Showing posts with label Occupation of Palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Occupation of Palestine. Show all posts

Thursday, December 14, 2023

3628. Christmas Greetings from Bethlehem

Popular Resistanace, December 14, 2023


Greetings from Bethlehem:

We have been writing annual Christmas messages of peace, for human rights, and relating sometimes what happened in the passing year for decades. Since I returned to Bethlehem in 2008, these messages have been special. Since founding the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) in 2014, we also added greeting from PIBS.  This year writing seems tougher than ever considering the ongoing and unprecedented genocide/holocaust occurring in Palestine. In the ten weeks before Christmas, more than 20,000 civilians (>8000 of them children) were killed. 2.3 million people were denied food, water and medicines while all means of life around them was systematically targeted. Palestinians (Muslims and Christians) are literally starving to death and dying from lack of medical care. 65% of Gaza residential buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged. Israel also targeted schools, hospitals, clinics, churches, mosques, bakeries, sewage and water facilities, electrical, communication and other infrastructure.

Rubble Nativity scene in Lutheran Church, Bethlehem

 We local Christians cannot “celebrate” or do decorations while injustice persists.  The Church of Nativity during this season usually received hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. Today it is shrouded in dark cloud. We can only pray and meditate on the need for peace and justice in the birthplace of the prince of peace. We native Christian Palestinians (the first Christians) reflect that some 2.5 billion human beings believe in a message that originated with a Palestinian baby born in a manger here. We reflect on the real message of Jesus of love and caring for the oppressed and the suffering. The harsh reality on the ground reminds us of our responsibility to shape a better future. Bethlehem is home to 260,000 Palestinian Christians and Muslims including over 60000 refugees. We natives are limited to live in only 13 percent of our district while over 150000 colonial Jewish settlers live on stolen Palestinian lands of the district.  Bethlehem is besieged and blockaded. Bethlehem University like other universities is mostly offering courses online due to the apartheid system. Bethlehem is isolated from its urban twin city Jerusalem (5 miles away) via an apartheid wall destroying the economy for Palestinians on both sides of the wall. Israeli Jewish settlers and soldiers move freely and have taken over most of our land and natural resources and regularly attack us.

Nativity Square 2022
Nativity square 2023

Eight million of the 15 million Palestinians in the world are refugees or displaced people thanks to a meticulous Western-backed program of ethnic cleansing. The vast majority of Palestinians who remain are living in concentration camps like Bethlehem, Jenin, and Gaza under a ruthless apartheid fascist Israeli regime. Despite all of this, we are still hopeful because we take a long view of history. Some 100,000 years ago humans migrated from Africa using Palestine as the passageway to Western Asia and then the rest of the world. This is where our ancestors first domesticated plants and animals (agriculture and pastoralism) some 11 millennia ago. This allowed development of the earliest civilizations (in the Fertile Crescent), the first writings and the first thoughts of deities. Our Canaanite ancestors spoke a language we refer to now as proto-Aramaic. From this language and its first alphabet came the Arabic, Syriac and Hebrew languages and alphabets. Aramaic was the language of Jesus. Phoenician Canaanites evolved the Latin alphabet delivered it to Europe and it is the alphabet you are reading now. ‘A’ is from Aramaic Alleph (turn upside down to be the symbol of the bull) and ‘b’ from Beit (house) turn to side to see a domed house and so on.

People lived in relative harmony here with nature and with each other for thousands of years. Thankfully very few attempts to transform Palestine from a mixed society of various religions and backgrounds to make it monolithic. The latest such foolish attempt was to transform Palestine into a “Jewish state” (apartheid and ethnocentric chauvinistic state), a state that is failing though with significant bloodshed.

As we reflect this Christmas from Bethlehem, we aspire to a certain future when refugees
are allowed to return and all people of all religions live in equality and justice. Jerusalem/Bethlehem will then become a true light unto the world. We are grateful that there has been tremendous growth of actions by civil society around the world to push for human rights and justice in this “Holy Land”. This has included some significant actions for boycotts divestments and sanctions (BDS) from Israel in the same way we did with Apartheid South Africa.

