No. 33
May 15, 2024
Anniversary of Al Nakba – May 15, 1948
• Ethnic Cleansing
and Dispossession as Explained by
Dr. Ismail Zayid
• A Brief History of Palestine and Its People
The Infamy Called "Canada Park"
• A Story of Dispossession and Suffering
• Militant
Opposition in Ottawa to City Council's
Complicity with Genocide
Photo Review -- May 7 to 14
• Worldwide Actions
Continue to Demand
Hands Off Rafah! and No More Nakba!
Anniversary of Al Nakba – May 15, 1948
End the Catastrophe Imposed on
the
Palestinian People!
Support Palestinian Resistance Until Liberation!
Mass action commemorates 76th Anniversary of the Nakba and
denounces Israeli genocide in Gaza, Montreal, May 11, 2024
May 15 is the day we commemorate al Nakba -- the Catastrophe -- a day marking a "continuous journey of pain, loss and injustice" for the Palestinian people. It marks the day that some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes during the 1948 war. Palestinians were forced from their lands and homes due to military attacks by Zionist forces, supported by the British and U.S. governments. The Israeli Zionist forces attacked 774 cities and villages, and occupied 80 per cent of the Palestinian soil after killing nearly 15,000 Muslim and Christian civilians. Those who survived were forced to migrate to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and neighbouring countries, such as Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
As we commemorate May 15, al Nakba Day, the world demands that the same crimes being committed today stop immediately. These crimes, committed 76 years ago and ever since then, set the scene for today's U.S./Israeli genocide.
As a result of the Nakba 76 years ago and crimes committed since then, out of the global population of 14 million Palestinians, more than seven million live in exile, while two million are being slaughtered in the Gaza Strip, the world's largest open-air prison, and another three million live in the occupied West Bank. Israeli occupation authorities are currently detaining some 9,500 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank being held in Israeli prisons, of which 3,660 are held in administrative detention, i.e., without charge or trial. Of these, 80 are women and 200 are children. At the same point last year, about 4,900 Palestinian prisoners, including 160 children and 31 women were being held in Israeli prisons. Whereas 84 Palestinians had been killed by Israel by April 2023, by the same period in 2024, the death toll is in the tens of thousands. Since October 7, 2023, 35,173 Palestinians have been killed by Israel with at least another 10,000 missing. Of those killed, at least 14,500 are children. At least 60 per cent of residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed, while 80 per cent of commercial facilities have been damaged or destroyed. Two hundred and sixty-seven places of worship have been damaged or destroyed. Only 12 of 35 hospitals remain partially functional. Seventy-three per cent of school buildings have been damaged or destroyed, including all of Gaza's universities. Beside's Israel's blocking of aid and use of starvation as a weapon of war against the people of Gaza, 83 per cent of Gaza's groundwater wells are not operational.
On this occasion, the peoples all over the world condemn the U.S./Israeli Zionist crimes as well as the relentless expansion of illegal settlements that continue the dispossession of the Palestinians begun in 1948, the attacks on the al-Aqsa mosque, and the collective punishment of the Gaza Strip through a brutal genocidal war that is now targeting people's last refuge in Rafah.
We salute the Palestinian people's unrelenting resistance and stand with them as the struggle for liberation enters a crucial phase.
All out to join the actions across the country condemning the crimes being committed against the Palestinian people which the world is witnessing and the violence and brutal attacks of the occupation forces.
Long Live the Palestinian Resistance!
Uphold the Palestinian People's Right of Return!
Ethnic Cleansing and Dispossession as Explained by Dr. Ismail Zayid
This material was originally delivered by Dr. Ismail Zayid as a lecture at the Conference on Palestine, Vancouver, May 23, 1999 under the title "Fifty Years of Ethnic Cleaning and Dispossession." It is now 76 years since the partition of Palestine and the overview of the conflict provided by Dr. Zayid is as pertinent as ever.
Dr. Ismail Zayid was born and grew up in Beit Nuba, Palestine, went to school in Jerusalem, received his medical education at the University of London, and emigrated to Canada in 1972. He is the author of two books, 'Palestine: A Stolen Heritage' and 'Zionism: The Myth and the Reality', and is founding president of the Canada Palestine Association. In the late 1990s, he retired from his position as professor of Pathology and Head of Anatomical Pathology in the faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University of Halifax.
'One Nation Promised a Second the Country of a Third'
Protest on the Centenary of the Balfour Declaration,
Mississauga, Ontario, November 4, 2017.
The Palestine-Israel conflict is frequently described as a very complex one. I want to submit to you that the problem is fundamentally a very simple one which was summed up, in the words of a simple Palestinian farmer in Jericho -- quoted by the late Frank Epp, then President of Conrad Grebel College of the University of Waterloo -- who told him: "Our problem is very simple. A foreigner came and took our land, our farms and our homes, and kicked us out. We have in mind to return. It may take a hundred years, but we will return."
This, in a nutshell, is the Palestine problem and the essence of this conflict. A country, Palestine, has been dismantled, its people uprooted from their homeland and replaced by an alien people gathered from all corners of the globe and a new state, Israel, created, in its place. This tragedy, and the ensuing conflict that brought about repeated wars in the Middle East is a direct outcome of the introduction of political Zionism into the Middle East.
Inevitably, some history is relevant here. It was the second of November 1917 when Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, issued his infamous declaration in the form of a letter written to Lord Rothchild. It read:
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."
It is interesting to note that the four-letter word "Arab" occurs not once in this document. To refer to the Arabs who constituted, at the time, 92% of the population of Palestine and owned 98% of its land, as the non-Jewish communities is not merely preposterous but deliberately fraudulent. I do not need to tell you that this letter has no shred of legality, as Palestine did not belong to Balfour to assume such acts of generosity. Dr. Arnold Toynbee described the British role, in issuing this document, accurately:
"We were taking it upon ourselves to give away something that was not ours to give. We were promising rights of some kind in the Palestinian Arabs' country to a third party."
Similarly, the well-known Jewish writer, Arthur Koestler, summed it up aptly when he described the Balfour Declaration as a document in which "one nation promised a second the country of a third".
On the 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed its Resolution No. 181, recommending the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state, in 56% of the land; an Arab state in 42% of the land; and an International Zone in Jerusalem. At the time, the Jews, a large proportion of them recent or illegal immigrants, constituted one-third of the population of Palestine and owned 5.6% of its land. In the area that was apportioned to the Jewish state, half of the population was Arab (Muslims and Christians) and half was Jewish.
It is interesting to note that times have not changed since 1947 when the United States got the General Assembly to delay a vote "to gain time to bring, by coercion, certain Latin American, Asian and African countries into line with its own views." Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles stated:
"By direct order of the White House, every form of pressure, direct and indirect, was used to make sure that the necessary majority would be gained."
Ruins of Deir Yassin, one of the hundreds of Palestinian
villages occupied and depopulated by Israel in 1948, Walid
Khalidi, Ed., Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992. In
the completion of its policy of "ethnic cleansing" in 1948,
Israel proceeded, in an attempt to destroy the Palestinian
national existence, by a policy of destruction of property and
expropriation of Arab land. A systemic process brought about the
total destruction of 378 Palestinian towns and villages.
Subsequently, fighting erupted between Arabs and Jews and by the end of the fighting in early 1949, Israel had occupied 78% of Palestine and approximately 750,000 Palestinians were driven out or fled in terror from their homes.
The genesis of this exodus emanates from the inherent concept of the Zionist ideology of creating a pure Jewish state in Palestine, free of Arabs. The current powerful political agenda that exists in Israel today, as the policy of "transfer of Palestinians" from Israel and the occupied territories, is not a new one. Theodor Herzl wrote in his diaries in 1897, on the occasion of the First World Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, where he presented his plans to create a Jewish state in Palestine, that:
"We shall try to spirit the penniless (Arab) population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. ... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly." (from R. Patai, ed., The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, Vol. I).
Ben-Gurion, in a speech to the 20th Zionist Congress plenum in Zurich on the 7th August 1937, stated:
"Transfer of (Arab) inhabitants happened in the past, in the Jerzeel Valley, in the Sharon (i.e. the Coastal Plain) and in other places. We know of the Jewish National Fund's actions in this regard. Now the transfer will have to be carried out on a different scale altogether. In many parts of the country new Jewish settlement will not be possible unless there is transfer of the Arab peasantry. The transfer of the population is what makes possible a comprehensive (Jewish) settlement plan. Thankfully, the Arab people have large, empty areas (outside Palestine). Jewish power in the country, which is continuously growing, will also increase our possibilities to carry out the transfer on a large scale. You must remember that this method contains an important humane and Zionist idea, to shift parts of a people (I.e. the Palestine Arabs) to their own country and to settle empty lands [in Syria, Transjordan and Iraq]."(Benny Morris, "Looking Back: a personal assessment of the Zionist Experience," Tikkun. 13:40-49, 1998)
Here we go again! Expelling people from their homeland, we are now told, is a "humane Zionist idea". Professor Israel Shahak said it all: "You cannot have humane Zionism; it is a contradiction in terms."
In a letter in 1937 to his son, Amos, Ben-Gurion confided that when the Jewish state comes into being, "We will expel the Arabs and take their places." And while visiting the newly-conquered Nazareth in July 1948, Ben-Gurion exclaimed: "Why are there so many Arabs left here? Why didn't you expel them?"
Joseph Weitz, who was the Jewish Agency chief representative, reported in the September 29, 1967 issue of Davar, organ of the Histadrut, that he and other Zionist leaders concluded, in 1940, that there was "no room for both peoples together in this country." The achievement of Zionist objectives, he realised, required "a Palestine, or at least Western Palestine (west of the Jordan River) without Arabs." He wrote that it was necessary "to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries. To transfer all of them and only after such transfer would the country be able to absorb millions of our brethren." This, in essence, is the foundation for the policy of "ethnic cleansing" that the Zionist forces adopted in 1948 to remove, by massacre, and by psychological warfare, virtually the entire Arab population in the area of the Palestinian territory that they conquered by military means, 78% of Palestine.
