Henry Clifford’s advertisement at the Chappaqua Metro-North train station July 10, 2012.
(Photo: Seth Harrison / The Journal News )
We knew this story had legs and now the race is on. Henry Clifford and his group Committee for Peace and Palestine have swung the door wide open, creating more opportunity for debate over Israel in this country by putting up ads in Westchester railroad stations that show the loss of Palestinian land.
And after appeals by elected officials to ban all political advertisements at Metro-North train stations failed, Stand With Us has announced plans to run counter billboards, just as they did in Denver earlier this year.
CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. — An Israel advocacy group plans to run billboards at Metro-North train stations in response to pro-Palestine posters that sparked outrage and a call to ban political advertisements from the transit system.
StandWithUs plans to run a total of 75 ads in Metro-North stations in Mount Kisco, Chappaqua and White Plains, where the controversial Palestine banners have appeared. The ads are expected to go up next week.
“It’s a matter of using it as an opportunity to respond and educate people. People may take for granted that the world understands the Jewish connection to ancient Israel,” Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs, told The Journal News Thursday. “If people have had the misfortune of seeing an eliminated Jewish narrative, then they should also have the benefit of information that is accurate.”
Six different posters include messages about Israel’s history and contributions to technology. One says that ancient Israel was renamed “Palestine” by conquering Romans, but “by any name it has been the Jewish homeland” for more than 3,000 years. Another ad will show a Palestinian and Israeli boy hugging and urge Palestinian leaders to work toward peace.
Henry Clifford is ready:
“thousands of words would be required to respond to and refute the statements by (StandWithUs), but when all is said the bottom line is irrefutable: the Palestinians have lost most of their homeland.”
they can run this picture
here
with the caption “America’s friend Israel – Keeping the Ooga-Booga Scary Muslamiacs in Line!”
“Another ad will show a Palestinian and Israeli boy hugging and urge Palestinian leaders to work toward peace.”
I wonder if Stand With Us has permission from the Palestinian boy’s family to use his image in anti-Palestinian propaganda. Kinda doubt it.
If it’s the pix I’m thinking about (two kids leaning together, arms on shoulders, from behind), that photo is just as staged as the “holding hands” IDF pinkwashing photo.
Peace is now considered anti-Palestinian propaganda?
Yes, Merk, and don’t act surprised. It’s called intellectual dishonesty.
SWU is not interested in peace. They are an Israel Lobby group and part of the colonial infrastructure.
Showing some Kodak moment is a whitewash of reality meant to do damage control. It’s strictly a PR battle for them. Israel has been colonizing Palestinian land since it’s inception.
This is not a struggle between two nationalisms. This is an oppression by one nationalism of the indigenous population, who became nationalistic in opposition to their own dispossession.
If you came to Mondoweiss thinking you could play your hasbara tune of innocent shock and bewilderment at our disillusionment with such Kodak moments, then **** off. It’s 2012, putz.
Grow up.
Nice post Cliff!
I have noticed this Merk person has been posting here lately. We all know he/she is a Zionist pretending to be partial, and somewhat “new” to the issues of the conflict.
Stand With Us does not promote peace.
And I doubt they have the rights to any picture of any Palestinian child.
Excellent. I hope they’re side-by-side with Clifford’s ads.
Let the games (dicussion) expand…
Absotively posilutely!
So, they are gonna show a map from 2000 years ago ?
“One says that ancient Israel was renamed ‘Palestine’ by conquering Romans,”
And these loosers (sorry, Mooser) complain about the map posters as being misleading?? It’s not like the Romans picked the name out of a hat. That name was there long before the Romans.
“but ‘by any name it has been the Jewish homeland’ for more than 3,000 years.”
LOL. Except for the 2000 years when there were barely any Jews there, of course.
My daughter was recently at the Chappaqua train station and told me that the Palestinian map poster has the word “Bullshit” scrawled across it twice. Haven’t seen it myself.
I hope someone comes along with a marker and scrawls in “NOT” in front of the “BS” tag.
too late – I checked myself and the ad is gone completely. I thought it was supposed to be up for 30 days. It hasn’t been that long, has it?
the ad is gone completely
really? that’s news. someone should call Clifford or Metro-North and see what’s up.
