporated, by Moshe Dayan, into the paratroop corps over which Sharon was eventually appointed commander.

It was Unit 101 that bequeathed the most notorious moral "password" in Israeli military history. When some Israeli soldiers voiced qualms over the ethics of targeting civilians in retaliatory operations, Shlomo Baum, deputy commander of the unit, responded curtly: "Our guns must be clean, not pure." In other words it was the soldier's job to make sure his artillery was in good working order and ready for combat, not to worry about moral criteria that had no place in the fighting creed of that unit. The soldiers of Unit 101 and then the paratroop corps became the model of the aggressive Israeli fighter. This unit formulated the moral creed of an entire army. Not that the model it set was emulated in all aspects, apart from its implication in lies and false reports, as we shall see.

The first attack carried out by Unit 101 was mounted against Al-Bureij refugee camp on the night of 28 August, 1953. Learning that its presence had been discovered, instead of withdrawing it stormed the camp and escaped from the other side, and thus found itself surrounded by unarmed civilians. The ensuing massacre claimed 43 Palestinian refugees, among whom were seven women, and wounded 22. Losses of Unit 101 totaled two wounded. Sharon had personally led the attack. In his report to his superiors he justified the enormous civilian death toll that resulted as follows: "The enemy opened fire on me from the northwest... I decided that it was better to pass through the camp and slip out the other side than to go back the way I came, because crops, gardens, barbed wire and guards made it difficult to move in that direction... I also decided that offensive action was better than giving the impression that we were attempting to escape... Therefore I invaded the camp with my group." (Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars: 1949-1956, Aam Ufid, Tel Aviv, 1996, p. 273)

As the last sentence of his military report illustrates, Sharon would rather attack and kill civilians than appear to be retreating. The equation is clear and the price clearer. International ceasefire observers described the Bureij operation as "an alarming instance of deliberate slaughter". Israel's government at the time officially denied responsibility for the operation, giving Western diplomats to understand that it had been undertaken independently by Israeli vigilantes and members of the kibbutzim near the Jordanian border in retaliation against raids mounted by Palestinian infiltrators.

Qibya Massacre: On 13 October 1953 Prime Minister David Ben Gurion met with Minister of Security Yitzhak Lavon and Moshe Dayan, head of operations in the office of the chief of staff, to discuss retaliation for the murder of a Jewish woman and her two children in a grenade attack on her home by a Palestinian infiltrator. Qibya was mooted as a suitable target and, apparently, there was a ready-for-use plan calling for the demolition of 50 out of the 280 homes in the village. However, what is of particular interest here is what happened to the order as it passed down the line of command.

The order issued by Dayan read, "Operation Shushna: Objective, carry out sharp-response reprisals against villages being used as bases for [Palestinian] infiltration operations. Task A: incursion into Naalein and Shiqba villages with the aim of destroying a number of houses and wounding their inhabitants. Task B: attack Qibya, occupy it temporarily, blow up homes and cause injury, forcing inhabitants to flee the village."

The order was transmitted by hand to Central Area Command, which reissued it as follows: "The aim of Chief of Staff is to mount sharp-response destroy-and- kill reprisal operations against Arab villages. The task: attack Qibya, occupy it temporarily, demolish homes and kill as many as possible in order to compel inhabitants to flee their homes... Invade Naalein and Shiqba, destroy a number of houses and kill inhabitants and soldiers."

Already the order had become more explicitly murderous than the original, as is obvious by the addition of "kill as many as possible". Working at the time in Central Area Command was David Alazar, operations officer (later to become chief of staff in the 1973 War). His counterpart in the office of the chief of staff was Rahboam Zaiffi , nicknamed Gandhi. The following is how Sharon, commander of the operation, interpreted the order to the forces that were to take part in it:

"The objective of Command is to mount sharp- response reprisal operations... The task: invade Qibya, occupy it, kill as many as possible and do as much damage as possible to property... Invade Naalein and Shaqba, kill inhabitants and blow up a number of houses."