The massacre on 9 April 1948 of the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, where 250 men, women and children were butchered and massacred in cold blood by the Irgun Zwei Leumi terrorist gang, with the approval of the Jerusalem commander of the official Zionist forces; the Haganah, David Shaltiel, as recently documented by Yitzhak Levi, a veteran Israeli intelligence officer, was instrumental in this expulsion. Ironically, the village of Deir Yassin had made a peace agreement with their Jewish neighbours of Givat Shaul. This massacre was not unique and numerous similar massacres were carried out by Zionist forces and Israeli forces during that war. A recent article in the Tel Aviv newspaper, Hair, of 6 May 1992, by Guy Erlich, documents evidence collected by the American Jewish journalist Dan Kortzman, author of Genesis 1948, and the history researcher Ariyeh Yitzhaki, of at least twenty large massacres of Arabs and about a hundred more massacres committed by Israeli forces. Yitzhaki states:
"For many Israelis it was easy to cling to the false claim that the Arabs left the country because that was what their leaders ordered. That is a total lie. The fundamental cause for the flight of the Arabs was their fear of Israelis' violence, and that fear had a basis in reality."
History researcher Uri Milstein, celebrated in Israel as the dispeller of myths, confirms Yitzhaki's evaluation regarding the volume of the massacres and even goes further:
"If Yitzhaki claims that there were murders in almost every village, then I say that up to the inception of Israel every event of fighting ended in a massacre of Arabs. There were massacres of Arabs in all of Israel's wars, but I have no doubt that the War of Independence was the dirtiest."
In the village of Duweima, an Arab village near Hebron, occupied without a battle by Battalion 89 of the 8th Brigade, some 80-100 civilians were murdered in cold blood by the occupiers. Later, more civilians were murdered. In the village of Safsaf: "fifty-two men were tied with a rope. Lowered into a pit and shot. Ten were killed. Women begged for mercy. Three cases of rape. A 14 year-old raped and four others killed."
The policy of massacre was complemented by a campaign of psychological warfare, initiating terror to force the Palestinians to flee. Leo Heiman, Israeli Army Reserve officer who fought in 1948, wrote in Marine Corp Gazette in June 1964:
"As uncontrolled panic spread through all Arab quarters, the Israelis brought up jeeps with loudspeakers which broadcast recorded "horror sounds." These included shrieks, wails and anguished moans of Arab women, the wail of sirens and the clang of fire alarm bells, interrupted by a sepulchral voice calling out in Arabic: "Save your souls all ye faithfull: the Jews are using poison gas and atomic weapons. Run for your lives in the name of Allah."
More subtle methods of psychological warfare were used by Yigal Allon, the Commander of the Palmach, an elite Haganah force, who later became Israeli Foreign Minister. He wrote in Ha Sepher Ha Palmach in 1948:
"I gathered all of the Jewish mukhtars (headmen), who have contact with Arabs in different villages, and asked them to whisper in the ears of some Arabs that a great Jewish reinforcement has arrived in Galilee and that it is going to burn all of the villages of Huleh. They should suggest to these Arabs, as their friends, to escape while there is still time. The rumour spread in all the areas of the Huleh. The tactic reached its goal completely."
When the Arabs failed to flee, as required, a combination of terror and physical expulsion was used, as in the case of the cities of Lydda and Ramleh, which were occupied in July 10th, 1948. Yitzhak Rabin, recorded in his memoirs, published in the New York Times (23 October 1979):
"While the fighting was still in progress, we had to grapple with the problem dealing with the fate of the civilian population, numbering some 50,000. We walked outside, Ben Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question: 'What is to be done with the population?' B.G. waved his hand in a gesture which said, 'Drive them out!'"
One of the Israeli war crimes is relevant here. After the surrender of Lydda, a group of Palestinian men took refuge in the small Dahmash Mosque. The commander of the Palmach's Third Battalion, Moshe Kalman, gave an order to fire several missiles at the mosque. The force that attacked the mosque was surprised at the lack of resistance. It found the remains of the Arab fighters stuck to the mosque walls. A group of 20 to 50 of the city's residents were then brought to clean the mosque and to bury the remains. When they finished their work, they were also shot, and thrown into the graves they themselves had dug. The American Jewish journalist Dan Kortzman learned of the event from Moshe Kalman while working on his book, Genesis 1948, describing the War of Independence.
Rabin and his officers proceeded to drive these 50-60,000 civilians away from their homes in terror, with low-flying airplanes over their heads shooting the occasional person and forcing them to run. The sight of the terror-stricken men, women and children fleeing in horror in the midday sun of the hot summer, having run approximately 25 km to the village of Beit Nuba, where I saw them with my own eyes, is a sight not to be forgotten. In reference to this scene and countering the Zionist propaganda, that the Palestinians left their homes voluntarily and in response to broadcasts by their leaders.
It is perhaps relevant to note that this piece of Zionist propaganda was first demolished by Dr. Erskine Childers who examined the American and British monitoring records of all Middle East broadcasts throughout 1948. He reported in the Spectator 1961:
"There was not a single order or appeal or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948. There is repeated monitored records of Arab appeals even flat orders, to civilians of Palestine to stay put."
The historical record clearly demonstrates that the Palestine refugee problem was created in response to a clear Zionist policy of cleansing the land of Palestine from its own people. Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel, described this process with a great deal of satisfaction as the "miraculous clearing of the land." However, the UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, stated in a report to the UN:
"It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries."
Count Bernadotte paid heavily for stating this obvious principle and was assassinated by the Stern terrorist gang, on direct orders of Yitzhak Shamir, on 17 September 1948 in Jerusalem. The United Nations General Assembly proceeded, however, to resolve on December 11, 1948, in its resolution No. 194:
"Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date and those wishing not to return should be compensated for their property."
The implementation of this resolution, together with Resolution 181 of the 29 November 1947, were reaffirmed and were made conditions for the admittance of Israel to the UN membership in Resolution No. 273 of 11 May 1949.
Despite this and despite repeated UN General Assembly and Security Council Resolutions demanding the implementation of Resolution No. 194 for the return of the refugees, Israel continues to defy this international will and in essence, it can be argued that its membership in the United Nations is illegitimate, in view of its refusal to comply with the conditions that were imposed upon it. Not only that, Israel proceeded in 1967, after the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, to expel over 300,000 more Palestinian refugees from their homes or refugee camps. Many of them were in essence expelled a second time. Security Council Resolution No. 237 of 14 June 1967, called upon the government of Israel to facilitate the return of these refugees, and similar UN General Assembly Resolutions to that effect remain unimplemented.
It is clear, for anybody, who has witnessed the history of that area to see that the Palestinians remain determined to return to their homeland and their struggle continues despite repeated massacres and an orchestrated policy of genocide denying them their national existence. Their sacrifices have been documented and continue, despite the Israeli policy of state terrorism and continuing bombardment of their refugee camps in Lebanon and the oppressive practices that are employed against them under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, the late Dr. Frank Epp, described the tragedy of the Palestinian people in these terms:
"Rarely has a people suffered so much injustice so passively for so long, waiting for the powers that be to redress the inflicted wrong."
Similarly, it was the distinguished philosopher, Lord Bertrand Russell who stated, addressing an international conference in 1970, the following:
"The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was `given' by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East."
Life in Ramleh, just before 60,000 inhabitants of the cities of
Ramleh and Lydda are expelled.
Palestinians leave 'voluntarily' in 1948. Right: massive
demonstration in Ramleh in 1962.
The Land Question
In the completion of its policy of "ethnic cleansing" in 1948, Israel proceeded, in an attempt to destroy the Palestinian national existence, by a policy of destruction of property and expropriation of Arab land. A systemic process brought about the total destruction of 378 Palestinian towns and villages.
In 1948, the total Jewish holdings, leased and owned, were less than 6% of the total land area of Palestine. To enlarge this, one of the most shocking acts of plunder in modern history took place. A series of so-called laws were quickly promulgated to expropriate the millions of acres and thousands of farms and stores and hundreds of whole towns and villages that belonged to the expelled Arab refugees. These laws included the Emergency Defence Regulations, the Abandoned Areas Ordinance (1949), the Emergency Articles of Exploitation of Uncultivated Lands (1947-1949), the Absentee Property Law (1950) and the Land Acquisition Law (1953).
This act of plunder was not confined to the property of the refugees who had been thrown out of the country but was extended to the Arabs who remained on their land. Under one regulation, any area could be closed by the authorities for security reasons and its Arabs barred from it. It would be declared "abandoned" or "uncultivated." Under another law it would be handed over to others, usually Jews, to cultivate. Many Arab citizens who had never moved from the part of Palestine that became Israel happened to be away from their lands and homes for a certain period during the process of Israeli occupation, annexation, and population transfer. They were barred from their villages upon their return, thereby becoming absentees, and their property was seized. These Arabs earned the Orwellian title of "absent present." Where else but in the Zionist dictionary would you find such an entity?!
Moshe Keren, a Jewish writer, described the laws as "Wholesale robbery with a legal coating."
In this way the Israeli authorities confiscated the entire movable and immovable property of the 750,000 evicted refugees, and more than one million dunums of land belonging to Arabs who had remained in Israel after 1948, was seized.
The expropriated Arab land was passed to Keren Kaymeth, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), the laws of which prevent leasing the land to Arabs or use of Arab labour. These are clearly racist laws. Uri Avnery told the Knesset: "If we are going to expel Arab cultivators from the land that was formally theirs, and was handed over to the Jews, we would be acting in accordance with the verse which says: 'Hast thou killed and also inherited'."
These were only a few of the methods and laws that were used or legislated to expropriate the land of the Arabs, who remained in Israel, and to discriminate against them.
The 1967 Occupation
Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing and expropriation continued in the territories occupied in its war of aggression in 1967, including the West Bank and Gaza. In part, this was achieved by the total destruction of a number of villages and towns in the West Bank, including my own village, Beit Nuba. Together with the neighbouring villages of Imwas (the biblical village of Emmaus) and Yalu, Beit Nuba was systematically dynamited, bulldozed and erased from the surface of the earth, on June 9-10, 1967, a war crime committed on the direct orders of Yitzhak Rabin, the Chief of Staff of the Israeli army at the time, and later the Prime Minister of Israel, and ironically a Nobel Peace Laureate. To the shame of every Canadian, the infamy called Canada Park, paid by Canadian tax-deductible dollars, stands today on the ruins of Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba.
