AP Uses the Word ‘Expelled.’ Nakba Awareness Inches Forward

by on February 11, 2008 8

On Google earth, Palestinians labelled a town north of Haifa, Kiryat Yam, as being the site of an Arab village whose residents were forced to leave in '48. The Israeli town is threatening all sorts of action, saying there were only sand dunes here till Holocaust survivors arrived. Google has so far stood by the Palestinians' right to post information about the place. And how interesting that the Associated Press has used the words "were expelled" (in addition to the usual "fled" of course) to describe the movement of Arabs in '48. Progress.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Beyondoweiss, Israel/Palestine

{ 8 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Charles Keating says:
    February 11, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    A land without people for a people without land. What more could one want?

  2. J. Martillo says:
    February 11, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    In Judonia Rising: The Israel Lobby and American Society (link to members.aol.com
    ), I list the following as a major project associated with Israel lobbying effort.

    Rewriting E. European and Jewish history (see
    link to eaazi.blogspot.com
    )

    Jewish history includes the history of Zionist crime in Palestine.

    Here is another part of history that Israel advocates tend to cover up.

    From Smolenskin, "Let us search our ways" (1881) in The Zionist Idea by Arthur Hertzberg, p. 151.

    Eretz Israel! Just a few short years ago this word was derided by almost all Jews except those who wished to be buried there.

    ————–

    The Israel consciousness of modern American Jews is completely a result of fairly recent Zionist marketing and indoctrination efforts.

  3. Hannah says:
    February 11, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    In the NY Times today:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/opinion/11gavron.html?ex=1203397200&en=005e7b1a46846ee9&ei=5070&emc=eta1

    -Hannah

  4. Richard Witty says:
    February 11, 2008 at 4:38 pm

    The world needs a nakba museum, and accessible.

    It doesn't need a polemic museum though.

    And, it needs Palestinians that never forget, that NEVER AGAIN are persecuted. And, after reconciliation at the green line as boundary, they should express that even negatively in the form of never driving in an Israeli made car.

    But, NOT in the form of bombings, shelling civilians, nor in even any suggestion that they would run Israelis or Jews out of their homes and from their land (defined by clear title).

    Not in the form of condemnation of someone for deviating from the range of "politically correct" position, no matter what they implied at previous moments in their life.

    Us Jews need to hear of the Palestinian experience (at moments and over time), and not for the purpose of cruel denigration, but for the purpose of developing the compassion to collaborate in the design genuinely mutually beneficial and healing reconciliations.

    Phil,
    Did you read of the efforts of orthodox Hebron rabbis and Hebron Islamic clergy to accept each other as residents (including the renunciation by the rabbis of any colonial program or intent)?

    And, did you read of the response of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs, to issue a death sentence on the Islamic clerics that led/accepted the reconciliation?

    Neither the rabbis nor the Islamic clerics were incidental in their communities, NOT puppets.

    We live in a knotty world, where adrenaline and fantasy too often trump acceptance and reality.

  5. Richard Witty says:
    February 11, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    Its a different experience for the Palestinians than for the Jews/Israelis.

    Jews left the site of their pain, even remotely. It was great fortune that the European Jewish refugees had an opportunity to get remote from their catastrophe.

    Palestinians don't really have that opportunity. They must live with or near those that wronged them in ways.

    As do Israelis that face the prospect of reconciling with those that undertook, directly, or even sympathetically supported terror on Israelis.

    Its a lot to ask of Palestinians, and of Israelis.

    But, it is necessary and just.

    The way that happens is by conscientiously HUMANIZING the other.

    Those that de-humanize, or demonize, the other disserve all populations.

    Those that advocate for a single state for example, but without undertaking the healing of animosities in earnest and in the present, perpetuate stalemate and mutual abuse, and delay and distort justice.

  6. q says:
    February 11, 2008 at 6:51 pm

    from Hannah's NYT link:
    "Palestinian terrorism against civilians has decreased over the past years, even though the barrier separating Israel and the West Bank has many large gaps. It is illogical to suppose that this incomplete wall is the factor that has reduced terrorism."

    It's nice to see this point in print. But it would have been even nicer if just one one US journalist had thought of mentioning it before.

  7. Richard Witty says:
    February 12, 2008 at 6:35 am

    Somehow shelling civilians in Sderot is not terrorism?

  8. Charles Keating says:
    February 12, 2008 at 8:59 am

    Yes it is. And state-sponsored terrorism is not? How about corraling 1.5 milllion people with jet and helicopter sheep dogs and preventing them from putting food on the table? As Rummy said (paraphrasing), "You fight with what you have, not what you'd like to have." This is a tough nut to crack when one goes beyond semantics–a few facts on the ground by average good people goes a long way to see the problem from each side without governmental spin:

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