TO EXIST IS TO RESIST! ~~ PALESTINIANS HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE
May 11, 2011 at 09:32 (Activism, DesertPeace Editorial, Ethnic Cleansing, History, Intifada, Israel, Nakba, Nonviolent Resistance, Occupation, Oppression, Palestine)
I teased a friend the other day: Do you feel safer in the new world order? We discussed the fact that there is a “new world order” whereby two states (regimes) in the world feel immune from International law, disregard existing mechanisms including the UN and Interpol, and send agents or machines regularly to other sovereign countries to engage in extrajudicial assassination of those they deem enemies. On most occasions, nearby civilians are killed or the victim turns out to be someone else. There is the argument that these people assassinated are bad guys and should be killed. My friend and I certainly do not have sympathy for Bin Laden and people like him. But violating laws is not the way to go (two wrongs do not make a right).
My friend points out that some two million Iraqis, half of them children, perished by the unjust US/UK led blockade, sanctions, and war. Millions suffered and over 60,000 were murdered by the Israeli policies of land theft, ethnic cleansing, regular massacres of civilians, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity. These are all acts of state terrorism in whole sale as opposed to the retail terror acts of Al-Qaeda. Yet imagine if Afghani commandoes (or Chinese or Irish for that matter) landed in a clandestine way in the US, Britain, or Israel and “took-out” one of the masterminds of such mass terrorism. Come to think of it, the stage is set now for this to happen since the message sent around the world is that “might makes right”. As humans, we have clear choices to make: we either support the notion of “dog-eat-dog world” and put our faith in military might OR we insist that another world is coming and that we can shape it with our hands using popular and nonviolent resistance.
My friend laments a history of our species of oppression, exploitation, destruction, and even mass murder (e.g. the genocide during slavery, during colonization in the Americas, the use of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). She asks half jokingly why should we expect a dramatic change in our life-span? History does show that, slowly but surely, democracy and peace are spreading around the world. In Latin America an amazing progress transpired from the era of colonialism (including genocide and slavery) to the era of “banana republics” (ruled by ruthless, western-supported dictators) to the hard won democratic revolutions. A similar transformation is occurring in the Arab world. This Arab spring came later and is more painful because such a transformation threatens the implanted Western wedge that is the racist apartheid state of Israel. My friend and I debate whether acting is contingent on being 100% sure of winning! While a more rational reading of history would lead one to be more optimistic, acting on our beliefs and our ideals is not contingent on existing power structures or short-term outcomes but only on how we believe we should live and act. Self-transformation itself is a win!
I ask my friend to imagine activists 10 years before each of these events and what motivated them to act (even as they did not foresee the end): the collapse of the Berlin wall, the freedoms in the countries of Eastern Europe, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the end of segregation in the South of the US, the woman suffrage, and the end of the US supported Pinochet, Suharto, and Mubarak regimes. In each of those instances and hundreds more, many activists died even before seeing the end of the struggle. In each of these cases, some thought it was a hopeless struggle against incredible odds. But even some activists did not understand how close they were to winning. Some even gave up the struggle a year or two before it triumphed.
Even when it seems most entrenched the status quo will not stay the same. The mighty Persian and Roman empires ended. Who now remembers that in the 19th century, Portugal, Spain, and England had armies and colonies around the world and seemed invincible. Even Hitler’s relatively short-lived third Reich seemed invincible. Human constructs are invariably changeable by new human constructs ESPECIALLY if they are repressive and antagonize too many people. The Israeli and US regimes are thus more susceptible on this front than any other in existence today. Martin Luther King Jr once said of the US: “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government..” Israeli historian Benny Morris stated “The Jewish generations of 1948, however, knew the truth and deliberately misrepresented it. They knew there were plenty of mass deportations, massacres and rapes . . . . The soldiers and the officials knew, but they suppressed what they knew and were deliberately disseminating lies.” Ilan Pappe summarized years of his historical research thus: “Jews came and took, by means of uprooting and expulsion, a land that was Arab. We wanted to be a colonialist occupier, and yet to come across as moral at the same time..” These ‘original sins’ (as another Israeli historian titled his book) will catch up with this generation.
I tell my friend that the sins of the past come to haunt people whether at the individual level or the national level. Similarly, the good deeds do get repaid sooner or later. I remind her that her good deeds were already rewarded many times over as she herself acknowledged to me. I am sure the many Israelis and US citizens who worked very hard for peace with justice will be vindicated. She states that our biggest troubles are not sustained by those who work against us but the masses who are apathetic. Apathy indeed is the scourge of humanity. Each of us should look themselves in the mirror everyday and honestly think if they have done enough! Here in Palestine, like in other parts of the world there are also those who act and those who are apathetic. The latter may watch TV, may feel pangs of frustration or anger but are not willing to sum up the inner courage (present in all of us) to finally act on their convictions. On our deathbed, will we lament a life wasted or smile at a life of achievement for fellow human beings.
My friend and I are pleased to be alive in this day and age and continue to be very optimistic. We are grateful for the tentative initial steps of reconciliation of the Palestinian house (but must keep pushing) and we are grateful for the failure of Netanyahu to get Europeans to pressure the Palestinian people to keep their divisions. We know Netanyahu will next go to the US but there he will have to pass through demonstrators to get to the Israeli occupied halls of Congress. And the US is already 14 trillion in debt, one third of it caused directly by the Israel-first lobby. But AIPAC is being challenged.(1)
Meanwhile, the struggle here in the last land of apartheid continues. Saturday, our friends Yusuf and Musa AbuMaria were attacked and injured by Israeli forces in a peaceful demonstration in Beit Ummar near Hebron (Yusuf had two breaks in one arm) and we attended two conferences in Hebron the same day. One was the Palestinian Forum for Medical Research first biomedical research symposium where one of my master’s students presented her research results. The second was attended by 300 activists nearly half Israeli and was titled “Joint Struggle for an End to the Occupation and Racism”. The final declaration from this conference is meaningful in showing the change happening on the ground in joint struggle (as opposed to normalization).
Join us 15 May 2011 on the streets as we launch a global intifada (uprising) using popular resistance methods. It will not be the end but the beginning of the end as hundreds of demonstrations and marches are held around the world (including marches to checkpoints) and from nearby countries to the borders of occupied Palestine.
We will say that 63 years of destructions and war is enough and our Nakba must end. Some are calling this the third intifada but it is actually the 14th or 15th and it is likely going to be the last . In follow-up you can join us in Palestine this July (see) to take a bigger step forward.
In the meantime, as our friend and martyr Vittorio reminded us to always “STAY HUMAN”.
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LOOK INTO MY EYES TO SEE WHY WE MUST RESIST……
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Planned activities in Palestine and worldwide can be seen below…..
Published by Maan
GAZA CITY — Palestinian students and rights activists in Gaza have initiated a campaign for Palestinian refugees aiming to harness the winds of change in the Middle East and mobilize the diaspora into action.
On May 15, the group said, more than 1 million people will participate in a global sit-in at Israeli embassies worldwide.
An organizer in Gaza told Ma’an that a preparatory committee was making contacts regionally and internationally, and a coordinated effort was underway to demand the return of 9 million refugees from camps in the Middle East and abroad.
“It is not our goal to criticize, affect or push negotiations or international treaties. We are only demanding the right of return to occupied territories,” the organizer said.
Figures known for their work on refugee rights have been contacted, organizers said. Among them: former Palestinian member of the Knesset Azmi Bishara, Palestinian researcher, academic and leader of the Palestinian Right of Return Coalition Salman Abu Sittah and former British MP George Galloway.
Palestinian communities in Europe and Latin America were being targeted for the rally, and being asked to gather outside Israeli diplomatic offices in world capitals.
In the Middle East, organizers said locations were being kept under wraps, for fear that measures would be taken to quash the peaceful action before its launch.
