Lebanon’s Final Solution: “Ethnic Cleansing” of Christians; Other M-E Stories (Jun 1, 2000)

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TiM GW Bulletin 2000/6-1

June 2, 2000

A Special Note from Pat Buchanan, Plus...

Lebanon's Final Solution: "Ethnic Cleansing" of Christians Now Nearly Complete

Secrets of Khiam Torture Chamber; Peres for Pres? No Way, Jose!; A Kangaroo Court in Israel

VIRGINIA, May 31 – We were flattered to receive today (June 1) the following handwritten note from Pat Buchanan, a United States presidential candidate:

This is just a personal note of thanks, both for your loyal support, and that terrific speech at the Reform Party Convention. Let us give the New World Order types a battle they will never forget - or recover from. All the best,

2. Lebanon’s Final Solution: “Ethnic Cleansing” of Christians Now Nearly Complete

BEIRUT, May 24 - Israel’s occupation of Southern Lebanon was ending in humiliation on Tuesday night (May 23) as Israeli soldiers opened fire on their own militiamen who were trying to seek sanctuary across the frontier, killing two fighters and a woman and wounding six civilians, according to a May 24 report by Robert Fisk, The Independent, a London daily, filed from Beirut.

No wonder Christians in South Lebanon are feeling betrayed by Israel, their longtime ally, after the Israeli troops suddenly pulled out last week. “Who will trust Israel in the future to be its ally?” a TiM Jewish-American reader lamented the situation.

Frayed, but not damaged. That was evidenced by a quick trip to Portugal that the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, made on June 1, seeking approval and reassurance from Bill Clinton over a breakfast meeting in Lisbon.

Approval for what? Treason? Betrayal of allies? Appeasement of Syria, Palestinians? Murder of innocent civilians?

If so, Barak had come to the right person to receive absolution for such heinous sins. Birds of a feather flock together. Devil Incarnate may have been the only better choice. But he wasn’t available for a breakfast meeting in Lisbon. Maybe a dinner in Damascus some day soon?

But there were other reasons that Clinton was a good choice for Barak to conspire with in a mutual effort to bring a “peace farce” to the Middle East.

First, Clinton is an experienced “peace farce” maker. Just look at Kosovo or Ireland as recent examples of it.

Second, this President is now suffering from an acute case of “lame-duck-itis,” as NewsMax.com put it in its May 27 report about Clinton’s upcoming trip to Russia. With five months to go before the presidential election, Clinton has nothing to lose and everything to gain from making irresponsible promises. After all, it won’t be he that will have to keep them, will he?

You strike iron while it’s hot. You strike lame duck presidents while they’re between breakfast and a golf course. Barak knew that, too. As the TIME magazine also put it today (June 1), “still, that doesn't mean they're just going through the motions with the late-term U.S. president.”

“There's great impetus on both sides to resolve as much as they can before Bill Clinton turns out the lights on his presidency," said the TIME’s Jerusalem bureau chief Lisa Beyer. "There's a tremendous appreciation on both sides that if they fail to reach a deal now, they won't have one until considerable time has passed from now."

But forcing a “peace” down the Israelis’ throats while forging ignominious retreat is hardly going to win Barak any points on the home front. As The Independent put it on May 24:

“The Israeli Prime Minister, could never have dreamt of the speed of the collapse (in South Lebanon); that within 48 hours, Hezbollah gunmen would be lounging in their villages in sight of the northern Israeli border. Nor that the South Lebanon Army militia, so pampered by the Israelis over two decades would disintegrate, abandoning their armored personnel carriers, tanks and shells to the Hezbollah guerrillas.

Yet not a single Hezbollah rocket was fired over the Israeli border and not a shot fired at the Israelis by the Iranian supported resistance army. The only gunfire came from Israel's side of the frontier. Not only did Israeli troops shoot at their own militia allies but they poured tank fire on to the roads and wadis of southern Lebanon in a last, vain attempt to prevent the collapse of the occupation zone.