So this Christmas we remember what Jesus said: “Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Luke 6). So think of us Palestinians as you think of Christmas and do boycott products that aid the occupation/oppression, see bdsmovement.net

History teaches us that injustice cannot last long especially when so many people join the struggle. We in this land will continue to struggle and yearn for freedom. We at at PIBS, Bethlehem University ask for your prayers and for your support (time and money) which helps us expand our work with thousands of Palestinians especially from marginalized communities (see palestinenature.org). And do come visit us or at least email us/stay in touch. Such are the best of of Christmas gifts.

May 2024 bring us closer to peace with justice.


Sunday, April 29, 2018

2899. Palestine and Israel

By Brian A. Mitchell, The Unrepented Marxist, April 29, 2018
Palestinians fleeing their homes during the 1948 Nakba – ‘the great catastrophe’
The power and importance of original quotes cannot be stressed enough. It is most revealing and undeniable, especially to the incredulous, to let Presidents, Prime Ministers and military leaders speak for themselves. Through tutoring, speaking, articles, debates and general argument, I have always found that original quoted statements have the most powerful impact; far more than any dialogue from me or any journalist or academic could ever have; and were an integral part of my political education. Many of these quotes are not widely known, some not at all. So please do spread them widely so that many more people can know what really goes on in this troubled world in our name. Although some of the quotes may be dated, the ideology of capitalism remains more inhuman, predatory, warlike, not only murderous but more genocidal every day.
Why You Will Not Find Israel On Any Pre 1948 Map: How the US Stole Palestine.
Ever wondered how Palestine became Israel? If a religion can claim a homeland, a state; I am atheist but was brought up and educated a Roman Catholic, so where is my homeland? Perhaps Rome or the southern half of Italy? And what about Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, Baptists, Anglicans, Confucians or Rosicrucians, where are their homelands or states? If a foreign peoples came to occupy your country with "proof" of ownership from ancient papyrus scrolls, wouldn't you resist them with all means at your disposal? As for the Bible: (the Red Sea parting so the Jews could return to their homeland, not mentioning how they crossed in the first place): if in thousands of years time, archaeologists digging in what was Hollywood find Walt Disney’s manuscripts, is that proof that Mickey Mouse existed?
Zionists considered settling various countries as a Jewish homeland or state since the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, including British East Africa, Madagascar, British Guiana and Birobijan. Palestine was chosen under US pressure and is undoubtedly less a state, more a large piece of US military real estate (Israel has nuclear weapons) on the edge of all the oil of the Middle East and North Africa, and that is why Israel was created. After all, look who consumes the largest amount of the world's oil resources.
Isreal was then settled by millions of Jews from all over the world, mainly the US, USSR and Europe. Israel's Right of Return law (aliya) permits any Jew or anybody who becomes a Jew anywhere in the world Israeli citizenship. This is remarkably similar to Nazi Germany's Blood Law permitting anyone in the world regardless of nationality German citizenship. Isreal ignores UN Resolution 194 which stipulates that refugees can return to their land and compensation for loss or damage of property to those choosing not to return. But Palestinians who were expelled from their land do not have any right of return. Israel has only to declare any Palestinian land a closed military zone and confiscates the land. It is a demand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Palestinians recognise Israel as a "State of the Jewish People.")
NOTE that it is essential to be aware that any support for the Palestinians and anything said against Zionism (the creation of Israel) is erroneously claimed to be anti-Semitic (meaning only anti Jewish) by over defensive Zionist apologists, ignorant or more likely deliberately distortive of history, anthropology, palaeontology, ethnology, languages and culture. Anti Zionism is not anti Jewish or anti Semitic. For a start, the Semitic peoples included Caucasians, Arabs, Sumerians (Iraq), Hebrews, Assyrians, Phoenicians (Lebanon, then part of Turkey and previously the former Ottoman Empire), Syrians, Persians, Jordanians, Ethiopians, Egyptians and other Middle Eastern and Northern African peoples. The Semitic languages are part of the Afro-Asiatic group of languages. In some cases the Semitic peoples and languages even precede the Bible, Christianity, the Torah and any Jewish religion.
Elected to my college Student Union because I was popular with foreign students, among them Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, non-Jews and atheists; who worked together in an anti Zionist organisation, all agreed that Israel was created for US geo-political-military purposes to control Middle Eastern oil resources. These quotes are all thoroughly verified and almost all are from Zionist, Israeli or Jewish politicians and authors.
See especially:
"Israeli Apartheid. A Beginner’s Guide."
(Ben White. Pluto Press, London and New York.)
"Against Our Better Judgement. The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel."
(Alison Weir. Published by If Americans Knew )
"The Invention of the Land of Israel."
(Tel Aviv University Israeli Emeritus Professor Shlomo Sand. Verso. London and New York.)

