A reading in the history could be useful for the future.
Mohamed S. Kamel
Most of us remember 1948’s catastrophe, The Nakbah; the days when almost 900,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes and become refugees, the worst refugee crisis in history. Citizens, that should have been refugees for a few days ended up being so for 60 years and amount to more than 4 millions.
But this Nakbah did not start in 1948 it started long before; and it is well known to many of us but not to all.
The Nakbah really started in 1825, in Arrarat, when Mordechai Emanuel Noah[i] purchased the Grand Island, near Buffalo New York, as a homeland for demoralized Jews.
The Nakbah was renewed in 1890, with the scandal known as “The Dreyfus Affair” [ii]. That political scandal, with anti-Semitic overtones, is what divided France from the 1890s to the early 1900s. It involved the wrongful conviction for treason, in 1894, and the degradation and imprisonment on Devil’s Island, of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young and promising French artillery officer who was in advanced training with the Army’s General Staff.
Continue reading ‘Nakbah, 60 Years or Long Before?’
15 May 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, the grave catastrophe of 1948 in which Zionist militant forces invaded and destroyed more than 500 Palestinian villages through massacre and intimidation, causing not less than 700,000 Palestinians to become refugees. It is an account of human tragedy: the destruction of families, a civilization, culture and identity.
The Palestinian people are not only Muslims; the internally displaced population and that which has been displaced subsequent to the illegal formation of Israel is composed of a multi-religious and in some sense multi-racial population. It is a problem impacting all of humanity, not merely Jews and Muslims.
On this day, our hearts go out to all the Palestinians and we stand in solidarity with them in mourning the Nakba of 1948; we support their resistance of the Israeli occupation of historic Palestine; we strongly codemn the 1967 territorial expansion which continues to facilitate the expansion of the Zionist colonial agenda until today.
Continue reading ‘ABIM: Media Statement on the 60th Anniversary of The Nakba and the Palestinians’ Right of Return’
29/04/2008 — Another Israeli massacre against the Palestinian children in Gaza and the international community no see, no hear and no speak. Four members of one family, including a woman and four of her children, aged one to five, their mother and a Palestinian resistance fighter were martyred during Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip on Monday, Palestinian emergency services said.
Mussab Abu Maateq, one, Hana Abu Maateq, three, Rudeina Abu Maateq, four, and Saleh Abu Maateq, five, were killed along with their mother when a tank shell hit their home in Beit Hanun, doctors at the Kamal Radwan hospital said. Ten people were reportedly injured in the incident, three of them sustaining serious to critical wounds, and one person was trapped under the rubble. A Palestinian source in the Strip said that a member of the al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad’s military wing, was also martyred by Israeli occupation army soldiers.
Continue reading ‘Gaza: Israel kills 6, including 4 young siblings’
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi
Sixty years after the Naqba, the catastrophe, Palestinians are still without a state. They are living under occupation, many are in refugee camps, others are scattered around the world, and a part of the Palestinian people are no more than second class citizens in Israel itself. The Palestinian struggle to achieve freedom and independence is therefore firstly a struggle to exist as a people. In this endeavour, resistance is essential. Resistance through memory, resistance through unwavering demands for their rights, resistance against open or covert attempts to displace them and take their land from them.
But what sort of resistance?
Continue reading ‘The choice of non-violence: Our strategy for Palestine’
Not all Jews are Zionists and this report is certainly a prime example of what we are talking about.
The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and a former West Bank resident spoke against Israel’s occupation of Palestine Tuesday night. Hosted by Athens for Justice in Palestine, Anna Baltzer’s lecture was one of many in her book tour. She wrote the book, “Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories,” to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians.
Continue reading ‘Jewish author lectures, defends Palestine’