These Palestinians still have the keys to their former homes before they were expelled from their land.
On the 71st anniversary of the Nakba, they still yearn to return to their homes.
THE KEY TO END THE NAKBA
May 21, 2019 at 15:05 (Collective Punishment, DesertPeace Exclusive, Nakba, Palestine)
WHY WE CALL IT THE ‘NAKBA’ (CATASTROPHE)
May 20, 2019 at 13:36 (Collective Punishment, DesertPeace Exclusive, Nakba, Palestine)
The Nakba explained in 3 minutes
Imagine this: You’ve lived in your hometown for decades, surrounded by your family and friends. But one day, gun-toting militias show up. You flee in terror. Then another family moves into your house–and you are banned from returning. This is the 1948 Nakba, the catastrophe, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
IN PHOTOS ~~ NEW YORKERS REMEMBER THE NAKBA
May 21, 2018 at 15:24 (Activism, Associate Post, DesertPeace Exclusive, International Solidarity, Nakba, Photography)
70 Years and counting ….
Nakba Day, 70 years, memorial demo, 5/18, at Times Sq. NYC . According to Al Jezeera 800 people attended.
Photos © by Bud Korotzer
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Related report from Al Jazeera (Click on link)
Far away from Gaza, a showdown in NYC’s Times Square
Hundreds protest in New York City in solidarity with Palestinians after another week of bloodshed in the Gaza Strip.
IN TOONS ~~ A HISTORY OF ISRAELI GENOCIDE
May 15, 2018 at 09:51 (Assassinations, Associate Post, Cartoons, Collective Punishment, Gaza, Israel's Shame, Nakba, Palestine, Soldier Brutality)
Israel …. Then and Now
Images by Carlos Latuff
The Catastrophe is NOT over!
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The catastrophe then and now!
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Gaza Massacre
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Another horrific example of the Israeli military using excessive force. A violation of international standards, committing what appear to be willful killings constituting war crimes.
Today is the 70th anniversary of Yawm an-Nakba or Nakba Day. On this day Palestinians mark the anniversary of the Nakba (“Catastrophe”) when they were violently forced from their land and homes as Israel was created in 1948.
More than 750,000 indigenous Palestinians were violently driven from their land and homes. As thousands of their fellow country people were slaughtered around them, they fled in terror to neighboring countries and to the West Bank and Gaza. To this day, Israel refuses to allow them to return to the land they were forced from – despite international law giving them that right to return.
But the Nakba didn’t end in 1948. It has continued for 70 years, as Israel continues to steal and occupy Palestinian land and oppress the indigenous Palestinian population.
Stay Human!
IN VIDEO ~~ GENERATIONS OF THE NAKBA SPEAK
May 13, 2018 at 15:07 (Collective Punishment, DesertPeace Exclusive, Israel, Nakba, Palestine)
#NakbaAt70
Palestinians of all their ages, and despite everything they’re exposed to still hold on to the right to return to their stolen homes
WHEN ‘PUSH CAME TO SHOVE’ …. WE WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT DAY
May 7, 2018 at 13:27 (Collective Punishment, DesertPeace Exclusive, Israel's Shame, Nakba, Palestine, Refugee Crisis)
“It was the worst scene ever when we were pushed out [by Zionist forces]. Only God knows how much I cried.” A Nakba survivor, 86-year-old Ibrahim lived through displacement in 1948 and now lives in Jalazone Refugee camp yearning to return to his land.
WE HAD A LAND ONCE ~~ WE HAD A LIFE ONCE
April 16, 2018 at 11:29 (Collective Punishment, Israel's Shame, Nakba, Palestine, Refugee Crisis)
Life before expulsion in Palestine: “We were there. We do exist.” Today, 7 million+ Palestinians are denied their right to return by Israel.
TWO MUST WATCH VIDEOS ABOUT THE PALESTINIAN CATASTROPHE
October 20, 2017 at 12:16 (DesertPeace Exclusive, Israel's Shame, Nakba, Palestine, Refugee Crisis, Videos)
The year 1948 saw the establishment of the state of Israel, the culmination of generations of Jewish persecution across Europe and Russia. But that same year proved catastrophic for the Palestinians — 700,000 to 900,000 men, women and children were forced to leave their homes and never allowed to return. 1948 was the most pivotal year in the most controversial conflict in the world, but it is almost never mentioned on American television, radio, or newspaper stories. This documentary aims to change that.
