George Sluizer declared that in 1982 he saw then Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon shooting Palestinian children from near the Sabra-Shatilla refugee camp, Beirut, while he was filming a documentary. Israel officials called report a ‘modern blood libel’.The accusation was first made in Volkskrant, a Dutch newspaper, during an interview to George Sluizer, who was promoting the screening of his most recent film about Israel in the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam.
According to Sluizer, who has made several documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he saw Sharon killing two Palestinian children with a pistol in 1982, near the refugee camp Sabra-Shatilla in Lebanon. Sharon was an Israeli minister of defense at that time.
“Sharon shot two children like you shoot rabbits, in front of my eyes,” he added.
Sluizer gave more details and reported hat the children were two or three years old and that Sharon shot them from a distance of 10 meters with a pistol. However, he could not specify in which month the event occurred, but he thought it was in November.
Meanwhile, Israeli government’s officials have been quick to deny accusations, claiming that the statement is not supported by a single shred of evidence and that it is very cruel to accuse Sharon of committing a murder when he cannot defend himself, Haaretz reported.
“Firstly, Sharon would never shoot a child; secondly, he was not in Lebanon in November of 1982: and thirdly, protocol prohibits ministers from wearing weapons,” Sharon’s successor as defense minister, Moshe Arens, explained.
In an interview for Haaretz, Sluizer defended his statement and said that after seeing the shooting, he had complained against Sharon in the International Court of Justice in Hague and the European Court of Human Right in Strasbourg, in 1983.
However, Israeli officials pointed out that no evidences that support that complaint have been found and added that they have warned the Dutch magazine to be careful when publishing anything that is not corroborated.
Sharon is currently in a permanent vegetative state after suffering a stroke in January 2006.
