The issue of continuing and expanding Jewish settlements came back to haunt the Palestinian leadership that negotiated Oslo and continued to negotiate with Israel for the last 16 years while Israeli continued to build and expand its settlements, not to mention building the Apartheid Wall.

Zayta is my home village and remains the closest place to my heart. Despite the radical shifts in today's world, the early memories of life in Zayta continue to shape my identity and worldview. Villagers' metaphors provide clarity to digest complexities and guidance to navigate the ambiguities of today's complex world. Although I have been living in Canada for the last four years, thousands of miles from Zayta, I still maintain regular presence and engagement with my family, friends and village, thanks to the evolving revolution of information technology. In return, along with this romantic attachment to Zayta, I have been blessed with knowledge and innovative creativity. In this article, I am going to share a transnational vision to build better futures for Zayta and other underprivileged communities in Palestine.

During the last century, the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and later the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank in 1967, uprooted Zayta villagers from their lands and homes. In 1948, the majority of the village's agricultural land was seized by Israel. The Israeli towns of Maggal, Sde Yizhaq, and parts of Hadera are situated on Zayta's land (Raml Zayta). Israel completed its military occupation of the populated part of the village in 1967, after destroying around 70 houses. Due to land confiscation and home destruction many families from the village were forced to move eastwards and settled in Jordan, Syria, and the Gulf countries. For example, there is a whole neighbourhood in Irbid, Jordan, called Zaytawi due to the large number of families from Zayta who live there. 

Historically, villagers were fully dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. They were harvesting olives, almonds, citrus and rain-fed crops such as wheat, barley, and beans. After the Israeli military occupation, villagers' hardship continued. Villagers were used as unskilled labour in Israeli factories and on construction sites. As a result, farmers neglected their remaining farmlands and agricultural produce declined sharply. As in any other Palestinian locality, shops in the village were turned into marketing outlets for Israeli produce. Moreover, the Israeli military administration controlled all aspects of economic life in the village, including the release of building permits, driving licenses, travel permits and recruitment approval of public servants. All in all, livelihood in the village was designed to serve Israeli colonial interests.

Unfortunately, the living conditions in Zayta and many other villages in the northern part of the West Bank deteriorated further after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. According to the Oslo Accords, Israel was to remain in control of security in the rural areas of the West Bank, while the Palestinian Authority handled civilian matters.

A few years later, the construction of the apartheid Wall by the Israeli government represented another drastic blow to the Zayta economy. According to the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees, the construction of the racist Wall has affected 820 dunums of land in Zayta. Four hundred dunums have been confiscated, levelled, and used in the construction of the Wall. The other 420 dunums are isolated behind the Wall. The construction of the Wall has also been responsible for uprooting 6,000 olive and almond trees and preventing workers from reaching their jobs inside Israel. Access to the Israeli job market has become extremely difficult for Palestinians. As a result, villages in the northern part of the West Bank, including Zayta, have experienced unprecedented poverty rates. Moreover, the unfortunate internal political crisis between Fatah and Hamas has deepened the social and political fragmentation within Palestinian communities. For example, incidents of social disengagement have grown considerably over the last few years and have led to a significant increase in migration flows. 

The combination of accelerated hardships of the Palestinian rural communities, including Zayta, and the failure of conventional development models to resolve Palestinian challenges call for an alternative Palestinian development worldview. In fact, resolving the challenges of deprived communities such as Zayta needs innovative development strategies to transform unhealthy patterns of social formation in these communities. According to social scientists, conventional development models that are focused on handling local and territorial patterns fail to address the evolutionary patterns of today's space-based world.  

The explosion of transnational information that flows through information technologies and social media outlets enhances the role of space in everyday lives worldwide. These space-based technologies are already reshaping organisations and economies. More precisely, they are changing the source of wealth creation, the organisation of firms, the nature of work and the boundaries of economic geography. Spatial literacy now serves as an important key for socio-economic development.  Economists, who have traditionally viewed the economy in territorial terms only, are now recognising the importance of space in economic transformation, technological innovation and global competitiveness.

In the age of open spaces, geographies are changing. Social technologies offer Palestinian communities and businesses a remarkable opportunity to reinvent themselves. For example, businesses have a great opportunity to rebrand their products and services within today's multicultural markets. Blogging offers business owners an easy way to brand and build connections with customers around the world. To take another example, this morning I bought a 3-litre bottle of olive oil produced in Nablus and a 2-kilogram can of pickled cucumbers produced in Jenin from an ethnic grocery store in Mississauga (a Canadian city near Toronto). Labels on these products only included Palestinian phone numbers as contact information. They didn't have electronic mail or website i.e., information. Building a virtual presence is critical for success in today's business world. Maybe  Palestinian businesses should develop their virtual content as a strategy to connect with global clients and partners. They should make information about their products and services accessible to everyone.

The shift from territorial to spatial economics offers Palestinian individuals, businesses, and communities remarkable opportunities to initiate innovative economic networks and create new social formation patterns in our communities inside Palestine. According to official statistics, more than five million Palestinians are living in transnational communities around the world. Building connections between the Palestinian diaspora and communities inside Palestine in today's interconnected world will foster innovation, knowledge transfer, market exploration, and business partnerships. In social terms, building Palestinian transnationalism will enhance community engagement, social change, and political empowerment. 

In the final analysis, it is about time to expand our horizons and facilitate new social interactions within our space-based society in order to build a new potential for Zayta and other Palestinian communities. 

Khaled Islaih is a community developer with a passion for societal transformation. He works with Muslim Community Services to provide language-training services for newcomers to Canada in Mississauga and Brampton. He can be reached at kislaih@yahoo. com.

The felonious Adam Malul commented on what Gadi Shamni, saying: “the GOC Gadi Shamni is trying to pretty up the picture; in fact he knows what's happening on the ground, but he chooses to stay in his ivory tower and keep his face clean. I am not ashamed of smacking the Palestinian; it was what I had to do. My commanders on the ground, my company commander, battalion commander and brigade commander backed me up, and I did what I was taught by my superiors”. He added: "in the territories. There are those that get dirty every day to defend the State's security".

On 29 July 2009, the Israeli military war criminal Central Command Chief Major General Gadi Shamni issued Military Order 1644 related to so-called “juveniles”. The order is a violation of the Fourth Geneva and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Israel itself had signed. The order is furthermore a grave crime against humanity, as it implements the stance often expressed by representatives of the “state of Israel”, according to which Palestinians have no human rights, what implies that we are not humans.

Shamni concludes his criminal military order by referring to paragraphs which clearly show bad faith, and the bad intentions of Shamni towards the Palestinian children detainees, as it is clearly intended by the Central Command GOC to circumvent the international laws and treaties related to children, and to “legalize” current criminal practices of Israel. See the English translation of the military order 1644 as PDF See the Arabic translation of the military order 1644 as PDF.

• Instructions of this order do not apply to cases in which the list of charges were made prior to the entry of this order into force. He means the 342 children who are currently incarcerated.
• The order enters into force sixty days from the date of issuance, and expires one year later. This means during this time, the troops of Shamni will catch some hundreds of Palestinian children among the peace protesters who throw stones at the Apartheid wall, and that they will be “found guilty” by military judges acting under Order 1644/2009 amendment number (109) issued by Shamni. It does not mean that less children are shot, murdered, tortured, abused or incarcerated – it just means that now these crimes are legalized.

Has anyone heard of any country in the world where children are tortured and incarcerated because of throwing stones at the concrete walls of the concentration camp where they live?

Has anyone heard that a state establish a military court to submit oppressed children to “trials”, because these children dared to express their anger over the violation of their rights by throwing stones at the concrete walls of the concentration camp in which they live?

Has anyone heard about any state which claims that the establishment of a military court was in response to the terms of international conventions on children rights?

Since when do the rights of children call for the establishment of military courts to more effectively prosecute them?

Since when have concrete walls needed armies and military courts to defend them?

This farce and the sanctimonious resolutions and crimes against humanity are taking place only in the zionist “state” called Israel. If this happened in any other country in the world, then the so-called, self-nominated democratic governments would issued a formal and explicit condemnation against that country. But rarely, if ever, do these countries issue such condemnations against Israel, which is governed by war criminals and psychopath military leaders.

Dozens of journalists from Israeli newspapers reported about this military order issued by the IDF Central Command GOC, the war criminal Gadi Shamni, as an achievement. If these wannabe-journalists had read the order issued by the Shamni, resolution 1644 on the establishment of a military court for “juveniles”, actually for Palestinian children, they would understand that the military order of Shamni is not only a crime against children, but against humanity, and against the present of Israel.

People acting as judges in these so-called military court for juveniles would be war criminals themselves. These “judges” of military courts are responsible for incarcerating thousands of Palestinian children during the past 42 years.

Currently there are 342 children incarcerated by these psychopaths among criminals, drugs dealers, sexual perverts, and these children are all subject to continuous sessions of torture to force them to become collaborators with the IDF military intelligence.

Shamni himself is directly responsible for the murders of 975 children by snipers over the past years and the currently incarcerated 342 Palestinian children in his jails. Before that, while Shamni was a colonel and the military commander of Hebron in the years between 1995 – 1997, he himself was involved in terrorizing, sniping and incarcerating many Palestinian children as well as adults, looting Palestinian agricultural lands, vandalizing Palestinian property lands and opening road for the jewish squatters.

Major General Gadi Shamni, the current IDF Central Command GOC, was the military occupation commander in my homeland, the city of Hebron. I know him in person. I know that he participated in and committed crimes against humanity and crimes of war against the civilian populations of Hebron, which all together amount to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

One of the most horrible military operations which Gadi Shamni lead in Hebron was with the “mistaravim” (“those who look like Arabs”), IDF paramilitary death squads, after the Hebron redeployment in 1997. These units wear civilian clothes and they hide their weapons under their long shirts. These units are manned with Druze soldiers who look like Palestinians, so that normal people going about their business are not aware of their presence. In one operation which I witnessed, which took place at the end of July 1997, Shamni sent these death squad units into the middle of Al-Shalala street in the (in name) Palestinian controlled area. It was later said that the undercover soldiers who took part in this incident were from the Duvdevan unit. The mission of these death squads was to catch and kill some children, young boys from the area under the purported control of the Palestinian Authority, and that is what they did.

Shamni himself was leading the mission. He was in the middle of the separation area in Al-Shalala Street, near the Al-Ja’abari pharmacy. His plan was to let his troops stationed on the rooftop of the Al-Said building in the same street throw an Israeli flag in the middle of the Palestinians going about their personal business, just for provocation. His death squads were ready to shoot, murder and arrest anyone. When the youths in the area started stepping on and burning the flag, the “mistaravim” started arresting these children and shooting in the middle of crowded street. A boy of age 9 in the crowd was killed next to me, and I was nearly shot. I witnessed several people in the crowd, some with bullet wounds, being dragged on the ground like sacks by the death squads to where Gadi had set up his command post. I remember being very scared and angry.

I went to the area where Colonel Gadi Shamni was standing and smiling of happiness after this incident. I told him in an angry voice that what he had done to catch some children aged under 15 years was a disgusting bloody game. Gadi did not pay attention to my words, he just continued smiling and expressing his “victories” of having snatched some  children, of shooting and the terrorizing innocent people in the street.

In the words of the lawyer of the Defence of Children International “DCI” human rights organization, Khalid Quzmar:

DCI-Palestine is of the view that children should not be tried in military courts with minimal fair trial guarantees and has a number of particular concerns regarding Military Order 1644 and the treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military legal system. DCI-Palestine’s concerns include the following:

Palestinian children are still being interrogated in the absence of a lawyer or family member. The overwhelming majority of these children report being mistreated and forced into providing confessions during interrogation. These interrogations are still not being video recorded, as recommended by the UN Committee Against Torture in May 2009.

Children as young as 12 can still be tried in the military courts, and are treated as adults as soon as they turn 16. This is in contrast to the Israeli domestic legal system that fixes the age of majority at 18, in accordance with generally accepted comparable principles of juvenile justice.

Military Order 1644 provides for the appointment of ‘juvenile judges’ by the Military Court of Appeal. These ‘juvenile judges’ are themselves, military court judges who ‘must be prepared to be competent for the post’. No further information is provided to shed light on how it is anticipated these military court judges are suitably qualified to adjudicate cases involving 12 year old children.

Military Order 1644 exempts all hearings to determine whether a child should be kept in pre-trial detention until the end of the legal proceedings from the requirement of having to be heard before a ‘juvenile judge’.

Much of the language used in Military Order 1644 is discretionary in nature, not mandatory. For example, the ‘juvenile military court’ must convene in separate rooms ‘as much as possible’ and children must not be brought to the court, or detained with adults, ‘as much as possible.’

It must be recalled that over 700 Palestinian children are prosecuted in Israeli military courts each year and the most common charge is throwing stones, including throwing stones at the Wall. The changes proposed by Military Order 1644 appear to lack substance.

As a minimum safeguard, DCI-Palestine continues to call upon the Israeli authorities to:

Ensure that no child is interrogated in the absence of a lawyer of their choice or family member;

Ensure that all interrogations of children are video recorded;

Ensure that all evidence suspected of being obtained through ill-treatment or torture be rejected by the military courts;

Ensure that all credible allegations of ill-treatment and torture be thoroughly and impartially investigated and those found responsible for such abuse be brought to justice.

The past is an integral part of the present, history is the past, especially if the past is associated with oppression, persecution and tyranny of the strong against the weak, and of the occupation against

If the past is associated with war crimes and crimes against humanity and injustice, then the history of the perpetrators is the history of criminals and their crimes, and the victims must never forget, never forgive, lest the perpetrators continue on their path of crimes. Nobody can ask from perpetrators to take responsibility for their crimes, because if they were responsible, or even capable of responsibility, to begin with, they would not engage in acts understood as reprehensible by the vast majority of humanity. The victims, on the other hand, have the responsibility not only to take care of ourselves, but to do everything in our power to stop the perpetrators, and to warn others about them.

I remember hearing my mother say that “the right can not be lost as long as the owner stands behind his right, questioning the right of the criminal and demanding his own right, until justice is achieved”.

The Justice is my goal, and the law is the only way to achieve justice, even after a hundred thousand years. If I die before achieving justice, I will leave it in will to my heirs to claim my rights, be it in one, ten, thousand or hundred thousand years. The jews will give me justice and restore my rights, be it the jews of today, or be it their descendants in 10,000 generations. (Kawther)

On August 21, 2009, I found out that the Israeli war criminal, the former military commander of Hebron, colonel Yigal Sharon, had been appointed as CEO and a coordinator for foreign expansion of an Israeli coffee company, "Aroma", in Europe (Romania, Ukraine, Cyprus) and elsewhere.

I know Sharon personally: he was the best of the worst of the IDF war criminals who served in the occupied territories. He was interested in having  good contact with journalists in order to cover the IDF crimes commited under his command.

I still remember all the grave crimes which he committed and covered in my homeland Hebron, (actually I was one of his victims, my hand was broken under his command). I have all the names of the children who were sniped, murdered and jailed under his command, I know all the military orders which he issued to pilfer the Palestinians property, I also appeared with him in the film “Hebron City without Mercy” in which I exposed the scandalous crimes of his soldiers, who forced Palestinians of Hebron to drink their urine in plastic bottles.

I know Yigal Sharon, who participated in and committed crimes against humanity, crimes of war against the civilian populations of Hebron, which all together amount to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Yigal Sharon also aided and abetted the criminal lawlessness of the jewish squatters present in Hebron: he conspired with them to dismiss the Israeli police chief at the time, Ish "Bono" Yemeni, who saw his duty in implementing the law equally for all instead of acquiescing to the crimes of the IDF and the squatters.

Because of Yigal Sharon's shameful and criminal past, I wrote AROMA Coffee informing them that it is not acceptable to give employment as the representative of their company in Europe to a war criminal.

A copy of e-mail was sent to the European commission, the chambers of commerce of the countries where Aroma conducts business, and human organizations interested in the issue.

I have not received an answer from Aroma, so I decided to publish the letter, and to seek the help of everybody, also from human rights organizations, to help me to sue Yigal Sharon to try to secure an arrest warrant against him for war crimes anytime he enters Europe.

From: K Salam <email>

To: info@aroma.co.il; dmachover@hickmanandrose.co.uk

Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 5:25:50 PM

Subject: Yigal Sharon

Ladies and gentlemen,

I just found out that a war criminal, a murderer of Palestinian children in Hebron, colonel Yigal Sharon, is the CEO of Aroma Israel, and that he coordinates the development business abroad (in Europe and elsewhere).

As a defender of human rights, a journalist and a victim of colonel Yigal Sharon, and also in the name of many other victims of Yigal Sharon from Hebron, like for example Hosam abu Allan, Wael Al-Shukhi, Samer Karameh, Lina Misk, I would appreciate if you end the employment of Yigal Sharon with Aroma Israel, as a coordinator of the brand "Marrone Rosso" in Europe and elsewhere, and in any other position.

As a victim of Yigal Sharon and also in the name of the many other victims of the crimes of Yigal Sharon in Hebron, I think that it is not acceptable to give employment to a war criminal as the representative of your company in Europe or anywhere else, where human rights and the laws are respected. I reserve the right to initiate and follow legal steps against Yigal Sharon, wherever he is. I think that it is in the best interest of your company to not be seen as associated with a war criminal and perpetrator of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Outside of Israel, most people prefer not to buy their coffee from people with blood on their hands.