1948: Creation & Catastrophe
This is just a trailer for the film …. you MUST seek it out and watch in full
AL NAKBA: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948
Arguably the first film that seriously tackles the historical events that lead to the creation of 750.000 Palestinian refugees at the end of the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Based on historian Benny Morris’ book “The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-49”.
IN IMAGES ~~ REMEMBERING A PROUD LAND THAT ONCE WAS
May 16, 2017 at 11:18 (Cartoons, Collective Punishment, DesertPeace Exclusive, Israel's Shame, Land Theft, Nakba, Ongoing Nakba, Oppression, Palestine, Right of Return)
Remembering the Nakba
Seventy years on from the Nakba, Palestinians seem to move from one cycle of oppression to another
A Palestinian man walks front of graffiti that reads “Returning” as Palestinians attend “camp of return” to mark refugees’ ties to lands lost in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, during a gathering to mark the 69th anniversary of the “Nakba” (catastrophe). Nakba means “catastrophe” in reference to the birth of the state of Israel 69 years ago in British-mandate Palestine, which led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who either fled or were driven out of their homes during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash 90
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I didn’t sell my house they stole it ..
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69 yrs later, we are still here, all over the world, keeping our keys & hope that every day passes we are getting closer to return
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To our homes in Palestine, we will return!
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69 yrs of dispossession, forced exile and oppression
We still resist & We Will Return
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Latuff adds the following
Their creation was our Nakba!
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“al-Nakbah” means “catastrophe”. Nakba Day when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled from their homeland
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Free Palestine!
REMEMBERING PALESTINE ON ISRAEL’S DAY OF REMEMBRANCE ~~ IN TOONS
May 1, 2017 at 12:05 (Associate Post, Israel's Shame, Nakba, Palestine)
As Israel commemorates its fallen soldiers today, and its day of Independence tomorrow, we mourn the death of a wonderful nation.
Images by Carlos Latuff
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Today’s reality of the Nakba
The video about the new novel by author William Hanna entitled Ezekiel’s Temple Prophesy
For the interview see
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MOTHER PALESTINE ~~ THE INSPIRATION
December 11, 2016 at 12:12 (Associate Post, Cartoons, Israel's Shame, Nakba, Palestine)
More often than not, Latuff’s cartoons feature a women called Mother Palestine.
Here she is in 1948 …
And yet again in 1948 leading her Nation to the wilderness …
And here, the real Mother …. The Inspiration
Mrs. Zarefa the woman that inspired me to create Mother Palestine. Expelled from Zakaria village by Israel in 1948 and after 1967 to Jordan
Today she is leading her Nation back to their rightful Homeland!
HOW BALFOUR’S ‘PROMISE’ AND BRITAIN DESTROYED PALESTINE
November 3, 2016 at 08:16 (Britain, Collective Punishment, History, Israel, Nakba, Palestine)
Ninety-nine years later, the British government is yet to possess the moral courage to take responsibility for what their government has done to the Palestinian people.
Ninety-nine years later, Palestinians insist that their rights in Palestine cannot be dismissed, neither by Balfour, nor by his modern peers in “Her Majesty’s Government”.
!["The Zionists claimed Palestine and renamed it 'Israel'" [Getty Images]](https://desertpeace.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/f6a374f5953846d5bc233ee05542cf66_18.jpg?w=477&h=268)
“The Zionists claimed Palestine and renamed it ‘Israel'” [Getty Images]
How Britain Destroyed the Palestinian Homeland
Ninety-nine years since Balfour’s “promise”, Palestinians insist that their rights in Palestine cannot be dismissed.
Ramzy Baroud
When I was a child growing up in a Gaza refugee camp, I looked forward to November 2. On that day, every year, thousands of students and camp residents would descend upon the main square of the camp, carrying Palestinian flags and placards, to denounce the Balfour Declaration.
Truthfully, my giddiness then was motivated largely by the fact that schools would inevitably shut down and, following a brief but bloody confrontation with the Israeli army, I would go home early to the loving embrace of my mother, where I would eat a snack and watch cartoons.