Moshe Dayan, the Minister of Defence in June 1967, is quoted by General Arieh Bar-On, Dayan's Military-Secretary, of declaring in a meeting of the General Command, in September 1967, that: "at the beginning of the war and during the war we carried out operations to destroy villages, for Zionist purposes in which I fully share." General Bar-On states in his recently published book, in Hebrew, Personal Signature -- Moshe Dayan in the Six-Day War and After:
"Encouraging the emigration of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria [sic -- The West Bank] was indeed the policy of the entire system, which was under his [Dayan's] dominion."
Wreaking Havoc in Palestine
Over 300,000 Palestinians were made refugees by the end of June 1967, and some for the second time. This was as a result of direct "encouragement" and planned policy by Israel.
Despite Security Council Resolution No. 237 of June 14, 1967, ordering the return of the 1967 Palestinian refugees to their homes, Israel refused to comply.
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Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, 1949, to which Israel is a signatory, states: "Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property, belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the state, or to other public authorities or social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited." |
Israeli policies in the occupied territories continue in defiance of international law, the Fourth Geneva Convention and Repeated UN Security Council Resolutions. These policies include the demolition of Palestinian homes and expropriation of property. Over 70% of the land area of the West Bank has been expropriated since 1967, for the creation of illegal Jewish settlements. Apart from the destruction of entire villages, thousands of homes have been demolished, as acts of collective punishment or for lack of building permits. Such permits are regularly denied to Palestinians to build on their own land.
In the Gaza Strip alone, 40% of this tiny area [was] expropriated to illegally accommodate 5000 Jewish settlers. The remaining 60% accommodates approximately one million people, making it an area with the heaviest population density in the world. The vast majority of these people are refugees expelled from their homes in Palestine in 1948.
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In a systematic process of economic deprivation, over 230,000 olive and orchard trees in the 1967 occupied territories have been uprooted and bulldozed. This is ironic, considering that the Zionist colonists came to Palestine with the myth that they were "to make the desert bloom."
In reference to this lie and the Zionist slogan of Israel Zangwill of 1906, "Palestine is a land without a people for a people without a land," it may be relevant to quote other Jewish Zionists.
In Truth from Palestine in 1891, Ahad Ha'am, the Russian Jewish writer and philosopher, wrote:
"We abroad have a way of thinking that Palestine today is almost desert, an uncultivated wilderness -- but this is not in fact the case. It is difficult to find any uncultivated land anywhere in the country."
The behaviour of Jewish settlers toward the Arabs disturbed him. They had not learned from experience as a minority within a wider population, but reacted with the cruelty of slaves who had suddenly become kings, treating their neighbours with contempt. The Arabs, he wrote, understood very well what Zionist intentions were in the country and "if the time should come when the lives of our people in Palestine should develop to the extent that, to a smaller or greater degree, they usurp the place of the local population, the latter will not yield easily. We have to treat the local population with love and respect, justly and rightly. And what do our brethren in the land of Israel do? Exactly the opposite! Slaves they were in the country of exile, and suddenly they find themselves in a boundless and anarchic freedom, as is always the case with a slave that has become king; and they behave toward the Arabs with hostility and cruelty."
Ethics were at the heart and soul of Ahad Ha'am's brand of nationalism, and to the end of his life, he denounced any compromise with political expediency. In 1913, protesting against a Jewish boycott of Arab labour, he wrote to a friend: "...I can't put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to humans of another people, and unwittingly the thought comes to my mind: 'if this is so now, what will our relations to the others be like if, at the end of time, we shall really achieve power in Eretz Israel? And if this be the Messiah, I do not wish to see his coming."
We see today Ahad Ha'am's prophetic statement completely fulfilled....
The process of land expropriation and the creation of illegal settlements, while Palestinian homes are bulldozed and their trees uprooted, continue after the charade that is called "The Middle East Peace Process" and the "Oslo Agreements," a process that has legitimised the occupation and undermined the international order and our people's will.
Speaking of peace, it is interesting to note that Ben-Gurion gave Arab leaders more credit than they deserve when he stated in 1956:
"I don't understand your optimism. Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country." (Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in The Jewish Paradox, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p.99)
Another observation that is relevant here is the continuing reference to the need for Israeli security and the accusations of terrorism directed by Israel and western media and politicians, at Palestinians, who are evidently expected to shower bouquets of flowers at Israelis who have expelled them from their towns and villages and continue to bulldoze their homes, uproot their trees and murder, incarcerate and torture their men, women and children. Interestingly, Canadian General E.L.M. Burns, Chief of Staff of United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO), did not expect that. He wrote in his book Between Arab and Israeli, 1962:
"It seemed to me to be symptomatic of certain blindness to the human reactions of others that so many Israelis professed not to understand why the Arabs who had been driven from their lands should continue to hate and try to injure those who had driven them out." (p. 162)
Commenting about the Western hypocrisy Noam Chomsky said that Israeli Labour Party policy adapted itself to Western hypocrisy, as Israeli former Cabinet Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, described their policy conducted "so that the West can pretend it does not understand."
The old city of Jerusalem in flames in 1948. Zionist army
attacks and destroys part of Jerusalem, expelling 80,000
Palestinians. The YMCA is at right.
After unilaterally annexing Jerusalem in 1967, the Zionists set
fire the historic Masjid Al-Aqsa,
completed in 705 CE.
April 4, 2002: Elderly Palestinian is denied access
to Jerusalem at an Israeli army checkpoint. Jerusalemites are
now required to use identity cards.
Jerusalem
The fate of Jerusalem is a major issue to determine the future course of peace or conflict in the Middle East. Jerusalem has been a Palestinian city throughout history, despite periods of occupation by invading alien forces. The same UN Resolution No.181, of the 29 November 1947, that allowed the creation of Israel, stipulated that Jerusalem be an international entity (corpus separatum). Of the 41 villages surrounding West Jerusalem, 37 were destroyed by Israel in 1948. More than 80,000 Palestinians were driven out from West Jerusalem in 1948. The annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, by Israel, is illegal and in violation of international law and in defiance of Security Council resolutions. However, Israel continues its policy of ethnic cleansing and expropriation in Jerusalem since 1967.
Israel destroyed the entire Magharba quarter, a historic Islamic religious site, to create a Jewish plaza, in front of the Western Wall. The Israeli government expanded the Jerusalem municipality to ten times its original size and annexed it.
Israel has, since 1967, systematically carried out a policy of Judaization of Jerusalem. 85% of the land annexed has been expropriated to create Jewish settlements and homes for Jews only, surrounding and suffocating Arab East Jerusalem.
Arab residents of East Jerusalem are treated as foreigners with special identity cards, as "permanent residents" in Jerusalem. These cards are confiscated from Jerusalemites, if they are forced to work or live outside Jerusalem, even though they and their ancestors have lived in the city for thousands of years. Yet, Jews from New York or Toronto can move into Jerusalem at will.
Since September 1993, and the Oslo charade, a strict closure has been imposed on Jerusalem for Palestinians in the West Bank, to whom Jerusalem is an economic, medical, cultural, educational and religious centre. Muslims and Christians are denied access to their religious worship places. Since then, hundreds of people have been killed and injured; over 500 families have had their homes demolished; over 1000 people have had their rights to live in Jerusalem, the city of their birth, taken away, while Jews from Moscow or New York can move into Jerusalem, when they choose. Thousands have been arrested, tortured and imprisoned. Land continues to be expropriated to create Jewish colonies on Palestinian land and thousands of people have found themselves homeless, destitute and hopeless. Students are denied access to their university and the sick are unable to reach hospitals for treatment.
This is what the Oslo charade has brought about. Illegal occupation has been legitimised, the Palestinian Authority has become a sub-contractor to do Israel's dirty work in the few scattered "Bantustans" that are nominally under Arafat's control, but besieged by Israel's troops. In essence, the Oslo agreement is another Nakba (catastrophe) that the Palestinian negotiators have inflicted upon their people and have put back the Palestinian struggle for self determination by another generation, at least.
Since the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, the Israeli government has adopted a policy of systematic and deliberate discrimination against the city's Palestinian population in all matters relating to expropriation of land, planning and building.
This is the principal finding of a report just published in Israel by B'Tselem, the Israeli Human Rights Organisation. It goes on to conclude that "this policy is a clear violation of international law and the fundamental principles of democracy, with grave consequences as regards human rights."
It is true that the Palestinian people have endured so much wrong and injustice but I assure you that the Palestinian people's tenacity is unyielding. Our people are willing to struggle and sacrifice; you cannot defeat a people with this tenacity, when a child turns his little hand into a fist, with a stone, that defies the oppressor. The oppressed people of South Africa were able to teach F.W. De Klerk a lesson that had made Mr. De Klerk declare that the book on Apartheid is closed. I am afraid the book on the Zionist ideology is not yet closed but I can assure you that Zionism, like Apartheid, is running against the natural course of history and I am optimistic that right will overcome wrong. I am also optimistic because there are Jewish voices who are speaking out. The late great Jewish journalist, I.F. Stone, wrote a few years ago:
"How can we talk of human rights and ignore them for the Palestinians? How can Israel talk of Jewish rights to a homeland and deny one to the Palestinians?"
Similarly, Professor Israel Shahak, a holocaust survivor and Chairman of the Israeli League for Civil and Human Rights, said: "The majority of the Israeli public are shutting their eyes to the simple human cry of the Palestinian." He warned his people "not to allow the experience of the German people between the two world wars to befall them." He went on: I am not afraid to say publicly that Israeli Jews and with them most Jews throughout the world, are undergoing a process of Nazification." He went on to state that he is saying this: "so that no one can say as the German people did, 'I did not know.' And like Albert Speer, 'I am trying to act before it is too late'."
