Nakba survivor marches through Manara Square with drumming scouts, Ramallah, 15 May.
Black balloons released from Manara Square, to fill the sky with floating reminders of the refugees.
Names and details of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948.
Kids enjoy the balloons in Qalandia refugee camp.
A more permanent form of balloon protest, Qalandia.
Armenian workshop in Jerusalem's old city, graffitied with the Kach symbol.
I Miss You, Mosrara, Jerusalem.
Demolished green hummos- yet another image from the Galilee.
Tarboush tip: Diala for taking the first half of these pictures.
Showing posts with label Nakba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nakba. Show all posts
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Photojournal: Black Balloons
Friday, May 16, 2008
Expressions of Nakba Gallery
In one of the more creative Nakba commemorations, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation held a multi-media arts competition. After receiving more than 300 pieces from 26 countries, a jury selected the most compelling works.
Selected pieces from the four categories of entries are available at an on-line gallery.
Greek Luminaries Post Nakba Statement
Greek newspapers published a statement of solidarity with the Palestinian people. It was written by 87 notable Greeks and Cypriots. Part of it read:
There is no reason to celebrate! Israel at 60 is a state that is still denying Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned rights, simply because they are 'non-Jews'. It is still illegally occupying Palestinian and other Arab lands, in violation of numerous UN resolutions. It is still persistently and grossly breaching international law and infringing fundamental human rights with impunity afforded to it through munificent US and European economic, diplomatic and political support. It is still treating its own Palestinian citizens with institutionalised discrimination.The signatories included prominent intellectuals, artists, academics and other figures from Greece and Cyprus. Specifically, a few examples are: acclaimed directors Pantelis Voulgaris and Nikos Koundouros, renowned singers Giorgos Dalaras, Demis Roussos and Maria Farandouri, writer and resistance fighter Manolis Glezos, former world javelin champion Sophia Sakorafa, composers Elias Andriopoulos and Giorgos Katsaros, poet/lyricist Manos Eleftheriou, and many actors, writers, artists and professors.
In short, celebrating 'Israel at 60' is tantamount to dancing on Palestinian graves to the haunting tune of lingering dispossession and multi-facted injustice. There is absolutely no reason to celebrate. But there are myriad reasons to reflect, to engage, to work towards peace and justice.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Celebrating Israeli Independence
Linda Mamoun wrote a funny and irreverent piece, "Israel Parties Like It's 1948: Marketing Ethnic Cleansing." It explores how pro-Israeli groups made Israel's 60th anniversary a fun bonanza. Check it out.
60 years ago
60 years ago, the state of Israel was founded on the land that was formerly known as Palestine. It is regarded as a miracle country, a state able to grow in strength and power as a home for the Jewish people in the midst of millions of hostile Arabs. Or so the narrative goes.
The problem with that narrative is that it completely fails to acknowledge the rights of the Palestinian people, at whose cost Israel was established. Palestine was never a barren, empty land. It had a vibrant, thriving culture and a settled population that had lived there for hundreds of years. Between the years of 1947 and 1949, most of that population -hundreds of thousands of men, women and children- were expelled from their homes by Zionist militias intent on cleansing the land of the native Arabs so that a purely Jewish state could be created in their wake. As Israeli historian Benny Morris puts it, "a Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians.”
Israel’s supporters claim that the refugees were forced out in the fighting that broke out when Arab armies attacked the new Israeli state. This version of events completely ignores the fact that Palestinian towns and villages were emptied of their populations by Zionist gangs before and after the war. Furthermore, the issue is not the circumstance of the flight of these refugees-rather, it is the fact that they were never allowed to return.
My grandparents were forced out of their homes in the village of Fallujah near Gaza in March 1949, months after an armistice was reached in that area. They left believing they’d be back in three days. Instead, they still live in the Khan Younis refugee camp where I was born, 60 years on.
Despite what many would like to believe, these refugees, now numbering several million, won’t disappear. Not only are their calls for the right to return to their homes natural and just, but they are enshrined in international law and UN Security Council resolutions. If Israeli society believes that they can ever live in total peace and security while continuing to deprive the Palestinians of their most basic right, the right to return to their own homes, it is deluding itself. The entire conflict stems from this point. To solve any problem, we must go back to the cause instead of attempting to gloss over it with vague promises of statehood or sovereignty, of defiant (and hypocritical) statements against ‘terror’
and incitement.