GAZA
May 10, 2011: 8 PM
Screening “This is my picture when I was dead”
FLYER OF GAZA ACTIVITIES #MAY15
PALESTINE – Al-QUDS
Palestine Freedom March – JERUSALEM
http://www.facebook.com/Free.Palestine.March.May15?sk=info
PALESTINE – Al-DAMUN | Al-RUWAYS
Tuesday, May 10 2011 at 3:00 PM
قريتي الدامون والرويس الهجرتين
نقطة التجمّع: مدخل قرية كابول ( عين الدامون ) الساعة الثالثة بعد الظهر تنطلق المسيرة في تمام الساعة الثالثة والنصف بعد الظهر
May 14, 2011
Israeli Arabs invited to take part in Nakba march
PALESTINE – RAMALLAH
Date : May 12, 2011 starting at 7:00PM
Location: Friends International Center in Ramallah (FICR)
A Poem and Musical Event to commemorate the Nakba
LEBANON
THIRD PALESTINIAN INTIFADA
All Arabs to March on Israel on May 15th
more info
EGYPT
Egyptians to mark Nakba with a march to Palestine
More info and participating organisations
EGYPT – CAIRO
May 15-21, 2011
Street: Tahrir Square – Cairo
more info 1 | more info 2
LEBANON
May 15, 12:00 PM
Maroun Al Ras
Announcements #Mar15 – Europe
DUBLIN – IRELAND
Dublin | May 15, 2011
Nakba Day Demo in solidarity with Palestinian people
LONDON – UK
Date: 29/04/2011 to 11/05/2011
The 2011 London Palestine Film Festival
Venue: The 2011 London Palestine Film Festival
http://www.palestinefilm.org/festivals.asp
London May 14, 2011: 12 Noon
Bust the Blockade with Barenboim
Assemble opposite Downing Street on Whitehall
Jews For Justice for Palestinians will be assembling with the banner outside Westminster tube station at 11.50
http://jfjfp.com/?p=23149
London | May 14, 2011 at noon
UK Protest at Downing Street to urge the UK government to take actions to stop Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine
London | May 15, 2011
Demonstration in Solidarity with Palestinian Third Intifada
Outside Israeli Embassy, London
BRISTOL – UK
Location: Special vigil in Bristol Center
Date: Sunday May 15, 2011
Time: All Day
Organised by Bristol PSC
AMSTERDAM – THE NETHERLANDS
Datum: zaterdagmiddag 14 mei 2011, 14:00 uur
Plaats: Singelkerk, Singel 452, Amsterdam-Centrum
http://www.palestina-komitee.nl/NPK-berichten/295
BRUSSELS – BELGIUM
Sunday, May 15 · 12:00pm – 3:00pm
Israëlische ambassade, Sterrewachtlaan 40 1180 Ukkel – Avenue de l’Observatoire 40 1180 Brussel (UCCLE)
http://act4palestine.blogspot.com/2011/04/belgium-brussels-demonstratie-in.html ( NL | EN | FR )
BERLIN – GERMANY
Sonntag, 15. Mai 2011 12:00 – 15:00 Uhr | Sunday, 15 May 2011 12:00 – 15:00 clock
Ort: Israelische Botschaft | Israeli Embassy, Auguste-Viktoria-Str. 74-76 – 14193 Berlin
Massenkundgebung aus Solidarität mit Palästina | Mass rally in solidarity with Palestine
BERN – SWITZERLAND
Sunday, May 15, 2011 , 3-6 PM
Location: Israeli Embassy, Alpine Road
BERN Rally in solidarity with the 3rd Intifada
ROME – ITALY
Sunday, May 15, 2011 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Location: Embassy of Israel
Street: Via Michele Mercati 12 , Roma
In risposta alla chiamata del popolo Palestinese per una sommossa popolare il 15 maggio, manifesteremo dinanzi all’ambasciata Israeliana a Roma lo stesso giorno, in sostegno del popolo palestinese e per richiedere l’espulsione dell’ambasciatore Israeliano alla luce del continuo disprezzo d’Israele nei confronti il Diritto Internazionale!!!
In response to the call of the Palestinian people for a popular uprising on May 15, will demonstrate before the Israeli embassy in Rome the same day, in support of the Palestinian people and to demand the expulsion of Israel in the light of the continuing contempt of Israel against international law!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=178215672227437
Announcements #Mar15 – Canada
MONTREAL – CANADA
Sunday, May 15, 2011 , 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Location: Métro Mont-Royal , 470, av. du Mont-Royal Es
On MAY 15th of this year, thousands of Palestinian refugees, Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians and many others will participate in peaceful protest in Palestine in hope to end the violent Zionist Regimen of Israel’s occupation.
Montreal’s Palestinian Refugee Revolution
OTTAWA – CANADA
Protest| Palestinian Refugee Revolution| 63rd Anniversary- Nakba
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
http://on.fb.me/jkCNnq
TORONTO – CANADA
Protest in Solidarity with Palestinian Refugee Revolution 63rd Anniversary- Nakba
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
http://on.fb.me/kBVjjJ
http://www.caiaweb.org/2011/05/08/697/
QUEBEC – CANADA
Protest| Palestinian Refugee Revolution| 63rd Anniversary- Nakba| Montreal, Quebec, Canada
http://on.fb.me/jjdIah
VANCOUVER – CANADA
Canada Boat to Gaza supporters will join Sunday May 15 rally for Palestinian freedom in Vancouver, starting 1pm at Van Art Gallery
http://canadaboatgaza.org
CôTE-dES-NEIGES – CANADA
Wednesday, May 11th 2011 – screening begins at 7pm
Maison de la Culture Côte-des-Neiges
5290 Côte-des-Neiges
Bus 165 or Metro Côte-des-Neiges
free event. Donations are welcome.
Announcements #Mar15 – Africa
TUNIS – TUNISIA
Sunday, May 15 at 12:00pm – May 16 at 5:00pm
Tunis, Rue de Liberté
www.palestine.clanteam.com
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=192127047495033
Announcements #Mar15 – USA
NEW YORK – USA
New York | May 15, 2011
Al-Nakba Rally for Right of Return
CLEVELAND – OHIO – USA
Sunday, May 15 · 12:00pm – 3:00pm
CLEVELAND Protest supporting “The Third Intifadah” in Palestine!
TBD please stay tuned for updates from Al-Awda Cleveland
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=198970843473366
http://shababnetwork.com/web/events/view/11-05-15/CLEVELAND_Protest_supporting_The_Third_Intifadah_in_Palestine.aspx
WASHINGTON DC – USA
May 10 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
Palestinian Political Movements in Israel and Israeli Repression
The Palestine Center 2425 Virginia Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20037
Date: May 15, 2011 , 1 PM
Location: White House Washington DC
For details about joining the march on the UN in NY on May 15, please contact: may15rally@gmail.com
Organised by the US Palestinian Community Network | PDF
HOUSTON | TEXAS | USA
Sunday, May 15, 2011 | 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Location: Starbucks corner by the Galleria, Street: Post Oak Rd. Houston Texas
http://shababnetwork.com/web/events/view/11-05-15/HOUSTON_Commencement_of_the_3rd_Palestinian_Intifada.aspx
LOS ANGELES – CALIFORNIA – USA
Sunday, May 15, 2011 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Demonstration at Israeli Consulate
Location: Consulate General of Israel – Suite 1700 , Street: 6380 Wilshire blvd.
Demonstration at Israeli Consulate
MIAMI – FLORIDA – USA
Location: The Israeli Embassy in Miami
Sunday, May 15, 2011 , 1-4 PM
Street: 100 Biscayne Blvd
With the middle east amidst many political reforms and humanitarian uprisings, the Palestinian people have every right to claim their stolen land and the rest of their basic humanitarian needs. Egypt had a tyrannical ruler for 30 years, Libya 40 years, Tunis 32 years and the Palestinians have been deprived of their freedom for 63 years. It is time to put an end to this…
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=113229285427304
http://shababnetwork.com/web/events/view/11-05-15/MIAMI_-_Third_Intifada_rally_for_Palestine.aspx
OLYMPIA – WASHINGTON
Sunday, May 15 · 3:00pm – 5:00pm
Organised by Orca Books
509 E 4th Ave. Olympia, WA
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143401642398312&ref=nf
ALLSTON – BOSTON – MASSACHUSETTS – USA
Date: Sunday, May 15, 2011, 6:00 pm
Location: Palestinian Cultural Center for Peace • 41 Quint Ave • Allston
Call Congress this week 202-224-3121. Tell them STOP U.S. aid that supports Israel’s siege on Gaza, illegal settlement building, and violations of International Law and the human rights of Palestinians.”
http://www.justicewithpeace.org/node/2689
SACRAMENTO – USA
Remembering the Nakba – Celebrating Palestine.