In an article in Haaretz, on 8 June 1994, Ben Gurion's semi-official historian, Shabtai Tibit, attempted to vindicate the former Israeli prime minister. The metamorphosis of the operation command order he attributes to the military culture of the Palmach, the underground paramilitary organisation that fathered most of Israel's military elite. The formula, "kill as many as possible", (in Hebrew, "cause maximum loss of life") had been in use in Palmach since the Haganah, on 12 December 1947, adopted a policy of "effective defence" and "systematic retaliation". In practical terms, Shabtai suggests that no one can be held responsible for the bloodthirsty wording of the Qibya orders since such orders are deeply rooted in the Zionist military credo.

The operation was carried out after midnight on 15 October. Carrying 700 kilos of explosives the task force blew up 54 houses within three hours. Seventy villagers were killed, most of them women and children. Most of the victims died from bullet wounds. A significant portion perished beneath the rubble of their homes, having been given no warning to vacate.

The Fallacy of "International Outrage"
The Qibya massacre triggered international outrage in the face of which Tel Aviv issued the following statement: "Over the past four years armies from the Trans-Jordan (read: Kingdom of Jordan) and from other Arab countries have been infiltrating Jewish settlements on the borders and in Jerusalem in order to commit murder and theft. Hundreds of citizens -- men, women, children and the elderly -- have been killed and wounded. Arab governments have sponsored these operations directly and indirectly for an obvious political purpose, which is to destroy Israel and make life in it impossible. Towards this end they have exploited Palestinian refugees, refusing to grant them citizenship and to help them order their affairs while the government of Israel has assisted Jewish refugees from Arab countries to settle in this country..." The statement continues in this sanctimonious tone until it finally states the government's position on Qibya: "Every one of us regrets the shedding of blood wherever it takes place. No one feels deeper sorrow than the government of Israel if blood has been shed in the retaliatory operation in Qibya. However, full responsibility for this falls on the government of Trans-Jordan. The government of Israel vehemently rejects the evil fiction that would have it that 600 members of the Israeli Defence Force took part in the operation against Qibya. We have investigated thoroughly and learned beyond a shadow of a doubt that no military unit, however small, was absent from its camp on the night of the destruction in Qibya."

The statement, delivered by Ben Gurion personally over the radio, is a boldfaced lie, accompanied by a stern sermon to others and adamant denial of any culpability. How reminiscent it is of the statements issued in the wake of the murder of Palestinian civilians, in which Israeli army officials declare that scrupulous inquiries confirm that no Israeli soldier opened fire and that responsibility lies elsewhere. Even so, Ben Gurion's statement raised some doubts in the West. Anglo-Saxon diplomats, in particular, found it difficult to believe that the head of a friendly democratic state could lie with such aplomb.

This is the political and military school of thought through which Sharon, who would later boast of the deterrent power of Qibya and similar operations, rose. To justify action: by lying through your teeth. In his introduction to the memoirs of Meir Hartison Sharon vaunted the achievements of Unit 101: "Its most outstanding achievements were in Qibya and Hebron. (Meir Haritson, Memoir Chapters, Levine-Epstein, Tel Aviv, 1969, p. 16)

Unit 101 carried out many other operations after it was integrated into the 890 parachute division. On 29 March, 1954 the unit invaded the village of Nahhalin, dragged four villagers from their homes in the middle of the night and murdered them. On 26 May it mounted a similar operation in Kherbat Janba, dragging people from their homes and shooting them with their hands tied behind their backs. Sharon's co-star in these operations, of which there are too many to recount here, was Meir Harzion, the unit's hero par excellence, its fiercest fighter and now a legend in Israeli military lore.