Near Adaissi, a Merkava tank fired a shell into a BBC car used by correspondent Jeremy Bowen, killing his Lebanese driver, while Israeli helicopters almost hit a carload of Lebanese journalists near Blat.

Israel talked of offering sanctuary to some not all of its former Lebanese militiamen although the deputy defence minister, Ephraim Sneh, claimed that Israel preferred not to do so because "it's very cruel to turn someone into a refugee". That was not the view of SLA gunmen who streamed towards the border last night, carrying suitcases on their heads and carrying children in their arms.

The last Israeli soldiers inside Lebanon at the very end of an occupation that has cost up to 20,000 lives and lasted for 22 years in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions were hiding inside their artillery battery in the old Crusader keep at Beaufort Castle last night, awaiting a helicopter evacuation under cover of darkness. Hezbollah mortar shells continued to fall around the castle whose ruins stand high above the Litani river gorge. The Israelis' final retreat will mark the defeat by a rag-tag guerrilla army of one of the world's most powerful fighting forces.

At Khiam (a notorious prison in Lebanon), frightened SLA men in a scene reminiscent of the end of the Second World War unlocked the cells of 160 men, almost all of them Shia Muslims and some held without trial for 16 years, allowing the inmates to run for their lives through the fields northwards. Three torture chambers and a whipping yard were abandoned by the pro-Israeli gunmen, surviving proof of the torments that the prisoners endured for almost a quarter of a century.

General Antoine Lahd, the SLA commander, who had earlier announced in Paris his imminent return to "rally" his troops, never showed up. His men left behind the symbols of their defeat: tons of armor, tanks and armored personnel carriers, many of them with their engines still running. Hezbollah guerrillas thousands of them with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mobile phones organised a victory parade of captured equipment amid scenes of jubilation from returning villagers.

The hundreds of SLA men surrendering to the Hezbollah were handed over apparently untouched to Lebanese army troops, although some Shia Muslims were angry that their former tormentors had escaped so easily. A woman in Yarin close to the Israeli border said she had once been forced to kiss the boots of an SLA officer but now found that he would receive only a statutory two months' jail sentence by way of punishment. But the SLA was no longer in existence by Tuesday night. The Israelis were on the run. And Hezbollah was celebrating the first victory of an Arab guerrilla force over Israel. The Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are unlikely to have ignored this week's lesson”

KHIAM, May 24 - Meanwhile, Fisk’s colleague, Phil Reeves, witnessed the following scenes at the notorious Khiam prison in the Israeli-controlled South Lebanon:

“With fingernails, fists and rifle butts, they tore their way into Khiam prison – south Lebanon's Bastille – to free the occupants of a place so brutal and hated that it has become one of the most notorious lock-ups in the world.

And the men who worked as turnkeys behind the barbed wire – within the dirty white buildings that so often echoed with the screams of torture – simply abandoned their weapons, climbed into their fancy cars and drove away across the landscape, almost certainly into the arms of Israel.

Israel's proxy force, the South Lebanon Army, jailers to some 160 men and women and children in this dismal place, left to extraordinary scenes. Triumphant villagers clambered up the suddenly empty watch towers, planting Hezbollah banners and blasting assault rifles into the air.

The SLA men leave with much blood on their hands, as human rights organizations have tirelessly reminded them. So do the Israeli agents who trained them in interrogation techniques and – in effect – controlled the prison itself, in Israel's occupation zone.

The horrors of Khiam have yet to be fully written. Human rights groups, such as the Lebanese Follow-Up Committee for Detainees in Israeli Jails, have said that electrocution and beating were routine. Detainees, it said, were often hung from posts for hours and beaten with steel rods on their heads and genitalia. But on Tuesday this hell-hole was consigned to history. 'The nightmare is over," said one snowy-haired detainee.”