Sunday, May 15, 2011,12 noon to 3pm,
North Steps, State Capitol, 11th & L, Sacramento
http://sacramento.craigslist.org/eve/2350541058.html
http://www.sacramento365.com/event/detail/441222363/Remembering_the_Nakba_Celebrating_Palestine
LIVONIA – MICHIGAN – USA
May 14: Saturday, May 14, 2011 6:30 PM
Nakba Commemoration in Michigan with Awad AbdelFattah, Noura Erakat & Helen Thomas
at Burton Manor, 27777 Schoolcraft, Livonia, MI 48150
http://wp.me/p16sn9-6T8
NEWARK – USA
May 15, 2011
AMP Bay Area Fundraiser
http://www.chandnirestaurant.com
5748 Mowry School Rd
Newark, CA
510-668-1051
American Muslims for Palestine invite you to its annual fundraising event:
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi
Dr. Hatem Bazian
Dr. Osama Abuirshaid
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/165679
SEATTLE – USA
Sunday, May 15 · 12:00pm – 5:00pm
Westlake Plaza, 4th & Pine, Seattle, WA
www.voicesofpalestine.org
Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign www.stop30billion-seattle.org
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143188592419482
Announcements #Mar15 – AUSTRALIA
BRISBANE – AUSTRALIA
Rally for Palestine – Remembering Al-Nakba
Friday 13 May 5.00 pm
Brisbane Square, top of Queen St mall (outside Casino)
www.justiceforpalestinebrisbane.org
ON PASSOVER, EXILED PALESTINIANS ASK ‘LET MY PEOPLE RETURN’
April 17, 2011 at 08:43 (Holidays, Israel, Nakba, Oppression, Palestine, Right of Return)
Of Passover, Exile, and Deliverance
By Mike Odetalla
The Jewish holiday of Passover is once again fast approaching…
As the Jews of the world and particularly those that live in Israel get ready to celebrate the Passover holiday or Pesach, I cannot but help draw an analogy of this holiday and my experience during the 1967 war. This holiday commemorates the departure of the Israelites from Egypt. Pesach marks the birth of the Jewish people as a nation led by Moshe (Moses) over 3000 years ago. This is as much a celebration of their spiritual freedom as the physical liberation from slavery. In their haste, the Jews had no time to let the dough sit and rise. Rushed as they were, the Israelites did not have time to bake their bread, nor prepare any food, and the dough they kneaded did not have time to rise. The Children of Israel wrapped up their dough and their leftover matzah and bitter herbs in their clothing, placed the bundles over their shoulders, and walked joyfully out of the land of Egypt. The dough was baked in hot sun and eaten along with the bitter herbs. Passover marked the freedom of the Jews from slavery.
As a child, I remember hearing tales from the elders, particularly those that became refugees, of how they were forced to flee their homes, lands, and villages. They were forced to leave in such a hurry, taking with them only what they could carry, leaving behind most of their belongings. Many lifetimes worth of hard work and memories was left behind in those homes and villages which were eventually looted and destroyed in a deliberate and systematic manner by the Zionists!
As I look at the black and white pictures of long lines of Palestinians who were forced to flee their lands, I cannot help but equate Pharaohs army with the Zionist army as they chased my people from their ancestral homes! The Israelites made camp and began celebrating their freedom from Egypt after crossing the Red Sea, while the Palestinians were given tents and told to wait for their eventual return from their exile! More than 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes, destitute and suffering from hunger and thirst, they were left to the elements, their only shelter were the flimsy tents that were donated by the International community!
The Mukhiamat, which means “tent cities” in Arabic, were supposed to be temporary housing for the Palestinian refugees. They were promised by the International community and the UN through the passing of UN Resolution 194, that all they would be able to return to their homes as soon as possible. In fact, as a condition for entry into the UN, the newly declared State of Israel had to agree to UN Resolution 194! More than 60 years later, the “temporary” solution to the Palestinian refugee’s plight is still ongoing! The “tent cities” have grown and become squalid ghettos, the tents having been replaced by cinder block hovels with corrugated tin roofs!
Today, I can’t help being mindful that we Palestinians have our own experiences with the unleavened bread – as is celebrated by the Jews who commemorate their exodus and freedom from Pharaoh. Except, of course, we commemorate our Nakba (catastrophe of being dispossessed) and entry into our own Diaspora. The Palestinian women, which included my mother, anxious to feed their children, would slip into nearby abandoned homes looking for any kind of food to feed us. Once they returned with flour, water, sugar, and olive oil. They kneaded the dough and immediately baked it over a fire covered with the metal lid of a barrel, the lid providing the surface upon which the bread was baked: there was no time to wait for the dough to rise as we were in constant fear and flight as we lived in and moved from cave to cave in the surrounding hills. The unleavened bread was eaten with Za’tar, a somewhat bitter herb that grows wild in the Palestinian hills.
As an adult, having shared the Jewish holiday of Passover, with my friends, I am drawn by powerful but ironic parallels between the Palestinian experience of running away in fear into the wilderness, chased by an army, looking for freedom, eating unleavened bread as we ran. For me, Pharaoh’s army was the Israel Defense Forces and we; the Palestinians were the persecuted Jews. I remember a particular meal of stale bread, which we found outside of an abandoned home, and the green onions that my mother pulled from the garden. She fed me this with a sip of stale water to wash it down.
While Jews in Israel celebrate their freedom, they continue to oppress and imprison others. The unleavened bread is now eaten with the leaves of organically grown lettuce which serves as the “bitter herbs” and is grown in many Jewish only colonies, built on the stolen lands of the Palestinians.
While Jews around the world recite the traditional Passover prayer “may all those that are hungry eat”, before they commence their feast, those that are truly hungry in Gaza are NOT allowed to eat due to the inhumane closures and suffocating blockades imposed on them by the Israelis! In fact, thousands of Gazans had their homes, fields, and lives utterly destroyed and decimated by the Israeli army forcing them once again to brave the elements in tents while the Jews of Israel celebrate and feast, Gazans a mere few hundred yards away are being starved as if they existed in an entirely different universe…
Fleeing in fear, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs…something to think about this Passover…While the Palestinians still await their “deliverance” in hunger from modern day Pharaoh!
PUTTING A HALT ON THE ONGOING NAKBA
March 10, 2011 at 13:36 (Israel, Land Theft, Nakba, Nonviolent Resistance, Palestine)
Temporary Injunction against New Building in Palestinian Village Destroyed in 1948
An Israeli court has issued a temporary injunction on selling luxury lots on the site of the historic Palestinian village of Lifta, whose residents were expelled and forced out in 1948.
Israeli Judge Yigal Marzel issued a temporary injunction on Monday (7 March) ordering the Israel Land Administration to freeze publication of the results of a tender to lease plots for building in the historic Palestinian village of Lifta.
The tender was issued following the Jerusalem Municipality approval of construction of 268 housing units, one hotel and a number of community institutions on the site of the ancient Palestinian village, the residents of which were expelled in 1948.
The petition to save Lifta was submitted on Sunday by Attorney Sami Arshid on behalf of Jerusalem activists, including descendents of Lifta, the Bnei Lifta Association, Rabbis for Human Rights and the Jafra Association.
According to the petitioners, “in the given situation and according to which the village of Lifta is an abandoned village and its original inhabitants live as refugees at a distance of only a few hundred metres from their village, it would have been befitting to abstain from all construction in the area and certainly to prevent building that would result in destruction of the village and the complete dispossession of the rights of the original inhabitants of the place”.
The petitioners further write that the “marketing of plots for building in the village of Lifta and furthermore the construction of new buildings on the village lands and in place of the existing village could thwart the ability to preserve the existing village and foil any possibility of reconstructing the historic structure of the village, and everything that is derived from this.”
Before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, more than 3,000 Palestinians lived in Lifta, but the village was depopulated during the 1948 war and partially destroyed. It is one of the few of the 500 villages that had not been completely destroyed by Israeli forces in the time since.
The AIC spoke with Meir Margalit, a member of the Jerusalem Municipal Council, about the situation in Lifta. He told the AIC, “I am extremely fearful that Lifta will eventually turn into an exclusive neighborhood, similar to neighborhoods such as Mamilla and other places where flats were sold to Jews from France and New York. I fear that Lifta will be a ghost neighborhood.”