"The book does not discuss how Sharon pushed Begin's party Herut and the party of the general Zionists (Sapir-Rokach, Bernstein, Serlin, Erlich, Mapai) into a political merger, the creation of the Likud! This is the epitome of Sharon's genius!".... Gad Nahshon in a Book Review

There are sabra words in the Hebrew vocabulary such as the word ‘Dugri’ (Arabic - tell the truth straight, do not cover up…)A sad memory of the Sabra morale!!(Sharon is recently reported to have told his Turkish ally, prime minister Bülent Ecevit, that the secret aim of his politics is to drive Arafat out of office.Sharon's own words:"Even for us, it's very hard to understand that people like Mr. Arafat are looking into your eyes and lie.  It's an empire of lies. ")

In his memoirs Harzion's account of the "adventures" of this period read as though they were a form of self-fulfillment. Harzion's sister and her boyfriend had been killed by a Bedouin when they were "taking a walk" that led them into Jordanian territory. Three weeks later, on 4 March 1955, Harzion took revenge. Along with three of his fellow paratroopers he crossed the border and made his way to the camp belonging to members of the Azazma and Jahalin clan, located eight kilometres east of the border. They shot and killed one Bedouin who tried to escape and captured five others. After several failed attempts to interrogate their prisoners -- none of the soldiers knew Arabic -- they killed four of them by stabbing them (or by slitting their throats according to another account). The fifth was released in order to tell the story.

Although Ben Gurion initially condemned the operation and ordered that the perpetrators be brought to trial no one was prosecuted. What concerns us here is that the Israeli army was involved in the operation and that Sharon had given tactical support to the perpetrators. He had furnished them with arms, food and ammunition, transported them in a military vehicle to the border and had some of his paratroopers pick them up again upon their return. Sharon had also instructed the four not to cooperate with the police. "We remain silent, under direct order from Eric," they told investigating officials.

On 22 June 2003, when discussing settlement construction in a cabinet meeting, Sharon told his ministers: "Build but stay silent. There's no need to go out and dance every time the approval is given to build... We have strong bonds of trust and confidence with the US" (Yediot Ahranot, 23 June 2003). One cannot help but wonder whether Sharon has advised his sons to avail themselves of the "right to silence" in the investigations currently under way into allegations of financial fraud against Gilad Sharon.
(Last Update:By Baruch Kra, Haaretz Correspondent 14/09/2003 The Tel Aviv District Court ruled Sunday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's son, Gilad, does not have to hand over to police documents related to the
Cyril Kern loan affair, in which foreign funds were illegally donated to Ariel Sharon's 1999campaign for the leadership of the Likud. The state attorney prosecuting the case said he intends to appeal the decision.The court said that had Gilad Sharon's appeal been rejected, it would have been a violation of his right to remain silent and so would have undermined the rights of suspects in other cases to defend themselves )

February 4, 2001
The Observer

At about eight o'clock on a warm autumn evening Ahmed al-Badoui was standing guard in a grove of olive trees on a rocky slope just beneath his village of Qibya. It was dusk and people were settling down for the night. Moonlight picked out the jagged limestone crags typical of the rolling hills and valleys north of Jerusalem. The city itself was only about 10 miles away but could not be seen. The first warning came when al-Badoui saw a dark shape flicker across the rocks at the edge of the olive field.

At first, he thought it was someone trying to steal olives. He gripped his wooden cudgel tightly and shouted a challenge. His answer came in a hail of bullets. One smashed into his wrist, another into his side. The impact of the heavy rounds knocked 22-year-old al-Badoui, a strapping 6ft farmer, into the dusty earth. As he staggered to his feet he screamed to wake his village: 'The Jews are coming, the Jews are coming.'

It was mid-October 1953. Within eight hours al-Badoui's home was rubble. By dawn the next morning Israeli special forces would have dynamited much of the village and killed 69 people. Their leader was Ariel Sharon.

The attack was a typical Sharon operation. It was thorough, violent, ruthless, attention-grabbing and deeply controversial. His style has changed little from his first battles in the years after Israel's independence to the debacle in Lebanon that led to the deaths of hundreds of Israeli soldiers and more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians at the hands of Christian militiamen in 1982.

Sharon's motto has been the same - always escalate.

