Cii Radio| Sabera Sheik Essop| 28 September 2016| 26 Zhul hijjah 1437
Israeli ex-president Shimon Peres died on Wednesday, two weeks after suffering a major stroke.
The 93-year-old died in his sleep at around 3:00am (0000 GMT)
According to Al Jazeera’s Middle East analyst Yehia Ghanem , many would remember Peres as a war criminal, especially in light of the 1996 Qana massacre. In that Israeli attack on a southern Lebanese village, at least 106 people were killed. Peres was then prime minister.
“People who are praising him [Peres] supported Israel and all of its crimes throughout its history,” Ghanem said. “The fact he ordered this massacre in Qana was and still is considered a war crime.”
Speaking of Peres’ legacy, Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian peace negotiator, told Al Jazeera: “This is a man who, from the very beginning, was a war criminal.”
Buttu added: “He’s somebody who believed in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, somebody who when he had positions of power made sure that Palestinian land that was occupied – not captured – was then turned over and made into Jewish Israeli settlements, which are war crimes under international law.”
Peres was also assisted the procurement of weaponry for the South African Apartheid regime in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Source : Al Jazeera