At the time, I had no idea who Balfour actually was, and how his “declaration” all those years ago had altered the destiny of my family and, by extension, my life and the lives of my children as well.
All I knew was that he was a bad person and, because of his terrible deed, we subsisted in a refugee camp, encircled by a violent army and by an ever-expanding graveyard filled with “martyrs”.
Decades later, destiny would lead me to visit the Whittingehame Church, a small parish in which Arthur James Balfour is now buried.
While my parents and grandparents are buried in a refugee camp, an ever-shrinking space under a perpetual siege and immeasurable hardship, Balfour’s resting place is an oasis of peace and calmness. The empty meadow all around the church is large enough to host all the refugees in my camp.
Finally, I became fully aware of why Balfour was a “bad person”.
Once Britain’s Prime Minister, then the Foreign Secretary from late 1916, Balfour had pledged my homeland to another people. That promise was made on November 2, 1917, on behalf of the British government in the form of a letter sent to the leader of the Jewish community in Britain, Walter Rothschild.
At the time, Britain was not even in control of Palestine, which was still part of the Ottoman Empire. Either way, my homeland was never Balfour’s to so casually transfer to anyone else. His letter read:
“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
He concluded, “I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.”
Ironically, members of the British parliament have declared that the use of the term “Zionist” is both anti-Semitic and abusive.
The British government remains unrepentant after all these years. It has yet to take any measure of moral responsibility, however symbolic, for what it has done to the Palestinians. Worse, it is now busy attempting to control the very language used by Palestinians to identify those who have deprived them of their land and freedom.
But the truth is, not only was Rothschild a Zionist, Balfour was, too. Zionism, then, before it deservedly became a swearword, was a political notion that Europeans prided themselves to be associated with.
In fact, just before he became Prime Minister, David Cameron declared, before the Conservative Friends of Israel meeting, that he, too, was a Zionist. To some extent, being a Zionist remains a rite of passage for some Western leaders.
Balfour was hardly acting on his own. True, the Declaration bears his name, yet, in reality, he was a loyal agent of an empire with massive geopolitical designs, not only concerning Palestine alone, but with Palestine as part of a larger Arab landscape.
Just a year earlier, another sinister document was introduced, albeit secretly. It was endorsed by another top British diplomat, Mark Sykes and, on behalf of France, by François Georges-Picot. The Russians were informed of the agreement, as they too had received a piece of the Ottoman cake.
The document indicated that, once the Ottomans were soundly defeated, their territories, including Palestine, would be split among the prospective victorious parties.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement, also known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was signed in secret 100 years ago, two years into World War I. It signified the brutal nature of colonial powers that rarely associated land and resources with people that lived upon the land and owned those resources.
The centrepiece of the agreement was a map that was marked with straight lines by a china graph pencil. The map largely determined the fate of the Arabs, dividing them in accordance with various haphazard assumptions of tribal and sectarian lines.
Once the war was over, the loot was to be divided into spheres of influence:
– France would receive areas marked (a), which included: the region of south-eastern Turkey, northern Iraq – including Mosel, most of Syria and Lebanon.
– British-controlled areas were marked with the letter (b), which included: Jordan, southern Iraq, Haifa and Acre in Palestine and a coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan.
– Russia would be granted Istanbul, Armenia and the strategic Turkish Straits.
The improvised map consisted not only of lines but also colours, along with language that attested to the fact that the two countries viewed the Arab region purely on materialistic terms, without paying the slightest attention to the possible repercussions of slicing up entire civilizations with a multifarious history of co-operation and conflict.
The agreement read, partly:
“… in the blue area France, and in the red area Great Britain, shall be allowed to establish such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire and as they may think fit to arrange with the Arab state or confederation of Arab states.”
The brown area, however, was designated as an international administration, the nature of which was to be decided upon after further consultation among Britain, France and Russia. The Sykes-Picot negotiations finished in March 1916 and were official, although secretly signed on May 19, 1916. World War I concluded on November 11, 1918, after which the division of the Ottoman Empire began in earnest.
British and French mandates were extended over divided Arab entities, while Palestine was granted to the Zionist movement a year later, when Balfour conveyed the British government’s promise, sealing the fate of Palestine to live in perpetual war and turmoil.