The people of Qibya certainly think they know Sharon. 'He is a man with killing in his blood,' al-Badoui told The Observer last week. 'I do not know why God has let him live.'

Safia Hussein Teeb, 83, remembers al-Badoui's screamed warnings as Sharon's crack troops poured through the olive groves. 'I was at home getting ready to go to sleep when I heard the shouting,' she said last week. 'Everything was confused and we hid downstairs where the animals were. All night we could hear explosions as the Israelis blew up houses. My daughter and her husband and my nephew were killed.' The young commander had equipped his men with 600kgs of explosives and was determined to use them. In all, nearly 50 houses were destroyed. Most villagers died when their buildings were blown up. Sharon has always said that his troops thought the houses were empty. But an inspection of ruined homes in Qibya last week revealed that all but the most cursory of checks would have found anyone hiding inside.

Two other little-known incidents from Sharon's early career have also surfaced. Earlier in 1953, Sharon led another punitive raid against an Egyptian-run refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Interviews with participants reveal that even some of his own soldiers were uneasy at his ruthlessness and objected to the plan. But the attack went ahead and 15 people were killed.

Another alleged operation involved an ambush of women who were crossing Israel's border to get water from a village near Jerusalem. Sharon's supporters dismiss such stories as 'ancient history'.

.A package of concessions seen as at the limit of what the Israeli public would accept was rejected by Yasser Arafat, the president of the new semi-autonomous Palestinian government, last summer. Within months, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip exploded in violence that has so far left nearly 400 dead. The majority are Palestinians, but 50 Israelis have died, including many civilians. 'The old collectivist spirit of sacrifice that motivated people in Israel 40 years ago has been replaced by something far more individualist,' said Tom Segev, a respected Israeli historian and journalist.

Sharon was the architect of the first waves of settlement in the early 1970s and, as a Minister in various right-wing administrations, has done much to expand the contentious building programme. Though there are fewer than 200,000 settlers, they command the support of a broad swathe of Israeli right-wingers. 'The ultra Orthodox have more support than ever before,' said Galia Golan, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. 'There is a creeping fundamentalism.'

Last week The Observer watched as left-wing pro-peace activists confronted a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews celebrating the opening of a new building they had bought in the heart of the Muslim quarter of the old city of Jerusalem. In a narrow alley a few hundred yards from the religious complex known as the Temple Mount by Jews and as Al Haram al Sharif by Muslims, and sacred to both, heavily armed soldiers struggled to keep order. The peaceniks came off worse. 'We have to struggle against these people and their ideas. They are not what Israel should be about,' said Noam Hofshteter, the head of the Jerusalem branch of Peace Now, a pressure group, as police moved him on. 'But it is a struggle we are losing.' Above his head a huge Israeli flag fluttered from the roof of a house in the chill winter night breeze. Three other flags flew beside it - blatant provocations to 90 per cent of those living in the surrounding streets. But the owner of the house (SHARON)has never been bothered by such things in the past.

.January 2002
SHARON in his own words to Rita Cosby on Fox News:
SHARON:  (talking about Arafat)......One should be judged by terror, by his acts.  He caused thousands of killed.  Thousands!  And thousands and thousands of injured.  One should be judged by the results, and the results were murder and killing.
COSBY:  Is there a military solution to the Palestinian problem?
SHARON:  We don't have any intention whatsoever to use military force to solve the Palestinian problem.  But when it comes to terror -- when it comes to terror, I believe that military -- the right military steps is a very, very complicated kind of warfare, where I make every effort not to escalate the situation.  There's not going to be any escalation here.  I would say it's -- the answer to those specific problems are military answers.;

.June 2003
To George Bush : Mr. President, I congratulate you on the impressive victory in the Iraqi campaign and for removing Saddam Hussein from power - one of the most ruthless and tyrannical leaders in history. For thirty years, the Free World has witnessed the recklessness and brutality of this dictator. Only you, Mr. President, have shown the courage, determination and leadership needed to spearhead the successful campaign to oust this merciless despot, his dynasty and evil regime.
This relative calm was achieved, first and foremost, through the uncompromising activity of the Israeli security forces, and as a result of your personal efforts, and the actions taken by the United States among Arab and European countries.

