Palestine

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 26, 2019 4:45 pm

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ISRAELI SETTLERS POISON WATER WELL IN WEST BANK CITY
By َQudsN / April 26, 2019
Hebron (QNN)- Israeli extremist settlers on Thursday threw a poisonous substance in a water well in the east of Yatta, south of Hebron, in an attempt to kill local residents and their animals, who depend on the well for their livelihood.

The Palestinian Information Center quoted local official Rateb al-Jabour saying that settlers from the illegal settlement of Maon in eastern Yatta threw a blue toxic substance in a water well used by local shepherds in al-Hamra area in eastern Yatta.

He said that local shepherds in eastern Yatta are exposed to almost daily assaults by Jewish settlers in order to force them to leave their native areas.

Violent actions of settlers against Palestinians are not exceptions to a rule. Rather, they form part of a broader strategy in which “Israel” colludes, as it stands to benefit from the result. This unchecked violence is designed to gradually drive Palestinians from more and more locations in the West Bank, making it easier for “Israel” to take over land and resources.

http://qudsnen.co/israeli-settlers-pois ... bank-city/

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue May 14, 2019 12:58 pm

Israel’s Independence Day: Commemorating the dispossession of the natives and rise of the West’s outpost in the Middle East
Below is an excerpt from my new book, Israel, A Beachhead in the Middle East: From European Colony to US Power Projection Platform. The excerpt is from Chapter 3, titled Nakba. The book is available from Baraka Books.

May 14, 2019

By Stephen Gowans

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly approved Resolution 181, calling for the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, linked by an economic union, with Jerusalem set aside as an international territory outside the jurisdiction of either state. Palestine would be divided into eight parts. Three parts would constitute the Jewish state, while the Arab state would be comprised of three other parts, plus a fourth, Jaffa, which would be an Arab exclave within the territory of the Jewish state. Jerusalem—envisaged as a corpus separatum, or international city—was the eighth part.

The Jewish population had grown rapidly from World War I under the stewardship of the British colonial administration from approximately 10 percent of the population to about one-third. Yet, while Jewish settlers remained in the minority and were outnumbered two to one by the indigenous Arabs, the resolution granted the Jewish state 56 percent of the Palestinians’ country, while the Arabs, with two-thirds of the population, were given only 42 percent. The balance, two percent, represented Jerusalem.

Some people continue to see the partition resolution—and its descendant, the two-state solution—as fair and practical, but it was neither of these things. Laying aside the inequitable apportionment of a greater territory for a Jewish state to a smaller Jewish population, there are larger issues to confront.

The first is the denial of Palestinian sovereignty. There is no question that the indigenous population was adamantly opposed to the expropriation of its land. While it made up the majority of Palestine’s inhabitants, its wishes were completely ignored by the United Nations. This was predictable. At the time the world body was dominated by First World powers steeped in the colonial tradition. Many of the countries that voted for the resolution were settler colonial states themselves: Britain, France and Belgium, and the British settler offshoots, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. There was no chance that a similar resolution would have passed from the 1960s onwards, when the balance of power in the United Nations General Assembly shifted from the First World to the Third World. Countries with colonial pasts unwaveringly considered Zionism a legitimate political ideology, while countries victimized by colonialism regarded it as a form of colonialism.

The second issue, following from the first, is that the partition resolution called for the creation of an unacceptable institution: a colonial settler state. Colonial settler states have been overcome one by one by the determined resistance of the political Left—in Algeria, Rhodesia, South Africa, and elsewhere—to the deserved applause of the majority of humanity. The demise of each settler colonial state is a sign post in the progress of humanity. The question of whether the Jewish state envisioned by the partition resolution, or Israel today, is a colonial settler state isn’t even controversial. Neither Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, David Ben-Gurion, the father of the state of Israel, nor Le’ev Jabotinsky, founder of revisionist Zionism, were in any doubt that a Jewish state built by settlers on the land of another people was unequivocally settler colonialism.

As to the practicality of Resolution 181, it is as indefensible as the partition plan’s alleged equity. A practical settlement to the conflict would have been one that all sides accepted. But neither side accepted the resolution. The indigenous population rejected it for the obvious reason that it denied them sovereignty over 56 percent of their territory and handed it to a minority population of recent immigrants. No people on earth would have accepted this proposal for themselves; why the Palestinians were expected to accept it, boggles the mind. Ben-Gurion accepted the resolution in words, but only as a tactical manoeuvre, recognizing that an embryo Jewish state could be incubated into the Land of Israel through military conquest. The Revisionists rejected the planned partition, because it fell short of fulfilling Zionist aspirations for a Jewish state in all of south Syria (the name by which Palestine and Jordan were known by the indigenous population.)

For the settlers, the demographics of the partition plan were all wrong. The Jewish state would contain 500,000 Jews but almost as many Arabs. There would be 440,000 Arabs living in the territory Resolution 181 envisioned for the Jewish state. Jews, then, would constitute only a bare majority. A bare majority could quickly become a minority, depending on immigration, and on the birth rates of the two communities. Moreover, how could 500,000 Jews rule almost as many Arabs, considering that the Arabs rejected Jewish rule? The plan was completely unworkable. The only way to create a viable Jewish state would be to engineer a radical reduction in the number of Arabs living within its frontiers while at the same time expanding its borders to absorb as many of the 10,000 Jewish settlers the resolution had assigned to the Arab state.

The resolution’s proclamation immediately touched off fighting between the native Arabs and the immigrant Jewish settlers. The settlers were determined to drive as many natives as possible out of the territory assigned by the UN to a Jewish state, while capturing territory assigned by the UN to an Arab state. When the dust settled, a Jewish state, named Israel, was proclaimed, comprising 78 percent of Palestinian territory, not the 56 percent envisaged by the resolution. Meanwhile, 700,000 Arab natives had been exiled from their homes and the settlers refused their repatriation, keen to protect the outcome of their demographic engineering.

Today, Israelis insist their state grew out of a UN resolution that Arabs rejected and Jewish settlers accepted. While the Arab natives certainly rejected the resolution, the settlers rejected most of it as well, accepting only one small part of it—the call for the creation of a Jewish state. They rejected all the other parts, including the call for the creation of an Arab state within specified borders; the prohibition against expropriating Arab land within the Jewish state; the designation of Jaffa as an Arab exclave; the creation of an international Jerusalem; and the creation of an economic union between two states.

British rule of Palestine came to an end on May 15, 1948. On May 14, Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel, sparking what has become known as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It was the first in a series of settler-native wars—armed conflicts between the army of the Jewish colonial settler state and various Arab armies and Arab irregulars.