The editor of the Jewish religious newspaper Ner wrote in January 1961:
"Only an international revolution can have the power to heal our people of their murderous sickness of causeless hatred. How great was our responsibility to those miserable wronged Arab refugees, in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought from afar; who now sow and harvest; and in whose cities that we robbed, we put up houses of education, charity and prayer, while we babble and rave about our being the 'People of the Book and the Light of the Nations'."
This is the kind of authentic Jewish voice that I am happy to say gives me hope that in time, there will be more people like I.F. Stone, Israel Shahak, Felicia Langer and other great Jewish men and women of conscience. For, if the other voice, the voice which has come to dominate Israel and Zionist thinking, arrogant with power which thinks only of territorial expansion and practiced discrimination and terror, the voice of Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin and Benjamin Netanyahu, if that voice should continue to speak for Israel, then Israel will bring, I am afraid, tragedy on herself and the Palestinians and very likely on the rest of the world.
The tragedy of the Jewish people in the crimes they committed, and continue to commit, against the Palestinian people, are highlighted in that accurate statement made by the renowned British historian, Professor Arnold Toynbee, who wrote in his great work on history History of the World:
"In A.D. 1948, the Jews knew from personal experience what they were doing; and it was their supreme tragedy that the lesson learned by them from their encounter with the Nazi gentiles should have been not to eschew but to imitate some of the evil deeds that the Nazis had committed against the Jews."
The Old Testament prophets were incredibly prophetic in foretelling what would happen if the Jews turned aside from what they knew to be the truth of justice. Let me end by quoting to you some verses from the prophet Micah, who might have been writing for today when he gave this warning:
"Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the House of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong. Therefore because of you, Zion shall be ploughed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins."
There is still time to prevent that prophecy from coming true in our own day. But there may not be very much time.
The Palestinian people are calling for a modicum of justice, for without this, I am afraid, there will be no peace for Arab or Jew in the Middle East.
A Brief History of Palestine and Its People
The Road to Nowhere by Ismail Shammout 1930-2006. He was
expelled from Lydda, Palestine in 1948. The plight of the
refugees is depicted in many of his most famous paintings.
Palestine, the mythic "land without people for a people without land" was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919.
The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs' inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today.
The problem with this explanation is that it is simply not true.
Early History of the Region
Before the Hebrews first migrated there around 1800 BC, the land of Canaan was occupied by Canaanites.
"Between 3000 and 1100 BC, Canaanite civilization covered what is today Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon and much of Syria and Jordan Those who remained in the Jerusalem hills after the Romans expelled the Jews [in the second century AD] were a potpourri: farmers and vineyard growers, pagans and converts to Christianity, descendants of the Arabs, Persians, Samaritans, Greeks and old Canaanite tribes." Marcia Kunstel and Joseph Albright, "Their Promised Land"
Present-day Palestinians' ancestral heritage
"But all these [different peoples who had come to Canaan] were additions, sprigs grafted onto the parent tree And that parent tree was Canaanite [The Arab invaders of the 7th century AD] made Moslem converts of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried with them, with the result that all are now so completely Arabized that we cannot tell where the Canaanites leave off and the Arabs begin." Illene Beatty, "Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan."
The Jewish kingdoms were only one of many periods in ancient Palestine
"The extended kingdoms of David and Solomon, on which the Zionists base their territorial demands, endured for only about 73 years Then it fell apart [Even] if we allow independence to the entire life of the ancient Jewish kingdoms, from David's conquest of Canaan in 1000 BC to the wiping out of Judah in 586 BC, we arrive at [only] a 414 year Jewish rule." Illene Beatty, "Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan."
More on Canaanite civilization
"Recent archeological digs have provided evidence that Jerusalem was a big and fortified city already in 1800 BCE Findings show that the sophisticated water system heretofore attributed to the conquering Israelites pre-dated them by eight centuries and was even more sophisticated than imagined Dr. Ronny Reich, who directed the excavation along with Eli Shuikrun, said the entire system was built as a single complex by Canaanites in the Middle Bronze Period, around 1800 BCE." The Jewish Bulletin, July 31, 1998
How long has Palestine been a specifically Arab country?
"Palestine became a predominately Arab and Islamic country by the end of the seventh century. Almost immediately thereafter its boundaries and its characteristics including its name in Arabic, Filastin became known to the entire Islamic world, as much for its fertility and beauty as for its religious significance In 1516, Palestine became a province of the Ottoman Empire, but this made it no less fertile, no less Arab or Islamic Sixty percent of the population was in agriculture; the balance was divided between townspeople and a relatively small nomadic group. All these people believed themselves to belong in a land called Palestine, despite their feelings that they were also members of a large Arab nation Despite the steady arrival in Palestine of Jewish colonists after 1882, it is important to realize that not until the few weeks immediately preceding the establishment of Israel in the spring of 1948 was there ever anything other than a huge Arab majority. For example, the Jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total of 1,033,314." Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."
How did land ownership traditionally work in Palestine and when did it change?
"[The Ottoman Land Code of 1858] required the registration in the name of individual owners of agricultural land, most of which had never previously been registered and which had formerly been treated according to traditional forms of land tenure, in the hill areas of Palestine generally masha'a, or communal usufruct. The new law meant that for the first time a peasant could be deprived not of title to his land, which he had rarely held before, but rather of the right to live on it, cultivate it and pass it on to his heirs, which had formerly been inalienable Under the provisions of the 1858 law, communal rights of tenure were often ignored Instead, members of the upper classes, adept at manipulating or circumventing the legal process, registered large areas of land as theirs The fellahin [peasants] naturally considered the land to be theirs, and often discovered that they had ceased to be the legal owners only when the land was sold to Jewish settlers by an absentee landlord Not only was the land being purchased; its Arab cultivators were being dispossessed and replaced by foreigners who had overt political objectives in Palestine." Rashid Khalidi, "Blaming The Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens
Arab opposition to the arrival of Zionists: inherent anti-Semitism or a real sense of danger to their right to be?
"The aim of the [Jewish National] Fund was ‘to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people.' As early as 1891, Zionist leader Ahad Ha'am wrote that the Arabs "understood very well what we were doing and what we were aiming at' [Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism], stated ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly' At various locations in northern Palestine Arab farmers refused to move from land the Fund purchased from absentee owners, and the Turkish authorities, at the Fund's request, evicted them The indigenous Jews of Palestine also reacted negatively to Zionism. They did not see the need for a Jewish state in Palestine and did not want to exacerbate relations with the Arabs." John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
"Before the 20th century, most Jews in Palestine belonged to old Yishuv, or community, that had settled more for religious than for political reasons. There was little if any conflict between them and the Arab population. Tensions began after the first Zionist settlers arrived in the 1880's when [they] purchased land from absentee Arab owners, leading to dispossession of the peasants who had cultivated it." Don Peretz, "The Arab-Israeli Dispute."
"[During the Middle Ages,] North Africa and the Arab Middle East became places of refuge and a haven for the persecuted Jews of Spain and elsewhere In the Holy Land they lived together in [relative] harmony, a harmony only disrupted when the Zionists began to claim that Palestine was the ‘rightful' possession of the ‘Jewish people' to the exclusion of its Moslem and Christian inhabitants." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Proposals for Arab-Jewish Cooperation
"An article by Yitzhak Epstein, published in Hashiloah in 1907 called for a new Zionist policy towards the Arabs after 30 years of settlement activity Like Ahad-Ha'am in 1891, Epstein claims that no good land is vacant, so Jewish settlement meant Arab dispossession Epstein's solution to the problem, so that a new ‘Jewish question' may be avoided, is the creation of a bi-national, non-exclusive program of settlement and development. Purchasing land should not involve the dispossession of poor sharecroppers. It should mean creating a joint farming community, where the Arabs will enjoy modern technology. Schools, hospitals and libraries should be non-exclusivist and education bilingual The vision of non-exclusivist, peaceful cooperation to replace the practice of dispossession found few takers. Epstein was maligned and scorned for his faintheartedness." Israeli author, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "Original Sins."
The British Mandate Period 1920-1948
The Balfour Declaration promises
a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
"The Balfour Declaration, made in November 1917 by the British Government was made a) by a European power, b) about a non-European territory, c) in flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory [As Balfour himself wrote in 1919], ‘The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant (the Anglo French Declaration of 1918 promising the Arabs of the former Ottoman colonies that as a reward for supporting the Allies they could have their independence) is even more flagrant in the case of the independent nation of Palestine than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.'" Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."
The colonial outlook that Palestine was a wasteland before the Jews started immigrating there.
"Britain's high commissioner for Palestine, John Chancellor, recommended total suspension of Jewish immigration and land purchase to protect Arab agriculture. He said ‘all cultivable land was occupied; that no cultivable land now in possession of the indigenous population could be sold to Jews without creating a class of landless Arab cultivators' The Colonial Office rejected the recommendation." John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Were the early Zionists planning on living side by side with Arabs?
In 1919, the American King-Crane Commission spent six weeks in Syria and Palestine, interviewing delegations and reading petitions. Their report stated, "The commissioners began their study of Zionism with minds predisposed in its favor The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission's conferences with Jewish representatives that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non- Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase
"If [the principle of self-determination] is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine's population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine nearly nine-tenths of the whole are emphatically against the entire Zionist program To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted No British officers, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms. The officers generally thought that a force of not less than fifty thousand soldiers would be required even to initiate the program. That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program The initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a ‘right' to Palestine based on occupation of two thousand years ago, can barely be seriously considered." Quoted in "The Israel-Arab Reader" ed. Laquer and Rubin.
"Zionist land policy was incorporated in the Constitution of the Jewish Agency for Palestine 'land is to be acquired as Jewish property and..the title to the lands acquired is to be taken in the name of the Jewish National Fund, to the end that the same shall be held as the inalienable property of the Jewish people.' The provision goes to stipulate that ‘the Agency shall promote agricultural colonization based on Jewish labor' The effect of this Zionist colonization policy on the Arabs was that land acquired by Jews became extra-territorialized. It ceased to be land from which the Arabs could ever hope to gain any advantage
"The Zionists made no secret of their intentions, for as early as 1921, Dr. Eder, a member of the Zionist Commission, boldly told the Court of Inquiry, ‘there can be only one National Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish preponderance as soon as the numbers of the race are sufficiently increased.' He then asked that only Jews should be allowed to bear arms." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Given Arab opposition to them, did the Zionists support steps towards majority rule in Palestine?
