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The following was written by Edward Said on the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel.
In the United States, celebrations of Israel’s fifty years as a state have tried to project an image of the country that went out of fashion since the Palestinian Intifada (1987-92): a pioneering state, full of hope and promise for the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, a haven of enlightened liberalism in a sea of Arab fanaticism and reaction. On 15 April, for instance, CBS broadcast a two hour prime-time program from Hollywood hosted by Michael Douglas and Kevin Costner, featuring movie stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kathy Bates (who recited passages from Golda Meir minus, of course, her most celebrated remark that there were no Palestinians) and Winona Ryder.
In the United States, celebrations of Israel’s fifty years as a state have tried to project an image of the country that went out of fashion since the Palestinian Intifada (1987-92): a pioneering state, full of hope and promise for the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, a haven of enlightened liberalism in a sea of Arab fanaticism and reaction. On 15 April, for instance, CBS broadcast a two hour prime-time program from Hollywood hosted by Michael Douglas and Kevin Costner, featuring movie stars such as Arnol Schwarzenegger, Kathy Bates (who recited passages from Golda Meir minus, of course, her most celebrated remark that there were no Palestinians) and Winona Ryder. None of these luminaries are particularly known for their Middle Eastern expertise or enthusiasm, although all of them in one way or another praised Israel’s greatness and enduring achievements. There was even time for a cameo appearance by President Bill Clinton, who provided perhaps the least edifying, most atavistic note of the evening by complimenting Israel, “a small oasis,” for “making a once barren desert bloom,” and for ” building a thriving democracy in hostile terrain.”
What’s the BBC’s ‘Birthday’ present to Israel? A stream of propaganda following a story thats Israeli driven. Not content with 3 other, Israeli directed, Storyville documentaries (watch here), a birthday radio show (featuring 4 Israelis with one token Israeli Arab and zero Palestinians) and birthday articles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc) the BBC has gone a step further and commissioned this 60 minute film. By Jeremy Bowan, it details the founding of the State of Israel. To be fair to the BBC, the events surrounding the founding of the State of Israel are immensely interesting and have had important repercussions in the world at large. However it’s instructive that this documentary is called ‘The Birth of Israel’ and not for example ‘The Nakba’ - we get an idea of the focus from the start. In fact we might ask where all the Nakba articles (1?), audio and films are? Is it sufficient that it just happens to get a small mention in amongst all this ‘birthday’ nonsense?
Although this film is good in many places, covering the massacre of Deir Yassin for example, overall it fails to place the responsibility of the conflict firmly in the hands of the Israelis and Europeans. It fails to present the Palestinians as the victims of Zionist colonialism which was approved of by the Europeans because of guilt from the Holocaust and because 60 years ago the idea of colonialism, ‘civilised’ Europeans settling land that native ‘barbarians’ are wasting, was still acceptable. Time and again Israelis under interview blame the conflict on the Palestinians for not accepting the 1947 UN partition plan, where the UN carved up the land of Palestine and gave much of it to the colonialists. In the 21st century we should by now understand that the UN had no right to give away another mans home, the Zionists were incorrect in thinking they could colonise another peoples country and that resistance to this dispossession was legitimate. What nation would accept its land being given away to immigrants by the UN? Especially with such a bad deal: Israelis owning 10% of the land but getting 50% while only accounting for only 33% of the total population.
Counting the number of Israelis interviewed we find there were 11 with 10 Palestinians representatives. The number of times they appeared differs more: Israelis appearing 30 times and Palestinians 22. In a 60 minute film this approximately translates to about 8 minutes (15%) more air time. Personally I don’t believe balance is about giving both sides equal time - I follow Robert Fisks example of giving more time to the victims no matter who they are. In the ‘birth’ of Israel the victims were the Palestinian natives: 700,000 of whom were ethnically cleansed and many men, women and children were brutally massacred. This crime has continued as although under international law refugees have a Right of Return this has been denied. And Palestinians that remain in Israel and the Occupied Territories live in Apartheid conditions. Therefore its significant that they are not given priority.
The other big issue I have with the film is its failure to convey the true nature of a Two State solution. Israeli colonialism has continued with the illegal gaining of territory through military force in 1967. It is by now clear the continued Israeli rejection of peace for expansion and settlement of the Occupied Territories has led to a situation where a Two State solution is now unworkable. Only a One State solution where Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights and share the land will provide any meaningful resolution to the regions problems. The idea of a predominatly Jewish State is non-inclusive and racist, it can only be maintained through further ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Witness Statement from speaker at demonstration
The following from the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign for more see Peoples Geography.
London protest calls for Free Palestine
Thousands marched through London, sixty years after the Palestinian Nakba, to demand an end to the siege on Gaza, an end to Israeli occupation, and for the right of return of refugees.