I couldn’t find when they were actually placed. The controversy started early July, so they had to be up before then. It does seem early…
They may also have been removed for the “bad language” in the defacing, perchance to be replaced with fresh ones at some unspecified date and time. Contract loophole?
How rude. I mean, yes, it is bullshit, what with showing Jordanian and Egyptian land as “Palestinian” from 1948 to 1967, and counting leased (miri) government owned lands in 1946 as being Palestinian owned, rather than belonging to the government. Also in counting all public land of villages and towns as Palestinian land, rather than public land. But it’s still not right to vandalize someone else’s sign.
Yeah and that’s why you refuse a RIGHT OF RETURN. Sounds to me like you would be clutching at straws in much the same way had you bought up 5.5% of land in the USA and ethnically cleansed the people to 2 parts (say Texas and Alaska).
Rational Miko Peled gets it: “Now, although Palestine was not a state yet, it would have become one had it not been so thoroughly destroyed. Palestine had bustling cities where commerce & trade were taking place, they had a middle class, they had judges, scholars, a rich political life, they had culture & a unique identity that set them apart from the rest of Arab world. What Palestinians did not have was a military. While they constituted vast majority of population, when Jewish militias attacked, they were helpless.”
No Palestinian militias? Huh? Of course they had militias. In the 1930s they had them, and in the 1940s, and in March 1948 it even looked like they were winning. Who was Abdul-Kadr Husseini? Fawzi Kaukji? Who blocked the road to Jerusalem for months? Who won the battle of Nebi Daniel? Who conquered Kfar Etzion in May 1948? Who did most of the fighting in the Old City, forcing the Jews out of the Jewish Quarter in May 1948?
I did not say they had no resistance I said the British did their utmost to confiscate any weapon they had whilst allowing the Jews to arm themselves and have armed militias. Hagannah even had an airforce.
Avi Shlaim, Israeli historian: “The battle for Palestine for the Palestinians was not lost in 1948 but in the late 1930’s because Britain completely smashed to the ground the Arab revolt/forces.”
Fred, the map accurately shows the land on which Palestinians could live freely. Yes, the situation is much more complex than what could be shown in any one poster, but this accurately conveys the shrinking space available for Palestinians to live. The poster does not convey the misery and terror of living under foreign military occupation, nor the shocking number of deaths at the hands of the Israeli military, nor the fact that Palestinians’ freedom of movement outside the country is strictly controlled by Israel, nor the state-imposed discrimination against Palestinian citizens, nor the house demolitions, nor the superior rights and privileges given to my NYC born-and-bred tuchus over the indigenous inhabitants of the land, etc. But it does accurately portray the one small part of the intolerable injustice that it tries to portray.
I look forward to your criticism of the inaccuracies of the SWU ad when it is posted.
“Live freely” is a great way to introduce the concept and begin to explain the larger problem. Tks, DS. Hadn’t thought of it that way before.
Fredblogs July 27, 2012 at 8:36 pm
“Jordanian and Egyptian land as “Palestinian” from 1948 to 1967″
They were Occupying Powers. Occupying Powers do not have sovereignty over “territories occupied”. Simple really.. your drivel just doesn’t make the grade. It’s pathetic.
“…But it’s still not right to vandalize someone else’s sign…”
Well, Israel supporters just be’s that way.
It was hardly a major trauma, but I once came back to my car to find a ‘support Israel’ bumper sticker of some kind stuck over my own ‘free Palestine’ bumper sticker.
During ‘Cast Lead’ there was some kind of altercation at an intersection near my house. Some guy was blocking traffic — storming around with a baseball bat and shouting and menacing some party or other. His own car was plastered with signs calling for support for Israel.
Israel is a Nazi state. It’s logical that its supporters would adopt Naziism’s worship of violence and illegality.
Miri land wasn’t precisely “leased government owned land”. Under the Ottomans, cultivators of miri land acquired rights to pass it on to their heirs, it only reverted to the government if the person died without heirs, or the cultivation ceased for three years. So it’s fully accurate to call miri land used by Palestinians as Palestinian land. Similarly, the Ottomans recognized collective rights, e.g. rights to “public” land to be used by a village for communal grazing. So it’s also quite fair to call such land used collectively by Palestinians as Palestinian.