I am not advocating the destruction of Israel or the expulsion of the Jewish people. Palestinians have accepted that Israelis have made their homes in this country. What I am advocating is an end to the continued attempts to destroy the Palestinian people. In an age where many try to characterize the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as one waged between moderates and extremists, the Palestinian people are demanding nothing more than the implementation of international law and of their human rights. For 60 years now, Israel has rejected the demands of the international community, portraying the people it displaced and dispossessed as the obstacles to justice.
60 years on and the Palestinian people have not disappeared. It is time to recognize the grave injustice committed against them, and end the decades of longing and suffering. It is time for the Israeli people to realize that the Palestinians have the right to share this land as equals.
It is time to return.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
After Egypt, Jordan...
...bans any event commemorating the Nakba. For the sake of "public security", I presume?
Tarboush tip: Angry Arab
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Nakba Demonstration in Safuria Attacked
**Please click here for video from www.panet.co.il.
***What happened to the people of Safuria?
Thousands of people converged Thursday on the land of Safuria to mark the anniversary of the Nakba and to demonstrate for the right of return of the refugees. The crowd included mainly Palestinian citizens of Israel, and some Jewish citizens. Chants included "Long live Palestine," "Gaza is Palestinian and Golan is Syrian," and "We are all one people" invoking the West Bank, Gaza and Arab countries along with the people of the Galilee, and "The White House is the biggest terrorist." Some people released hundreds of black balloons into the sky to fly over the 60th Birthday of Israel celebrations and barbecues to remind them of those who were forced out 60 years ago.
Safuria was a town that was cleared of its residents and destroyed in 1948. It was larger than Nazareth at the time of its destruction. Many of the descendants of the former residents of Safuria now live in nearby Nazareth, while others fled to refugee camps in the West Bank and surrounding countries. The Jewish community that now lives on the land of Safuria is called Tsippuri. Each year for the last ten years, these Nakba commemoration demonstrations in the Galilee have been at the site of a different destroyed village.
When I left the demo, I saw riot police waiting across the street. However they seemed relaxed and simply there to make sure no confrontations took place with the Jewish people celebrating in the field on the other side. Then, the next morning, I saw this image of Member of Knesset Wasel Taha:
I learned that after a couple hours of the demonstration, the police moved in, some on horseback, and attacked people with tear gas and sound bombs, brilliantly setting the fields on fire. My coworker was there with her small girls still at the time the police and army came into the crowd. My older daughter was so afraid. She never wants to go again, though I told her no, the police are just trying to make us afraid. There were people with blood, and smoke and bombs and gas. We are not used to this and we didn't expect anything like it. There had been no problem- the police and the army came in and made the problem.
Six youth were arrested, and more were injured at the close of what was an otherwise peaceful demonstration attended by whole families with small children:
Egyptian State Goons Want People to Forget the Nakba
They indirectly intervened to cancel the events of Nakba week, and interestingly enough the event at Townhouse gallery (which I live very close to) was ignored by them because it doesn't have much of a popular Egyptian crowd that frequents it. This is the same Egyptian state that likes to delude itself that it achieved a glorious victory over Israel in 1973 (and then went promptly and made "peace" in 1978). AUC professor Jalal Amin the other day said that in his daughter's junior high school exam around that time, all the questions in the Arabic comprehension section had sentences about the gloriousness of peace in it.
Tarboush tip: Electronic Intifada and Serene Assir
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
60 Years Later, Nakba Front Page News
Israel is today celebrating it's 60th anniversary. I was surprised and pleased to see this article on the front page of the International Herald Tribune yesterday: After 60 Years, Arabs in Israel Are Outsiders, complete with pictures and video.
Then I read the first paragraph. The author feels the needs to qualify from the start the Palestinian discontent inside of Israel:
As Israel toasts its 60th anniversary in the coming weeks, rejoicing in Jewish national rebirth and democratic values, the Arabs who make up 20 percent of its citizens will not be celebrating. Better off and better integrated than ever in their history, freer than a vast majority of other Arabs, Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens are still far less well off than Israeli Jews and feel increasingly unwanted.