The Arab belligerents in 1948—Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria—dispatched some 20,000 troops to help their compatriots resist settler efforts to transform Palestine into the Land of Israel. Only three of these states— Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq—had armies of consequence, and only one, Jordan, had an army that was prepared for war. All three states were British clients, governed by kings who served at the pleasure of London. All were armed by John Bull, and Jordan’s army was under the direct command of 21 British officers who took their orders from London. This was significant, since Britain favored the settlers, and could—and did—restrict the flow of weapons and ammunition to their client states. It’s not by accident that the core Arab armies did not intervene in Palestine until after British forces exited Palestine, even though settler forces began operations to drive the Arab natives out of Palestine five months earlier. When the British-controlled Arab armies did finally intervene, the settlers had largely ethnically-cleansed Palestine, and their entry into the affray was a near farce.

The Arab forces had no central command and no coordination. It has been remarked that one of the reasons five Arab armies were defeated by one Israeli army was because there were five Arab armies.

Worse, there were inter-Arab rivalries that further weakened the combined Arab forces. Jordan and Iraq, led by British-installed kings, brothers of the Hashemite dynasty, were eager to see the defeat of the Egyptian army of King Farouk. Farouk was a rival for influence in the Arab world, and the Hashemites desired his defeat. Jordan and Iraq, then, had no intention of doing anything to help their rival’s military forces.

On top of these problems, was the general weakness of the Arab armies. The Egyptian forces were under equipped and poorly led. They had no maps, no tents, and insufficient logistical support. Their officers were generally incompetent, having attained their rank through political connections. When orders were issued to soldiers in the field, they were often contradictory. The Iraqi army was even worse; it was sent into battle without ammunition.

Finally, there was betrayal. Abdullah, the king of Jordan, had secretly worked out an arrangement with the settlers to annex the West Bank to his kingdom. Glubb Pasha, the British officer who commanded Abdullah’s army, deliberately restrained his forces, ordering them not to enter territory assigned by the UN to a Jewish state, though Israeli forces had seized territory assigned to an Arab state.

It would have been difficult enough for the Arab armies to prevail under these trying circumstances, but the fact that they were outnumbered made victory all but impossible. Under-manned, lacking coordination, incompetently-led, ill-equipped, largely untrained, betrayed from within by Abdullah, and sabotaged by their British masters, 20,000 Arab soldiers were no match for the 60,000 unified and determined settlers under arms, many of whom were highly trained soldiers, having served in the British Army during the Second World War.

The Israelis have misnamed the First Settler-Native War as The War of Independence, as if it were a national liberation struggle of an oppressed people against a colonial power, Britain. On the contrary, it was a colonial war fought by Jewish settlers whose victory was aided in the background by the British. It was a war of dispossession, not a war of restitution.

https://gowans.blog/2019/05/14/israels- ... ddle-east/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed May 15, 2019 1:23 pm

Stealing Palestine: A study of historical and cultural theft
Roger Sheety
17 June 2014 20:18 UTC | Last update: 3 years 10 months ago

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The cultural appropriation of books, music, art, cuisine and dress have been used by Zionists as a weapon against Palestinians
Stealing and appropriating the culture and history of indigenous peoples is a typical characteristic of all modern colonial-settler states, but usually accomplished once the indigenous people in question has been eliminated, dispossessed, or otherwise seemingly defeated therefore making it safe to do so. The colonial-settler state of “Israel,” established on the ruins of Palestine and through the expulsion of the majority of its indigenous population in 1948 and after, is no different.

The Israeli theft of all things Palestinian, however, does not simply come from misguided notions of nationalism or childish pride as is often argued by Western apologists, but is rather a conscious political policy of the state that seeks to erase Palestine from historical memory, particularly within Western discourse. Indeed, the continuing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their historic homeland goes hand in hand with the theft of Palestinian land, homes, history, and culture. It is an essential part of the larger, long-term Zionist project of eradicating the Palestinian nation altogether, literally writing it out of history while simultaneously assuming its place.

This erasure has been correctly termed as memoricide by historian Ilan Pappe in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Nur Masalha, elaborating further, writes: “The founding myths of Israel have dictated the conceptual removal of Palestinians before, during and after their physical removal in 1948... The de-Arabisation of Palestine, the erasure of Palestinian history and the elimination of the Palestinian’s collective memory by the Israeli state are no less violent than the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 and the destruction of historic Palestine: this elimination is central to the construction of a hegemonic collective Israeli-Zionist-Jewish identity in the State of Israel” (The Palestine Nakba, 89).

Thus, the theft of Palestine and its culture has two essential and interwoven components, the removal/erasure of Palestinians and a concurrent assumption of nativity or “birthright” in Anglo-European Zionist terms. Over the last six and a half decades, this brazen erasure and theft has been achieved mainly through two methods: brutal violence (that is, terrorism) and mass media propaganda.

Al Nakba: Physical Destruction/Physical Theft
Between 1947 and 1949, at least 800,000 Palestinians, comprising the majority of the indigenous Arab population of Palestine at that time, were ethnically cleansed from their homes by Zionist militias made up of European and Russian colonists and aided by British imperialists. Major urban Palestinian centres from the Galilee in the north to the Naqab (renamed “Negev” by Zionists) in the south were emptied of their original inhabitants. During this three-year period alone, some 531 Palestinian towns and villages were also simultaneously ethnically cleansed and then later razed by the newly established Israeli state. As Moshe Dayan, a native of the Ukraine, would later boast:

"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population" (Ha’aretz, April 4, 1969).

What is perhaps lesser known is that during this same period tens of thousands of books, paintings, musical recordings, furniture, and other artifacts were also looted by the Zionist militias from Palestinian homes, libraries, and government offices. As documented by Benny Brunner and Arjan El Fassed in their film The Great Book Robbery, at least 70,000 Palestinian books were stolen from their owners. As shown in the documentary, this theft was no mere accidental by-product of war; rather, it was a deliberate act with a specific purpose:

“For decades Zionist and Israeli propaganda described the Palestinians as ‘people without culture.’ Thus, the victorious Israeli state took upon itself to civilise the Palestinians who remained within its borders at the end of the 1948 war. They were forbidden to study their own culture or to remember their immediate past; their memory was seen as a dangerous weapon that had to be suppressed and controlled.”

1948, however, would not be the last time that Israeli forces would steal and destroy Palestinian books and other cultural productions. In 1982, during its occupation of Lebanon, Israeli invasion troops would storm the homes, offices, and libraries of Palestinians and walk away with thousands of books, films, and other records documenting Palestinian history. This is a common practice of Israeli occupation forces and continues to this day, most notably in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza, which were occupied in 1967 along with Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai.