SHARON'S ASTROLOGICAL PICTURE .....DOESN'T LOOK TOO PROMISING!!!

A hidden Pisces, with an aggressive, adventurous Aries ascendant, and a fixed Taurus Moon, the Israeli leader is a complex personality. More retiring than is obvious, he likes his own company, is often self doubting to the point of depression and fearful. But a strongly placed Jupiter in Aries on his ascendant in an over confident square to Pluto makes him rash and impulsive, inclined to go on holy crusades that are not holy in the eyes of others. This streak of arrogant self righteousness is boosted by having Saturn in Sagittarius which makes him feel that his religious and intellectual views are superior to his opponents.

His reputation for brutality stems from the strong Mars in Capricorn opposition to Pluto which creates a need to control through violence if necessary. Misuse of power is often associated with this aspect. Those who carry it in their chart can be perpetrators or victims. His inflexible Taurus Moon (at 25 degrees) also sits beside the fixed star Algol, known as the demon star. It marks Medusa’s severed head and has a reputation for extreme danger and violence. [Algol is an Arabic name – “Al Ghoul” meaning evil spirit or devil].

His Moon contributes to his emotional stamina but also prevents him changing. He tends to get stuck in the past, cling with great intensity to instinctive ways of behaving and lacks the detachment to see where change is necessary. His inability to stand back far enough to gain sensible perspective is also emphasised by having only one planet in an air sign in his chart. When life forces him to let go as it periodically does, he acts in a primitive, often unconscious way that has a tendency to destroy the security he has built up around him.

Since Uranus is squaring his Moon in 2002 [Feb 17 to Mar 3; Sept 11 to Oct 19; Nov 19 to Dec 26] he will be facing a fair number of emotional shocks and upsets which will rattle the bars of his cage. Uranus also opposes Neptune (at 27 degrees Leo) which will be highly disorienting (In 2002 - Mar 26 to Apr 16; Jul 19 to Aug 15; Jan 16 to Feb 3, 2003]. This will create high stress, anxiety and great confusion. With a fixed Neptune in his chart squaring his Moon and in opposition to his Sun & Mercury, he has a tendency anyway to be very spaced out to the point of being delusional. Fantasy may take over from reality, or he will suffer physically from ill health. May & June 2002 were over stretched, discouraging times.

2003 in general will be a tremendous uphill struggle for him with Pluto conjunct his Saturn (from Dec 24 2002 till Nov 2003). This tends to produce great tests of strength and will. Change is necessary but enormously difficult. It’s a touch like bulldozer meeting a brick wall. Nothing will go according to his plans. Neptune also hits difficult aspects to two key midpoints, suggesting his career plans will be undermined along with his physical energy.

The Wall ,we should realise, has separated many hundreds of Palestinians from their land. Does this fact provide a clue to the psychological repetition of Sharon's history - now at the end of his life he seeks to re-create the conditions in which his criminally insane violence was founded? Along this wall there will be many check-points to "allow" Palestinians continue to reach their land. Can we trust that on the other side of this wall they, or their crops,will always be safe?
"THE COCK'S ARROGANCE" : " he instructed a number of his officers to shoot women at the village of Katana when they were drawing water. The reason for this was that, on the way to the well, the women crossed the border."Uzi Benziman

UNREPENTENT WAR CRIMINAL
By J. STEINBERG
Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel, is currently facing possible war crime prosecutions for two massacres that occurred 20 years apart: the September 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, and the April 2002 Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) mass killings in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
 
Sharon is, without doubt, guilty of these crimes against humanity, and others. He is also unrepentant. For him, these mass killings are merely necessary steps on the path toward his objective of a "Final Solution" to the "Palestinian problem," through the mass expulsion and/or extermination of the more than 3 million Palestinians and Arabs now living in Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. Under various labels, Sharon and a rogues gallery of collaborators inside Israel, Britain, and the United States, are now moving toward the final phase of their "mass transfer" plans for the Palestinians and Arabs.

