The Israeli General whom I met In Hebron

Gadi Shamni during a tour of Hebron, in 1996 or 1997 (click photo).

In Hebron, my homeland, I met Major General Gadi Shamni, the Brigade Commander of the IDF troops in the city until the end of September 1997. I'm sure that he still remembers me, we talked many times during his tour in the city. He was a good English speaker. Of course, I met many other Israeli officers and Generals as well many Palestinian Generals, I will never forget them. They are part of my history, my memory and my suffering. I never had any problem with the Palestinians Generals, but I never liked them as they were very weak and never defended the innocent Palestinians from the Israeli war machine. I was wondering if the Palestinian Generals were a real General or a copy of other corrupted Arab military systems that came to take part in the occupation, the division of the Holy Land.

Whatever my memory brought me today and whatever this memory will bring me tomorrow and after tomorrow, I will never cancel this memory, its part of my life and history.

Today I was loading my photo archive from Palestine. I have thousands of images in this small archive. I saw Major General Gadi Shamni. His tour with the Central Command in the occupied territories, his tour with Colonel Baruch Nagar, Dov Tzadaka and Amnon Lipkin-Shahak.

I whispered to myself, and I asked: Is there any Justice in this World?
What memory of death and destruction did Shamni leave behind him in Hebron during the peace time? What memory did he leave behind him in Gaza and the West Bank during the Al-Aqsa Intifada? What memory did he leave behind him in Lebanon? Just death and destruction!!

Is Gadi Shamni a human being, or a gun machine, or a robot, or a psychopath?

Today I remembered Gadi leading his death squads, sowing murder and destruction in Hebron. I first met Gadi in Al-Shuhada Street and Al-Sahleh Street near the Abraham Cave. I remember the question which he asked me several times: How many copies does your Arabic newspaper print and spread the West Bank, especially in Hebron ? Gadi would also ask me what troublesome story I’d write against them on that particular day. I did not answer Gadi’s questions back then. I had no answers for him. I had to ask others at that time. But now I have an answer for Gadi, who has become Maj.-Gen. Gadi Shamni and who was recently appointed as the new GOC of the Central Command.

Here is my answer, Gadi: I have a huge audience around world, not only in Palestine. It is an audience far greater than when I worked in Hebron. Many of my articles have tens of thousands of readers, much more than I could even dream of when I worked in my home, Hebron. I, and my friends, want to see you and your partners in crime standing trial before an International Court of Justice for all the crimes against humanity and crimes of war which you committed. We will do everything possible to lodge you in a cell in The Hague or elsewhere, what is much more than what you accorded to your victims. Gadi, you filthy murderer of children and defenseless women, be informed that your god Yahweh has abandoned you, and that he will no longer help you because your usefulness to his plans has ceased. And the same is true for the schizoids from your yeshiva, the ones who made you believe that they know what Yahweh's will is: they were never your friends, they only had the mission to poison your soul and fill you with fear. All your crimes will come to light, and for all of them we wish to see you rot in jail or hang. Turn yourself in before they get you, Gadi, before your family has to suffer the shame of seeing the police take you away in cuffs like the cheap hoodlum, the mlochlach which you are, during one of your next travels abroad. You can either run or hide, Gadi, but not both.


Who is the General Gadi Shamni I met in Hebron?

Major General Gadi Shamni was the engineer of war in Hebron, Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. He was the head of the Sayeret Matkal unit (IDF death squads) in Hebron. He served in the city as brigade commander of the IDF. He graduated in the US, where he studied Economics and Political Science. He attended lectures (and possibly also lectured) about murdering with the US Army Special Forces in North Carolina, at the US Army War College.

In Hebron, Gadi prepared the map and plan to divide the city in two parts. Area “H1” under the Palestinian control and area “H2” under his control. He imprisoned the Palestinians of the city in a ghetto and kept all the entrance and the roads around the city under his authority. His strong propaganda turned the facts into their opposite, stating to the public that “the biggest part of the city had been given to the Palestinians”.

Matan Vilnai, Gadi Shamni and Dov Tzadaka on a thieving tour through Hebron (20.11.1996).


On the ground, Gadi kept the whole city under the authority of Israeli power. Over 100 new military posts were created inside the city, on the Palestinians rooftops and at the main entrances between the city and its districts, and over 5.000 soldiers were sent to protect the extremist settlers. He kept his soldiers running around the whole city in a scheme he invented and called “Joint Israeli-Palestinian Patrols”.