INTERACTIVE: A century on – Why Arabs resent Sykes-Picot
The idea of Western “peacemakers” and “honest-brokers”, who are very much a party in every Middle Eastern conflict, is not new. British betrayal of Arab aspirations goes back many decades. They used the Arabs as pawns in their Great Game against other colonial contenders, only to betray them later on, while still casting themselves as friends bearing gifts.
Nowhere else was this hypocrisy on full display as was in the case of Palestine. Starting with the first wave of Zionist Jewish migration to Palestine in 1882, European countries helped to facilitate the movement of illegal settlers and resources, where the establishment of many colonies, large and small, was afoot.
So when Balfour sent his letter to Rothschild, the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was very much plausible.
Still, many supercilious promises were being made to the Arabs during the Great War years, as self-imposed Arab leadership sided with the British in their war against the Ottoman Empire. Arabs were promised instant independence, including that of the Palestinians.
The understanding among Arab leaders was that Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations was to apply to Arab provinces that were ruled by the Ottomans. Arabs were told that they were to be respected as “a sacred trust of civilization”, and their communities were to be recognised as “independent nations”.
Palestinians wanted to believe that they were also included in that civilization sacredness, and were deserving of independence, too. Their conduct in support of the Pan-Arab Congress, as voting delegates in July 1919, which elected Faisal as a King of a state comprising Palestine, Lebanon, Transjordan and Syria, and their continued support of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, were all expressions of their desire for the long-coveted sovereignty.
When the intentions of the British and their rapport with the Zionists became too apparent, Palestinians rebelled, a rebellion that has never ceased, 99 years later, for the horrific consequences of British colonialism and the eventual complete Zionist takeover of Palestine are still felt after all these years.
Paltry attempts to pacify Palestinian anger were to no avail, especially after the League of Nations Council in July 1922 approved the terms of the British Mandate over Palestine – which was originally granted to Britain in April 1920 – without consulting the Palestinians at all, who would disappear from the British and international radar, only to reappear as negligible rioters, troublemakers, and obstacles to the joint British-Zionist colonial concoctions.
Despite occasional assurances to the contrary, the British intention of ensuring the establishment of an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine was becoming clearer with time.
The Balfour Declaration was hardly an aberration, but had, indeed, set the stage for the full-scale ethnic cleansing that followed, three decades later.
In his book, Before Their Diaspora, Palestinian scholar Walid Khalidi captured the true collective understanding among Palestinians regarding what had befallen their homeland nearly a century ago:
“The Mandate, as a whole, was seen by the Palestinians as an Anglo-Zionist condominium and its terms as instrument for the implementation of the Zionist programme; it had been imposed on them by force, and they considered it to be both morally and legally invalid. The Palestinians constituted the vast majority of the population and owned the bulk of the land. Inevitably, the ensuing struggle centreed on this status quo. The British and the Zionists were determined to subvert and revolutionise it, the Palestinians to defend and preserve it.”
In fact, that history remains in constant replay: The Zionists claimed Palestine and renamed it “Israel”; the British continue to support them, although never ceasing to pay lip service to the Arabs; the Palestinian people remain a nation that is geographically fragmented between refugee camps, in the diaspora, militarily occupied, or treated as second-class citizens in a country upon which their ancestors dwelt since time immemorial.
While Balfour cannot be blamed for all the misfortunes that have befallen Palestinians since he communicated his brief but infamous letter, the notion that his “promise” embodied – that of complete disregard of the aspirations of the Palestinian Arab people – is handed from one generation of British diplomats to the next, the same way that Palestinian resistance to colonialism is also spread across generations.
In his essay in the Al-Ahram Weekly, entitled “Truth and Reconciliation“, the late Professor Edward Said wrote: “Neither the Balfour Declaration nor the Mandate ever specifically concede that Palestinians had political, as opposed to civil and religious, rights in Palestine.
The idea of inequality between Jews and Arabs was, therefore, built into British – and, subsequently, Israeli and US – policy from the start.”
That inequality continues, thus the perpetuation of the conflict. What the British, the early Zionists, the Americans and subsequent Israeli governments failed to understand, and continue to ignore at their own peril, is that there can be no peace without justice and equality in Palestine; and that Palestinians will continue to resist, as long as the reasons that inspired their rebellion nearly a century ago, remain in place.