TiM Ed.: Ever heard a righteous outcry by the “international community” over this Israeli-SLA torture chamber called Khiam before? No? Ever wondered why not? Could it be that all these “human rights” or “human watch’ were too busy demonizing the New World Order’s designated culprits - the Serbs over Kosovo, or the Russians over Chechnya - for which these NGOs get paid well by their masters? (see “Doctors without Borders” and “They Are Not Doctors” stories, for example).

The NWO’s media’s silence about places like Khiam is, of course, despicable. But it pales in comparison to the media’s complicity in another crime on a much greater scale - the “ethnic cleansing” and subjugation of Christians from Lebanon, which is now nearly complete. And “silence means acquiescence,” goes an old saw.

The western media’s silence about the Lebanese travesty had been only exceeded by its lack of concern when more than half a million (again Christian) Serbs were driven from their ancestral homes in Bosnia and Croatia in the early 1990s. Or in the last 12 months, when more than quarter of a million (again Christian) Serbs were “cleansed” from Kosovo - under the “watchful eyes” of the “international community,” and with Washington’s full complicity. Just as was the case with Tel Aviv’s and Washington’s roles in Lebanon.

Which is why we concluded in our September 1999 TiM Bulletin, ”Like Lebanon, Like Bosnia,” that, “the message is clear: Washington's foreign affairs establishment is not only un-American; it is anti-Christian” (also see the TiM editor's Washington Times columns referenced at the bottom of this report).

JERUSALEM, June 1 - Now that Ezer Weizman has been told to resign as Israel’s president over a bribe-taking scandal, the leading candidate for that position is said to be Shimon Peres. Which is what has evidently given Barry Chamish, an outspoken Israeli journalist, much anxiety. Chamish, who needs no introduction to TiM readers, basically said “No Way, Jose” in response to “Peres for Pres” calls from the “liberal” Israeli establishment.

“In the Fall of 1989, a Geneva-based French arms dealer named Edouard Seroussi paid Ezer Weizman over $3 million to fly to Geneva and meet the PLO, thus initiating the disastrous "peace" process with the most notorious terrorist group on the planet. Although accepting a bribe is illegal in Israel, Weizman was not charged with selling his country out. Rather, the Attorney-General recommended this week that he resign. So, Israel was spared the spectacle of its President tried and then shackled off to prison.

The leading candidate to replace Weizman is Shimon Peres. If he is finally chosen, this time Israel will not be spared the spectacle. Peres will be tried and watch out, because this time around it will be for murder. Israel's moral imperative will be shattered in the wake of the trial. It will suffer a national collapse of conscience. Peres cannot become President!!! Please utilize the following brief resume to fight the looming disaster.

* Throughout his career, Peres has enjoyed the company of gangsters. Whenever he traveled to Paris, he would be wined by the likes of such wanted criminals as Marc Rich, Pinchas Greene, Bernard Cornfeld and Bruce Rappaport. It is the latter who should have ended Peres's career for good.

In 1985, Iraq could not export its oil because Iran had blockaded the Persian Gulf. So it turned to Bechtel Corporation to build a $30 billion pipeline to the Jordanian port of Aqaba. Bechtel would not initiate the project unless it had assurances that its investment would not be destroyed by Israel in warfare.

Enter Bruce Rappaport, who the FBI charged with oil sanctions busting. He made his fortune selling oil to the West from countries whose oil was officially forbidden from sale. Hearing of Bechtel's quandary, he acted as a middleman between then-Prime Minister Peres and US Attorney General Edwin Meese, who also happened to be a VP of Bechtel. Peres bribed Bechtel, offering a written promise never to bomb the pipeline in exchange for $700 million, to be deposited in the coffers of the Israeli Labor Party. When word of the bribe leaked, Meese was forced to resign his government post, but Peres, as usual, escaped untarnished.

* In 1986, a government commission headed by Ebba Eban investigated the Jonathan Pollard spy affair. Eban placed most of the blame for the scandal on Peres who knew of Pollard's role, read his intelligence as it came in, used it to build international policy and, as Prime Minister, ultimately authorized the operation. Peres spent a week denouncing Eban, rejected the commission report and threw Eban out of the Labor Party, thus ending his political career.