If you’re talking about land actually used by roads and government buildings, while actual ownership might have been “the government” prior to 1948, they were the heritage of the Palestinian people. That would have included Jewish citizens of Palestine at that time. There’s no better description of them than “Palestinian” as they were in Palestine and used by all its people. After 1948, the vast majority could not be used by the native people of land taken over by Israel. They were lost to almost all Palestinians, except for the very small amount that Israel permitted some Palestinians still residing in its borders to keep.
The Ottomans began a process of privatizing the land, granting it to the cultivators though its likely it would fall into the hands of whoever had the best connections with the Ottoman government. The British, who were capitalists and firm believers in private property, continued this process of privatization. Once again sometimes allowing land to be sold out from under villagers who had been using it. The privatization process was far from complete by 1948.
The state of Israel applies the Ottoman laws in a very different way then the Ottomans did, cynically grabbing the land as government land and then allowing only Jews to use it (it’s a Jewish state after all). See link to btselem.org. On top of preventing Palestinians from cultivating or otherwise using their land thus forcing the 3-year rule to come into place.
@Fredblogs, so you object to people vandalizing a sign, what do you think of Israel’s deliberate destruction of 400+ villages and mass murder of many of their inhabitants?
I guess that’s up to the usual level of discourse of the Zionists.
So now they are going to try fool the brain dead that mythological “Israel” was on a map 3000 years ago and that they are connected to it. I mean seriously what person with half a brain would not question that. Maps I have seen from as early as 750BC clearly show Palestine on the map with Judea, and not “Israel”, just a small part of Palestine – so they are basically going to photoshop the truth.
I have a whole lot of them in the archives under my name:
link to mondoweiss.net
Search for maps.
I bet the maps actually say “750 BC” don’t they?
Thanks MRW and yes they do Fred (750BC-625BC actually), courtesy of MRW. Do you really love humiliating yourself Fred? Read and weep:
link to lib.utexas.edu
More like read and ROFLMAO.
That is a map with the modern names of places, in English, with an overlay of what parts were in the Assyrian Empire. My point was that the maps would be fakes, as in, any document that purports to be an actual document made in a B.C. year, with a date put on it at the time in terms of B.C. is a fake because before Christianity, no one called those years B.C.
So you put forward a map that uses modern names for everywhere (except that it says Palestine. so probably made before 1946, as the region was called that then, though it wasn’t an independent country) as though it has any significance. You probably think they called Italy “Italy” back then too. This is just too funny.
University of Texas library archive Fred. Obviously it’s not from 750BC, it’s an archive of the history of that period in time. You can laugh all you like self chosen rosen, sane human beings laugh at how you believe you are entitled to Palestine at the native people’s expense. It’s insane.
Jeopardy 01/16/2012:
Judea for $1000:
Question: Galilee, Samaria & Judea in the south were the 3 traditional divisions of this ancient area with a still-current name.
Answer: What is Palestine!
So you put forward a map that uses modern names for everywhere (except that it says Palestine…
Why look at all those modern names for places and people! There’s Macedonia, and the Lydian Kingdoms, the Assyrian Empire, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Phoenicians, Chaldeans, etc.. All those totally modern states and peoples! Why there’s even Samaria and Judea on the map, which of course in Fred cuckoo-logic must mean that the map was probably made after 1967.
Do you ever even THINK before you zip off your ridiculous knee-jerk responses, Fred? Seriously, did you you actually look at the map or did you simply see the word “Palestine” on a map and jump into crazed zionist-reflex mode?
I forgot to request your authentic map there Fred. Go on make our day.
The map contains a mixture of modern and old names, it is no proof at all what things were called then. Especially since it doesn’t contain the names as they were used then, but the anglecized names we use now.
Yet you have provided NO map at all to disprove it’s authenticity. So we shall accept it as just another baited condescension then and that map is 100% correct of course. You just make things up as you go along Fred. Your whole screw loose warped ideology has always done that. No foresight or planning, just brutal savage terror to get your way and steal land murdering the innocent natives. Can you not see how that is so out of place in a civilized world?
