Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, meeting Tuesday with her Egyptian counterpart in Brussels, expressed Israel's concerns over unsubstantiated reports by "certain elements in Egypt" that a new film documents an Israel Defense Forces massacre of Egyptian soldiers in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The allegations arose from media reports about material included in Edelist's film "Ruach Shaked" (The Spirit of Shaked), which aired on Channel 1 television in Israel last week.

Media reports claim that Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer's Shaked commando unit executed 250 Egyptian prisoners-of-war in the Sinai peninsula immediately after the cessation of hostilities, rather than transfer them to prison camps.

	Advertisement

During a meeting with her Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Livni voiced "Israel's concern that certain elements in Egypt are misrepresenting the documentary film 'The Spirit of Shaked', without checking the facts or substantiating what actually happened, with the intent of sabotaging our two countries' relationship."

Livni asked Gheit to move to dispel the ill-feeling in Egypt on this issue. She stressed to Gheit that the issue was not a massacre of prisoners of war, but rather the deaths of soldiers in battle.

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said Tuesday that a copy of the film and a script of the narration will be passed on to Gheit.

The official Middle East News Agency said Tuesday that Gheit has also asked Israel to launch an inquiry into the allegations.

"Egypt will see Israel's position in the next few days and, in light of that position, it will deal with the situation on the regional, international and legal levels if Israel does not move," MENA quoted Gheit as saying.

"The Egyptian people and Egyptian society [are] extremely angry, and we hope that that issue will be tackled in a manner that understands and feels that Egyptian anger," Gheit said.

The claims have been flatly denied by Ben-Eliezer and by Ron Edelist, who made the documentary.

Ben-Eliezer cancelled his scheduled visit to Egypt this week in the wake of the row. He was to have met with Egyptian Chief of Intelligence Omar Suleiman on Thursday.

Edelist said in remarks broadcast Monday that the media reports misrepresented the material in the film. He said the dead were not Egyptian POWs, but Palestinian fedayeen fighters, and that they were killed in the heat of battle, not executed.

According to Edelist, hardline opposition elements in Egypt had misrepresented the facts and the message of the film in order to attack Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, signed in 1979.