* During the same period of Peres's 1984-86 term as Prime Minister, he authorized Israel's participation in what became known as Iran Contra. Israel's role included selling arms to Iran and funneling the money to Central America, where the likes of Michael Harrari and Yair Klein had acquired controlling roles in the cocaine trade. Iranian cash bought cocaine sent by the tons to the US, much through a little used airport at Mena, Arkansas, under the watchful eye of governor Bill Clinton. The coke money was laundered and used to buy weapons for the Nicaraguan Contras...hence Iran-Contra.

Peres sent his terrorism advisor Amiram Nir to Teheran where he was joined by the likes of Col. Oliver North and Bud MacFarlane whose goal was to convince the ruling mullahs to release American prisoners held by Hezbullah in Lebanon in return for arms vital to the war effort against Iraq, procured from Israel's stocks. Ultimately the deal collapsed though Israel did forward two shipments of Hawk missiles to Iran.

The scam became a national scandal in the US and Nir was subpoenaed to testify before a Senate Commission investigating Irangate. The Israeli government did its best to prevent its participants from flying to Washington but Nir was determined to set matters straight. In anger, Peres locked Nir's office and released him from public service. Days before Nir was to fly to Washington to testify before the investigating committee, he died in a small plane crash in Mexico. Of the three passengers, he was the only one to perish. Two writers with Israeli intelligence backgrounds, Victor Ostrovsky and Arieh Ben Menashe claimed in their books that Peres ordered the murder.

* In Yitzhak Rabin's 1979 book, he called Peres "an unrelenting conniver" and claimed that he had devoted his life to ruining him. In 1990, Rabin watched Peres corrupt the Knesset in what he called, "the stinking deal."

After the tie in the 1984 elections, Peres understood that his Labor Party could not win a national election because the 600,000 strong Moroccan community would never support its policies. But Peres saw a way around the problem. A new party, Shas, which represented Moroccan interests, had won a few seats in the Knesset. If the party could be corrupted and then financed to become a serious electoral force, Labor could win the Morrocan vote through the back door. He keyed in on 23 year old Arieh Deri, the secretary of the party's spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef. Peres sent his cronies Haim Ramon, Yossi Beilin and Moshe Shahal to flatter Deri, draw him into illegal business deals and further his career. Within a year, Deri was appointed Director of the Interior Ministry Office and by the age of 25, Peres arranged that he become the Minister of The Interior.

In 1990, Peres was the Minister Of Finance in a unity government headed by Yitzhak Shamir. As Finance Minister, Peres recorded every agora of thefts Deri was perpetrating in the Interior Ministry and in February 1990, he decided that the moment had arrived to blackmail Shas.

Working with Secretary of State James Baker to bring down Shamir, he devised a plan to become Prime Minister. Baker presented a new peace plan, which included negotiations over Jerusalem. Peres and Baker both knew that Shamir would have to reject the plan. So Peres caused a government crisis by demanding that Israel, "Say yes to Baker." He ordered a non-confidence vote against his own government, knowing that he would win. He had sent his deputy Yossi Beilin to Deri with a full report of his thefts and gave him the choice of facing prison or felling Shamir. Deri chose the latter and led the once Rightist, Orthodox Shas Party to abstain from the vote. Shamir fell and Peres was given the right to form the new government, though this term only lasted 88 days. The blackmail of Shas, however, never desisted and the current peace process was built on the back of Peres's corruption of this hapless party.

* In February of 1994, Peres's friend, the French intellectual Marek Halter made an amazing admission to the Israeli newspaper Chadashot. He claimed that in May 1993, he delivered a letter from Peres to the Pope, promising that he would arrange Vatican political hegemony over the Old City of Jerusalem. The plan had the Vatican controlling the Holy city, with UN soldiers guarding the entrances.