I ask your cooperation in bringing the war criminal Sharon to court for his many crimes. Much success for your company Aroma, but without the war criminal Yigal Sharon.

Thank you for your consideration,

Which are the laws that Yigal Sharon studied at the School of Law? Were they the unjust laws which he imposed  in my homeland. Or were they the codes of "honor" of criminal organizations, of gangs of murderers, thieves and rapists?

I also strongly condemn and reject the interference of the Israeli military censorship, who tries to impose his dirty mission on newspapers, websites and blogs, published outside Israel with continued terror, bullying and intimidation done by many front organizations and individuals of lacking intellect, who call themselves “glorious” names “Fancy Titles” but who in fact work for Israel and the IDF censorship office in Beit Agron, and who also get paid by them.

I strongly condemn the military censorship imposed on my correspondence with my homeland Palestine, by Israeli military “security” in the post office, in the West part of occupied Jerusalem, people who open and empty my packages of it’s content, destroying my videos which shows the crimes of the military occupation in Palestine. (See a copy of a letter from the Post office informed me that my letter had arrived at their office opened and damages).

Yesterday I was forwarded an email been sent by one of these “Fancy Titles”  people, IDF fronts abroad, who tried bully a German website which translated and published my article into removing my article, thus de-facto imposing the IDF censorship in a foreign publication. See the e-mail attached as a PDF. This slanderous and menacing E-mail was sent to German government ministers in copy. The writers of this badly written E-mail questioned the validity of the information I mention in my article, and the validity of my sources. While the Email was sent to another website and only forwarded to me, I thought it appropriate to answer these small-time bullies because the article is mine. My response to the threat Email sent to LinkeZeitung as a PDF. I will translate both e-mails as soon as I can.

As a journalist I know how to get direct access to ministers and government offices; I have documented the crimes perpetrated by Israel since my family left their homeland in the north of Palestine, today called Israel, 61 years ago.

After the criticism of  the “Fancy Titles” people against my latest article body snatching by the IDF and their partners in crime at Abu Kabir, I have decided to publicize each crime with further details to show that Israel is a state of cutthroats and thieves next to being a criminal occupier.

I am also sure that all the governments know what happened to the Palestinians since 1948 until today, and that Israel is established on the destruction and genocide of the Palestinian nation. But while these governments are paralyzed and unable to do much about about the Israeli genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the violations of the international humanitarian laws because of their thorough infiltration by zionist elements, I have decided to go ahead with my work exposing further details about the Israeli crimes, whether the criminals and their allies and frontmen like what I write or not.

I will not start from the story of my relative murdered and autopsied. First I will start presenting the full details of the murder of three children and the abduction of their bodies and autopsy which I mentioned before. Here is the Press Release issued by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights concerning this crime.

here is the testimony in Arabic by the director of Al-Shifa’a hospital in Gaza as PD F.

(I was not able to translate it because of the horrible things which are described. Perhaps the people “Fancy Titles” and the IDF military censorship will be able to translate it)  I hope that the bullies from “Fancy Titles” people will enjoy it).

Below is a Press release which I received in 2002

Press Release

New evidence in case of three Palestinian children unlawfully killed by Israeli forces

Ref: 11/2002

Date: 30 January 2002

New evidence has been obtained demonstrating the excessive and disproportionate use of force by Israeli forces against three Palestinian children killed last month. According to recent statements made by the Israeli military commander of the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli forces used “Fletchette” shells (shells containing dart-like shrapnel which is fired over a large area upon impact) in the incident when the three children were killed.

PCHR, the legal representative of the victims’ families, expresses its serious concerns regarding this case and reiterates its call for the international community and the United Nations to initiate a full, independent and impartial investigation into the case, to bring to justice those responsible and to provide effective reparations, including adequate compensation for the families of the victims.

On Sunday, 30 December 2001, Israeli forces fired artillery shells at three Palestinian children north of Beit Lahia, killing them. The victims, all from Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza, were:

• Ahmed Mohammed Banat, age of 15.
• Mohammed ‘Abdel-Rahman El-Madhoun, age of 16
• Mohammed Ahmed Lubbad, age of 17.

At approximately 17:40 on that day, an Israeli tank positioned in the vicinity of “Elli Sinai” settlement, north of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, fired four artillery shells at a Palestinian agricultural area, under full control of the Palestinian National Authority, approximately 1200m south of the settlement.

Then, Israeli forces opened fire at the area from heavy and medium machine guns. Approximately 30 minutes later, the Israeli forces issued a statement claiming that they had killed three gunmen who were attempting to enter “Elli Sinai” settlement. Later, the Israeli forces stated that the three children were attempting to plant bombs in the area. A later statement from the Israeli military asserted that the children were armed with knives.

The Israeli authorities did not immediately release the bodies of the three victims and did not issue information regarding their identities or ages. Three families from Sheikh Radwan neighborhood notified PCHR about the disappearance of three of their children while they were returning home from a visit to a friend in Beit Lahia.

This raised fears that the three children might be the victims killed by Israeli forces. On 2 January 2002, PCHR, through an Israeli lawyer, Andre Rosenthal, sent a message to the Israeli military legal advisor, requesting the recovery of the three bodies to the Palestinian National Authority in order to be identified, and called for an investigation into the case. The bodies were handed over to the Palestinian National Authority on the same day, but no investigation was initiated by the Israeli military.

PCHR has continued to follow up the case internationally and within Israel. On 8 January 2002, PCHR sent appeals to John Dugard, Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Arab Territories, including Palestine; Asma Jahangir, Special Rapporteur for Summary, Arbitrary, and Extra-Judicial Executions; and Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict. PCHR requested that they take immediate steps to ensure a thorough, independent and impartial investigation into this incident is conducted, and that other cases of possible willful killings and excessive use of lethal force perpetrated in the Occupied Palestinian Territories be similarly investigated, with appropriate legal action taken.

In addition to following the case through its lawyer in Israel, PCHR coordinated with the Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI), and Physicians for Human Rights, providing the two organizations with information, in order for them to pressure inside Israel for an investigation into the case. In its letter to the two organizations, PCHR stated its initial comments and conclusions regarding the incident:

 

• The children were fired at from a significant distance, when they had posed no threat to the lives of Israeli soldiers.
• The three children were extra-judicially killed since no efforts were made to arrest them.
• The victims were unarmed civilians under the age of 18.
• The bodies were taken to the Legal Medicine Institute in Abu Kabir without the approval of their families and without a court decision.
• An autopsy conducted by Palestinian officials indicated that the bodies had been mutilated and that one of the victims had been trampled by a large vehicle.

Following a request by Member of Knesset Tamar Jabotnisky, the Israeli parliamentary foreign and security committee held a session on 23 January 2002 to address this case. Representatives of the PCATI and Physicians for Human Rights attended the session.

In his statement before the committee, the Israeli military commander of the northern Gaza Strip revealed new information which supports the conclusion that the children were willfully killed.

His statement can be summed up in the following points:

• At approximately 17:48 on 30 December 2001, three suspects were noticed in the vicinity of “Elli Sinai” settlement. The officer in command of a tank fired four artillery shells at the three, killing them.
  
• One of the bodies was then run over by the tank. The tanks shells fired contained nails (flechettes) which were scattered as far as 100m away from the point of impact.

In his statement before the committee, Director of the Legal Medicine Institute (Abu Kabir) explained that the victims died having sustained injuries inflicted by the nails in the shells and that one of the bodies had then been run over by a tank. This information further supports the conclusion that the killings were willful and a violation of international human rights and humanitarian law.

The Israeli military representative also produced video footage before the committee showing that the victims were positioned at a significant distance from the Israeli military position. It is PCHR’s opinion that this information collectively indicates that the Israeli military extrajudicially killed the three, and used excessive and disproportionate force. All evidence indicated that the victims had not posed any threat to the lives of the Israeli soldiers, that the soldiers had not resorted to less lethal force as required by international standards and had made no attempts to arrest the suspects prior to opening fire. The video footage also reaffirmed that the victims were unarmed contrary to claims made by the Israeli military.

The session was adjourned, to be reconvened later this week, pending receipt of the report of the Israeli Legal Medicine Institute on the case.

In light of these developments, PCHR asserts:

 

The killing of the three children was willful and extra-judicial in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, and that Israeli forces have full legal responsibility for their deaths, including with respect to the provision of compensation to the victims families, in accordance with international law.

In immediately resorting to the use of artillery shells despite no threat having been posed to the lives of the soldiers, the Israeli forces employed excessive and disproportionate force.

It was not the first time that Israeli forces have employed “Fletchette” shells against Palestinian civilians. A number of Palestinian civilians have been killed or injured by such shells, including when no threat was posed to the lives of Israeli soldiers, according to PCHR’s investigations.

Despite all these facts, Israeli forces have not initiated a full and proper investigation into this case or many other similar cases. The autopsy of the bodies took place at the Israeli Legal Medicine Institute without the approval of the victims’ families and without a court decision – according to the director of the institute, the bodies of the victims were brought to the institute without having been identified in contravention of Israeli law.

The video footage showing the killing of the three children should be made public.

The international community and the United Nations must call for a thorough, independent and impartial investigation into this incident, and that other cases of possible wilful killings and excessive use of lethal force perpetrated in the Occupied Palestinian Territories be similarly investigated.

The use of such shells against a civilian population is unlawful under international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. The Israeli military commander also confirmed that an Israeli tank ran over the body of one of the victims.

SOURCE: http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/08/28/fancy-title-people-and-the-idf-against-journalists

As we used to fast when we were young, we did not think a great deal of the deep meanings of fasting, we only felt that we are getting stronger, we felt like heroes being able to defeat our own temptations and weaknesses, fighting our battles against dribbling mouths when we used to bring our noses as close as we could to a big bowl of desert in the fridge without sinking in, especially in a weather that was boiling hot, almost like being smacked by a whip of fire through a window overlooking hell.

Of course we needed to watch TV to keep us occupied. I used to watch the English version of Sesame Street and I envied the Cookie Monster while the clock was ticking away the moments until we heard the loudspeakers from the mosques declaring that it is time to dig in, drink and eat whatever we wanted. We thanked God that we were not one of the many poor people around the world who have nothing to eat all year round. We knew that hunger and deprivation are the enemies that we should fight and defeat when we grow older.

Writing a couple of weeks ago about the top Syrian actor Duraid Laham and his seasonal work for Ramadan, triggered my appetite to write about an important aspect very closely connected with Ramadan, though it has nothing to do with fasting, faith, or any other form of religious rituals.

Anyone who lived long enough in the Middle East would have noticed that people get glued to their TV sets in Ramadan. Ramadan turned to be the season of drama and entertainment on TV channels. Most television channels compete to steal the time of the Muslims who are supposed to be offering more of their time for worship and charity work, but since I worked a significant time of my life in TV stations, I felt the need to vent some of my bottled views before my memories go frothy.

Ramadan is the month most production companies get geared for all year round, the majority of satellite channels will never release their best production of Drama but during this month, after all, it is the only time of the year all members of all families follow the same routine of eating their meal at almost the same second in each city, and most of them do that while watching TV.

Ramadan has turned out to be a month of trade, entertainment and consumerism, even though we are supposed to consume much less than any other time of the year, since we are not eating 3 meals a day, and supposed to share what we have with the needy, but quite the opposite happens. People stand in long queues to buy things normally they do not need, and in amounts that looks like we are going to be struck with a famine, or subjected to a nuclear attack and might starve to death while in hiding for the rest of our lives.

Shopping for dates, juices, meats, sweets, disposable cups, new utensils and everything that can go down the pipes is accompanied with entertainment to make such experience a memorable one. Entertainment on TV screens in Ramadan is a completion and a race because the revenues of advertising rise like no other time of the year, promoting things that we have already bought, and hypnotizing us to think that we still need to buy some more to stay alive otherwise we will collapse out of sheer depravation.

Getting ready for Ramadan starts in the Arab world in fields of entertainment through the silver screen, everyone in the media market rolls up his sleeves, writing sarcastic scripts, historic or hysteric 30 episode series since Ramadan is almost 30 days, and fishing for new faces to play the new soup operas and dramas, and many cooking shows.

Dramas on TV during Ramadan are almost a racing competition between two leading countries in this field, Egypt and Syria. Egypt is known for producing social drama, while Syria is in the lead of documenting historical drama. The social drama in Egypt does not need a great deal of financing, most of the work can be made on comparatively limited budgets, the story can be written easily about everyday life, and the locations of shooting are usually indoors in an apartment.  Studios are where most of the activities go. The costumes cost is minimum; no research is needed as such for most aspects. Unlike the Syrian drama that costs a great deal, since in general its arguments are subjects of the past, and talks about important turning points of history, thus lots of research goes into documents, costumes, antiques, horses, locations and huge numbers of actors involved every year.

In general Syrian drama comes at the lead regarding the amount of work documenting the Palestinian plight and the suffering of the Palestinian refugees. One of its best dramas aired in the past Ramadan was ‘Altaghreebeh Alfalasteeneyeh’ or the Palestinian Exodus, starring Jamal Suleiman (in the photo with the author) and Khalid Taja from Syria and Juliet Awwad from Jordan and a long list of leading actors and actresses.

Syria remained the strong guard and protector of Arabic literature, language and theatrical traditions, while the language of other works of the Arab world’s productions has been deformed beyond recognition.

The society has changed even in Syria, but it is still the only country whose drama offers us the chance every Ramadan to have a little peek into the past, to experience what being colonized was like, and how women used to be totally isolated from men, and how the structure of the family was different, and how responsibilities were distributed. The competition in the field of drama in Ramadan sometimes develops into diplomatic tension, it touches certain spots of pain of our fading history.

The main characteristic difference between both dramas is that the Syrian drama is almost always highlighting the collective efforts; the hero is the nation or the group, unlike championship in Egyptian drama that is claimed by individuals. Every successful Syrian drama reflects every participant as a star or a hero regardless of how humble the role is, because the work itself is gigantic, as a collective championship. The Egyptian drama on the other hand is characterized by a leading role for a leading actor or actress, and should there be two actresses in the lead, it is inevitable that interruptions of work would happen and debates are published regarding whose name should appear on the top.

The Syrian individual is far from wanting to be the ultimate hero in drama or politics. In any Syrian drama one can be very lucky to see tens of leading actors, iconic figures playing different roles.

The dramas from Jordan, the Gulf countries and the North Africa come in second place.

The Jordanian drama is almost unique in being the first in the Arab world to focus on the Bedouins’ society, culture, and their rich content of oral literature and history. This kind of drama proved very successful in the Gulf region and Iraq, it reminds the people in the Gulf of a few years back before the oil messed up their serene environment, and before the skyscrapers out shadowed their kind, caring neighbourhoods, and before being invaded by hundreds of foreign imported lifestyles that made them feel like a minority in their own home countries. The drama production in the Gulf is comparatively new, it is almost their own taste, and not as widely circulated as Egyptian or Syrian dramas which are considered easier to understand because of the Egyptian and Syrian simple dialects all Arab countries got used to. On the other hand, North African drama (Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia) have difficult dialects to understand, this discouraged many TV channels from buying their works.  All the previously mentioned, besides other factors, lead TV channels to adopt exclusivity and selectivity policies.

But some privately owned satellite stations take advantage during the holy month of Ramadan to promote what can be described as non modest line of production to satisfy the taste of some and fill a certain gap, while other satellites, mainly state owned, have to put their brakes on as a sign of respect of the fasting viewers and the holy month. This of course attracts different lines of advertising.

In general the majority repent partially then the minute Ramadan starts packing its bag, all absurdity and sluggish production comes back on the screens in a flash.

And since TV production is a business, those who claim to be pious start to work on faith related programmes, some investors have both kinds of channels; the ones that sell viewing time using women’s bodies, and the ones that promise the viewers paradise in the afterlife where they can enjoy equally beautiful women. Women are in the mind of the producers, regardless of the media season. Some might wonder why an investor in low standards content of entertainment would want to invest in an Islamic channel. I would say that some hope to be forgiven for the junk they have been producing all year round, it is somehow like feeding the poor a piece of bread, hoping to be forgiven for eating pork…doing some good hoping to mask the bad. Some even think that the Almighty does not know how to handle their tax books. More like spraying the skunk with some cheap perfume.

Ramadan is also the season of polishing the images of some Sheikhs of Fatwa, they are invited like movie or entertainment stars, some Sheiks even have their own fans, but of course they appear on their own kind of religious channels.

The funny thing is, some TV satellite investors find it more economical to mix both lines. One minute you have a religious program aired with someone preaching until you are convinced that you are so corrupt and guilty deep down to your bones that you are going right away to hell before even being given the chance to change your pyjamas, the other minute the programme is followed by a video clip or an interview with one of the so many so-called female artists who believe deeply in the mission of economising, since they wear only the minimum size of hugging outfits, which might shrink even further during the interview. Many of them strive hard to stretch the hem over their thighs or cleavages while mentioning God repeatedly and talking about how blessed they are that God helped them swarm well while they perform their belly dance, even though many do not even know the difference between dance and stomach ache.

The thing is…some of those entertainers can’t stay away from the glamour of the screen, they have to appear on the screen for one reason or another, a month is too long a period to be deprived of lights, and surprise… surprise… they are invited to appear as guests of talk shows to teach us about our faith and talk to us about manners and how we can develop and better ourselves, and of course to fit in with the Ramadan spirit they would thank God for being able to be good belly dancers.

