Dorothy Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Dear Friends,

Tonight’s message has 8 items, several of them extraordinary ones.

They begin with Tony Greenstein’s report of UCU rejecting an EUMC=Zionist definition of anti-Semitism.  I apologize for duplications of this piece.

Item 2 is about hearing aids.  Now while this project of bringing hearing aids to Palestinians is itself praiseworthy, the first question that arose in my head after reading the piece was ‘why are hearing aids unavailable in the West Bank?’  It surely isn’t because Palestinians are less capable than Israelis of buying them from companies that make them.  I wonder if the lack could possibly have anything to do with the occupation and Israel’s refusal to allow free movement of goods?

Items 3 and 4 are from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.  In item 3 the PCHR calls for an investigation of the circumstances that caused serious injury to a prisoner who had to be hospitalized in intensive care due to his injuries.  In item 4 the PCHR justly condemns Israel for holding government meetings in East Jerusalem!

Item 5 is ‘Today in Palestine.’  When you come to it, you will see that I ask you to pay specific attention to a certain part of it and particularly to a given event, namely the detention of a child.

Item 6 is a longish opinion piece of the first order: Joseph Massad queries, ‘Are Palestinian children less worthy,’ the implication being ‘than Israeli children?’  Indeed, all children are worthy by virtue of the fact that they are children.  But apparently President Obama and others have problems in realizing this.

In item 7 Robert Fisk comes down hard on President Obama in “Who cares in the Middle East about what Obama says?”

And finally item 8 takes us to Lifta, a Palestinian village which has laid in ruins since 1948 when the Israeli army chased out its residents.  Now the Israeli government wants to tear the remains down and build a luxury complex.  Please watch the video as well as read the report.

Lifta is not the only village whose ruins remain, though perhaps it is the most complete one still standing.  One can find ruins of Palestinian homes in present Israeli cities as Ramleh and Haifa, and find ruins of churches and mosques that Palestinians still try to use, though prohibited, in villages that they are not allowed to return to.  These Palestinians are termed ‘internal refugees’ as opposed to those who were chased out of  or who left what became Israel and are called ‘refugees.’   Internal refugees desire to return to their villages no less than do the refugees abroad.  Please watch the video that accompanies the report about Lifta.

All the best,

Dorothy

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1.  Tony Greenstein’s Blog

Socialist, anti-Zionist, anti-racist

http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2011/05/university-college-union-rejects-eumc.html

Monday, 30 May 2011University & College Union Rejects EUMC-Zionist Definition of Anti-Semitism

UCU Defies Threats and Blackmail

Wonderful news from UCU. The European Union Monitoring Committee Report on Anti-Semitism, which came from the American Jewish Committee, a group which opposed another Boycott in the 1930’s – the trade union & Jewish labour movement boycott of Nazi Germany – has repeatedly been used as a weapon deployed against all critics of Israel, including Jewish anti-Zionists.

It is no wonder that the Zionist Community Security Trust, presided over by Gerald Ronson, the far-right owner of Britain’s biggest private company, Heron Ltd., David Hirsch, to say nothing of the EDL supporting, Muslim hating, Harry’s Place have complained so bitterly about this rejection.

What does the EUMC actually say? That ‘antisemitism; includes:

‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour’

Now this is strange. Accusing the Jews of being one people was always an anti-Semitic notion. It was the anti-Semites who held that a Jew might be Polish but s/he belonged elsewhere ‘Jews to Palestine’ was their favourite slogan. The idea that Chinese, British and Argentinian Jews, all of whom speak different languages and hold to different customs, are members of the same people was a shorthand for race.

So we have the absurd position whereby a definition of anti-Semitism is itself anti-Semitic!!

The EUMC definition goes on to hold that ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’ is also anti-Semitic. But who is it who regularly makes comparisons between Israel’s actions and the Nazis if not the Zionists. When Matan Vilnai, Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister promised a ‘bigger Shoah (Holocaust)’ for the Palestinians of Gaza he was as good as his word when a few months later1,400 civilians were murdered including 400 ‘terrorist’ children. But noone accused him of anti-Semitism.

The EUMC definition wasn’t deployed against Vilnai. It was used exclusively against Palestinians and their supporters who compared Israel’s actions to that of the Nazis, in particular the Warsaw Ghetto. In Brighton this included a Police attack on a demonstration.

When retired Israeli Judge Ben-Itto stated how ‘We must learn from the Nazis’

I can’t remember the outcry about anti-Semitism. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is reserved solely for Palestinians and the victims of Israel’s barbarism, not against its perpetrators. The EUMC is merely a propaganda weapon in Israel’s arsenal. Even the hapless Richard Goldstone was accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ by Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz for his Report on the genocide in Gaza.

And the final irony of this absurd and pretentious report, beloved by cold war warriors and Zionists like Dennis McShane MP is ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.’ Now who holds Jews responsible for Israel’s actions and labels those of us who are anti-Zionist Jews as ‘traitors’. Please do tell. Ah yes, those who helped formulate this report!

I can’t remember Zionists protesting when on 9th January 2009 the Jewish (read Zionist) Board of Deputies of British Jews decided to hold a demonstration in Trafalgar Square to back Israel’s War on Lebanon under the title “Community to Show Support for Israel at Trafalgar Square Rally.” Strange that. A definition that is only partially applied is not a definition but a propaganda weapon. Today the EUMC has all but been dropped such is its obvious bias.