The meaning behind this theft is not complicated. Unable to assimilate actual, recorded Palestinian history (which was and remains mostly in Arabic) into its fabricated history, Israel chooses simply to destroy it, to physically remove it from sight, while simultaneously inventing and disseminating a fairy-tale account of Palestine as a virgin “land without people for a people without a land.” Consequently, the destruction of Palestinian villages, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian cities, the aerial bombing of Palestinian refugee camps, and the looting of Palestinian books all lead to the same intersection: what cannot be absorbed within Zionist mythology must be eradicated.

Palestinian Artifacts: Re-writing History
The Zionist belief that modern European and Russian Jews (and all of worldwide Jewry for that matter) are somehow the direct, lineal descendants of ancient Hebrew-speaking tribes who lived on another continent some 2000 years ago and can thus lay claim to Palestine, its history, and its culture would be outright laughable if the political consequences of this fairy-tale ideology were not so tragic. That this racist belief, propagated by both anti-Semites and Zionists alike, is accepted as self-evident truth and not even worthy of questioning by most Western mainstream media outlets is certainly a testament to decades of Zionist propaganda and to a shameful journalistic laziness and conformity of thought that has now become the norm.

A typical example is this article from the Huffington Post titled “Israel Ancient Jewelry Uncovered in Archeological Dig.” According to the article, “Israeli archaeologists have discovered a rare trove of 3,000-year-old jewelry, including a ring and earrings, hidden in a ceramic jug near the ancient city of Megiddo, where the New Testament predicts the final battle of Armageddon.” Based on the guesses of Israel Finkelstein, who co-directed the dig, “the jewelry likely belonged to a Canaanite family.” That may well have been so, but the unquestioned assumption throughout the piece is that this jewelry is in some way Israeli. (Note, as well, how a biblical tale associated with the ancient Palestinian city of Megiddo is mentioned as if this was of any relevance.)

In 1919, the World Zionist Organisation officially presented a map of its future state of “Israel” at the Paris Peace Conference. This map included not only all of Palestine, but also southern Lebanon, southwestern Syria, including the Golan Heights, significant parts of western Jordan, and parts of Egypt’s Sinai. Let us for argument’s sake say that the WZO’s colonial wish was granted at least in the case of Lebanon. Would that make all the ancient artifacts found in occupied southern Lebanon, “Israeli”? What of Syria’s Golan which remains occupied today; are the artefacts found there today somehow “Israeli”? And what about Egypt’s Sinai, a territory that Israel occupied from 1967 to 1979; were the ancient relics discovered there during the period of occupation “Israeli”? And did they stop becoming “Israeli” after the Zionist state properly returned the stolen land back to Egypt?

Since all of Palestine is as stolen as the once occupied Sinai and the currently occupied Syrian Golan, what exactly is so “Israeli” about this ancient jewelry discussed in the Huffington Post article besides the unsubstantiated claims of its author who completely ignores Palestinian history? The European/Zionist re-writing of ancient Palestinian history is so blatant, so ubiquitous, it is almost invisible. Not only have Zionists re-written Palestinian history, they have also written themselves into it even as they remove indigenous Palestinians both physically and notionally out. Wielding history as a weapon, this type of propaganda utilises the laziest and most common form of censorship, that of simple omission.

This particular form of cultural theft, however, is not limited to Palestine. Israel, against all historical evidence, continues to conflate its racist political ideology, its raison d’être, Zionism - a uniquely European creation - with Judaism, a universal religion with origins in the Arab world. Thus, Zionists justify the theft of Iraqi-Jewish archives, for instance; or they claim that 1000-year-old Jewish documents originally from Afghanistan belong to the Zionist state. The assumption is that, since a document has Hebrew or even Aramaic script written on it, it must somehow belong in “Israel” and not where it was actually found. It never occurs to the author of the Haaretz piece that a 1000-year-old document discovered in Afghanistan has absolutely nothing to do with a European colonial-settler state established in 1948 on top of Palestine. Or have perhaps Israel’s undeclared borders now stretched to Afghanistan?

Palestinian/Arab Dress
Palestinian women are rightly proud of traditional Arab dress, as any people would be of their creations. These stunningly intricate, handmade embroidered dresses, scarves, and other accessories have deep roots within the Arab world, especially Greater Syria. The skills with which to create them have been passed down from generation to generation and the evidence of their authenticity and artistry is undeniable. So refined is Palestinian dress in particular, that one can identify their place of origin within Palestine from the colours and designs of the embroidery alone.

Historian and scientist Hanan Karaman Munayyer, an expert on Palestinian clothing, traces “the origins of proto-Palestinian attire from the Canaanite period circa 1500 B.C. when Egyptian paintings depicted Canaanites wearing A-shaped garments. The distinctive silhouette is observed in a 1200 B.C. ivory engraving from Megiddo, Palestine, identified as a ‘Syrian tunic’” (Sovereign Threads by Pat McDonnell Twair, PalestineHeritage.org). In short, they are living works of art that carry within their stitches millennia of indigenous cultural memory.

Yet even Palestinian dress has not been immune from shameless Israeli theft and appropriation. Basem Ra’ad, in his superb Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean, writes:

“An Israeli book on embroidery, Arabesque: Decorative Needlework from the Holy Land, starts with "biblical times" and ends with photographs showing Israeli adults and children wearing the embroidered clothing of Palestinian villagers (many from the villages from which Palestinians were forced to flee in 1948). These Israelis have put on an act for the photographs. The book not only takes over a Palestinian art form; it impersonates it. The euphemistic allusion to the "Holy Land" helps to camouflage the real, Palestinian source of this unique form of village art” (128).

As Ra’ad notes throughout, often within Israeli cultural works no mention at all is made of Palestinians thus rendering them invisible. A more recent and equally outrageous form of appropriation was documented in an article from Ma’an News which describes the theft of the Arab kufiya or hattah. Though common throughout the Arab world, the kufiya became a Palestinian symbol of resistance during the Great Palestine Revolt of 1936-39 when the majority of Palestinians rose up against the British occupation and their Zionist colonial allies. That Zionists today choose to appropriate this symbol in a pathetic effort to make it their own is yet another example of both an ignorance of Arab history and a complete lack of imagination.

Palestinian/Arab Cuisine
What is more fundamental to any people and its culture than its food? The stealing of Palestinian cuisine by the Zionist state has been just as shameless as its theft of Palestinian land. In fact, since cuisine is so overtly geographically-based, the two are in reality one and the same. Jaffa oranges, olives and olive oil, hummus, tabouleh, arak, falafel, kubbeh and almost every other kind of Arabic food, drink, and ingredient native to Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and the rest of the Arab world suddenly becomes “Israeli” within the state’s various media and through its Western advocates without any acknowledgement of its true origins.

