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Epiphany at Beit Jala
Another milestone came in mid-1977 with the publication by The London Sunday Times of a major expose about torture of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli security officials. The newspaper reported that torture was "systematic" and "appears to be sanctioned at some level as deliberate policy." Israel indignantly denied the charges. Nonetheless the Times stuck by its report and it had the result of touching off other investigations. (Over the years other reports produced such overwhelming evidence that Israel eventually had to admit their truth. Instead of changing the practice, however, it then passed a law making some torture legal, probably the only country in the world to have a law sanctioning torture.) But until 1978 nothing influenced me more to reconsider my original bias than the leak to the Hebrew press of a top secret government report outlining how Israel could rid itself of some of its Palestinian citizens and make the lives of those remaining more miserable than they already were. It had been co-authored in 1976 by Israel Koenig, Northern District (Galilee) Commissioner of the Ministry of Interior and became known as the Koenig Report. The report was so diabolical it was hard to believe it was authentic. It warned—correctly, as it turned out—against growing Palestinian nationalism and suggested a number of cynical ways Palestinians of Israeli citizenship could be kept subordinate or even got rid of. These included examining "the possibility of diluting existing Arab population concentrations;" "giving preferential treatment [in the economic sector, including jobs] to Jewish groups or individuals rather than to Arabs;" encouraging Arab students to study difficult scientific subjects because "these studies leave less time for dabbling in nationalism and the dropout rate is higher;" and encouraging Arab students to study abroad "while making the return and employment more difficult—this policy is apt to encourage their emigration." Despite massive protests by Palestinians demanding the authors' firing, the government maintained the report was merely the personal opinion of two middle-rank officials and not official policy. Koenig remained in his post and a short time later his co-author, Zvi Aldoraty, was recommended by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as his candidate for appointment as director of the Labor Party's Arab Department. For me the Koenig Report was a watershed. My stories increasingly began focusing on the occupation and the sly and brutal ways Israel employed to undermine the Palestinian community. Some of my stories were based on information and leads I received from a valiant Palestinian woman, Ramonda Tawil. A wealthy, sophisticated Christian from Ramallah, she became something of a one-woman Palestinian press center in the late 1970s. (One of her daughters, Suha, married Yasser Arafat many years later.) The stories Mrs. Tawil had to tell were usually unimpeachable since many of them centered on her own maltreatment by Israeli military authorities. She was imprisoned and abused several times, placed under house arrest and otherwise brutally and repeatedly harassed because of her outspokenness. Since it was clear what was happening to her—there could be no doubt she was under house arrest—Israel had to admit it was acting against her, thereby providing reporters a rare solid basis for stories about Israel's occupation practices. My final revelation, my epiphany, so to speak, came in March 1978. It began with a telephone call from a freelance reporter, a courageous American who had become interested in the plight of the Palestinians and was close to Ramonda Tawil. She reported she had heard reports that Israeli troops had just conducted a cruel campaign throughout the West Bank against Palestinian youth. Many Palestinians had suffered broken bones, others had been beaten and some had had their heads shaved. Some of the victims were in Beit Jala hospital. When I repeated the report to my staff, all of them Israelis, they reacted with horror and indignation. The whole group, a secretary, a teletype operator, two stringers, a photographer and two other correspondents, cast doubt on the story. They all declared that it was unthinkable because "that is what was done to us in the holocaust." About this time one of my best friends, Freddie Weisgal, stopped by. He was the nephew of one of Zionism's important theoreticians, Meyer Weisgal, and a former human rights fighter in the United States before moving to Israel after the 1967 war. His vision of developing a dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians early dissolved in disillusionment. Like most American immigrants, who were not large in number, his ideas about living together with the Palestinians were not taken seriously by the Zionist establishment comprised of Eastern European Jews. As a result, he whiled away his time playing chess and the piano, trying to eke out a living selling Hebraic art and artifacts to American tourists. He was the funniest, liveliest and dearest man I had ever known. He said something like, "Aw, come on, Don, you know Jews wouldn't do anything like that." He was agitated and indignant, which wasn't all that unusual for him. But there was an underlying tension too. By this time the bureau was in great agitation. Everyone seemed to echo Freddie's indignation. My god, one or another of them muttered or shouted at one time or another, that is what Nazis did to Jews. It was impossible to think of Jews doing that to anyone. "All right," I said to Freddie, "let's go to Beit Jala and check it out."
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