As incredible as the story sounds, it was soon backed by solid proof. The Italian newspaper Il Stampa confirmed the Vatican deal and added that it was included as a secret clause of the Declaration of Principles signed with the PLO in September 1993. In March 1995, the Israeli radio station Arutz Sheva, was given a copy of a cable between the Israeli Embassy in Rome and the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. This cable described the very promise to the Vatican in detail. The cable was reprinted on the front page of Haaretz within two days.

Trapped, Peres came up with a not so ingenious explanation. The cable was genuine, he explained, but someone had whited out the word, "not." The cable really said that Israel would "not" hand over hegemony of the Old City to the Vatican. Incredibly, numerous Israeli rabbis who had previously cancelled their Passover invitations to Peres, accepted his goofball excuse and reinvited him to their tables. Another crisis passed with Peres emerging unscathed.

* In February 1994, the director of the Labor Party's publishing branch Bet Beryl, Mordechai Nessiyahu, was poised to release a powerful book on the peace process, exposing Peres's real role in Oslo. As publisher of Labor's own writers and employer of Peres's daughter at Bet Beryl, Nessiyahu was well positioned to know the secrets of Oslo. After the newspaper Globes reported that Nessiyahu's book would offer proof that Peres played no role in Oslo, Joel Bainerman, my co-editor of the newsletter Inside Israel and I decided to meet him.

Our meeting was in the cafe at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv. Nessiyahu was a great supporter of Oslo and had no bones to pick with anyone but Peres. He explained that Rabin and Beilin had initiated Oslo behind Peres's back and both agreed that the talks in Norway had to be kept secret from Peres in order that he not sabotage them. The Oslo talks were sponsored by Washington/London and Peres was tied to France/Continental Europe, whose interests did not coincide with Rabin's. Rabin despised the French and during this period allowed Peres to concentrate on his French diplomacy knowing it would be fruitless.

According to Nessiyahu, Peres did not learn of the Oslo talks until April, 1993, five months after the process had begun with a meeting in London in November, 1992. After the talks were concluded with an agreement, Peres wrote a book including himself in the Oslo track. Nessiyahu told us, "He completely rewrote history. His book is a lie."

Not long after our interview, Nessiyahu's 30 year old son died in mysterious circumstances. His girlfriend explained, "We were sitting with friends and he just stopped breathing." If Nessiyahu's book was ever published, no one ever said anything about it.

* Peres has turned Israel into a shelter for international black money. How he operates was illustrated in the case of the former Ukrainian President Yafim Zviagilski. In June 1994, Peres and Police Minister Moshe Shahal flew to the Ukraine and met with Zviagilski. Three months later, the Ukrainian leader arrived in Israel with over $30 million pilfered from his country's treasury.

He arrived on a visa given him by the Prime Minister's Liaison Office, called Nativ, the very same organization which had hired Yigal Amir, the fall guy for Rabin's murder, for work in Riga, Latvia for five months in 1992.

Naturally, the Ukrainian government protested and demanded the return of the money and extradition of the thief. Peres said he'd get right on the case and appointed Tzvi Hefetz, legal affairs advisor for Nativ to investigate. The Ukrainian president and his money are still hiding in Israel, as are similar crooks and their billions of stolen dollars from the former Yugoslavia, Poland and sundry nations elsewhere.

* For years the rumor that Peres turned masterspy Eli Cohen into the Syrians has floated around Israel but few believed he was capable of betraying an Israeli agent. Then in 1994, newspapers in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and London published a report that makes the rumor believable. Adnan Yassin, as Yassir Arafat's security chief, was the highest-placed Mossad agent in the PLO. As a gesture of good faith to Arafat, the Arab newspapers reported that Peres blew Yassin's cover. Yassin's car was searched and high-tech communications equipment, we well as sophisticated explosives were found. He was shipped to Yemen and never heard of again.

* It's just a matter of time before Peres’ complicity in the Rabin assassination is revealed. There are already three books in the Israeli market which accuse Peres of being the mastermind behind the murder and the irrefutable proofs will be released during his term as President, if we allow him to be so appointed.

