Ex-Israeli PM shot Palestinian toddlers: Dutch director

The Israeli foreign ministry called one of the recent Dutch media reports that accuse their country’s 11th Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, of murdering Palestinian children in Lebanon as the “modern blood libel,” the Israel-based Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday.

Volkskrant, the third largest paper in the Netherland, had reported the witness account of a famous Dutch-Jewish director, George Sluizer.

While filming a documentary, Sluizer who is now 78, said he witnessed Sharon killing two Palestinian toddlers with a pistol in 1982 near the refugee camp of Sabra-Shatilla.

“I met Sharon and saw him kill two children before my eyes,” he said.

Sluizer thought this happened in November, when Sharon was Israel’s minister of defense.

Prior to his ministerial post, Sharon was also commander in the Israel Army since the Jewish state inception in 1948.

In another interview for him with an intellectual magazine, Vrij Nederland, published on November 13, and prior to screening one of his movies at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, he reiterated his account, and said that “Sharon shot two children like you shoot rabbits, in front of my eyes.”

Sluizer told the Haaretz, that his cameraman Fred van Kuyk, who died a few years ago, also witnessed the shooting.

In 1983, Sluizer filed two complaints against Sharon, one with the International Court of Justice in the Hague and the other with the European Court of Human Right in Strasbourg.

I met Sharon and saw him kill two children before my eyes

George Sluizer, Dutch-Jewish director

Israeli officials say it is a “lie”

Sharon’s successor as defense minister, Moshe Arens, said Sluizer’s account was “a lie.”

“Sharon would never shoot a child and he was not in Lebanon in November of 1982. Thirdly, protocol prohibits ministers from wearing weapons. As civilians they are not allowed to carry firearms,” said Arens.

Amram Mitzna, former chairman of the Israeli Labor Party who served under Sharon as head of the Syrian front during the First Lebanon War, called Sluizer’s account “total nonsense.”

“I attacked Sharon politically over his decisions, but Sharon would never do a thing like that. It’s completely ridiculous,” Mitzna said.

Yossef Levy, senior spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called Sluizer's account a "crude and disgraceful lie. It is hard to believe that any reasonable person would take seriously this kind of modern blood libel, which is not supported by a single shred of evidence."

Sluizer said by the time his complaints arrived at their destination and should have been processed, minister of defense Sharon had become prime minister and was free of prosecution.

Sharon became prime minister in 2001, 18 years after Sluizer said he filed his complaints.

Sluizer says he never received a reply from either institution.

when asked why he did not pursue the case furthermore, Sluizer said that he was "busy doing other things then, finishing filming and traveling the Soviet Union and other countries."

Sluizer however, began thinking more about the shooting after surviving a near-fatal aneurism in 2007.

Sluizer has made several documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and he is well known for directing The Vanishing with Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland in 1992.

Also, Sharon, 82, has been in a coma since 2006, when he suffered a massive stroke.