Why? The first thing the author points out is to the effect of, 'You should thank your lucky stars that you're living here in a westernized civilized society, and not with those backwards barbarians we're surrounded by.' And does he really believe that they are freer than other Arabs? If he's talking about ability to get a visa to the US, ok. If he's talking about freedom from harassment by intelligence and police, freedom from state oppression, freedom from discrimination, the right to hold property without anyone taking it from you arbitrarily, or freedom of the press, he's got some research to do.
The article also curiously ignores the Bedouin, who have the worst living situation and rights abuses inside of Israel's self-chosen borders not including Jerusalem. The article ignores the situation of Jerusalem residents, who have lived under Israeli governance since 1967 yet who do not have Israeli citizenship and hence have a different, lesser set of rights. While I understand the purpose of focusing on Palestinian citizens of Israel, which does not include the Golan or Jerusalem, I find that simply mentioning their plight in the consideration of Israel's treatment of the native population within what it considers its borders demonstrates the nature of the colonial settlement and ethnic cleansing that has been ongoing for 60 years. It gives some context to the 'freedoms' the author cites, that these apparently civilized barbarians should be thankful that they've been enlightened with.
Despite my criticisms, however, the Nakba on the front page is a positive step.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Self-Hating Jews
From the Guardian, these Jews hate themselves because they believe in equality between Arabs and Jews. I mean, how dare they talk about Plan Dalet and the Yitzhak Rabin-admitted ethnic cleansing of Lydda and Ramleh as bad things:
"In May, Jewish organisations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-semitism and Hitler's genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasised, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba is to the Palestinians.
In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa's market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorised the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the state. We will not be celebrating.
In July 1948, 70,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in Lydda and Ramleh in the heat of the summer with no food or water. Hundreds died. It was known as the Death March. We will not be celebrating.
In all, 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. Some 400 villages were wiped off the map. That did not end the ethnic cleansing. Thousands of Palestinians (Israeli citizens) were expelled from the Galilee in 1956. Many thousands more when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Under international law and sanctioned by UN resolution 194, refugees from war have a right to return or compensation. Israel has never accepted that right. We will not be celebrating.
We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.
We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East."
click on the link to see the list of signers
(Tarboush Tip: Tammy)
Friday, April 11, 2008
Sha3bawi
From KABOBfriend Tarek:
sunday morning, i got up early and put on a shirt that reminds me a lot of my dad. it's chocolate brown and has the little button flaps on the shoulders and two pockets that button on the chest. my dad loves those shirts.
i was heading home.
i went to sha'ab once as a kid.
My family's village was always a mythical place painted in my mind by my dad's second-hand stories. I remember three things from my visit to sha'ab with my mom and deena almost 12 years ago -
1. the dust from the streets which i kicked up onto my shoes and my chubby ankles and calves.
2. distant members of baba's family feuding over where we would eat lunch.
3. a simple, boring rock that i picked up and put in a red velvet jewelry box which wouldn't close as a way of actualizing baba's myth.
when our bus pulled up to the bottom of sha'ab's hill (bus 68), the village was instantly different than i remembered it to be. i remembered walking in on a flat, grimy road and thinking..."psh. this is it?"
this time, i climbed the windy road to the top, curving around half finished homes and closed convenience shops. For the first few minutes, I wasn't actually sure I was in sha'ab as i looked around at the buildings, the new construction underway..."where is this place," i kept thinking to myself.
soon, though, i started to look around and feel a sort of familiarity with the people. a lot of the kids playing in the street had colored eyes and hair that was more brown than black, lawyers and engineers' names were proudly displayed: faour, el-khatib, and khaled - names i had recognized all my life as my townspeople; i soon saw a sign in arabic assuring me i had scaled the right path:
"مدرسة شعب الابتدائية على اسم الاستاذ كامل سعده" kamel sa'ade sha'ab primary school.
sha'ab is a town of bends and curves, of dust and dirt - of people. quaint is a fittingly kitsch but hardly sufficient description. nonetheless, as i neared the point where the street's upward incline leveled off onto a rocky plateau of construction, i thought to myself, looking over the endless grove of olive trees below, "well. this is it. sha'ab. that didn't take long."
as i pushed on, continuing down the hill, i saw two men in what will from this point forward be referred to as palestinian stance 1(one foot against a wall, second leg slightly bent at the knee, staring into the distance) and decided to test the reality and viability of a family tree.
in the most literal of translations.