Numerous organisations, especially BIMKOM, Zochrot and FAST have lobbied for the village to be listed by UNESCO as a heritage site, as a symbol of reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis, and for alternative plans they have formulated with the Land and Housing Research Centre.
Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine in 2005 placed an advertisement in the Times, signed by over 350 architects and planners worldwide, many of them eminent figures including academics, to help save Lifta for its original Palestinian inhabitants.
Esther Zandberg in Haaretz has again written a moving plea for the village to be symbolically returned to those who were forcibly removed from there, instead of building 212 luxury apartments that will be bought only by Jewish people, in the proposed decade-long project (plan number 6036) that the Israel Land Administration wishes now to commence.
According to a press release from the Coalition to Save Lifta, the court petitioners have requested that the court order an annulment of the tender to sell plots in Lifta and order the Israel Land Administration to desist from any action that would damage the physical and cultural heritage of the place, until an inclusive planning process is completed that includes the area of Lifta. This would ultimately include planning for preservation of the site in accordance with professional standards and with public participation.
“There are 37 Lifta refugees in East Jerusalem and Ramallah, and we have a Lifta Association; and now the internet makes it possible to keep in touch with those that have moved further away,” said Yakub Odeh, a Lifta refugee.
“We all want to return to our village. I’m sure we can achieve our dream through peaceful means….We will never give in. They say that every human being is born in the land, but for us Palestinians, our land is born in us.”
THEY WANT TO DRIVE US TO THE SEA
February 7, 2011 at 08:17 (Collective Punishment, Corrupt Politics, Ethnic Cleansing, Home Demolitions, Human Rights, Illegal Evictions, Illegal Settlements, Israel, Nakba, Occupation, Oppression, Palestine, Status of Jerusalem)
The settlers have been able to expand their hold in the neighborhood because prior to 1948 there was a Jewish neighborhood in Sheikh Jarrah. The court recognized the right of Jews who inherited properties to reclaim their properties. Since then, the settlers are working hard to convince the owners of the properties to sell them the rights so that they could evict the Palestinians and populate the area with Jewish families.
We often hear the zionists cry out that ‘the Arabs want to drive the Jews to the sea’…. but the reality remains that the zionists themselves are doing exactly that to the Arabs. One by one, family by family, Palestinian families are being driven from THEIR homes in Occupied East Jerusalem to make way for illegal Jewish settlers.
Jerusalem council set to approve Jewish housing in Arab neighborhood
Several Palestinian families in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah will be evicted to pave way for two new buildings meant to comprise 13 apartments.
The Jerusalem Municipal Committee for Planning and Building is expected to approve Monday the construction of two buildings that will include 13 apartments for Jewish residents in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
Backing the plan are settler organizations who currently occupy three homes in the neighborhood. Following the plan’s approval, it will be necessary to evict a number of Palestinian families living on the site in order for construction to commence.
Settlers evict Palestinians from their home in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, December 1, 2009. |
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Photo by: AP
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The planning committee is also expected to approve a new access road south of Har Homa, which will enable the expansion of the neighborhood.
According to the plan to be brought today for approval, two buildings will be razed in the western part of the neighborhood where, until now, nearly no Jews live. In its place, two new buildings will be built. One will have 10 apartments and the other, three.
In both cases Chaim Silverstein, a well known figure in right-wing circles in Jerusalem, is proposing the plans to the municipality. The companies behind the project are registered in the United States, and are probably front companies set up by right-wing activists in order to transfer funds for the purchase of real estate in Israel.
Silverstein has power of attorney rights in both companies, Debril and Velpin.
For the past 18 months there has been a struggle between Arabs and Jews over the activities of settlers in Sheikh Jarrah and against efforts to evict Palestinian families from the neighborhood.
The settlers have been able to expand their hold in the neighborhood because prior to 1948 there was a Jewish neighborhood in Sheikh Jarrah. The court recognized the right of Jews who inherited properties to reclaim their properties. Since then, the settlers are working hard to convince the owners of the properties to sell them the rights so that they could evict the Palestinians and populate the area with Jewish families.
A Supreme Court ruling in 2001 included the possibility of applying for Jewish property rights in the western portion of the neighborhood, and right-wing activists announced that they intended to expand their activities in the area over that portion of Sheikh Jarrah.
“Continuing Jewish settlement in Sheikh Jarrah will seriously harm relations with the Palestinians and will break all agreements that Jewish neighborhoods will remain under Israeli sovereignty and Arab neighborhoods will be under Palestinian sovereignty,” says Yosef Alalu, a Meretz city councillor.
IRONIC TWISTS OF HISTORY
December 31, 2010 at 11:50 (DesertPeace Editorial, Ethnic Cleansing, History, Irony, Israel, Nakba, Oppression, Palestine, Racism)
McCARTHYISM RESURFACES ITS UGLY FACE IN ISRAEL
THE CONTINUING NAKBA ~~ PALESTINIANS BARRED FROM RETURNING HOME
June 30, 2010 at 00:01 (Collective Punishment, Corrupt Politics, Deportations, Ethnic Cleansing, Israel, Land Theft, Nakba, Oppression, Palestine, Second Class Citizens, Status of Jerusalem, zionist harassment)
Barred from Jerusalem for crime of being Palestinian
Engineer’s battle to overturn loss of residency highlights plight of thousands
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
To say that Palestinian Murad Abu-Khalaf’s roots are in Jerusalem is a serious understatement. His family lived in the Baka district of West Jerusalem until they were forced to leave in the war of 1948. They have since lived – and live – in the inner East Jerusalem district of Ras al-Amud. His family doctor father’s clinic in East Jerusalem’s main street of Salahadin is opposite three shops owned by each of his uncles. One of his brothers, also a doctor, works at one of Jerusalem’s two main (Israeli) hospitals, the Shaare Zedek Medical Centre. The city is, in short, his home.
But when the next hearing of a case of fundamental importance to the future of this super-qualified young man takes place in the Jerusalem District Court today, he won’t be there. At the age of 33, he has suddenly become, to use his own word, “stateless”. His only “crime” has been to spend several years in the US doing an electrical engineering PhD, completing post-doctoral research funded by a division of the US Army, acquiring high-tech work experience with the sole purpose of bettering his future career prospects in the Holy Land, and being a little homesick.
Yet in 2008 the young Dr Abu-Khalaf became a statistic, one of a record 4,577 Palestinian residents to have their Israeli-conferred status as a resident of East Jerusalem revoked in that year and with it the right to live permanently or work in either Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories. It is this revocation which is being challenged in court on his behalf by the Israeli human rights lawyer Leah Tsemel today, and about which he says: “Losing my residency in my country is a source of pain to me… I feel I am being asked to choose between building my career and my homeland.”
For Dr Abu-Khalaf has been told his only chance of having the revocation “reconsidered” – and it’s far from certain this would succeed – is if he gives up his high-flying job as a software developer, leaves the US and stays here for at least two years – maybe “working in a café”, as he puts it. So far Dr Abu- Khalaf has been told he will no longer qualify for an Israeli travel document. He would still be able to visit the country as a tourist, though not work or live in it, and then only if he obtains a US travel document.
If Dr Abu-Khalaf was an Israeli citizen he would be able to take up temporary residency for as long as he liked without losing his rights. But his case exemplifies the fragile status of more than 200,000 East Jerusalem Palestinians, who have Israeli conferred ID, and the right – denied to most West Bank Palestinians – to travel in Israel and access to certain benefits like Israeli health insurance, but not the security of full citizenship. According to Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO campaigning for an “equitable and stable” shared Jerusalem, the sharp increase in residency revocations are part of “an ongoing Israeli policy to reduce the Palestinian presence in East Jerusalem”.
When Israel unilaterally annexed Arab East Jerusalem after the Six-Day War – an annexation whose legality has never been accepted by most of the international community, including Britain – it offered Palestinian residents citizenship. But the large majority refused, believing that to accept would reinforce Israel’s claim on occupied East Jerusalem.
Part of Dr Abu-Khalaf’s problem was that he applied successfully for a “green card” purely to maximise his job opportunities, but unwittingly reinforcing Israel’s determination to cut off his Jerusalem residency. Dr Abu-Khalaf said when he was job-searching “many potential employers replied to me asking if I held a green card.” They told him that “otherwise they could not employ me… I never knew it would cause all this fiasco.”