How to Steal A State: First Find "God's Promised Land" in an Ancient Manuscript, Then Occupy It as Quickly as Possible and Eliminate the Existing Arab Population.
“This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.”
(Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971,)

“The Oslo agreement is very important for the Palestinians since it is the only official agreed-upon document they got. We have another document, a much older one … the Bible.”
(Ariel Sharon, speaking at a Washington symposium, 8 May 1998.)

"When we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that received us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country. … Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. Let the owners of immovable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us something far more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back."
(Hungary born World Zionist founder Theodor Herzl, in his diary June 12 1895.)

"Palestine is a country without a people, the Jews are a people without a country. … If you wish to give a country to a people without a country, it is utter foolishness to allow it to be the country of two peoples. … The Jews will suffer and so will their neighbours. One of the two: a different place must be found either for the Jews or for their neighbours. … We must be prepared either to drive out by sword the Arab tribes in possession as our fathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedans [Muslims]."
(British Zionist leader Israel Zangwill.)

"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfil Zionism. It's that simple."
(Israeli Prime minister Yitzhak Shamir.)

“At Basle, I founded the Jewish state… If not in five years, then certainly in fifty, everyone will realize it.”
(Hungary born World Zionist founder Theodor Herzl, in his diary September 3 1897.)

"His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which shall prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by the Jews in any other country."
(British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour, in a letter called the Balfour Declaration, (not to be mistaken for the Balfour Memorandum, below) to billionaire Lord Walter Rothschild and the Zionist Federation of Great Britain, November 2 1917; supporting Zionism – the creation of Israel as a state in Palestinian land.)

"For in Palestine we do not propose even to go throught the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country… Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, for far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land."
(British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour in a private memo to Lord Curzon (called the Balfour Memorandum, not to be mistaken for the Balfour Declaration, above), August 11 1919; supporting Zionism. What part of humanity is it that can support something seen as "right or wrong," "good or bad," just because it is "rooted in age long traditions,"?)

"Accept my congratulations on this splendid conquest… We are all proud of the excellent leadership and the fighting spirit in this great attack… you have made history in Israel … Continue thus until victory. As in Dier Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou hast chosen us for conquest."
(Zionist terrorist group leader and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion. The Irgun under its leader Menachem Begin bombed the King David hotel in Jerusalem which was the British army headquarters in 1946. Over 200 Arabs were massacred in Deir Yassin in 1948.)

“The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz [Biblical] Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya [Jewish immigration], and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country.”
(Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, November 1990.)

"The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates. It includes parts of Syria and Lebanon."
(Jewish Agency for Palestine member Rabbi Fischmann to UN, 1947.)

"For thousands of years, we Jews have been nourished and sustained by a yearning for our historic land… I believed and to this day still believe in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire land."
(British Mandate Palestine born Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.)

"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
(Zionist terrorist group leader and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion.)

“Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever.”
(Menachem Begin, on the UN vote to partition Palestine.)

"Here, in the Land of Israel, we returned and built a nation. Here, in the Land of Israel, we established a State. The Land of the prophets, which bequeathed to the world the values of morality, law and justice, was after two thousand years, restored to its lawful owner, the members of the Jewish People. … we have built an exceptional national Home and State."
(British Mandate Palestine born Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. So before the "prophets" humanity had no values or morality, law or justice?)

"Jordan is a part from Eretz Israel in history."
(Israeli Prime minister Ariel Sharon, 2000.)

"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai."
(Zionist terrorist group leader and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion, May 1948. So the Moslem regime is artificial but the Israeli regime is not?!)

”The present map of Palestine was drawn by the British mandate. The Jewish people have another map which our youth and adults should strive to fulfill – From the Nile to the Euphrates.”
(Ben Gurion.)


