A little news item, buried amongst the pages of the Israeli daily Haaretz reads:
Nes information policy for Israeli radio and army.
News items concerning small border incidents no longer to be published, from our muntary corespondent.
Israel Galili, Minister for Information, has -roica te voice of Israel to suppress news broadcasts concerning activities or sabotage organisations, as well as those concerning minor border incidents not involving casualties, following * complaint of the israell army authorities concering "exagerated? reporting of such incidents by broadcasting service.
Following these directives the ' Voice of Israel ' has curtailed its reporting of border incidents and sabotage activity. Only reports of Army spokesmen ane broadcast, all other reports require advanced Dese directives conform to the new information polcy of the Army. In the past doubts were raised about the value of official publication of every minor sodent not involving casualties. such news created the impression that the sabotage organisations are cout and more than once received exaggerated -y on ine radio and in some of the papers.
Suing to the new policy there is no restriction in the press to publish news on minor border socats, or sabotage activity that tailed, but the ry spokesman does not issue official communiques evening paper Yedior Aharonor reads:
The military governor said yesterday to the a romain, witnin a icw years, a single house anding in the villag Yediet Aharonor, 26 November, 1968 The quotation marks around the military governor's weedi appeared in the original news item. The wme paper published (on 21 November, 1968) • report on the insaguration of the military ner MEHOLA on the West Bank as a a Zeevi.
You have done yourselves an honour by reinheriting After reminding his listeners that Gideon's cavalry once undered in that valley he added After 3,200 years Gideon's great grandchildren have agai performed wonder of war on the same spot. The wace or nistory nas turned full circle but now under the banner of: Sickle and sword to God and Gideon?"
(Yediot Aharonot, 21 November, 1968)
These news items highlight the new developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian guerrilla fighters perform daily acts of sabotage, mining, ambushing, attacking military, economic, installations in the occupied territories and inside Israel. However, their major success is in a different sphere: they have won the support, and accosmuon to tne majority of the Palestinians -including those living under Israeli rule - as the embodiment of the Palestinians' aspirations. This was not the situation prevailing from June, 1967 to, say, June, 1968. During that period most 'alestinians were numbed by the impact of contac vith the modern, Westernised, Israeli society. Th Israeli occupation was much more lenient than the Jordanian and the Egyptian one, it was, unlike its predecessors, free from corruption. Moreover, most Palestinians believed and hoped that Nasser, Hussein, Jarring, or Brezhnev, will sooner or later, dislodge the Israelis from the occupied territories. When these hopes failed to be realised, and the occupation proved to be harsh, houses of suspects (or relatives of suspects) of acts of sabotage, being blown up without trial or inquiry, the attitude towards the guerrilla movements turned trom indifference into sympatny The Israel authorities are fully aware of the fact (having undergone a similar experience 20 years ago) that they cannot defeat the combination of militant, active, guerrilla groups and a parent population of 1.5 million people which sympathises and passively, or actively, supports them. The recognition of the fact that such a state of affairs is actually emerging is driving the Israeli authorities and public opinion to despair. There are mounting Pressures in the Israeli public to reinstate capital Punisnment for sabouteurs, The issue was debated in ine Israeli parliament. Other pressures demand the construction of hard labour camps in the Sinai corespondent reports on visits to prison camps for for sabouteurs? the text is tailored to produce the Palestinians under the heading: Kecreation camps conclusion that the Israeli POW camps are, in fact, recreation camps for sabouteurs.
The recognition of the fact that no Israeli politician or policy have a political solution to the conflict drives many Israelis to fatalism or religion Dayan articulated the fatalists in the concluding sentence of his speech to joint forces in the Staff College:
* The Arabs do not agree to our venture. If we want to continue our work in Eretz Israel against their desires there is no alternative but that lives should be lost. It is our destiny to be in a state of continual warfare with the Arabs. This situation may well be undesirable, but such is reality. (Jerusalem Post, 30 September, 1968) As for becoming religious, this is quite the fashion among high ranking Israeli army officers. Suffice it to note that Maj-Gen Zeevi, quoted earlier, has, like many of his colleagues become religious as a result of experiences during, and after, the June, 1967 war. Maj-Gen Zeevi, shot, with his own hands, in mid-September of this year, five Palestinian guerrilla fighters, after they had surrendered their arms and were taken prisoner by a junior officer who refused to obey the order to shoot them. A secret army inquiry was held to investigate the case, but typically, the army and civilian authorities took a decision not to de anything about it, and to hush the matter up The self-manufactured Israeli illusion of the Palestinians living happily as a discriminated population under the enlightened Israeli rule in Greater Israel were shattered by the logic of occupation within less than 18 months. The ad which 10 Israelis published in Haaretz three months after the June 1967 war now reads like a prophecy. * Our right to defend ourselves does not grant us the right to oppress others.
Occupation mean foreign rule, Foreign rule breeds resistance, Kesistance breeds oppression.
Oppression breeds lerror, and counter- Terror The victims of Terror are nearly always innocent Holding on to the occupied territories will transform Terror By Irandust Ever since the CIA overthrew the nationalist regime of Mohammad Mosadeq in 1953, Iran has been in the grip of a terrorist anti-communist regime, headed by the Shah. In spite of the fact that this regime has come in recent years to take a more independent stand vis-a-vis its US promoters, and in spite of the military and economic aid accorded it by the Russians, a white terror still reigns in the country.
In January, 1968 hundreds of students were arrested in the several universities of the country following an upsurge in political resistance. The immediate cause of this upsurge was the death, in mysterious circumstances, of the Olympic wrestling champion, Holamreza Takhti, who had taken up a position of public opposition to the shah, and was a leader of Mosadea's old organisation, the National Front. According to the left, Takhti was murdered by the SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, and his funeral and subsequent mourning ceremonies were an occasion for public demonstrations. Thirty people have been shot in Iranian kurdistan this summer.
The arrested students were tortured and kept without trial; their tamilies did not know for several months what had happened to them. It was only when the SAVAK released some of the detainees that they knew that the students were still alive. The standard torture practiced in prison is known as dast-i-bande ghapani - the prisoners hands are tied behind his back and he is forced to pull his shoulders further and further back thus straining his chest and shoulder blades. More standard processes such as enforced sleeplessness are also common. One student detainee, Jazani, was kept awake for oz hours.
Those detainees who have been released after the January terror have been forced into the army. seventeen orners are now coming up for trial, eight of them on capital charges. A protest movement in their favour is sweeping the west: on November 30 a demonstration by 300 British and Persian militants marched to the Iranian Embassy and demanded that there be a fair trial. In 1965 a a prest movement saved the lives of sever Iranian graduates of British universities who had been framed with attempting to shoot the shah.
The Black Dwarf 10 Jan 69
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(Haaretz, 11 November, 1968) Another news item buried in a chronicle of the
habitants of one of the villages (in the occupied Weit Bank, N.I) that if they fail to come to the belp of the authorities in keeping order " there will