Sept. 17-23: Mass Graves; Egypt Says Israel Shot P.O.W.'s in '67 War (September 24, 1995)<
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"A report by Egypt last week that it had discovered two mass graves in the Sinai aggravated a crisis of confidence that has been building for some time between Egypt and Israel. The report, in the Government-owned newspaper Al Ahram, said the graves contained the remains of Egyptian prisoners of war and unarmed civilians shot by Israeli soldiers during the 1967 war.
A senior Egyptian official said that for years, Egypt had ignored evidence that as many as 800 of its prisoners had died in mass killings in both the 1956 and 1967 wars. The reasons for looking the other way, this official said, were mostly domestic, including the fear of arousing a rebellion within the army against Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. But, the official added in an interview, "we cannot do this anymore when the Israelis themselves reveal it."
Last summer, a retired Israeli brigadier general, Arieh Biroh, said in interviews that he and another officer killed 49 Egyptians in 1956. At the same time, an Israeli historian said that as many as 300 unarmed Egyptians were killed."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEFDE163AF937A1575AC0A963958260A SOLDIER'S CONFESSION (August 28, 1995)http://www.time.com/time/international/1995/950828/israel.htmlAdmitting to killing Egyptian POWs in 1956, a veteran stirs a nation's conscience<
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"The way retired Israeli general Arieh Biro tells the story doesn't leave much to the imagination. First, he says, the 49 Egyptian soldiers, taken prisoner by Israeli paratroopers in the 1956 war, were ordered to lie facedown on the ground. Next, Biro and a lieutenant raked their bodies with submachine gunfire. "They didn't cry out. They were in shock," Biro, then a captain, says without emotion. "It was all over in a couple of minutes."
Actually, it's not over yet. The disclosure that Israeli officers massacred Egyptian POWs in the 1956 war in the Sinai has generated similar allegations about the 1967 war and touched off a scandal that could reach Israel's leading political personalities. The controversy has prompted a bout of soul searching among a people who take pride in the morality of their army. The new paper Yediot Aharonot this week concluded that the government-ordered investigation was necessary not only to satisfy Egyptians but "for our own sake, our conscience, our beliefs and our principles."
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"Biro warns that if he is "thrown to the wolves" over the killings, he will name those who shared responsibility, and "many important people will be implicated." Uri Avnery, a peace activist and former Knesset member, has filed complaints with the police and the Attorney General against Biro, Eitan and retired general Ariel Sharon, a prominent figure in the right-wing Likud Party who was the paratroopers' brigade commander at the time of the massacre. Biro has said he did not think Sharon, who arrived on the scene only the following day, could have known about the murders.
Biro's account unleashed other stories about the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Yitzhak Rabin, now the Labor Party Prime Minister, was chief of staff. Michael Bar-Zohar, a war veteran and former Labor Knesset member, told Israeli radio that he saw two army cooks use knives to slaughter three Egyptian POWs "in broad daylight." In a newspaper account, journalist Gabriel Brun, a sergeant major in 1967, wrote of seeing two military policemen force an Egyptian prisoner to dig his own grave, shoot him inside it, then shoot another prisoner who fell into the grave. Brun said he saw five Egyptians killed that way.
The most serious charge was leveled by Arieh Yitzhaki, a former archivist with the army's history branch. He alleges that in 1967, 300 to 400 Egyptian and Palestinian soldiers fleeing from the Gaza Strip toward Egypt were mowed down by Israel's Shaked reconnaissance unit. Some, he says, died fighting, but others were shot after surrendering. Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Shaked's acting commander at the time and now Rabin's Housing Minister, denies any POW killings."
Accusations regarding the Six-Day Warhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusations_regarding_the_Six-Day_WarIDF killings of Egyptian prisoners of war<
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"In a 16 August 1995 interview for Israel Radio, Aryeh Yitzhaki of Bar Ilan University, who had worked previously in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) history department, accused a reconnaissance unit, known as Shaked (Almond), of which then housing minister in the Labour government Binyamin Ben-Eliezer had been acting commander, of killing hundreds of Egyptians who had abandoned their weapons and fled into the desert during the 1967 war. Yitzhaki claimed that after the war, he conducted a study proving that in six or seven separate incidents, approximately 1,000 unarmed Egyptian prisoners of war were killed by IDF units. He told Israel Radio that he "submitted the study to then chief of general staff Yitzhak Rabin, but he, as well as the upper echelons of the army, knew and swept it under the rug." It emerged subsequently that Yitzhaki was a member of Rafael Eitan's Tsomet Party. Meir Pa'il, who had employed him as an assistant during research in the IDF archive, speculated that Yitzhaki was seeking to divert public attention away from revelations by retired general Arye Biro concerning his and Eitan’s involvement in the killing of 49 PoWs in the 1956 war. Yitzhaki said "It annoys me that everyone is making an issue about that one case, when everyone knows there were so many events like it". The allegations received widespread attention in Israel and throughout the world and later resurfaced in a book called Body of Secrets (pp. 201-202) by James Bamford.
Although Yitzkhaki’s claim that up to 1,000 prisoners had been killed was not substantiated, in the ensuing national debate in Israel more soldiers came forward to say that they had witnessed the execution of unarmed prisoners and a long-suppressed public reckoning began. Gabby Bron, a journalist on the tabloid, Yedioth Ahronoth, said he had witnessed the execution of five Egyptian prisoners. Michael Bar-Zohar confessed that he had personally witnessed the murder of three Egyptian POWs by a cook and Meir Pa'il said that he knew of many instances in which soldiers had killed PoWs or Arab civilians. In the Associated Press article in which Yitzhaki’s claims spread around the world it was noted that "Rabin, who was chief of staff when some of the 1967 killings allegedly were committed, walked away today when a reporter shouted a related question. His office later issued a statement denouncing the killings and calling them isolated incidents". However, leading Israeli military historian Uri Milstein was reported in the same article as saying that there were many incidents in the 1967 war in which Egyptian soldiers were killed by Israeli troops after they had raised their hands in surrender. "It was not an official policy, but there was an atmosphere that it was okay to do it," Milstein said. "Some commanders decided to do it; others refused. But everyone knew about it."
According to a New York Times report of 21 September 1995 the Egyptian government announced that it had discovered two shallow mass graves in the Sinai at El Arish containing the remains of 30-60 Egyptian prisoners shot by Israeli soldiers during the 1967 war. Israel responded by sending Eli Dayan a Deputy Foreign Minister, to Egypt discuss the matter. During his visit Dayan offered compensation to the families of victims, but explained that Israel was unable to pursue those responsible owing to its 20-year statute of limitations. The Israeli Ambassador to Cairo, David Sultan, asked to be relieved of his post after the Egyptian daily Al Shaab said he was personally responsible for the killing of 100 Egyptian prisoners, although both the Israeli Embassy and Foreign Ministry denied the charge and said that it was not even clear that Sultan had served in the military.
Declassified IDF documents show that on 11 June 1967 the operations branch of the general staff felt it necessary to issue new orders concerning the treatment of prisoners. The order read: "Since existing orders are contradictory, here are binding instructions. a) Soldiers and civilians who give themselves up are not to be hurt in any way. b) Soldiers and civilians who carry a weapon and do not surrender will be killed... Soldiers who are caught disobeying this order by killing prisoners will be punished severely. Make sure this order is brought to the attention of all IDF soldiers."
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