193 of 251 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Facts and Distortions, November 24, 2003
This review is from: The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians (Paperback)
It is surely incumbent on those who seek to decry this book - any book - on the basis of its supposed lack of factual and historical accuracy and absence of supporting evidence to get their facts and their history correct and provide supporting evidence when they depart from the widely accepted historical record.
So let's look at some real facts.
Did the settlers in the Occupied Territories express their unequivocal condemnation of the murder, by one of their number, of 29 Palestinians at prayer? Hardly. One of their most prominent leaders, Rabbi Ginsburg, circulated a pamphlet in which he said the death of any Arab was "a fortunate event" but that these killings were especially heroic. Jerusalem was festooned with posters celebrating the grizzly deed. Opinion polls showed that 50% of Israelis approved of the mass murder. The Israeli army accompanied the murderer's coffin and the enormous crowd of supporters to his tomb, which is now a place of pilgrimage for many Jews and settlers. [source: `The Gun and the Olive Branch' David Hirst 2003]
Was Ariel Sharon cleared of responsibility for the massacres in Sabra and Shatila? Hardly. The official commission of enquiry, the Kahan Commission, held Sharon to be `personally responsible' for the killings. Israeli forces fired flares to illuminate the camps, allowing the killers to do their filthy work and turned away those who tried to flee, sending them back to be killed. [Source: `The Kahan Report' 1983; `Pity the Nation', Robert Fisk 2001]
But surely the most disgraceful distortion of all is the suggestion that those who were massacred at Deir Yassin somehow invited their own fate. No serious Middle Eastern scholar has ever suggested that those killed at Deir Yassin deserved their fate. So who should we believe about what happened at Deir Yassin?
The victims? What about 12 year old Fahimi Zidan who said "The Jews ordered all our family to line up against the wall and they started shooting us. I was hit in the side ... the bullets hit my sister Kadri [aged four] in the head, my sister Sameh [eight] in the cheek, my brother Mohammad [seven] in the chest. But all the others against the wall were killed: my father, mother, grandfather and grandmother, my uncles, aunts and some of their children."
What about the British policeman who investigated the 254 deaths? "Many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young schoolgirls were raped and subsequently slaughtered ... a young girl was literally torn in two. Many infants were also butchered and killed." [Source: `Report of the Criminal Investigation Division', Palestine Government 1948.]
Or the Head of the Red Cross in Palestine, Jacques De Reynier, who went to the scene immediately afterwards and reported: "I found some bodies cold. Here the `cleaning up' had been done with machine guns, then hand grenades. It had been finished off with knives, anyone could see that. The same thing in the next room but as I was about to leave, I heard something like a sigh. I looked everywhere, turned over all the bodies, and eventually found a little foot, still warm. It was a little
girl of ten, mutilated by a hand grenade, but still alive; everywhere it was the same horrible sight ... there had been 400 people in this village; about fifty had escaped. All the rest had been deliberately massacred in cold blood for, as I observed for myself, this gang was admirably disciplined and acted only under orders."
It is here suggested that if there was any massacre at all it was condemned by the Jewish leadership. But as well as the terrorist Irgun gang - led, let's not forget, by Menachin Begin, who was elected Prime Minister by the Israelis - the killers were joined by the official Haganah and acted in collaboration with the official Jewish leadership. Indeed a unit of the Palmach - the elite forces of the Haganah - took part in the massacre and one of their own soldiers, Meir Pa'el, gave this written account: "The Irgun and Stern ... began cleaning up operations in the houses. They fired with all the arms they had and threw explosives into the houses. They also shot everything they saw in the houses, including women and children ... twenty five men were brought out from the houses: they were loaded into a freight truck and led on a victory parade ... through [Jerusalem]. At the end of the parade they were take to a stone quarry.... and shot in cold blood" [source: `History of the Middle East' Ted Thornton; `Days of Fire' Samuel Katz; `Who Knows Better Must Say So' Elmer Berger]
The Shai or Jewish Information Service reported that those taking part in the `operation' were ordered to kill all prisoners. They were "taken to town in trucks, paraded in the city streets [of Jerusalem], then taken back to the site and killed with rifle and machine-gun fire." The Shai commander confirmed that money and jewellery was stolen from the prisoners and that inhabitants of West Jerusalem "took part in the torture" of prisoners. [Source `Righteous Victims', Benny Morris 1999].
It is a chilling fact that the Head of the Red Cross, was ordered to sign a false witness statement by the Jewish leaders and was told that "if I valued my own life, I had better sign immediately. The only course open to me was to convince them that I did not value my life in the least ..." [Source: `A Jerusalem un Drapeau Flottait sur la Ligne de Feu' Jacques De Reynier, 1950]. Is it to be that the false witness which the killers could not extract even by threatening to kill again, is now proffered by those who seek to excuse the acts of the killers?
If this book is condemned by those who resort to such distortion, it must be fully deserving of five stars.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
75 of 99 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great book, August 25, 2004
This review is from: The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians (Paperback)
Finaly a true book about the Palestinian Genoside. I have read this book two times and I told my friends to read it too. The book teels us about the slow motion Genocide that are news does not want us to know. The book tells us that terrorism started with the Jewish terrorist groups like the Irgum which also assinated THEIR OWN Prime Minister because he was a men of peace. I also reccomend readers to read Micheal Hoffman's other works, and also his web page. Today most people in the West dont know about a few Genocides that happen in the World. Including the Armenian Genocide, the Soviet Genocide (Lenin, Salin, and other Communist leader killed over 40 million Christians) Genocide in Aferica and elswere. I urge all people to read this book and know the truth. Dont belive the media because its controled by the Goverment. And you know who controls the Goverment. Arial Sheron the Isreali Prime Minester and the same person who was found GUILTY by a ISREALI court for War Crimes said in a metting last year the Jews Control America. This is his words not mine.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
