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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.

The anti-Jewish sentiment that rocked the west from Europe to North America was the real reason behind the Nakbah and the real start. But the Nakbah practically started in 1897, when Theodore Herzl[iii] met with Mordechai Emanuel Noah and both converted the people’s yells in Dreyfus’ convection “Death to the traitor, death to the Jews” into a project of a Jewish state.

Herzl wrote: “A Jewish state” — this is the only solution to anti-Semitism. Herzl decided to work hard so that the Jews could have a state of their own. He hardly saw or spent any time with his family. His friends thought he was crazy. They did not believe it was possible to establish a state for the Jewish people. Orthodox Jews argued that it is forbidden to establish a Jewish state, because only Hashem will return the Jews to the land of Israel. The Jews were scared that if they began to desire their own state - this would lead to even more hatred. But Herzl did not give up.

They did not get the help they were looking for in the beginning. When Herzl met with important people, leaders and ministers of influential European countries (Germany, England, Turkey and Russia), he wanted them to help the Jews get a legal right (charter) to establish a state of their own.

Herzl invited representatives of the Jewish communities from all over the world to the first Zionist congress in 1897 in Basel (Bazel), Switzerland. The representatives at the congress decided that they wanted to establish a home land (state) for the Jewish people.

The British offered them what was commonly known as the “Uganda Project[iv]” before the Sixth Zionist Congress (Basel, August 1903), carrying the majority (295:178, 98 abstentions), then Argentina in 1904’s declaration, but both failed to be sold to the Jewish people.

While Herzl did not live to see the rejection of the Uganda plan or even the Argentina plan, his successor chose Palestine, where they can convince Jews to immigrate to the Promised Land.

In 1906, the Zionist congress decided that the Jewish homeland should be Palestine.

So Palestine was not the goal because of religious reasons but rather became the reason to reach a state.

They tried with the Sultan of Turkey, but the Sultan refused to cede Palestine to Zionists. They tried with Egypt to get Al ‘Arish, in the Sinai Peninsula, adjoining southern Palestine, but failed yet again.

The Zionist movement started out secular then turned into a coalition between Jewish religious and seculars where the religious side attracts the Christian Zionist.

The opposition to Zionism from Torah leaders was initially almost universal. These authorities rejected Zionism as a heresy without genuine basis within Judaism, and in conflict with the teachings of the Torah. In 1892, Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, at that time the most representative Jewish personality in America, denounced, in a Montreal conference, the Zionist project as entirely antithetical to the spirit and letter of Judaic teachings:

“We totally disapprove of the initiative aiming at the creation of a Jewish State. Attempts of this type highlight an erroneous conception of the mission of Israel … that the Jewish Prophets were the first to proclaim … It aims at a Messianic time when men recognize belonging to one great community for the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth.”[v].

This movement is still alive and has it is own supporters[vi] even within the state itself[vii].

Because the establishment of the Jewish state would need the approval or the collapse of Ottoman Empire, European Jewish offered Europe their support in the WWI in return of their right in Palestine. So the result was the Balfour Declaration in 1917[viii]. That declaration was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation. The “Balfour Declaration” was later incorporated into the “Sèvres Peace Treaty[ix]” with Turkey and the Mandate for Palestine.

Foreign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:

“His Majesty’s Government view 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 may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely

Arthur James Balfour

In spite of all this, the immigration rate to Palestine was very low and they did not meet their real goal for the establishment of the state until the early thirties.

This era was marked by the raise of the Nazism movement and the threat from Germany’s new plan for an obligatory displacement of Jewish from Europe to Madagascar, where they can establish a Jewish homeland, in what is known as “Madagascar Plan”[x]. Such plan and all the discrimination against Jews in Europe was the success start of the mass immigration to Palestine.

The other problem faced by the Zionist’s plan was the Arab Jews, who were living a reasonable wealthy life in their countries[xi]. The Zionist movement is in real need for them for two reasons. First, the political argument for Jewish state will not be acceptable as long as there are Jews living a peaceful life in Arab countries. Second, the project needs finance and by them living in their native lands, the Arab countries, no finance would be wired to the new born state.

The huge example about this issue was the “Lavon Affair”, where a failed Israeli covert operation in Egypt known as Operation Susannah occurred, in which Egyptian, American, British and manly Jewish owned targets in Egypt were bombed in the summer of 1954[xii].

