Shammout said the following: Israeli soldiers banged on the door. “Out, out!” All the people gathered in the town square. They thought it would be like the British during the Arab revolt in 36-39, when they gathered the Arabs and searched their homes. “We were surrounded by Zionist fighters… They ordered us to leave by the road… I saw shops that had been broken into and looted. The windows were broken and everything was a mess. We also saw bodies along the roadside.” His parents were scared and parched. It was a hot day. They passed an orchard Ismail knew. The Israeli soldiers stood along the road at 10 meter intervals. He slipped away and got a bucket he knew was by a stream, but when he brought the water to the procession, “a lieutenant got out and put a revolver to my head, ‘You pour the water on the ground.’” The boy was terrified. “What choice did I have?”
He watched the water trickle into the dust and was grateful to the lieutenant for not shooting him.
Why? In 1979 the NY Times ran David Shipler’s piece (for which I can’t find a link) on the censorship by the Israeli government of Yitzhak Rabin’s memoir of the ‘48 war, specifically of passages describing the Israeli army’s expulsion of 50,000 Palestinians who lived in Lydda and Ramle, now called Lod, the area of the Tel Aviv airport, and an area of strategic importance to Israel as it took on the Arab states that opposed the creation of an Israeli state. “What is to be done with the native population?” Ben Gurion was asked during a strategy session. “B.G. waved his hand in a gesture which said, ‘Drive them out!’ …’Driving out’ is a term with a harsh ring. Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lod did not leave willingly…”
The purpose of the expulsion was not simply strategic, to control the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road during the ‘48 Israeli-Arab war; Shammout and his family were not allowed to return.
These events have now caused destruction in the great house of the American Jewish tradition of intellectual leadership and civil rights, to the Jewish tradition of factgathering and analysis that elevated the sciences and journalism in my country. To view this destruction, just read Commentary Magazine’s monument to Nakba denial, lavishly funded by the chairman of the New-York Historical Society, which asserts there was no Nakba, that the Arabs drove Arabs out of Palestine. Lydda is mentioned once in the piece, as an example (during the Arab rebellion) of Arab on Arab violence. 100 years from now that magazine will be in an exhibit at the Nakba Memorial in Washington, and young Jews will ask themselves, Why did people ignore these witnesses to atrocities?
[Later: I apologize to readers for failing to provide a link on the Shipler piece. Here it is. Though you have to buy it. I have a pdf of it but am too backward to know how to upload it.]
Related posts:
- Was James Kim Victimized by Off-Road Car Ads?
- Christian community outside Bethlehem to be encircled by Israeli ’security road’
- The Discourse It Is a-Changin’: ABC News reports on Israeli plan to ‘ethnically cleanse’ road signs
- the water issue
- Israeli anti-assimilation campaign asks Jews to inform on their family members
{ 14 comments }
why? what they were and what they are.
something re LYDDA DEATH MARCH can be found, i think, at AMEU web site(americans for middle east understanding).
also at AMEU, Naeim Giladi's, "THE JEWS OF IRAQ" can be read and should be. more of what the state of the jews and the jews of the state are.
mr weiss, Naeim Giladi is someone you might want to interview.
forgot. NG lives somewhere in NYC. people at AMEU could help you.
more why and the IDF(israeli deviant/sadistic force)
this from a joachim martillo link:
Who raped Sawsan will not hesitate to rape again :
November 30, 2002
Who learned how to practice tyranny in the Palestinian cities…
He will practice it somewhere else…
Who learned to harass Palestinian kids, women and men sexually…
He will harass others somewhere else…
Who learned to practice violence against Palestinians…
He will use it against his own people…
I wasn't astonished when Ronit Lev-Ari, the head of the Occupational Prime Minister's Office for the Status of Women declared on Wednesday, November 27, 2002 that one in every six women is Israel has been sexually harassed on the streets.
She said, 30% of the victims were aged between 18-24. The harassment includes attempts to touch the women, obscene verbal proposal, prolonged staring, and efforts by men to press their bodies against them…
In Hebron I used to hear obscene verbal proposals, such like, "whore, bitch, nice fucker…"
In one case an IDF soldier pressed his body against me and touched my breasts in the public in Al Shuhada street. This happened on 25th April 2000 during the peace time.
In another case I witnessed, the IDF soldiers were collecting the underwear and bed clothes of Zohoor Al Atrash, and exposed them in front of others. This happened during an operation to demolish Zohoors house during June 1998, during what was called peace.
The soldiers were dropped Zohoor in a big ground hole after they ripped off her clothes, they then brought her alternative bed clothes, a "baby doll" to put on … The soldiers then told her, "this will look nicer on you", the other soldiers laughed …
In yet a different case, I witnessed the IDF soldiers raising up their penis and exposing themselves in front of other Palestinian women, they were behaving in this way to prevent the women from passing through the border between area H1 and area H2 in the city of Hebron.
Sawsan Abu Turky, a nine year old girl from Hebron was attacked by the IDF soldiers on her way back home on July 5, 2001. At a checkpoint, one soldier allowed Sawsan to pass, but the other one said no, you should return. When Sawsan tried to pass anyway, the soldier pushed her on the ground and kicked her head with the butt of his rifle.
