Notes & Letters

From Glenn Witmer in Jerusalem: 16 Apr 2002

Dear Friends,

I attended a number of the SABEEL conference special sessions this past week, including one where Dr. Hanan Ashrawi was the speaker. You will recognize her name from the frequent interviews she gives to the TV networks - she is a Christian, and an elected member of the Palestinian "house of representatives" for the Jerusalem district. The news reports this week have included increasing references to the story of an apparent massacre in the occupied city of Jenin, not far from Nazareth. The Israeli military continues to refuse to allow the foreign press or other agencies to enter. The stories that are filtering out are horrifying. The following report was prepared by Mark Frey of the Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT) based in Hebron, and also attending the SABEEL conference:

April 15, 2002:
JERUSALEM: Massacres in Jenin, and Deir Yassin Relived

The brutality of the IDF's take-over of Palestinian towns and villages has been downplayed by US and Israeli governments and within the Western media, particularly in the US. Even so, Israeli Prime Minister Peres has been privately referring to the IDF's attacks in the Jenin refugee camp as a "massacre." Sketchy reports speak of hundreds of bodies lying in the rubble of homes knocked down by military bulldozers clearing the way at the front of the advancing IDF. Israeli officials are concerned about world reaction when the full extent of death comes to light. Facts are not known because Israel is not allowing press or humanitarian workers into the area. The dead and wounded are left in the streets as Israeli snipers shoot at anyone who moves.

Unlike today's Jenin, however, the 1948 April 9th massacre of over 120 people from the Jerusalem area/Arab village of Deir Yassin by Jewish troops is well known. As word of that attack's brutality spread, eventually hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled their homes. Today Deir Yassin has acquired a potent symbolism, representing the destruction - the Nakhba, or catastrophe experienced by Palestinians during Israel's war of creation, during which over 400 Arab villages were razed to the ground and effectively erased. Today, apart from a few original Deir Yassin buildings now used as a mental hospital, the Jerusalem neighborhood of Givat Shaul covers the now erased village.

Every April 9 is the day of "Deir Yassin Remembered." Coincidentally, this April 9, 2002, as happens very 19 years, was also Holocaust Memorial Day. At 10:00 am sirens blared throughout Israel and all movement came to a halt while people stood still, remembering.

The CPT delegation, attending the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center's week-long solidarity visits, visited the remnants of Deir Yassin, standing at 10am with the rest of Israel, remembering both Holocaust and massacre. Following the solemn commemoration, the group listened to 74-year-old Imm Saleh describe the Jewish attack on her village, how her family was slaughtered - one member shot five times in the head, another member's throat slit. Through tears she explained that after she was captured, the soldiers gave her a choice of death: to be strung up, to be shot, or to remain in the house while it was destroyed. She chose the last, she said, because she would not leave her land. Her testimony evoked images of bodies lying in rubble, like those in Jenin camp who refused to leave their land and were consequently, reportedly, buried in their homes. Imm Saleh was lucky; she was not killed and instead soldiers transported her and other witnesses to different villages so they could spread the eye-witness
stories of terror.

Deir Yassin is not over. Palestinians continue to trace the symbolic
massacre through other brutalities like the massacre in Lebanon's camps of Sabra and Shatila. Deir Yassin is being relived right now, in the mind of Imm Saleh and other survivors like her, and on the destroyed streets of Jenin. Imm Saleh said, "What is happening today is worse than what happened to us." And, like Sabra and Shatila, then General and now Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is the architect. And the world, in large part, is doing very little.

Note: Glenn is the North American Mennonite Church representative in Israel.