The Great War for Civilisation (94 page)

“What would my grandfather say of this?” she asks. “What were those Israelis
thinking
as they were putting on their prayer shawls? Were they praying: ‘Father who art in heaven, help me to kill as many
Arabushim
as possible'? Do they now have a right to kill without any guilt?”
Arabushim
—a racist term for Arabs in the Hebrew language—was later used in an Israeli newspaper interview by one of the artillerymen who fired into the UN base at Qana. Stern has included an English translation of the interview from
Kol Ha'ir
in her file, a set of documents that she has sent to the UN, to the Lebanese delegation to the UN, and to the most prominent American journalists in New York. She hoped to persuade the latter to mark the first anniversary of the Qana massacre. Her sense of outrage is as brave as it is lonely; although many American Jews are troubled by the behaviour of Israel's right-wing government and the bloody adventures in which Israel has been involved in Lebanon and in “Palestine,” most do not take kindly to Stern's concern for the truth to be told. But she is unremitting:

My feelings started slowly. I always had a problem with unquestioned obedience to authority—that's why I always got into trouble in class. And when I thought about the atrocities committed by the Israelis, I felt that as an American taxpayer and an American Jew, I had an obligation to speak out. If ordinary Germans living under total oppression can be held responsible for the crimes committed by the Nazis—because they did not speak out—how much more responsible are we who live in a country where we have the freedom to speak out? If ordinary Germans were guilty for not speaking out, then surely we are also guilty in remaining silent about Qana. Because we don't live in fear of death squads. What I am doing is not courageous—it is the decent thing to do. If enough decent Germans had spoken out at the time, perhaps the Holocaust would not have happened. I'm not saying that the level of atrocities committed by the Israelis is on the same scale or in any way comparable to those of the Nazis. Of course not. But I know that I have paid as a taxpayer for the shells that rained down on Qana. And therefore if I'm silent, I'm no better than those Germans. Israel claims to be the representative of the Jewish people. It's important for people to know that they clearly do not speak for world Jewry. They clearly do not speak for me. So I have a duty to speak out.

A secretary in a Manhattan corporate law firm—she was educated in an ultra-orthodox Brooklyn girls' school—Eva Stern was encouraged in her campaign by Noam Chomsky, that most irascible and brilliant of America's philosophers and linguists, and by the work of former Warsaw Ghetto survivor Israel Shahak, whose history of Israel she quotes by heart. “He wrote that ‘any support of human rights in general by a Jew which does not include the support of human rights of non-Jews whose rights are being violated by the “Jewish state” is as deceitful as the support of human rights by a Stalinist.' That really influenced me.”

Stern's father, Chaim, was a Hungarian Jew who also survived the concentration camps. “My mother was his cousin and he married her in 1949. I was born seven years later. My parents are still alive and know my feelings about Israeli atrocities. They are sort of ambivalent about it. They believe I'm right in condemning it. But because of what they went through, they believe all the world is anti-Semitic. So when there's a terrorist attack against the Israelis, they are unable to see it in the context of the Arab–Israeli dispute. I strongly condemn any terrorist attack. But my parents see it in terms of ‘the Arabs are anti-Semitic and that's why there's a terrorist attack.' I refuse to condemn my parents for these feelings. They see all Germans, for example, as Nazis—because in their experience, they only met Nazis. And for most Palestinians, the only Jews they know of are the oppressors. The Palestinians in the refugee camps . . . probably never met a decent, moral Jew.”

But Eva Stern's attempt to persuade American journalists to mark the anniversary of the Qana slaughter met with little more than indifference. Not a single major mainstream American newspaper carried a paragraph—not even a brief news report—on the UN-attended ceremony held in Lebanon to mark the first anniversary of the bloodbath. Unlike Eva Stern, American journalists remained silent. So did her bosses. The house magazine of her Manhattan corporate law firm encourages employees to write about their interests and out-of-hours work. Stern wrote a passionate account of her inquiries into Qana—and into the 1982 massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Chatila. An official of the firm later declined to publish her article—on the grounds that it was “sensitive” and “might be misunderstood.”

