It seems like yesterday that we watched Israeli tanks
rolling down the hills towards our sleepy town of Beit Sahour 45 years ago
today. As a child it was the most frightening sight. The second
stage of the Zionist expansion on the land of Palestine unleashed terror that
our generation had not experienced but my parents generation had during eth
Nakba when between January 1948 and the end of 1949, some 530 villages and
towns were ethnically cleansed. The changes I witnessed the 45 years
since the "6 day" invasion of 1967 have been nothing short of
monumental. Those hills that the tanks rolled down on are all now filled with
colonial settlements that scar the ancient landscape. The Israeli quarries
have literally dug up other hills and trucked stone and soil away to build the
"Jewish state" while destroying Palestinian lives. But I do not
want to take time here to write of these violations. I think anyone can
find thousands of documents and reports from independent human rights groups
and international agencies describing the horrors of colonization, apartheid,
and occupation in this "holy land". Nor will I address how
people who teach their children about Jewish suffering over the ages teach them
that it is OK to inflict this suffering on native/indigenous people. Nor do I
want to write on this occasion of the treachery of western countries who
profess human rights and international law actually become complicit in war
crimes and crimes against humanity. Nor do I want to address the
treachery of Arab leaders (yes including some Palestinians) who were complicit
in helping make 7 million of us refugees or displaced people. I do
want to talk about us, the people, and especially about mental occupation.
Occupiers/colonizers are of course always dependent not just
on military might but also on propaganda and psychological manipulation to
reach their goals. For example, from the late 19th century, the
Zionists successfully infiltrated the minds of their victims with notions like
"Arabs" and/vs. "Jews". With this one simple
concept, Zionists succeeded in 1) equating a linguistic group with a religion
and elevating Jewishness to a supposed national structure ("a
people"), 2) removing Arab Jews as a viable group whose allegiance lies
naturally with their fellow Arabic speaking people, 3) fostering anti-Jewish
feelings (mistakenly called anti-Semitism) to help their cause in conflating
Zionism with Judaism. Before that they coined and popularized the term
anti-Semitism to confuse the Europeans and claim they are Semites. From
those early efforts in the 19th century, the people of the world were
subjected to sustained intensive efforts at brainwashing.
We actually understand these propaganda efforts as natural
and expected in efforts to propel racist ideologies. What we do not
understand is why many native Palestinians accepted defeat and even adopted the
Zionized version of history. Even some of our school textbooks perpetuate
the mythologies that keep the Zionist nightmare a reality. It is easy to keep it alive when we, the victims
keep the myth of the exodus from Egypt to Masada to the falsified history of
Josephus to the suppression of our Canaanite ancestry to the notion that Jewishness
is somehow biological. Some of this is due
to those who are religious confusing metaphors and myths with
historiography. Some of it is due to
ignorance: e.g. ignorance of the fact that the Philistines were actually Canaanite
people and not from Crete or that both ancient Arabic and Hebrew were dialects
of Canaanite Aramaic. Some of it is pure foolishness; for example
that somehow we can "return" Palestine to an idealized (fictional) Islamic
or Jewish state. Would it not be better
to admit the wrong that was done to the native people, do some restorative
justice, and begin to discuss among ourselves how we Christians, Muslims, Jews,
atheists, and others can live TOGETHER in a country in full equality? How about
a new joint political movement to reform and to dismantle the dysfunctional
Israeli and Palestinian political structures so as to build a new reality? Aren't 64 years of Nakba and 45 years of
Naksa long enough? There are 11.5 million Palestinains in the world and
billions of fellow human beings who know what is right to contentd with at best
half a million deluded Jewish Zionists (and the equally deluded Christian
Zionists who support them). What
perevents justice (ie. peace) is apathy and ignorance. Is it not time to shed these?
Cover-up of the deliberate Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.
We should remember the victims of the Israeli attack 45 years ago and the
cowardice of the US government which succumbed to the Israel lobby and buried the
incident http://www.ussliberty.org
The 2011 Humanitarian Overview addresses the key advocacy
priorities identified by the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), the main
humanitarian coordinating body for UN agencies and NGO partners in the
the occupied Palestinian territories. http://www.ochaopt.org/annual/
Rabbi Brian Walt: Affirming a Judaism and Jewish identity
without Zionism
Israel is new South Africa as boycott calls increase
After Madonna began her world tour there last week,
campaigners urge cutting of cultural ties
Boycott Israeli Blood Diamonds, Dublin 2-6-2012
Don’t Let Mahmoud Sarsak Die – Act Now!: http://freehaifa.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/dont-let-mahmoud-sarsak-die-act-now/
ACTION: Consider introducing resolutions for
boycotts, divestments and sanctions at your union, church, organization, group,
political party, association. You may also start a petition to have your town,
city council, state or other governmening entity divest from Israel and
companies that support the Israeli apartheid system. To help, we put
together some relevant information on this link
http://www.qumsiyeh.org/calltobds/ and
will try to keep it updated for use in promoting BDS (send me anything you
think should be added)
Here are other links with lots of information
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