The Great War for Civilisation

by Robert Fisk

  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 rem
ember 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.

  If I was to enter Hindawi’s mind—I am not sure I want to, and I await more letters from Whitemoor prison on this matter—would I not find the same logic as that employed by Yigal Amir, Rabin’s killer, who could quote the Book of Joshua to justify how “if I was conquering the land, I would have to kill babies and children”? Is this not the same rationality—or lack of it—that allows a Palestinian suicide bomber to see his or her victims before the switch is pressed and the explosives detonated? The suicide bomber eliminates his own life but has the fearful privilege of looking at the future dead, the soldiers or—let us speak frankly— the Israeli children in the pizzeria or the girls on the bus who are about to be eliminated from the world. The Israelis and the White House tried to diminish the self-destructive element of suicide bombers by fatuously calling them “homicide bombers,” which is ridiculous; all bombers, suicidal or otherwise, are homicidal. The difference is that the suicide bomber not only takes their own life—and thus becomes a “martyr” for Palestinian groups—but is an executioner. They see those about to die. They hold in their hands, however briefly, the life and death of innocents. Whether they press the button is their choice. Hindawi, of course, was not planning to press any buttons. Anne-Marie Murphy was going to be the button. And history—if we are to believe his letters to me—was the detonator.

  I AM STANDING IN THE DUST and rubble of Khan Younis Palestinian refugee camp at the beginning of that year of 2001. April 15, it says in my notebook, along with the words: “In any other place, it would be a scandal, an outrage.” If Palestinians had wilfully destroyed the homes of 200 Israelis, I wrote in my report to The Independent that night, there would be talk of barbarism, of “terrorism,” grave warnings to Arafat from the new American president, George W. Bush, to “curb violence.” But it was the Israelis who destroyed the homes of at least 200 Palestinians in Gaza on that Easter Sunday morning of 2001, bulldozing their furniture, clothes, cookers, carpets and mattresses into the powdered concrete of their hovels until one end of Khan Younis looked as though it had been hit by an earthquake. So of course it was not “terrorism.” It was “security.”

  The old sat like statues amid the rubbish tip that the Israelis had made of their houses. Many of them, like seventy-five-year-old Ahmed Hassan Abu Radwan, had been driven from their homes in Palestine—in his case from Beersheba—in 1948; now they were dispossessed by the same people for the second time in fiftythree years, this time courtesy of Ariel Sharon. Maybe it is impossible to shame history. What happened in Khan Younis—however the Israelis dress up their vandalism with talk of “security”—was a disgrace. This was house destruction—no, let us call it “home destruction”—on a hitherto unprecedented scale as a battery of bulldozers was sent to pulverise this part of Khan Younis above the sea from where—according to the Israeli army—shots had been directed at their occupying soldiers. As the machines careered up the road from the coast just after midnight, thousands of Palestinians ran screaming from their huts and concrete shelters.

  Many of them fled to the nearest mosque, where they seized the loudspeakers and appealed to their neighbours “to take arms and resist.” To the apparent surprise of the Israeli army, that is just what their neighbours did. As Palestinian rifles were turned on the bulldozers, at least two Israeli tanks raced up the same road and began firing shells into the nearest apartment blocks. An Apache helicopter gunship appeared out of the darkness, launching missiles into the same buildings. And as old Ahmed Hassan Abu Radwan and his family remember all too clearly, a crane suddenly moved out of the darkness, a platoon of Israeli soldiers in the bucket from where—once the crane’s chain had hauled the container to its highest point—the troops opened fire.

  The gun battle lasted for four hours and left two Palestinians dead and thirty wounded, twelve of them critically, among them a Reuters camera crew who were filming it when a shell exploded against the wall behind which they were standing. Ariel Sharon, the biggest bulldozer of them all, had taught the Palestinians another lesson. But picking one’s way through the muck and dust of thirty-five houses, it didn’t take long to realise that the lesson they had grasped was not quite the one Israel had intended. Mariam Abu Radwan, a cousin of old Ahmed, put it eloquently: “We have no life any more. This is the destruction of our life. Let them shoot us—please let them shoot us—and we can die here. And let the Israelis die too. No one is looking after us—no Arab countries, no foreign countries either.”

