A modern blood libel
A Dutch director claims to have seen then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon shoot two 'Palestinian' toddlers at close range near the Sabra and Shatilla 'refugee camps' in 1982. Sharon was in Israel at the time. The claim first appeared in the Volkskrant, the third largest paper in the Netherlands, in an interview with the well-known Dutch-Jewish director George Sluizer. According to Sluizer, 78, he witnessed Sharon killing two Palestinian toddlers with a pistol in 1982 near the refugee camp Sabra-Shatilla while filming a documentary there.This is the same country that tried to prevent Geert Wilders from running for office and put him on trial for speaking against Islam.
“I met Sharon and saw him kill two children before my eyes,” said Sluizer, who lives in Amsterdam. Sluizer has made several documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but is best known for directing The Vanishing with Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland in 1992.
Sluizer repeated the accusation in an interview for Vrij Nederland, an intellectual magazine, published on November 13 ahead of a screening of his film at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. “Sharon shot two children like you shoot rabbits, in front of my eyes,” he said.
The children, according to Sluizer, “were toddlers, two or three years old. He shot them from a distance of 10 meters with a pistol that he carried. I was very close to him.” Sluizer added he thought this happened in November, when Sharon was Israel’s minister of defense, but he was not sure of the month.
...
Sharon’s successor as defense minister, Moshe Arens, said Sluizer’s account was “a lie.” According to Arens, “Sharon would never shoot a child and he was not in Lebanon in November of 1982. Thirdly, protocol prohibits ministers from wearing weapons. As civilians they are not allowed to carry firearms.”
Amram Mitzna, former chairman of the Israeli Labor Party who served under Sharon as head of the Syrian front during the First Lebanon War, called Sluizer’s account “total nonsense.” Mitzna added: “I attacked Sharon politically over his decisions, but Sharon would never do a thing like that. It’s completely ridiculous.”
Yossef Levy, senior spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called Sluizer's account a "crude and disgraceful lie. It is hard to believe that any reasonable person would take seriously this kind of modern blood libel, which is not supported by a single shred of evidence."
Read the whole thing. The only mystery about this story is why the Dutch media published it in the first place. Oops. I guess that's not such a mystery either.
Labels: Ariel Sharon, Moshe Arens, Operation Peace for Galilee, Sabra and Shatilla
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:31 AM
2 Comments:
Off topic - there's a report in the Jerusalem Post to the effect Prime Minister Netanyahu is asking for Jonathan Pollard's release to persuade the government to extend the freeze.
This is the only justifiable reason for doing it. If not - it shouldn't be on the table, period. It depends on how badly Obama wants a freeze that he's willing to do what Netanyahu needs to sell it to his Cabinet.
And if that's not in writing, I don't see a freeze happening in the foreseeable future.
Does the schmuck explain why he or anyone else hasn't come out with this for 28 years?
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