Consider, for instance, this article from the Jerusalem Post which states that arak is “indigenous to Israel.” “The largest-selling spirit in Israel may be vodka,” claims the writer, “but the indigenous spirit is arak.” Note, too, how several countries from the region are cited -Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, Jordan - but, somehow, Palestine remains beyond the recall of the writer. This is a typical strategy of Zionist cultural appropriation and usurpation; list the surrounding countries and cultures as if you are a part of them, but don’t mention the country you destroyed and whose culture you stole. One must also wonder how a colonial settler state established in 1948 by Europeans can lay claim to an indigenous Arab cuisine which existed for millennia before it ever came into being. Perhaps this is another example of the fabled “miracles of Israel.”

Or take the example of falafel which Israel claims is its “national” dish, an assertion repeated in countless cook books, blogs, and even academic papers. “What distinguishes the case of falafel from those of rice and wine is our access to its historical origins,” writes Yael Raviv. “Falafel was not assimilated into Israeli society by a long, slow, natural process. Rather, its transformation into an icon of Israeli culture was rushed and deliberate. In its urgent search for symbols of unity, the nationalist movement hit upon falafel as a signifier of Israeli pride.” This is a remarkable bit of ahistorical sophistry. How exactly is falafel - which existed long before “Israel” - a “signifier of Israeli pride” unless one is proud of cultural theft?

In a refreshing moment of honesty, Gil Hovav admits: “Of course it’s Arabic. Hummus is Arabic. Falafel, our national dish, our national Israeli dish, is completely Arabic and this salad that we call an Israeli Salad, actually it’s an Arab salad, Palestinian salad. So, we sort of robbed them of everything.” Although it is always appreciated to hear Zionists admit their various thefts, take away the apologetic qualifier “sort of” and we will arrive to a much closer truth.

The usual defence or apologetics, however, is that this is a trivial matter; it is only food after all. Unfortunately, Israeli claims to inventing Palestinian and Arabic cuisine are used for distinctly political purposes - to marginalise, discredit and, ultimately, to dispossess the Palestinian people. Did the Russian-born Golda Meir (originally, Golda Mabovich) invent hummus? Did the Polish native David Ben-Gurion (originally, David Green) create the recipe for tabouleh? Perhaps it was the family of current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (originially, Ben Mileikowsky), who created falafel? As ridiculous as these questions are, this is essentially what Zionists are asking us to believe whenever they refer to Arabic food as “Israeli.”

Palestinian Agriculture and Land
A common Zionist historical fabrication, still disseminated today, is that “Israelis made the [Palestinian] desert bloom.” Palestine, according to this tall tale, was a horrid, barren place until European Jews arrived with their superior technology and know-how and made it flower. It was only then, as the tall tale continues, that those poor Arabs arrived (from other countries, of course) to find work in this new, green, and blooming land. As recently as the 2012 American election campaign, openly anti-Palestinian bigots such as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney would parrot this ahistorical fiction in an attempt to score cheap political points.

Here, however, are some historical facts to counter this racist fairy tale. In 1901, the Jewish National Fund was founded in Basel, Switzerland with the explicit goal of buying land in Palestine for exclusive European Jewish colonisation. By 1948, after nearly half a century, they had succeeded in buying less than 7 percent of Palestinian land, mostly from absentee landlords living outside of Palestine. In other words, the enterprise was a failure; Palestinians understandably would not give up rightful ownership of their land for any price.

Why is this important? When Britain invaded and occupied Palestine from 1917 to 1948, they not only came with their military and typical savagery, but also with their surveyors and scholars whose main job was to produce information on the country they happened to occupy. This information would fill volumes of books sent back for consumption by the British public and in order to justify their government’s imperial projects abroad. One of those volumes is the 1300-page A Survey of Palestine published in December 1945.

Summarised brilliantly by the Lawrence of Cyberia Website, the survey reveals that Palestinians produced the vast majority of Palestine’s agricultural output as late as 1948, including “92 percent of its grain, 86 percent of its grapes, 99 percent of its olives, 77 percent of its vegetables, 95 percent of its melons, 99 percent of its tobacco, and 60 percent of its bananas.” Sami Hadawi in his Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine showed similar results. It simply makes no agricultural sense that Zionist colonists, who were in the minority at the time, were minority land holders, and who had only recently arrived in Palestine, overnight turned a supposed desert into a flower bed.

The reality is that it was Palestinians who made Palestine bloom through centuries of labour and hard work, not recently-arrived foreign colonists from Europe, Russia, and (later) the United States and elsewhere. These are the facts as recorded in 1948 by both indigenous Palestinians and their British occupiers. Those who believe in magic and fairy tales, on the other hand, can always return to the comfort of Zionist myths and Hollywood.

Conclusion: The Rope of a Lie is Short
Books, music, art, cuisine, dress—these are what constitute the essence of a people’s culture and history. Israel’s cultural claims on Palestine are as vacuous as its claims on the land; both have been taken, and are still being taken, by force and fabrication. The Palestinian intellectual Dr. Fayez Sayegh once said, “Israel is, because Palestine has been made not to be.” Sayegh was not only speaking of the land but also of the entirety of the Palestinian nation which, naturally, includes its cultural productions as well. Zionism, like all other European colonial-settler movements, uses cultural and historical theft as key weapons in its war of elimination against the indigenous Palestinians.

Israel’s delusion that Palestinian culture belongs to it is no different from the fantasy that it somehow sits in Europe and not in the heart of the Arab world. The continuing theft of Palestinian culture in particular and of Arab culture in general is a damning reflection of its own artificiality, its poverty of spirit and, indeed, of its very illegitimacy. There is a Palestinian proverb that says, “The rope of a lie is short (قصير الكِذِب حبل)” meaning, a lie will sooner or later be found out. The goal of the Zionist project in Palestine, to erase it from history and take its place using all means possible, has been obvious to Palestinians almost from its inception; it is time for the rest of the world to come to this realisation. For the sake of justice and common decency, it is also long time to give credit where credit is due.

- Roger Sheety is an independent writer and researcher, and is a regular contributor to PalestineChronicle.com. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ibinfalasteen.

Photo Credit: A Palestinian boy reads a traditional text (AA)

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Thu May 30, 2019 1:08 pm

Israel newspaper publishes terms of ‘deal of century’
May 8, 2019 at 8:59 am | Published in: Asia & Americas, Israel, Middle East, News, Palestine, US

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May 8, 2019 at 8:59 am
The main points of US President Donald Trump’s much-derided plan for the Middle East, the so-called “deal of the century,” were leaked by a Hebrew-language news outlet in Israel yesterday. Israel Hayom published the main points of the deal from a leaked document circulated by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

The US has said it will reveal its deal after the Muslim month of fasting comes to an end in early June.