The demonstration, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, British Muslim Initiative and the Palestinian Forum in Britain, was supported by trade unions UNISON, Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Unite the Union, Communication Workers Union, GMB, TSSA, RMT, Fire Brigades Union, and the National Union of Miners, who joined organisations such as the Association of Palestinian Community UK, Amos Trust, Friends of Al Aqsa UK, Palestinian Return Centre, War on Want, Jewish Socialist Group, Pax Christi, Stop the War Coalition, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Britain Palestine Twinning Network, ICAHDUK, Friends of Lebanon, Federation of Student Islamic Societies, and Midlands Palestinian Community Association.
The following is an excellent find by Idrees of The Fanonite.
A decent documentary from the best television news channel out there — Al Jazeera International. However, it is mostly an Israeli perspective featuring Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Uri Avnery, Shulamit Aloni et al.
(thanks Shahbaz)
A special series examining the origins, violent creation, and modern-day reality of the state of Israel through the stories of individual Israelis.
Episode two, Conflict, looks at how the still small Jewish population succeeded in defeating a far larger Palestinian population and asks if a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing was employed.
Israel turns 60. Israelis Celebrate but Palestinians demonstrate. Will the refugees be allowed to return home?
Answer to this question and more on Link TV ’s Mosaic intelligence report presented by Jamal Dajani.
For more info, go to http://www.linktv.org/mosaic
Fedwa Wazwaz in the Minnesota Star Tribute:
Minnesotans gathered Wednesday at the Metrodome to celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary. For some, this was a joyful event. But at what price did this statehood come?
Those who celebrated should read the letter signed by British Jews in the Guardian on April 30, “We’re not celebrating Israel’s anniversary.” The letter says, “Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-Semitism and Hitler’s genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasized, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba [Catastrophe] is to the Palestinians.”
The price of Israel’s creation can be read in the book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. Pappe writes: ” … on 10 March 1948 … veteran Zionist leaders together with young military Jewish officers, put the final touches to a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.” This led to 750,000 Palestinians being driven from their towns and villages in 1947-48. Many fled in the wake of atrocities such as the massacre of the villagers in Deir Yassin by Jewish forces on April 9, 1948. Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed, and vast tracts of land, houses, shops, olive and orange groves were confiscated.
After already threatening to ethnically cleanse Israel Arabs who refuse to celebrate Avi Dichters, who recently cancelled a trip to the UK for fear of being arrested for war crimes, cronies are looking to prevent the Nakba Day parade. Thanks Ann.
Danny Danon, the chairman of World Likud, appealed to Public Security Minister Avi Dichter on Tuesday to issue a ban on the “Nakba Day” procession to be held by Israeli Arabs on Independence Day.
In a press release distributed to the news media on Tuesday, Danon said the purpose of the march is “to oppose and incite against the state.”
“This is a deliberate and subversive challenge of the Arab Israeli leadership against the existence of the State of Israel,” Danon said.
Should Dichter fail to heed Danon’s call, the World Likud chair said he intends to appeal to the district court. He also demanded the authorities arrest any Arab leader quoted as inciting against the state and its institutions, as well as anyone seen brandishing the flag of an enemy state or a terrorist organization.
Excellent article by fellow Scot John Hilley:
9 April 2008 marked the terrible events of Deir Yassin, sixty years after 254 of the village’s Palestinian men, women and children were massacred by Zionist forces.
You didn’t hear anything about it on the BBC. You didn’t see any recognition of it by the US, EU and other ‘civilised’ Western governments. And you certainly won’t find any message of regret over it from a state which has sought to bury the truth of this and multiple other atrocities with all those murdered Palestinians.
For Israel, its allies and their media stenographers, Deir Yassin doesn’t merit special commemoration. But it’s a name, a village, a place, a painful memory still firmly fixed in Palestinian consciousness.
Drawing on Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and other key sources, a fine article from Ronnie Kasrils reminds us that Deir Yassin was part of the Zionists’ calculated campaign of pogroms, which is why every person of conscience should be protesting over Israel’s 60th ‘birthday’:
Bethlehem, April 2008: The BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights announces the release of the Nakba 60 Special Issue of al-Majdal, our English-language quarterly magazine.
The introductory articles in this issue deal with the history of the Palestinian Nakba, and the international community’s role in bringing about the 1948 Nakba; as well as the growth of the Palestinian grassroots right of return movement since the early 1990s.
The main feature of this Nakba 60 Special Issue tells the stories of Palestinian refugees in their own voices through 19 profiles of individual Palestinian refugees of different ages scattered across the Americas, Europe and the Arab World (thanks Sofiah!).
From the Electronic Intifada (thanks Mary!)
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| The 12 March cartoon by South African cartoonist Zaprio that was later attacked by David Saks of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and which sparked debate in the country. |
As a 10-year-old growing up in Johannesburg, I celebrated Israel’s birth, 60 years ago. I unquestionably accepted the dramatic accounts of so-called self-defensive actions against Arab violence, to secure the Jewish state. The type of indoctrination South African cartoonist Zapiro so bitingly exposes in his work, raising the hackles of scribes such as David Saks of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies. When I became involved in our liberation struggle, I became aware of the similarities with the Palestinian cause in the dispossession of land and birthright by expansionist settler occupation. I came to see that the racial and colonial character of the two conflicts provided greater comparisons than with any other struggle. When Nelson Mandela stated that we know as South Africans “that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” [1] he was not simply talking to our Muslim community, who can be expected to directly empathize, but to all South Africans precisely because of our experience of racial and colonial subjugation, and because we well understand the value of international solidarity.
When I came to learn of the fate that befell the Palestinians, I was shaken to the core and most particularly when I read eye-witness accounts of a massacre of Palestinian villagers that occurred a month before Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence. This was at Deir Yassin, a quiet village just outside Jerusalem, which had the misfortune to lie by the road from Tel Aviv. On 9 April 1948, 254 men, women and children were butchered there by Zionist forces to secure the road. Because this was one of the few such episodes that received media attention in the West, the Zionist leadership did not deny it, but sought to label it an aberration by extremists. In fact, however, the atrocity was part of a broader plan designed by the Zionist High Command, led by Ben Gurion himself, which was aimed at the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the British mandate territory and the seizure of as much land as possible for the intended Jewish state.
(more…)
In the 1980’s a group of Israeli researchers began to re-examine the historical record surrounding the foundation of Israel in 1948. This is an interesting and important year that Ilan Pappe describes as a departure point for history. For one side, the Israelis, it was “a miracle, the best year in Jewish history” where the Zionist colonial project achieved its goal of building an independent Jewish State. Yet for the other side it was a disaster, the worst year in their history, what the Palestinians call the Nakba (Catastrophe), “almost the Holocaust.”
In May Israel will celebrate this event calling it their 60th ‘birthday’ and are inviting world leaders and the global media to attend. In other words - they’re not just celebrating while Palestinians are mourning they are using it as a photo opportunity!
With this in mind we propose a competition to create artwork that either commemorates the Nakba or highlights the offensive and indecent nature of celebrating while others mourn.
As the global celebrations run into 2009 so will the competition. We will however pick a handfull of the best from the 14th - 16th of May that will be distributed to the media and journalists.
All the artworks will be displayed on the ‘Artwork Competition‘ page and will be added to this flickr group (flickr pool RSS feed). To submit an artwork either post a link in a comment, email the artwork or add it to the flickr group. Also could bloggers that are willing to distribute the winning entries leave a comment to show their support?
Thumbnails
In the future they will be posted here.
PA urges Palestinians to return to Israel on 60th anniversary
JP:The Palestinian Authority is planning to mark Israel’s 60th anniversary by calling on all Palestinians living abroad to converge on Israel by land, sea and air.
The plan, drawn by Ziad Abu Ein, a senior Fatah operative and Deputy Minister for Prisoners’ Affairs in the Palestinian Authority, states that the Palestinians have decided to implement United Nations Resolution 194 regarding the refugees.
Article 11 of the resolution, which was passed in December 1948, says that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
The initiative is the first of its kind and is clearly aimed at embarrassing Israel during the anniversary celebrations by highlighting the issue of the “right of return” for the refugees.
1991 Documentary on JNF’s Illegal “Canada Park”
Illan Pappe on the JNF in Canada
It was the Jewish National Fund (JNF) that planted these pine trees, to wipe out the memory of the place and Europeanize it. I was bewildered in Toronto, seeing signs for the JNF, asking for support for the JNF as if it was some kind of ecological organization dedicated to protecting whales. It is not. It is a colonialist agency of ethnic cleansing.
The Australian: A BIPARTISAN motion congratulating Israel on 60 years of statehood has provoked division in federal Labor, with one government MP threatening to boycott the vote and union heavyweights accusing the Jewish state of racism and ethnic cleansing.The parliamentary motion is due to be passed by MPs today, commemorating 60 years of friendship between Australia and Israel.The motion provoked a clash between Kevin Rudd and Labor MP Julia Irwin yesterday after Ms Irwin questioned why the Government was supporting the gesture, given Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.And today a group of individuals and organisations, including the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, the Maritime Union of Australia and South Australian Democrat MP Sandra Kanck, have put their names to an advertisement in The Australian condemning the motion.“We, as informed and concerned Australians, choose to disassociate ourselves from a celebration of the triumph of racism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the al-Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948,” the advertisement reads.