Natan Gefen in his book Fatal Sting reviews Peres's sick hatred for and jealousy of Rabin and offers a convincing argument that Peres was blackmailed by the Likud before the 1996 elections and forced to lose the race. I reached the same conclusion independently, after I was told the full story by two cabinet officials. As President, Peres will be subject to the same blackmail.

This is not the place to prove that Rabin was murdered by a few officers of the General Security Services (Shabak). For the uninitiated, just know that there are now five books out in Israel which make this claim and prove it. They are my book Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin, Fatal Sting by Natan Gefen, Srak by Ori Barkan, Lies: The Rabin Assassination And The Israeli Secret Service by David Morrison and Your Brother's Blood by Michael Raz. The Israeli public's growing awareness of the Shabak's complicity will explode during the term of the next presidency.

There may be a dozen people in Israel with the power and influence to order a political assassination on the level of Rabin's. Of them, only Peres appointed the primary suspects to high office. On the night of Rabin's assassination, Peres appointed the likely shooter, Yoram Rubin to command the Prime Minister's bodyguard unit. Late last year, Peres appointed the head of the Shabak at the time of the murder, Carmi Gillon, to the high-paying post of Chairman of The Peres Center For Peace. Note: On the night of the murder Gillon was in Paris, he admits, meeting with officials of French Intelligence.

Earlier this year the Zionist Organization of America released documentation that that the Abu Dis Agreement between Israel and the PLO, which divides Jerusalem was signed in Paris by Foreign Minister Peres twelve days before Rabin's assassination. Rabin was never informed of the signing.

The next day, Peres's friend, the French media tycoon Jean Frydman agreed to finance the rally where Rabin died. There is a frightening document in the hands of responsible journalists which will be released in due time. It is an interview with Frydman in French in which he details how he and Peres sat with a most reluctant Rabin and finagled him into participating in the rally. Yet Rabin refused to attend until the last moment. Testimony from Rabin's regular driver Yeheskiel Sharabi has been uncovered and it will be released when the Rabin truth finally explodes. Sharabi explains that 90 minutes before the rally, Rabin unexpectedly called him and told him not to pick him up. He would not be going to the rally. Sharabi offered to remain by his phone in case he changed his kind. But someone had already changed Rabin's plans. Instead of his regular chauffeur driving him, Rabin was driven by Peres's regular driver, Mencham Damti.

And it is the Damti connection which will be Peres's demise. Before anyone was supposed to be in Rabin's car, the back passenger door slammed. For the past four and a half years, researchers have known that someone was waiting for Rabin in his car, but only in the past year has that someone been likely identified. Damti invited several members of his family to be with him in the "sterile zone" and one of them, his twelve year old daughter, snuck into the back seat. She was an accidental witness to the murder and because she was there and had to be removed, Rabin's car was diverted for no less than twelve minutes before it finally arrived at the hospital.

We have Peres captured on videotape rounding Rabin's car, looking in the backseat and then stopping in front of the limousine. He stares intently into the backseat and calls his four bodyguards over, telling them to look into the backseat as well. All their heads turn towards it. They have no explanation for the passenger so Damti is called over to explain. Peres scolds him and Damti looks most perturbed, shaking his head back and forth vigorously. But it is too late to get her out. Peres looks towards the stairs and sees Rabin walking towards his car. There is no stopping the murder. Peres enters his own limousine and the murder carries on as planned, but with an unplanned witness in the backseat of Rabin's vehicle.

There is NO explaining Peres' actions except that he knew how the murder was supposed to be carried out. That is the only way he would have known that something was amiss in Rabin's Cadillac. And that's not the only film of the night that traps Peres. At the emergency cabinet meeting Peres addressed the stunned nation with the words, "We sang the song and then Yitzhak put the songsheet in the side pocket of his jacket where the bullet pierced it."