Occupying the Palestinian Land.
"A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning. I am certain that we can not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country and the region.
(First Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion, in a letter to his son, 1937.)

"…there can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 per cent."
(Irgun terrorist group leader and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion, speech, December 3 1947, in his book "As Israel Fights.")

"If the Arabs in Israel form 40 per cent of the population, this is the end of the Jewish state. But 20 per cent is also a problem… If the relationship with these 20 per cent becomes problematic, the [Israeli] state is entitled to employ extreme measures."
(Tel Aviv born Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, December 17 2003.)

"During the last 100 years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road."
(Ottoman Empire born Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan.)

"If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land."
(Russia born Zionist leader and Jewish National Fund chairman Abraham Ussishkin, 1930.)

"I don't mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal. What you don't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it."
(Ariel Sharon to Amos Oz, editor of Davar, Dec. 17 1982.)

"One certain truth is that there is no Zionist settlement and there is no Jewish State without displacing Arabs and without confiscating lands and fencing them off."
(Israeli journalist Ben Porat, in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, July 14 1972.)

"after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine."
(Irgun Zionist terrorist group leader and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion, 1938.)

"Ben Gurion was right … Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."
(Israeli historian in Ben Gurion University Benny Morris, in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, January 9 2004.)

"This is only a stage in the realisation of Zionism and it should prepare the ground for our expansion throughout the country … The state, however, must enforce order and security and it will do this not by moralising and preaching ‘sermons on the mount’ but by machine guns, which we will need. … If we will receive in time the arms we have already purchased, and maybe even receive some of that promised by the UN [US dominated], we will be able not only to defend but also to inflict death blows on the Syrians in their own country, and take over Palestine as a whole."
(Irgun terrorist group leader and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion, 1938. The arms were supplied largely by Britain and the US.)

"The transfer of the Arab population from the area of the Jewish state does not serve only one aim, to diminish the Arab population. It also serves a second, no less important aim, which is to evacuate land presently held and cultivated by the Arabs and thus to release it for the Jewish inhabitants."
(Jewish National Fund director Joseph Weitz, to the Committee for Population Transfer, 1937.)

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the
(Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don’t grab will go to them."
(Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, to a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.)

"If I were a Palestinian, I would be a terrorist."
(Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.)

"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country."
(Zionist terrorist group leader and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion. [Only in their view?!])

"Israel is the Jews’ land… It was never the Arabs’ land, even when virtually all of its inhabitants were Arab. Israel belongs to four million Russian Jews despite the fact that they were not born here. It is the land of nine million other Jews throughout the world, even if they have no present plans to live in it."
(British Mandated Palestine Zionist Israel Eldad.)

"Before (the Palestinians) very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they and their ancestors have lived. We are the generation of colonizers and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a house."
(Ottoman Empire Palestine born Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan.)

"By a Jewish national home, I mean the creation of such conditions that as a country is developed, we can pour in a considerable number of immigrants and finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English…"
(Zionist leader and first President of Israel Chaim Weizmann. Ignoring the obvious fact that the word Jewish refers to a religion, not a nationality, that English is a nationality, not a religion, nor is a country a race, and if England is English, then the nation Palestine is therefore Palestinian.)

"Jews have been entitled to simply show up and declare themselves to be Israeli citizens … Essentially all Jews everywhere are Israeli citizens by right."
(Israel’s Law of Return (Aliyah), Jewish Agency, July 1950.)


An Israeli Genocide: Eliminating the Existing Palestinian Population.
"Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both people in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe should be left."
(Director of the Jewish National Fund, head of the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department, the Zionist agency charged with acquiring Palestinian land, Yosef Weitz in his diary, 1940.)

"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
(Yoram Bar Porath, Yedioth Ahronoth, July 14 1972.)

"Our thought is that the colonization of Palestine has to go in two directions: Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel and the resettlement of the Arabs of Eretz Israel in areas outside the country. The transfer of so many Arabs may seem at first unacceptable economically, but is nonetheless practical. It does not require too much money to resettle a Palestinian village on another land."
(Ukraine born World Zionist Congress leader Leo Motzkin, 1917. Eretz Israel is loosely the region of Jordan, Palestine, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, and part of Sinai. Zionists claim it is Biblical Israel, that is if you believe the Dead Sea Scrolls
(the Bible), written by several people over many ancient historical periods, and which was never the title deeds to Palestine.)