His father, Samir Abu-Khalaf, wanted Murad to return and marry when he had laid the firm basis of a career. “It’s injustice to deal with us in this way,” he said. “It seems they want Palestinians only to be workers, cleaners.” To his son it is illogical that in an age when academic and corporate life is increasingly multinational, he should be penalised for participating in it. The loss of residency “in my home country”, he said, is “at best inconsiderate… extremely backward looking, and short-sighted.”
An Interior Ministry spokeswoman said the law prescribed that East Jerusalem residents were treated like any other people with resident status, losing it if they are away for more seven years or take up residency elsewhere. Asked whether the position of native East Jerusalemites was not different from – say – those from France temporarily living and working in Israel she added: “If you want someone to justify the policy you are asking the wrong person. But it’s the law.”
THE ONGOING NAKBA IN PALESTINE
June 13, 2010 at 12:21 (Ethnic Cleansing, Israel, Nakba, Oppression, Palestine, zionist harassment)
The 43 Year Nakba Of The Rayan Family
- Young Palestinians attach flags to the apartheid fence at a demonstration commemorating 43 years since the expulsion from the Latrun Villages.
The hundreds of peaceful demonstrators congregating in New Beit-Nuba barely made it to the fence before they were met with plumes of tear gas and soon after Israeli soldiers entered the village.
After 43 years, the villagers of New Beit-Nuba and the surrounding area are used to IDF incursions. Still, their memories of 1967, forced to flee as Israeli soldiers violently raided the original villages of Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba, erasing every trace of their existence, are difficult. As tear gas rained over the Rayan house on the ‘front-line’ of New Beit-Nuba this Friday, the family recalled their forced expulsion from their land over forty years ago.
In her darkened kitchen, the shutters closed to keep out the gas, Eisha Salama Rayan, tells us how the family escaped the village. “We were sleeping, when suddenly they came from the West side. We escaped to the North Side as they came. They shot with normal ammunition. They had killed young men, who lay on the streets…escaping through Yalu we saw the dead bodies on the street.”
- Eisha Rayan, 87 sits in her tear-gas filled living room, describing her families flight from the village of Beit Nuba.
87 year old Eisha, though barely able to support herself, stands to show me how she gripped her skirt between her teeth to hold one of her children there as she ran; another child on her back. She explains with distress, that she lost a daughter because she could not carry all her children with her.
It was not only in Beit Nuba that the raids took place: “they [Israeli soldiers] spread around all the villages here. Yalu, Imwas – they also ran away, they also escaped”, Yusef Abdul Rahim Rayan explains. Describing their difficult journey, Hasan Yusef Rayan, who was just 12 at the time, says “my father took us to a cave for shelter…When there was daylight, we saw the people from Yalu and Imwas leaving. As we were going up the hill we looked back towards Yalu and saw all the wheat fields burning. On our way we saw a Jordanian soldier who had lost his head. 150 metres after we saw another dead soldier. When I saw the soldiers I realised that the Israeli soldiers were everywhere, behind us and in front of us.”
The villagers sought shelter wherever they could find it; some in the mountains, some in the caves, some with family in other villages. A few days after the forced evacuation Israeli soldiers came to the refugees and told them to return home with a loud speaker. Rayan’s account of what happened next reveals the insincerity of the offer. “We came and it was blocked…they told us to go back to King Hussein (King Hussein Bridge leading to Jordan). We had all our livestock there in Beit Nuba; our sheep, our camels. What were they talking about, going back to King Hussein? They shot at us and didn’t let us pass…A few days after we tried to get back, but they had bulldozed the village”.
- Hasan Yusef Rayan with his father Yusef Rayan. Hasan was 12 when his family was forced to flee Beit Nuba.
Beit-Nuba’s land has now become the Israeli settlement, Mar Haven. Where the villages of Imwas and Yalu once stood is a public recreation park, where Israeli families take weekend picnics. Israeli NGO Zochrot (meaning ‘Remembering’), aims to raise awareness of the park’s dark past.
Founder Eitan Bornstein explains: “at the centre of the park the JNF (Jewish National Found) constructed a set of walls that hold plaques with the names of JNF donors. Hundreds of names of Jews, mainly from Canada. Those walls are made of the stones of Imwas. Imwas was destroyed and the stones were used to honour the Jewish donors. In the park there are many signs telling the history of the place – Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman history. But the signs totally forget hundreds of years of life in the Palestinian villages.”
- Plaques of donor names in Canada Park.
Zochrot conducts alternative tours of the park and has campaigned the JNF, the Civil Administration, and eventually the Israeli Supreme Court to have signs erected within the park alerting visitors to the previous residents – Palestinian villagers.
Though the campaign has met strong and lengthy resistance from these institutions, Bornstein believes the campaign has been successful: “currently there are two signs indicating the villages. I think it was very important that in spite of the initial refusal, they [the JNF] had to post the signs. This raised the Canada Park issue…it clearly exposes the racism of the JNF’s policies.” Zochrot are currently attempting to contact the donors and their descendents involved in financing the park in an attempt to explain exactly what they are funding.
Whilst the revision and erasure of history by Israel is no surprise, there is also concern that the villages will be forgotten inside the West Bank. Protest organiser and resident of nearby Saffa village Yusuf Karakeh feels this is an important aspect of the demonstrations: “It’s nice for the young people to know about these villages because if you ask the Palestinian people about these villages, they did not say anything because they did not know it. But now, through the demonstration all people know what is Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba and what happened to them in 1967.”
- Imwas 11 years after its destruction.
The building of the wall in 2005 involved the confiscation of more land and meant an end to the agricultural way of life the villagers are used to. Hasan Rayan and his father kept around 200 sheep and 80 cows before the wall. Now this is no longer possible.
With the constant annexation of land, restrictions of freedom to work and laws against building new houses, the future New Beit-Nuba appears bleak. But while the Nakba is ongoing, the resistance survives. The villages of Beit Nuba, Yalu and Imwas are hidden beneath settlements and parks, but they will never be forgotten.