"Clearly, the last thing the Zionists really wanted was that all the inhabitants of Palestine should have an equal say in running the country [Chaim] Weizmann had impressed on Churchill that representative government would have spelled the end of the [Jewish] National Home in Palestine [Churchill declared], ‘The present form of government will continue for many years. Step by step we shall develop representative institutions leading to full self-government, but our children's children will have passed away before that is accomplished.'" David Hirst, "The Gun and the Olive Branch."
Denial of the Arabs' right to self-determination
"Even if nobody lost their land, the [Zionist] program was unjust in principle because it denied majority political rights Zionism, in principle, could not allow the natives to exercise their political rights because it would mean the end of the Zionist enterprise." Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "Original Sins."
Didn't the Zionists legally buy much of the land before Israel was established?
"In 1948, at the moment that Israel declared itself a state, it legally owned a little more than 6 percent of the land of Palestine After 1940, when the mandatory authority restricted Jewish land ownership to specific zones inside Palestine, there continued to be illegal buying (and selling) within the 65 percent of the total area restricted to Arabs.
Thus when the partition plan was announced in 1947 it included land held illegally by Jews, which was incorporated as a fait accompli inside the borders of the Jewish state. And after Israel announced its statehood, an impressive series of laws legally assimilated huge tracts of Arab land (whose proprietors had become refugees, and were pronounced ‘absentee landlords' in order to expropriate their lands and prevent their return under any circumstances)." Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."
UN Partition of Palestine
Why did the UN recommend the plan partitioning Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state?
"By this time [November 1947] the United States had emerged as the most aggressive proponent of partition The United States got the General Assembly to delay a vote ‘to gain time to bring certain Latin American republics into line with its own views.' Some delegates charged U.S. officials with ‘diplomatic intimidation.' Without ‘terrific pressure' from the United States on ‘governments which cannot afford to risk American reprisals,' said an anonymous editorial writer, the resolution ‘would never have passed.'" John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Why was this Truman's position?
"I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents." President Harry Truman, quoted in "Anti Zionism", ed. by Teikener, Abed-Rabbo & Mezvinsky.
Was the partition plan fair to both Arabs and Jews?
"Arab rejection was based on the fact that, while the population of the Jewish state was to be [only half] Jewish with the Jews owning less than 10% of the Jewish state land area, the Jews were to be established as the ruling body a settlement which no self-respecting people would accept without protest, to say the least The action of the United Nations conflicted with the basic principles for which the world organization was established, namely, to uphold the right of all peoples to self- determination. By denying the Palestine Arabs, who formed the two-thirds majority of the country, the right to decide for themselves, the United Nations had violated its own charter." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Were the Zionists prepared to settle for the territory granted in the 1947 partition?
"While the Yishuv's leadership formally accepted the 1947 Partition Resolution, large sections of Israel's society including Ben-Gurion were opposed to or extremely unhappy with partition and from early on viewed the war as an ideal opportunity to expand the new state's borders beyond the UN earmarked partition boundaries and at the expense of the Palestinians." Israeli historian, Benny Morris, in "Tikkun", March/April 1998.
The war begins
"In December 1947, the British announced that they would withdraw from Palestine by May 15, 1948. Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa called a general strike against the partition. Fighting broke out in Jerusalem's streets almost immediately Violent incidents mushroomed into all-out war During that fateful April of 1948, eight out of thirteen major Zionist military attacks on Palestinians occurred in the territory granted to the Arab state." "Our Roots Are Still Alive" by the People Press Palestine Book Project.
Zionists' disrespect of partition boundaries
"Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage of their superior military preparation and organization, had occupied most of the Arab cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948 In contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories reserved for the Jewish state under the partition resolution." British author, Henry Cattan, "Palestine, The Arabs and Israel."
Culpability for escalation of the fighting
"Menahem Begin, the Leader of the Irgun, tells how ‘in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive to the offensive Arabs began to flee in terror Hagana was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter' The Israelis now allege that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states' intervention." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
The Deir Yassin Massacre of Palestinians by Jewish soldiers
"For the entire day of April 9, 1948, Irgun and LEHI soldiers carried out the slaughter in a cold and premeditated fashion The attackers ‘lined men, women and children up against the walls and shot them,' The ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin shocked Jewish and world opinion alike, drove fear and panic into the Arab population, and led to the flight of unarmed civilians from their homes all over the country." Israeli author, Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel."
Was Deir Yassin the only act of its kind?
"By 1948, the Jew was not only able to ‘defend himself' but to commit massive atrocities as well. Indeed, according to the former director of the Israeli army archives, ‘in almost every village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes' Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that ‘every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.'" Norman Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict."
Statehood and Expulsion — 1948
Arab reaction to the announcement of the creation of the state of Israel
"The Arab League hastily called for its member countries to send regular army troops into Palestine. They were ordered to secure only the sections of Palestine given to the Arabs under the partition plan. But these regular armies were ill equipped and lacked any central command to coordinate their efforts [Jordan's King Abdullah] promised [the Israelis and the British] that his troops, the Arab Legion, the only real fighting force among the Arab armies, would avoid fighting with Jewish settlements Yet Western historians record this as the moment when the young state of Israel fought off ‘the overwhelming hordes' of five Arab countries. In reality, the Israeli offensive against the Palestinians intensified." "Our Roots Are Still Alive," by the Peoples Press Palestine Book Project.
Ethnic cleansing of the Arab population of Palestine
"Joseph Weitz was the director of the Jewish National Land Fund On December 19, 1940, he wrote: ‘It must be clear that there is no room for both peoples in this country The Zionist enterprise so far has been fine and good in its own time, and could do with ‘land buying' but this will not bring about the State of Israel; that must come all at once, in the manner of a Salvation (this is the secret of the Messianic idea); and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer them all; except maybe for Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem, we must not leave a single village, not a single tribe' There were literally hundreds of such statements made by Zionists." Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."
"Following the outbreak of 1936, no mainstream (Zionist) leader was able to conceive of future coexistence without a clear physical separation between the two peoples achievable only by transfer and expulsion. Publicly they all continued to speak of coexistence and to attribute the violence to a small minority of zealots and agitators. But this was merely a public pose Ben Gurion summed up: ‘With compulsory transfer we (would) have a vast area (for settlement) I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it,'" Israel historian, Benny Morris, "Righteous Victims."
"Ben-Gurion clearly wanted as few Arabs as possible to remain in the Jewish state. He hoped to see them flee. He said as much to his colleagues and aides in meetings in August, September and October [1948]. But no [general] expulsion policy was ever enunciated and Ben-Gurion always refrained from issuing clear or written expulsion orders; he preferred that his generals ‘understand' what he wanted done. He wished to avoid going down in history as the ‘great expeller' and he did not want the Israeli government to be implicated in a morally questionable policy But while there was no ‘expulsion policy', the July and October [1948] offensives were characterized by far more expulsions and, indeed, brutality towards Arab civilians than the first half of the war." Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949"
The Nakba of 1948
"Israeli propaganda has largely relinquished the claim that the Palestinian exodus of 1948 was ‘self-inspired'. Official circles implicitly concede that the Arab population fled as a result of Israeli action whether directly, as in the case of Lydda and Ramleh, or indirectly, due to the panic that and similar actions (the Deir Yassin massacre) inspired in Arab population centers throughout Palestine. However, even though the historical record has been grudgingly set straight, the Israeli establishment still refused to accept moral or political responsibility for the refugee problem it — or its predecessors actively created." Peretz Kidron, quoted in "Blaming the Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens.
"The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) monitored all Middle Eastern broadcasts throughout 1948. The records, and companion ones by a United States monitoring unit, can be seen at the British Museum. There was not a single order or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine, from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948. There is a repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to the civilians of Palestine to stay put." Erskine Childers, British researcher, quoted in Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
"That Ben-Gurion's ultimate aim was to evacuate as much of the Arab population as possible from the Jewish state can hardly be doubted, if only from the variety of means he employed to achieve his purpose most decisively, the destruction of whole villages and the eviction of their inhabitants even [if] they had not participated in the war and had stayed in Israel hoping to live in peace and equality, as promised in the Declaration of Independence." Israeli author, Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel."
The deliberate destruction of Arab villages to prevent return of Palestinians
"During May [1948] ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence to the Palestinian exile began to crystallize, and the destruction of villages was immediately perceived as a primary means of achieving this aim [Even earlier] on 10 April, Haganah units took Abu Shusha The village was destroyed that night Khulda was leveled by Jewish bulldozers on 20 April Abu Zureiq was completely demolished Al Mansi and An Naghnaghiya, to the southeast, were also leveled By mid-1949, the majority of [the 350 depopulated Arab villages] were either completely or partly in ruins and uninhabitable." Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.
"The first UN General Assembly resolution — Number 194 — affirming the right of Palestinians to return to their homes and property, was passed on December 11, 1948. It has been repassed no less than twenty-eight times since that first date. Whereas the moral and political right of a person to return to his place of uninterrupted residence is acknowledged everywhere, Israel has negated the possibility of return [and] systematically and juridically made it impossible, on any grounds whatever, for the Arab Palestinian to return, be compensated for his property, or live in Israel as a citizen equal before the law with a Jewish Israeli." Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."
The Right of Return
"The fact that the Arabs fled in terror, because of real fear of a repetition of the 1948 Zionist massacres, is no reason for denying them their homes, fields and livelihoods. Civilians caught in an area of military activity generally panic. But they have always been able to return to their homes when the danger subsides. Military conquest does not abolish private rights to property; nor does it entitle the victor to confiscate the homes, property and personal belongings of the noncombatant civilian population. The seizure of Arab property by the Israelis was an outrage." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Negotiations after the 1948-1949 wars
"[At Lausanne, Switzerland] Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians were trying to save by negotiations what they had lost in the war — a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Israel, however [preferred] tenuous armistice agreements to a definite peace that would involve territorial concessions and the repatriation of even a token number of refugees. The refusal to recognize the Palestinians' right to self-determination and statehood proved over the years to be the main source of the turbulence, violence, and bloodshed that came to pass." Israeli author, Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel."