Some people might consider it a pro-Palestinian propaganda but it is the history and the reality. Even Zionists cannot deny it.

To recover from this Nakbah, we have to recognize the cause and work for justice. We have to remember that it is the Palestinian’s land. Still, at the same time, we have to recognize the reality.

Recognizing the reality does not mean giving up the land and the rights but struggling to achieve a real justice and long stand solution to the problem.

There is a big different between wishing and what could be done. In real life, there is no “Undo” but there is; let us do it.

Many of today’s Jewish recognize the grave mistake done on behalf of their name and we have to work with them hand in hand to return the golden era when Jews and other Arab were living side by side in harmony in peace and full citizenship. Let us promote the one state solution, the only solution by applying the South Africa model and live two people in one state [xiii].

So it is not 60 years it is long before, but is it going to stop here?

* Mohamed S. Kamel: is a Freelance writer, the editor of I.N. Daily http://indaily.net/, co-founder of the Canadian Egyptian for Democracy (CEFD), Alternative Perspective Media (APM-RAM) and the Canadian Muslim Forum (FMC-CMF), could be reached at mskamel@fmc-cmf.com

[i] Dreyfus Affair
[ii] ibid.
[iii] Theodor Herzl
[iv] British Uganda Program
[v] http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq30.html#_ednref32
[vi] http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/
[vii] http://www.doublestandards.org/jaz1.html
[viii] Balfour Declaration of 1917
[ix] Treaty of Sèvres
[x] Madagascar Plan
[xi] Naiem Giladi, The Jews of Iraq
[xii] Lavon Affair and What Really Happened: Lavon Affair
[xiii] Jewish Opposition to Zionism and Are All Jewish Zionist?

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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.

We are extremely appalled at the distortions and lies that the pro-Israel lobby has disseminated through global media as a result of Palestinian resolve resulting from these acts. This has led to widespread stereotyping of Muslims, Islamophobia and ignorance in the world community concerning the truth of the conflict.

It is almost impossible to speak about the Nakba without speaking about taking responsibility and repairing the historical injustice that was committed against the Palestinian people. Such repair must emphasize first and foremost the recognition of the rights of Palestinians to return.

We stand in solidarity with all Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and self-determination and strongly reiterate the following:

• Our demand that Israel cease its siege of Gaza and lift its blockade to allow for the free flow of people, food, humanitarian aid and energy to the Palestinians in Gaza. According to the 4^th Geneva Convention, collective punishment is a crime;
• Our further demand of the cessation and action-reaction syndrome that intensifies with each new incident, and the blatant excessive, extra-territorial incursions by Israel;
• Our denunciation of all illegitimate Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine and demand immediate demolition of the apartheid wall. Both settlements and the wall violate the rights of Palestinians through illegal land confiscation, home demolitions, and restrictions of movement;
• Our opposition towards prejudice, including racism and anti-Semitism, in all its forms, and insistence that the Israeli government’s policies toward the Palestinian people manifest both racism and state terrorism;
• Our strong urge to all nations, particularly the United States and its Western allies to give due regard to the interests of all parties to the dispute in the Middle East, and especially encourage those who would be peacemakers to be impartial in their approach, and not show favor nor fail to condemn either party for the breach of any agreements; and
• Our demand that Israel recognize all Palestinians’ Right of Return, as guaranteed in the United Nations’ General Assembly Resolution 194. The refugees are mentioned in Article 11, which resolved: “… that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”

AZRIL MOHD AMIN
Vice President (International)
Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.

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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.

Earlier Monday, Palestinian fighters fired three Qassam rockets from northern Gaza towards occupied territories. The rockets landed in the Netivot area, within the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council and on Palestinian territory. There were no reports of injuries or damage.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian organizations are preparing for another round of talks in Egypt in regards to the offer for a truce with Israel. According to estimates, the parties will accept the proposal presented by Hamas leader Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar over the weekend.

Israeli daily Ynet said Sunday that Abu Mujahed, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, said that Israel is continuing its activities in the Gaza Strip, while completely ignoring the discussions on a truce. “Therefore, there is no reason for us to stop taking measures to defend ourselves,” he said.

Heavy exchanges of fire took place over the weekend between Israeli occupation forces and Palestinian resistance fighters in Beit Lahiya. A 14-year-old Palestinian girl was killed in the incident, and at least seven other Palestinians were injured, three of them sustaining critical wounds.