The main points of the agreement put together by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner — who has extensive interests in Israel and its settlements — and proposed by the US administration are as follows:

A tripartite agreement will be signed between Israel, the PLO and Hamas, and a Palestinian state will be established that will be called “New Palestine” and will be established in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, with the exception of the settlements. Israel would release Palestinian prisoners gradually over the course of three years under the deal.

The settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law, would form part of Israel.

Jerusalem will not be divided but is to be shared by Israel and the “New Palestine” with Israel maintaining general control.

Palestinians living in Jerusalem would be citizens of the Palestinian state but Israel would remain in charge of the municipality and therefore the land. The newly formed Palestinian state would pay taxes to the Israeli municipality in order to be in charge of education in the city for Palestinians.

The status quo at the holy sites will remain and Jewish Israelis will not be allowed to buy Palestinian houses and vice versa.

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Partition of Jerusalem? Let my people in! – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Egypt will offer the new Palestinian state land to build an airport, factories and for agriculture which will service the Gaza Strip. Palestinians will not be permitted to live on this land.

A highway would be built to connect the Gaza Strip to the West Bank 30 metres above Israel. Funding for the project will mainly come from China, which will pay 50 per cent of the cost, with South Korea, Australia, Canada, the US and EU each paying a ten per cent each.

Deal sponsors
The US, EU and Gulf states would fund and sponsor the deal for five years to establish the state of “New Palestine”, the leak claims.

This would be at a cost of $6 billion a year; the majority of which -70 per cent – would be paid by Gulf states, with the US contributing 20 per cent and the EU ten per cent.

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When the Arab World sells the Holy City – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

“New Palestine” would not be allowed to form an army but could maintain a police force. Instead, a defence agreement will be signed between Israel and the “New Palestine” in which Israel would defend the new state from any foreign attacks.

Upon signing the agreement, Hamas will hand over all its weapons to Egypt. The movement’s leaders would be compensated and paid salaries by Arab states while a government is established.

Elections are expected to be held within one year of the establishment of the “New Palestine” state.

All borders between the Gaza Strip and Egypt and Israel would remain open to people and goods and Palestinians would be able to use Israeli air and seaports.

“New Palestine” will have two crossings into Jordan, these will be under the control of the “New Palestine” authorities.

READ: ‘Deal of the Century’ does not entail win-win equation

The Jordan Valley will remain in Israel’s hands and a four-lane toll road will be built through it.

If Hamas or any Palestinian bodies refuse this deal, the US will cancel all of its financial support to the Palestinians and pressure other countries to do the same.

If, on the other hand, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas signs the deal but Hamas and Islamic Jihad do not agree to it, a war would be waged on the Gaza Strip with the full backing of the US.

However, if Israel refuses the deal the US would cease its financial support. The US currently pays $3.8 billion a year to support Israel.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190 ... etQAx-ObZA

This is such a bad 'deal', a demand for complete capitulation, the road to extinction of the Palestinian people. And they think they can force it through with a bit of money. These scum don't understand anything except their own self-interest.

I also question as to whether China has actually signed off on the abomination.
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 06, 2019 7:55 pm

Israel shrinks Gaza fishing zone over alleged incendiary balloons
Thu Jun 6, 2019 02:17PM [Updated: Thu Jun 6, 2019 04:21PM ]

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Fishing boats return to the port in Gaza City on May 4, 2019. (Photo by AFP)

The Israeli regime has cut the offshore fishing restriction it imposes for vessels off the Gaza shore after its officials claimed that incendiary balloons were launched from the besieged enclave towards the occupied territories.

An unnamed Israeli regime official told media outlets on Thursday that as of Wednesday the fishing limit for Gaza fishermen had been reduced from a maximum of 15 nautical miles to 10.

Israel has cut the fishing zone it allows off Gaza in the third such measure in a fortnight, citing Palestinian incendiary balloons.

It was only on Tuesday that Israel restored the limit to 15 miles after a previous reduction last week. It imposed a similar cut on May 23.

The limit of up to 15 nautical miles set ahead of Israel's April general election was the largest allowed in years.

Under the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, Israel is obligated to permit fishing up to 20 nautical miles, but this has never been implemented.

The accords were signed between the Israeli regime and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) during the 1990s to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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PressTV-Israeli navy fires at Gaza fishermen, sets boat on fire

The boat caught fire as Israeli naval forces opened fire on Palestinian fishermen in the northern part of besieged Gaza Strip.
In practice, Israel only allowed fishing up to 12 nautical miles until 2006, when the fishing zone was reduced to six and later to three miles.

Israel maintains a heavy naval presence off the coast of the impoverished Palestinian enclave, severely affecting the livelihood of some 4,000 fishermen and at least 1,500 more people involved in the fishing industry.

Over the past few years, Israeli forces have carried out more than a hundred attacks on Palestinian boats, arresting dozens of fishermen and confiscating several boats.

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PressTV-Israeli jets attack Gaza ports, destroy boat

In a new act of aggression, Israeli warplanes carry out airstrikes against various targets in the Gaza Strip, including seaports.
Flying fiery kites and balloons has become a new mode of protests by Gazans since last March, when the regime in Israel began a crackdown against anti-occupation demonstrations near the fence separating Gaza from the Israeli-occupied land.

The violence has so far left at least 305 Palestinians dead and more than 17,000 others wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The economy of Gaza has also suffered from years of Israeli and Egyptian blockades.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade since June 2007. It has caused a decline in the standard of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.

Israel has launched three major wars against the enclave, killing thousands of Gazans each time and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/06/ ... -PLO-Egypt

The Zionists are petty, vicious & unrelentingly genocidal.
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 09, 2019 2:48 pm

Renouncing Israel on Principle
How to answer the question, “Do you affirm Israel’s right to exist?”

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When anti-Zionists discuss the Middle East, the topic of Israel’s existence rarely arises. It’s almost exclusively a pro-Israel talking point. We’re focused on national liberation, on surviving repression, on strategies of resistance, on recovering subjugated histories, on the complex (and sometimes touchy) relationships among an Indigenous population disaggregated by decades of aggression. That a colonial state—or any state, really—possesses no ontological rights is an unspoken assumption.

“Do you recognize Israel’s right to exist?” pretends to honor the downtrodden, but it is an altogether different proposition, transforming sophisticated ideas of liberation into a crude test of political respectability. Prioritizing the state as worthy of relief, as something to which we automatically owe deference, subsumes life to the imperatives of capital.

The fundamental goal of the question is to attribute a sinister position to dissidents. It accomplishes that goal even when the dissidents haven’t promoted destruction. Mere defense of Palestinian life is enough to evoke the settler’s existential fear. For people socialized into orthodoxy, Israel is synonymous with progress, technology, and production. Affirming its existence is an endorsement of the status quo; no matter how ludicrous as a moral premise, in capitalist spaces it is a perfectly sensible demand.

There are plenty of reasons to eschew the demand. The first reason is practical: we don’t advocate for the destruction of human communities, but of ideologies conducive to racism and inequality. It’s both insidious and unethical to conflate Jewish people (of any national origin) with the existence of a violent, rapacious polity. That sort of conflation is a grave disservice to activists and intellectuals devoted to a better world—and to the communities for whom a better world is a necessity of survival. Nobody has ever asked me to affirm another nation-state’s existence, a demand I would likewise decline. Zionists constantly single out Israel for special treatment.

Moreover, it is remarkably impudent for champions of a state founded on the destruction of Palestine and now in its eighth decade of ethnic cleansing to ask the victims of its malevolence for recognition. Even worse, recognition is only the tip of the demand. We’re also being asked to legitimize apartheid and ignore the routine commission of war crimes. The upshot is to validate Israel as a militarized object of Western imperialism—in other words, to affirm the existence of a deeply antihuman entity.

Let’s consider the demand in context of North America, where it’s most frequently issued. Those of us operating in this geography haven’t the authority to abdicate nearly 80 (and arguably 100) percent of historical Palestine. It’s not any Westerner’s prerogative to relinquish Palestine under the pressure of a spuriously humanistic insistence by Zionists that their perfidy be excused because it will somehow make us more responsible citizens.

I am happy, eager even, to affirm the right of Jewish people to live in peace and security, wherever that may be, a right all humans deserve in no particular order of worthiness. But I won’t ratify Israel’s bloody founding or its devotion to racial supremacy. Ultimately, when Zionists demand that you affirm Israel’s right to exist, what they really seek is affirmation of Palestinian nonexistence.

Beyond these philosophical, political, and practical factors, there’s a worthy psychological reason to refuse the demand. Zionists are the bully in this supposed conflict and enjoy nearly universal support in centers of political and economic power. They have more funds, access to corporate media, and the backing of the US military. Palestinians, however, hold one form of power that doesn’t require money, platforms, or weaponry: the ability to withhold legitimacy from Israel. It is a small power, without a material apparatus, but it is power, nevertheless, one that only a fool or opportunist would relinquish. When an oppressor makes submission the basis of civic responsibility, insolence is the only dignified response.

https://stevesalaita.com/renouncing-isr ... principle/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 27, 2020 5:41 pm

Palestinians reiterate rejection of US ‘deal of the century’
Monday, 27 January 2020 8:25 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 27 January 2020 9:18 AM ]

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In this file photo taken on March 25, 2019, US President Donald Trump (L) and Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu hold up a Golan Heights proclamation outside the West Wing after a meeting in the White House in Washington, DC. (Photo by AFP)

Palestinian factions have reiterated their rejection of the controversial US plan on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which is expected to be unveiled by President Donald Trump this week, calling for a “day of rage.”

Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh stressed that the Palestinians would not allow the plan, which Trump calls the “deal of the century” to pass.

“The Palestinian leadership, with the support of our people, will defeat attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause,” Abu Rudeineh said Sunday.

“The leadership will hold a series of meetings on all levels — including the factions and organizations — to announce its total rejection of conceding al-Quds,” he added.

The spokesman also called on the Arab world to support the Palestinian stance, warning that Trump’s plan would trigger turmoil in the region.

A Palestinian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Monday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had rejected repeated requests from Trump to talk to him on the phone.

Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the Hamas resistance movement, also stressed that the deal is doomed to fail, warning of a “"new phase” in the Palestinian struggle against the occupying regime.

"We firmly declare that the 'deal of the century' will not pass. The new plot aimed against Palestine is bound to fail," and could lead the Palestinians to a "new phase in their struggle" against Israel, Haniyeh said in a statement on Sunday.

Haniyeh also called for a meeting in the Egyptian capital with other Palestinian factions, including the Fatah movement, in order to form a common response to Trump's plan.
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PressTV-Trump ‘peace plan’: Keeping Netanyahu in power
US President Donald Trump’s so-called peace plan is aimed at saving Netanyahu’s “desperate” campaign, a report suggests.
Palestinian factions call for ‘day of rage’

Palestinian factions on Sunday called for a “day of rage” in response to the controversial plan.

Trump is expected to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main political rival Benny Gantz at the White House on January 28 to unveil the so-called deal of the century.

Even though the full plan has not been released, Israeli media outlets have described it as a deal that meets nearly all of Tel Aviv’s demands in exchange for the possibility of recognizing a Palestinian state someday.

According to the English-language online newspaper Times of Israel, the deal drastically undermines Palestinian hopes for restoring land.

Palestinian factions, in a statement signed by the National and Islamic Forces in Ramallah and El-Bireh, said the day Trump’s plan is announced should be declared as a “day of popular rage.”

They have also called for a boycott of American goods.

The Palestinian Authority has warned that Trump’s deal would ignite mass protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Officials have also hinted that the Palestinian leadership may quit all agreements signed with Israel and suspend "security coordination" between the Palestinians and Israel in the West Bank.

Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Saeb Erekat said Sunday that the Palestinians would withdraw from key provisions of the Oslo Accords in case Trump unveiled his initiative.

The initiative, he said, would turn Israel's “temporary occupation (of Palestinian territories) into a permanent occupation.”
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Palestinians threaten to give up Oslo Accords over US-crafted deal of century
The Palestine Liberation Organization says it reserves the right “to withdraw from the interim agreement.”
‘Plot of the century’

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry described the US plan as “the plot of the century,” stressing that it aims to “liquidate the Palestinian cause.”

Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said the Palestinians were discussing “practical steps with the Arab brothers” to respond to the US plan.

Jordanian king reiterates opposition to Trump plan

The planned release has met unease in the Arab world, with Jordan’s King Abdullah II reiterating his opposition to the deal.

“Our position regarding the plan is very clear: we are opposed to it,” Abdullah said during a conference in the southern Jordanian city of Aqaba on Sunday.

Jordan and Egypt are the only two Arab states that have diplomatic ties with Israel.

Amman is vexed at Netanyahu's repeated threats to annex the Jordan Valley.