"The [Lausanne] conference officially opened on 27 April 1949. On 12 May the [UN's] Palestine Conciliation Committee reaped its only success when it induced the parties to sign a joint protocol on the framework for a comprehensive peace. Israel for the first time accepted the principle of repatriation [of the Arab refugees] and the internationalization of Jerusalem, [but] they did so as a mere exercise in public relations aimed at strengthening Israel's international image Walter Eytan, the head of the Israeli delegation, [stated] 'My main purpose was to begin to undermine the protocol of 12 May, which we had signed only under duress of our struggle for admission to the UN. Refusal to sign would have immediately been reported to the Secretary-General and the various governments.'" Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, "The Making of the Arab-Israel Conflict, 1947- 1951."
"The Preamble of this resolution of admission [to the UN] included a safeguarding clause as follows: ‘Recalling its resolution of 29 November 1947 (on partition) and 11 December 1948 (on reparation and compensation), and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the ad hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions, the General Assembly decides to admit Israel into membership in the United Nations.'
"Here, it must be observed, is a condition and an undertaking to implement the resolutions mentioned. There was no question of such implementation being conditioned on the conclusion of peace on Israeli terms as the Israelis later claimed to justify their non-compliance." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
The fate of the Palestinians who had now become refugees
"The winter of 1949, the first winter of exile for more than seven hundred fifty thousand Palestinians, was cold and hard Families huddled in caves, abandoned huts, or makeshift tents Many of the starving were only miles away from their own vegetable gardens and orchards in occupied Palestine the new state of Israel At the end of 1949 the United Nations finally acted. It set up the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA) to take over sixty refugee camps from voluntary agencies. It managed to keep people alive, but only barely." "Our Roots Are Still Alive" by The Peoples Press Palestine Book Project.
The 1967 War and Israeli Occupation of West Bank and Gaza
The former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman, stated that there was "no threat of destruction" but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that Israel could "exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies."
Menahem Begin said: "In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."
"I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to The Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it." Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Chief of Staff in 1967, in Le Monde, February 28, 1968
"Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan [said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland [Dayan stated] ‘They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot.
"And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us." The New York Times, May 11, 1997
The history of Israeli expansionism
"The main danger which Israel, as a ‘Jewish state', poses to its own people, to other Jews and to its neighbors, is its ideologically motivated pursuit of territorial expansion and the inevitable series of wars resulting from this aim No Zionist politician has ever repudiated Ben-Gurion's idea that Israeli policies must be based (within the limits of practical considerations) on the restoration of Biblical borders as the borders of the Jewish state." Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3000 Years."
In Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharatt's personal diaries, there is an excerpt from May of 1955 in which he quotes Moshe Dayan as follows: "[Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no it must invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge And above all let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space." Quoted in Livia Rokach, "Israel's Sacred Terrorism."
"In violation of international law, [in the 1967 war] Israel has confiscated over 52 percent of the land in the West Bank and 30 percent of the Gaza Strip for military use or for settlement by Jewish civilians From 1967 to 1982, Israel's military government demolished 1,338 Palestinian homes on the West Bank. Over this period, more than 300,000 Palestinians were detained without trial for various periods by Israeli security forces." Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation," ed. Lockman and Beinin.
"Under the UN Charter there can lawfully be no territorial gains from war, even by a state acting in self-defense. The response of other states to Israel's occupation shows a virtually unanimous opinion that even if Israel's action was defensive, its retention of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was not The [UN] General Assembly characterized Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a denial of self determination and hence a ‘serious and increasing threat to international peace and security.'" John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
"A study of students at Bethlehem University reported by the Coordinating Committee of International NGOs in Jerusalem showed that many families frequently go five days a week without running water The study goes further to report that, ‘water quotas restrict usage by Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, while Israeli settlers have almost unlimited amounts.'
"A summer trip to a Jewish settlement on the edge of the Judean desert less than five miles from Bethlehem confirmed this water inequity for us. While Bethlehemites were buying water from tank trucks at highly inflated rates, the lawns were green in the settlement. Sprinklers were going at mid day in the hot August sunshine. Sounds of children swimming in the outdoor pool added to the unreality." Betty Jane Bailey, in "The Link", December 1996.
"You have to remember that 90 percent of children two years old or more have experienced some many, many times the [Israeli] army breaking into the home, beating relatives, destroying things. Many were beaten themselves, had bones broken, were shot, tear gassed, or had these things happen to siblings and neighbors The emotional aspect of the child is affected by the [lack of] security. He needs to feel safe. We see the consequences later if he does not. In our research, we have found that children who are exposed to trauma tend to be more extreme in their behaviors and, later, in their political beliefs." Dr Samir Quota, director of research for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, quoted in "The Journal of Palestine Studies," Summer 1996, p.84
"There is nothing quite like the misery one feels listening to a 35-year-old [Palestinian] man who worked fifteen years as an illegal day laborer in Israel in order to save up money to build a house for his family only to be shocked one day upon returning from work to find that the house and all that was in it had been flattened by an Israeli bulldozer. When I asked why this was done — the land, after all, was his — I was told that a paper given to him the next day by an Israeli soldier stated that he had built the structure without a license. Where else in the world are people required to have a license (always denied them) to build on their own property? Jews can build, but never Palestinians. This is apartheid." Edward Said, in "The Nation", May 4, 1998.
All Jewish settlements in territories occupied in the 1967 war are a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has signed.
"The Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to change the existing order as little as possible during its tenure. One aspect of this obligation is that it must leave the territory to the people it finds there. It may not bring its own people to populate the territory. This prohibition is found in the convention's Article 49, which states, ‘The occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.'" John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Excerpts from the U.S. State Department's reports during the Intifada
"Following are some excerpts from the U.S. State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices from 1988 to 1991:
1988: ‘Many avoidable deaths and injuries' were caused because Israeli soldiers frequently used gunfire in situations that did not present mortal danger to troops IDF troops used clubs to break limbs and beat Palestinians who were not directly involved in disturbances or resisting arrest At least thirteen Palestinians have been reported to have died from beatings '
1989: Human rights groups charged that the plainclothes security personnel acted as death squads who killed Palestinian activists without warning, after they had surrendered, or after they had been subdued
1991:[The report] added that the human rights groups had published ‘detailed credible reports of torture, abuse and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees in prisons and detention centers." Former Congressman Paul Findley, "Deliberate Deceptions."
Jerusalem Eternal, Indivisible Capital of Israel
"Writing in The Jerusalem Report (Feb. 28, 2000), Leslie Susser points out that the current boundaries were drawn after the Six-Day War. Responsibility for drawing those lines fell to Central Command Chief Rehavan Ze'evi. The line he drew ‘took in not only the five square kilometers of Arab East Jerusalem but also 65 square kilometers of surrounding open country and villages, most of which never had any municipal link to Jerusalem. Overnight they became part of Israel's eternal and indivisible capital.'" Allan Brownfield in The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2000.
The record of Israeli state terrorism
"However much one laments and even wishes somehow to atone for the loss of life and suffering visited upon innocents because of Palestinian violence, there is still the need, I think, also to say that no national movement has been so unfairly penalized, defamed, and subjected to disproportionate retaliation for its sins as has the Palestinian.
The Israeli policy of punitive counterattacks (or state terrorism) seems to be to try to kill anywhere from 50 to 100 Arabs for every Jewish fatality. The devastation of Lebanese refugee camps, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, and orphanages; the summary arrests, deportations, house destructions, maimings, and torture of Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza..these, and the number of Palestinian fatalities, the scale of material loss, the physical, political and psychological deprivations, have tremendously exceeded the damage done by Palestinians to Israelis." Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine."
"It is simply extraordinary and without
precedent that Israel's history, its record from the fact that
it is a state built on conquest, that it has invaded surrounding
countries, bombed and destroyed at will, to the fact that it
currently occupies Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian territory
against international law is simply never cited, never subjected
to scrutiny in the U.S. media or in official discourse never
addressed as playing any role at all in provoking ‘Islamic
terror.'" Edward Said in "The Progressive." May 30, 1996.
The Infamy Called "Canada Park"
A Story of Dispossession and Suffering
Canada Park is a national park built on top of three ethnically
cleansed Palestinian villages.
I was born, in 1933, in the village of Beit Nuba in Palestine, where I was brought up and lived happily with family and friends. The village of Beit Nuba had existed for thousands of years, as historic records show. However, Israeli wars of aggression and war crimes made its recent history painful and tragic.
In May 1948, the Israeli army launched an attack to occupy the villages of Imwas [Emmaus], Yalu and Beit Nuba, but failed to conquer these villages. Elsewhere, in Palestine, the Zionist terrorist gangs and the Israeli army were committing massacres against the predominantly unarmed Palestinian people and conducted their long-planned campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their homeland. There was one day, out of many during that conflict, that left painful sights in my life. It was on July 10, 1948 that Israeli army troops, led by Yitzhak Rabin, occupied the Palestinian cities of Lydda and Ramleh. Rabin and his officers proceeded to drive these 50-60,000 civilian inhabitants of these two cities away from their homes in terror, with low-flying airplanes over their heads shooting the occasional person and forcing them to run. The sight of the terror-stricken, hungry and thirsty men, women and children fleeing in terror in the midday sun of the hot summer, having run approximately twenty-five kilometres to the village of Beit Nuba, where I, a 15 year old boy, saw them with my own eyes, is a sight not to be forgotten.
The defeat of the Israeli army and its failure to occupy these
three villages, in May 1948, brought about a brutal revenge 19
years later in the war of aggression that Israel planned and
effected on June 5, 1967 against its Arab neighbours. On June 6,
these three villages were occupied, without a single shot being
fired, and were systematically dynamited and bulldozed, on the
direct orders of Yitzhak Rabin, the then chief of staff of the
Israeli army. The villagers, over 10,000, were expelled from
their land. In the village of Beit Nuba, 18 were buried alive
under the ruins of their homes because they were old or infirm
and unable to move out of their homes before they were
demolished. One of them, Mohammad Ali Baker, was an uncle of my
mother. When our home was demolished, my uncle, who was old and
arthritic, was slow to move out, the Israeli soldiers told him,
while they were demolishing the western part of our home, that
he will be buried alive if he did not move when they will be
soon demolishing the eastern part of our home. He was hurriedly
moved out. The pain and suffering that my mother sustained was
immense and continued to feel until her dying day. My mother,
brother, sisters and my uncle were driven out from our land and
never allowed to return, and I continue to bear that pain.
