Palestine: 68 Years On

Via: 1948: LEST WE FORGET.

Sixty eight years ago to this day (29 November 1947), the UN committed an act which no other similar organisation, under any law, would be allowed to do then, or today.

Like a great legal world body ruling the world and throwing its weight around to achieve justice soon after the end of WW2 – and only 2 years and 2 month after this world body (made up of 50 nations) came officially into existence, it perhaps needed to show some muscle and that it can exercise power over an issue which had been created by the world Zionist bodies and their allies; an issue so far away from the shores of New York where the UN stood, and where the Zionist lobbies practiced their tricks and used their power to twist arms and influence governments for the single most important of their objectives: the creation of the State of Israel on the land of another people.

So, the UN obliged them with UN Resolution 181 on the 29th November 1947 which resulted in splicing my country in half against my will and the will of my Palestinian brothers and sisters. With that single most criminal act, it was planting the seeds for a conflict that has been raging ever since and which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the dispossession of 750,000 indigenous Palestinians.

Even before the so-called State of Israel was established in May 1948, less than 6 months after that criminal act by the UN was committed, more than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed, or literally erased from the Palestinian landscape.

This crime, christened by a body which has failed ever since to establish peace on this planet, was carried out by the same Zionist gangs whose ascendants have ruled this so-called State ever since 1948.

The western nations pamper this so-called State, and defend its actions no matter how gruesome they have become and claim it to be the only democracy in the Middle East.

Slogans, peace processes, ‘international agreements’ and shuttle diplomacies, will never alter the single most important fact about Palestine: Its land and its people are one; its historic boundaries are sacrosanct; its struggle for over 68 years will never be compromised by political manipulation and the just cause of our Nakba children will remain the hope and the light during their struggle to rid their land of the Zionist gangs.

All the so-called political dealings presumed to be aiming for a just solution, back then, and even today, will never achieve their objectives because their single core objective is the preservation of this colonial-settler Zionist State.

We have struggled for over 68 years – longer than any people in modern times; we have withstood the most powerful assaults by the 4^th largest military machine in the world; we have remained resilient under the most criminal, inhumane and brutal occupation (and that means the occupation of all of historic Palestine – not only the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza); if anyone needs proof that a just struggle is a winning one, take a look at the Palestinian people today.

Antoine Raffoul
Coordinator 1948: LEST WE FORGET

U.S. Wars and Aggression. Naji al-Ali

U.S. Wars and Aggression. As Naji al-Ali Saw It.

Naji al-Ali wrote: “The child Handala is my signature, everyone asks me about him wherever I go. I gave birth to this child in the Gulf and I presented him to the people. His name is Handala and he has promised the people that he will remain true to himself. I drew him as a child who is not beautiful, his hair is like the hair of a hedgehog who uses his thorns as a weapon. Handala is not a fat, happy, relaxed, or pampered child, he is barefooted like the refugee camp children, and he is an ‘icon’ that protects me from making mistakes. Even though he is rough, he smells of Amber. His hands are clasped behind his back as a sign of rejection at a time when solutions are presented to us the American way. Handala was born ten years old, and he will always be ten years old. At that age I left my homeland, and when he returns, Handala will still be ten, and then he will start growing up. The laws of nature do not apply to him. He is unique. Things will become normal again when the homeland returns. I presented him to the poor and named him Handala as a symbol of bitterness. At first he was a Palestinian child, but his consciousness developed to have a national and then a global and human horizon. He is a simple yet tough child, and this is why people adopted him and felt that he represents their consciousness.”

Read more about Naji al-Ali.

Video Info:
Art by Naji al-Ali.
Palestinian Folklore Song by May Nasr.
Editing: Palestine Diary.

The Land Speaks Arabic

Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal
Volume 7, Number 2, November 2008

Documentary Film Reviews
THE LAND SPEAKS ARABIC
Reviewed by Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh

‘La Terre Parle Arab’ (2007). Director Maryse Gargour. Arabic, French, English audio with English subtitles, 61 minutes. Winner of several European awards (ASBU, Prix France 3 Medirerranee, Prix Memoire du Medirerranee).

This excellent documentary on one of the most pressing issues of our time brings
together rarely seen footage of Palestine before 1948 juxtaposed with historical research, eyewitness accounts, stunning choreography, moving testimonials, and historical documents.