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/01/ ... of-century
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sat May 16, 2020 4:27 pm

Palestinian CP, Statement on the 72th anniversary of Nakba day
5/14/20 11:55 AM
Palestine, Palestinian Communist Party Ar Asia Communist and workers' parties
A statement issued by the Palestinian Communist Party on the occasion of the seventy-second anniversary of the disaster



The masses of our people, the sons of Palestine in every land, at a time when the colonial powers succeeded in planting the Zionist settlements of the land of Palestine, this foreign body and the weed in the field of Ibn Amer and every inch of our land lengthened and worsened the land where the beholder seemed to grow the land strange and ugly, at the time Who succeeded in imposing a fait accompli policy and displacing the people of Palestine by force of arms and money, our people practiced all forms of struggle and resistance and still struggling, it is true that the fruits of our people's struggle did not make a boat for the return, but it kept the Zionist entity in a state of tension and constant fear for the future of its settlement-based project, a revolution Our people and the question of Palestine is Conspiracies against it are still being hatched at all times. The imbalance of powers in favor of the enemies will not force our people to surrender, and if some are so palatable, the battle today continues to establish identity and establish awareness of Palestine, an issue that cannot be compromised, regardless of the intensity of the conspiracy, and many surrenders and printers, our valiant fans, that a battle Obliterating awareness and sowing loss of hope



The masses of our struggling people, after the policy of imposing the fait accompli and the chain of neglect from the beginning of Oslo until today, and the illusion of a settlement that will inevitably be buried, the Zionist enemy is still launching a frenzied campaign aimed at demonizing the resistance and its symbols, which is clearly evident today against our brave prisoners who formed the spearhead of our national struggle Liberalism, if the furrow of our war head represented by the captive movement means to the Zionists that the sword of our power will be worthless in the battle of being or non-being.



The masses of our people gave us the 72nd anniversary of the Nakba, and the issue of our people is going through the worst stages of their existence, this reality imposed by the illusion of compromise with the Zionists, who were from the beginning procrastinating and dodging in order to impose their hegemony over the whole of historic Palestine in which the Palestinians have no place, and what was called the peace process is a cover for their goal The old new one is the emptying of the land from its original inhabitants, imposing the de facto policy of Judaization of the land and the law of the state's Judaism and house demolitions, and expanding the spread of rapes horizontally and vertically and annexing the rest of the land to the state





The occupation to fulfill Sharon's dream of an alternative homeland, this conspiracy practiced against the Palestinians, whether inside the usurpation state in our occupied lands 1948 or in the West Bank, the Diaspora and the Gaza Strip, which has a separate plan devoted since the beginning of the Palestinian-Palestinian division to become a reality imposed on the Palestinian to live with.



Masses of our people We are in the Palestinian Communist Party, as we hold the Oslo leadership fully responsible for every success achieved by the occupation against our people, its land, and its cause. At the same time, we hold the responsibility for all the factions that call themselves opposition, whose militant ceiling represents no matter how high, coexistence with the secretions of Oslo as a fait accompli. It is true that the reality is difficult, and the balance of power is deranged, but the bright and indisputable truth is that our people are greater than all leaders and that our people will not waste their sacrifices, no matter how severe the stage and darker, so we in the Palestinian Communist Party renew our call for all the anti-Oslo forces to create a broad national front core. Resistance, in order to build a revolutionary strategy of liberation, and more importantly, to return to the sea of ​​the masses and adhere to it.



The masses of our people, we do not call for the impossible. Our people, like the rest of the people of the earth, and the will of the people are invincible. Bank balances of parasites are not accumulated on the revolution by blood merchants.





Glory to our struggling people

Yes to liberate the earth and the human being

Palestine lived the kiss of the two revolutions

The right of return is irreversible

Freedom for the prisoners and the glory of the martyrs



Palestinian Communist Party



5/15/2020

http://solidnet.org/article/Palestinian ... Nakba-day/

Translated from Arabic by Google
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Jul 01, 2020 1:06 pm

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Palestinians Will Resist Annexation and Occupation and Fight for National Liberation
June 30, 2020

By Hatem Abudayyeh – Jun 30, 2020

Chicago, IL – Israel already controls the entirety of Palestinian life in the occupied territories, even in the areas that are supposedly run by the Palestinian Authority, but this annexation plan codifies the expropriation of Palestinian land and may secure Israeli sovereignty over 30% of the West Bank, including the border with Jordan called the Jordan Valley.

Annexation is illegal under international law, but that has never stopped Israel before. The occupation of the West Bank and annexation of Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights is illegal as well, and Israel has also violated the majority of so-called peace agreements with the Palestinians since the 1993 Oslo Accords because Israel does not want peace.

It wants to continue its racist, white settler-colonialist project in Palestine, ethnically cleansing the indigenous population and replacing them with European and U.S. Jews. Over 500,000 of these illegal settlers already live in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and annexation is the Zionist’s way of saying that the land stolen from Palestinians to build settlements and house colonizers now officially belongs to Israel.

Again, this plan and move by Israel would not be possible without the U.S. Both the Democrats and Republicans have allowed Israel to commit crimes against the Palestinians with impunity, but Trump’s administration has definitely been the worst in history.

He and his son-in-law Jared Kushner clearly see the Palestinians as a non-entity, working only with their fellow racist, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the Deal of the Century, their ridiculous ‘peace proposal’ for the region.

This ‘Sham’ of the Century has already been rejected by Palestinians, Arabs, and all people of conscience. Nobody even discusses it anymore.

And this annexation plan is also rejected by the Palestinian masses and their supporters. People in Palestine and across the world are calling for Days of Rage on or around July 1, and protests are scheduled on every continent, including a number in U.S. cities like Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Santa Ana, Los Angeles, San Diego and Miami.

Palestinians have been resisting Zionist Israel, Arab reactionary regimes, and U.S. imperialism, for over seven decades, and will continue their struggle against racism, annexation, occupation and colonization – never surrendering until they win their Right of Return and national liberation.

Featured image: @WOL.Palestine
(Fight Back News)

https://orinocotribune.com/palestinians ... iberation/

**********************************************

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Reparations and the Palestinian Right of Return
June 26, 2020

By Miko Peled – Jun 24, 2020

Two Sides Of The Same Bloody Coin.
Both in Israel and the US, conversations about reparations and the Palestinian right of return are stifled by arguments explaining why injustice must go on and a yearning for the status quo.

The calls “Black Lives Matter” and “Free, Free Palestine,” serve to remind us that Palestine is not free and that if the lives of Black people mattered, there would be no need for the call. In both cases, people are in the grips of a cruel, racist system that refuses to let go. In both cases, people are being hunted down, caged, strangled, and shot to death, and the root cause of their suffering is rarely addressed.



In Palestine, the return of refugees is the issue that has the capacity to completely alter the conversation and ultimately bring justice to Palestinians. However few are willing to bring it up, much less to discuss it seriously. In America, the issue of reparations to descendants of slaves is arguably the issue that will force an honest conversation and provide some semblance of justice to Black Americans, and yet it too is rarely discussed in public forums.

Are people being too polite? Is it a fear of making someone feel uncomfortable, or is it that people have given up? What is it that keeps conversations on these important, pivotal issues from bursting into the public debate?

