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Israeli conspiracy of silence over

butchery of

Arab prisoners unveiled

JERUSALEM: A conspiracy of silence which has surrounded Israel's massacre of hundreds of Arab prisoners of war has been broken, causing dismay and official embarrassment in the Jewish state.

The Suez campaign in 1956 and the June 1967 war saw hundreds of men in Egyptian army uniforms shot after throwing away their guns.

The facts were known by a small group of historians and witnesses, but had never been brought to public knowledge or admitted by the army.

Three weeks ago the army's historical records department allowed a research worker to publish details of how Israeli parachutists led by Colonel Aryeh Biro executed about 40 Egyptians in October 1956.

The parachutists, who had jumped behind enemy lines on the Mitla Pass in the southern Sinai peninsula, were commanded by Raphael Eytan under General Ariel Sharon, both now right-wing leaders.

Biro quickly confessed that he had gunned down as many as 49 captured Egyptians because he did not have enough men to guard them.

The colonel, who became a brigadier general and is now retired, said he felt no remorse.

Historian Aryeh Vitzhaki followed with his own disclosures from 1967, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was army chief of staff, saying it was unfair to single out Sharon and Eytan.

Yitzhaki said nearly 900 Egyptians or Palestinians were shot dead, mostly after throwing away their guns.

"The biggest massacre took place in the al-Arish area where 300 Egyptian soldiers and Palestinians from the Palestine Liberation Army were shot by an elite unit," he said.

The troops, called the Shaked commando, were led by Binyamin Ben Eliezer, who is today housing minister. He said he knew nothing about any massacre.

Reserve major Shlomi Gruner, who was in the commando unit, denied that prisoners were executed.

He did, however, say he had been put in charge of an operation called "Gazelle hunt" or firing on fleeing soldiers. "It upset some of the men", Gruner added.

"There is no doubt that hundreds of Egyptian soliders were shot dead in 1967, after they had stopped fighting," said Uri Milstein, who wrote the Shaked commando's official history.

Journalist Gaby Brown related how he saw five Arabs in Egyptian uniforms forced to dig their own graves before being shot dead near al-Arish on the north Sinai coast in 1967.

"The scene has haunted me until today," he told AFP. "But at the time we were not so shocked because they were Fedayeen who spread terror throughout Israel.

Rabin condemned Wednesday the 1956 massacre, but refused to consider punishing the guilty.

Egypt has demanded an explanation of the reports.

The prime minister told his aides he knew nothing of executions in 1967, but added that it was "suicidal" for Israel to publish such details, according to the Haaretz newspaper.

For historian Benny Morris the revelations "show a deep change in Israeli society which is today able to look its past straight in the face and end the myth of an army with clean hands.-AFP