Learn more about the al-Latrun villages here http://www.palestineremembered.com/…
MAY IS THE MONTH TO REMEMBER THE FORGOTTEN
May 25, 2010 at 10:58 (Collective Punishment, Deportations, Ethnic Cleansing, Gaza, History, Israel, Land Theft, Nakba, Occupation, Oppression, Palestine, Photography)
Unending Nakbas
Eva Barlett
This is the month for Palestinians to remember their Nakba, or “catastrophe”, in which more than 700,000 women, men and children were pushed off their land and rendered homeless refugees by the Zionist attacks before, during and after the founding of Israel in 1948. Isdud, a farming community to the north of Gaza’s current border, was ethnically cleansed, in the months after the expulsions began in May 1948. It was one of over 530 villages razed and destroyed after the residents were forced out by Zionist attacks. After three nights of Israeli air bombardment, more than 5,000 Palestinian residents here were forcibly expelled from their houses and land. Most resettled in what are now overcrowded refugee camps in Gaza. “Most of the houses have been destroyed; the rubble is covered with grasses and thorns,” wrote Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi. At a Gaza City Nakba commemoration displaying the clothes, agricultural equipment and tools of Palestinian daily life, Mohammed Tooman, 83, wearing the traditional robes of Isdud, spoke of village life and their forced expulsion. *Photos from Isdud villagers “We were farmers and grew grains, fruits and had orange and palm orchards. Isdud had a large market every week and people from neighbouring towns came to buy from us. “With every sunrise, I expect to return to my home in Isdud. And as the sun sets, I tell my grandchildren about our home and village, to which they will return.” Hammad Awadallah, 70, also from Isdud, keeps this call for justice alive. “My right is passed down to my sons and daughters and their children. We will not forget our villages and our history. They are instilled in our memories.” Since 1948 the United Nations (UN) has reiterated over 130 times its Resolution 194 calling for Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. The 1974 UN Resolution 3236 specified “the inalienable right of Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return.” Roughly another four kilometres east of Isdud, East Sawafir (al Sawafir al Sharqiyya) was ethnically cleansed of its thousand residents on May 18, 1948. The village had a mosque and shared a school with two other villages. “No village houses remain on the site,” wrote Khalidi. “But some traces of the former village are still present on the surrounding lands.” Abu Fouad was born in 1930, before East Sawafir was intentionally disappeared. After the forced expulsion from his village, he ended up in the tents which eventually became the tiny, poorly-built, maze-like concrete houses of a Palestinian refugee camp. “My father was a farmer and had 35 dunums (a dunam is 1,000 square metres) of land, on which he grew wheat and vegetables. We had 50 sheep which I used to herd.” East Sawafir shared a primary school with two neighbouring villages. “We didn’t go to school after 4th grade because there were no secondary schools in our area,” says Abu Fouad. “We only learned to write our name and studied religion a little, but nothing much more.” Life was simple as were the houses. “Ours had two rooms,” Abu Fouad says, “but no bathroom: we would bathe outside. Even though we didn’t have money or the conveniences of today, we lived well, people were happy.” Like most Palestinians, Abu Fouad has relatives spilled around the world from whom he is cut off. “We have family in Jerusalem, Libya and Hebron. We don’t know them. And I haven’t seen or spoken with one of my brothers since he left for Libya decades ago.” His wife Umm Fouad comes from the same East Sawafir community. Born in 1948, she was just four months old when her family fled. “My father was a tailor and grandfather a farmer. He grew cucumbers, squash, tomatoes and other vegetables. We hand-washed our clothes and cooked food over a fire or a kerosene stove (baboor) and baked bread in the wood oven (taboon).” Although just an infant at the time of expulsion, Umm Fouad has been told the history of her family’s land and home so much that she has internalised it as her own memory. “We fled because the Israelis were firing on us. My grandmother couldn’t walk properly, so in the panic we had to leave her there. She must have died in the house. We left walking, carrying only a few possessions as we didn’t have cart or horse. It was days of walking until we reached Gaza.” And dispossessions continue. Since 1967, Israel has demolished more than 24,000 Palestinian homes in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, says the Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions (ICAHD). “I still come back to the house to work a small piece of my land that is 700 metres from the border. But even then I get shot at by the Israelis,” says Jaber Abu Rjila. His home and poultry farm east of Khan Younis lie just under 500 metres from the border. They were destroyed in a May 2008 Israeli invasion into the farming community. Soon after, the family fled, renting a house to escape the regular Israeli attacks. On May 18, Israeli soldiers set land near Rjila’s fields on fire, burning the wheat crops of the Abu Tabbash family. The Nakba is not just about memory. UPDATE: On 21 May 2010, Israeli bulldozers destroyed Jaber Abu Rjila’s remaining chicken farm, killing 150 chickens, 200 pigeons, 60 rabbits, and 5 sheep, and destroying 3 tons of wheat and rye as well as an estimated 10,000 shekels worth of onions, said Rjila. The land in question is over 600 metres from the border fence. The Israeli bulldozers also destroyed a home roughly 1 km from the border. 14 people lived in the house, including a man who was ready to marry and bring his bride to the home. photos from the Gaza City Nakba commemoration of Isdud village: *pointing to his father, from Isdud. *the rebab, a simple, traditional musical instrument interesting facts and quotes: Founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, in 1895, called for Palestinians to be expelled from their land by land purchase and economic deprivation: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border.” Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, called for Palestinian expulsion by any means: “We must expel Arabs and take their places…and, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places-then we have force at our disposal.” “Moshe Dayan Israeli Minister of Defense during the 1967 war said, “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. …There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab Population.” (from Ha’aretz, April 4, 1969)” [SOURCE: IMEU] “Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University in New York, points out that ‘it is crucial to remember that Zionist forces expelled 400,000 Palestinians from their lands before 1948. Many hundreds of thousands more would be expelled in the months and years following, throughout the 1950s, and again since 1967.’” [SOURCE: ELECTRONIC INTIFADA] “As a result of home demolitions, revocation of residency rights and construction of illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian owned-land, at least 57,000 Palestinians have become displaced in the occupied West Bank.” [SOURCE: AL AWDA] “Internal displacement continues unabated in the OPT today. Thousands have been forcibly displaced in the Jordan Valley as a result of closure, home demolition and eviction orders, and the threat of displacement hangs over those who remain. Similar patterns of forced displacement are found in Israel, where urban development plans for the exclusive benefit of Jewish communities are displacing indigenous Palestinian communities in the Naqab (Negev) and Galilee.” [SOURCE: BADIL] “Following the Israeli 2008-2009 war on Gaza which destroyed or badly damaged at least 20,000 homes, construction materials continue to be banned entry into Gaza by the Israeli authorities, and those 20,000 families remain homeless.” [SOURCE: FRIENDS OF UNRWA] “In 1950, Israel enacted the Law of Return, granting any Jew anywhere the right to citizenship as a Jewish national in Israel and (since 1967) also in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) while the 1952 Citizenship Law denationalised the Palestinian refugees.” [SOURCE: BADIL] “some 30 laws that explicitly discriminate between Jews and non-Jews — another way of referring to the fifth of the Israeli population who are Palestinian and supposedly enjoy full citizenship. There are also many other Israeli laws and administrative practices that lead to an outcome of ethnic-based segregation even if they do not make such discrimination explicit.” [SOURCE: DISSIDENT VOICE] “Palestinians with Israeli citizenship continue to face tens of racist, discriminatory Israeli laws and live as lesser citizens vulnerable to harassment, arrest and injustices.” [SOURCE: CRAIG MURRAY] SEE ALSO: |
SUNDAY MATINEE AT THE MOVIES ~~ PALESTINE … YESTERDAY, TODAY, FOREVER
May 23, 2010 at 10:20 (Ethnic Cleansing, History, Land Theft, Nakba, Oppression, Palestine, Videos)
Bookmark this page and view videos at your convenience….
Israeli NGO Zochrot, Hebrew for “Remembering”, an organisation that works to raise awareness about the Nakba, goes out into the streets of Jaffa and discovers what Israelis think about the rights of refugees.
Nahr al-bared refugee camp has still not recovered from the devastating war in 2007 during which it was destroyed. The Lebanese army has been keeping a tight grip on the camp and the 20.000 displaced Palestinians that have returned so far. The army’s siege seriously hampers the camp’s economic recovery, as access is restricted and the area was declared a military zone. A recent survey found that the army’s presence and measures are considered a difficulty by 98 per cent of nahr al-bared’s business owners. The army meanwhile justifies its presence as necessary to the preservation of the safety of the people.
This 30-minute film documents various consequences of the siege on nahr al-bared. Merchants and artisans explain their specific problems and the UNRWA project manager, a project coordinator of the palestinian-arab women league, The president of nahr al-bared’s merchants’ committee and a researcher provide their views and thoughts on the issue.
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ZIONISM MUST BE ABOLISHED IF REAL PEACE IS EVER TO HAVE A CHANCE
May 18, 2010 at 11:21 (Associate Post, Israel, Nakba, Palestine)
Nakba-62: we will not forget, we will not forgive
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By Khalid Amayreh
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Hunefis, and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that didn’t have a former Arab population.” Moshe Dayan, during an address to the Technion, Haifa , reported in Ha’aretz, April 1969
“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of changes in the air- however slight-lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” William O. Douglas.