"brother, allow me to burden you. where is the home of the el-khatib clan?"
"no. it's no burden in the least! welcome welcome. 1oo welcomes to sha'ab. why do you ask? (welcome.)"
"i'm tarek ziad said ismail el-khatib. i'm from here. from sha'ab. but from america. but from here."
"ahhhhhh! welcome welcome welcome. so you want to see your relatives! who from the house of el-khatib do you want to see?"
"i don't know. just show me some khatibs."
"well there's abu-something-or-other right here, he should be able to tell you. and if he doesn't know, then just follow that street all the way down until you see construction in the road, and that area is all el-khatibs."
"Ok great. Thanks."
And I was off. One of the pair yelled at me while I was walking down the hill, smirking,
"Who leaves America to come to this place anyway?"
"I do!"
"Well, you're an ahbal (a goof.)"
"Thanks."
I went to abu-something-or-others house near the top of the street, but the only person in was a 12 year old boy in a yellow sweatshirt hanging out the window."
Is abu-something-or-other home?!" I asked him. I slurred the something-or-other part because I wasn't sure at all what the name was.
"No he's not home!"
I walked over to the people sitting on their front porch across the street. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and they were outside chopping the stems off of some type of leaf to cook as palestinians do.
"May God give you health."
"May he increase your health."
"Do you know where the el-khatib neighborhood is?"
"Abu-something-or-other across the street is el-khatib."
"I know. His son just told me he's not home."
"YOUR DAD'S NOT IN THE HOUSE?!" he yelled past me at the yellow sweatshirt kid who may have been named something-or-other, given his father's name.
"NO."
"Ah. He's not home," No shit. "Ok...well if you walk down this street to the end, you'll be in the el-khatib neighborhood. You can't miss it."
"Ok, thanks."
"Welcome welcome."
I kept walking down the street. Most of the houses in this area were mere skeletons; construction was the latest fashion trend, as rubble lie everywhere - a productive rubble, not the same as the ramallah rubble with a pile of candy wrappers and falafel sandwich remains attached. As I neared what I thought was the end of the street, I saw and older lady with her hijab halfheartedly tied around her head.
"Good morning. Do you know where the el-khatib neighborhood is?" I fully expected her, at that point, to open her arms and say, "You're standing in it! Ahla o Sahla! Welcome!"
Instead,
" Well...I think there are some down there. Did you try Abu-something-or-other up the road? He knows. Hey, girls!" She called over two teenage girls that were walking back up the way from which I had come. "Take this man up to Abu-something-or-other's house. He's looking for the house of el-Khatib."
Crimony.
Up again we walked, to Abu-s.o.o.'s house. Once again, the only person there - a boy in a yellow sweatshirt hanging his big goofy face out the window.
"Where's your DAD?!" "Not home!"
Just then, a pickup truck drove down the rode, and slowed next to the porch leaf-choppers.
"Where is he?" "This is the kid. He's looking for el-Khatibs. He's one of you."
I opened the truck door to find Omar - buzzed head, bright pink and white striped polo shirt, and huge silver chain.
"What's your name?" "Tarek Ziad Said Ismail El-Khatib. My grandfather lived here. Said Ismail. Abu-Ghazi. Ana Sha3bawi."
"You're related to me kid. Jump in."
We drove down to his father's house, where he parked the pickup in the road and ushered for me to walked into the outdoor area - too low to the ground level to be a porch, and too shabby to be a courtyard. He introduced me to his father, Abu-Marwan - a fair skinned man with a blondish mustache who sat alone shuffling 4 decks of cards, and his lips smacked together around his toothless mouth when he explained to me who was related to whom among the el-khatibs.
We never really established how we were related, but within 5 minutes Abu-Marwan (from the sheikh muhammad branch of the el-khatib clan) was insisting that i was family, and that regardless of whether he wanted to host me or not, that he was "majboor - forced" to have me. Because we were family.
His wife, daughter, and grandchildren came out of the woodwork, elated at the prospect of a new cousin. I was equally so. They brought me coke, cucumber, tomato, and za'atar (thyme) bread that they had baked that day, and argued over who i resembled the most among our family.
Soon, they called me inside,
"Tare2, the phone's for you."
I walked in, as they all crowded around the spin-dial phone. Im-Marwan handed me the receiver.
"Hello?" "Yes, Tare2? Tare2 what?" "Tare2 Ziad Said Ismail"
"Ahhh...so your grandfather is Said? Said whom?" "Said Ismail...Abu Ghazi. He left to Lebanon in 1948." "Ah so you have family in Lebanon? Who?" "Um...my Aunt Myassar is there. She's married to Khaled Yunus."
"Myassar is your AUNT?! Hold on we'll be right there."
5 minutes later, Abu Said, Im Said, and Insaf, whom I had spoken to on the phone, pulled up to Abu-Marwan's and hopped out of the car. My dad's sister Myassar had visited them in the early 1980's when she was still able to travel here, and they knew her from then.
Im Said was on the verge of tears. "The people of Sha'ab are coming back. The people of Sha'ab must come back."
She went on, telling me how she didn't know anyone anymore in her village. It was all foreigners - Arabs from other towns that had settled in Sha'ab. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Nakba is not the destruction of homes or the loss of land, but the sheer annihilation of familiar community.
"Where are your father’s sisters and brothers?" I explained proudly, “Well, he has a brother in the UAE, one in California, another in Texas but he was in Saudi for a while, one in Canada, a sister in Lebanon, one in Syria, and another in Turkey..."
Im Said shook her head the whole time.
"Yaaaa haram. What a shame. They belong here. They belong in Sha'ab so I can know them and know their children!"
After thanking Abu-Marwan profusely for his generosity, I was whisked off by Abu-Said and friends to his home in the upper part of town.
"Look over here...look my son..." Im-Said told me pointing west, toward the setting sun..."That's all Sha'ab. All of those olive trees...grove after grove...this is your village my son." And it was.
They quickly zoomed me around the city, showing me an abandoned - yet preserved - church that was over 300 years old, my grandfather's home, and the well from which the villagers used to fill bucket after bucket of water.
At home, Abu-Said told me about himself. He had worked for years in Haifa as the manager of a supermarket, living there and raising his children. Sha'ab had been closed off as an Israeli settlement until 1970, but when the time came to retire, Abu Said told me, he decided to come back home. His sons have followed suit and now live in the three floors above him.
Child upon child piled into the house, each of them with bright green eyes and frizzy hair.
Im-Said and Insaf made molokhiyeh and sumac-spiced chicken, apologizing for having only been able to throw something small together.
I laughed. 4 hours before, I had been ready to turn back to Jerusalem, and now I had an entire family urging me to come back so I could properly see my village. I agreed.
As I walked out Im-Said limped after me, a heavy bag at her side, insisting,
"Take this. Take this I swear it's nothing." I opened the bag - a 3 liter corn-oil bottle - filled with olive oil.
"This is from Sha'ab. Use it to your heart's content, and if you need more - it's your village. Just come back for it."
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Saturday, March 01, 2008
NYTimes Finally Admits that the Nakba was a Holocaust
Following yesterday's statement by Israeli Deputy Minister Matan Vilnai in which he threatened the Palestinians with a "shoah" (Holocaust, in Hebrew), the New York Times has finally come to its senses! You see, the New York Times translated the word "shoah" (Holocaust) into "catastrophe" despite the fact that the word "catastrophe" already exists in Hebrew (and it is not "shoah", it is "catastrophe"). Using this logic, the Nakba (in Arabic "catastrophe") marking Israel's systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine must therefore translate into a "shoah" in Hebrew! So Israel really did commit genocide against the Palestinians. Thanks New York Times for being the first major media outlet to make the link!
Tarboush tip for cartoon: Nimr
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Nakba Survivor: Inea Bushnaq
As the 60th anniversary of the Nakba approaches, the Institute for Middle East Understanding will feature the “Untold Stories” of those, like Inea Bushnaq, who lived through this tragedy. Visit http://www.imeu.net/ to read more.