  One of the dead was Riad Elias, a Palestinian security forces officer—who was presumably fighting the Israelis when he died—but the second, Hani Rizk, was identified to me as a cleaner at the local Naser Hospital, the same hospital to which his body was taken before his funeral that Sunday afternoon. Ibrahim Amer, a thirty-five-year-old agricultural worker who says he was hit in the back and side by machine-gun bullets from the helicopter as he ran—he now lay in blood-soaked pain in one of the hospital’s beds—saw Rizk running in the street “when a spray of bullets from the helicopter ricocheted against a wall and hit him—he had at least twelve bullets in his body.” Had Palestinians been shooting at the Israelis from these houses? Ask anyone amid the rubble and they would invariably say that they “never saw anyone”; which is not quite the same as saying that no one ever fired from here. But this was more than disproportionate; the Israeli operation was a deliberate attack on civilians.

  Ahmed Hassan Abu Radwan, like many of his cousins, was a Bedouin farmer when the Israelis advanced towards his Beersheba home in 1948 where he lived with his father Hassan, his mother Shema and his four brothers. Since then he has lived in poverty in Khan Younis and was sleeping in his seven-room complex of hovel-huts with his wife Fatma and their twenty-three children and grandchildren when he heard the Israeli bulldozers. “What has happened to me now was what happened to me fifty years ago,” he said. “I feel a kind of madness. Peace now? I don’t think so. The Jews gave us many words but they don’t keep their word.”

  As usual, shots were fired into the air at the two funerals that Sunday afternoon. Just three hours earlier, Wail Hawatir, a Palestinian military doctor, was buried, victim of the previous night’s helicopter attack on what the Israelis called a “Palestinian naval base”—the Palestinians, of course, have no navy and no ships— so the day began and ended in familiar Gaza fashion: with funerals. Needless to say, Mr. Bush was silent.

  As both he and Clinton were silent while Israel perfected its system of executions against Palestinians deemed worthy of death for their role in Hamas or Islamic Jihad or any other organisation which opposed Israeli occupation of the West Bank or Gaza. There was nothing new in this campaign of extrajudicial executions. When the Israelis came for Arafat’s lieutenant, Abu Jihad—Khaled al-Wazzir—in Tunis in 1988, they employed up to 4,000 men for the assassination. There was an AWACS plane over Tunis, two warships in the Mediterranean, a Boeing 707 refuelling aircraft, forty men to go ashore and surround the home of Arafat’s PLO deputy commander, and four men and an officer to murder their victim.

  Abu Jihad’s son Jihad al-Wazzir, now living through the second intifada inside Gaza, recalled for me in detail how his father was executed. “First they killed the bodyguard who was asleep in the car outside—then they killed the gardener and the second bodyguard. My dad was writing in his office and went into the hall with a pistol. He got off one shot before he was hit. My mother remembers how each of the four men would step forward and empty an entire clip of bullets from an automatic weapon into my dad—like it was a kind of ritual. Then an officer in a black mask stepped forward and shot him in the head, just to make sure.”

  Now Israel’s murder squads come cheaper: a computer chip that activates a bomb in a mobile telephone, a family collaborator, a splash of infrared on the roof of a car to alert an Israeli Apache pilot to fire a Hellfire missile i
nto the Palestinian’s vehicle. It’s long-range assassination. It is an internationally illegal war in which the Palestinians have themselves been guilty in the past. Back in the 1970s, Israeli and PLO agents murdered each other in Europe in a policy of retaliation and counter-retaliation that enraged European security forces. In Beirut, two of the Israelis involved in murdering Palestinian leaders were called Ehud Barak and Amnon Shahak. Shahak would later become Israeli military commander in Lebanon in 1982. It was Barak who, as prime minister, relaunched Israel’s murder squads.

  Hamas and Islamic Jihad have their own murderers; their suicide bombs slaughter civilians as well as soldiers, hitherto unknown victims rather than individual Israeli intelligence officers. But Israel’s killers take innocent lives too. A helicopter attack on a Palestinian militant in 2001 tore two middle-aged Palestinian women to pieces; the Israelis did not apologise. The nephew of a man murdered by the Israelis in Nablus later admitted to the Palestinian Authority that he had given his uncle’s location to the Israelis. “They said they were only going to arrest him,” he told his interrogators. “Then they killed him.” When Ariel Sharon ordered the killing of a Hamas official in Gaza, an Israeli jet flattened an apartment block, killing seventeen civilians, including nine children. Sharon regarded the attack as a victory against “terror.”