The next day it was announced that Rabin was shot twice in the BACK. Only months later, when Rabin's medical records were retrieved by diligent researchers was it proven that Rabin was, in fact, shot from the front. On the night of the murder, only a very few close to Rabin's medical treatment knew about the frontal shot. So how did Peres know?

Our nation will not be able to withstand the trauma of a Peres presidency. We are in a fragile enough state without inviting the kind of social collapse which this atrocity will bring. The widespread perception that Peres murdered Rabin has led to a rumor heard throughout the nation. It goes like this: Peres is seeking the presidency to pardon himself when the Rabin truth emerges. It is his last refuge. Unfortunately, the Israeli people will not have the luxury of a similar refuge.”

JERUSALEM, May 2 - Most people who follow global geopolitical affairs are aware of the kangaroo court set up in the Hague, also known as the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal for Yugoslavia. Well, based on Barry Chamish’s recent experience, it looks like kangaroo courts have spread to the Israeli judicial system, too.

Here’s a story about a personal experience that this Israeli journalist had, which he had titled “My Day in Court and How I Learned to Despise the Israeli Judicial System,” when Chamish submitted the piece to TiM earlier last month:

“Last October, Knesset Member Ofir Pines sent a letter to the Steimatzky Book chain, Israel's book monopoly, demanding that it remove my book Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin from its shelves. In the letter he called me "the country's biggest inciter and his book is a pack of lies."

So I sued him for slander. A month ago he defended himself in court, citing parliamentary immunity. Or simply, no one can sue him for anything because he's a Knesset member. Judge Boaz Okun, of the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court, turned down his defence and today, May 1, a procedural hearing was held. But wouldn't you know it, the judge had a change of heart and ruled that Pines was immune from further trial.

Here was my day. At 11 AM, my attorney Nitzana Darshan Leitner phoned from the court saying, "You won't believe it. The Attorney General sent his lawyer to influence the judge. He wants to speak to you. Can you get here in an hour?"

I did and she was right. Sitting at Pines' table were his two lawyers but the General Attorney Elyakim Rubinstein had sent his mouthpiece, a curly-haired semi-youngish woman named Orit Podansky to do 90% of the talking. She came armed with a brief prepared by the Attorney General's office explaining why Pines' parliamentary immunity had to be protected.

Nitzana received her copy of the brief three hours after the hearing began. "This,"she acknowledged, "is called an ambush."

Later in the day, another attorney, Dror Bar Nahum was incredulous. "I've never heard of the Attorney General intervening in a civil case before. This appears to be scandalous."

Before the afternoon session began, Nitzana informed me, "He's already reached a decision. He wants you to comply with it so it won't be overturned later on. If you do, he'll waive court costs."

"Let's hear what he has to say first and maybe I can sway him to change his mind."

Judge Okun addressed me. "It would be a waste of time for you to carry on with your suit. It is legal in this country to criticize someone and anyone can legally write a book store asking it to remove a book from its shelves. There is no basis for a continuance."

I asked for permission to speak and began, "Mr. Pines did not merely criticize me. He called me a liar and then deliberately abused his power as a Knesset member to wreck my income. I worked for almost four years on the book without pay and his goal was to deprive me of an income. To do so, he sent copies of his letter to Steimatzky to most of the Israeli media, and this resulted in headlines calling me a liar. There are hundreds of thousands of readers who still believe what's printed in the papers and they didn't buy my book because a member of the government said it was a lie. And, though I admit, sales rose initially because of the scandal, later stores turned the book down because they thought selling it was illegal. I'll bring my publisher and he'll show you the refusals.

"Pines tried his best to ban my book. This is barbaric and primitive and has no place in the twentieth century. You seemed to have already made your ruling and it justifies book banning and the repression of free thought."

Judge Okun was clearly taken aback as was the gallery where loud murmurs arose. The judge tried a new strategy. Reading from the Attorney General's brief, he quoted my book's allegations against Carmi Gillon and Meir Shamgar. He had hoped I would trip up and say nasty things about them.