Imwas in 1958 (left) and in 1968 (right),
after being razed by the Zionists.
Palestinians are expelled from Imwas by the Israeli military,
which bulldozes their homes.
The destruction of these three villages in June 1967 was described, in the CBC documentary below, as an act of revenge, by General Narkiss the commander of the Israeli forces that demolished these villages.
The destruction of these villages was witnessed and described by the Israeli journalist Amos Kenan, who was a reserve soldier in the occupying force in Beit Nuba. He gave this account to the Israeli newspaper Ha'Olam Hazeh, which was prohibited by the censor from publishing it. It was sent to all members of the Knesset, and to the Israeli Prime Minister and Defence minister, but no response was received.
"The unit commander told us that it had been decided to blow up three villages in our sector; they were Beit Nuba, Imwas and Yalu ... We were told to block the entrances of the villages and prevent inhabitants [from] returning .... The order was to shoot over their heads and tell them not to enter the village.
"Beit Nuba is built of fine quarry stones; some of the houses are magnificent. Every house is surrounded by an orchard, olive trees, apricots, vines and cypresses. They are well kept. Among the trees, there are carefully tended vegetable beds.
"At noon the first bulldozer arrived and pulled down the first house at the edge of the village. Within ten minutes the house was turned into rubble. The olive trees and cypresses were all uprooted. After the destruction of three houses, the first refugee column arrived from the direction of Ramallah. We did not fire in the air. There were old people who could hardly walk, murmuring old women, mothers carrying babies, small children. The children wept and asked for water. They all carried white flags.
"We told them to go to Beit Sira. They told us they had been driven out. They had been wandering like this for four days, without food, some dying on the road. They asked to return to their village ... Some had a goat, a lamb, a donkey or a camel. A father ground wheat by hand to feed his four children .... The children cried. Some of our soldiers started crying too.
"We went to fetch the Arabs some water. We stopped a car with a major, two captains and a woman ... We asked the officers why these refugees were sent from one place to another and driven out of everywhere. They told us that this was good for them, they should go. 'Moreover,' said the officers, 'what do we care about the Arabs anyway?'"
"We drove them out. They go on wandering like lost cattle. The weak die. Our unit was outraged. The refugees gnashed their teeth when they saw the bulldozers pull down the trees. None of us understood how Jews could behave like this. No one understood why these fellaheen [villagers] shouldn't be allowed to take blankets and some food.
"The chickens and doves were buried in the rubble. The fields were turned into wasteland in front of our eyes. The children who went crying on the road will be fedayeen in nineteen years, in the next round. Thus we have lost the victory." (From Israel Imperial News, March 1968.)
Uri Avnery, then a Knesset member, described the destruction of these villages as a definite war crime. This was carried out on the direct orders of Yitzhak Rabin, then Chief of Staff of Israel's armed forces. These acts are in direct violation of The Fourth Geneva Convention, 1949, to which Israel is a signatory. Article 53 of the convention states: " Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property, belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the state, or to other public authorities or social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited."
It is now difficult to spot the ruins and the rubble. Today
there stands on the site of the ruins of these three village,
Imwas [the biblical village Emmaus, where Jesus Christ first
appeared after his Resurrection to meet with his Apostles],
Yalu and Beit Nuba, the infamy called "Canada Park", with
picnic areas for Israelis, built with Canadian tax-deductible
dollars provided by the Canadian Jewish National Fund (JNF), a
registered Canadian charity. [TML emphasis]
It was in 1973 that Bernard Bloomfield of Montreal, then President of the JNF of Canada, spearheaded a campaign among the Canadian Jewish community to raise $15 million to establish Canada Park, so as to provide a picnic area accessible to Israelis from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
At the entrance of Canada Park, just off John Diefenbaker Parkway (opened by Diefenbaker himself in 1975), is a sign that reads: "Welcome to Canada Park in Ayalon Valley -- a project of the Jewish National Fund of Canada."
The JNF, responsible for the upkeep of the park, has removed all signs of the villages and their inhabitants from the area. It would seem that only the Canadian donors are worthy of being remembered; their names are engraved in the bronze plaques which cover an entire wall. Interestingly, these donors are not directly informed that the park is built on the site of the demolished villages. The Director of the American JNF stated that, "It is a delicate situation, and one cannot expect an institution [such as the Canadian JNF] which gathers money from abroad, to publicise the issue [of the demolition of these villages]." ("Canada Park: A Case Study," by Ehud Meltz and Michal Selah, Kol Hair, Aug. 31, 1984.)
The glossy guidebook, published by the JNF of Canada, has an entire page devoted to the history of the area, including the biblical, Roman, Crusader and British periods, but has no mention of these villages or their destruction. Another step in the obliteration of the villages from memory can be seen in their absence from Israeli maps.
As a new Canadian, my personal pain was compounded when I read on Dec. 4, 1978, in our local newspaper, The Halifax Herald, that Peter Herschorn, a prominent Halifax businessman and past chairman of the Atlantic branch of the JNF, was honored by the JNF for his humanitarian work and "choosing the right goodness" in his participation in the building of Canada Park. The Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, the Premier of NS and the Mayor of Halifax were in attendance and offered their greetings. I was mortified that political leaders in my new country, Canada, would consider the erection of recreation centres on the site of ruins of criminally demolished peaceful villages, illegally occupied, as a humanitarian act.
When I was invited to come to Canada to teach at Dalhousie
University Medical School, I accepted with enthusiasm, as I had
a vision of Canada as a country of liberal values upholding
human rights and international law. However, the story of our
government, allowing our tax dollars to be used to build this
infamy of Canada Park, a war crime, has been a source of torment
and pain for me. Over many years, I have written repeatedly,
supported by some honourable politicians like Senator Heath
Macquarrie and Mr. R.A. Corbett, MP, to successive Revenue
Canada Ministers, expressing concern about this, and receiving
only vague unhelpful answers. It was in the midst of this that
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Fifth Estate
program prepared and broadcast a documentary on Canada Park,
titled: "Park with no Peace," broadcast on Oct. 21, 1991. This
deserves to be viewed and studied by all.
In summation, I stand before you today, to express gratitude to The Canadian Museum for Human Rights for agreeing to listen to my story exposing the violation of my human rights and to express the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people who were systematically expelled from their homeland and continue to live as refugees denied the fundamental right of return to their homes, a right clearly stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and repeated UN resolutions. As Israel continues to defy international law and to compound our agony, we witness deafening silence from countries, like Canada, which claim to uphold the UN Charter and universal human rights. To compound that, I, as a Canadian citizen, feel, with pain and shame, the complicity of my country in continuing to subsidize this war crime, sadly called Canada Park, defaming Canada's name.
Canada Park -- "Park with No Peace"
Militant Opposition in Ottawa to City Council's Complicity with Genocide
A demonstration was held in front of Ottawa City Hall on May 14, where the Municipal Council was supposed to hoist the Zionist flag to celebrate the State of Israel's so-called Independence Day. Rather than holding the scheduled celebration at 10:00 am, the City of Ottawa hoisted the flag of infamy like thieves in the dead of night.
The Palestinian community and its allies denounced the hoisting of the genocidal flag and the City of Ottawa for celebrating genocide one day before the anniversary of the first Nakba and in spite of the second ongoing Nakba taking place before everyone's eyes as Israeli occupation forces attack Rafah, intensifying the humanitarian crisis, which is being condemned the world over.
One of the organizers pointed out: "This is the crowd that
stands on the right side of history, against war and against
genocide. This is what Palestinians stand for, what
Palestinian allies stand for. We are against war. We do not
support the genocide of any people and this is a terrorist
flag that the City of Ottawa has decided to raise. At a time
when Israel is on trial right now at the International Court
of Justice, the City of Ottawa disgracefully decided to raise
the genocidal flag one day before the [anniversary of] the
Nakba, the Catastrophe, when 15,000 Palestinians were murdered
and 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes. This
is what Ottawa and the Zionists want to celebrate, our
genocide. They want to build land on the bodies of our
children. Israel is a terrorist State, and we will keep on
telling the media: "Judaism, yes! Zionism, no!"
May 14
Photo Review -- May 7 to 14
Worldwide
Actions Continue to Demand
Hands Off Rafah! and No More Nakba!
March marking upcoming Nakba Day,
Montreal, May 11
CANADA
National Capital Region
Over 500 people marched for Rafah on May 11 in Ottawa.
At the Human Rights Monument at 2:00 pm, an organizer for the Palestinian Youth Movement said that for seven months Israel has carried out a genocide that has killed 40,000 Palestinians with impunity, and that it is crystal clear that it will not stop until all Palestinians have been erased or displaced.
He pointed out that the closing of the Rafah crossing, coupled with evacuation warnings by the Israel Occupation Forces, paints a bleak picture of what is to come if the world does not act swiftly against Israel. "As over 1.4 million souls brace for the worst, the time for international action is long overdue. The time for an arms embargo, for sanctions and for escalation is right now," he said.
He went on to say that Israel has repeatedly shown that it is not interested in rescuing its hostages, rejecting the latest prisoner exchange deal that would have led to a ceasefire, and continues to show its true intention to continue the ongoing genocide in Gaza. He also pointed out that this year marks 76 years of Nakba and announced that Nakba would be commemorated in Ottawa on May 15 at 6:00 pm. "We will meet at Tabaret Hall and we will march again. One thing at the heart of the Palestinian struggle and the source of Resistance against the Zionist entity is precisely the will to return," he said.
