**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:
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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
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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.
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For years Israel has touted Gazan cross-border smuggling operations as a method for Jew-thirsty Palestinians to acquire the weapons necessary to rid themselves of God's chosen people. Prior to Hamas' explosion of the border wall between Rafah and Egypt, most Palestinians relied on secret tunnels to obtain their sophisticated weaponry. Unfortunately, the media has always turned a blind eye to these smuggling operations, as secrets are often hard to prove.
However, the security wall is now (temporarily) down, and jihadists have become increasingly lax over the level of secrecy shrouding their smuggling operations. Below are just a few examples of the anti-Semitic contraband they've recently been able to acquire...
Camels!
Sheep!
Cows!
More Camels!
God, when will the camels end?
I hear this one can spit as far as five yards!
"Moo!"
God, please not a goat!
Look at the utters on that thing!
"Baaaa!"
And last, but certainly not least, a JACK ASS!
Clearly, Palestinians are an evil force that must be contained. Support the containment and suffocation of Gaza! Support an end to terror!
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A country that vehemently opposed the war and didn't bend it's Arab ass to be used as a military outpost, is paying the heaviest price for it-and a poor Arab country at that! Syria! I mean it's pockets are lined with...wait what does Syria have in plentiful production? Oh yeah, fisto ahdar! Suffices to say, they not are sitting on comfy cushions rested on top of oil fields or piles of dough from USAID-ahem Mubarassment and King Abdummba!
In an article on the Seattle Post Intelligencer's website entitled "Syria sinking in flood of refugees from Iraq," astonishing figures regarding the refugee situation in a Syrian context are brought to light:
- 2.6 million Iraqis have fled their homeland since the start of the war in 2003.
- Syria has taken in 1.5 million Iraqi refugees from 2003 to present
- Iraqi refugees make up about 10 percent of Syria's population.
- There are 1 million refugees alone in Syria's capital, Damascus.
- The refugees are costing the government $1.6 billion per year in free education, health care and other benefits.
- Of the 1,608 Iraqi refugees admitted by the United States (as Hanaan mentioned),, only 242 came from Syria.
- While the UNHCR referred 4,004 Iraqi refugees in Syria for resettlement in the United States in 2007.
- The United States is spending $1 billion a day on the war in Iraq, while it has contributed only $70 million to aid refugees.
So, if there are an estimated 2.6 million Iraqi refugees, and approximately 1.5 million have settled in Syira, that comes to over 50%-around
57-58% of the worldwide population(yeah Arab math genes for quicker-than-an-abacass- "in my head" calculations!) of Iraqi refugees living in Syria right now. This is a startling statistic considering other statistics Syria is trying to grapple with-namely limited resources. Let me not forget to mention the fact that when when I last visited Damascus, there was a water and electricity shortage situation (exceeding regional averages in power outages and water shortages by almost double), that limited the use and access of aforementioned utilities. How is Syria going to handle a ballooning population with such limited resources and aid? And why is a country with abundance only accepting 1,608 Iraqi refugees for a war it started to "save the Iraqi people"????
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"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
- U.S. Statue of Liberty
Nearly five years after the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, the U.N. estimates
more than 4 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes. The Bush administration has repeatedly acknowledged a
'moral obligation' to those displaced, but so far its reaction has been pathetic at best.
The U.S.
had pledged to admit
7 ,000 Iraqi refugees by September, but fell far short of that goal, granting only
1,608 visas ahead of deadline.
The State Department has since upped the goal for next year, pledging to admit
12,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of September 2008.
But the
latest figures released last week show they're off to a slow start, accepting 450 refugees in October and only 362 last month.
Do the math, folks - the U.S. needs to admit an average of 1,000 people every month to meet its target. What's more, all this talk of
'bureaucratic roadblocks' is starting to get really old.
Four million displaced .. 2,240 admitted.
That's in stark contrast to the
675,000 refugees from Vietnam who were admitted after the fall of Saigon in 1975.
It's a massive country, the United States. Frankly, it ought to be ashamed.
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