“The most spectacular event in the contemporary history of Palestine – more spectacular in a sense than the creation of the Jewish state – is the wholesale evacuation of its Arab population which has swept with it also thousands of Arabs from areas threatened and/or occupied by us outside our boundaries.”
(Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok, in a letter to Chairnam of the World Jewish Congress Nahun Goldmann, June 15 1948.)

"There is a need now for strong and brutal reaction. We need to be accurate about timing, place and those we hit. If we accuse a family, we need to harm them without mercy, women and children included. … there is no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty."
(Zionist terrorist group leader and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion, in his diary, January 1 1948.)

"I don't know something called International Principles. I vow that I'll burn every Palestinian child
(that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child is more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian child’s existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger."
(British Mandate Palestine born Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.)

"But the leaders … had foreseen this difficulty at the outset of the Zionist project in Palestine. The solution as they saw it was the enforced transfer of the indigenous population, so that a pure Jewish state could be established. On 10 March 1948, the Zionist leadership adopted the infamous Plan Dalet, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the areas regarded as the future Jewish state in Palestine."
(Israeli historian Professor Ilan Pappe. Dalet was the Israeli equivalent of the Nazi holocaust.)

“We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, ‘What is to be done with the Palestinian population; Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said ‘Drive them out!’?
(Yitzhak Rabin, New York Times October 23 1979.)

“Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in [Tiananmen Square] China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.”
(Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, in Israeli magazine Hotam, November 24 1989.)

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."
(Chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces Rafael Eitan, in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, April 13, 1983, and New York Times, April 14 1983.)

“We must expel Arabs and take their places and if we have to use force, to guarantee our own right to settle in those places – then we have force at our disposal.”
(First Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion, 1937.)

"Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them…"
(British Mandate Palestine born Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.)

"We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return. … The old will die and the young will forget."
(First Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion, in his diary, July 18 1948.)

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist."
(Ukraine born Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, Sunday Times June 15 1969.)

"There is no more Palestine. Finished."
(Ottoman Empire Palestine born Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan.)

"What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred for us? For eight years now they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived."
(Ottoman Empire Palestine born Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan, 1955.)

"We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state. Just as we do not recognise the Arab’s proprietorship of the land, so also do we not recognise their spiritual proprietorship and their names."
(Zionist terrorist group leader and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion, 1949. An Israeli government department Naming Committee has the sole purpose of "Judaising"
(renaming or Biblifying) Arab land and villages in order to hide their Arab origins.)

"We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. … There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
(Ottoman Palestine born Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan, to Technion University March 19 1969, in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, April 4 1969.)

"200 ARABS KILLED, STRONGHOLD TAKEN. Irgun and Stern [terrorist] Groups Unite to Win Deir Yassin …Jerusalem. April 9. A combined force of Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern group, Jewish extremist underground forces captured the Arab village of Dier Yassin on the western outskirts of Jerusalem today. In house to house fighting the Jews killed more than 200 Arabs, half of them women and children."
(New York Times, April 10 1948.)

"[Israeli] terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village [Dier Yassin], which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants, 240 men, women and children, and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed… But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicised it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havok of Dier Yassin."
(Letter from Albert Einstein and 27 other Jews, in New York Times, December 4 1948.)

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."
(Ukraine born Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, March 8 1969.)

"Israel's policy – in the last 60 years – stems from a racist hegemonic ideology called Zionism, shielded by endless layers of righteous fury. Despite the predictable accusation of anti-Semitism ... it is time to associate in the public mind the Zionist ideology with the by now familiar historical landmarks of the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the oppression of the Palestinians in Israel during the days of the military rule, the brutal occupation of the West Bank and now the massacre of Gaza."
(Israeli historian Professor Ilan Pappe.)

“A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison … for without an armed force … colonization is impossible, … Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. … The Islamic soul must be broomed [swept] out of Eretz Yisrael. … it is even more important to be able to shoot … This is our policy towards the Arabs.”
(Russian born Zionist leader, Haganah founder and Irgun leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1923. The Irgun and Haganah were both Zionist terrorist organisations.)