Nakba Survivor: Inea Bushnaq
On the window sill of her Central Park West apartment, Inea Bushnaq keeps a miniature orange tree and an olive sapling. They remind her of her first home, a house on the western edge of Jerusalem overlooking an olive grove.In 1948, fighting between Zionists and Palestinians sent bullets through the windows of the house. Bushnaq was nine years old at the time. "I could sense that my parents were frightened," she recalls, "And to a child that was more alarming than the bullets." The next day the family packed two suitcases and moved to Nablus, to the house of an uncle which had become a refuge for other family members fleeing Haifa and Tulkarem. "We stayed in Nablus for about six months always expecting to go back. For a while my father continued working at the Arab College in Jerusalem, where he taught, visiting us on weekends." When it became too dangerous to travel or to keep students at the college, the family moved to Jordan and then to Beirut and Damascus finally landing in London where Bushnaq's father worked in the Arabic section of the BBC. The family eventually moved back to the Middle East, to Amman, Jordan. Finishing her education in England, Bushnaq still held out hope of a return to Jerusalem but after the 1967 war she decided to move to New York, "I just gave up."
Bushnaq travels to Palestine frequently. "Every time the walls of Jerusalem's Old City come into sight I have the same reaction: overwhelming delight mixed with sadness," she said. "Something about the clarity of the air, the way the sun slants on those stones, the smell and the sound, the echo when you speak, has an impact as powerful as a physical blow. I think that those of us who left unwillingly in 1948, we are all plagued with this painful nostalgia." Three years ago, Bushnaq visited the house in West Jerusalem for the first time. It is an Israeli nursery school now and a whole neighborhood has replaced the olive grove. Sixty years have passed, but Bushnaq feels that the injustice done to the Palestinian people in 1948 needs to be acknowledged and addressed if there is to be peace. "Palestinians paid a huge price for what the Germans and the Russians and others in Europe did to the Jews. Against our will, our land was partitioned and half the population displaced so that Israel might be a safe haven for world Jewry. A first step would be for Israel and the West to acknowledge what was done to the Palestinians. In the silence about this history it becomes easy to demonize the Palestinian resistance to being totally occupied by Israel and it becomes reasonable to tell Palestinians they have no right of return after 60 years while Jews anywhere in the world are welcome to return to Israel after 2000 years. American tax money has been very generously supporting Israel for decades. Americans need to be made aware of the facts underlying the violence. Maybe then the U.S. would exert pressure for a peace acceptable to Palestinians as well as Israelis."In the meantime, Bushnaq is left with her miniature trees, the visits to East Jerusalem and an unsettled feeling. "Like all displaced people," she said, "one fits in neither country 100 percent."
**
The "Nakba" ("catastrophe" in Arabic) refers to the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 and the exile of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and homeland. It is estimated that more than 50 percent were driven out under direct military assault by Israeli troops. Others fled in panic as news spread of massacres in Palestinian villages like Deir Yassin and Tantura. Nearly half the Palestinian refugees had fled by May 14, 1948, when Israel declared its independence and the Arab states entered the fray. Israel depopulated more than 450 Palestinian towns and villages, destroying most while resettling the remainder with new Jewish immigrants without regard to Palestinian rights and desires to return to their homes. Israel still refuses to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and to pay them compensation, as required by international law. Today, there are more than 4 million registered Palestinian refugees worldwide. The Nakba is a root cause of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel's denial of its expulsion of the Palestinians and seizure of their homes and properties for Jewish use continues to inflict pain and to generate resistance among Palestinians today.
Tarboush tip: IMEU
Friday, February 22, 2008
Introducing Birthright Palestine
Ok, so they won't fly you to Palestine for free, but it still sounds like a worthwhile program: Birthright Palestine.
A project of the Palestine Center for National Strategic Studies, Birthright Palestine "is meant to gather first generation, western‐born Palestinians (over the age of 18‐years old) in their ancestral homeland, so that they can reunite and witness firsthand how their brethren are living under illegal Israeli military occupation."
The program is made‐up of four major components, education, tourism, hospitality, and volunteering, and was created to maintain Palestinian unity on an international level and to make foreign‐born Palestinians feel at home in their homeland.As a Diaspora Palestinian myself, whose felt "out of place" (Oooh, did ya get the reference?) here and in my ancestral homeland, the program appeals.