The majority evade talking about the occupation in Palestine, or what is happening in Iraq. They are great spirits; very sensitive souls that they do not want to ruin the appetite of the good audience, that they sedate their conscious before coming to the studios.

The historic dramas in general are not about our present struggles in Palestine or Iraq; such issues are not encouraged because they might lead the viewers to question present time corruption. The investors also know that they should be on the safe side to get the work accredited by the largest number of censorship committees in the Arab world and to be able to sell the product. Hence the drama is manipulated and dwarfed and deformed to portray what can be described as manhood stands… showing local fights in the streets, and howling males to gather the gang of friends or tribe members to protect the honour of someone’s sister because she looked out of a window, or was seen talking to a boy.

In the midst of the time Iraq was torn apart and was bleeding to death, we have been introduced to the new budding stars of Iraqi refugees on TV, who are on their way to stardom through shows and competitions of talents. No one should complain that Arab satellites do not care about Iraq; here we are bringing you the most beautiful Iraqi young girls to entertain you. The Iraqis are doing fine. The Palestinians are living a normal life too, the Gaza people are fasting all year round, and fasting is good for their health. No one dares to say that they are fasting all year round against their will. 

The Israeli military occupation started in the early 1970s to capture and keep the bodies of the Palestinians who they murdered. Since the early seventies, thousands of Palestinians have been buried in secret and number graves of the Israeli military. Since the early seventies, thousands of Palestinian victims of the occupation were “autopsied”, and many of their bodies kept in military numbered graves. Most members of the resistance who were killed were taken for “autopsy”, and also those who were wounded were abducted from the hospital by the Israelis. This practice became somewhat less widespread only when the PA came to power, meaning that people murdered in areas controlled by the PA were not “autopsied” any more, but this would still happen to people murdered or wounded in areas controlled by the Israelis.

The Israeli military leadership, the Central Command and the so-called “defense” Ministry cannot hide these well- and widely-known facts: the Israeli military murders people all the time, and most if not all of the murdered are taken for “autopsy”, many of them are buried in Israeli military cemeteries in numbered and secret graves. These facts cannot be hidden by the fancy statements issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, by the deranged terrorist and war criminal Ehud Barak and the corrupt extremist Benjamin Netanyahu.

In many cases, the so-called “civil administration”, military commanders and officers were returning to their families the bodies of Palestinians who they had murdered after the middle of the night, and after a few days “detention” of the bodies. The military officers would call the families of the victim after the middle of the night (usually at 1-3 in the morning), demanding that a few relatives, “not more than 10”, wait on the street for burying the body.

The first condition of the military “civil” administration was that the burial should take place immediately after receiving the body, in the dark of the night, for “security reasons”, the second condition of the Israelis was that women should not participate in the secret funeral, also for “security reasons” (actually they wanted to avoid that the screams of grieving mothers, sisters, daughters of the victim would be heard, so alerting the neighbourhood to the crime). The Israeli officers always used “security reasons” to justify and cover up their criminal activities!

On each such occasion returning the body of one of their murdered victims, the “civil” military administration officers would follow the funeral procession, driving their armored grey cars and waiting until the end of the burial. A number of other military vehicles filled with soldiers would surround the funeral, watching the burial of their victims, always ready to shoot the small number of participants in the funeral. Of course, the officers would always insistently make it clear to the family that they were doing them a great favor in returning the body of their beloved one and allowing them to bury it.

Empty Bodies, Stuffed With Cotton

What is the reason to bury somebody in middle of the night, with a company of IDF soldiers and the Israeli military “civil” administration officers surrounding the procession? If the burial is normal, and the organs of the victims were not stolen, then why should they be buried in the dark of the night? The families of the victims all knew that they were receiving empty bodies, filled with cotton, to be buried in the middle of the night.

One fact for Ehud Barak: near the end of the first Intifada, after the start of the so-called Oslo peace negotiations, the brother-in-law of one of my paternal uncles was murdered by the Israelis at the Qalandia checkpoint, he was returned to his family stuffed with cotton some days after the incident. My uncles relative, Monzer Naji Rashid Abdullah, was a small transportation entrepreneur; he was not involved in political activities of any kind. He was murdered on 14 April 1991, two days before Eid Al-Adha, a festivity comparable to Christmas. As a result of his to date unpunished murder by Israelis manning the checkpoint, his wife and children were reduced to dependency on charities.

The deranged war criminal Ehud Barak and his corrupt “state” should better stop denying what the Swedish writer Donald Boström published in Aftonbladet. I personally was witness of the Israeli soldiers and military vehicles kidnapping the bodies of dead Palestinians from the emergency rooms of hospitals, in some other cases I saw the soldiers following the Palestinians to the cemetery, to steal the body from the family before the burial. This vile practice became so widespread that many people started carrying the bodies of the murdered to be buried at home, in the garden, under the house or under trees, instead of waiting for the ambulance to take them to the hospital.

The Israelis always murder or gravely injure some people at demonstrations, and first the Israeli soldiers themselves would take the bodies, then they would besiege the hospitals where the bodies were taken by Palestinian ambulances – finally people present at demonstrations started taking the murdered and injured directly to their families. Everybody in Palestine knows that the Israeli soldiers besiege the hospitals in order to kidnap the bodies. The most disgusting thing I witnessed was when the criminal soldiers of Barak and Netanyahu were following Palestinian funeral processions to the cemetery to kidnap the bodies.

The issue of stealing the Palestinian organs is known to everybody in Palestine. I reported several times about this crime. In many cases my reports were rejected by the criminal military censorship of the occupation, these reports are until this moment stored at the military censorship office in “Bet Agron” in occupied Jerusalem.

I know that the criminal “state of Israel” was harvesting the organs of Palestinians who were kidnapped by the Israeli military from the emergency rooms of the Palestinian hospitals in Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin, and everywhere in the West Bank and Gaza, and transferred to the Israeli hospital (or rather, butchery) of Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv. The families of the victims know the criminal israeli officers of the so-called “civil administration” who were covering this crime. Everybody knew Captain Eyal, Col. Fuad Hahul, Col. Amnon Cohen (now head of the “infrastructure department” of the “civil” administration  in occupied Palestine), Rafi Geoli, “Alex”, and many other officers whose name I don’t know, but who were always present.

Everybody knew the higher commanders, above them brigadier general (res.) Gadi Zohar, (former head of the civil administration, and IDF intelligence officer for 30 years), brigadier general (res.) David Shafi (former head of the civil administration), Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni (former IDF brigade in Hebron and the current head of the central command), Col. Baruch Goldstein (formerly with the IDF “civil” administration in Hebron and currently with the municipality of Jerusalem), Lt.Col. Baruch Nagar (former head of the civil administration and the current head of the water administration for the West Bank and Gaza), Col. Yigal Sharon, (former brigade of Hebron and the current, Coffee Salesman), Brigadier General (res.) Dov Sedaka, (former head of the civil administration and the current head of the zionist Chairman of the steering committee), Maj.Gen. Matan Vilnai, Brigadier General Noam Tivon, Col. Yehuda Fuchs, Lt. Col. Udi ben Muha, the military commander of Hebron, and others. And everybody knew that these people were involved in the harvesting of organs of their victims.

Captain Eyal, Col. Fuad Halhal, Col. Amnon Cohen, Rafi Geoli and many of those mentioned above and many others were the ones calling the families of the murdered Palestinians, in the middle of the night to inform them about the bodies of their loved ones. These criminals were telling the Palestinian families that they “had worked hard to make it possible to release the bodies of their relatives from the military headquarter” – implying that it was a favor, and that the military commanders Shamni, Goldstein, Nagar, … had ordered that the bodies should be buried in the dark and that “not more than ten persons” were allowed to be present at the funeral.

Often the relatives of the murdered people were screaming and shouting, as they had received an empty body stuffed with cotton. These criminal officers and their soldiers forced them to shut up.

All this criminal activity is not only a clear violation of the human rights, a horrendous crime against humanity, but a disrespect of the sanctity of life which can only be explained with mental deficiencies of the perpetrators.

If Israel did not steal the ORGANS of the murdered Palestinians, and if Israel did not want to cover up their inhuman crimes, and if Israel respects the Geneva conventions and other humanitarian  laws, in peace and in war, then Israel would not kidnap and transfer to the Abu Kabir “hospital” in Tel Aviv hundreds, perhaps thousands of Palestinians bodies of people who were murdered during PEACE demonstrations in the cities of the West Bank.

If it is not true that Israelis are harvesting the organs of murdered Palestinians, then why were they transferring the bodies of their victims to be butchered at Abu Kabir? The reasons of the death were known. The victims all received bullets in the head, or in the chest by Israeli snipers.

After all the whining and screeching of the Israelis after the Swedish newspaper article, the fact stands that hundreds, perhaps thousands of bodies and even people known to have been alive were transferred to the Abu Kabir autopsy center and returned to their families stuffed with cotton. Hundreds of victims who were buried in the dark by their families, and hundreds or thousands more bodies which Israel keeps in their numbered graves.

During the first Intifada and during the so called peace time I personally witnessed how the Israeli military were kidnapping Palestinian bodies and gravely injured people from the emergency room of Princess Alia hospital in Hebron. Some years later I also witnessed how the Israeli army kidnapped the bodies of the Palestinian dead from the then new Al-Ahli hospital: All the area would be declared military zone, the hospital surrounded and invaded by troops, nobody was allowed to move inside the building. All these kidnapped bodies of Palestinians, and also people known to have been living, were killed before taken to Abu Kabir for “autopsy”.

Taking in consideration these facts, everything I know, and until Israel comes clean on who are the members of the organ harvesting mafia, the only conclusion is that:

• All the Israeli officers and civil personnel of the so-called civil administration who served in the West Bank since the early seventies were involved at least covering up the harvesting of organs from Palestinians, at the very least conniving, but  probably taking part in the racket for money.
• All the Israeli doctors and other personnel who worked in Abu Kabir since the early seventies were involved in harvesting and selling organs from Palestinians.
• All the IDF snipers and other soldiers who shot Palestinian (and foreigners) at peace demonstrations are and were involved with the mafia which harvests and sells the organs of murdered Palestinians, at least some of the involved in the crimes are given money.
• The IDF central command and most if not all officers in the chain of command until the field fully know what is going on, and they connive with the harvesting of organs from Palestinians they murder, they offer planning and logistics for the commission of the crimes, and make the families of the victims shut up. All the Israeli State and the whole Israeli Nation who accept the continued military occupation are involved in crimes against humanity.
• Most if not all the Israeli medical establishment knows what is going on, and they keep silence because they either get money, or they are rewarded in other ways for conniving in these crimes. This is confirmed because of repeated complaints of doctors from other countries because Israel is one of the few jurisdictions which does not forbid commerce with human organs and body parts.
• The Israeli health ministry is fully informed of what goes on. This would be corroborated by reports that organ traffickers captured in Brazil and South Africa in 2003 stated as much as that they had been given “business contacts” by “people from the Israeli government”, and that the Israeli government financed organ transplants.

I think that the Israeli government and all those suspected of being involved have some hard questions to answer, rather than complaining about a well written report in a Swedish newspaper which speaks about only one case among thousands:

• Where are the bodies of the two brothers Imad and Adel Awad Allah from Al-Bireh in the district of Ramallah, who were murdered on 10 September 1998 on the farm of Akram Maswadeh near Hebron?
• Where are the bodies of Hani Ahmad Kharboush and Adel Mohammad Hadaideh who were murdered on 6 June 2003 in “Ateel”, a town north of Tulkarem in the West Bank?
• Where is the body of Sarhan Borhan who was murdered on 4 October 2003 in the Tulkarem refugee camp?
• Where is the body of Hasan Isa Abbas who was murdered on 9 October 1994, in Jerusalem?
• Where is the body of Hisham Hamad who was murdered in Gaza on 11 November 1993?
• Where is the body of Salah Jad Allah Salem who was murdered on 14 October 1994?
• Where are the bodies of the two Japanese citizens who were murdered in 1972?
• Can Israel prove that the organs of these people, and those of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of Palestinians which are buried in numbered graves of the Israeli military, were not stolen?
• Why does Israel bury the victims of their occupation in secret, numbered graves, if their organs were not stolen?

I know the answer of the criminal sophists of Israel in advance: they will say that all these people buried their numbered graves were “terrorists or unknown”. But I say that these are LIES and the usual propaganda which Israel uses to cover their crimes. Many people who were buried in these graves were not “terrorists” but legitimate resistance, many of them were peace demonstrators, and none of them were unknown. The only thing unknown or silenced until now is that the israelis are murderers, thieves of organs, a criminal occupational state which commits to all kind of crimes against humanity for fun and profit.

Dr. Yehuda Hiss Butchered Three Teenagers From Gaza

Another issue about which the Israelis have some explaining to do is the story of three teenagers from Gaza. On the evening of Sunday 30 December 2001 the Israeli military occupation fired several artillery shells towards these three north of Beit Lahiya in Gaza. They were Ahmed Mohammed Banat, 15 years, Mohammed Abd El-Rahman Al- Madhoun, 16 years and Mohamed Ahmed Lebed, 17 years.

After murdering them with flechette shells, a military vehicle drove over one of them, and their bodies were delivered to Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv, for “autopsy”, without the consent of their families, and without the issuance of a warrant to conduct an autopsy according to the law. The chief pathologist at Abu Kabir (the so-called “Israeli forensic institute”) Dr. Yehuda Hiss, said that they received the children without knowing their names, they had all been found killed by nails which the tank shell contained (flechettes).

Hiss broke the law Israeli when he accepted the bodies of the children without knowing who are were and without the knowledge of their families, but that is of no concern. The bodies the three were given to the PA stuffed with cotton several days after their murder.

The director of the Jerusalem Center for Democracy and Human Rights, Salim Khalleh, stated that their organization has been able to document 270 cases of Palestinian bodies “reserved” in hands of the Israeli occupation, which are buried in numbered graves in secret military cemeteries, or in numbered compartments of cooling facilities. Among these cases, 24 are of Palestinian citizens of the city of Tulkarem. On 8 April 2009 the families of these persons whose bodies are still in the power of the israelis held a demonstration in Tulkarem. The demonstrators presented a petition to the director of Red Cross, in which they demanded that the international organizations make pressure on Israel to release the bodies of their sons.

What follows are some of the names of Palestinians published by the Jerusalem Center for Democracy and Human Rights and whose bodies still in the hands of Israel, among other hundreds. The question is, where are these bodies? Are they in the refrigerated facilities, or were they buried in numbered graves after their organs were harvested? Why are they not returned to their families if not because Israeli crimes must be covered up?

• Abdel-Fattah Mohamed Badir – murdered near Jericho on 15-7-1975.
• Murad Mohammed Abu Assal – murdered on 30-1-2002.
• Sarhan Burhan Sarhan – murdered during the invasion of the Tulkarem refugee camp on 4-10-2003.
• Saif Allah Bashir Badran – murdered near the illegal Mawr colony on 1-1-2003.
• Adel Mohamed Hadaydeh – murdered in “Atteel”, a town north of Tulkarem on 16-6 -2003.
• Tarek Samir Sfaqeh – murdered in the illegal Hermesh colony on 30-10-2002 .
• Faiz Mohammed Awad – murdered in Lebanon on 17-8-1967.
• Ramzi Fakhri Ardah – murdered on 3-4 – 2004 in the illegal Avnei Hefetz colony.
• Khalid Ahmed Abul-Ezz – murdered on 30-10-2002 in Zeita near the Apartheid wall.
• Khaled Subhi Sandjak – murdered in the illegal colony of Sha’ar Ephraim.
• Muaiad Mahmoud Salah Al-Din – blew himself up on 8-11-2001.
• Abed El-Basset Mohamed Odeh – blew himself up on 27-3-2002.
• Ahmed Sami Gawi - murdered in Netanya on 12-7-2005.
• Mohammad Jamel Faraj.
• Ahmed Ibrahim Abed Allah – murdered in Jerusalem June 1967.
• Iyad Naeem Radad – murdered on 15-7-1979 in Al-Zawieh near Salfit.
• Rami Mohammed Idris – murdered in Netanya on 31-3-2002.
• Mahmoud Ahmed Marmash – blew himself up on 18-5-2001.
• Mufed Mohammad Asrawi – murdered at Baqa Al-Garbiah on 21-2-2002.
• Muhammad Ali Abu Zeneh – murdered in the Jordan Valley on 12-5-1969.
• Lutfi Amin Abu Saada – blew himself up in Netanya on 25-12-2006.
• Omani Ahmad Kryosh – murdered in “Atteel” town near Tulkarem on 5-6-2003.
• Mashhour Aruri - murdered on 18 May 1976 together with other three persons from Lebanon.
• The bodies of 88 Palestinian from Gaza who are known to be in the hand of Israel (no names given).
• Abed Allah Kallab and his friends Mohamed Abed El-Qader Abu Al-Zulof and Mohamed Hanafi – all from the Rafah refugee camp, disappeared on 7 March 1988.
• Fadi Ahmed Al-Amoudi age 22 years from Beit Hanoun – murdered on 17 April 2004 at the Erez military checkpoint

Abed Al-Naser Ferwana, Director of the Department of Statistics, at the Ministry of Prisoners in the Palestinian National Authority, a former prisoner and researcher about Palestinian prisoners of Israel, a competent speaker for prisoners affairs, said that the number of Palestinian prisoners who were murdered after their arrest and detention in the Israeli jails sharply increased during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. They are in sum the double of the number of people who the Israelis murdered in a quarter of century since they occupied the West Bank and Gaza. The bodies of these murdered prisoners are also kept in the secret Israeli cemeteries, in a few cases the dead are released two weeks after the Israelis murder them. This is a new proof that the Israelis harvest their organs according to Ferawneh.