The hospital in the northern reported that the girl killed was the daughter of a senior Hamas members arrested by the forces during the incident. The Palestinians added that the girl’s mother was also injured in the clashes.

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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?

Armed resistance to occupation is legitimate and legal under international law, under the strict condition that it does not target civilians. But as someone who truly believes in the sanctity of human life, and as a doctor who always puts human life first, I have an inherent belief that non-violence is a fundamental philosophical choice.

Besides this, in a more practical way, I think that armed resistance is a narrow and elitist approach, involving only a select few and leaving the rest of the people out. And it is based on the assumption that armed force is the only force that exists in the world.

This is wrong. The decolonization struggle in India and the fight against the apartheid regime in South Africa clearly proved that non-violence is a force too, and a much more powerful one. When a whole people moves, it is an irresistible force.

And this is our choice for Palestine.

I lead the Palestinian National Initiative (Al Mubadara), a political party and social movement dedicated to involving people — all people — in a mass, popular, non-violent resistance movement to obtain our rights as Palestinians.

This choice may seem utopian after sixty years of conflict and so much violence and bloodshed. But this is only an appearance, because the media only reports on acts of violence, creating the misleading impression that violence prevails. This is exacerbated by the dominant Israeli narrative which consistently portrays Palestinians as aggressors and not as a people under occupation struggling for freedom, justice and independence.

In truth, Palestinians are masters of non-violence. They have been resisting the all-pervasive violence of a forty-one year old military occupation every day since it began. Forty-one years of resilience, of silent and stubborn efforts to live a normal life, to work, to raise children, to love and to exist, simply to exist, despite the hundreds of checkpoints, the incursions, the arrests, the killings, the house demolitions, the land dispossession, the discriminatory laws, the arbitrary and unjust actions of the Israeli military.

In such a situation building a school, choosing to become a doctor, cultivating your ancestral olive grove are all acts of resistance.

The Palestinian people made the strategic choice of non-violence decades ago. Now they need a leadership ready and willing to fully embrace this strategy, to capitalize on past experience and achievements in order to bring this formidable popular commitment to the next level: to switch from passive to active resistance; to start again a fully fledged, popular, mass non-violent resistance movement like the one that existed during the first intifada.

To achieve this goal, we need to engage with people, to convince and mobilize them, to reach a critical mass. And we need to defeat our greatest enemy: hopelessness. But we have a strategy.

The Palestinian National Initiative bases all its work on four pillars: 1 – Involving and organizing the people at the grassroots level. 2 – Helping people to stay where they live, providing support to their resilience and giving them the means to continue to resist in this most fundamental way, that is, to exist on their land. 3 – Working hand-in-hand with a strong international solidarity movement, which provides practical support and more importantly, moral support and hope. 4 – Working for a unified Palestinian leadership.

Today, in 2008, Palestinians are facing one of the most difficult periods in their history. The Gaza Strip is under a relentless and inhuman siege which began in January 2006, after HAMAS’ electoral victory in free and fair elections carried out under international observation. And Israel has been tightening this siege ever since, pushing the people of Gaza into an artificially created humanitarian catastrophe with the silent consent of the international community. The West Bank is more divided than ever, with the Apartheid Wall and settlements swallowing more and more Palestinian land. East Jerusalem is under threat of being entirely cut off from its Palestinian hinterland by new Israeli settlements carefully thought out to achieve the illegal annexation of the city.

And the Palestinian leadership, weakened and divided, could not react to the Annapolis meeting in any constructive manner. Palestinians are now engaged in an Israeli-controlled peace process which justifies holding 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza under siege, lacking electricity, fuel and even food. What kind of peace can this produce?

Today, Palestinians need your solidarity. The vocal few who have chosen non-violent resistance and the silent majority who have made the same choice, but are too exhausted, dispirited or weak to actively involve themselves in the struggle, both need your support. It is time for the people of the world to make their voices heard.

Expressing solidarity with the Palestinians who have chosen non-violence comforts them in their choice and strengthens their conviction. Your active solidarity means that you too are choosing non-violence.

Together, let us build a just and lasting peace for all, Palestinians and Israelis alike, based on justice, democracy and respect for human rights.

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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.