Your own map proves that it isn’t authentic. “Italy” for example and an accuracy of the shape of the land that comes only from methods that didn’t exist for more than 2 millennia after you think the map was made.
I thought it was odd when you claimed to have a map from 750BC that showed “Palestine”. I figured you were going to haul out something in some dead language that showed the Philistine areas. I didn’t expect you to haul out what is clearly a modern map and a sincere and bizarre belief that it is actually a map from 750 B.C. The English language didn’t even exist then, nor did the techniques to accurately map out an area anywhere near that size.
Again not disproving it’s authenticity. Its a university library archive Fred take it up with them and provide something that proves its not true for heavens sake or hush. Provide them with the “right map”. Lol. What is it with you hasbara shills always trying to get the last word in? Maybe it’s some childish need in you, or an insecurity, I don’t know, but it sure is tiring. I guess its done to wear everyone down so they finally stop reacting to your baited condescensions, and that way they prove they are right, in their irrational minds, of course, not in anyone else’s.
Will StandWithUs, an unregistered Israel Lobby, take a cue from the NY Times, NPR, CNN, etc., whose “coverage” of Israel/Palestine, keeps so many from learning that occupation and ethnic cleansing is even happening?
“Stand With Us” is a hugely racist organization.
Dexter says:
July 27, 2012 at 6:48 pm
““Stand With Us” is a hugely racist organization.”
“Stand With Us” is such a cute name, too. However, Stand with us over here so that while we encourage you to really focus your attention on that over there, we may acquire more Lebensraum ostensibly for the entitled White-Jew people, with far less hassle. Er…No, we don’t know what that Jew word means either, Anti-semite. would have been a somewhat more accurate, if considerably less punchy moniker for the org.
I think this is a good thing. For one, it will betray how grossly thin the Israel-fanatics’ message really is. More important, it will firmly establish precedent for future pro-Palestinian ads, robbing the bigots of one avenue for suppressing free speech. Bigotted politicians won’t be able to whine about removing pro-Palestinian ads when they’ve allowed the Israel Lobby stuff.
map of the world 100 bc
link to en.wikipedia.org
link to commons.wikimedia.org
by this map of 2000 bce…looks like israel was Canaan…
link to upload.wikimedia.org
One problem with Biblical borders is that as Israelites did not know geographic coordinates at the time of Biblical prophesies, the Divine revelations concerning the boundaries of the Jewish land were a bit vague. Like extending from the southern tip of Dead Sea to the west, through the Wilderness of Zin. Why does Israel have Negev?
And there is an even more vexing problem of Samaria and Samaritans. Jews are supposedly descendants of Judah and Benjamin. What happened to the other 10 tribes? Romney should provide interesting answers (being a Mormon), but most people who trace their origin to Samaritans are Muslim living near Nablus, and some are Samaritans who do not view themselves as Jews (the religion is very similar, with the biggest difference that for them Jerusalem is not a sacred city, just a geographic location in Judah).
That ‘Ancient Israel’ bullshit makes me seethe.
I wonder what dimension it was located in? No one in the first three noticed it, nor did it leave any ruins — and they’ve dug over that whole country three times trying to find them.
“No one in the first three noticed it”
That’s because the first three dimensions are anti-Semtic.
So they’re going to rehash the Hasbara, none of which has any bearing whatsoever on the legal extent of Israeli Sovereignty and by default what is non-Israeli territory.
They’ll spin the olde line that it is only Jews returning to their land, but fail to explain why the returnees have to pay developers and the Israeli Government for a home.
The arguments they put up are so amazingly pathetic, no thinking person could possibly believe them, success relying on mindless repetition and people not thinking or checking.
I keep thinking 64 years of deceit is gonna eventually come unwound and leave a lot of duped Israeli citizens REALLY REALLY ANGRY at the bullsh*te they’ve been fed all their lives. But maybe there are just too many morons out there ready to suck it up.
