Editor’s Note: The following press release was issued by Zochrot. Mondoweiss occasionally publishes press releases and statements from organizations in an effort to draw attention to overlooked issues.
On Saturday, August 28, we held a tour of Lifta to express our solidarity with its refugees and our opposition to the destructive plan that seeks to eradicate the Palestinian village once and for all. As in all our tours, we presented the injustices of the Nakba to the participants, above all the uprooting and denial of return of some 85% of the Palestinians living in the territory that became the State of Israel. We also emphasized the realization of the refugees’ right to return as a prerequisite for a just future in the region.
Several dozens of Israelis, Palestinians and internationals took part in the tour, including Lifta refugees who fascinated the participants with important stories about the village’s history – memories that are still alive and form a clear statement about the refusal to forget the Nakba and the eternal desire to return home. Upon our arrival at the village spring, we were received with racist and homophobic slurs by about ten men and a woman, and when we refused to leave the place and continued with the tour as planned, the verbal violence became physical. One of the assailants declared that he trains his dog “to bite Arabs”. Another one claimed that we were disturbing him at “his own home” where he has been living for 15 years. The tour proceeded as planned among the remains of the village, but upon our return to the parking lot, we found that several vehicles of the tour participants had been vandalized.
Violence against people who are well within their rights to use public space, and who take part in nonviolent activity on behalf of a legally registered NGO should concern anyone who cares about individual liberties and freedom of expression. Attacks on civil society and human rights organizations in Israel are not new. They are the product not only of ideological conflicts and flawed understanding of democracy, but above all of living in deep denial and constant collective and individual defensiveness. This social disease of denial laced with fear is highly familiar to us, and we at Zochrot strive to heal it.
The attack on the tour participants precisely on the lands of the depopulated Palestinian village of Lifta is a sobering reminder of the necessity of our work. The ability of so many who have been raised in the Zionist education system to spend their leisure time in a water spring that used to be a source of life for thousands of people without stopping for a moment to think about the place they are in is tragic. The instinctive opposition to those who seek to invoke the memory of those who lived here, to talk about the price we all pay for the crimes committed here, and mainly about ways to redress this reality indicates the fragility of the Zionist vision, and the importance of bringing the Nakba and the return of Palestinian refugees to the forefront of the public agenda.
Those who seek to silence us, know this: we will never stop uncovering the truth, we will never stop teaching, touring and promoting political and cultural change within Israeli society until such time as the Palestinian refugees’ right of return is realized, leading to sustainable peace and a just and equal society.
We thank Mr. Yaqub Odeh, who was born in Lifta and became a refugee at eight years old, and led us through the village trails, even after a group of Israelis asked to expel him once again. We thank Yaqub and all the people of Lifta for the memory, persistence and vision. We thank the tour participants and the thousands who choose to take part in Zochrot’s activities each year.
Click here for more details on the struggle to save Lifta from the most recent “development plan”, and on ways of taking part in it.
2 of 2
“By the time the entire village was occupied, most of the people had already left Lifta and fled into the West Bank, the rest were taken by truck and dumped in East Jerusalem. By February 1948, Lifta had been completely depopulated.[4] The Stern Gang and Irgun occupied the houses and broke holes in the roofs to ensure that they would be uninhabitable if the residents attempted to return.
“The story of Lifta was repeated in numerous villages throughout Palestine in 1948. At least 418 villages were ethnically cleansed in the same way.[5] In fact, the evacuation of Palestinian villages was a matter of policy for the Jewish fighting forces. Israeli historian Benny Morris explains that “in the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the predecessor to the Israeli Army]… were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves.”
“Lifta, however, is unique in the fact that it was completely depopulated in February, at least two months before the war was in full-swing, and three months before Israel’s declaration of independence. In April of 1948, the Jewish forces were fighting several armies from newly independent Arab states. The Jewish settlers enjoyed substantive advantages in the war. Aside from possessing newer weapons and technology, they also outnumbered their Arab counterparts by a margin of two to one.[7] It was in this context that, the leader of the Jewish forces, David Ben-Gurion, commanded his fighters to “adopt the method of aggressive defense; with every [Arab] attack we must be prepared to respond with a decisive blow: the destruction of the [Arab] place or the expulsion of its residents along with the seizure of the place.”
1 of 2
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3652.shtml
EXCERPTS:
“The village of Lifta was once one of the largest and wealthiest communities in the Jerusalem region. The beauty of the old homes still standing upon the overgrown hillside pays tribute to that prosperous past. In fact, Lifta’s lands once covered 8,743 dunum (8.7 km2) and stretched from the hills west of Jerusalem right up to the gates of the old city itself. The population of the village in 1948 was approximately 2,550 (including 2,530 Muslim and 20 Christian Palestinians). Like most Palestinian villages, many of Lifta’s residents were dependent on agriculture and cultivated 3,000 dunums (3 km2) of land, including 1,500 olive trees.[2]
“According to research compiled by Palestine Remembered, Lifta was originally a Canaanite village and during Biblical and Roman times it was known by the name Nephtoah. In the Byzantine period it was called Nephtho, and the Crusaders referred to Lifta as Clepsta. Before 1948, the village had been continuously inhabited for well over 2,000 years.
“In the years leading up to the 1948 war, however, the village fell under attack by Jewish militias operating in the area. On the 28th of December, 1947 six people were gunned down in the village coffeehouse, by members of two Jewish militias, the Stern Gang (whose commander, Yitzhak Shamir, later became Prime Minister of Israel) and the Irgun (whose commander, Menachem Begin, also later served as Prime Minister of Israel).[3] Some of Lifta’s residents sold their property to European investors eager to acquire more land for Jewish settlement. Many more left early on. According to the descendents of the villagers, however, a significant number remained in Lifta into the first months of 1948.
“Lifta was harassed by Stern Gang and Irgun militants through December 1947 and January 1948. One of the refugees who returned to the village last Friday, relayed the story he was told about the attack on Lifta:
“In late January or early February, the Stern Gang and Irgun attacked and seized the neighboring village of Qaluba and then invaded Lifta from the West. They occupied Lifta’s new town and the remaining residents took refuge in the old town in the valley. The village was cut-off from the west and anyone trying to leave was killed. The villagers resisted but were defeated after 9 or 10 hours of fighting. (cont’d)
“we will never stop teaching, touring and promoting political and cultural change “
Good quality video of the harassment and vandalism would be helpful.
Decisive blows and seizure are still the IDF’s MO.
Terrorism that the US supports, protects, and does nothing to end, despite the endless terrorist attacks.