As a Palestinian who has been living under the yoke of Israeli military occupation for over 43 years and who lost three innocent uncles and several other relatives, in addition to tens of thousands of my people to Zionist bullets and other tools of death, I should have no problems comparing Israel with Nazi Germany. It is true that Israel has not introduced gas chambers into Palestinian towns and villages. (Gas chambers were not the main method of killing in Nazi Germany). However, Israel has been killing and tormenting Palestinians unceasingly in a variety of ways that, in their brutality and sheer evil, don’t really differ in substance from Nazi behavior. Moreover, it is important to remember that the German Holocaust didn’t begin with actual abominable crimes such as Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, but rather with an idea, with a book and with a Kristallnacht, the sort of things that are so rampant in Israel’s collective thinking these days as the Israeli Jewish society continues to drift menacingly towards religious and secular fascism. Indeed, any honest comparison between Israeli behavior and Nazi acts and behavior would reveal the striking similarity between Zionist and Nazi thinking. The manifestly racist public discourse in Israel is an expression of a society that is poisoned by fascist thinking, a society without a moral or even a human compass. Fortunately, several Israeli intellectuals, such as former Knesset Speaker Abraham Burg, have spoken elaborately about the growing dearth of humanity and morality in Israel. However, instead of paying attention to these conscientious voices, the bulk of the Israeli society continues to slide toward the fascist abyss, which is more or less the same path that Germany faced prior to the Second World War. This is not liberal Zionism giving way to religious Zionism as some Israeli and pro-Israeli apologists would argue. There is simply no such a thing as liberal Zionism or democratic Zionism or even human Zionism, just as there was no such a thing as liberal Nazism or democratic Nazism or human Nazism. These are stark contradictions in terms. Indeed, the moment a Zionist Jew sets foot in Palestine and accepts, enthusiastically as is usually the case, to live on a piece of land seized or effectively stolen from its rightful proprietors and to live in a house seized at gunpoint from its native Palestinian owners, this Zionist Jew loses his humanity and becomes an evil person, knowingly or unknowingly. We all know that there were millions of people in Germany and other European countries who didn’t actually commit direct crimes such as murdering innocent people. But they did provide the “human” basis for Nazi criminality and their silence, tacit or explicit approval, was conducive to making the general Nazi discourse acquire a certain rationality if not legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Zionism, we are told, is about ‘building a national homeland for the Jews.’ However, for millions of its victims, Zionism is a project of dispossession, it is about the uprooting, expulsion and dispersion of the bulk of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homeland to the four corners of the world by way of organized terror and violence. Indeed, Zionism has always been clear about one thing: The Palestinians would have to leave by ‘hook or by crook.’ And there is ample historical evidence to support this fact. This is the evil side of Zionism that much of the West doesn’t want to recognize or even know about.. From its very inception, Zionism viewed Palestine as a land without a people for a people without a land. This arrogant denial of the Palestinian people’s very existence didn’t originate in ignorance of reality. It was rather an expression of virulent and violent racism, very much like those white European barbarians who exterminated untold millions of indigenous Americans and called the genocide ‘Manifest Destiny.’ The Zionists did know that Palestine was populated by hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims. In 1897 two Austrian rabbis visiting Palestine to assess the feasibility of making it a Jewish state, sent a pithy telegram summing up the situation. “The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man.” That ‘other man’ was none other than the Palestinian Arab nation, long established as a political entity. Yet, the Zionist movement insisted with unflinching determination on wresting the bride from her lawful husband. That was a sheer act of rape, it still is an act of rape and will always be an act of rape, no matter how much the myth is glorified and the mythmakers are celebrated. Needless to say, this act of rape has no moral legitimacy, and never will. It has no right to exist, and never will. How can an act of rape and theft acquire legitimacy. Does a theft become legitimate after the passage of 62 years? This is, of course, unless the system of “right and wrong” upon which human existence is supposed to be based is decimated into smithereens and morphed into another system based on the laws of the jungle. In 1948, the forces of Zionist terror ethnically cleansed more than 90% of Palestinians in pre-1967 Palestine, banishing them to the four winds. Now, they are dreaming or probably planning to do it again, and they want to ‘transfer’ millions of Palestinians to ‘the desert’ in order to maintain Israel’s pure Jewish identity and have more ‘Lebensraum’ for ‘God’s chosen people.’ Yes, despite the passage of nearly sixty years of ‘Jewish Statehood,’ Israel’s undeclared but ultimate goal remains the expulsion of most or all Palestinians from the area extending from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, any casual observer of the Israeli media will be affronted, nearly on a daily basis, by remarks and statements by Israeli officials, including Knesset members and cabinet ministers, calling for ‘transferring’ the Palestinians, not only from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, but also from Israel. ‘Transfer’ is not an innocent term. It is no less than a euphemism for genocide, at least a partial genocide, since it is almost impossible to effect the wholesale removal and ethnic cleansing of millions of people from their motherland without resorting to mass murder and mass terror. Well, was not this the method used quite liberally by the legions of Zionism to force the bulk of the Palestinian people to flee their hometowns and villages in 1948? Didn’t Menachem Begin (may he rot in hell) in his book ‘The Revolt’ refer to the Deir Yassin Massacre as a miracle because it made hundreds of thousands of terror-stricken Palestinians flee in fear? It is imperative that we call the spade a spade, especially when in the hands of our gravediggers. The Zionists are comparable to Nazis because their actions and behavior are comparable and similar to Nazi actions and behavior, and if Nazi actions and behavior were decidedly nefarious as they indeed were, then by the same token we must apply the same standards to the Nazis of our time. In the final analysis, when Zionist Jews think, behave and act like the Nazis of yesterday, they do become Nazis of today. No special treatment ought to be given to them. Right is right and wrong is wrong. Indeed, just as the Nazis sought to obliterate Jews as a people, the Zionists have been seeking to obliterate the Palestinians as a people. This is more than Golda Meir saying dismissively “what Palestinians?”!! Or some Israeli officials referring to us contemptuously as ‘Never-landers.’ The systematic destruction of some 460 Palestinian towns and villages by Israel (1948-52) was a Nazi act of the highest order. It embodied total disregard and total denial of ‘the other’ on no ground other than that the victims being non-Jewish. The relics of many of these towns can still be seen even today and are meticulously documented in Walid Khalidi’s monumental work, ‘All That Remains.’ Unfortunately, this modus operandi of hateful racism and terror remains Israel’s central policy towards the Palestinian people. There is no clearer proof of Israel’s malicious intent than the unrelenting intensive building of hundreds of Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Yes, everything here is ‘Jewish-only.’ Jewish-only settlements, Jewish-only roads, Jewish-only pools, even Jewish-only rights and Jewish-only tunnels since non-Jews are viewed by Zionism (religious and secular Zionism) as children of a lesser God or even outright animals. Israeli and Zionist apologists may not express these beliefs openly on CNN and BBC. They are not that stupid. But the daily crimes of the Israeli state, its army and especially its Nazi-like settlers, bear a clarion testimony to this virulent racism, which can only be compared to the ideology of the Third Reich. Just take a look at this evil gigantic wall, the stated goal of which is to prevent Palestinian guerrillas from infiltrating into Israel, whereas the real purpose is to carve and steal as much Palestinian land as possible, under the largely false rubric of security, and to narrow Palestinian horizons further and further by effectively converting Palestinian towns and villages into de facto detention camps. Perhaps a visit to the northern Palestinian town of Qalqilya will be more eloquent evidence of the brutal ugliness of Zio-Nazism. In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the Wall was illegal and ought to be dismantled. However, Israel, backed by its guardian-ally, the United States, arrogantly defied the ruling and implicitly accused the court and its judges of anti-Semitism. In addition to the settlements, inhabited by some of the most violent and racist-minded Jews anywhere in the world, Israel has always sought to make Palestinian lives so harsh and unbearable in order to coerce them to emigrate. To realize this evil goal, successive Israeli governments (Labor and Likud alike) employed every conceivable legal trick, including the introduction of dual justice systems, a liberal one for Jews and a harsh one for non-Jews. One expression of this judicial apartheid is the open-ended incarceration of thousands of Palestinian activists, students, professionals and college professors as well as politicians, including lawmakers and cabinet ministers, without charge or trial. (Since 1967 Israel has arrested over a million Palestinians). When the notoriously insidious system of institutionalized repression failed to make significant numbers of Palestinians emigrate, Israel resorted to brazen physical harm in the form of terrorizing and killing the Palestinians at the slightest ‘provocation’, very much like Hitler’s forces did throughout Nazi-occupied Europe more than sixty years ago. Needless to say, Israeli ‘pacification’ raids and incursions, like Nazi pacification raids and incursions, would leave many children and women killed, homes destroyed, farms pulverized, furniture and house appliances vandalized and roads and infrastructures thoroughly bulldozed. In short, everything, every conceivable crime is committed by this Nazi-like