According to their website, Birthright Palestine aims to assimilate Diaspora Palestinians into Palestinian society through cultural immersion. During the program's duration (anywhere between 1 to 3 months), participants will live with a host family, learn Arabic (yes you can get college credit), and intern at a local NGO. Participants will also attend weekly trips throughout the West Bank and take part in numerous activities -- including film screenings, cultural events, speeches, workshops, informative classes, special-issue debates, etc.
Though the program focuses on Diaspora Palestinians, anyone of Arab descent is welcome. Not including airfare, it'll cost $2,900 to participate for three months (cheaper for those staying less).
Given that this year marks the 60th anniversary of al-Nakbeh, it's quite fitting that the program launches this summer. At the risk of sounding like an infomercial (If I haven't already), sign up today! TODAY! TODAY!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Nakba Survivors
As the 60th anniversary of the Nakba approaches, the IMEU will feature the untold stories of those, like Darwish Addassi, who lived through this tragedy.
Nakba Survivor: Darwish Addassi
Darwish Addassi wishes his fellow Americans could spend a day in his shoes.
Maybe then they would know what it feels like to be a refugee. The 74-year-old retired chemist still remembers the day he was expelled from his home 60 years ago and became a refugee. Addassi has not been back to Lydda, Palestine since.
On July 11, 1948, when Addasi was just 14 and in the eighth grade, an "informal" Israeli military unit entered Lydda after days of encircling the city.
"My brother came into the house and he said 'Lydda fell,'" Addassi said. "The Israelis came and announced that we have kicked you all out."
His family's farm of oranges, grapefruits and lemons, more than 4,000 years old, was gone. Making matters worse, Addassi, along with the other men of his family, were rounded up and detained by the newly formed Israeli government. They were deemed a threat because before falling, Lydda was one of the few Palestinian towns to resist the takeover and to refuse to sell its land to the future Israeli state.
"They took about 1,500 of us to a place called Jalil," he said, adding that each prisoner was interviewed, numbered and put in a pen. "It was like a prison or a concentration camp."
For two days Addassi and his fellow prisoners of war did not get any food and were even forced to dig their own latrines. Forty men were crammed into each tent. "So if you sleep on your back the other guy has to sleep on his side," Addassi said.
Addassi spent nine months in detention all the while having no communication with his mother and two sisters who had fled to Jordan.
"We were part of the lucky refugees because we knew people in Jordan, influential people," he said. "They came and they took the whole family to Amman and they gave them a small house."
Still, the horror stories that Addassi heard from his mother and sisters about their journey are difficult to share. Stories of Israelis stealing whatever the refugees had - from rings to watches - and of people being killed for the few possessions they were able to sneak along, since they were not allowed to take anything with them, not even water.
After working in Jordan and Kuwait to support his family, Addassi moved to Chicago in 1957, with $2,000 in his pocket, to go to school. Now retired and living with his wife in Walnut Creek, California, the father of two enjoys making wine and trying to recreate the beautiful gardens he remembers from Lydda in his backyard, all while waiting for his right to return home 60 years later.
"If the Jews gave themselves the right to go back after two thousand years I should have that right, too," he said. "What would you do? Put yourself in my shoes. What would you do if someone came and kicked you out of your house?"
The "Nakba" ("catastrophe" in Arabic) refers to the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 and the exile of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and homeland. It is estimated that more than 50 percent were driven out under direct military assault by Israeli troops. Others fled in panic as news spread of massacres in Palestinian villages like Deir Yassin and Tantura. Nearly half the Palestinian refugees had fled by May 14, 1948, when Israel declared its independence and the Arab states entered the fray.
Israel depopulated more than 450 Palestinian towns and villages, destroying most while resettling the remainder with new Jewish immigrants without regard to Palestinian rights and desires to return to their homes. Israel still refuses to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and to pay them compensation, as required by international law.
Today, there are more than 4 million registered Palestinian refugees worldwide. The Nakba is a root cause of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel's denial of its expulsion of the Palestinians and seizure of their homes and properties for Jewish use continues to inflict pain and to generate resistance among Palestinians today.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Norman Finkelstein On The Six-Day War
Author, professor, and anti-Zionist (aka self-hating Jew) Norman Finkelstein was interviewed on Chicago Public Radio's World View on Wednesday to discuss the history and impact of the Six-Day war of 1967 in which Israel occupied the remaining parts of Palestine (Gaza & the Wast Bank including Jerusalem), Sinai Desert, the Golan Heights, parts of the Jordan Valley, and Southern Lebanon. (The Israelis love claiming to have done all that on the defensive).
