Ouze Merham

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Ouze Merham is a fictitious character, made out to be a general in the Israeli Defense Forces, who allegedly interviewed Ariel Sharon in 1956. The interview, first appeared on Muslim websites in mid-2001 during the al-Aqsa Intifada, turned out to have been a hoax. Sharon, who was Prime Minister of Israel when the interview appeared in public, never made such an interview and the Israeli army has no record of a general by the name Ouze Merham.

The hoax quotation is frequently used as anti-Israel propaganda. It was a winner of the Annual Islamophobia Awards held by Islamic Human Rights Commission on May 31, 2003. ^[1] Student columnist Mariam Sobh used the quote in her December 11, 2003 Daily Illini column ^[2], but later apologized. ^[3]

1 The alleged quote
2 Criticism
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] The alleged quote

In the quote, Sharon allegedly said:

I vow that I’ll burn every Palestinian child (that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian women and child is more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian child’s existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger. I vow that if I was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I would make him suffer before killing him. With one hit I've killed 750 Palestinians (in Rafah in 1956). I wanted to encourage my soldiers by raping Arabic girls as the Palestinian woman is a slave for Jews, and we do whatever we want to her and nobody tells us what we shall do but we tell others what they shall do.^[4]

[edit] Criticism

In an email response dated April 24, 2002 to Atul Gawande, Yael Shahar of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) stated:

The comment that you quoted is indeed an invention, and a rather lame one. To begin with, any public expression of such sentiments would be grounds for dismissing a soldier from the army. Hatred is considered to render the soldier incapable of clear judgement and unreliable in carrying out the will of the state. Indeed many young hotheads have been dismissed from active combat duty because of their expression of racist sentiments--sentiments that could have serious consequences in an army in which Jews serve alongside Druze and Bedouin Arab soldiers.

One clue to the fact that the comment is a pure fabrication is the use of the word "Palestinian." In 1956, the term had still not taken hold in reference to Palestinian Arabs, but was at times used to refer to Jews born in Mandatory Palestine prior to the establishment of Israel. The Arabs in Palestine often referred to themselves as residents of "Greater Syria," or of the new state of Jordan... At any rate, the term "Palestinian Arab" was made popular only in the early 1960's by what eventually became Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, the Palestine Liberation Movement, which was founded in 1964. It did not catch on right away, and certainly had not gained enough provenance to have been used by Ariel Sharon in 1956. There is simply no way that an Israeli--and certainly not one expressing the sentiments ascribed to Sharon in this comment--would at that time have used the term "Palestinian" to refer to the Arabs.^[5]

Other evidence of the quote's falsehood:

There is no record of any Israeli general named "Ouze Merham" existing, nor any record of Sharon giving such an interview in 1956. It is also unclear why an Israeli general would interview Sharon (who, at the time, was only a major), and then publish the interview. ^[2]
The quote cannot be found in any text book, news article, or published record. ^[6]
This is one of a number of false quotes attributed to Sharon which are circulating on the internet.^[7]

[edit] References

^ Annual Islamophobia Awards2003 by Islamic Human Rights Commission on May 31, 2003
^ ^a ^b Anti-Israel Venom at University of Illinois Paper (CAMERA) March 24, 2004
^ University of Illinois Columnist Fully Apologizes by Deborah Passner (CAMERA) April 26, 2004
^ The quote is still widely cited on anti-Israel and anti-Semitic websites.
^ An Interview by Ariel Sharon in 1956 an Invention (Big Lie) 25Apr02 by Atul Gawande
^ Exposing False Zionist Quotes (Quote Busters) by Ricki Hollander (CAMERA) October 1, 2004
^ Other false quotes include:
- Don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it, falsely claimed to have been stated by Sharon before Israeli parliament in October 2001 and reported on Kol Yisrael radio
- A lengthy quote in which Sharon allegedly refers to himself as a "monster or a murderer" and a "Judeo-Nazi" and states "the dirty work of Zionism is not finished". The latter actually comes from an interview with an unnamed Israeli settler referred to as "Z" (or, in some translations, "C") in the collection of articles In the Land of Israel by Israeli author Amos Oz. The articles in the book were based on Oz's alleged interviews in October and November 1982, and published in Davar in November and December 1982 and January 1983. The false attribution to Sharon gained credence when Rocky Mountain News editor Holger Jensen published it in an April 2002 column. Jensen recanted four days later, admitting he had “made a grievous error in not verifying the authenticity of 20-year-old quotes attributed to Ariel Sharon”, and resigned shortly thereafter. Oz has confirmed that he has never interviewed Sharon. In an appendix to the 1983 English translation, Oz wrote "Many people. . . expressed a suspicion that I invented Z. and that such a man is 'not possible'. On the other hand, there were also people who went to the trouble of writing to express their total identification with Z.'s words. The man still refuses to be 'uncovered' and I am obliged to respect the promise I made to him to protect his privacy".