entity, all under the rubric of fighting terror. And then much of the Western media would just parrot the Israeli narrative as if the Israeli army spokesmen were the paragons of truth and honesty. A state that allows and instructs its army to bombard with heavy artillery densely populated neighborhoods, as happened on numerous occasions, before and after the murderous onslaught against Gaza more than a year ago, is a Nazi state par excellence, even if it evokes the Torah, God, Ten Commandments, and terror. Moreover, an army whose soldiers blithely and gleefully murder children on their way to school and then verify the killing by emptying twenty more bullets into the child’s head, as happened with Iman al Hams in Rafah nearly three years ago, and then the soldier is exonerated and given financial compensation, is not really an army of professional soldiers, but an army of thugs, gangsters and common criminals. It is an army that differs very little from the Wehrmacht, the Gestapo and SS. And the fire storms over Gaza created by the heavy use of White Phosphorus over in densely populated neighborhoods? Well, I am sure that Hitler and his cohorts would have had much to learn from the Nazis of our time. In 2002, Portuguese Noble Laureate Jose Saramago, who won the Noble Prize for literature in 1998, toured the occupied Palestinian territories and saw for himself the extent to which Israeli repression of Palestinians resembled Nazi behavior during World War II. Here is some of what he had to say about his impression following the tour. “We must ring all bells in the world to tell that what is happening in Palestine is a crime, and it is within our power to stop it. We can compare it to what happened in Auschwitz, even if we consider the differences in place and time, it is still the same thing. From the military view point, Ramallah is the barracks, and the Palestinians are the prisoners inside.” When challenged by some Israeli spokespeople that the Israelis were not shipping Palestinians to concentration camps, Saramago retorted, telling them, “Gas chambers are not the only way to kill people.” In fact, Israel has been waging a ‘total war’ on a virtually completely unprotected civilian population, and this fact alone should justify the Zionist-Nazi analogy. The blitzkrieg in Gaza was too eloquent to need further explanation using human words? According to the Israeli Hebrew Daily Ma’ariv, quoted by the famous British journalist Robert Fisk, an Israeli officer advised his troops to study tactics adopted by the Nazis in the Second World War. “If our job is to seize a densely populated refugee camp or take over the Nablus Casbah, an officer must analyze the lessons of past battles even to analyze how the German army operated in the Warsaw Ghetto.” (see Robert Fisk, The Independent, London , 30th March, 2002) Well, the Israelis don’t have to learn much from the Nazis or anybody else. In many respects, the Israeli army has succeeded in emulating and surpassing the Gestapo, the SS, and the Wehrmacht. The Israeli army shoots and murders wounded civilians. The Israeli army destroys homes, occasionally right on top of sleeping civilians; the Israeli army bulldozes farms, olive groves, citrus orchards, agricultural fields as collective punishment, and Israeli tanks smash their way through the walls of refugee camp shanties, without the slightest regard for the inhabitants. Like the Nazis’s victims were treated, Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza , from 15 to 60 years of age, are routinely rounded up, many are stripped naked, handcuffed, harshly interrogated and tortured. Politicians are kidnapped and held hostage and left to suffer, often without food and water. And Israeli occupation soldiers are give carte blanche to torment, humiliate and even kill innocent civilians at evil roadblocks manned by equally evil soldiers and border policemen. In some cases, these soldiers even force innocent Palestinian youngsters to drink their (the soldiers’) urine as was reported by the Israeli press on several occasions. As with the Nazis, hundreds of wounded Palestinians are left to die as Israeli troops deliberately block ambulances, and Israeli warplanes, including F-16s and Apache helicopters, rain bombs and missiles on major towns and refugee camps, such as Rafah, Khan Younis, Beit Hanoun, Jabalya, and on cities such as Hebron, Bethlehem and Nablus. Indeed, the discovery of a single resistance fighter often results in the destruction of a huge multistory building as this writer witnessed in Hebron several times. And yes, like the Nazis detained and interned thousands of Jews in special camps called concentration camps, the Israeli government also imprisons thousands of Palestinians in detention camps Israeli propagandists would argue that Israel could, from a purely military viewpoint exterminate six million Palestinians in a few days and that it doesn’t do so for ‘moral and ethical reasons.’ This is simply a big lie. If Israel were truly concerned about ‘moral and ethical considerations’ it wouldn’t be carrying out these horrendous daily crimes in Gaza, including the imposition of this criminal blockade which is meant to starve and torment innocent people just because they had the audacity to elect a political party that Israel and its huge proxy-like American colony didn’t like. The real reason preventing Israel from carrying out a final solution against the Palestinians is the international public opinion and the feared political ramifications. Is there hope for a peaceful solution to this enduring cancer? Certainly there is, and it lies in dismantling Zionism and the creation of a unitary, civic and democratic State in Palestine-Israel whereby Jews and Arabs can live equally as citizens as many Jews and Arabs are living in Europe and North America and many other parts of the world today. This is because the two-state strategy upon which current American-led peace efforts is irreversibly dead given the ubiquitous proliferation of Jewish-only settlement and the nearly complete Judaizing of Arab East Jerusalem. I say Zionism ought to be dismantled because the anachronistic concept of ‘Jewish State’ necessarily implies intrinsic racism and violence against non-Jews. Indeed, Israel is constitutionally defined as the state of ‘all’ Jews irrespective of where they live. This means that Israel is also the state of millions of people around the world who are not Israeli citizens, while it is not a state of nearly one quarter of Israeli citizens who are followers of different religions. This scandalous anomaly must come to an end if there is to be peace and stability in Palestine/Israel. Finally, Israel must not delude itself into thinking that it has achieved a final victory. It has not and it won’t. Because the conflict will remain open-ended until the slate is wiped clean. Sixty-Two years are nothing in the history of this region. |
A YOUNG PALESTINIAN LOOKS BACK TO 1948
May 17, 2010 at 11:07 (Ethnic Cleansing, Guest Post, History, Land Theft, Nakba, Palestine)
The year his nation was erased from the map…..
“Al Nakba”–The Palestinian Catastrophe of 1948
The Palestinian Exile, also known as Al Nakba (Arabic for “The Catastrophe”), refers to the ethnic cleansing of native Palestinian peoples … all » during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
From December 1947 until November 1948, Zionist forces (namely the Irgun, Lehi, Haganah terrorist gangs) expelled approximately 750, 000 indigenous Palestinians–almost 2/3 of the population–from their homes.
Hundreds of Palestinians were also murdered for refusing to leave their homes. The most notable massacre is the Deir Yassin Massacre, in which an estimated 120 Palestinian civilians were brutally murdered by an Irgun-Lehi force. Other massacres include the ones at Sahila (70-80 killed), Lod (250 killed), and Abu Shusha (70 killed). About 40 other massacres were carried out by Zionist forces in just the summer of 1948.
Not only did Zionist forces conduct massacres of Palestinian civilians, rape occured as well. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, “In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer [in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg.”
During Al Nakba, Palestinians were murdered, raped, and ethnically cleansed from their villages. According to Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, “In a matter of seven months, 531 villages were destroyed and 11 urban neighborhoods emptied.”
Palestinians were forced into were forced out of Palestine and into neighboring countries (i.e. Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan), where they lived in refugee camps. Many were also sent to camps in West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Most Palestinian towns were demolished and taken by the newly established Israeli government to make room for new Jewish immigrants. Old Palestinian infrastructures, as well as many ruins dating back from the Canaanites, Romans, Greeks, Crusaders, Arabs, and Ottoman Turks were completely destroyed. This signified the end of historical Palestine and the birth of modern-day Israel.
Al Nakba marked the beginning of the Palestinian refugee crisis. Al Nakba destroyed a thriving and diverse Palestinian society and scattered them into diaspora. According to the UNRWA, the number of registered Palestinian refugees today is approximately 4.5 million. These refugees are dispersed throughout the world, many of which are still living in poverty-stricken refugee camps. Today, the situation keeps worsening and thousands die from malnutrition, contaminated water, or scarce medical supply.
Israel has since refused to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, and has refused to pay them compensation as required by UN Resolution 194, which was passed on December 11, 1948.
Historically, the Israeli government, Israeli schools, and Israeli historians have denied that Al Nakba has occured. However, The New Historians, a loosely-defined group of Israeli historians, have recently published information recognizing the Al Nakba tragedy and controversial views of matters concerning Israel, particularly events concerning its birth in 1948. Much of their material comes from recently declassified papers. Leading scholars in this school include Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, and Tom Segev. Many of their conclusions have been attacked by other scholars and Israeli historians, who continue deny Al Nakba even occurred.
About the Author from www.peaceforgaza.blogspot.com : Ayman Talal Quader. I’m a Palestinian born and raised in Gaza. I’m 23 years old. I have a bachelor degree in English Language and Education. I have worked in several different fields’ pre and post of my university studies for almost 4 years. I have worked as volunteer in civil societies where I practiced tasks to help people and educate children. i always try to bring the suffering of Palestinian to the whole world.I Do Love Gaza and its people, its land, its the breezes. i believe that justice and freedom should prevail one day.