Ninety-nine years later, the British government is yet to possess the moral courage to take responsibility for what their government has done to the Palestinian people.
Ninety-nine years later, Palestinians insist that their rights in Palestine cannot be dismissed, neither by Balfour, nor by his modern peers in “Her Majesty’s Government”.
More photos and videos at SOURCE
WATCH AS ISRAELIS CELEBRATE 49 YEARS OF JERUSALEM’S NAKBA
June 17, 2016 at 11:42 (Collective Punishment, Corrupt Politics, Ethnic Cleansing, Israel, Land Theft, Nakba, Palestine, Status of Jerusalem)
Tens of thousands of Israelis took hours to stream through the monumental Damascus Gate and weave their way through the alleys of the Muslim Quarter, eventually reaching their final destination, the holy Western Wall plaza, where they were treated to musical performances and a series of speeches by top religious and political officials.
‘Worship God By Nakba’: Jerusalem march celebrates Israeli occupation with messianic fervor
Dan Cohen and David Sheen FOR
The Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City was cleared of its Palestinian inhabitants on the eve of the Ramadan holiday, June 5, to make way for a flag procession by Jewish religious nationalists, celebrating Israel conquering the eastern half of the city 49 years earlier.
Store owners, street merchants, and shoppers preparing for that evening’s celebratory feast were driven out of the lanes that fell along the route chosen by march organizers and approved by Israel’s Supreme Court. From a safe distance behind police barricades, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem watched silently as ultra-nationalist Jews paraded through the quarter, singing songs of praise to Yahweh and calling for the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews.
Almost all of the shops along the march route shuttered their doors, while some took the added measure of taping over their door locks, to prevent paraders from sabotaging them, a common occurrence in previous years.
Tens of thousands of Israelis took hours to stream through the monumental Damascus Gate and weave their way through the alleys of the Muslim Quarter, eventually reaching their final destination, the holy Western Wall plaza, where they were treated to musical performances and a series of speeches by top religious and political officials.
A determination to assert Jewish sovereignty in the Muslim-majority areas of Jerusalem’s Old City was not the only cause of concern for some marchers. Opposition to a government plan to partition the Western Wall into gender-segregated and gender-mixed prayer areas also occupied some of the paraders.
In recent weeks, pressure from Netanyahu’s Ultra-Orthodox coalition partners convinced him to renege on his prior commitment to support the construction of a mixed-gender prayer area at the southern stretch of the Western Wall. The flag march was an opportunity for conservative religious forces to reassert their adamant opposition to any concessions to liberal Jews at the holy site.
Some marchers wore stickers and held aloft flags that criticized the proposed plan for an egalitarian prayer space. The traditionalist campaign materials read: “You don’t divide a heart – You don’t compromise on the Kotel [Western Wall]”. At the end of the march, Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch echoed these sentiments in a celebratory speech, claiming that the current layout of the site – gender-segregated according to Orthodox rules – should not be tampered with:
“May the call go out to all the Jews of the world, whoever and wherever they are: The Western Wall is a place that unifies and consolidates. It is forbidden to allow arguments to rip holes in the beating heart of the Jewish nation. Here we must act according the tradition of the House of Israel, the House of the father, the eternal tradition of Israel. At the Western Wall plaza, with God’s help, people will continue to pray next to one another, religious and non-religious, Jews and non-Jews. Because as it says, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer by all nations’ – because of unity, and because of Jewish tradition. From here we issue a call to leave the Western Wall as a unifier and a consolidator. We earned the kindness of God, in order to return here, for the sake of unity. Don’t ruin it!”
But Rabinovitch’s remarks were measured, bereft of some of the harsh language he has used in the past towards liberal Jews. One enthusiastic young parade participant sporting a gay pride sticker on her backpack was also spotted in the crowd. Her presence would seem to indicate that event organizers had sufficiently camouflaged their reactionary intentions, making the march more palatable to at least some liberal Zionists.