"The state... must see the sword as the main if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may know it must invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation and revenge... And above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space."
(First Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett in his diary,)

“It lies upon the people’s shoulders to prepare for the war, but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the ultimate object of erecting the Israeli Empire.”
(Moshe Dayan (Israel Defense and Foreign Minister), Radio Israel, February 12 1952.)

Israeli Racism Against the Arabs – No Different From Nazism and Apartheid.
"Zionism [the creation of the Israeli state] is a form of racism and racial discrimination."
(United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, November 1975. In 1991 Israel threatened non-participation in the Israel Palestine Peace Conference and under severe US pressure, the UN revoked Resolution 3379.)

“Hitler’s legal power was based upon the ‘Enabling Act’, which was passed quite legally by the Reichstag and which allowed the Fuehrer and his representatives, in plain language, to be what they wanted, or in legal language, to issue regulations having the force of law. Exactly the same type of act was passed by the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) immediately after the 1967 conquest granting the Israeli governor and his representatives the power of Hitler, which they use in Hitlerian manner.”
(Dr. Israel Shahak, Chairperson of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, and a survivor of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, Commenting on the Israeli military’s Emergency Regulations following the 1967 War. Palestine, vol. 12, December 1983.)

"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more."
(Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, August 28 2000, in the Jerusalem Post August 30 2000.)

"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."
(Chief of Staff of Israeli Defence Forces Raphael Eitan, New York Times April 14 1983.)

''We say to them from the heights of this mountain and from the perspective of thousands of years of history that they are like grasshoppers compared to us.''
(Isreali Prime Minister Yitshak Shamir to Jewish settlers, New York Times April 1, 1988.)

"We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters."
(Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion’s special adviser on Arab Affairs Uri Lubrani, 1960.)

"Israeli lives are worth more than Palestinian ones."
(British Mandate Palestine born Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.)

"The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews … is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle."
(First Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine Abraham Kook.)

"The killing by a Jew of a non-Jew, i.e. a Palestinian, is considered essentially a good deed, and Jews should therefore have no compunction about it."
(American born Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg.)

"There is a huge gap between us [Jews] and our enemies – not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbours here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy."
(Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001.)

“Jewish blood and a goy’s (gentile’s) blood are not the same.”
(Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, Inferring that killing isn’t murder if the victim is Gentile. Jerusalem Post, June 19,1989.
(Goy: Goyim, Gentile Christian or non Jew.))

"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial."
(British Mandate Palestine born Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.)

"Let us not be too familiar with the Arab Fellahin lest our children adopt their ways and learn from their ugly deeds. Let all those who are loyal to the Torah [Jewish scripture] avoid ugliness and that which resembles it and keep their distance from the fellahin and their base attributes."
Haganah (Zionist terrorist group) commander Moshe Smilansky. Fellahin is a derogatory name for the original Palestinian inhabitants, meaning labourers or peasants, who collectively owned and farmed the land.)

“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
(David Ben-Gurion.)

”If the General Assembly were to vote by 121 votes to 1 in favor of “Israel” returning to the armistice lines–
(pre June 1967 borders) Israel would refuse to comply with the decision.”
(Israeli Foreign Minister Aba Eban, New York Times June 19, 1967.)

“Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created State of Israel of the Freedom Party (Herut), a political party closely akin in its organization, method, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.”
(Albert Einstein and other well known Jewish Americans, New York Times, December 1948.)

"Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples."
(Republic of South Africa Year Book, 1977, during apartheid.)

"The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived here for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state."
(South African Prime Minister Hendrick Verwoerd, 1960s.)

"The Intifada is the Palestinian's people's war of national liberation. We [Israel] enthusiastically chose to become a colonialist society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the Occupied Territories, engaging in theft ... we established an apartheid regime."
(Attorney General of Israel Michael Ben-Yair.)
Brian was born in the bombed out wartime East End of London and developed an interest in political books early on. He worked in various technical fields for 20 years, all of which thoroughly bored him. He entered academic life (History and Classical Economics) and became an independent journalist, worked for the ANC (secret at the time) until the end of apartheid, and was a trade union representative in a large hospital. He is now retired and still works (when able) as an independent journalist.