I replied, "So let them sue me. My fight in this courtroom is only with Pines. You can take passages you dislike and read them out of context but the fact is I based my book on police lab results, hospital findings and eye witness reports. I have brought my notes for you to examine. They prove I'm no liar since the book's quotes are from official sources."

The judge answered, "This isn't the time to read your notes. I haven't even read your book."

"It comes highly recommended," I said. Then I added, "Ofir Pines took an illegal action against me and even Leah Rabin called his act, 'too drastic. People should read the book if they like.' Since the book's release, polls by Gallup and the Jerusalem Post show that two thirds of Israelis, including the Rabin family, want the assassination reinvestigated. If you rule against continuation of the trial, you will be alienating those with doubts. They will further lose faith in our judicial system."

Judge Okun replied, "We are dealing with technical matters here. This court is not the right place for you to pursue your argument with Mr. Pines."

I knew then that, yes, Judge Okun had been influenced by the government. He must have known how flimsy his arguments were. Still, I added, "And who in this public arena will compensate me for the damage Mr. Pines has done to my reputation and income? This court is the last stop. If you rule against continuation, you will set some very dangerous legal precedents. From now on Knesset members will be free to slander whoever they want and interfere in anyone's honest business affairs. That will be your legacy."

From that point on, Ofir Pines sat in the gallery with his assistant. The government sent in its forces and turned an honest judge into a compromised weakling. Attorney Avi Leitner summed it up, "You just got a front seat view of judicial corruption."

For the next four hours, the lawyers entered their arguments but it was already a done deal. Judge Okun ruled in favor of Pines' parliamentary immunity and opened the door to dictatorship in Israel.

Now, of course, I'm ticked off, so I'm going to release new information. After unrelenting pressure from honest journalists, Rabin's assassination night driver Menachem Damti agreed to be interviewed by two television crews working with me, one from Tel Aviv University's Communications Faculty, the other from MGI Productions.

I had claimed that his daughter was in Rabin's car, slammed the back right passenger door, witnessed the murder and caused the Rabin limousine to arrive at the hospital between twelve and twenty minutes late. I based this assertion on an interview given to Channel Four Television in England on the evening of Rabin's funeral. One guest was Yifah Barak who claimed her sister's friend was in the car, Rabin fell on her after he was shot and she was taken to hospital for treatment of shock.

Damti acknowledged that one his daughters, Reut, was beside Rabin's car and indeed she appears in the assassination film standing beside her father. After all this time, Damti acknowledged that his daughter was at the murder scene but the film proved she wasn't in the car.

Next Reut Damti, finally, agreed to be interviewed and added to her father's claim that she couldn't have been in the car because she was outside. She was then shown Yifah Barak's interview and admitted that a lot of people did call her house on the murder night to see if everyone was alright. She added that there was nothing strange about her being in the sterile area, her two uncles were there too.

Damti had invited his family to witness the grand fake assassination of which he would play a starring role. One of his invited guests was likely his OTHER, twelve year old daughter.

Yifah Barak was phoned in London to get her side of things. She stood by her story but added vital details. She never claimed Reut Damti was in the car. Reut was her age. It was her sister, Karen Barak who called the Damti home to inquire about the other daughter, who was her own age, twelve at the time. And that is who, most likely, was an accidental witness to the Rabin assassination.

Stay tuned! Now lots of researchers are working towards sorting out the lies. One is Ori Barkan, who wrote a brilliant dramatization of the murder called Srak.

Today was a sad day for Israeli justice, but the push towards truth is now a shove. We'll all get there. And, oh yes... I SHALL APPEAL THE WRETCHED RULING.”

Brookline Books will be issuing a new edition of “Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin.” Call 1-800-666-BOOK. The first edition is sold over Amazon.com. The Hebrew and Russian editions can be acquired from Gefen Books. Write isragefen@netmedia.net.il or call 02-5380247. The French edition is available by writing lurcat@netvision.net.il.