As Orly Noy reported last week in the liberal Israeli news site Local Call, there were concerted efforts to improve the optics of the march in the eyes of onlookers. Police reduced the size of the flagpoles they permitted to be carried into the Old City, confiscating planks that could be used to attack Palestinian people and property. Some Israeli youth sporting stickers calling to ethnically cleanse the country of Palestinians covered them up when they noticed they were being filmed.
But the theme of driving non-Jews out of Israel was not driven out of the march – it was only tamped down by authorities, in order to give the event a thin veneer of respectability. Stickers calling to expel Palestinians from the land reading, “There is no coexistence with them – Transfer Now!”, were freely distributed at the march by far-right activist Baruch Marzel. Jewish youth chanted “May your village burn!” as they marched towards the Old City. Once inside, they called to worship Yahweh by committing more Nakba’s, embracing the Arabic term for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that Israel carried out in 1948.
By minimizing the most overt calls to kick Arabs out of the country, event planners managed to rebrand the country’s largest annual “Death to Arabs” rally as a family-friendly show of support for Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. Those that stand to gain from the mainstreaming of the march, however, are not only advocates of one apartheid state, or advocates of fast-track-ethnic-cleansing. Also hoping to gain from the march’s normalization are advocates of building a Jewish temple on the al-Aqsa compound.
Once considered a marginal movement of messianists, Jewish Temple advocates have made major inroads in recent years. More Israeli Jews than ever before are visiting the compound annually, and increasing numbers of Israeli legislators are voicing support for a change in the status quo of the site. A long list of government officials, both religious and secular, have called to officially sanction Jewish religious rituals on the mount. WithTemple Movement leader Yehudah Glick entering the Knesset late last month as a member of the Likud list, efforts to apply Jewish sovereignty to the mosque compound are only expected to increase.
At the flag march itself, many of the participants wore T-shirts that prominently featured drawings of the Jewish Temple that messianists hope to build and T-shirts portraying the existing Islamic Dome of the Rock with calls for its elimination. At the massive celebration held in the Western Wall Plaza at the end of the march, one high profile Israeli official after another used the opportunity to call for the fulfillment of Jewish prophecies that call for a Jewish temple to be built where a mosque has stood for more than a thousand years.
Shmuel Rabinovitch, the rabbi in charge of the Western Wall site for over two decades, told the crowd: “We ask to be worthy of complete redemption, to return to the Temple Mount, pure and holy.” Rabinovitch added: “We are now living in the prophecy, and praying for it to be complete.”
David Lau, one of Israel’s two chief rabbis, and the son of a former chief rabbi, said: “Already by next week, as we are graced with the Pentecost holiday, grace us with making a pilgrimage, as we were graced by your first steps to stand here, grace us by showing us the construction of the Temple and cheer us with its renovation, returner of priests to their [Temple] worship and Levites to their singing and music-making.”
Moshe Leon, Jerusalem city councillor, said: “Here, facing the site of the Temple, as we set our eyes towards the holy mount, we all pray for a full redemption, to the building of the Temple speedily, in our era.”
Uri Ariel, Israel’s Minister of Agriculture, said: “Between the river and the sea will only be the State of Israel. There are not two states west of the Jordan. And the Temple Mount is ours! And it is not to be divided, not with the waqf (Muslim religious authorities), and not with anyone else! Sovereignty is within the power of the State of Israel, it must use it and implement it all the way. We say to Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time for sovereignty. It is time for sovereignty on the Temple Mount.”
The underlying ideology of the march was best exemplified by the only event speaker who is not a resident of Israel, but rather its primary patron, the United States: Simon Falic. Chair of a large chain of duty-free stores in the US, Simon “Simcha” Falic was honored with a slot on the program because his family is the top contributor to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which manages the Jewish holy site, under the auspices of the prime minister.
Last week, Ha’aretz investigative reporter Uri Blau revealed that the Jerusalem Day flag march is funded by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office. In years past, Blau has also exposed that the Falic family is the top contributor to Netanyahu’s personal election campaign, and also the top contributor to Lehava, a violent Jewish Supremacist street gang that follows the teachings of far-right Rabbi Meir Kahane and attacks mixed Jewish-Arab couples. Lehava regalia and other Kahanist identifiers were spotted along the parade route and amongst the Western Wall revelers.