The deranged criminal Ehud Barak, the people from the Israeli Central Command, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the others involved in these subhuman crimes should stop threatening Swedish journalist Donald Boström with criminal complaints, as they are the first persons who should be investigated not only for these monstrosities, but also for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The time of silencing journalists and curtailing freedom of speech is over.

The public opinion of the world is loath the criminality of Israel and the repetitive and stupid screeching of “anti-semitism” whenever one of their crimes is uncovered. Constant and inappropriate invocation of the holocaust is boring to the point where nobody cares anymore, and it does not help anymore to cover up their crimes. The criminal sophists of Israel would better clarify were all these bodies are buried, and were their organs are.

If the Israelis go forward and cause troubles for Donald Boström in court, I will volunteer to testify in his favor about these disgusting crimes of the Israelis, and I appeal to all Palestinians who have such a case in their family, to also offer to testify in favor of Mr. Boström should this become necessary.

SOURCE: http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/08/23/the-body-snatchers-of-israel#

Forty-four testimonies of uprooted Palestinians, summarize the crime of raping a homeland and expose the truth with clarity and sincerity that many tried to efface or hide, sometimes due to ignorance or avoiding it, and mostly with design and dubiousness.

Emigrants… displaced… uprooted?  This is the ordinary and simple question that may not stop us and possibly may make ourselves ask some questions about it, on the pretence that the result is one: An occupied homeland and a dislodged people. But there is a great difference between uprooting and emigration, and there is a purpose or purposes to establish and engrave this understanding in people’s minds.

This could be the importance of this book, which lays light not only on the Palestinian memory, but opens the file of the Nakbah, details, documented events and keeps asking the question, "who is responsible for the loss of Palestine? The British mandate, the Belfour declaration, the Sykes Picot agreement, Zionist gangs and their savage terrorism and massacres, or the weak unstable Arab regimes… or is all these together?"

Questions that put us back at square one, in relation to happenings and  events, placing us in an open confrontation with our memories, sentiments, givens and culture about Palestine that the book, “Testimonies of Uprooted Palestinians” published by Baheth Center for Studies, in which its writer the political striver and researcher, Adib S Kawar, wants to  focus on various different personalities with different characteristics, standards of education, professions who came from most occupied Palestinian cities and villages. The book speaks with sincerity and righteousness about their roots that go deep in Palestinian soil that were not eradicated along with their uprooting from it; so its veins remained flooded and boiling with Palestinian Arab blood. And the image of which remained alive in their memory with great yearning for return. Facts were recreated as if they are being lived, documented, alive with details, developments and witnesses to uncover the falsity of Zionist claims and defy them fully. The war of annihilation that Zionism practiced even before the Palestinian Nakbah is still an imprint and testimonial that the book refers to is in many patterns and examples, which unmask the enemy’s racism as expressed by many Zionist researchers and historians such as Benny Morris, the Beer Shiva University (Ben Gurion University) professor and "new historian" who uncovered in his interview in Haaretz daily http://www.google.com.lb/url?  “Survival of the Fittest” the massacres that Zionist invaders committed against the indigenous Arab population with the purpose of uprooting what he called “The Barbarians”, claiming that there is no moral problem in slaughtering Palestinians, and thus he blames Ben Gurion for his incompletion of the uprooting process, and he looks forward for the opportunity for Zionists to complete the long awaited aim to do so.

Kawar refers in his book to the role of the Zionized American press in adopting Zionist claims and refers to the “Source”, a novel by James Michener that connects the Palestinian “emigration” with secret orders by Arab field officers, which aims at the evacuation of Palestinian Arab civilians, and orders them to create the most possible chaos, confusion and infringement of public civil services as mentioned in page 961 of this Zionist novel, “Assure them that Arab Armies shall take control of all Palestine and tell them 'you shall be able to return to it and take possession of Jewish properties'." Kawar also referred to the operations of Judification of Palestine, and building of Zionist only colonies (settlements), which are, were and sill active to change the geographical, cultural and constructional features of Palestine to prove the great Zionist lie that “Palestine is a land without a people for a people without a land” and evidencing the legend of the historical and divine promise…

Forty-four testimonies of uprooted men and women from all over Palestine that bear indications, occurrences and information that uncovered many secrets and facts that some people were not aware of or Zionism tried to hide from the public’s attention which also have no longer been discussed in the political scene today. Common factors among strivers, thinkers and ordinary citizens who were brought together by a common cause and one cause of worry, also could be the common dream of returning to the Palestinian homeland where their roots still remain and which is their source of identity: George Habash, Shafik Al-Hout, Ahmad Al-Yamani “Abu Maher”, Salah Salah, Abdul Latif Kanafani, Ibrahim Quombarji, Khalil Al-Wazir “Abu Jihad” and many others who put light on live memories that never tires from embracing the homeland and moving around with it, whether in schools, homes, work along with the youthful friendships and their playgrounds. Some of those passed away have left behind documents and testimony in more than one sort or document or another. Some are still alive, breathing the homeland as a dream that should one day materialize as a living fact. All suffered from exile, but were never fatigued with waiting for their first step on the long road on the way of return to their dear and beloved stolen homeland.

A documented book in more than four hundred pages, the introduction of which was written by thinker, striver Dr. Anis Sayegh with a testimony of his own that sighs with the pulse of Palestine’s lover breathing with a long deep and rich experience. What could be the most outstanding in Dr. Sayegh’s introduction is the Biblical concept of the “Exodus” that spread throughout more than thirty centuries coupling this expression of Jewish history from one side and Biblical myths on the other, considering this so-called fallacious “Exodus” in its foundations, sources, meaning stands ashamed in front another factual, actual and felt exodus in millions of proofs, which is the exodus of three quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs forcefully and savagely uprooted by the force of arms and Zionist terror. Dr. Sayegh reflects the sufferings of their writers, artists men of letters with what was called then the literature of uprooting. He didn’t forget while throwing light on the importance of these testimonies to write his own distinctive testimony in which he related his family’s life in Tiberius (Tabariya) and a lot about life in his beloved town and his birthplace to lay light with his pen that glows with yearning for a childhood, the arteries of which roar with the love of Palestine.

Along with the introduction we have a prologue by the author, the forty-four testimonies that chronicle for the most outstanding personalities of the period and information… What did Adib Kawar want to say in his book, and why now, after over sixty years from the uprooting?

The writer, critic and striver Adib Kawar said: “Palestinian’s memory should always be alert, alive, ardent and continue to live and take roots in their children and grandchildren’s memory and never tire from remembering the stolen homeland.”

But who is Adib Kawar? He also briefly replies that he is a Palestinian from Nazareth, but he lived since 1938 in Lebanon where he studied public administration and political science in the American University of Beirut and graduated in 1954, and among his classmates were the present Lebanese minister of foreign affairs, Fawzi Saloukh and Ambassador Khalil Makawi. Kawar said he was among the first generation of the founders of the Arab Nationalist Movement in the early fifties of the twentieth century.

How was his starting with nationalist striving? He replied: "The start was while studying in the American University of Beirut, which was at the time the center of political and national activism, and it was the birthplace of the Arab Nationalist Movement with Dr. George Habash, Dr. Wadie Haddad, both from Palestine, Dr. Ahamad Al-Khatib from Kuwait where he became a parliament member and headed the biggest block deputies in it, Saleh Shibel and many others from various Arab countries: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and others." Kawar’s start was in Al-3oroba Organization in the preparatory Section of the International Collage which joined forces with the Arab Nationalist Movement pioneers in the university, then the movement had a widespread development in the Arab homeland from the Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean. Kawar said the movement stirred the Arab street and lead to an Arab awakening. Among it activities were leading big demonstrations against the Baghdad pact organized by the colonialist powers, the Palestinian cause and anti-imperialism in Algeria, Morocco etc. Student demonstrations in Lebanon were joined by activists from certain organizations and university and school students in Lebanon. This demonstration and others organized in various Arab nationalist occasions lead by the movement were confronted by police during which a martyr fell in addition to some injured demonstrators by police fire. He was arrested along with other demonstrators and some students were expelled from the university who were later admitted to Egyptian universities by order of the late President Gamal Abdul Nasser, but Kawar was lucky enough to be allowed to finish his graduation year.

In the American University the Al-Orwah Al-Wothqa Society established more than two decades earlier as a cultural and literary society to develop into an Arab Nationalist center of activities through which student and other forces were activated to stir the Arab street. Its membership covered besides members the movement members of other parties active at the time such as the Communist Party and the Syrian Nationalist Social Party, but it was always controlled by the A. N. M. A year later the university’s administration closed Al-Orwah forever in an attempt to cripple political and nationalist activism. During his membership in this society he organized the first and second Arab book fair.

The activities of Al-Orwah were continued by the Arab Cultural Club as a center of political and Arab national activism outside the university’s campus. The club continued organizing the book fair, the 53rd exhibition of which shall be organized during the current year, which became one of  the largest of its sort in the Arab homeland. Kawar was editor in chief of the club's quarterly magazine “Arab Culture.”

Kawar is the author of a number of books:

1-  “Jewish Women in Occupied Palestine” 1968 published by The Palestine Research Center (Arabic)

2-  “Zionist Propaganda in American Fiction” Published by Baheth Center for Research (Arabic) in two editions 2004 and 2005 and in English available on CD.

3-  “Testimonies of Uprooted Palestinians” 2007 Published by Baheth Center for Research (Arabic)

4-  “Palestinian Education under the Two Occupations” (Arabic) Ready for printing

  At last why are these testimonies, and at this time in particular? Kawar says in principle they are to refute the idea, the Zionist movement and its state, “Israel” to try to convince the world that Palestinians deserted their homes and homeland voluntarily, or by orders from their leaderships or both.

In fact they were uprooted though ethnic cleansing operations, terrorist massacres/annihilation and raping and murdering Palestinian girls by members of Zionist gangs. We believe that the best proof for such war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against Palestinian Arabs is the writings of the  racist Zionist new historian, Benny Morris, who blamed Ben Gurion for not completing once and for all his ethnic cleansing crimes, refer to Morris’ interview with Haaretz ARI SHAVIT – SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST? AN INTERVIEW WITH BENNY ….ere are also documented testimonies and proofs that the Jewish Legion in the British Army counting about sixty two thousand men and women well trained and some had actual combat experience during WW II in North Africa and Europe, most of who were sent to Europe to fight the Fascists and the Nazis took the advantage of their presence in Europe to collect European Jews, train them wherever they were and send to Palestine instead of fighting the Axis forces. On the other hand Arab forces that took part in defending Palestinian Arabs against the Zionist invasion forces in Palestine did not exceed twenty two thousand fighters. Including Arab Armies, Al-Inqaz army and Palestinian resistance men-  http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?lg=en&reference=24197

It is very important to note that the Governments of Egypt, Jordan and Iraq were tied by treaties with Great Britain that gave the latter the “right” to control the political and military decision of these three countries. It is also important to note that Great Britain’s aim during its mandate on Palestine was the application of the Balfour Declaration, and to facilitate the establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine, that is why it insisted on during is negotiation with France on the Sykes Picot agreement to have Palestine as its share while dividing their spoils of the Arab territories of the old Ottoman Empire. This is why it was encouraging military training and arming Jews while Arabs were denied this right. This went to the extent if any Palestinian Arab was caught even with an empty bullet was sentenced to life imprisonment if not hanging, actually tens of them were hanged. Many Palestinian Arab leaders were exiled to remote British colonies such as the seychelle islands in the Indian Ocean.

    As to how in Adib Kawar’s opinion the liberation of Palestine shall be fulfilled sixty one years after the Nakbah, he confirms that today it shall be achieved earlier than yesterday, but now it shall now not be by Arab Armies, it shall be by popular resistance. The example of the withdrawal of Zionist occupation forces from Gaza unilaterally was the result of years of armed resistance and struggle and not willingly by the Zionist entity, also the failure of the Zionist forces to crush Palestinian resistance during the 23 days long Zionist war on Gaza is also a good example. And the example of Lebanese resistance forces obliging the Zionist occupation of South Lebanon to unilaterally withdraw from occupied South Lebanon in the year 2000 as well as the failure of the Zionist assault on Lebanon July/August 2006 to crush the Lebanese resistance is a big proof of that. He said it is the first time in the history in the Arab Zionist struggle an Arab victory against the Zionist entity achieved.

Adib Kawar is now dedicating all his time and efforts after retiring in research, writing and translating and coordinating with hundreds of Arab and foreign activist for the Palestinian cause mainly through internet and other means of communication, he assures people that resistance is not terrorism, and that the Zionist entity is the biggest terrorist organization in the world and throughout history, which could only be defeated with popular resistance. He says that he shall continue his struggle by use of the pen to uncover the truth about our Arab causes, and confirm Palestinian Arab rights in their homeland.

:
“فلسطين لن تُحرَّر إلا بالمقاومة”

بيروت – سلوى التميمي:
أربع وأربعون شهادة، تختزل جريمة اغتصاب وطن وتطرح بصدق جارح حقيقة يحاول الكثيرون طمسها أو الهروب منها . أحياناً بجهل، وغالباً بتعمد غير بريء ومشبوه .

مهاجرون . . نازحون أم مقتلعون؟ هذا السؤال العادي والبسيط قد لا يستوقفنا وقد لا نطرحه على أنفسنا باعتبار أن النتيجة واحدة: وطن محتل وشعب مشرد . لكن ثمة فرق شاسع ما بين الاقتلاع والهجرة، وثمة هدف أو أهداف لتكريس هذا المفهوم وزرعه في الأذهان .

من هنا ربما تأتي أهمية هذا الكتاب الذي لا يضيء فقط على الذاكرة الفلسطينية بقدر ما يفتح ملف النكبة، تفاصيل وأحداثاً موثقة ويعيد طرح السؤال من جديد: من المسؤول عن ضياع فلسطين؟ الانتداب البريطاني ووعد بلفور أم العصابات الصهيونية وإرهابها الوحشي ومجازرها أم هو واقع الأنظمة العربية المفكك والهزيل أم هو كل هذا معاً؟

أسئلة تعيد خلط الأوراق والوقائع والأحداث وتضعنا في مواجهة عارية ومكشوفة مع مخزون ذاكرتنا ووجداننا وثقافتنا حول فلسطين قضية وشعباً يطرحها كتاب “شهادات لمقتلعين فلسطينيين” الصادر عن باحث للدراسات والذي تعمّد معدّه المناضل السياسي والكاتب د . أديب قعوار أن يسلّط الضوء على وجوه متعددة وشخصيات متباينة تغطي مساحة فلسطين المحتلة مدناً وقرى . وتتحدث بحميمية وصدق عن جذورها الضاربة في عمق تراب الوطن والتي لم تُستأصل باستئصالها منه . فبقي الدم في عروقها فلسطينياً حتى النخاع وبقيت الصورة في ذاكرتها حيّة حتى اللهفة . فجاءت الحقائق كأنها وليدة اللحظة موثقة ونابضة بالتفاصيل والوقائع والشهود لتكشف عن زيف ادعاءات العدو وتنسفها من جذورها . ولعلّ حرب الابادة التي انتهجها منذ ما قبل النكبة ولا يزال هي من السمات والشواهد التي يؤشر إليها الكتاب حيث يورد الكثير من النماذج التي تفضح عنصرية العدو وعلى لسان عدد من الباحثين الصهاينة من أمثال المؤرخ بني موريس الأستاذ في جامعة “بئر السبع” المعروفة بجامعة بن غوريون، والذي كشف في مقابلة معه له مع جريدة “هآرتس” معنونة "البقاء للأفضل" المجازر التي ارتكبت بحق الفلسطينيين من أجل استئصال من أسماهم البرابرة، مفصحاً عن ان لا مشكلة اخلاقية في ذبح الفلسطينيين وبالتالي فهو يعتب على بن غوريون لأنه لم يكمآنذاك عملية الاستئصال هذه ويأمل ان تحين الفرصة للصهاينة ليتسلموا المهمة يوماً!

ويتطرق قعوار في كتابه الى دور الاعلام الأمريكي المتصهين في تبني وتكريس الادعاءات الصهيونية مشيراً الى رواية “الينبوع” للكاتب الأمريكي جيمس ميشيز التي تربط هجرة الفلسطينيين بأوامر سرية الى ضباط الميدان العربي تقضي بإجلاء جميع المدنيين كما تأمرهم بخلق أقصى حدّ من التشويش والارباك والاخلال بالخدمات العامة كما جاء في صفحة 961 من الرواية “أكدوا لهم أن الجيوش العربية ستستولي على كل فلسطين وسيكون بإمكانهم العودة اليهاوحتى الاستيلاء على أملاك اليهود ” . كذلك يتطرق قعوار الى عمليات التهويد وبناء المستوطنات التي كانت ولا تزال تنشط في تغيير معالم الوطن تحقيقاً للكذبة الكبيرة بأن فلسطين أرض بلا شعب لشعب بلا أرض أو إثباتاً لأسطورة الحق التاريخي والوعد الإلهي .