Not long after I met Eva Stern, a letter arrived in my mail in Beirut from Nezar Hindawi. Remember the name? Hindawi was the Palestinian who on 17 April 1986 gave his unsuspecting and pregnant Irish girlfriend Anne-Marie Murphy a bomb to take on board an El Al jet at London Heathrow Airport. The 1.5 kilograms of Semtex would have destroyed the aircraft, killing all on board, including the young chambermaid who fondly believed that Hindawi would be arriving in Israel a few days later to marry her. After seeking the protection of Syrian security men in London, he decided to give himself up. At the Old Bailey six months later, he was given forty-five years in prison, the longest sentence in British criminal history.

Which is why his letter to me carried the address of Her Majesty's Prison Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire. It was polite but carried a persistent message: if IRA killers imprisoned for “political” crimes could be freed, then he—Nezar Hindawi—should also be released. In his poor English, he wrote: “My case is a political as you know, no one will go to blow up an aircraft for personal matter. I do believe that if it was not an Israeli aircraft and not in UK I would not have that sentenced which it is the longest in UK's recent history.” The first problem for me in Hindawi's letter was not political. Many IRA men—and Protestant paramilitary killers—in Northern Ireland discovered, after years in prison, a profound sense of unease and contrition for the terrible deeds they committed. Even old Gusty Spence, the first of “Loyalism”'s sinister murderers, came out of Long Kesh a born-again Christian. Yet not a hint of remorse did I find in Hindawi's letter to me, not a single tiny clue that he might feel sorry for what he had tried to do. The clause “no one will go to blow up an aircraft for personal matter” was chilling, I was to write in
The Independent
, his “categorisation of evil” quite clear. It would be unforgivable for him to blow up a plane for “personal” reasons—if, I suppose, he hated the passengers—but not, it appears, for political reasons if the passengers, even his pregnant girlfriend Anne-Marie Murphy, were of no personal interest.

Referring to his own case as “history,” Hindawi continued:

The PLO and Israel made a peace deal with Jordan. Even the relation between Syria and UK is in its best in all aspects . . . look what happened after the peace deal in N. Ireland, the British Government transferred all IRA prisoners to N. Ireland and lots of them been released . . . I wrote to the Prime Minister Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Robben [
sic
] Cook, Ken Living-stone MP, Tony Benn MP, D. Skinner MP and others asking them to release me . . . I have not reply yet.

Nor was I surprised. For an Irish peace which a majority of people in both Britain and Ireland support, the old Thatcherite policy of criminalising all villains was abandoned. There were child-killers, wife-murderers, mafia murderers and hit men—who must stay in prison—and “political” killers, “political” murderers and “political” hit men who were now going home. Like it or not, that's how most wars end. There's a kind of crossing-off of sin. The men we have dubbed “terrorists”— Jomo Kenyatta, Menachem Begin, Archbishop Makarios, Gerry Adams and, yes, Yassir Arafat—have an odd habit of turning up for talks at Downing Street and tea with Queen Elizabeth, or chats in the White House.

But where does that leave prisoners from other wars? In theory, the PLO–Israeli peace could have had some effect on Hindawi. But the peace was now dead and Hindawi wrote—though somewhat obliquely—that he thought he was working for the Syrians.
⁹⁸
I didn't respond directly to him. But I wrote an article about his letter in which I said I wanted “to know a bit more about the real Nezar Hindawi”—and how a man—whomever he thought he was working for—could hand a bomb to the young girl who loved him, the woman who carried his child, knowing that it represented their doom and that of all those with her. I sent Hindawi a copy of the article. More than three months later, I received another letter from him. It was both angry and agitated, written from the depths of historical indignation. Although crippled by his English, Hindawi made a metaphorical attempt to reconstruct the betrayals of the Middle East—in which he flagellated himself as the instrument of “terrorism,” inviting Britain and France to take up their mandates and create the state of Israel:

I thought it may be good for you to know “a bit more about the real Nezar Hindawi” . . . it seems to me that you have not found that “bit” . . . I am Nezar Hindawi who invited the EMPERORS of England and France to Arabia—Middle East—to slice the CAKE and to teach the Arab how to play Cricket. But the most importante point for the invitation was to found or to fill “a Land without a people for a people without a Land.” So, the Emperor of England brought from Europ “a people without a land for a Land without a people” as I request. For that “people” I gave them that slice of the cake and they named it “Israel.” Free of charge. But the cricket game [is] still on. It is so long. It need time to end. The referee went away

for good. Do you think he may come to stop the game? That game, I am the founder of it. I am Nezar Hindawi, the founder of and the head of the HAGANAH, IRGUN, STERN GANG the terrorist organisations and by my direct orders, unleashed a campaign of terror and violence that deliberately targeted only civilians . . . I ordered the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem which resulted in the death of about 90 British. I . . . ordered the invasion of Lebanon and West Beirut and did the Massacres at Sabra and Chatila Camps . . . Some more information for you, Dear Mr. Robert Fisk about Nezar Hindawi and his evil works, I am Nezar Hindawi responsible for killing, tortures and the disappearance of more than 4,000 people in Chile, NOT General Augusto Pinochet. I am the responsible of keeping the sanctions on Iraq . . . Now you may undestand Nezar Hindawi and his evil works.

My use of the word “evil”—before its meaning had been contaminated by George W. Bush—had riled Hindawi. But there was no doubting the meaning of his letter. Little criminals like Hindawi were locked up for forty-five years. Big criminals—Menachem Begin, Pinochet, Britain and France in their long colonial histories—get away with murder. There was a section of his handwritten letter in which he praised “Greater Syria,” the Ottoman province which included Jordan, Palestine and present-day Syria—
Asham—Biladu Asham
—which existed in the “days before I send the invitation to the Emperors of England and France . . . ”

He wrote that he was proud of his “love” for Syria.

I [was] just born in Part of Syria which [is] called Jordan. But does Jordan make a state? Is it really a state? It is part of Syria and one time it must return to its Mother, to its heart, to Syria, that is [a] tru [
sic
] fact and you may see it in your time . . . I have a great bright history I am so proud of it. I do not want to write about personal things, this belongs to me only, also this is why I do not want to reply to what you wrote about the girl and the child and love . . . I regard these things as something personal, once the time will allow me to say about this things [
sic
], make sure you will be one of whom will I tell them . . .

Hindawi ended by expressing his “love” for President Hafez el-Assad of Syria.

There is much more I would like to know about this case, not least why Hindawi's defence lawyer, Gilbert Gray QC, argued at his 1986 trial that “another nation may take retribution” if Hindawi was convicted—a remark which Sir William Mars-Jones, who sentenced the accused to forty-five years, said “should never have been made.” Was this “nation” supposed to be Syria? A psychologist might also have much to say about Hindawi's refusal to discuss “the girl and the child and love” because that, surely, is what this whole drama revolves around. Hindawi will confront the political tragedy of the Middle East—and the hypocrisy of a world that will sentence lesser would-be murderers to forty-five years but allow those held responsible for mass murder to go free—but not the immediate and all too relevant issue of his own moral conscience. Yes, I am waiting for Hindawi to tell me about “the girl and the child and love.” And so, too, is Anne-Marie Murphy who, eighteen years after Hindawi tried to smuggle her and her unborn child onto the El Al flight at Heathrow with a bomb, gave her first newspaper interview to complain that Hindawi had been granted legal aid to demand a parole board review of his sentence:

That man is pure unadulterated evil. You are talking about someone who has never shown a flicker of remorse or once said “sorry” . . . What about the human rights of all the people on that plane he was trying to murder? He held me in his arms and kissed me on both cheeks. The next time I saw him, he said we would be getting married. With that he smiled and stood there waving goodbye . . . He carried this bag all the way to the airport and then give [
sic
] it to me as I was about to go through. He left me at Terminal One because he said his flight was going from Terminal Three. I remember going past the sniffer dogs and two security check points before a guard asked me to step aside for a moment. Then when they opened the bag and looked inside my whole world fell apart.