Merchant Navy Memories - The Palestine/Israeli Conflict
by Published on 21st May 2021 06:00 PM
The current dispute between Gaza and Israel reminded me of an incident that happened to me back in 1969. While serving on the oil tanker ‘MV Captain Avgerinos’. The tanker often loaded/discharged at the oil pipeline in Haifa Israel. On one occasion my mate and I attended a circus in Haifa. The big-top was part of the Tokyo Fair. We sat on the back row, with our backs to the canvas. During the early part of the performance, I heard a loud crack, similar to a penny banger firework going off. It was so close I thought the bang came from under the big-top’s seats below and to the left of where we were sitting.
About 30 minutes into the show (An elephant kicking a huge beach ball into the audience back and forth) the elephant was taken off and the Ringmaster made an announcement from the center of the ring. He spoke in Hebrew, therefore I didn’t understand what he was saying. The audience stood up and began to file out of the circus. No one pushing or shoving or talking loudly, I just thought it was an intermission, the performance had hardly started. So, my pal and I just sat there, not moving. That was until an armed Israeli soldier ordered us to leave the tent. Not sure why we were being evacuated, I asked a second soldier, what was going on. He said there was a bomb in the tent.
Outside the marquee, I saw dozens of armed soldiers rounding up Arabs and pushing them into army wagons. To this day, I’ll never understand how the army selected Arabs from the Jews.
Anyway, back on the ship the following day, I was listening to the BBC World Service news broadcast, and lo and behold they were reporting on the bomb scare incident. The BBC said a young boy had found a watermelon under the marquee seats. Poking out of the melon there was a pencil-like object. The pencil turned out to be a detonator and it blew up in the boy’s hand as he pulled it out of the melon,’ badly damaging his hand, I think they said it had blown off his hand. And that was more or less what was reported. I remember thinking that I must have been sitting right over the watermelon bomb!
It was many years later (2014) while I was searching on the internet, that the account of what really happened was reported in a podcast by ‘The Elder of Ziyon’. Reporting on the death of female terrorist Zakiya Shammout, the woman who had planted the bombs. The EoZTV podcast reported that Mahmoud Abbas, the Hamas leader, had praised Shammout on her terror activities.
Here is the account of how Shammout targeted children at a circus in 1969. Written by Joshua Fox:
“A 14-year-old Israeli boy’s curiosity was credited by police today with frustrating saboteurs’ plans for a major blast in a circus here which was timed to maim and kill hundreds of the circus-goers.
Benjamin Peretz and a youthful friend had been looking at the Tokyo Fair from the street but apparently did not intend to watch the performance. They wandered over to one of the numerous watermelon stands looking for “spare” melons. Benjamin opened a melon and observed a pencil-like object embedded in the opening. He removed it and playfully threw it at his friend. It exploded, injuring the boy slightly.
Police were called to the melon stand and began a search. They found the suspected melon and inside of it a kilogram of explosives. A second melon was found with three times that much explosive. An old coat, to which no one had paid any attention, was found to have 20 sticks of gelignite sewn into its lining. The circus performance was halted immediately and the audience followed instructions to leave by the tent through its back entrance while the search for more explosives continued. No more were found.
The police said that the pencil-like object was a timing device that had been set to detonate the explosives as the circus audience was leaving the performance. They said a major catastrophe in damages, injuries, and death could have occurred.
I don't know how many deaths she ended up being responsible for. Arabic sites are saying that she was sentenced to 12 99-year sentences but was released in 1985 in a prisoner swap. However, Israel would not allow her to stay in the country and the only Arab country that was willing to take her was Algeria.
Her terror career is being exaggerated in her obituaries, but her happiness at targeting Jewish civilians is clear. She claimed that the watermelon bomb at the circus exploded and killed many Israelis and described how happy she was, dancing around with her husband and chanting Allah Akbar.
Shammout also described how she chose to attack the market, waiting until there were no Arabs there and supposedly putting four bomb-laden baskets covered with fruit in different locations, while pretending to shop with her children.
The official PA news agency reports that Mahmoud Abbas sent condolences to her family, praising the terrorist who targeted Jewish children at a circus as a pioneer in the "struggle" who was "dedicated to the service of her country and committed to its objectives.”
The above comments are not my words, however, it just goes to show how innocent seamen can be caught up in local wars and disputes. In my time at sea, I had other skirmishes and near misses.
I was on the Fleetwood trawler Armana (Skipper Victor Buschini) when arrested by the aging Icelandic gunboat ICGV Thor (circa 1962) for ‘Steaming inside territorial waters with our fishing gear in a position for shooting’ (Not allowed!). I was stopped at the point of a bayonet in Apapa Nigeria for breaking a curfew during the Biafran civil war (The Nigerian soldiers were notoriously trigger happy). Ashore in Newark New Jersey 6th April 1968 watching a major fire and young black men throwing firebombs following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jn. That was intimidating. I got cursed and spit upon, by an Arab woman in Bone Algeria during the Algerian French disputes 1959 and other bits and pieces, buzzed by US warplanes near Cuba, bracketed by cannon fire by the Chinese as we sailed towards Taiwan (MV Cragmoor). Although scary at the time, these are only minor incidents that pale into insignificance by the actions of some of our members who have been caught up in real shooting wars at sea. I honestly can’t imagine being at sea in wartime when at any moment a torpedo or mine could blow the ship to Kingdom Come.
Anyway, that’s about it, for the time being, folks. Any more similar stories?
R710198.