Friday, March 30, 2018

2861. Ecological Destruction in the Name of Science

By Michelle Munjanattu, Left Voice, March 23, 2018

“They dazzle me with the tonnage of cotton or cocoa that has been exported, the acreage that has been planted with olive trees or grapevines.“I am talking about natural economies that have been disrupted — harmonious and viable economies adapted to the indigenous population — about food crops destroyed, malnutrition permanently introduced, agricultural development oriented solely toward the benefit of the metropolitan countries; about the looting of products, the looting of raw materials.”
From Discourse on Colonialism, Aime Cesaire
In his Discourse on Colonialism, Aime Cesaire describes how colonialism facilitated the whole-scale destruction of entire societies whose peoples and cultures offered insights into how we may live peacefully alongside nature and create a new world. He revealed how colonialism’s fixation with what is produced, without regard to the process of production, obscured the poverty, malnutrition, displacement, and environmental destruction necessitated by an increase in the export of raw materials.
Colonial endeavors far and wide were justified by their description as an effort to civilize barbaric natives, with the ultimate goal of replacing native models of agriculture, industry, and cuisine, among others, with preferred Western models, to facilitate the growth of markets for Western goods. To encourage this shift, traditional knowledge was cast as imprecise, deficient, and unreliable. These perceived gaps in indigenous knowledge could be solved by the adoption of scientific and western methods.
The effect of this deification of scientific knowledge means that alternative models based in tradition and indigenous knowledge are not viewed as complementary practices, but as competition for existing scientific models. It behooves us to view science as one of several methods of discerning realities about nature and our relationship to each other. An uncritical adoption of scientific knowledge obscures how colonial and profit motives often impact the integrity of such discoveries, as demonstrated below. And when the primacy of scientific and western models results in the removal of communities’ control over their own land and food, it deprives them of self-determination and cultural vibrancy.

The Origins of Scientific Forestry

James Scott’s Seeing Like a State opens with a fascinating case study of the origins of scientific forestry in the 18th century, relevant today because it became the basis of forest management techniques in Europe, the United States, and throughout the global South. Scott describes the early European state’s view of forests primarily as a source of revenue generation from timber. Using such a narrow lens, the state obscured other considerations in forest management: the trees, bushes, and plants that couldn’t be sold commercially as fodder, fruit, branches, roots, and more. The aim of the forest scientists was to “deliver the greatest possible constant volume of wood.”
To this end, scientists carefully counted and measured sample plots of trees, coming up with precise calculations of tree size and age under normal growth conditions. Scott reveals that state power utilized forest science and geometry to transform the living, diverse, old-growth woodlands into a new, more uniform forest. In pursuit of the ideal forest formed by scientific principles, underbrush was cleared, the number of species was reduced, and plantings were done in straight rows on large tracts. The archetypal German forest was seen as a victory of scientific control and management, and German forest science became the standard at the end of the 19th century.
However, within a century of adoption of this new forest model, the negative biological and commercial consequences of this anesthetized woodland became clear. The second generation of conifers were retrograde in quality, creating a considerable loss in timber available for sale. In examining the causes of this forest regression, it became clear that the first generation of trees had thrived off the incredibly nutrient-rich soil of the previous old-growth forest that it replaced. Once this soil was depleted, it resulted in a steep decline in growth rates. In the pursuit of an organized, manageable, and aesthetically pleasing forest, this German experiment disrupted a complex process of soil building, nutrient uptake, and an interdependent ecosystem of fungi, insects, mammals and flora.

Can Pine Trees Survive in Palestine?