At the Western Wall celebration, Falic reassured the crowd that Israel’s 49-year military occupation of territories conquered in 1967 is morally justified. He also urged Israelis to visit Mount Zion in far greater numbers:
“Forty-nine years ago, the Israel Defense Forces conquered Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. We should be proud of it! There is no shame in it! Better to be conquerer than conquered. They say we have 70,000 participants here today. Next year: 170,000 are waiting for you. There are more devout friends waiting for you. Brothers, come, we need half a million people here.”
The directive to increase the number of Jews who visit the al-Aqsa mosque compound is a declared tactic of the Temple Movement. Vastly expanding the Jewish presence on the site is part of its strategy to create the political pressure necessary to force the Israeli government to alter the status quo of the site and permit augmented Jewish activity there.
Once exclusive control of the mount has been wrested from the hands of the Jordanian waqf, Jewish messianists hope to build a Yahwist temple on the site, replacing prayer with daily animal sacrifices and turning Israel’s somewhat-secular ethnocracy into a full-fledged Orthodox theocracy. Under religious rule, all non-Jews who refuse to sign a contract committing themselves to a special subset of Jewish laws reserved for gentile subjects would be deported or put to death.
By discouraging only the most overt manifestations of base racism while simultaneously infusing the event with ultra-nationalist sentiment and messianic fervor, organizers managed to frame the parade as moderate and mainstream, even though the march route dispossessed Palestinians temporarily and marchers openly voiced unbridled hopes of soon dispossessing them permanently.
IN PHOTOS ~~ NAKBA DAY DEMOS CONTINUE IN NEW YORK AND IN PALESTINE
May 17, 2016 at 08:58 (Associate Post, DesertPeace Exclusive, International Solidarity, Israel's Shame, Nakba, Palestine, Photography, Videos)
NAKBA DAY EVENT-NYCITY HALL & MARCH ACROSS THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE
Photos © by Bud Korotzer
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Videos from Palestine VIA
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NAKBA DAY IN TOONS
May 16, 2016 at 10:22 (Associate Post, Cartoons, Israel's Shame, Land Theft, Nakba, Palestine)
Images by Carlos Latuff
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USPCN commemorates #Nakba #Nakba68 & #NakbaDay with Political Prisoners Campaign & petition
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In Tel Aviv, zionists ‘celebrate’ The Nakba by denying it …
IN PHOTOS ~~ NAKBA DAY IN NEW YORK
May 15, 2016 at 07:49 (Activism, Associate Post, DesertPeace Exclusive, Nakba, Palestine, Photography)
On Israel’s Independence Day, New Yorkers remember who lost theirs
Photos © by Bud Korotzer
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Still to come ….
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NAKBA DAY MARCH FOR RESISTANCE AND RETURN
Sunday, May 15
1:30 pm
Rally at City Hall Park in Manhattan followed by March on Brooklyn Bridge to Cadman Plaza Park
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1720235081568888/
On the 68th anniversary of the occupation of Palestine, and as the Palestinian people enter the 68th year of dispossession and exile, we call on all Palestinians, friends of Palestine and supporters of justice and liberation to come together to march and rally, commemorate the Nakba, stand against the continuing Nakba, and call for the right of return for Palestinian refugees and freedom for Palestine.
68 years after the Nakba – the war of 1948 in which over 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and land and the state of Israel created on that land – Palestinians continue to struggle for their right to return, for freedom from occupation, for justice, and against the Nakba that continues today.
After a rally at City Hall, we will march over the Brooklyn Bridge for an afternoon of Palestine-focused and family-friendly activities at Cadman Plaza Park.
68 YEARS LATER ~~~ WHAT DO ISRAELIS KNOW ABOUT THE NAKBA?
May 12, 2016 at 09:16 (DesertPeace Exclusive, History, Israel's Shame, Land Theft, Nakba, Videos)
What do Israelis really know about the Nakba? What do they think about the right of return of the Palestinian refugees?
PHOTO ESSAY ~~ THE TAINTED MEMORY OF ISRAEL’S INDEPENDENCE
May 8, 2016 at 09:33 (Collective Punishment, DesertPeace Exclusive, History, Israel's Shame, Nakba)
This Wednesday evening at sundown Israel will mark 68 years as an independent state as Palestians mark 68 years since the Nakba which destroyed their nation.
