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"Indict Sharon Now" Campaign Gears Up
by Emad Mekay
CAIRO (IslamOnline) - A campaign by Arab human rights activists started on the World Wide Web to indict Israeli prime ministerial candidate Ariel Sharon for atrocities against humanity is gathering momentum in several countries.
The unprecedented initiative, Indict Sharon Now, started by Gasser Abdel Razeq, a leading human rights activist in Egypt, and other democracy advocates located in different parts of the world, has received support from several Muslims and Arabs.
"I was in this chat room and someone sent it to me," said 19-year-old Doaa al-Saeed, a commerce student at Cairo University. "I felt bad having fun chatting while Sharon is on the way to be the next Israeli prime minister."
Organizers of the campaign sent multi-recipient email messages asking recipients to circulate the petition and background information on Sharon's role in the massacre of thousands of Palestinians during the 1982 Israeli invasion of neighboring Lebanon.
"It is our goal that this initiative reflect the views of an international constituency, North and South, that remembers the gravity of Ariel Sharon's actions and is committed to seeking international justice in his case," said the message.
Among the signatories of the petition are professionals, students, and politicians from the United States, Jordan, United Kingdom and other countries.
The initiative organizers said they were particularly interested in enlisting Israeli sympathizers. "We encourage Israeli citizens and non-governmental organizations to sign the petition, join this campaign, and raise inside Israel the issue of Ariel Sharon's impunity."
Sharon was indicted in Israel itself for allowing an Israeli-backed militia group to storm into Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila and slaughter men, women and children.
Sharon was Israel's minister of defense and architect of his country's bloody invasion of Lebanon in September 1982.
He was also involved in another notorious massacre in the West Bank village of Qibya on October 14, 1953. Sharon's unit blew up 45 houses in the village, killing 69 civilians, two-thirds of them women and children, according to Israeli historian Avi Shlaim in his recent book The Iron Wall.
Sharon is running for the premiership in Israel's February elections. Opinion polls show that he leads his challenger, current Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, by a comfortable margin with a double-digit lead.
Currently heading Israel's conservative right wing Likud party, Sharon came into the spotlight in September after his incursion into al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The mosque is Islam's third holiest site. Jews consider the site holy as well.
More than 310 Palestinians have been killed protesting the Israeli occupation of Muslim holy sites and Palestinian territories, compared to several dozen Israeli dead in the ensuing violence.
The organizers of the campaign for Sharon's indictment said they were prompted to launch it by recent developments other countries and the "emerging system of international justice."
They noted the cases of Chili's former military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic, and the perpetrators of Rwanda's genocide. This, they said, "provid[ed] compelling precedents for ending the impunity that Ariel Sharon has thus far enjoyed."
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