"If saving lives means I'm a traitor, so be it"

Yunis Owaidah is probably the only Palestinian who's not afraid to admit that he is a "collaborator" with Israel. On the contrary, the 63-year-old father of 12 even boasts of the fact that he has been collaborating with Israel since 1967.

"I've saved the lives of many innocent people," Owaidah said in an interview at his home in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras el-Amud. "If saving the lives of innocent civilians means that I'm a traitor, so be it."

Thousands of Palestinians who have made similar confessions over the past three decades have been either killed or ostracized by their families and communities. The last killings occurred in Tulkarm on Monday, when two suspected collaborators in their mid-20s were executed by Fatah gunmen.

The executioners claimed that the two had confessed during interrogation to assisting Israel in hunting down and killing wanted activists. A week earlier, Fatah gunmen in Ramallah kidnapped a young man, also suspected of collaborating with Israel, as he was being escorted to court by Palestinian Authority security agents. The man's bullet-riddled body was later discovered near Al-Amari refugee camp south of Ramallah.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1095914106456
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A brave man.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/03/1091476457046.html?oneclick=true

Palestinian vigilantes have executed two collaborators in their beds in a Gaza hospital, where they were being treated for injuries from a grenade blast in their jail cell.

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Around noon, five masked gunmen taking part in a funeral procession for three other militants killed in an overnight clash with Israeli forces broke away and raced into the hospital.

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Just five hours later, it happened again.

At least 20 armed militants raced to the hospital in four vehicles, witnesses said, screeching to a halt at the entrance. Most of the gunmen deployed on the street, closing it off, while five ran into the hospital.

who saves the lives of innocent Palestinians? Tell us again your views on Vanunu Don?

with a militarily superior force.

Strange - during WWII, the collaborators were those who would turn
in the Jews to the Nazis. How quickly some people forget.

Mind you, I tend to think this guy's full of shit, but those who actually are collaborators do so for a variety of reasons, and bravery's got very little to do with it. Self-preservation, greed, power, getting into a position where someone is trapped into doing it, and sheer stupidity in being conned by the occupying force which lies about the outcome in order to gain the collaboration and there's an example of that in what I'm going to post a link to. And if Palestinian collaborators are anything like WWII collaborators, the vast majority of them would shift from being collaborators to engaging in active resistance if they think that the occupying power is on the wane, which is what happened in Vichy France after D-Day...

"We found the same in the case of collaborator Majdi Makawi, who was one of two people officially executed by the Palestinian Authority. (He was executed at the beginning of the Intifada. After the trial, Palestine Television broadcast a live interview with him). Makawi had provided information that led to Israel's killing of his uncle, a Fateh activist, in a premeditated ambush on the outskirts of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Israeli intelligence officers had convinced Makawi that the information he offered to Israel on his uncle's movements would lead to his capture and that this would be the only way of saving him from death.

This arouses further complex questions. Is collaboration done out of personal or public motives? Are the dealings voluntary or forced? In Europe, some collaborated for no political reason and under no pressure. Rather they viewed the issue as a private game, a way to get money or as their own submission to the power of the occupier. Is collaboration equal in all of these cases? In the event of collaboration under extreme pressure, is there a sort of "legitimization" that justifies a softening of the punishment?"


http://www.palestinereport.org/article.php?article=63

Violet...