People are making good points here responding to the silliness of the “response” of “Stand With Us” to the actual maps demonstrating and showing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist criminals in modern times. As someone already said (showing a map from 2000 BCE) the land was Canaan at that time according to historians! But I guess we aren’t suppose to go back that far for the Zionist hasbara I guess!
Also the very common claim that the land was supposedly only referred to as Palestine after the Romans “changed it” to that is demonstrably false (as someone with a BA in History I just shake my head at how ignorant the people who claim that are). And it seems the Zionists in the West (and in particular the US) use this false claim a lot because it sells to right wing Evangelical “Zionist Christian” nutjobs (whom the Zionist regime derives a lot of support from, in US Republican politics in particular). In fact I’ve heard the obese charlatan John Hagee making this claim to his “flock” at his “mega-church” in Texas. These right wing Evangelical “Zionist Christians” usually go on their own little tangent and say that God allowed the Romans to do this to supposedly “punish the Jews”, etc. etc. The only problem for this claim however is that the use of the name Palestine, for the land of Palestine!, demonstrably goes back further than the Romans and the 1st century CE.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Info on Palestine showing the name of Palestine goes back as far as 1150 BCE and Ancient Egyptian monuments (Medinet Habu temple in Luxor, Egypt) mentioning the “Peleset” of Canaan (that is Peleset meaning Philistines, which is the etymological source the later Romans and Byzantines did derive names like Palaestina Prima, Syria Palaestina, etc from as well as where the Muslim Caliphates derived the name Jund Filastin from for the land of Palestine as well in the 7th century CE). And the source I quoted above then notes Assyrian sources (Adad-nirari III and Dur-Sharrukin) going back to the 8th century BCE referring to “Pilistu” meaning the Philistines in Canaan as well.
And then two more examples, just to conclude, from this era (pre-Roman) that clearly mention and use the name Palestine for the land and territory in question. The legendary Ancient Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484 BCE- 425 BCE) in his circa 450 BCE work “The Histories” mentions Palestine and its people as the “Syrians of Palestine”; that is referring to Palestine as district of a Greater Syria, modern Arabic Bilad ash-Sham, etc. And then another legendary Ancient Greek figure Aristotle (384 BCE- 322 BCE) in his circa 340 BCE work “Meteorology” writes; “Again if, as is fabled, there is a lake in PALESTINE, such that if you bind a man or beast and throw it in it floats and does not sink, this would bear out what we have said. They say that this lake is so bitter and salt that no fish live in it and that if you soak clothes in it and shake them it cleans them.” Most historians view the body of water being mentioned here in Palestine by Aristotle as البحر الميت (al-Bahr al-Mayyit), that is the Dead Sea!
Six different posters include messages about Israel’s history and contributions to technology.
And again the Zionists will be using one of their favorite rhetorical devices — the straw man.
Israel makes valuable contributions to technology. So did the Nazis. Indeed, jet airplanes and guided missiles, two weapons widely used by Israel, were largely developed by Nazi Germany. This didn’t prevent them from committing genocide. And what about apartheid South Africa — they performed the first heart transplant at the same time that blacks were denied the vote and banned from beaches.
In contemporary times, China has undergone awesome change to become the world’s largest provider of consumer goods, even as it crushes individual freedoms and represses its minorities.
So that yes, Israel may produce high technology, but that it isn’t incompatible with its having stolen Palestinian land. The SWU posters will be addressing a completely different issue than the signs they purport to rebutt.
Why not go back to around 1700 (?) BCE when a tribe of monotheist nomads leveled Jericho.
“And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword”. Joshua 6 (XXI).
No Palestine?
“What Arab cannot do his math and understand that the immigration at the rate of 60,000 a year means a Jewish state in all Palestine”
Letter (dated July 1937) to Moshe Sharrett, Israel’s first Foreign Minister, from ‘Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs’ pp167-8
You realize that’s a myth, right?
One myth is as good as another.
NickJOCW July 28, 2012 at 5:48 pm
“Why not go back to around 1700 (?) BCE “
No need. Israel became a state May 15th 1948 and subsequently became a UN Member State 1949. As such Israel obliged itself to adhere to International Law, the Laws of War, the UN Charter etc.