Sawsan was hospitalized for five days, but when she released she was still having pain. On September 6, 2001, Sawsan was arrested because she had tried to kill an Israeli soldier.
Sawsan was raped twice at Israeli jail on the first day of her incarceration …
Thank you Shlomo for the Giladi material. I urge everyone to read it. I couldn't finish the article it was so upsetting.
Beyond a doubt The establishment of Israel was a criminal enterprise.
A TERRORIST.
Well, for whatever its worth, here is my take on the whole Nakba phenomenon.
http://americangoy.blogspot.com/2008/05/al-nakba-word-myth-struggle.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/5pvpe4
If you don't feel like reading my article, here is my summary here:
The Palestinians have noticed (how could they not) that the narrative of the Holocaust made the Jews victims, and them as the evil aggressors, regardless of the facts on the ground.
So, with Nakba, they are creating their own mythology of suffering (mythology is a bad word to use here, especially since the expulsion and the Jewish Holocaust were true) – not mythology, a narrative to be used for propaganda and political purposes.
Nakba overturns the (old) Holocaust and makes Jews the aggressors, and Arabs the victims.
Nakba can then be used to politicize the right of return, or even (gasp!) compensation, THE SAME LIKE THE JEWISH VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST AND NAZI SLAVE WORKERS RECEIVED FROM GERMANY FOR THEIR WRONGS.
Now you see why Nakba must be squashed in the bud, and why Israeli ambassador did this:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3544098,00.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/5vbuayv
mistake
read ur article in new yorker thought u might enjoy my post
http://nyshrink.blogspot.com/
Info about that 1979 David Shipler article:
Israel Bars Rabin From Relating '48 Eviction of Arabs;
Sympathy for Palestinians 'I Can't Violate the Law'
Survivors' Reports Confirmed
By DAVID K. SHIPLER
Special to The New York Times
New York
Oct 23, 1979, pg. A3
Abstract (Summary)
JERUSALEM, Oct. 22–A censorship board composed of five Cabinet members prohibited former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin from including in his memoirs a first-person account of the expulsion of 50,000 Palestinian civilians from their homes near Tel Aviv during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Ah yes, the ghost of Goering knows; he's smiling.
You ask why. I think one answer is "dehumanization of enemy". This happens, I think, in most wars as it is the only way to explain how people can do some things to other people and keep their sanity. In some cases the dehumanization indoctrination is overt and extreme, like in the case of the Nazis, who were indoctrinated that Jews are some kind of cockroaches or rats and that's why it was OK to do to them the most unspeakable things. In the case of Israeli attitude towards Arabs, the dehumanization was a bit more "benign" and not too overt. In 1948 the Yishuv believed that the Arabs were going to massacre them all (the validity of this belief is a topic for another discussion). ). Look what Uri Avnery – a man I have the deepest respect for – is saying:
“When I enlisted at the beginning of the war, we were totally convinced that we were faced with the danger of annihilation and that we were defending ourselves, our families and the entire Hebrew community. The phrase "There Is No Alternative" was not just a slogan, but a deeply felt conviction”
(here is the full text: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1210454063/)
In the recent years this not too overt indoctrination became much more overt and so bad, that people in Israel – including one good but terribly confused old lady I know – were talking about dropping an atom bomb on Lebanon during the Second Lebanon Debacle, And this is just one example.
Another answer is the general corrupting effect a power over other people's lives has on out morality. The officer in the story might or might not be a heartless sadist. Just the same with the checkpoint stories. or the Abu Ghraib guards (a lot of people by now have heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment:
http://www.prisonexp.org/)
walking the streets of or yehuda, i saw then asked, "WHY DO THEY DO THIS"?
Orthodox Jewish youths burn New Testaments in Or Yehuda
By The Associated Press
http://www.haaretz. com/hasen/ spages/985362. html
Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land.
Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a
neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.
After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it.
"The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue," he said.
The newspaper Maariv reported Tuesday that hundreds of yeshiva students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched.
"Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were," he said.
He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a commandment to burn materials that urge Jews to convert.
"I certainly don't denounce the burning of the booklets, he said. I denounce those who distributed the booklets."
Jews worship from the Old Testament, including the Five Books of Moses and the writings of the ancient prophets. Christians revere the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, which contains the ministry of Jesus.
Calev Myers, an attorney who represents Messianic Jews, or Jews who accept Jesus as their savior, demanded in an interview with Army Radio that all those involved be put on trial. He estimated there were 10,000 Messianic Jews, who are also known as Jews for Jesus, in Israel.
Police had no immediate comment.
Israeli authorities and Orthodox Jews frown on missionary activity aimed at Jews, though in most cases it is not illegal. Still, the concept of a Jew burning books is abhorrent to many in Israel because of the association with Nazis torching piles of Jewish books during the Holocaust of World War II.
Earlier this year, the teenage son of a prominent Christian missionary was seriously wounded when a package bomb delivered to the family's West Bank home went off in his hands.
Last year, arsonists burst into a Jerusalem church used by Messianic Jews and set the building on fire, raising suspicions that Jewish extremists were behind the attack. No one claimed responsibility, but the same church was burned down 25 years ago by ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremists"
not a rare happening there.
Is that Shapler article online or do I have to go to the library to find it?
The answer seems clear enough Phil. So the Zionist Chickens could cross the road.
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