أربع وأربعون شهادة لمقتلعين من مختلف أرجاء فلسطين حملت دلالات ومعطيات ووقائع كشفت الكثير من الأسرار والحقائق التي غابت أو غُيّبت ولم تعد تتصدر المشهد السياسي اليوم . قواسم مشتركة لمناضلين ومفكرين ومواطنين عاديين جمعتهم قضية واحدة وهمّ واحد، وربما هو حلم واحد العودة الى أرض الوطن حيث المنبت والجذور والهوية . جورج حبش، شفيق الحوت، أحمد اليماني “أبو ماهر”، صلاح صلاح، عبد اللطيف كنفاني، ابراهيم قمبرجي، خليل الوزير “أبو جهاد” وغيرهم أضاؤوا على ذاكرة لم تتعب من احتضانها للوطن والترحال به ومعه عبر البيت والمدرسة وأصدقاء الطفولة ومرتع الصبا والشباب . بعضهم رحل تاركاً شهادته موثقة في أكثر من مطبوعة . والبعض لا يزال يتنفس الوطن حلماً لا بد أن يصبح حقيقة . وآخرون أتعبتهم المنافي ولم يتعبهم انتظارهم الطويل للعودة الى الوطن .

كتاب موثّق في أكثر من أربعمائة صفحة قدم له المفكر والمناضل د . أنيس صايغ في شهادة موقّعة بنبض العاشق لفلسطين وبصدق الباحث وعمق تجربته . ولعل أبرز ما تطرقت اليه مقدمته مفهوم “الخروج” التوراتي والذي شاع على امتداد أكثر من ثلاثين قرناً وتوأمة هذا التعبير للتاريخ اليهودي من جهة ولأساطير التوراة من جهة أخرى، معتبراً ان هذا الخروج الوهمي في أساساته وأصوله ومدلولاته ومزاعمه يقف ذليلاً أمام خروج آخر حقيقي وواقعي وملموس في ملايين الأدلة والتجسيدات وهو خروج ثلاثة أرباع المليون فلسطيني من ديارهم خروجاً قسرياً ووحشياً وارهابياً . ويعكس د . صايغ معاناة هذا الشعب في ابداعات كتّابه وفنانيه وأدبائه وما سمي آنذاك أدب الاقتلاع . ولا ينسى وهو يضيء على أهمية هذه الشهادات ان تكون له شهادته الخاصة والمتميزة والتي استحضر من خلالها اسرته في طبريا والكثير من ملامح الحياة في مدينته الحبيبة ومسقط رأسه طبريا ليضيء قلمه ويتوهج حنيناً لطفولة تضج عروقها بعشق فلسطين .

مؤسس في حركة القوميين العرب

ومن المقدمة الى الشهادات الى مجموعة من الوثائق التي تؤرخ لأبرز أصوات تلك المرحلة ومعطياتها . . ماذا أراد أديب قعوار أن يقول في هذا الكتاب ولماذا اليوم وبعد ستين سنة على الاقتلاع؟

يقول الكاتب والناقد والمناضل أديب قعوار “لا بدّ للفلسطيني أن تبقى ذاكرته حيّة حاضرة ومتقدة وأن تعيش وتترسخ في ذاكرة أبنائه وأحفاده وألا يتعب من استحضار الوطن” .

ولكن من هو أديب قعوار؟ أيضاً يجيب وباختصار أنه فلسطيني من الناصرة لكنه عاش منذ سنة 1938 في لبنان حيث درس العلوم السياسية والادارة العامة في الجامعة الأمريكية سنة 1954 ويذكر من زملاء الدراسة د . فوزي صلوخ والسفير خليل مكاوي . وقعوار كما يقول من مؤسسي أو من الرعيل الأول لحركة القوميين العرب ومنذ أوائل الخمسينات .

كيف كانت بدايته مع النضال؟ يقول: الانطلاقة كانت من الجامعة الأمريكية في بيروت حيث كانت آنذاك تشكل مركزاً قومياً سياسياً ومنها انطلقت حركة القوميين العرب مع د . جورج حبش ووديع حداد ود . أحمد الخطيب الذي أصبح رئيس كتلة نيابية في مجلس النواب الكويتي وأيضاً صالح شبل وجميعهم من طلبة الجامعة وقد شكلوا بداية “منظمة العروبة” والتي اصبحت لاحقاً حركة القوميين العرب وقد انتشرت في العالم العربي من المحيط الى الخليج . ويضيء قعوار على بعض أنشطة الحركة في 1954 حيث حرّكت الشارع العربي وشاركت في أضخم التظاهرات ضد حلف بغداد . وقد تعرضت تظاهرة الطلبة في لبنان الى القمع واطلاق النار فسقط فيها شهيد كما تمّ اعتقاله وسجنه لليلة واحدة الى جانب اعتقال وسجن العديدين وطرد بعضهم خارج لبنان

. مؤلفات الكاتب: شكل الدولة العربية لعتيدة – 1955 / المرأة اليهودية في فلسطين المحتلة 1968 /

الدععاية الصهيونية في الرواية الأمريكية (عربي وانجليزي) طبعتين 2004 و 2005 /

شهادات لمقتلعين فلسطينيين 2007 / التعليم الفلسطيني تحت الاحتلالين (جاهز للطبع)

وفي الجامعة الأمريكية في بيروت أيضاً تأسست “جمعية العروة الوثقى” باعتبارها جمعية ثقافية لتتطور لاحقاً الى مركز نشاط قومي عربي كانت الحركة تدير من خلالها أنشطتها كالانتخابات النقابية والطلابية وتحريك الشارع وكانت تضم أبرز الأحزاب آنذاك كالشيوعيين والحزب القومي السوري لكن حركة القوميين العرب كانت تشكل مركز الثقل فيها . وبعد تظاهرة سنة 1954 تم طرد عدد من الطلبة ولأنه كان في سنة التخرج فقد اكتفي بتوجيه انذار له .

يقول قعوار “انتميت الى النادي الثقافي العربي والذي انبثق من جمعية العروة الوثقى باعتبارها جمعية ثقافية لتتحول لاحقاً الى مركز لنشاط القوميين العرب وبعد توقيفها أخذ مكانها “النادي الثقافي العربي” والذي يستمر نشاطه حتى اليوم وكنت آنذاك رئيس تحرير مجلة النادي واسمها مجلة “الثقافة العربية” والتي كانت تصدر أعداداً فصلية متخصصة بمواضيع فكرية عربية تتناول في كل عدد منها دولة عربية كفلسطين أو الجزائر وقد أقمنا أول معرض للكتاب العربي أثناء دراستنا الجامعية وفي مركز العروة الوثقى ليتابع النادي الثقافي هذا النشاط لاحقاً ويستمر فيه” .

ويتطرق قعوار الى مرحلة النضال العربي والى ما تعرضت له حركة القوميين العرب من انشقاقات نجم عنها ولادة الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين . وليتابع نضاله لاحقاً عبر الكتابة والأبحاث وفي مجلات وصحف متعددة كمجلات "الثقافة العربية:، المقاصد"، "الآداب"، "تاريخ العرب والعالم" وغيرها وفي بعض الصحف العربية .

ماذا عن مؤلفاته الأخرى؟ ربما من أهمها وكما يقول كتابه عن المرأة اليهودية في فلسطين المحتلة والذي صدر سنة 1968 . وفي سنة 2004 أعدّ لمركز باحث للدراسات ثلاثة كتب منها الدعاية الصهيونية في الرواية الأمريكية وباللغة الانجليزية الذي ترجمه لاحقاً للعربية كذلك "شهادات لمقتلعين فلسطينيين" وهناك دراسة عن "شكل الدولة العربية العتيدة" أصدره سنة 1955 مؤتمر الخريجين العرب في القدس وهو بصدد الانتهاء من كتاب “التعليم الفلسطيني تحت الاحتلالي”.

وأخيراً لماذا هذه الشهادات وفي هذا التوقيت بالذات؟ يقول قعوار انها في الأساس لدحض الفكرة الأساسية التي روجتها الحكومة الصهيونية وحاولت من خلالها اقناع العالم بأن الفلسطينيين تركوا أرضهم اختيارياً أو بأوامر من القيادات العربية .

فالحقيقة انهم اقتلعوا اقتلاعاً وعبر عمليات تصفية عنصرية ومجازر ارهابية واغتصاب للفتيات وليس أدلّ على هذه الجرائم وعمليات الإبادة من شهادة بني موريس الذي يلوم بن غوريون فيها لأنه لم يكمل عملية تصفية الشعب الفلسطيني . كما ان ثمة شهادات موثقة تؤكد ان الفيلق اليهودي الذي كان ملحقاً بالجيش البريطاني وعدده 62 ألف امرأة ورجل مدربين تدريباً عسكرياً للقتال في فلسطين وليس للمشاركة في الحرب العالمية الثانية وكانت مهمتهم الأساسية جمع اليهود وتدريبهم على القتال حيثما وجدوا وليس القتال ضد الجيش الألماني . وفي المقابل لم يكن عدد عناصر الجيوش العربية وجيش الانقاذ والمقاومة ليتجاوز 22 ألف نسمة آنذاك الى جانب أن حكومات مصر والأردن والعراق كانت مرتبطة مع بريطانيا بمعاهدات تخوّلها السيطرة على القرار العربي والعسكري علماً بأن همّ بريطانيا خلال الانتداب كان تطبيق وعد بلفور وتسهيل اقامة الكيان الصهيوني على أرض فلسطين، لهذا كان اصرارها خلال تطبيق معاهدة سايكس بيكو أن تكون فلسطين ضمن حصتها ولهذا كانت تشجع على تسليح وتدريب اليهود في الوقت الذي تحظر على عرب فلسطين حمل السلاح ومن كانت تجد معه “فشكه فارغة” كان يعدم أو يسجن مؤبداً وقد شُنق العشرات في فلسطين، أو سجنوا وعُذّبوا ونفي قادتهم إلى أماكن نائية مثل جزر سيشل في لمحيط الهندي .

أما كيف يرى أديب قعوار تحرير فلسطين بعد ستين عاماً على النكبة؟ فيؤكد أنها اليوم أقرب من الأمس وأن تحريرها لن يكون عبر الجيوش العربية وانما عبر المقاومة الشعبية ويعطي غزة كمثال اذ خرج منها الصهاينة مندحرين تحت ضربات المقاومة لا طوعاً، كذلك الحزام الحدودي في لبنان . ويرى أنها المرة الأولى في تاريخ القضية الفلسطينية التي نحصد فيها انتصارات .

يبقى أن المناضل أديب قعوار والذي يشغل وقته اليوم بعد تقاعده بالعمل في الأبحاث والتأليف والترجمة والتواصل عبر الانترنت مع مؤيدي القضية الفلسطينية يصر على أن المقاومة ليست ارهاباً وأن الدولة الصهيونية هي أكبر ارهاب عرفه التاريخ وأنه سيواصل العمل النضالي وإن كان عبر القلم لكشف الحقيقة وتكريس حق شعب فلسطين في وطنه وأرضه .

دعواتكم .. .. …

Commemorating 60+ Years of the Systematic Murder of Palestinian Land. The first part of a three part series for Land Day

As I stood on the roof and watched Jerusalem stretch in front of me, with the sun reflecting on the golden Dome, I felt angry and felt how unfair the world is. I was born in Jerusalem, went to school there and practically grew up there knowing almost every corner, every street and every alley in it. I have more memories in Jerusalem than any other place in the world, all cherished ones. But now, I am not allowed into the city anymore because I am Palestinian. As I stood there, with tears in my eyes, I envied every Palestinian with an American or European passport, because they can come and visit Jerusalem. I envied every foreigner who can visit the city whenever they choose. I even envied the birds singing on the cypresses before me, because they could fly over Jerusalem and fill their eyes with its beauty and their lungs with its air. In my childhood, Jerusalem was the only major Palestinian city I knew well and loved. In the eyes and mind of a child, to me Ramallah was a cold city, Bethlehem was the “village” nearby, Nablus and Hebron were the places “to visit my uncles in Israeli prisons” and Jericho was too hot. Only Jerusalem was perfect: with its bustling Old City, the old bus station, Salah Al-Deen Street, Al Musrarah, the walk to the Notre Dame, the walk down Wadi Al-Joz and up to Al-Tur and the walk up to Ras El Amoud. I walked on the roof and saw the mountains on the Jordanian side, clearly visible during mild weather. Late afternoons, coming back home from school, one would witness a breathtaking sight going down the steep street in Sawahreh: a marvellous mixture of simple houses, some with old traditional domed roofs, barley fields or olive groves spreading against a curtain of mountains. Between the mountains and the last of the houses a strip of blue was visible. We always thought it to be the Dead Sea. Well, I personally still like to think of it as the Dead Sea. It was a combination of colours that rarely showed itself, but when it did, it was truly breathtaking.

To the south I could see Mount Herod in the distance. I have watched this artificial mountain since my childhood and always wondered at its shape. It always looked far away to be reached, but at the same time so close, an integral part of the view surrounding my home. I used to think about the impossibility of climbing that mountain, because it had steep sides, one would keep slipping and would never reach the top. I did “climb” that mountain years later, during the work on a TV documentary on Bethlehem. During the 2002 IOF invasion of the West Bank, my parents told me that Israeli fighter jets used to pass over Sawahreh on their way to Bethlehem. After a few minutes, the sound of explosions would rock the sky, as the IOF bombarded Bethlehem and the surrounding towns, villages and refugee camps. Since hearing this, every time I see Mount Herod I can’t help thinking of Israeli jets on their way to destroying yet another part of Palestine and kill innocent unarmed civilians. In Sawahreh, Israeli jets roaring in the sky were always a common thing. Some of Sawahreh’s vast lands had been confiscated for so-called “security reasons” and were used as a training area for the IOF. We would often hear sounds of explosions and the house would shake, or hear Israeli jets coming and going. One time, my sister, my brother and I thought that they were preparing for war, and since we had no army of our own, had no jets or tanks or bombs to protect ourselves, we held a meeting to decide on the best way to protect the family. The only solution we could think of was to build an underground shelter. I don’t know where we got the idea of a shelter from, since Palestinians have no shelters, but most probably from one of those WWII films the Israeli TV kept showing. We did start digging, using our hands and small pointy stones, but realized after a while what a lengthy and hard process that was, and instead decided that in case a war does break out we would use the water well as a shelter, i.e., after removing all the water.

One would think what a beautiful view, Jerusalem on one side, Bethlehem on the other with mountains and an imaginary sea in the background. Unfortunately, this scenery is interrupted by the Jewish illegal settlements Maale Adumim and Kidar, spreading themselves on Palestinian hills. Many Palestinian villages and town are surrounded by illegal Jewish settlements. Some are surrounded by settlements from one, two or three sides. Others are surrounded by illegal settlements and the Apartheid Wall. Sawahreh is surrounded by the illegal settlements of Maale Adumim from the northeast and Kidar from the east and by the Apartheid Wall from the west. Kidar settlement is the closest to us. Before the first intifada, Kidar settlers used to come and walk through our main street, among Palestinian houses. So sure they were of themselves, acting as if the land belonged to them. I remember once we were playing in the land, when a group of settlers walked up the street. We stopped playing and just watched them. I didn’t understand settlers and settlements much at the time, but I remember knowing that these people had no right to walk on our streets. We used to spend our holidays in Dheisheh refugee camp, where the IOF would shoot to kill little children, and then we would come back to Sawahreh, where settlers were walking our street. Those close to Kidar used to sell home-made white cheese and yoghurt to the settlers, who thought us too quiet and peaceful, so they called us “Kiryat Shalom” or the village of peace. It was something I always felt ashamed of, knowing that the settlers thought us too peaceful to bother with, while their army and their fellow fanatic settlers were attacking Dheisheh and killing people there. If the illegal settlers of Kidar were so very interested in peace with us, why did they steal our lands to expand their settlement, knowing that our livelihood depended on these lands? You can’t have peace with your occupier, because the only peace they will offer you is a masquerade, not a real and just peace. In Palestine, power cuts are a regular thing, and whenever we had no electricity and had to study using candle light, which often hurt our eyes, I used to look through the window and watch Sawahreh, Abu Dees and Ezariyyeh drown in complete darkness, while Kidar and Maale Adumim would be lighted like a Christmas tree. Even as a child this made me think of how unfair the situation was and that these settlers and these settlements don’t belong here.

I remember as a child how “far away” Maale Adumim seemed. But as I grew up, so did the illegal settlement. The danger of this expansion never really registered in my mind until one night I dreamt that I opened the window of my bedroom to find myself looking into the courtyard of a Jewish house. The settlement had eaten the land all the way from where it stood till our house, and our house and the land surrounding it was next. I woke up sweating and my heart beating fast. So real was the threat, I realized at the time, that I knew it was not a mere nightmare. The next day I went at the back of the house to the spot where one could get a direct view of Maale Adumim and tried to calculate how much time we had before my nightmare became reality. I thought we still had time to act, but I was mistaken. Since the 1990’s the settlements have been expanding and are eating more Palestinian land at an unprecedented pace. In this area there are several illegal Jewish settlements such as Maale Adumim, Alon, Almon, Kidar, Kefar Adumim and Mishor Adumim, with a combined population of some 40,000 settlers. The largest, Maale Adumim was established in 1975 on confiscated Palestinian land and lies 14 km to the east of Jerusalem. It has a population of 35,000 illegal Jewish settlers and a jurisdictional area of 50 km². Road networks have been also established to connect Maale Adumim and neighboring settlements with Jerusalem and with the Jordan Valley. Palestinian land would be confiscated, declared a “closed military zone” and later used for illegal settlement expansions.

