I was checking out Lauren Pierce’s tweets and was aghast at her musings about Tel Aviv:
The Jewish people broke ground on Tel Aviv even before WW1 even. “Occupy Palestinian City” rightttttt
Guess that’s what happens when you get your history from StandWithUs.
I recalled a fantastic video I watched on Mondoweiss filmed by Alex Kane during his trip to Israel/Palestine last year called In Ajami and Mas’ha, evidence of the continuing Nakba. It contains a oral history lesson from the very engaging and entertaining Sami Abushhadeh as he stands on a rock in Jaffa overlooking Tel Aviv. I love this video, so naturally I thought Lauren might too.
For more information Sami recommends a book by scholar Mark Levine Overthrowing Geography .
I also recommend:
- Palestine Remembered: Jaffa
- Zochrot: A Palestinian Village in the Heart of Tel Aviv?
- Zochrot: Remembering al-Shaykh Muwannis
- JVP: Setting the record straight
Michael Jacobson of the architecture department at Bezalel Academy:
“While many good people, and I among them, were raised on the conception that Tel Aviv was a city born from the sand, it is astounding to discover that the city includes within it a number of sites which until the outbreak of the War of Independence were the sites of Arab villages,” said Jacobson at the symposium at Zochrot.
“Tel Aviv was not born from the sand, was not ‘born from the sea’ and certainly did not ‘walk through the fields.’
And since Lauren is a student I thought it might interest her to know Tel Aviv University was constructed largely on the lands of the Palestinian village Al-Shaykh Muwannis.
RE: “Guess that’s what happens when you get your history from StandWithUs.” ~ annie
FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME: “Sticks and stones may break our bones, but facts will never sway us.” ~ Neocon Creed (also applies to “fundies” and ‘Stand With Us’)
Is there anything at all about Israel that is not a lie?
I read somewhere lately that Tel Aviv was the only city in the world that does not have an Arab living in it and I keep wondering if this is true. Does anyone know?
See George Orwell on direct and transferred nationalism. Orwell considered Zionism a direct nationalism because he assumed that only Jews would be passionate about Zionism and that Zionist Jews would want to live in Palestine/Israel. Even in his own day, he was wrong in those assumptions.
Today, among both American Jews and American gentiles, Zionism is a powerful form of transferred nationalism. It’s certainly stronger than the kinds of exoticism and cultural nostalgia that Orwell relegated under that label. One is free to speculate as to what Lauren Pierce’s Zionist enthusiasm is “really about”: Israel, the Jews, the Bible, America, Christianity, Texas, or something else.
“The Jewish people broke ground on Tel Aviv”
What, all of them together? Must have been crowded.
i was just reading From Tel Aviv to Jaffa: Gentrification and Judaization
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/?p=3030
this is Sami. they quote him all throughout the article. i recommend.