Palestinian youth rise up against Israeli occupation
1988Ralph Schoenman 1988-01Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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"With anger, hatred, and sheer ferocity, thousands of youngsters hurled rocks at their Israeli occupiers, undaunted by the gunfire that greeted them. This was more than civil unrest... It was the beginning of a civil rebellion.' This is how Jerusalem Post correspondent Hirsh Goodman described the uprising of Palestinian youth in the West Bank and Gaza in mid-December.
Goodman's remarks were written the day before the Dec. 21 general strike, which engulfed every Palestinian community under Israeli rule. That strike was described by the Israeli daily Ha'aretz as "writing on our wall even more serious than the bloody riots of the last two weeks."
On that day, wrote John Kifner in The New York Times., "The vast army of Arab laborers who wait on tables, pick vegetables, haul garbage, lay brick, and perform virtually all Israel's menial work, stayed home.
Israel's brutal response
The Israeli response to the uprising was brutal. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the use of tanks, armored vehicles, and automatic rifles against an unarmed population.
The San Francisco Examiner (Dec. 23, 1987) cites Rabin as openly advocating assassination. "They can shoot to hit leaders of disorder," Rabin said in defense of the army's practice of using marksmen with high-powered .22-caliber rifles to indiscriminately shoot at Palestinian youth.
Rabin ordered house-to-house searches for