On the day of my arrival to Palestine for a short visit, I watched in shock as I passed Maale Adumim at how huge it has become. Within the space of two years, since my last visit, it had doubled in size, to say the least. Standing there on the mountain top, with a wall surrounding parts of it, it reminded me of a fortress from the middle ages. Although I am a fan of fortresses, this one brought only anger and disgust. The lands opposite it, which I distinctly remember were planted with olive trees, had become bare land, the trees uprooted and the land destroyed to make way for more illegal settler houses and roads. At the entrance to Maale Adumim stood a single olive tree, as huge as life and older than any illegal settler on this land. It was clear that this tree had been uprooted from some Palestinian field, maybe even from our confiscated land, and replanted here. Macabre, I thought and could only shake my head at the sad view of that lonely olive tree. Olive trees are like Palestinians, they grow in groups, surrounded by family and friends. That tree stood there alone, a reminder to every Palestinian that this is what the so-called peace process had done to us, and that if this process is allowed to go on, every single Palestinian will end up like that tree, alone and uprooted.

The plan to expand Maale Adumim, known as the “E-1” Plan, which was initiated by Rabin in 1994 and approved in 1999, led to the confiscation of yet more Palestinian land. This Plan is an important part of the “Greater Jerusalem” scheme, which includes Maale Adumim, Beitar, H´Givat Ze’ev, Gush Etzion, the Ariel bloc, the Hashmonain bloc and the Jordan Rift, and aims at annexing large areas of the West Bank to Jerusalem. This plan expands the jurisdictional boundaries of Maale Adumim and its satellite settlements to the Israeli Jerusalem municipal boundaries, linking Jerusalem with surrounding settlement blocs and linking the Maale Adumim bloc with with other settlement blocs such as Pisgat Ze’ev, Pisgat Omer, Neve Ya’acov and the French Hill. Also, a wall is being built around Maale Adumim and its satellite settlements, which will completely encircle East Jerusalem and 61 km² of Palestinian land. The “E-1” Plan aims to completely cut off Jerusalem from the rest of the Palestinian Territories, disconnecting the geographic contiguity of Palestinian Territories by dividing the West Bank into two parts, thus ensuring that no viable Palestinian state would ever come to existence. Last year, roads were paved and a bridge, main junctions, public squares, police stations, checkpoints and side walls were built in the “E-1” area. This area will cover some 13,000 dunums confiscated from Palestinian villages around Jerusalem and is to house an additional 15,000 illegal settlers. Two Israeli-only roads will connect settler roads southeast of Bethlehem with roads to the northeast, including connecting Maale Adumim and other Jerusalem settlements with the Ramot Ashkol settlement. For the construction of these roads, tens of houses in Sawahreh, Abu Dees and Al Tour are to be demolished. To prevent Palestinians from entering Jerusalem or using Road Nr. 1 that passes through the E-1 and Road Nr. 60 that passes through East Jerusalem, an “alternative” road is being constructed for Palestinian use and is to connect the Southern West Bank with its Northern part. For the construction of this road, the IOF issued a military order in 2007 confiscating 1,128 dunums of Palestinian land from villages between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, i.e. Sawahreh, Abu Dees, Nebi Musa and Al Khan Al Ahmar.

Blocking the southern entrance of Sawahreh is the “Container” checkpoint, which is now being expanded to become a permanent border-like crossing. Passing the checkpoint, one would not imagine what beautiful landscape lies behind the Israeli stone blocks and control tower. Locally, we call it “Barriyeh”, the wilderness or the prairies. Green meadows decorated with red poppies wherever one looks. My favourite spot there is a low area, surrounded by hills and naturally-formed stone structures. Here, running was not possible because of the tall vegetation that covered the place. We would imagine ourselves swimming and race each other or play hide and seek. Then, when we would feel hungry, we would have something to eat under the olive trees. Relics of family history decorate caves in that area and cherished memories of childhood lie behind the checkpoint, making them off-limit to us. The last time I went there was just before leaving for Germany and I had not set foot again. Our lands there, including the olive fields, which were a source of income for my family, were confiscated in 2003. Today, only those few who originally had their houses behind the checkpoint are allowed in, but no one knows how long before their houses will be demolished for some reason or other so as to close the area completely.

The “Container” checkpoint is a passage between the north and the south of the West Bank. It is one of more than 630 Israeli checkpoints and road barriers all over the West Bank, aiming to restrict Palestinian movement on Palestinian land. Travelling to the south, one would have to take the “Wadi Al-Nar” road. Wadi Al-Nar, the Valley of Fire, is most probably called so because of its steepness and the danger of driving there. It was a dirt road connecting Sawahreh with Ubediyyeh, rarely used except maybe by villagers travelling on donkeys. With the signing of the so-called peace process, Jerusalem was closed to most Palestinians and this road was used instead as a link left between the south and the north. If one is stuck behind a truck on that road, the meaning of “Valley of Fire” becomes clear, for when driving up the road, one has the continuous feeling that the truck will turn over any minute and everything behind that truck would be squeezed underneath it. As children we would follow the shepherds with their herds whenever we could. We would eat figs, search for snake nests in caves and play at the old ottoman stone circles. Every time we were there on the hills, we would go exploring a bit further. It was mostly steep hills, where we learned to slide slowly down a hill, using our left foot as a break. Here, there were no illegal settlements and no IOF soldiers, or at least they were not visible. When it was time to go home, instead of taking the direct way, we would go all around the hills, passing the “sacred river” to the old Sawahreh houses and further back home. The “sacred river” as we called it, was a small “river” running through the Wadi Al-Nar. Greenery was along both sides of this river, giving it a genuine river look, like those we used to see in cartoons. The vegetables growing around the riverbanks were double the size of the ordinary vegetables we would buy from the supermarket. Later, and to our great disappoint, we found out that the reason for the extraordinary growth of these vegetables was the waste water. This “sacred river” was actually the flow of waste water from Maale Adumim and other settlements in the area. Not only was their waste water contaminating our lands, their solid waste was being dumped and burned on our lands as well. Several studies have shown that illegal Settlements comprise a major environmental threat. Waste water and industrial waste from settlements is dumped on Palestinian lands, contaminating the soil and the water supply. Palestinian plans to treat waste water are usually rejected by Israel, and in one incident Israel insisted that a treatment facility for Tulkarem be built on the other side of the Green line, for no other reason than to use the treated water for its own interest.

During my last visit to Palestine, I wanted to see these hills again and enjoy the beauty of a Palestine that was free of illegal settlements and IOF checkpoints. It was late afternoon and as I looked around me I saw Mount Herod in the distance, with Palestinian villages decorating the hills all the way from there to Jerusalem. And opposite them, Palestinian hills extended all the way to meet the Jordanian mountains in the horizon. There was no Apartheid Wall, no IOF checkpoints and no settlements. Although I knew they were there, breaking the natural bond between Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, they were not visible from where I stood. I saw the old stone houses with the traditional domed roof, a herd of sheep with a shepherd who was playing the flute, the sunset adding a magical touch to the whole landscape, and there, at that moment I felt what it would feel to live in a truly free Palestine. I started taking photos and wondering how long before the Israelis would wipe out this landscape and all traces of Palestinian existence here. I went home, thinking that the Palestine I grew up in is not the Palestine of today. The Palestine of today is the rest of the so-called peace process with its illegal settlements, the Apartheid Wall, the IOF checkpoints and “Herrenstraßen” that are eating Palestine from inside, like a cancer, destroying the land piece by piece. I remembered that lonely olive tree in front of Maale Adumim and hoped that those still disillusioned by the “peace process” would wake up and act before it was too late.

Sources:

www.arij.org

www.peacenow.org

www.poica.org

www.btselem.org

www.imemc.org

Zionist influx into Palestine started in 1882.  There were 6 waves of Jewish immigration between 1882 and 1948.  As a result of these waves, the number of Jews living in Palestine increased to about 650,000.

During the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Zionists asked for the creation of a state in the territory that includes all of Mandate Palestine, Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the Golan Heights and part of Western Jordan along a line parallel to the Hijaz railway and ends in Aqaba.  From there, the line goes northwest to Al Arish in Egypt.  (David McDowall, Palestine and Israel: The uprising and Beyond, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989, p. 20.  See also: Simha Flappan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New York: 1987, p. 17) 

In 1948, Ben-Gurion considered acceptance of a Jewish state in part of Palestine as a bridgehead for future expansion whenever the time was right.  His vision was spelled out in a letter to his son, Amos, stating that “A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning… We shall bring into the state all the Jews it is possible to bring… We shall organize a modern defense force, a select army…and then I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country, either by mutual agreement with our Arab neighbors or by some other means.  Our ability to penetrate the country will increase if there is a state…”  (Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography.  New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, pp. 91 – 92)

In a round table meeting with the French at the Sévres Conference, Ben-Gurion proposed a plan for settling all the issues in the Middle East.  The plan included eliminating Nasser in Egypt and partition of Jordan, with the West Bank going to Israel and the East Bank to Iraq.  In exchange, Iraq would sign a peace treaty with Israel and undertake to absorb the Palestinian refugees.  Moreover, Ben-Gurion requested that Israel would annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani , with a Christian state established in the rest of the country.  Ben-Gurion added that the Suez Canal would enjoy international status, that the Straits of Tiran would be under Israeli control, and that Syria should be placed under a pro-Western ruler in order to stabilize the Syrian regime.  Official confirmation of the Sévres protocol was received by Ben-Gurion on 26 October and was warmly congratulated by Menachem Begin.  (Ibid, pp. 236-244)

Golda Meir even denied the mere existence of the Palestinians by stating that there is no such thing as the Palestinians.

Within 5 decades, the Zionist dream began to evaporate.

In spite of all the Zionist atrocities aimed at Ethnic Cleansing, Palestinian Arabs living within the borders of Mandate Palestine are approximately 4.5 million.  Within ten to fifteen years, Arabs living in Palestine would become the majority even if the Palestinian Refugees living outside Palestine were not allowed to return to the homes and lands that were usurped from them. 

In spite of having a large army equipped with all the high-tech weaponry provided by the U.S., Israel failed to deter or stop Arab resistance.

In March, 1968, Israel attacked the village of Karama on the East Bank of the Jordan and faced a bloody and heroic stand by the Palestinians.  This battle gave the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) a psychological boost and increased its influence.

On 24 May 2000, Israel was obliged to withdraw from Southern Lebanon, which was occupied since 1978.

On 12 July 2006, Israel started an ‘open war’ against Lebanon.  The war stopped on 14 August 2006.  During this war, another massacre was committed in Kana, about 54 innocent civilians, including about 37 children, were killed in an air raid, and there was a lot of damage and destruction.  However, Israel failed in achieving its goal of ending Hizbullah.   

On 27 December 2008, Israel launched ‘Operation Cast Lead’ against the Gaza Strip and committed a massacre killing more than 1300 men, women and children and injuring more that 5500.  The war was ended on 18 January 2009 without achieving Israel’s goal of ending Hamas.

The game is over.  The Zionist lie of a ‘land without a people for a people without a land’ did not fool any one.  What we are witnessing these days is the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end, which will not take long: 5 – 20 years…

Poster courtesy Badil.

Palestinian women photojournalists: from taking photos of holy places to documenting burned babies

The first woman photojournalist in the Arab world was the Palestinian Karimeh Abbud (1896-1955)  

Palestinian women started taking photographs of families and holy places, ceremonies and weddings, but ended up taking pictures of bodies of killed young children, shelled schools ruined homes, and lots of blood

Research by exiled Palestinian journalist Iqbal Tamimi

Introduction 

The difficult circumstances in Palestine facing journalists in the occupied West Bank and Gaza forced many media establishments to choose employing local journalists who know the nature of the area, besides minimizing the amount of risks reporters and photojournalists face when covering clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza.

This Essay will focus on Palestinian women photojournalists working within the Palestinian territories; thus excluding hundreds of Palestinian women journalists who are working all over the world after their families became refugees, or forced to exile.  

Early photography in Palestine

Photojournalism started after photography was introduced to Palestine in the late-nineteenth century by the British who undertook the first archaeological excavations in the Holy Land and tried to document their findings and the areas they investigated by pictures as Rachel Hallote reported (2007 pp 26-41). The British were followed by the Germans, and eventually by the Americans. Photography was introduced by people who came searching for evidence about biblical subjects and connections. Some elder Palestinians claimed that these excavations were part of a planned agenda to pave the way for the Jews to occupy Palestine well ahead the Nazi’s aggression on the European Jews. Americans were deeply involved in the archaeological photography in Palestine, but the British Palestine Exploration Fund dominated the photography activities in Palestine since the 1860s.

Photojournalism in Palestine is considered a male dominated profession as is the case in almost all Middle Eastern countries, but Palestine has always been the first country within the Arab world to offer women the opportunity to be in the lead to break old social moulds when it comes to pioneering work and education for women. As an example the first Arab woman to hold an academic title as a professor and to establish an institute in a western country was the Palestinian Kulthum Odeh (1892 -1965) as Tamimi (2008) reported.

During the same period another woman from the same city of Nazerath named Karimeh Abbud (1896-1955) was the first Palestinian woman to become a professional photographer. Karimeh lived and worked in Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century, research shows that she might have been the first female professional photographer not just in Palestine but in the entire East. Karima had her education in Nazareth, and at the Schmidt Girls School in Jerusalem, and the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.

Ahmed Mrowat (2007 p 72-78) reported that Abbud started photography in 1913 in Bethlehem after receiving a camera from her father as a gift for her 17th birthday. Her first photos were of family, friends and the landscape in Bethlehem. Her first signed picture available at present is dated October 1919. She started by setting up a home studio, earning money by taking photos of women, children, weddings and other ceremonies. She also took numerous photos of public spaces in Haifa, Nazareth, Bethlehem and Tiberias. When local Nazareth photographer Fadil Saba moved to Haifa 1930, Karimeh's studio work was in high demand. The work she produced in that period was stamped in Arabic and English with the words: "Karimeh Abbud – Lady Photographer. She took photos of areas that have religious significance like Kafr Kanna in the Galilee associated with the Cana village where Jesus biblical stories claimed he turned water into wine. This village flourished in the 16th century, as it lay on the trade route between Egypt and Syria. Karimeh also took pictures of Mary’s Well near Nazareth or "The spring of the Virgin Mary") which is reputed to be located at the site where the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced that she would bear a son. The well was positioned over an underground spring that served for centuries as a local watering hole for the Arab villagers.

In the mid-1930s, she began offering hand-painted copies of studio photographs. In a 1941 letter to her cousins, she expresses her desire to prepare a publicly printed album for her photographic work. According to Mrowat (2007) Karimeh ultimately returned to Nazareth, where she died in 1955. Original copies of her extensive portfolio have been collected together by Ahmed Mrowat, Director of the Nazareth Archives Project. In 2006, Boki Boazz, an Israeli antiquities collector, discovered over 400 original prints of Abbud's in a home in the Qatamon quarter of Jerusalem that had been abandoned by its owners in 1948. Mrowat has expanded his collection by purchasing the photos from Boazz, many of which are signed by the artist.

While Palestinian male photojournalists started few years earlier than Karimeh as Nassar reported (2006 pp. 139-155) it was Yessayi Garabedian the leader of the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem who started the first photographic workshop in Palestine. One of Garabedian’s pupils was the famous Garabed Krikorian as Ankori (2006 p36) reported that he established his photographic studio in the Old City of Jerusalem and worked in it from 1885 until 1948. Krikorian was entrusted to prepare the famous Sultan Abdul Hamid Albums on Palestine and later became the official photographer of Kaiser Wilhelm II during his visit to Palestine in 1899. Krikorian worked in his workshop for over forty years. His son Johannes travelled to Cologne in Germany to further his photographic training and came back after years of study and training to become the preeminent studio photographer in Jerusalem.

Another of Garabed's students was Khalil Raad who opened his studio in 1890, across the street from the Krikorian studio, leading to intense competition between the two pioneering photographers. Peace was found when Raad's niece, Najla Raad was betrothed to Johannes Krikorian and she became known as the peace bride. But unfortunately the historic photographic studio was tragically destroyed in 1948 by the Jews during their attacks on the city. 

Palestinian women photojournalists now 

I requested some information from The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in the Palestinian Authorities for (2008) regarding the percentage of female Palestinian photojournalists registered officially, the Palestinian authorities statistics built its findings on ownership documents of photography studios showing that there are 201 Palestinian female photographers in the West Bank of a total of 984 photographers, 783 are males. This statistic was obtained from officially registered studios excluding the number of photographers in Gaza where it is difficult to obtain statistics by the Palestinian Authorities, besides there is a number of journalists who are not registered officially. A female photojournalist in Gaza Eman Mohammed explained to me the amount of social difficulty she faced for stepping in a male’s territory, she also expressed her determination to overcome obstacles as she said “going to take photos at invasions, airstrikes, violent demonstrations, and hot zones seemed like the only way to prove to everyone that I can handle this job, but I could never go there without getting verbally offended or harassed”.