Even at the end of his military career, Sharon was still running death squads. On Sept. 25, 1997, Israeli Television Channel One interviewed Benny Golan, a veteran of the Rimon Unit, which Sharon had created and deployed in the early 1970s in the Gaza Strip to carry out targetted assassinations of Palestinian "militants." Golan described the assassination program, and reported that members of the unit frequently "disguised themselves as Arabs" for "special operations." Other sources reported, at the time, that the "special operations" included terrorist attacks on Israeli Jewish targets to justify "retaliatory strikes" against pre-selected Palestinian and Arab targets.

  Far from ending his career of mass butchery, Sharon's resignation from the IDF coincided with the launching of an even more ambitious criminal enterprise that would see thousands of Palestinians killed and wounded as part of the "Eretz Israel," or "Greater Israel" drive to permanently annex all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights—and resettle these areas with Russian and other Jewish immigrants, after the Palestinians have been eliminated.

  'Landscam'.  Sharon entered the Knesset in December 1973, at the very moment that the Israeli government lifted the ban on private sales of West Bank land to Israelis. The Knesset decision was brought about by a heavy lobbying effort by Sharon colleague and former Police Minister Yehezkel Sahar. The very first "private" purchase was for the construction of a residential community for retired IDF officers. The partners in the deal included Sahar, Gen. Reshavam Ze'evi, Sharon publicist Eli Landau, and Avraham Mintz, a founder of the fanatical settlers movement Gush Emunim.  

In June 1974, Sharon personally led a group of settlers to establish an illegal outpost near the West Bank town of Nablus. It was the first of many such ventures that Sharon would sponsor, under the rubric of the drive to "Judaize the territories."  

Sharon's political career continued to advance. In 1975, Prime Minister Rabin appointed Sharon as his personal security adviser. Then, the Likud was swept into power in the 1977 elections, and Prime Minister Menachim Begin named Sharon as Minister of Agriculture. In that capacity, Sharon launched a massive expansion of Jewish "agricultural settlements" throughout the West Bank and Gaza. During 1977-81, more than 25,000 new settlers—mostly members of the Gush Emunim —moved into the occupied territories. The Gush Emunim settlers formed into death squads explicitly modelled on Sharon's old "Unit 101." They would play a pivotal role in the filthy Anglo-American Zionist criminal enterprise known as "Landscam."
 
In 1979, the Israeli Supreme Court ratified the private land purchases in the occupied territories, and immediately, Sharon's mafia cronies set up several real estate ventures, under such names as Jumbo, Samarea and Judea, and Meteor. In 1980, Sharon and Yuval Ne'eman formed an organization," Prevention of Emergence of Another Arab Country in Eretz Israel " (PEACE), to press the issue of permanent Israeli annexation of the occupied territories. The group included a number of notables from Israel and the United States, who would remain part of the extended Sharon mafia family for years to come: Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, Jewish Defense League (JDL) founder Joseph Churba, Young Israel director Harold Jacobs, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith general counsel Arnold Forster, right-wing Knesset member and Rabbi Meir Kahane patron Geula Cohen, and Roni Milo.   Sharon toured the United States in 1980, lining up financing for a massive real estate grab.

"Landscam" coincided with Sharon's invasion of Lebanon, which began on June 4, 1982, and was aimed at wiping out the Palestine Liberation Organization, which had established its base in several camps near Beirut.
Between June 4 and Aug. 31, 1982, the IDF, under Sharon's direction (Begin had named him Minister of Defense the previous year), killed a total of 19,025 Palestinians and wounded 30,032 in a military campaign that Sharon called "Operation Peace in Galilee." Under immense pressure from the Reagan Administration, Sharon abandoned plans to assassinate Arafat, and, on Aug. 21, 1982, he allowed the PLO to evacuate 15,600 fighters from Lebanon, under an American- brokered cease-fire.

