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.
6 September
ONE MILLION BULLETS IN A WEEK AGAINST DEMONSTRATORS On this day in 2002, Israeli right-wing daily Ma’Ariv published a report revealing that “during the first three weeks of the Intifada - before the wave of terror attacks against Israelis even began - the [Israeli Army] according to Army records, fired one million bullets”. According to Amnesty International the early Palestinian casualties were demonstrators or bystanders and 80% of the Palestinians killed during the first month were in demonstrations where Israeli soldiers’ lives were not in danger.
مليون رصاصة ضد المتظاهرين في أسبوع
6 سبتمبر
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2002، نشرت صحيفة معاريف اليومية اليمينية الإسرائيلية تقريرًا يكشف أنه "خلال الأسابيع الثلاثة الأولى من الانتفاضة - وقبل بدء موجة الهجمات الإرهابية ضد الإسرائيليين - فان [الجيش الإسرائيلي] وفقًا لسجلات الجيش، أطلق مليون رصاصة". وبحسب منظمة العفو الدولية، كان أول الضحايا الفلسطينيين من المتظاهرين أو المارة، وان 80٪ من الفلسطينيين الذين قتلوا خلال الشهر الأول كان خلال مظاهرات لم تشكل اي خطر على حياة الجنود الإسرائيليين.
"In the Hebrew press there was a report by a well known, respected military correspondent attending a meeting of high Israeli military officials discussing the military tactics in the Intifada. One of the officers asked for information about ordnance: How many bullets got fired? The information came back from the IDF (the Israeli army) that "in the first few days of the Intifada [Sept 30th 2000 and the next few days] the IDF fired a million bullets." There was some surprise, it sounded high, and one officer said kind of bitterly (they don't necessarily like the orders they're given to carry out): 'That means approximately one bullet for every Palestinian child.'
"The same article reported another military source who gave a graphic illustration of how it works. He reported that an official from the Palestinian authority who had a European visitor in the first weeks of the Intifada wanted to illustrate to him how it works, so he had his body guard shoot a single bullet. That was followed by two hours of heavy Israeli gun fire aiming at no particular target in response to a single bullet that was fired. In the first month of the Intifada (according to Israeli sources) the ratio of deaths was about 20 to 1 (75 Palestinians / 4 Israeli soldiers in the Occupied Territories).
In the first days of the Intifada Israel immediately began using Israel immediately began using what are called in the press 'Israeli helicopters'. They're not Israeli helicopters, they're US helicopters with Israeli pilots that were used to attack civilian complexes, killing and wounding dozens of people. That was sort of reported, it wasn't a secret. That's in response to stone throwing, at most. The US did react to that officially. October 3rd 2000, the Clinton administration made the biggest deal in a decade to send new military helicopters to Israel, along with more parts for Apache Attack helicopters - the most advanced in the arsenal which had been sent in September. It's not that they didn't know what they were using them for, you could read that in the newspapers. They were using them to attack and murder civilians. But they needed more because a million bullets in the first few days isn't enough so we need to send them attack helicopters and missiles.
Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Palestinians Noam Chomsky