Eman mentioned violent demonstrations, invasions, and airstrikes for her subjects unlike the subjects documented by Karimeh, because she had no other choices for such subjects are part of everyday life in Palestine. Should she had another choice maybe she would choose to take photos of fashion shows or festivals, art galleries or anything that is not related to death and destruction, but this is her city and this was the hard reality she had to face.

During the Visa pour l'image international photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France, from August 29 to September 11, 2005 Jack Crager (2005 p10, 15) reported that the exhibitions featured reflected individual photographers' efforts to highlight major trends, during the exhibition all three participating Palestinian photographers' images were of funerals in the Gaza Strip. Burgess (1994 p20-22) also reported that during the 1994 World Press Photo annual awards in Amsterdam, the top award went to Larry Towell's image of Palestinian boys playing with guns for the camera. Palestinian photojournalists do not only witness and document attacks, they become sometimes part of such bigger picture. Smyth (2005 p12-14) wrote a feature article about three Palestinian photojournalists and brothers based in the Gaza strip who are employed by Reuters. Smyth reported that their work regularly takes them to scenes of chaos and destruction in which they are sometimes, inevitably, involved and face the possibilities of injury, she wrote of Jadallah one of the three Palestinian brothers photographers being injured four times through his work, and she reported on the more tragically still, funerals they have to cover that is often involve friends and relatives. Smyth argues that their intimate knowledge of Gaza that allowed the brothers to take photographs different to those of Western photographers based in the area. Sure if you are part of a place you would see things differently because you are not only doing your job, you are affected by what you are trying to capture from another angle, you are not totally independent of your emotions. 

Eman like almost all other Palestinian photojournalists could not get official training so she was trained as an individual by several photojournalists, and she had to convince her community that photography was only ‘just a hobby, not a lifetime career’ to escape more scrutiny. She had worked for different agencies for free just to have her pictures published.

Unlike Eman, Enas Mraih another Palestinian female photojournalist she was lucky to work with Alhadath newspaper published in Palestinian territories occupied 1948 called now ‘Israel’. She was invited to Denmark to participate in a workshop with 28 other journalists from 6 countries: Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Occupied Palestinian territories of 1967, Besides Israel and the country host. Enas was even chosen to be on the cover of ‘Crossing Borders’ a magazine published in Denmark and circulated in the Arab world. Enas was accompanied by another two Palestinian women photojournalists; they were Kholoud Masalhah, and Qamar Thaher. Enas was more fortunate than other female Palestinian photojournalists in being able to participate few times in conferences to discuss the Palestinian Israeli conflict, and the struggle of Palestinians fighting for the right to be treated equally like Jewish citizens living in the same state holding the same Citizenship, but still suffer racial discrimination by the Israeli government for being Israeli Arabs.

Laila Abu Odeh is another female photojournalist working in Rafah who was a victim of aggression by Israeli forces; she was shot in her thigh by the Israeli soldiers while filming the destruction caused by the Israeli shelling of The Rafah Camp near Salah Eddin Gate on the 20^th of April 2001.

Palestinian women started taking pictures of families and holy places, ceremonies and weddings because this was part of every day life, but ended up taking pictures of bodies of killed young children, shelled schools and homes, and lots of blood including their own for the same reason. Having been living in an area where everything is disputed including the rights of journalists, there are no institutions those women can request assistance from for training or protection. They are women armed with cameras chasing the truth no matter what the consequences are. Some of them end up in jail like Isra’a el-Amarna the photojournalist from Dheisheh refugee camp who has been detained by the Israeli occupation authorities. Isra’a was working in photography to support her poor family when the Israeli occupation authorities arrested her on accusation of membership to Qassam Brigades, and that she had the intention to carry out a martyrdom operation. A camera is as powerful as a gun but those who use cameras are not the coward ones.

Bibliography

Katz, Lee M. (2000) Life, limb, & a deadline to meet Editor & Publisher 11/20/2000, Vol. 133 Issue 47, p14 

Hallote, R. (2007) Photography The American Contribution To Early Biblical Archaeology 1870-1920. Near Eastern Archaeology 70 no1 pp 26-41

Tamimi, I.  (2008)  The Palestinian Kulthum Odeh (1892 -1965) the first woman to hold the professor title in the Arab world, London Progressive Journal. Issue 41 October 2008

Mrowat. A (2007) Karimeh Abbud: Early Woman Photographer (1896-1955) Jerusalem Quarterly (Institute of Jerusalem Studies) Issue 31: p. 72-78

Mrowat, A (2007) Photography As Ethnographic History. Depiction of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict since 1948, The Institute of Jerusalem Studies.  

Nassar, I. (2006) Familial Snapshots: Representing Palestine in the Work of the First Local Photographers History & Memory – Volume 18, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2006, pp. 139-155 Indiana University Press.

Ankori. G. (2006) Palestinian Art Reaction Books, London P36

Mohammed, E. (2008) Proud with no pride of the "me" I choose to be Voices from the Frontline. Available online at: http://www.peacexpeace.org/content/en/yourstory/write?memoir=148&showhidden=hb8fea1a312984aae10183bef02bd1f26 accessed 20/1/2009

Crager, J. (2005) See it now American Photo v. 16 no. 5 (September/October 2005) p. 10, 12

Burgess, N. (1994) Going Dutch British Journal of Photography v. 141 (June 8 1994) p. 20-2

Smyth, D. (2005) Funeral days British Journal of Photography v. 152 (September 7 2005) p. 12-14

The Zionist elections: A society competing with itself…

The result is the same… It is either me or you!!!

For the first time in twenty years the veil dropped off the face of the Zionist candidates and their parties’ programs by dropping the deceiving and unwanted peace from their electoral programs, of course with the Arabs. In the past they always claimed that Palestinian Arabs are the obstacle to peace, and they are, Zionists, who call for it.   

Jonathan Cook, wrote on February 09, 2009 in the "The Nation"
quoting Elias Khoury, a 33-year-old architect from the village of Ibilin in Galilee, who had been a lifelong supporter of the Communist Democratic Front, the only joint Arab-Jewish party represented in the Israeli parliament. No longer. Tomorrow, when Israelis head to the polls to elect their next government, Mr. Khoury – one of the country’s 1.2 million Arab citizens – will be staying home rather than casting a vote.

Khoury said, “I’ve given up on the talk of coexistence,” and added. “Now it’s clear it is just empty rhetoric. After the attack on Gaza, I am sure there will never be two states here. It’s going to be either a Jewish state with no Arabs, or an Arab state with no Jews. Voting any Arab party into the parliament is a waste of time.” Of course this is a reflection of the over 90% or actually more of the Zionist electorate that endorsed the Zionist war waged last December/January, as well as being anti coexistence with Palestinian Arabs as well as in other occupied Arab territories.

Cook added, “His ominous vision of the future reflects disillusionment with the Israeli political system, he said, rather than extremism. ‘We are living in an extreme situation imposed on us by Israel.’”        

The Zionist imported society on all levels, of interests and professions had been cooking for their hatemongering and as thus warmongering against Arabs at large and Palestinians in particular, the vast majority of their university professors, historians and “philosophers” such as Benny Morris of Ben Gurion University in the Negev and Martin van Creveld, a former professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a world-leading writer on military matters, who both, like all their other colleagues, claim to be speaking on behalf of the civilized white European world, which has the right to annihilate third world peoples to establish their new civilized democracies on their lands,  of course with no exception Zionist military personnel are the teachers for and revivalists of Zionist hatred and warmongering.

Martin van Creveld said in a September 2003 interview in Elsevier (the Dutch weekly) to directly or indirectly threaten all Arab with atomic warheads, which Zionist leaders try to deny also directly or indirectly: "We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force…. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under."

Van Creveld like his fellow professor Morris who blamed Ben Gurion for not completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, Creveld talked about 'collective deportation' as Israel's only meaningful plan for the Palestinian people. "The Palestinians should all be deported. The people who strive for this [the Israeli government] are waiting only for the right man and the right time…”

The same person who wants to deport Palestinian Arabs from their own land, which we are sure as a historian knows better than to falsely claim that this land isn’t theirs said, "They are after our civilization. We must summon the forces of civilization and the force and the power to act against them now, when we have the power and when we still have the time to do so."

In reviewing the elections campaign programs, you don’t have to read in between the lines, the above quote is in block letters, and was and shall still be ruminated by each and every one of the winning and losing candidates for which they receive high cheers and applause shall keep echoing as long as the Zionist entity is still in existence, which shall certainly shorten its life span…

The Telegraph published an article 5 Feb 2009 by Damien McElroy titled Britain offers to accept Palestinians who fled Iraq (30 widows with children!)

The article is about efforts to resettle Palestinians who have been forced into squalid desert refugee camps on the Iraqi border in the hardest conditions including facing hazards of fires and floods that have claimed many lives such as the story of Ahmed Mohammad who lost his pregnant wife when a fire engulfed his tent last month. "The fire took seconds to burn and I could only rescue my son." said Ahmad. There are more than 800,000 Palestinian refugees still living in Syria and 224,000 are registered with the UN as refugees.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/4527498/Britain-offers-to-accept-Palestinians-who-fled-Iraq.html

many Palestinians were never granted citizenship in the countries they fled to, they and their offspring are scattered now all over the world from Europe to Chile. Governments like that of the UK have a moral obligation towards those Palestinian refugees for two reasons: the first is due to the British government’s role and policies since the Balfour Declaration which was a direct contributor to the Palestinians’ misery, and the second is its role in the Iraqi war that ended up with forcing the refugee Palestinians of Iraq to become refugees again. But still a solution like accepting 30 widows is not going to be the perfect solution. These Palestinian widows from the Tanf refugee camp in the desert must be grateful for this kind gesture, but this action solves the problem of 30 widows only, thus discriminating against male refugees who are as much victims as women. Men like 81-year-old Mahmoud Abdul who fled Haifa in 1948 from Palestine to Baghdad, then Amman, Damascus and now again he is with many other Palestinian refugees are in the no-man’s land holding tight to one dream only, they want to be citizens where they can set up homes and feel no one can take that home away from them. Saving the lives of 30 widows is a drop in the ocean regarding solving the problem of 6 million refugees. And we should not brag about accepting to rescue 30 widows after causing 6 million people become exiled and refugees.

Solving the problem of 30 widows or ‘spearheading’ this attempt as the Telegraph has called it, is not good enough, year after year Israel has been forcing more Palestinians to become refugees by enforcing different methods of pressure and expulsion. Even though Palestinians are grateful for such generous gestures they would rather be home in their own properties, taking care of their lands and feeling dignified instead of feeling like a heavy guest.

The new effort to resettle Palestinian refugees outside Palestine is another attempt to patch another hole Israel punctured while being sure that other countries should find a way to mend. Since 1948 Israel has been expelling Palestinians from their country, thus entering the circle of displacement over and over again. The only suggestion Israel keeps coming with is why don’t other Arab countries accommodate them? This is the most ridiculous statement made to escape the blame and dumb problems created by its policies of expanding occupation on other people’s steps. Israel’s continuous suggestions that the Palestinians should be absorbed by other Arab speaking countries is the most ridiculous statement ever, sharing a language does not in any way give a valid reason to accept such responsibility, it would be like a great mixture of people invading Australia because their God told them Australia will always be theirs regardless of where they came from or when they embraced that religion, and then demanding the UK to take the Australian refugees in because they speak English.

The Telegraph was fishing in muddy waters when it said in its report "After turning a blind eye for years, Syria feels it has done enough. There has to be a resettlement solution that allows these people to resettle in a third country." Why should Syria or any other Arab country solve a problem created by Israel with the blessing of USA and UK? Syria itself is suffering the Israeli aggression and occupation of its Golan Heights and the stealing of its water resources by Israel.

Israel is still refusing to declare its borders, and was and still is expanding illegally on Palestinian land, Israel is still turning a blind eye to the international community and a long list of UN resolutions demanding its withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories and to stop building more settlements on Palestinian land, Israel is still stealing the resources and lands and properties in the Occupied Territories and still gets away with it. The media shows every day Israel being defended by the USA and UK governments, and shows the friendly visits of top politicians visiting Israel on the Palestinian occupied land, yet emphasising Israel’s RIGHTS to live in peace, what a load of ridiculous heap of pathetic policies, they are visiting an occupied territory and yet demanding safety of the occupier not the victims. But one knows well that such visits are not returned back because most Israeli politicians are wanted for war crimes, and the people in the USA and UK have a different stand from that of their government and sympathise with the oppressed Palestinians. Should any Israeli official gamble with his life and visit the UK I am sure he will be executed by being stoned by hales of shoes by the citizens who showed great support and sympathy to the misery of Gaza people.

Should the UK not do something regarding Israel’s continuous policy of forcing Palestinians to exile, one day it will find itself facing the moral obligation of not only taking the 13,000 Palestinians who fled to Syria with faked Iraqi identities but much more than this figure. The UK and other European countries have to bear in mind that if Israel was not stopped by international collective effort, those countries will be forced to clean Israel’s mess, and pass this inheritance to the coming generations.

On the face of it, the “boker tov” greeting was natural and expected. But why did it upset me? Something did not settle well with me. By itself, it was a natural human greeting, but in an unnatural context and environment: these two men were there, on my land, only because they happened to be Jews (and, most likely, Zionists). Thus, they were rendered privileged to live in a subsidised house that was built for them on stolen Arab land, while people in my village are not even permitted to build or expand their houses on their very own land in order to meet the need of their extended families, only because they happened to be Palestinian Arabs. This is what did not settle well with me. Because, as they passed me on that October Saturday morning, we were not equal under this Zionist-Jewish system, nor did we have access to the same resources – economic, legal, political, etc. – in a place where I should have been “more equal” and more privileged, having been born on this very land. My narrative has been undermined by force and mythology.

How do I interpret what I might call our expropriated narrative? And how can we, as a people – individuals and collectives – repossess this narrative?

I begin by posing two interrelated questions: What does it mean to be a Palestinian Arab living in Israel? And what does it mean to be part of an indigenous minority that is a remaining fragment of the Palestinian people, living in a country that is directly responsible for this historical evil?

To heighten our Palestinian narrative, I propose to look at three interconnected events in our very recent history, threaded by the same historical sequence, and underpinned by the same racist ideology. The focus on these events will shape the answer to the above two questions. The three events are Yawm al-Ard (Land Day) of March 1976, Habbet October (the October uprising) of October 2000, and the  Zionist-Jewish attack on Palestinian Arab Citizens in Akka of October 2008.

Yawm al-Ard, 1976

Yawm al-Ard refers to the day of the general strike that was held on 30 March 1976 among the Palestinian communities in Israel to protest the new wave of government-approved expropriation of Arab-owned lands, hitting at the heart of Arab villages in Central Galilee. The decision to strike was an exercise of the Palestinian community’s right to protest and civil disobedience, as a means of affirming the indigenous Palestinian struggle against the gradual dispossession of their patrimony, the “Judaisation” (tahweed) of historical Palestine, and the “de-indigenisation” of their native place. Through protest and public strike, the Palestinians in Israel sought to halt the vicious and determined process aiming toward their ethnic cleansing. The Israeli security apparatus made a conscious attempt to forcefully put down the strike by deploying police, “border guards,” and army units in the heart of Palestinian communities. As a result, 6 Palestinian civilians were killed, about 50 injured, and about 300 arrested.

Israel’s colonisation plans for the Galilee were explicitly expressed in 1976 in what became known as the “Koenig Memorandum,” which was submitted to and approved by the Israeli government. The Memorandum detailed the “Judaisation of the Galilee Project,” whose objective was to expropriate Arab lands in the Galilee and develop 58 additional Jewish colonies by the end of the decade, increasing the Jewish population of the Galilee by 60 percent. The explicit purpose of this “development” was to break up the concentration of the Palestinian Arab population in large contiguous areas by infusing them with new Jewish colonies.

Since the breakup of the indigenous demographic contiguity of the Galilee and al-Naqab and their transformation from Arab majority areas have not yet been completed, the Israeli government created in 2005 a new portfolio for its deputy prime minister at the time (Shimon Peres) to “develop” al-Naqab and the Galilee. In a follow-up speech, Peres stated, “The development of al-Naqab and the Galilee is the most important Zionist project of the coming years.” Thus, the responsible ministerial committee allocated US$ 450 million “to building Jewish majorities in the Galilee and al-Naqab over the coming 5 years.”

Habbet October, 2000

Habbet October (or the October uprising) refers to the subsequent events that occurred during the general strike and protest marches of the Palestinian community in Israel on 1 October 2000, heeding the call of the “Higher Follow-up Committee of the Arab Masses” a week after Sharon’s insistent entry to al-Haram al-Sharif, which resulted in the killing of 80 Palestinians and the injuring of hundreds in the West Bank and Gaza during the week following Sharon’s visit.

As for the protest marches during the day of the general strike of the Palestinian communities inside Israel, the police were instructed by Ehud Barak, the minister of internal security at the time, to use all means possible to quell the protest. As a result, the police used live ammunition, rubber-coated bullets, and snipers, which resulted in the killing of 13 Palestinian civilian citizens. According to documented testimonies, the police used violent means to “inflict the maximum damage possible.” To avert severe protests from all quarters, and with the approach of elections for the prime minister, the government appointed an official commission of inquiry headed by a judge of the Supreme Court (Theodore Orr) eleven months later.