President Ronald Reagan's Special Middle East Envoy in 1982 said, "Sharon was a killer obsessed with hatred of Palestinians. I had promised Arafat that his people would not get any harm. Sharon, however, ignored this commitment entirely. Sharon's word is worth nil."

On Sept. 15, Sharon broke the cease-fire agreement, and the next day, launched a "purification" campaign against the refugee camps of Sabra, Shatila, and Burj El Barajneh. Falangist death squads—protected by the IDF, which encircled the camps—massacred unarmed women, children, and elderly.   On Sept. 19, 1982, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 521, harshly condemning the massacres at the camps. In a distant mirror of the current genocide in Jenin, Ramallah, and Bethlehem, Sharon ignored the international condemnations.

Today, Sharon faces war crimes prosecution in court in Belgium for his role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres, as the result of a lawsuit filed on June 18, 2001 by 23 survivors of the attacks.  

On Oct. 15, 1982, a month after the 1982 massacres, Sharon held meetings—in the Chouf Mountains of Lebanon and at his Negev ranch —with Falange leader Camille Chamoun, Uri Dan, Rupert Murdoch, Charles Douglas-Home, and others, to move the "Landscam" West Bank real estate grab forward. On Nov. 15, 1982, a final meeting took place on several real estate purchases, mostly through Arab middle- men, to push the massive expansion of Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank—at a handsome profit. Attending the meeting at Sharon's ranch were: Kissinger, Lord Harlech (Sir David Ormsby-Gore), Johannes von Thurn und Taxis, Tory Parliamentarian Julian Amery, Sir Edmund Peck, and MI-6 Mideast mandarin Nicholas Elliot.  

Dear Mother,Within my authority as commander of the IDF in the Judea and Samaria regions, and because I believe that the act is required for military purposes, and in view of the security conditions prevailing in this area, and the need to take necessary steps to prevent terrorist acts, I order ....
  I am Moshe Kaplinsky
I hate the Turk
And his brood of Arab
I have come
To place my rage
On history's page
This is now my land
My signature,
That cannot be writ
In Arabic, is engraved
With a flourish
By my hand,
Though this Law
Made by little English men,
Fools, whose plan I now usurp,
As would any other man.
Blessed by wisdom
Of the wily Kazars, smirk.
For no Jew
Will chance an arm
Or gain a foothold
Where I stand...
Moshe Kaplinsky
Called by Jews
"Our son Isaac"... laughs!
............................j.braddell

The Kahane Commission, an Israeli body convened to investigate the Sabra and Shatila mass murders, found Sharon to be complicit in the crimes, and he was fired by Prime Minister Begin as Defense Minister shortly after the report's release.

But Sharon landed on his feet. When Rabin was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1992, the former Sharon ally in the war on the Palestinians had the courage to admit that his underlying assumptions were wrong, and would lead to the destruction of Israel. He entered into secret peace talks with Arafat, which culminated in the August 1993 signing of the Oslo Peace Accords, in the presence of U.S. President William Clinton at the White House.  

Instantly, Sharon declared war on the Oslo Accords and on Prime Minister Rabin. The entire "Landscam" gang joined Sharon in assailing the peace initiative. On Sept. 11, 1993, Kissinger told CBS News interviewers that Oslo was "unworkable." Several weeks later, Kissinger told the Institute for Jewish Affairs in London that Jordan would soon fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists and Olso would be crushed— a not-so-veiled reference to Sharon's Hamas assets, which would soon launch a terror wave against Oslo in tandem with Sharon's Jewish underground.

