The Campaign for Radical Truth in History http://www.hoffman-info.com


Jewish Soldier Shoots Six Palestinian Civilians in Massacre Attempt

The Victims Speak

Jan. 2, 1997. Hebron, Occupied Palestine. Palestinian women wept and prayed at the hospital beds of their loved ones who were wounded in yesterday's attempted massacre of Palestinians by an Israeli soldier. The Jewish soldier shot six civilians (one of the victims is pictured below, right).

One of those sobbing women keeping vigil was Fousia Atrash, whose twin sons were among the victims. Akram and Abdel-Karim, aged 16, were selling vegetables in the Arab market when Israeli soldier Noam Friedman (pictured above left), started firing at them.

The pair suffered gunshot wounds in their legs and feet. In the hospital, they suffered their pain in silence while staff and reporters crowded round them. But their mother could not remain silent.

Mrs Atrash said this time she would not be satisfied with platitudes from the Israeli Government.Ten members of her clan had been among the 29 Muslim worshippers killed by Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish settler, in Hebron in 1994. Then, she said, the Israeli authorities said that Goldstein was crazy.

"We are waiting for them to say this incident is also crazy," she said. Mrs Atrash said it made no difference that Friedman came from outside Hebron. "There is no difference. All the soldiers think the same."

She noted that both Goldstein and Friedman had put on their army uniforms before attacking Palestinians.

Fathers also vented their emotions over the shootings. "How will this agreement protect us?" asked Talfi Jaber, who sat at the bedside of his son, Hamoud, 31, who was in a critical but stable condition.

Mr Jaber, 84, said he felt more secure when he lived under British rule in Palestine than he did under Israeli military occupation. "The British didn't hurt us," he said.

Majdi Mohtesb, said he feared the Jewish settlers' hatred of Arabs was being passed from father to son.

The head of a non-government organisation said that another Palestinian boy had been injured after the shooting.

"The kids of the settlers pushed and beat him," he said.

---Compiled from European News Services


N.Y. Times Coverage Biased:

Today (Jan. 2) the N.Y. Times coverage of the shooting of Palestinian civilians by an Israeli soldier was laughably biased as usual.

The Times is painting the soldier, Noam Friedman, a committed Orthodox Jew and settler activist as "deranged." Whenever Israelis commit terrorism, this is the standard line, "It's pathology, not policy."

Joel Greenberg's Times article today is an example: He interviews Rabbi Moshe Levinger who says that the security threat is from the Palestinians and not the Israelis.

Greenberg reports this without once mentioning that Levinger is himself a random shooter of Palestinians, having murdered one and wounded another and received only a few weeks in jail for his crime.

Omitting this fact about Levinger, supports the notion that Israeli terrorists are a small minority of madmen. To mention Levinger's background would furnish evidence of the reality: that even the settlers' spokesman is a killer and that violent racism and hatred of Palestinians is ubiquitous throughout the settler movement.

The biased reporting of the N.Y. Times will cost more Palestinian lives in the future. Evil must be exposed or it will increase exponentially. --Michael A. Hoffman II


The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinian People / Research Archives / Order Form / News Bureau / home