In Palestine, the perceived legitimacy of the Zionist regime and the far reach of the Zionist PR machine, or Hasbara, is keeping the issue from being raised. In the U.S., the lack of real discourse about the horrors and the legacy of slavery is preventing Black Americans from real emancipation. People are generally not aware of the amount of wealth the United States amassed on the backs of African slaves, nor are they aware of the necessity to compensate the descendants of slaves through reparations.

According to an article titled, “Why we need reparations for Black Americans” by Rashawn Ray and Andre M. Perry, published in Brookings Policy 2020, “the case for reparations can be made on economic, social, and moral grounds.” The article continues, “The United States had multiple opportunities to atone for slavery […] but has yet to undertake significant action.” It goes on to state that, “Black Americans are the only group that has not received reparations for state-sanctioned racial discrimination.”

RELATED CONTENT: What Chicago’s Ultimate Bad Cop Taught Me About Police Reform

In the June 2014 issue of The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote that “America begins in black plunder and white democracy, two features that are not contradictory but complementary.” And, he adds, that “American law worked to reduce black people to a class of untouchables and raise all white men to the level of citizens.”



A House Built By Slaves
When Michele Obama spoke in front of the 2016 DNC, her speech created waves. What caught people’s attention was her statement, “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.” The families of those slaves have not yet been compensated for their work,” and yet, she added, “this right now is the greatest country on earth.” Since such injustice is allowed to go on, one wonders where exactly she sees this “greatness.”

In June 2016 she gave a commencement address at City College in New York. Here again, she described the feeling of living “in a house that was built by slaves.” She described watching her daughters head off to school each day, “waving goodbye to their father, the president of the United States.” But why is it that neither she nor her husband, the first Black president of the United States, saw a need to find the descendants of the slaves that built the White House and compensate them.

Who And How
It is not uncommon for people to highlight the complexity of a given situation in order to avoid action. There are complex issues that need to be resolved, like what a reparations package should include and who would qualify. Similar questions are raised when one mentions the Palestinian right of return – who should be allowed to return and what a reparations package should look like. These are all important questions, and they can all be answered once there is a will and a demand to act.



According to Amnesty International, “Israel’s failure to respect the right to return for Palestinians who were forced to flee their homes in 1948 is a flagrant violation of international law that has fuelled decades of suffering on a mass scale.”

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said on many occasions that Palestinians have no right to return. The Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, is a Zionist organization dedicated to promoting the Zionist agenda and the defamation of Arabs and Muslims. According to them, the right of return is not viable on practical grounds. This, they say, is because “an influx of millions of Palestinians into Israel would pose a threat to its national security and upset the country’s demographic makeup.”

The demographic makeup of Israel was artificially designed to create a Jewish majority. The return of Palestinians to their land would create a Palestinian majority, but this would have been the case anyway had it not been for Israel’s original crime of artificially manipulating the population ratios in Palestine through ethnic cleansing.

The ADL also claims that “any international effort would also need to consider the situation of the 800,000 Jews who were either expelled from their native Arab nations or forced to flee.” There is no comparison to be made here and there is ample evidence that suggests that the claim is false. However, even if it were true, Palestinian refugees are not responsible for what may or may not have happened to Jewish people in Iraq or Algeria or any other Arab country.

We can expect to hear arguments that explain why injustice must go on, why the status quo is the best we can expect. While it is obvious that today, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Iyad Halak in Jerusalem, the calls for justice are starting to be heard more than ever before, we are not there yet. Until a serious discussion on reparations becomes front and center in the U.S. and a serious discussion on the right of return becomes front and center in Palestine, the systemic denial of human rights to Palestinians by Israel and Blacks in America will not end.

Featured image: Barbara Martin looks at a display about slavery in Mobile, Ala. after the discovery of the remains of the slave ship Clotilda, Aug. 26, 2019. Jay Reeves | AP.

(Popular Resistance)

https://orinocotribune.com/reparations- ... of-return/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 06, 2020 1:43 pm

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Israeli Annexation of West Bank: More Stolen Land as Time Runs out for Occupation
July 6, 2020
By Freedom Road Socialist Organization – July 2, 2020

The Israeli apartheid regime is poised to commit a new crime against Palestine: the annexation of up to 30% of the West Bank. As things stand Israel effectively controls Palestine, with the heroic people of Gaza confined to an open prison and the hapless Palestinian Authority serving as accomplices to the occupation.

The significance of the annexation is twofold. First, it codifies the theft of Palestinian land. It is a statement to one and all, “We are stealing this, and it is ours forever.” Second, it is the declaration of the end of a solution that was never really a solution at all, the so-called ‘two state solution.’

Israel was founded in the not-so-distant past on stolen land. It was a colonial project of British, and later U.S., imperialism, which came to fruition at a time when colonial empires were being swept away in a tide of struggle. At the time, American, British and Portuguese-backed white minority rulers dominated large swaths of Africa. Only the armed struggle involving millions of Africans brought that to an end. But in the Middle East, Western imperialism doubled down and used Israel as a weapon against the Arab peoples.

The plan for ‘two states’ on Palestinian land was never just, reasonable, or, in reality, viable, but for Western imperialism it was always the articulated plan, and a cover of Israeli apartheid’s continued existence. Then along came Trump, a shift in U.S. politics, a declining U.S. empire – and the sham that was a two state solution is gone. The Trump administration has made it clear it plans to support the annexation, the same as it backed the Zionist annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights, and moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. In Israeli-occupied Syria, the Zionists have named a settlement after Trump.

If the planned annexation goes through, it would seize the Jordan Valley along with its arable land, water and mineral resources, After this you don’t need a degree in cartography to look at map and realize there can be no ‘two states’ – just one apartheid Israeli occupation.

The great Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong made the point, “Historically, all reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct a last desperate struggle.” That is exactly the position that occupiers of Palestine find themselves into today. They talk big. They claim everything. And their defeat is certain. They live on stolen land and borrowed time.

The Zionist project is despised on the Arab “street,” where songs like I hate Israel will always find ready listeners. The camp of resistance is growing stronger across the Middle East. Israel’s imperialist backers are growing weaker. For if moribund imperialism was a cartoon, Trump could have been sent by central casting as an ideal political representative.

Here in the U.S. we need to demand an end to all U.S. aid to Israel. Nelson Mandela was correct to say that the rulers of Israel are worse than South Africa’s white minority rulers, and that is how we need to address the matter. The state of Israel is an apartheid state with no right to exist. Organizations that fight for freedom, like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, should be embraced by everyone who is serious about justice. Annexation will be another mile maker for a failed imperialist project. The Palestinian people are sure to win!



(Fight Back News)

https://orinocotribune.com/israeli-anne ... ccupation/

Posted in lieu of having any actual info on what is actually happening.
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