Exactly one month ago on the 30^th September 2000, you may have noticed media coverage on the death in Jerusalem of a twelve-year-old boy named Mohamad Rami. The disturbing thing that caught the headlines, because there have been many deaths of children on both sides over the last forty years, was that his death was witnessed and photographed by a French cameraman Talal Abu-Rama. See http://www.middleeastnews.com/pg930palestine.html

This tragedy did not fit the usual rhetoric put out routinely by the Israeli Security Forces through its global press network and nor did the circumstances of this child’s death sit happily with the responses from the American Government made through the State Department. US official Press Statements made about the events unfolding in Israel and the occupied territories do not remotely address the facts or the causes of the unrest and avoided any reference to this particular killing.

In fact the manner of Mohamed’s death brings into serious doubt the whole question of America’s continued support for Israel, when a child can be murdered and seen live on television and this by a regime its politicians continues to support with billions of American taxpayers hard earned tax dollars.

Initially the excuse supplied to the worlds press for this killing was that, this was just another “stone thrower”  [ref www.idf.il/english/news/boy.stm]

not realising of course that this merely brought into the open, and to the worlds amazement, the systematic killing of children and young protestors for that “offence”.

The dawning realisation, by civilised society, that the Israeli Government was “out of control” in its handling of the Palestinian unrest has been reinforced over the last few weeks by the disproportionate numbers of Palestinians killed [at least 145] and the numbers seriously injured by gunshots [at least 3500].

The killing of “stone throwers” at a safe distance by Israeli snipers has been recorded almost daily by the many international teams of cameramen sent to Israel to record the disturbances and this evidence has mounted and can easily be used should any subsequent investigation be called for by the United Nations. The use of  “excessive force” compelled Amnesty International to file a report on the 20^th October 2000 [ref http://amnesty.cupboard.org/cgi-bin/eatsoup.cgi?id=972040710t212f2r8v51 ] condemning the abuses and the United Nations to record Resolution 1322 on the 7^th October 2000 that

condemned Israel for these abuses. America controversially abstained. This additional condemnation has been added to the long list of other U N Resolutions against Israel in the occupied territories, all of which have been ignored by successive Israeli Governments.

The attacks against Israel’s policies do not come exclusively from overseas. Rabbi Ronald Kronish who has resided in Jerusalem for 21 years has condemned both the excessive use of force and that Israel initiated the violence in Nazareth. [ref http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/10/11/News/News.13543.html ] It does not stop there.  Maj Gen [res] Abrahim Tamir is no lightweight in these matters. He headed up the Israeli team at the Camp David Summit in 1978 with Egypt and he has published a paper through The Jerusalem Centre on the 10^th October entitled “A new Paradigm for Arab-Israeli Peacemaking” that attacks the Israeli government and accuses the US State Department of directly influencing the mistakes being made. More seriously he states that these mistakes are a major threat to world peace. [Ref http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/10/11/News/News.13543.html]

Statement’s of this nature from a man who was a key player in the Israeli camp have to be listened too. In fact not only are his concerned and factual observations being ignored, they are being withheld from the American people, along with ANY or ALL forms of criticism of these corrupt policies. 

The clamour to stop the violence is falling on deaf ears both in Israel and in Washington and it is this abject failure of the Clinton administration more than anything that proves a “different agenda”. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to conclude that both the US and Israeli Government’s wish to engineer political unrest to destabilise the Middle East. The two possible reasons for this duplicity are not too far under the surface to discount out of hand because what is happening in Israel simply does not make sense from the reasons and excuses being floated or spun into the world’s media.

There have been mass relocations of Jewish immigrants from the old Soviet Republics and this has caused two problems. Finding homes and or land for them to build homes and paying their wages or subsistence.

The level of income previously experienced by these particular refugees whilst under Communist oppression and corruption are to say the least minimal. A doctor or any professional would have expected to earn something in the region of  $10 per month. It is this low level of wage expectancy [or new found cheap labour force] that Socialist Israel has now marketed to Corporate America and rapidly built an “Entente Cordial” with Capitalism.  This business opportunity was too good to miss for both parties and has caused a complete about turn in both their Foreign Policies with the Palestinians, not least of which directed and actually required the mass illegal deportations of Palestinians [that were again condemned by many UN Resolutions] and the provocative escalation of settlements being built on Palestinian Land against numerous written agreements. These “carpetbaggers” are not being drawn from long -term residents of Israel and placed in harms way in the new settlements but the new immigrants who are now starting to feel justifiably threatened by the nearby Palestinian snipers who regularly take pot shots at their walled enclosures.

Arafat has declared that he wishes to compel Israel and America to keep their promises over a Palestinian homeland. This has caused a big problem for the recently amended US Foreign Policy because Arafat has an untapped cheap labour force as well as Israel and wishes to declare a Palestinian Free Trade Area. This would be a nightmare for the big US Corporations setting up in Israel and especially those that who have already invested huge sums of Capital building new factories and assembly plants to take advantage of the pool of cheap labour.

In the long term the intention of American Foreign Policy has to be to treat Israel as a major distribution point to the Middle East for US Corporate businesses and by definition any Palestinian homeland and neighbouring Free Trade Area would be in direct competition to that business plan.

Running parallel to that are the existing US Arms Industries sales that rely entirely on the continuance of unrest in the Middle East to sustain growth or at least the maintenance of sales at their current huge at very profitable levels.

To illustrate the volume of this business over the last few months a cursory scan produced the following deals that have been announced by the US State Department and I am confident that there are many more.

1. 22^nd September 2000. $125 million to Israel for 14 combat service support Airplanes.

2. 26^th September 2000. $51 million to Bahrain for 30 guided missile assemblies.

3. 27^th September 2000. Free -Trade Agreement with Jordan.

4. 11^th September 2000. $73 million to Egypt for Tank support vehicles, machine guns and military hardware.

5. 11^th September 2000.  Three deals to Saudi Arabia

A. $416 million for Advanced guided missiles and communications systems.

B. $1.6 Billion for F15 aircraft and full time US support on all logistics including training, maintenance, modification and labour.

C. $690 Million for F15 aircraft, support, training and depot.

6. 21^st July 2000. $150 million to Kuwait for ammunition.

7. 21^st July 2000. $475 million to Saudi Arabia for air-to-air missiles.

8. 20^TH July 2000. $400 million to Egypt for attack helicopters and radar.

9. Wye River “peace accord” between Israel and the Palestinians. $1825 million [1.8 billion]

These extract’s of arms sales and the most recent “Peace Aid” package total $5.805 billion can be viewed commencing at [ref http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/peace/archives/2000/september/me0922a.html] and exclude the huge annual foreign “aid” budgets to the region as a whole.                                                                  

It is these dual policy considerations that should lead any independent observer to conclude that both Israel and America needed to sabotage the “Peace Process” to stop a Palestinian homeland, simply because it would have been “bad for business”.

There are departments with huge legions of Military, Political and Intelligence personnel both in America and Israel, that knew with absolute certainty that when Ariel Sharon visited The Temple Mount in Jerusalem the Palestinians would be outraged. Why then would he turn up with well over 1000-armed bodyguards in case the known and inevitable violent protest was immediate? A stone-throwing mob could be dealt with, by forward planning to include the use of Water Cannon and riot police tactics, not live bullets and lethal repression. The excessive violence was, from the evidence, deliberate to actually cause political unrest amid the escalating fatal protests. Killing protestors by a “Shoot to Kill” Policy was specifically designed in my view to enrage the Palestinians and the mounting death toll and shooting casualties led directly to the deaths of the two Israeli policemen in retaliation. The families of about a half a dozen other Israeli’s over the last few weeks should be looking to the Israeli Government for an explanation for these policies because these deaths were as inevitable as night follows day. You only have to look at published material from the Far Right in Israel to establish with certainty the known relevance of any visit by a hawk like Sharon to The Temple Mount. These beliefs are confirmed by the specific statement made as long ago as 22^nd December 1999 by Rabbi Menachem Brod and indeed all his comments found in the Israel National News opinion which can be found at.  

[Ref. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/english/newspaper/opinion/brod/brod-221299.htm ]

Pay particular notice to his comments, “Those in positions of influence have exerted great efforts to create the impression that only radical elements and mentally-unstable Jews are concerned with the fate of the Mount.” And he declares clear knowledge of what would happen in the Arab communities by his further statement “ Add to this the atmosphere of cowardice and trepidation that tells Israeli’s that just about any enforcement of Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount would earn Israel the wrath of the entire Arab world” It cannot be more plain the Israeli’s and the American State Department knew what would happen when this staged event took place. All that followed will go down as a permanent blot against those involved in the corrupt conspiracy.

If we look again at the killing of Mohamed Rami in this context [and no stone thrower was he as evidenced by his terror at ref www.middleeastnews.com/pg930palestine.html] The protestations of the Israeli Government and the U S State Department about the need for a “peace process” and yet another summit, having indisputably done everything they could to destroy it, should be treated by Arafat and the rest of the world with the contempt they all deserve. All agreements on the sensitive Jerusalem question have been ignored by Israel who regularly blocks all access to Palestinians to key religious areas, even though its sovereignty has been specifically excluded from previous treaties. It was known that this would automatically cause serious trouble and this was part of the plan of escalation of tension.

The stone throwing argument was indeed used by the Israeli Defence Force at [ref www.idf.il/english/news/boy.stm] but at least the IDF apologised inferring however that the child was throwing stones when clearly he was not.

One assumes that the people that wrote that particular apology have seen the same pictures that I have and the “Orwellian News speak” employed by the Israeli defence Force and the deafening silence of the American State Department on this matter, does them all no credit whatsoever.

American Foreign Policy in Israel has already tarnished the image of America as an “Honest Broker” towards world peace and there is no doubt that as these serious crimes unfold daily on the worlds television screens, serious questions will be asked in Congress and more and more it is hoped in the worlds media. But will those ultimately responsible for the deliberate murder of Mohamed Rami and many others be brought to justice? Certainly not by the Israeli Government or the Clinton Administration or any process proposed by Presidential Candidate Al Gore, both of which appear to be firmly in the pocket of the business interests that have engineered these events. The shoot to kill policy in force in Israel can now easily be discribed as a policy that in effect is murdering children and unarmed protestors for profit. The inevitable war crimes investigation should also look into the role of the Foreign Policy department of the US State Department and The Clinton Administration. And all arms sales and Aid to Israel should be stopped immediately.

This meanwhile only leaves Presidential Candidate George Bush, who also appears to be sitting on the fence at this time, but maybe, just maybe, there is something in his personal locker that will put a stop to the current destruction of the well -earned good name and reputation of America by the corrupt events festering in Israel. It should be remembered that he was not dragged up through the apparently endemic corporate sleaze in Washington and may be his own man. Who else is there?

Ultimately the threat to world peace detailed by Maj Gen Abrahim Tamir is being jeopardised by an imposed trade agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with any peace process. Can we afford to let these matters drag on with that risk increasing by the hour as the violence escalates out of all control?

Malcolm Glynn wrote this Special Report to Middle East News & World Report -- Malcolm Glynn is a British Investigative Journalist.

Copyright Malcolm Glynn 31th October 2000.