Here are some of the photos …. (Click on link)
Photos of the Nakba (“the catastrophe”): the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948.
IN PHOTOS ~~ REMEMBERING THE ‘OTHER’ SIX MILLION
May 4, 2016 at 07:32 (Activism, Associate Post, DesertPeace Exclusive, Nakba, Palestine, Photography, Refugee Camps)
Image by Carlos Latuff
Umm Akram and Amena are among six million Palestinians not living in Palestine. They are citizens of no country.
VOICES FROM THE NAKBA
Monday, May 2
6:00PM
NYU School of Law
On May 14, 1948, 18-year-old Mariam Fathallah, her family, and the rest of the Palestinian town of Al-Zeeb were forced out of their homes and into Lebanon. By the end of the year, their 4,000 year-old community was leveled and half of all Palestinians in Palestine had been killed or expelled. Palestinians know this event as the Nakba (“the catastrophe”). Mariam, now 86 years old and respectfully known as Umm Akram, has spent the last 68 years in crowded, makeshift refugee camps, where she has raised three generations of children who are waiting to return to their homes in Palestine. She has lived through 5 Israeli invasions of Lebanon and the 1976 Tel Al-Zaatar camp massacre which killed 2,000 refugees.
Amena El-Ashkar, 23, is the granddaughter and great granddaughter of Nakba survivors and has known no home other than a refugee camp.
Umm Akram and Amena are among six million Palestinians not living in Palestine. They are citizens of no country.
Photos © Bud Korotzer
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REMEMBERING THE TERROR THAT LED TO JEWISH STATEHOOD
April 12, 2016 at 13:34 (Collective Punishment, Ethnic Cleansing, History, Israel's Shame, Nakba, Palestine, zionism)
#DeirYassinMassacre let us remember the innocent lives lost to terror
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Palestinians mark 68th anniversary of Deir Yassin massacre
Palestinians on Saturday marked the 68th anniversary of the massacre of more than 100 Palestinians civilians carried out by Zionist paramilitary groups in the village of Deir Yassin in 1948 prior to the establishment of Israel.
Deir Yassin has long been a symbol of Israeli violence for Palestinians because of the particularly gruesome nature of the slaughter, which targeted men, women, children, and the elderly in the small village west of Jerusalem.
The number of victims is generally believed to be around 107, though figures given at the time reached up to 254, out of a village that numbered around 600 at the time.
The Deir Yassin massacre was led by the Irgun group, whose head was future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, with support from other paramilitary groups Haganah and Lehi whose primary aim was to push Palestinians out through force.
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Records of the massacre describe Palestinian homes blown up with residents inside, and families shot down as they attempted to flee.
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The massacre came in spite of Deir Yassin resident’s efforts to maintain positive relations with new Jewish neighbors, including the signing of pact that was approved by Haganah, a main Zionist paramilitary organization during the British Mandate of Palestine.
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An Israeli psychiatric hospital now lies on the ruins of Deir Yassin, the remainder of which was reportedly bulldozed in the 1980s to make way for Jewish housing and incorporated as a neighborhood of Jerusalem. Streets of the neighborhood hold names of Irgun militiamen who carried out the massacre.
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The massacre was one of the first in what would become a long line of attacks on countless Palestinian villages, part of a broader strategy called Plan Dalet by Zionist groups to strike fear into local Palestinians in hopes that the ensuing terror would lead to an Arab exodus, to ensure only Jews were left in the “Jewish state.”
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Thus the attack on Deir Yassin took place a month before the UN Partition Plan was expected to be carried out, and was part of reasons later given by neighboring Arab states for their intervention in Palestine.
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The combination of forced expulsion and flight that the massacres — what would later become known among Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe — precipitated left around 750,000 Palestinians as refugees abroad. Today their descendants number more than five million, and their right to return to Palestine is a central political demand.
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The anniversary of the deadly razing of the village comes as modern day Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank continue to fight for their livelihood in the face of illegal Israeli settlement expansion, widespread detention campaigns, extrajudicial executions by Israeli forces, and a surge in housing demolitions — most recently leaving 124 Palestinians homeless in a single day.
The 97 known victims of the Deir Yassin Massacre committed by Zionist Terror in Palestine
Desertpeace 