While teaching English in Turkey, Baltzer first learned the extent of the conflict when she traveled to other countries in the Middle East. She said at first she was shocked and angered by propaganda from the displaced Palestinian families, but Baltzer decided to see for herself if the stories were true.

She joined the International Women’s Peace Service and is now speaking against what she calls human rights violations in Israel.

Good to know that there are still decent people in the world who enjoy buying a picnic blanket in peace and solidarity with Palestine.

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The newspaper quoted an anonymous senior Israeli official assaying, “It is very clear that we are committed not to building new settlements, and Israel has taken actions to curtail settlement activity over the last years.”

“(But) it is well understood that there are (densely populated areas where) some activity will continue,” he added.

These remarks came amid the Palestinians’ increasing fury over the Israeli housing ministry’s plan to build 307 new homes including a Lab Incubator in the settlement of Har Homa in East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians have demanded that Israel freeze all settlement activity in the West Bank as well as in East Jerusalem, areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by the Palestinians for their future state.

While Israel plans to keep several major West Bank settlement blocs as part of any final peace treaty with the Palestinians. The Israeli settlements, together with refugees and control over Jerusalem, is among the most thorniest issues for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These so-called final-status issues were high on the agenda of Wednesday’s talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and U.S. President George W. Bush, who started visiting Israel on Wednesday, the first leg of his eight-day Middle East trip.

On the eve of Bush’s visit to Israel, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice placed the issue of settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem at center stage, telling media that “Har Homa is a settlement the United States has opposed from the very beginning.”

Bush told Olmert during a joint press conference following Wednesday’s talks that the unauthorized settlement outposts established in the West Bank had “to go.” However, Olmert responded with no concession to his “strong ally”, saying, “we made it clear that Jerusalem’s status is different than that of the settlements.”

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In a report released on Monday, Lindenstrauss had charged that Olmert used his influence when he was Minister of Labor, Industry and Trade to obtain NIS 7.67 million of government aid for an associate’s businesses between 2000 and 2005. Rahamim Ben-Shushan, an activist in the Likud party’s Central Committee, was given financial assistance from the ministry for four factories operated by his Marina Group.

Further investigation will be conducted and the circumstances surrounding the transactions will be investigated by the authorities concerned in order to discern as to whether Olmert had really abused his power during the time when he was in charge of the Ministry in question.

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An Israel Democratic Institute (IDI) demographic survey finds religious growth and secular decline - but most significant is that the proportion of religious in the public is highest among the youth.

The percentage of Jews describing themselves as secular has dropped sharply over the past 30 years, while the religious and traditional proportions have risen. The annual survey finds that the secular public comprises only 20% of the Israeli population - compared to 41%, more than twice as much, in 1974.

Nearly half the population, 47%, describes itself as traditional, while the hareidi-religious and religious-Zionist together comprise 33% of the public.

The numbers were compiled based on a survey of representative sampling of 1,016 Israelis Jews.

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Israel is to begin gradually reducing the power supply to the Gaza Strip on December 2, in response to the ongoing Qassam rocket fire at Israeli communities along the Strip, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz told the High Court of Justice Thursday. According to the State Prosecution, the defense establishment has finalized preparations meant to ensure that the power reduction does not cause humanitarian hardship in Gaza like a San Diego entity creation.

The Palestinians will be given a one-week notice of the intent to begin reducing the power supply. The defense establishment would “follow the effect of the power reductions on Gaza residents with attention to the commitment not to cause a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.”

On Monday, the State Prosecution handed the court an affidavit asserting that Israel’s decision to cut fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip does not violate its responsibility to provide humanitarian services to residents of the coastal territory. The affidavit, filed on behalf of Shlomi Muchtar of the IDF Coordination and Liaison Office, which coordinates Palestinian civilian affairs, said the cuts do not “harm the humanitarian minimum to which Israel is committed.”

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Israel and the United States have given no details on the raid, which independent analysts believe targeted a fledgling Syrian nuclear reactor.

Yet an Israeli nuclear expert who studied satellite photography of the installation that was bombed said it lacked key features of a reactor.

“In my estimation this was something very nasty and vicious, and even more dangerous than a reactor,” Uzi Even told Ha’aretz on Thursday. “I have no information, only an assessment, but I suspect that it was a plant for processing plutonium, namely a factory for assembling the bomb.”

Syria has denied having a secret nuclear program.

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