The Orr Commission laid the blame for what happened on the Palestinian community in Israel and its political leadership, on the basis that the protest marches were illegal and unjustified and that they were only intended to disrupt the public order; on the other hand, the Commission maintained that the response of the police was equally illegal and unjustified. Thus, in their “balanced” response, the Commission blamed the victim.

The allusions in the Commission’s conclusions are very telling. I shall focus only on two: the first has to do with the relationship of the police with the Palestinian community in Israel, and the second has to do with what is referred to as “Arab-Jewish relations.”

Regarding the first: the Commission emphasised the need for “conceptual transformation” in how the police deal with the “Arab sector.” The police are viewed in the Arab sector not as an agent of support, or assistance provider, but as an “enemy agent that serves an enemy authority.” The Commission emphasised the need for re-training and re-indoctrination among the police, stressing that the Arab communities in the state are not an enemy and that they should not be treated as such.

As for the conclusion regarding “Jewish-Arab relations,” the Commission stated, as summarised two years later by the academic member of the Commission (Shamir’s lecture, Tel Aviv University, 19 September 2005, p. 6):

·        The Arab minority population of Israel is an indigenous population which perceives itself subject to the hegemony of a society that is largely not indigenous.

·        The Arab minority in Israel is a majority transformed; it bears a heritage of several centuries of belonging to the majority, and views with disapproval its minority status, forced upon it with the establishment of the state.

·        This reversal was the result of a harsh defeat suffered by the Arabs which, in their historical memory, is tied to the Nakba – the most severe collective trauma in their history.

·        There was a continuous dynamic aspect to the decisive outcome gained by the Zionist movement in the struggle over the establishment of the State, reflected primarily in the takeover of extensive lands, clearing space for the masses of new immigrants. This fact fostered a feeling among the Arabs that the Israeli democracy is not as democratic toward the Arabs as it is toward the Jews.

Regarding the two events above, it is worth remembering that in all previous violent confrontations with Jewish protest movements in Israel, e.g., Black Panthers, the Rabbi Uzi Meshulem Movement, etc., never before was live ammunition used to quell a protest by Israeli Jews; and never was a Jew killed by the agents of the state.

The Zionist-Jewish attack on Palestinian Arab citizens in Akka, October 2008

This refers to the events that happened in Akka (Acre) on the eve of the Jewish Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). The sequence of events went this way (based on a meticulously documented report by the Akka Residents Coalition):

A 48-year-old Arab citizen of Israel from Akka rides in his car to the house of relatives … who live in the eastern part of the city (with a Jewish majority), to pick up his daughter … He drove slowly and quietly with no radio or speakers turned on (to respect the solemn Jewish holiday). Jewish youth attacked the car with stones.…

 

After Yom Kippur ended (9 October,) a large group of Jewish residents, estimated at 1,500, gathered around the train station in the eastern and northern parts of the city (where a small minority of Palestinian Arabs live in Jewish-majority neighbourhoods) … The Jewish rioters threw stones, clashed with the police, and attacked Arab passersby.

 

In these areas of the city, there is a Jewish majority; about twenty Arab families live there in total. The Jewish rioters gathered in the streets and cried “death to the Arabs.” They attacked Arab family homes trying to make their inhabitants flee; they damaged the homes and set them on fire … A text message distributed to Jewish residents called for a boycott of Arab tradesmen and shopkeepers.

Violent harassment by Jewish-Zionist extremists against Arab residents of the city of Akka did not start on Yom Kippur 2008; it started at least since 2002 when slogans such as “death to Arabs” started appearing on walls, elevators of apartment buildings, etc. This is not accidental vandalism; it is part of a trend to establish Jewish “purity” in the so-called Arab-Jewish mixed cities such as Akka, Lod, Ramleh, and Yaffa, which Jewish-Zionists consider areas of “demographic risk.” This trend is being pushed by the national right-wing party called “the seeds of the settlements” in recent years, by transplanting Jewish “yeshivas” and settlers into the Arab areas, brought in generally from the most extreme racist Jewish colonies in the West Bank. Today there are around 200 yeshivas in Akka, in addition to approximately 1,000 settler-extremists. The clear and overt purpose is to “Judaise” these cities.

In an interview (on Channel 7), the head of the Hesder Yeshiva in Akka, Rabbi Yosi Stern, stated:

"Akka is a national test. Akka today is Israel in ten years’ time. What happens in Akka today is what will happen in Israel.…

 

“Co-existence is a slogan. Ultimately Akka is a town like Raanana, Kfar Saba, or Haifa, and must safeguard its Jewish identity. I think everyone would agree that Akka is the capital city of Galilee, of thousands of years of Jewish history. We are here to preserve that Jewish identity and to reinforce that spirit, to stand for our nation’s honour.”

 Concluding remarks

How are these three events that happened over the last thirty-some years interconnected? And how do they shape the answer to the two questions I posed earlier?

The ideological underpinnings of the three events are the same and focus on two levels with overt objectives: one is the Judaisation of the entire country through the Jewish colonisation of the land and the prevention of the existence of any Arab majority concentration (hence, the targeting of Galilee, al-Naqab and the Triangle, etc.). The second is the forced disconnection in identity and shared future between the Palestinian minority in Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and in the shatat (diaspora).

The only future for us, as an indigenous national minority that can exercise our inherited basic human rights on our land and that can achieve true justice and equality, is to reclaim and re-assert our narrative. We should seek to regain our status as part of our national Palestinian majority, in historical Palestine, as we struggle for the dismemberment and dissolution of the Zionist racist system and its transformation into a “normal” democratic system, responsive to the needs of all its citizens. Our future, as a national minority in and on our land, and as part of the Arab nation, is organically connected to the future of the Arab nation and to the entire Palestinian people – the communities in the West Bank and Gaza, the refugees, and all those dispersed throughout the world; and it has to be realised in a democratic society in historical Palestine, where we would be ready to co-exist with non-Zionist Jews. Our repossessed narrative cannot be a reinterpretation of our history as a dull shadow of Jewish-Zionist narrative. Our repossessed narrative must be based on the deconstruction of the racist Zionist-Ashkenazi system, which itself is a precondition for such a just solution. The existing Israeli system is, by definition, racist and exclusivist, and it is inherently and structurally incapable of providing justice and genuine equality to my Palestinian people.

Dr. Khalil Nakhleh is a Palestinian anthropologist, writer, and independent development and educational consultant from Galilee who resides in Ramallah. He is the editor of The Future of the Palestinian Minority in Israel (Ramallah: Madar Center, 2008). He may be reached at abusama@palnet.com.

"We are all Hamas," screamed a scrawny Mauritanian, repeatedly, as he determinedly drew his face closer to a TV camera. Behind him, thousands more tunefully chanted similar words, chants that were heard in different Arabic dialects, in fact in many different languages all across the globe.

Yet, Israel, somehow is claiming victory in the media war, which it calculatedly unleashed weeks before its most violent attack on Gaza yet. Thousands have been reportedly killed and wounded in the first two weeks, starting Dec. 27, in the tiny stretch of land (roughly 140 square miles), yet densely populated Gaza Strip of 1.5 million people.

"Whenever Israel is bombing, it is hard to explain our position to the world," said Avi Pazner, former Israeli ambassador to Italy and France, and "one of the officials drafted in to present Israel's case to the world media," according to the Jewish Chronicle. "But at least this time everything was ready and in place."

"Fewer military officers; more women; tightly controlled messages; and ministers kept on a short leash. This was Israel's new media game plan in Operation Cast Lead," the newspaper reported.

It's always difficult to fathom Israel's giddiness and sense of triumph as defenseless civilians are pulverized by mostly U.S.-supplied warplanes and bombs. Even if one chooses to empathize with Israel's dodgy claim, parroted endlessly by the George W. Bush administration, that the Israeli army is in a state of self-defense, one can never fully grasp the wisdom of its military tactics.

"Fatalities in Gaza are already over 400 and injuries close to 2,000 so far as is known. Total Palestinian civilian casualties are 400 times greater than the casualties incurred by Israelis," wrote three-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader in an open letter to Bush, five days into the Israeli onslaught. Nearly one week after the devastating airstrikes, Israel unleashed a ground offensive which is pushing the causality figures to unprecedented heights, made mostly of civilian victims, which by January 9, reached 795 dead and over 3,000 wounded.

Much of Israel's war machine is financed, manufactured and supplied by the United States. U.S. financial and military generosity has served as the backbone of all of Israel's wars against its neighbors, including the Palestinians. In Israel's war against Lebanon in the summer of 2006, lest it runs out, the U.S. rushed 'emergency' military supplies, including cluster bombs to the Israeli army, allowing the latter to ensure the demise of its arch enemy: thousands of dead and wounded Lebanese civilians.

In the ongoing war against Gaza, neither the U.S.' "dedication to the security of Israel," nor Israel's dedication to inflicting maximum harm on civilians have been in any way altered. While Bush brazenly chastised Hamas and the Palestinians for the death wrought on them by Israel, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama had nothing to say.

"The scale of bloodshed in Gaza over five days is the same as if almost 2,000 Israelis had been killed and 9,000 wounded in the same period. Imagine the consequences for Israel in such an event," wrote author and former BBC correspondent Deepak Tripathi. Would Obama find the staggering number worthy of cutting short his Hawaii vacation, even for a brief comment, if the tables were turned? Candidate of change, he said.

But Israel is winning the media war, reports Israel; a peculiar claim by any standards. If the reference is made to a 'victory' that helped win over mainstream U.S. media, one has to wonder if the corporate media has ever expressed any sympathy for Hamas, or any resisting Palestinian faction, be it secular, socialist or Islamist?

The opposite has always been true. Any violent Palestinian response to the Israeli occupation and its inherit violence has been dubbed "terrorist" for decades, even if Palestinians were targeting Israeli soldiers or paramilitary settlers. Aside from allowing a 'moderate' Palestinian commentator an occasional limited space to write a watered down op-ed, now and then – which serves as a feel-good moment that demonstrates the 'objectivity' of U.S. media – the pro-Israel mantra has defined every major American newspaper in every city in every state. That requires a separate discussion, but the persistent question remains: what is Israel winning exactly?

More Israeli women are stating Israel's case to the media, according to reports. The strategy is both sexist and underhanded. Following the Lebanon war, Israeli bikini models flooded U.S. men''s magazines exhibiting their barely covered bodies. Former Miss Israel, model Gal Gadot defended her nude photos, promoted partly by the Israeli consulate in New York as her attempt to help "improve Israel's war-torn image," reported the New York Post in June, 2007. Now as Israeli bombs are lightening the sky of Gaza, similar tactics are underway, in Maxim and other magazines.

Kadima leader and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni took its message to YouTube, conveying the same redundant but "tightly controlled" misinformation, that attempts to explain why imprisoning, starving, then senselessly bombing 1.5 million Palestinian Muslims and Christians is good for world peace, for democracy, for security, for the future of the region and the world.

But the fact is, Israel never won the media war in the United States for, frankly, there was never one to begin with. Yet somehow, millions of people around the world managed to read through the filters, the propaganda, the perplexing logic, the Maxim cover pages, and took to the streets in a collective act of passion and dismay, without billion-dollar media crafters "tightly controlling" their every move, scripting their chants or directing their hoarse voices: We are all Palestinians and "with our souls, with our blood, we will die for you Gaza."

What has Israel won exactly, aside from the haunting images of Palestinian youngsters in UN schools, homes and hospitals, mutilated, some silent and others screaming? This is no victory, but a brief illusion of one. As for the long-term repercussions, that is a whole new story. Israeli bombs over Lebanon in 1982 gave rise to Hezbollah, and its war of 2006 turned a small, resisting militant movement into a major powerbroker that will certainly help shape the future of Lebanon. Israel is now doing the same in Gaza. A victory, indeed.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London).

Read the previous six FPA statements here.
For more details on upcoming protest actions or to read reports, go here.

Today, all indications point to an imminent ground attack. It is likely that it will be intense and focused on specified areas with prescribed goals. Typical of the Zionist leadership, it remains focused on attaining its colonial goals with utter disregard to the popular international outcry that has erupted worldwide and continues to this day. Political and military Zionist leaders are encouraged by the complicit response from Arab regimes, especially Egypt. Israel correctly recognizes the silence and inaction on the part of the regimes as a green light to escalate.

The fact that the Egyptian regime would not open the Rafah crossing beyond limited medical needs, and that it would not even consider ending any of the numerous relationships it has with Israel, is enough signal for Israel to keep up the massacre and even escalate. What would have Egypt done had it not been run by the Mubarak despots? At a very minimum, it would have opened the Rafah crossing unconditionally. It would have cut all relationships with the Zionist polity and terminated the supply of natural gas to it. It would have championed a support bridge from around the Arab world to sustain the Palestinian people against one of the most equipped armies in the world. Egypt could have assumed a leading position among all Arab states in galvanizing an international diplomatic and political support against the barbaric Zionist actions that would have isolated the Zionist Apartheid state.

Very few have any expectations that the Egyptian regime would ever consider entering the fight in any way, but no one could have imagined that it would simply stand silent counting the dead, as it has thus far and as it has done in 2006 when Lebanon was attacked Other Arab regimes have similar and equal responsibilities that they are also abrogating, to the disdain and outrage of the entirety of the Arab people. But those regimes are of no use to the Palestinian or the Arab people. They could not even hold a summit or agree on a language of condemnation. Their only role is to implement their complicit function, and in that they excel. After all, their jails are filled with Arab political activists, teachers, union leaders, and community members who are being brutally muted for simply expressing a natural yearning for dignity and liberation.

While we strongly urge all to participate in all protest activities scheduled today and in the coming period, we especially ask our community to begin the process of internal evaluation. The likes of Mubarak, Abu Mazen, and the various despots that plague us as a people, are our responsibility. They have extensions in our midst that must be organizationally and politically opposed and exposed. They come in various forms, from presumed scholars and journalists to destructive organizations and funders. They are destroying our youth by normalizing within them the ideology of defeat and surrender. They are so hateful to all resistance movements and obedient to colonial masters, that they aid and abet in the destruction of these movements. They have been financed and paid for by monarchs and by questionable sources, to say the least. They are the fat cats that despise everything that is genuinely Arab. Here, we salute our community members who have spoken against these poisonous organizations and individuals.

As a community, we must be able to distinguish between our principled allies and those who preach to us in a patronizing scolding, explaining to us how we must accept partial rights, and how we must sit quietly as they find us a seat at the corner of the table with some leftovers to have. This is our time, and we must embrace it. This is a duty from which we must not walk away.

The Arab people are in the streets daily defying imprisonments, beatings, and interrogation by Arab regimes to call on their respective governments to stand in support of the Palestinian people. The least we can do is to do the same with organizations that claim to be our own or in our solidarity.

As the savagery of Zionism continues, there is no room for equating the victim with the victimizer, and there is no role for those who spread hate and false information about our people. They must be exposed for what they are: obedient servants to their funders and keepers. At the very least, they must not speak for us.

We have a duty as a community to embrace a consciousness that distinguishes between our constitutional belonging in the US and the manufactured ideological enslavement imposed on us by hand-picked functionaries. Opposing the Gaza Strip massacre is a moral obligation that transcends citizenship and nationality. It is based on its own merits and rooted in internationally recognized rights and principles. The only reason for any regime, entity, organization, or individual not to be able to fully take a clear position on this matter is due to their ideological and political allegiance. Such is the test today. Where do you stand on the Gaza Massacre and what are you doing to stop it?

The Free Palestine Alliance
January 2, 2009

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http://wewillreturn.blogspot.com

Imagine if all this carnage is being paid for by your tax money.

Israel is carrying out an all out massacre in the Gaza Strip and the Arab American Community is outraged because neither the US Media is covering and reporting the facts nor do the Bush Administration and Congress have the backbone to order Israel, which gets almost 11 Billion Dollars a year from the US, to stop carrying out these war crimes.

The US Administration and the US media keep repeating the Israeli lies that it is doing this mass killing in retaliation to Hamas breaking the cease fire and launching rockets on settlers just outside of the Gaza Strip. Neither have the decency to think for a minute and investigate these lies.

Israel says that it left the Gaza Strip almost 2 years ago and that a cease fire agreement between it and Hamas took place and that Hamas violated it. What it does not say that since then it has been enforcing a very tight siege, were medicine, gas, food, electricity or even clean air is not allowed in. It does not tell you that since then it killed more than 67 people in Gaza and that more than 385 sick people died for the lack of medication and electricity that is needed to power life saving equipment, a very clear violation of the cease fire agreement it had with Hamas.

For almost 2 years Hamas did not retaliate. It actually put in jail members of resistance groups that could not take all these violations laying down.

All of this is well documented and easy to get information, but obviously not to the US Media and the US administration, who are doing a disservice to all of us. The whole world is aware of the US complicity in carrying out these war crimes .It¢s another shameful act that this Bush Administration is adding to its over-filled Dossier.

No crime should take place in our name and with our money. Bush, instead of trying to bring the Car Industry to its knees so he can give them loans to survive and sustain US jobs, should stop all US aid to the rogue state of Israel, and the US Congress should regain its independence and stop being an Israeli occupied Territory.