Democratic Palestine : 39 (ص 4)
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- Democratic Palestine : 39 (ص 4)
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HTL
~ Zionist Crime Met by United
Palestinian Upsurge
Early in the morning, Sunday, May 20th, an Israeli clad in army uniform accosted a group of about
50 Palestinians who had come from the occupied Gaza Strip to Rishon Letzion to wait for work. He
demanded their ID cards and then opened fire with his US-supplied M16; seven Palestinians were
murdered on the spot and another 11 injured. The Israeli army claimed he was deranged, but the
same day Israeli soldiers were just as quick to open fire on the demonstrators protesting the massacre.
Seven more Palestinians were killed, making May 20th a day that will go on record alongside scores
of other Zionist crimes.
Palestinian fight-back after the massacre will also go on record but in more human terms, showing
the instinctive oneness of the people of Palestine, at home and in exile, and their shared determi-
nation to regain their rights.
The media described Rishon Letz-
ion asa Tel Aviv suburb, but this is a mis-
nomer both historically and currently. It
is one of the earliest Zionist settlements,
established in the 1890s, and kept alive by
the finances of French Zionist Baron
Rothschild until the Zionist movement
had gained sufficient imperialist backing
to sustain more concerted colonization.
Rishon Letzion lies where there was once
a small Palestinian village called Ain
Qara. Today it is a «slave market,» half-
way between Tel Aviv and Gaza, one of
many junctions where Palestinians wait
for a day’s work in Zionist enterprises.
The May 20th massacre was no
chance occurrence but indicative of the
double victimization to which Palesti-
nians under occupation are subject.
Forced to sell their labor power cheap to
the occupier who has deprived them of
other-means of subsistence, they are also
exposed to racist attacks which are at
once systematic and arbitrary. May 20th
can only be viewed as the product of 42
years of Zionist state terror and
intitutionalized racism. For what other
reason is Palestinian life considered not
only cheap, but also best done away with?
This massacre could have happened
anytime, anyplace in occupied Palestine,
especially in the atmosphere of right-
wing extremism fostered by Shamir’s
government which is hell-bent on block-
ing the peace process, meanwhile
encouraging the «transfer» trend for ter-
rorizing Palestinians out of their home-
land. It is indicative that the Kach move-
ment said outright that it would not con-
4
demn the killings, for perhaps some of
the Palestinians who died had once
thrown stones at Jews.
The stage had been set by preceding
events. The five-month sentence handed
down to Rabbi Moshe Levinger, leader
of Gush Emunim, on May 1st for shoot-
ing dead a Hebron shopkeeper in Sep-
tember 1988, can only be understood asa
license to kill Palestinians. (He is the sec-
ond settler to be imprisoned at all for such
a crime, although at least 30 Palestinians
have been killed by settlers since the
uprising began.)
In the context of the Israeli political
crisis, rightist MKs had been deliberately
whipping up a racist atmosphere. In
April, Sharon called the Palestinian
Knesset members «Arafat’s murderers.»
Tehiya’s Guela Cohen and Likud’s
Ovadia Eli called them «agents of
Arafat» - acharge equal to high treason in
Israeli circles. A little over a week before
the May 20th massacre, Jewish graves
were desecrated in Haifa, and an attempt
made to have it look like an act by Palesti-
nians; incidently, the same week a Pales-
tinian cultural event opened in the city.
Moledet party leader Ze’eviimmediately
advocated that Arabs who do such deeds
be expelled, although a Jewish citizen of
Israel was almost immediately ap-
prehended for the crime.
Though Israel’s friends had been
tooting the lower death tolls in the
occupied territories this year, as com-
pared to 1988-89, Zionist repression has
not let up, but continues to be tightened
in the ongoing effort to strangle the
intifada. On the other hand, the media
had busily picked up Israeli statements
about the intifada «receding,» but this
was not the case either. Though without
media attention, the masses of the
intifada have all along been steadily
engaging in their militant routine of the
past two and a half years - throwing
stones and molotovs against the occupa-
tion troops; organizing protests, strikes
and boycotts; and consolidating com-
munity organization, social services and
self-reliance.
On May 28th, the Foreign Press
Association, representing over 200
foreign correspondents working in
Israel, protested the restrictions on their
coverage of the situation in the territories
after the Rishon Letzion massacre, due
to widespread curfews and closure
orders. In fact, curfews and closures have
been the order of the day all spring. The
Gaza Strip was either declared a closed
area or totally curfewed for at least ten
days in the preceding two months. In
addition, there was a two week maritime
siege on the coast after two political pris-
oners escaped from Ansar ITinlate April;
this affected the livelihood of over 1,000
Palestinian fishermen. Beit Furik, in the
West Bank, was under curfew and/or
military siege or closure orders through-
out Marchand April, with the population
subject to arrests, beatings, collective
punishment, tax raids and confiscation of
property at the hands of the notorious
Golani Brigade in concert with the regu-
lar army. In the village of Anabta, a long
curfew was imposed to cover the Golani - هو جزء من
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