Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
18 April
PEACE PRIZE LAUREATE'S 'DELIBERATE' SLAUGHTER OF REFUGEES
On this day in 1996, the Israeli Army shelled a United Nations compound in Qana in Southern Lebanon. 106 civilians were killed and 116 injured. A UN enquiry stated that the slaughter was likely to have been deliberate. The soldiers who fired told Kol Ha’ir magazine they were encouraged by their commander afterwards: “He told us we were firing well and we should keep it up, and that Arabs, you know there are millions of them," One officer said the dead were “just a bunch of Arabs. A few Arabushim die, there is no harm in that.”
الحائزعلى جائزة نوبل للسلام يشجع الذبح "المتعمد" للاجئين
18 أبريل
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1996 قصف الجيش الإسرائيلي مجمع الأمم المتحدة في قانا بجنوب لبنان. استشهد 106 مدنيًا وجرح 116. وذكر تحقيق للأمم المتحدة أن المذبحة كانت على الأرجح متعمدة. قال الجنود الذين أطلقوا النار لمجلة "كول هاير" إن قائدهم شجعهم بعد ذلك: "أخبرنا أننا نطلق النار بشكل جيد وعلينا مواكبة الأمر ، وكما تعلمون ، أن العرب، هناك الملايين منهم" ، قال أحد الضباط ان القتلى كانوا "مجرد حفنة من العرب. عدد قليل من العربوشيم يموتون ، ولا ضرر في ذلك."
Award winning journalist Robert Fisk reports the 1996 Qana massacre:
"Israel's slaughter of civilians in this terrible 10-day offensive - 206 by last night - has been so cavalier, so fero
cious, that not a Lebanese will forgive this massacre. There had been the ambulance attacked on Saturday, the sisters killed in Yohmor the day before, the 2-year-old girl decapitated by an Israeli missile four days ago. And earlier yesterday, the Israelis had slaughtered a family of 12 - the youngest was a four- day-old baby - when Israeli helicopter pilots fired missiles into their home."
Peres, the organiser of the massacre, came to the USA to receive yet another peace prize:
Chadia Bitar protests a 2003 visit by Shimon Peres in Dearborn, Michigan, to receive the John P. Wallach Peacemaker Award. Bitar’s two young sons were among 100 civilians killed by Israeli bombs in Qana, Lebanon, in April 1996. Peres was Israel’s prime minister at the time of the bombing.
Israel followed up its 1996 massacre of civilians in Qana with another Qana massacre in 2006. Robert Fisk Reported From Lebanon on the intensifying Israeli attack
2-minute video: AP newsreel after the 1996 Israeli attack on the UN complound -"worldwide condemnation...but Israel is continuing to defy world opinion"