The Palestinian troops and police were both under the factual authority of Gadi Shamni. The Palestinian troops had to spread near the separation areas (buffers between areas under nominal Palestinian or Jewish control) in the same streets which Gadi had divided, in order to protect him from the stones thrown by the children when they got out of their schools. And the Palestinian Police also had to search for the stolen Israeli cars, which were sold to Palestinians with the complicity and under the cover of the Israeli Police.

Gadi Shamni lead the “mistaravim” (“those who look like Arabs”) death squads after the Hebron redeployment in 1997. These units wear civilian clothes and they hide their pistols under their long shirts. They are manned with Druze soldiers who look like Palestinians, so that normally people going about their business are not aware of their presence. In one operation which I witnessed, which took place at the end of July 1997, Gadi sent these undercover units into the middle of Al-Shalala street in the (in name) Palestinian controlled area. It was said that the undercover soldiers who took part in this incident were from the Duvdevan unit. The purpose of the mission of these death squads was to catch and kill some young boys from the area under the Palestinians authority control. Gen. Gadi was leading the mission himself, he was in the middle of the separation area in Al-Shalala Street near the Al-Ja’abari Pharmacy. He gave orders to his troops stationed on the roof top of the Al-Jabari building in the same street to throw the Israeli flag in the middle of the Palestinians (a provocation). His death squad was ready to shoot, kill and arrest anyone. When the youths in the area started stepping on and burning the flag, the mistaravim stepped in and shot several people. Samir Karameh, a boy of age 9 who was in the crowd, was killed next to me in this incident, and I was nearly shot. I witnessed several people from the crowd, among them some with bullet wounds, being dragged on the ground like sacks by the death squads to where Gadi had set up his command post. I remember being very scared and angry.

I remember speaking with Colonel Gadi after this incident. I described the event as a disgusting bloody game, but Gadi did not pay attention to my words. He just said that the arrests, shootings and the death of the young boy were “victories”.


Shamni explains to his colleagues what they plan to steal next during a tour of Hebron.


Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni was born in Israel in 1959. He is married and he has four children.

He was drafted into the IDF Paratroopers Brigade in 1977. He served as a company commander, reconnaissance company commander, battalion commander, commander of a paratroopers brigade in the reserve, and as a commander of the paratroopers brigade. Thousands of IDF officers have learned the morality of murdering, torturing, kidnapping, assassinating Palestinians from Gen. Gadi. As a commander of death squads in the West Bank he sure was a competent teacher.

In 2003 Gadi was appointed as commander of the Gaza division. He was responsible for the collective punishment of the population of Gaza, for the criminal destruction in the Rafah and Al-Buraig (Bureish) refugee camps, and demolishing Palestinian houses in the city. In one incident during their campaign of ethnical cleansing and demolishing Palestinians houses, Gadi’s troops demolished seven houses of poor people who were not involved in any militant clashes in Rafah. Among the ruins, his criminal troops killed a pregnant woman, Noha Makadama, a mother of ten children. Noha was killed in front of her husband and her children.

The troops of Gadi Shamni also killed the peace activists Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall and the photographer James Miller in Rafah. The criminal commander Shamni did not find any fault in the terrorist operations of his soldier. The war criminal Gadi had imprisoned 1.5 million Palestinian in Gaza, living in inhuman conditions. He is responsible for converting Gaza into a concentration and extermination camp.

In 2004, Shamni was responsible for all the crimes and massacres committed by the IDF troops in the West Bank and Gaza. He was as appointed as a Chief of Operations in the Operations Branch.

In 2005 war criminal Shamni, was appointed to the office of Sharon as a “military secretary” in charge of further organizing the ethnical cleansing of Gaza and planning similar crimes in the West Bank.

posted by الفــ العربي ــارس @ 3:04 PM,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

The Author

Kawther Salam

A Palestinian Journalist...

About me

I graduated from..

addtomyyahoo Subscribe in Rojo Subscribe with Bloglines Add to Google Add to Netvibes Subscribe in NewsGator Online

Web This Blog


About me

    I'm الفــ العربي ــارس From very special being a tiny little creation of God.
    My profile

Archives

Previous Posts

Links

Powered By

Powered by Blogger