  On Oct. 11, 1993, Bertram and Herbert Zweibon, co-founders of "Americans for a Safe Israel", a Sharonist front, held a conference in Crystal City, Virginia to launch a campaign to destroy Oslo—and its sponsors. Five days later, Sharon delivered a speech calling for the settlers to launch a resistance to the sellout.   Sharon rushed to the United States and embarked on a nationwide tour on Nov. 14, 1993, in which he declared that the 150,000 Jewish settlers were the "only barrier to a Palestinian state." Sharon was accompanied, throughout the tour, by Yechial Leiter, a leader of the JDL in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. While in the United States, Sharon raised millions of dollars for the Kiryat Arba "resistance" from such right-wing Zionist patrons as Florida and California bingo parlor magnate Irving Moscowitz and former Reagan Administration Ambassador to Austria and perfume heir, Ronald Lauder.
 
Sharon's fundraising paid off. On Feb. 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an IDF reservist and leader of Kiryat Arba, massacred 50 Palestinian worshipers at the Cave of the Patriarch holy site. Goldstein had been Rabbi Meir Kahane's Knesset campaign manager at Kiryat Arba.   In March 1994, some 200 rabbis, led by Avraham Shapira, staged a rally at Kiryat Arba and issued a religious edict, ordering resistance against any attempt by the Rabin government to dismantle any settlements. On March 31, 1994, Sharon and Yitzhak Shamir, the former Likud Prime Minister and Stern Gang terrorist, led a rally of 10,000 people attacking Oslo. ADL National Chairman Abe Foxman told the Jerusalem Post on April 2, 1994 that Rabin was "undermining organized Jewish clout" in America, through his peace antics.  

Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 by a West Bank settler, Yigal Amir, who came from Sharon's terror hub, Kiryat Arba.   On Jan. 26, 1997, Sharon returned, triumphal, to Kiryat Arba, to deliver new marching orders to the heirs of "Unit 101." If Arafat declared a unilateral Palestinian state in the territory of the West Bank and Gaza under Palestinian Authority control, the settlers should join in the drive to annex all of Judea and Samaria.
At the time, Sharon was Minister of National Infrastructure, a super-ministerial post that had been created for him by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon's sometimes ally and sometimes rival for power in the Likud.

During 1996-99, Sharon's tenure as Minister of National Infrastructure, the settlers population in the occupied territories soared to more than 200,000.   Netanyahu's fall from power in 1999, and his replacement by a Labor government headed by former IDF chief Ehud Barak, signalled that the Oslo peace process that Sharon was dedicated to destroying, was back on the table.  

After the failure of the July 2000 Camp David II negotiations to reach a final settlement, more intense private negotiations between the Barak government and the Palestinian Authority began under a number of venues. Talks took place in New York City, and later, at the resort of Taba, Egypt, producing a final accord, in draft, that would have formed a just and viable basis for two sovereign states, Israel and Palestine. The thorny issues of the right of return of Palestinian refugees, the status of the holy sites in Jerusalem, and of creating two capitals within the extended city limits of Jerusalem, were, according to several Arab and Israeli diplomatic sources, worked out in principle by January 2001. These final points, memorialized in the talking points brought to the final sessions by President Clinton, could be revived today as a basis for reaching a just solution, in the view of many Mideast diplomats familiar with the document.   But Sharon and his backers would have nothing of this.

  In September 2000, Sharon visited New York City, where he met with Lauder and other supporters and financiers. He returned to Israel, reportedly with a large amount of cash to be disbursed to settlers' terrorist cells. Sharon personally staged the decisive provocation, by visiting the Islamic holy sites on al-Haram al-Sharif, what the Israelis call the Temple Mount, on Sept. 26, 2000. Sharon was accompanied by more than 1,000 Israeli troops and paramilitary police. It was a flagrant provocation, an assertion of Israeli permanent control over the sacred sites of Islam, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.   With that visit, Sharon provoked the "Al Aqsa Intifada," and within days, the entire Holy Land was again awash in the blood of Palestinian protesters. By January 2001, the Barak government would fall, and, on Feb. 6, 2001, Sharon, who had taken over the Likud party in September 1999, was elected Prime Minister of Israel, ready to launch his final drive for "Greater Israel."