Connected to this European forest legacy is the prevalence of pine trees in historic Palestine. In November 2016, 60,000 people had to evacuate their homes in the city of Haifa as forest fires threatened the city’s outskirts. A dozen smaller fires raged in forests throughout the country for over a week before Israeli firefighters were finally able to control them. Unsurprisingly, the Israeli government was quick to blame Palestinians, but a critical cause of these fires was the prevalence of pine trees in Israel’s forests, which are highly flammable, especially in Palestine’s very dry climate.
The reason behind the existence of pine trees in Palestine is part and parcel of Israel’s settler-colonialist project. As is well-documented, around 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland by Zionist paramilitary groups, and a majority of them before the official declaration of Israel’s independence (the Nakba) on May 15, 1948. Israel’s plan to ensure these Palestinian refugees could not return necessitated erasure of the violent process of ethnic cleansing that had birthed the state. So Israel undertook the minimizing of Palestinians’ historic presence, thereby demolishing the ruins of evicted and destroyed Palestinian villages in the 1950s.
Part of this sinister project utilized the forces of the Jewish National Fund, which from the beginning of the 20th century had been collecting money to plant and maintain forests in Palestine. Pine trees were chosen to provide a visual representation of Israeli exceptionalism and have the land appear as an extension of Europe.
Eager as the Israeli state was to erase Palestinians’ claims to the land, their haste to establish this through the construction of pine forests reveals the short-sightedness of the settler-colonial project. Palestinians, like other indigenous communities, know that their survival is intimately tied to the land and its fruits. Instead of approaching the terrain through the lens of control and subservience, there is an ethos of stewardship and an intimate knowledge of the land and seasons. In Palestine’s desert climate, its inhabitants sought to make the best use of rainfall to the region, whether through terracing of olive groves to protect against soil erosion and retain water, or through use of traditional methods to preserve soil moisture ahead of the summer growing season.
The Israeli project in Palestine has been absolutely devastating to its indigenous inhabitants, who are additionally impacted by the demise of Palestine’s indigenous flora and fauna. As the pine tree example demonstrates, there is a clear desire to depict Israel’s ability to transform the existing desert landscape as a victory of science and European standards. This manifests itself in nearly every sector of Israeli society. Specifically in terms of agriculture, the Israeli mythology about making the desert bloom obscures the fact that the state monopolizes the use of water resources (including in its own settlements) to create an export market for its agricultural products in Europe. This market for Israeli produce is artificially sustained by depriving Palestinians of water resources.
And what are the impacts of this artificially-sustained and resource-intensive Israeli agriculture? By creating a situation in which traditional Palestinian methods of sustainable agriculture cannot be followed, Israel continues to decimate ecological resources, from the soil to the water aquifers below ground. By enforcing “modern” methods of agriculture, there are few incentives for Palestinians to learn and preserve traditional agriculture, creating a dependency on chemical companies which supply seeds and fertilizers.
As the Palestinian agronomist Saad Dagher observes, an effect of Israeli agriculture in Palestine has been a decrease in the number of farmers and a concurrent loss of indigenous farming practices. Palestinians are struggling to meet their own food needs, and agricultural biodiversity has significantly decreased — Dagher states that more than 98 to 99 percent of Palestine’s figs and almonds have disappeared.

Preserving Indigenous Knowledge and Creating Possibilities for our Shared Survival

For those seeking answers to the question of how it is possible to materialize a post-capitalist, liberated society, part of this inquiry requires a willingness to scrutinize what is considered to be scientific “truth.” Another part of this inquiry will require respecting indigenous knowledge and practices, specifically those that highlight how people live in harmony with the land, and not in control over it.
There is a tendency for scientific and modern practices to be marketed as the only “valid” form of knowledge. When these practices are used to support colonial and capitalistic ventures, the intention is to depict native practices as deficient, thereby setting the stage for wholesale adoption of the “ideal” methods.
The error in forgetting or neglecting indigenous knowledge is that we will interpret our futures as completely delimited by capitalism’s demands. The reality is, capitalism and settler-colonialism cause a false crises of resources, rendering very few people (and flora and fauna) capable of survival. Indigenous approaches to agriculture are rooted in people living in harmony with the land and what it can offer, and exemplify more equitable and loving treatment of the earth and its inhabitants.

Resources and Further Reading

Lambert, Léopold. “Make the Desert Bloom”: Manufacturing the Israeli Territory Narrative.” April 7, 2015. https://thefunambulist.net/architectural-projects/palestine-make-the-desert-bloom-manufacturing-the-israeli-territorynarrative
Oberender, Svenja. “Traditional Farming in Palestine.” May 12, 2015.https://ps.boell.org/en/2015/05/12/traditional-farming-palestine
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.