We can state the fact that before the Zionist project began in Palestine it was more heavily populated than the United States of today. We can state that Palestine 20 years or even fifty years after the Zionist project was launched was still predominantly Arab. But it is one thing to state a fact and another to have seen it or lived it. The next best thing is to have a film that shows you a video of the era and pictures of the documents of the era. That is what this film does in a very professional, practical, and effective way.

Al Nakba and Canada

By: Mazin Al Nahawi.

It is a shame that John Baird and his boss Stephen Harper haven’t learned yet from Canada’s colonial past.

For over a century, the Palestine question has been described as the most complex political issue of our modern time. A very “complicated” equation that after a half of a century of Zionist colonization to set up and establish a colonial “Jewish state” in Palestine, a mathematician, none other than Einstein himself, had something to say about the crimes committed in his name as a Jew, and in the name of Judaism.

In a letter by Einstein to the Zionist, Shepard Rifkin, executive director for “American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”, dated April 10, 1948 (the date is very important, it’s only a month before the illegal creation of the Zionist state in Palestine.)

Mr. Shepard Rifkin
Dear Sir:
When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations build up from our own ranks.
I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.
Sincerely yours,
(Signed, ‘A. Einstein’)

It didn’t require more than three lines to solve this “complex” matter, and it seems that Einstein was very confident in naming the culprits for the “catastrophe in Palestine”, as he precisely described it.

One month after that letter, the Palestinian Arabs began to call the day of the creation of the Israeli occupation state, which consisted of the robbery of their homeland and existence as AL NAKBA (Cataclysm or Catastrophe). That was 65 years ago.

When Israeli Denial of Palestinian Existence Becomes Genocidal

Via: The Electronic Intifada.

By Ilan Pappe.

In a regal interview he gave the Israeli press on the eve of the state’s “Independence Day”, Shimon Peres, the current president of Israel, said the following:

“I remember how it all began. The whole state of Israel is a millimeter of the whole Middle East. A statistical error, barren and disappointing land, swamps in the north, desert in the south, two lakes, one dead and an overrated river. No natural resource apart from malaria. There was nothing here. And we now have the best agriculture in the world? This is a miracle: a land built by people” (Maariv, 14 April 2013).

This fabricated narrative, voiced by Israel’s number one citizen and spokesman, highlights how much the historical narrative is part of the present reality. This presidential impunity sums up the reality on the eve of the 65th commemoration of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine. The disturbing fact of life, 65 years on, is not that the figurative head of the so-called Jewish state, and for that matter almost everyone in the newly-elected government and parliament, subscribe to such views. The worrying and challenging reality is the global immunity given to such impunity.

Peres’ denial of the native Palestinians and his reselling in 2013 of the landless people mythology exposes the cognitive dissonance in which he lives: he denies the existence of approximately twelve million people living in and near to the country to which they belong. History shows that the human consequences are horrific and catastrophic when powerful people, heading powerful outfits such as a modern state, denied the existence of a people who are very much present.

This denial was there at the beginning of Zionism and led to the ethnic cleansing in 1948. And it is there today, which may lead to similar disasters in the future — unless stopped immediately.

Zionism and the United States Congress. By William James Martin

Via: CounterPunch.

The Locus of the Conflict in Palestine is in Washington DC

The ideology, or political project, of Zionism which underlies the creation of the State of Israel had, in fact, a Christian origin rather than a Jewish one, as writings can be found dating from the 1500’s, written by Christian clergymen in England advocating the migration of Jews to the Holy Land.

The migration of Jews to Palestine was also advocated by Napoleon Bonaparte.

The first Jewish presentations of Zionism were written by Moses Hess in 1862 and 20 years later by Leo Pinsker, both of the Russian Pale, with each writer advocated a separate state for Jews.

Twentieth century Zionism was initiated by Theodore Herzl who, likewise, advocated a separate state for Jews in his book in his book, Der Judenstaat, written in 1896. One year later he formed the World Zionist Congress which held its first meeting in Basel Switzerland in that same year.

What to do with the Arabs present in the prospective Jewish state dominated the thoughts of the founders of Israel from Herzl up until the actual expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948.
Thus Herzl stated:

“[We shall] spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

Thus the concept of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians was introduced.

It is not rocket science, if you want to create a state exclusively of Jews, mostly European, in the heart of the Middle East, then you must first get rid of the Arabs.