He pointed out that May 11 also marks the second anniversary of the assassination of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who ascended into martyrdom after the Zionist forces shot her while she was reporting from the front line at the Jenin refugee camp in 2022. "She represented the voice of Palestinians across the Arab regions and on the international stage. However, she is not the only journalist to have been deliberately targeted by the Zionist entity. Since October, over 120 journalists have been martyred as Israel wages a media war characterized by propaganda and the deliberate targeting of journalists, and their families, for exposing the lies and atrocities of Israel," he said.
He denounced Canada's seven-month long complicity in this genocide and its ongoing attempts to silence the resistance and suppress the right of Palestinians to demand justice. He ended by reiterating the movement's demands: "We demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to the genocide, an end to the 17 year-long brutal siege on Gaza, an end to the 75-year occupation of Palestine and to Canadian complicity in the crimes of the Israeli Zionists. We affirm more than ever that return is inevitable, an end to the occupation is inevitable and that we will see a free Palestine within our lifetime!"
People then marched along Rideau Street, then to the University of Ottawa where they joined the ongoing encampment on the Tabaret lawn, chanting "Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!"
One of the student organizers of the occupation said, "Yesterday, horrific images were released showing the realities of Palestinians kidnaped by the IOF. As well, seven mass graves were uncovered inside hospitals in the Gaza Strip, the most recent being the Al-Shifa hospital, where two other mass graves have been recovered, showing the systematic brutality and destruction of what remains of the crumbling medical system. Medical teams in Gaza have exhumed the bodies of 520 martyrs so far. These mass graves, which exhibit the most horrific acts of violence, join the list of bombings, field executions, kidnaping and torture that the Zionist forces employ against our people in Gaza. The inhumanity of this barbaric occupation knows no bounds.
"This is precisely why our job here is not done. We will remain on the Ottawa University grounds and occupy the Tabaret lawn until the university meets our demands:
- Full disclosure of all direct and indirect investments made by the University;
- Complete divestment from any and all corporations involved directly or indirectly in the surveillance, occupation and murder of Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank;
- Revise and break off relationships with academic Zionist institutions such as the Tel-Aviv exchange programme;
- Adopt the Arab-Canadian Lawyers Association's definition of anti-Palestinian racism."
May 11
Nova Scotia
Halifax
May 12
Quebec
Sherbrooke
Students set up a camp at the University of Sherbrooke on May 13. "Join the movement to denounce the genocide in Palestine, support other student camps and ask the University to publicly condemn the genocide, (to) publicly denounce Canada's complicity, (to) call on Canada to stop the sale of "weapons, (to) disclose full investments and more," the organizers wrote on Instagram.
May 13
Montreal
Close to 3,000 people gathered in front of the Israeli Consulate in Montreal on May 11 to commemorate the Nakba, the catastrophe of May 15, 1948 when Israel confiscated the land of 750,000 Palestinians by force of arms, expelling them from their homes and killing 15,000. People came from as far as Quebec City and Sherbrooke to join the rally.
Among those who spoke was a representative of Lawyers4Palestine who denounced the Israeli genocide and the silent complicity of international leaders for Israel's flagrant violations of international law. She called for an end to the occupation and apartheid in occupied Palestine and for an end to support for Israel's crimes by the governments of Canada and Quebec and universities. Speaking of the commemoration of the Nakba, she pointed out that since 1948 Palestinians have resisted Israeli occupation and affirmed their right to resturn to the homes from which they were expelled. She said "Under international law, peoples under occupation have the right to defend themselves against aggression and occupation, and the Palestinians are no exception" and spoke about the claim that Israel has the right to defend itself, pointing out that Israel is recognised as an occupier and the occupier cannot defend itself against the occupied. "To deny the Palestinians the legitimate right to defend themselves, while illegally granting it to Israel, is not only hypocritical but also contrary to the most elementary principles of justice," she said.
She drew attention to Resolutions of the UN General Assembly that affirm the right of self-determination, freedom and independence for all peoples under foreign and colonial domination and the legitimacy of their struggles by all available means, including armed struggle and said that Canada must respect the right of Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation.
She called for the lifting of the siege of Gaza as an absolute and unconditional humanitarian necessity, as well as the release of all Palestinian prisoners in occupied Palestine, and appealed to Canada and the international community to respond to the situation in Gaza by demanding an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, and for the Quebec government to close its office in Tel Aviv.
Concluding her remarks, she said "We must end trade relations with Israel and prosecute its leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity," ending with the slogan ‘Palestine must be free !', which was taken up in unison by the rally participants.
For more than an hour and a half, people took to the streets chanting slogans through the busy shopping area in the city centre. Passers-by stopped to take photos, smile and raise their fists in support of the marchers.
The march ended in front of the entrance to the McGill University campus, where the student encampment is located where they heard speeches in support of the students and chanted one of the slogans of the camp organisers: "One: We Are the Students! Two: We Won't be Silenced! Three: Stop the Funding Now! Now! Now! Now !"
The organizers invited marchers to visit the encampment, where free food and drink were handed out. They ended by calling upon everyone to join the march every Saturday at 2pm in support of Palestine.
Regarding McGill's request for an injunction against the student encampment a decision by Superior Court Justice Marc St. Pierre is expected on May 14 or 15. Organizers said that one way or another, they will inform everyone on different social media of the decision and call on everyone to continue their gestures of support of all kinds in support of the camp and the Palestinian people.
At the University of Quebec at Montreal, on May 11, students set up a camp in the central exterior courtyard of the Science Complex. They support the encampment established by McGill University students and demand that McGill withdraw its request for a court order to stop the McGill encampment and oppose the criminalization of the campers. They also demand the closure of the Quebec Government Office in Israel and an academic boycott against Israel by all Quebec universities. Leila Khaled, spokesperson for the camp, said: "As the occupying forces intensify their murderous aggression against Rafah, we, students and workers, refuse to remain silent in the face of apartheid, genocide and the colonial crimes of the State of Israel. We are calling on UQAM, but also the Quebec state and the Canadian state to take measures to put an end to their collaboration and complicity with the rogue state."
Demonstration marking Nakba Day, May 11
University of Quebec at Montreal, May 12
Ontario
Toronto
More than 5,000 people took part in a militant rally and march in Toronto on May 11, joining other actions in Canada and around the world to mark the 76th anniversary of the Nakba.
The action, organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement, drew participants from the Greater Toronto Area and other communities. Gathering at the U.S. Consulate, the crowd chanted slogans, many denouncing the U.S. for its role in funding and encouraging Israel's genocide against the Palestinians. The Trudeau government was also denounced for abstaining from the vote on May 10 at the United Nations to give Palestine more rights as an Observer State at the United Nations and support its full membership.
A lively atmosphere prevailed as people from all walks of life moved onto University Avenue and began the march north, their voices filling the air for blocks with Hands Off Gaza!, Hands Off Rafah!, Justin Trudeau, You Will See, Palestine is Almost Free! and other calls. At Yonge and Dundas Streets in the heart of downtown, speakers underscored that the Israeli state and its funders and backers such as the U.S. and Canada are completely isolated in world public opinion and are becoming more desperate and reckless in efforts to exterminate the Palestinian people in Gaza. One speaker noted that never before have the Palestinian people been so close to their liberation. Others hailed the students and youth on university and college campuses in the U.S. and Canada and across the globe who are demanding that their institutions divest from the Israeli killing machine and holding their governments and institutions to account. A physician who had worked in Gaza spoke about the heroism and self-sacrifice of the ordinary Palestinians in supporting the armed resistance and of people he knew who have died fighting in the resistance. In closing, he led the participants in the cry From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!
The march continued to the University of Toronto to join the students who have been encamped at King's College Circle for more than a week pressing the University to divest from Israeli enterprises. The more than four-hour action energized the resolve of everyone to stand with the heroic people of Palestine and to continue to demand that Canada stop playing its criminal role of supporting the U.S.-backed Zionist regime.
University of Toronto, May 10
May 11
Thunder Bay
Keffiyeh Day celebration and kite-making, May 11
Sudbury
May 11
Oshawa
Ontario Tech University, May 11
Hamilton
McMaster University, May 11
Windsor
Picket outside a meeting of University of Windsor Senate calls
for the University to divest from entities benefiting from the
Israeli occupation and genocide, and to cut ties with Israeli
universities, May 10
University of Windsor, May 11
May 12
Alberta
Calgary
University of Calgary, May 9
Rally against police attack on encampment, University of
Calgary, May 10
University of Calgary, rally to oppose police attacks, May 12
Edmonton
University of Alberta, May 10
British Columbia
Vancouver
University of BC, Point Grey, May 10
UNITED STATES
Cleveland, OH
May 8
Princeton, NJ
Princeton University, May 8
Washington, DC
George Washington University, May 10
Durham, NC
Duke University, students walk out of graduation ceremony,
hold their own on lawn, May 12
Ann Arbor, MI
University of Michigan, May 12
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin, May 8
Chicago, IL
May 8
DePaul University, May 13
Tucson, AZ
University of Arizona, May 9
Eugene, OR
University of Oregon, May 9
Berkeley, CA
University of California at Berkeley, May 11
EUROPE
England
Lancaster
Lancaster University, May 9
Hackney
May 9
Oxford
Oxford University, May 13
Malmö, Sweden
Large demonstrations stand with Palestine and oppose Israel's
participation in Eurovision
Song Contest, May 9
May 11
Geneva, Switzerland
University of Geneva, May 11
Madrid, Spain
May 11
Ljubljana, Slovenia
University of Ljubljana, May 13
Italy
Milan
University of Milan, May 10
Padua
University of Padua, May 10
Athens, Greece
University of Athens, May 13
May 14
ASIA
Gaza, Palestine
Children protest for right to education,
to go back to school, May 10
Sana'a, Yemen
May 10
Istanbul, Türkiye
May 12
Islamabad, Pakistan
May 10
Japan
Tokyo
May 11
Hiroshima
May 11
Kyoto
University of Kyoto, May 13
AFRICA
Johannesburg, South Africa
Global Conference Against Apartheid, May 10-12
LATIN AMERICA & CARIBBEAN
Havana, Cuba
May 1-2
Cali, Colombia
May 13
OCEANIA
Sydney, Australia
May 11
(To access articles individually click on the black headline.)
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca