Israeli minister ordered massacre of Egyptian POWs

Alright, alright! Seems people not very excited about the sex and politics series. Fine!

Here’s some abstinent politics :) !!

A television documentary that aired on the Israeli channel 1 about the June 1967 war mentions that Benyamin Ben Eliezer, current MK and minister of the cabinet, was responsible for killing 250 Prisoners of War (POW). Egyptians, is supposed to have said the documentary, according to Egyptian media. Only here is the thing: the director of the film says that the film makes no such claim.

So two things in this story:

a) how come we’re not even able to agree on what came in the film?! It shouldn’t be that complicated! Someone get the damn documentary, watch it, and tell us whether Ben Eliezer said that he killed Egyptian soldiers or Palestinian soldiers!! Not that either makes him less of a weasel in any event, but let’s agree on the facts! It appears that the confusion comes from the fact that MK weasel pretended they were of the other nationality so he could justify his action to his superiors. But still. The thing has been under the spotlight for 10 days or so now. Can someone actually WATCH the film before making their grand theories?
Lisa Goldman makes a nice post of that nonsense.

(I was reading Al-Ahram Al-Arabi, which featured this photo of the chap. My Sierra-Leonean colleague Idrissa spotted the man and, without knowing what the article was about since it was in Arabic, said: “in my village, when someone has a facial expression like this, we know he is a wicked person”. You are so right, my good friend...)

b) I won’t go in the detail of this particular incident as long as I don’t know what it said exactly. But the problem of the Israeli army killing POWs remains just as true and vivid. 1956, 1967, 1973. In every war, the IDF has managed to backstab unarmed Egyptian soldiers who were totally at the mercy of their jailers. They would have them lie in the sun, face down, the hot sand burning their faces, and shoot them in the back of the head. Mass graves were still being found as late as 1995 - and God know how many are left in the sands of the Sinai.
This is utterly disgusting. Al-Ahram Al-Arabi makes a good summary of some of those killings (in Arabic).

It should be simple, though: killing POWs is against the law of War and the Geneva Conventions.

Oops, sorry. I almost forgot: you can’t say the words ‘Law’ or ‘Geneva Conventions’ when you’re talking about the IDF. My bad.

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