This was the second of the 2-part series on the topic. The first day, the show hosted Michael Oren, an American who decided to become an Israeli, join its army, and invade countries on its behalf, including last years war against Lebanon, and later turned into a "Middle East scholar."
Though I have no problem with Finkelstein presenting this side of the issue, I think it is so ironic that the host and producers of the show could not live with themselves had they hosted a Palestinian to present that side, or a politician/officer from the army that fought against Israel's offensive. The most their conscious would allow them is to host a kosher Jew against a non-kosher Jew, the later being slightly more tolerable than an Arab.
Fair and balanced.
Here is the audio of the interview, towards the end of the hour, it discusses the public debate around Finkelstein's tenure at the DePaul University in Chicago, and Alan (CrazyMan) Dershowitz' et. al. campaign to get DePaul to deny him tenure.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
The New West Bank
This new map of the West Bank, issued by the UN and published in the Financial Times, reflects the new realities continuing Israeli occupation and practices has created.
40% of the land mass is off limits to Palestinians. Remember, the West Bank is only 18% of historic Palestine area, most if that is already known as Israel.
Along with the restricted land area, the many fixed and even more mobile check points make population movement next impossible, to say little of goods and services, or even ill patients waiting for hours at checkpoints, some times resulting in their death.
The FT references the latest Amnesty International human rights report. This damning document provides a detailed breakdown of evidence, cases, testimonials, and photos of Israeli criminal practices of oppression and collective punishment.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Hebron turned into 'ghost town'
From BBC.com
Human rights groups say Israeli curbs on Palestinians in the West Bank town of Hebron have forced thousands of them to leave homes and close businesses.
B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said Israel had in effect expropriated central Hebron to protect some 650 Jewish settlers there.
Israel had breached the Geneva Convention prohibiting forced transfer, which was a war crime, the groups said.
The Israeli military says curbs are to maintain order and protect life.
"The policy of separation founded on ethnic criteria has caused a massive exodus of Palestinians from Hebron's city centre," the joint human rights report said.
"Israeli activities have been carried out on the basis of a preferential policy toward settlers that has turned the centre of Hebron into a ghost town."
Military closures
The groups said about 1,000 Palestinian homes, more than 40% of homes in the centre of Hebron, had been vacated because of Israeli closures in the centre of the city.
Two-thirds of these were vacated during the course of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which began in 2000.
Troops look after settlers' interests not Palestinians', the report saysMore than 75% of shops were shut down, the joint B'Tselem/ACRI survey said, 62% of them since 2000 and a quarter of them as a result of military orders.
"They created conditions that made the Palestinians move," B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said. "The army can't now say that they didn't know this was going to happen."
An Israeli military statement said the report had failed to reflect the complexities of Hebron, and that the restrictions were imposed to protect both Israeli and Palestinian residents.
"In this complicated reality the military commander is required, and is in fact obliged, to take such actions on purely security grounds," a military statement said.
'Lies, distortions'
The report said the army generally did not intervene when Palestinian residents were subjected to attacks by militant settlers, which also caused people to leave.
"Dozens of settlers attacked my house at once, and they burned things inside the house," former resident Mufid Sharabati is quoted saying.
"We called the Israeli police and the army, but nobody helped us."
Settler spokesman David Wilder denounced the report as lies and distortions, and said Palestinians left because of curfews imposed because of attacks on settlers.
"We have never tried to throw anybody out, and we have not tried to keep anyone here," he said.
Hebron is the only place in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where a small community of Jewish settlers lives in the heart of a Palestinian city.
Under an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, Israel evacuated 80% of Hebron in 1997, remaining in an area around the Old City where 650 Jewish settlers live among about 30,000 Palestinians.
All Israeli settlements built on land captured in the 1967 war are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
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Also read an interesting article on the divide in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives of the conflict history: Nakba and Occupation of Palestine and the establishment of Israel.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
The Nakba 59 Years On: The Winning Poster
The following is the winning poster of the 2007 Al-Awda Award Festival In Celebration of Creative Resistance to commemorate Al Nakba. Peep the other amazing art works submitted for the award competition.