Israel’s 60th Birthday

“We committed Nazi acts.” Aharon Zisling, Israel’s first Agriculture Minister

“There is no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young (Arab) girls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested.” General Richard Catling, British Army Assistant Inspector after interrogating several female survivors (The Palestinian Catastrophe, Michael Palumbo, 1987)

The following article is by Khalid Amayreh from The Voice of Palestine. (thanks Ann)

As the evil state of Israel is celebrating sixty years of ethnic cleansing and atrocities against the native Palestinians, many people around the world, especially young generations, will not be fully aware of the manner in which Israel came into existence. Similarly, the younger Zionist generations who don’t stop calling their Palestinian victims “terrorists” should have a clearer idea about Israel’s manifestly criminal past which Zionist school textbooks shamelessly glamorize and glorify

Prior to “Jewish” statehood, three main Jewish terror organizations operated in Palestine, primarily against Palestinian civilians and British mandate targets. The three were: The Haganah, the Zvei Leumi or Irgun and the Stern Gang. The Haganah (Defence) had a field army of up to 160,000 well-trained and well-armed men and a unit called the Palmach, with more than 6,000 terrorists. The Irgun included as many as 5,000 terrorists, while the Stern Gang included 200-300 dangerous terrorists.

The following are merely some examples of Zionist terrorism prior to the creation of the Zionist state in 1948: The list doesn’t include the bigger massacres such as Dir Yasin, Dawaymeh, Tantura and others.

1937-1939

During this period, Zionist terrorists carried out a series of terror attacks against Palestinian buses resulting in the death of 24 persons and the wounding of 25 others.

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From the Stop the War coalition:

Stop the War is calling on all its supporters to join the national demonstration for Palestine in London next Saturday, which will mark the 60th anniversary of what Palestinians call the Nakba - the catastrophe - when Israeli forces used terror and brute force to drive hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland.

Sixty years of colonial expansion and brutal occupation have followed — in violation of numerous United Nations resolutions — and today the Israelis have imposed a blockade on Gaza which starves one and a half million inhabitants of food and essential resources. Across Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinians are living in the most abject conditions, under which Israel has set up walls and checkpoints that separate farmers from their lands, students from their schools and universities, patients from their hospitals and families from each other.

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The BBC have a fine feature on Israel’s 60th Anniversary I wonder if they’ll also give the same space to the Nakba ( the catastrophe: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine).   Some how I doubt it.  They also had the following article inviting Israelis to submit comments to the site about the anniversary.  Here at Israels60thbirthday we’d like to do the same except we want to hear from Palestinians  leave a comment below.

As Israel approaches its 60th anniversary, the BBC News website would like to hear the views of Israelis about their country.

Do you have memories of 1948 or the time before the state? What are your hopes for the next 60 years of Israel? What can Israelis do to settle their country’s borders and reach peace with its neighbours?

Were you born in Israel, or have you moved there from somewhere else? What do you value most about your country? What things would you change if you could?

The following from Global Research:

On May 14, Israelis will commemorate the 60th anniversary of their “War of Independence” and founding of the Jewish State. It also marks 60 years of Palestinian Nakba suffering. The web site www.alnakba.org recounts the history:

– from the late Ottoman empire period; to

– the birth of Zionism; to

– the early Jewish colonization of Palestine; to

– the 1917 Balfour Declaration support for a “Jewish national home in Palestine;” to

– the simultaneous British betrayal of the indigenous Arabs; to

– the British occupation; to

– its delayed promised end; to

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Self-defence or Brutal Occuaption

Israel is gearing up to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its birth; six decades of destruction for the Palestinians, writes Khaled Amayreh (thanks to Dr Nasir Khan).

With spectacular fanfare and a plethora of highlighted events, Israel is planning to celebrate its 60th birthday on 18 May 2008.

According to an Israeli government website called Israelfestival.com, the festival will include “non-stop entertainment, [a] fashion show, a variety of ethnic food for sale, Israeli folk dancing, arts and crafts, Israeli and Jewish cultural and heritage pavilions and art exhibits”.

The centrepiece ceremony is expected to take place in West Jerusalem and be attended by Israel’s political and military leaders as well as foreign dignitaries. Among those expected are US President George W Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Israeli media and non-governmental organisations have already begun celebrations in earnest. For example, Israeli television has begun airing a new series called Shishim (meaning “60″), which looks back at the six decades since Israel was created in May 1948. The series, which began 31 March, is divided into six episodes, each devoted to one of the decades following the founding of the state.

Israel hopes that the high-pitched celebrations will serve as an opportunity to promote Israel and enhance its questionable standing abroad. “It is an opportunity to celebrate our achievements, our successes, our national being,” boasted Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who was not yet born in 1948.

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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’:

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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!).

Download Nakba 60 Special Issue of Al-Majdal

From the Electronic Intifada (thanks Mary!)

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.
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 Great short film on the history and geography of the Israel-Palestine conflict by David Barsamian.

The battle over Palestine is one of the most intensely geographic conflicts in the world. Yet most people know nothing of the area and what factors make it so intensely important to the imperialist powers. David Barsamian takes a look at the maps to provide a sweeping history of the current and historic forces that are shaping the so-called “Holy Land,” sacred to three of the worlds great religions, a land drenched not with holy water but holy oil.

The fate of all the 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon is still unsettled, after almost 60 years.

As Israel celebrates its 60th Birthday - refugees of the ethnic cleansing continue to suffer. What has happened to their Right of Return guaranteed under international law?

Mohammed and Maysa (centre) face many problems over their status

Mohammed and his sister Maysa are Palestinians, but they have no passports and no identity cards.

They are not even given the status of refugees. Legally, they don’t seem to exist at all.

They are among about 3,000 so-called “non-ID” Palestinians in Lebanon.

Many don’t qualify for aid and have been unable to leave the refugee camps, find jobs or even get married.

“Last year the government prevented me from doing my exams,” says Mohammed, a 21-year-old student.

“They arrested me because I don’t have an ID. Without an ID, I can’t do anything.”

“We face many problems,” says his sister Maysa. “No travel, no marriage, no work. We live in the camp like a prison.”

Their mother Aida has lived a life of regret.

“It’s my husband’s problem,” she says. “If I had known at the time what a big issue this would be for us, I would never have married him.”

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Some upcoming events in the UK really worth attending - 

Windsor JNF dinner Protest

MONDAY 7TH APRIL, 6PM ONWARDS
 
‘COME SPOIL ISRAEL’S 60TH BIRTHDAY BASH AT WINDSOR CASTLE’
 
Demonstrate against Israel’s 60th Birthday celebrations at Windsor Castle, Windsor, Berkshire.  Come with banners and placards and join us at the main entrance to the castle, Henry V111th Gate, Castle Hill, Off High Street, Windsor, Berks.
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