At a time when the fascist English Defence League demonstrates alongside Zionists in support of Israel and every far right party of significance in Europe, apart from the Hungarian Jobbik Party, supports Israel and Zionism, it is clear that whatever else its purpose, the EUMC definition isn’t about anti-Semitism but defending Israel. No better supporters are there than Michel Kaminski of the Polish Justice and Freedom Party, who opposed the Polish state apologising for the massacre of hundreds of Jews in 1941 at Jedwabne, burnt alive in their synagogue and not forgetting Robert Ziles of the Latvian Freedom & Fatherland Party, which commemorates the butchers of the Latvian SS every yeaer. But the EUMC Definition of Anti-Semitism never seems to apply to these people!

Well done UCU and in particular Sue Blackwell, Mike Cushman, Tom Hickey and all the other stalwarts in Bricup who proposed this. Note how the Zionist threats that ‘Jews’ will resign now from UCU doesn’t ever seem to include anti-Zionist Jews! Zionists and racists are always welcome to resign when they can’t accept democracy.

Below is the resolution which was passed:

70 EUMC working definition of anti-semitism – National Executive Committee

Congress notes with concern that the so-called ‘EUMC working definition of antisemitism’, while not adopted by the EU or the UK government and having no official status, is being used by bodies such as the NUS and local student unions in relation to activities on campus.

Congress believes that the EUMC definition confuses criticism of Israeli government policy and actions with genuine antisemitism, and is being used to silence debate about Israel and Palestine on campus.

Congress resolves:

1. that UCU will make no use of the EUMC definition (e.g. in educating members or dealing with internal complaints)

2. that UCU will dissociate itself from the EUMC definition in any public discussion on the matter in which UCU is involved

3. that UCU will campaign for open debate on campus concerning Israel’s past history and current policy, while continuing to combat all forms of racial or religious discrimination

Posted by Tony Greenstein at 17:52   0 comments:

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2.  Hearing Aids [forwarded by Annelien]

One thousand and eighty children and adults from all over the West-Bank who suffer from hearing problems were presented with hearing aids in a cooperative project of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, the Sheba Hospital, Tel-Hashomer and the Starkey Foundation.

In response to a request by Professor Rafi Walden, vice-director of the Sheba Medical Center and member of the board of PHR, that PHR is willing to take upon itself to locate appropriate patients and the organization of the project in the West-Bank, the director of medical activities of PHR, Mr. Salah Hay Yihye, started to coordinate this very complex campaign. He contacted dozens of volunteers in hundreds of Palestinian villages and refugee camps in the different districts of the West-Bank. Among these volunteers were many from Mutual Help Organizations, the Palestinian Medical Relief Organization, Organizations for Rehabilitation of the Handicapped, and other Charitable Institutions. After one month of intensive field work, thousands of requests for hearing aids were received. The working group at Starkey decided that for the present project some thousand instruments could be allocated, and therefore the requests were screened by the Hearing Institute at the Ear-Nose-Throat Department of Sheba Hospital. All files were examined and the Starkey work group, in conjunction with The Sheba Staff, traveled to Tulkarem for the first phase of the project. The Palestinian Ministry of Education and the Haled Bin-Said School volunteered to host the project and the Security Forces maintained order.

The first phase: 4-6 of April, 2011 – PHR, Sheba Hospital and the group from Starkey worked at the Haled Bin-Said School in Tulkarem. During these three days patients were invited for preparatory investigation and fitting of hearing aids. 950 persons were examined by the different crews and imprints of their external ear canals were taken in order for the Starkey group to prepare the hearing instruments in the U.S.

The second phase: 24-26 of May, 2011 – Professor Rafi Walden and Salah Hay Yihyeh worked hard to free the shipment of hearing aids from customs in order to have them available in Tulkarem for the arrival of the Starkey group. Only at 8 p.m. the shipment arrived at its destination, and for hours after that, until one o’clock at night, Salah busied himself to prepare the allotment of the right instrument for the right patient. One day ahead of the campaign, the school was prepared with a waiting area and shaded seating, and examination corners for the patients. On the first day of  distribution of the hearing aids some fifty persons, medical personnel and the media, arrived from the Tel-Aviv area to Tulkarem. After some delay at the checkpoint (the soldiers were not informed of the permits the delegations were issued ahead of time) we arrived at the school court. The patients were seated already in exemplary order and quiet.

The day was opened with a warm reception by the foremen of the Palestinian Authority and representatives of the Institutions and Organizations from the West-Bank who praised the campaign and those associated with the project. An especially moving moment occurred when Mr. Salah Hay Yihyeh was presented with a certificate of merit in gratitude for his untiring efforts towards the well-being of the Palestinian inhabitants during the 23 years of the existence of PHR.

The three days of fitting the hearing aids were strewn with moving moments when we saw how the faces of children and old people changed and a wide smile lit up their lips. Children, who before were reluctant and refrained from going to school, can now join their peers in class. These smiles and their emotions, and of their parents, filled us with pride and immense satisfaction. Also parents of prisoners came to tell us and thank us that they will be able to hear their children well, who until now had to shout at them across the wall separating them during their visits.

On May 26^th at 18:30 this complex project was terminated – a project, the first of its kind in the West-Bank – in a moving ceremony involving Starkey, Sheba and PHR and dozens of volunteers. All expressed their intense satisfaction with this action. Our Palestinian coworkers mentioned that this campaign became the subject of the day in the territories. The Starkey group promised that they will repeat this campaign in the near future.

(Translation EK).

=======================================

3.

PCHR Palestinian Centre for Human Rights Press Release

Ref: 48/2011

Date: 30 May 2011

PCHR Condemns Israeli Government’s Meeting in the Old City of Jerusalem and Its Decision to Allocate Additional Amounts of Money to Create Jewish Demographic Majority in Occupied Jerusalem

In a blatant challenge to the international community, and US President Barack Obama’s statement relating to his vision for the resolution of the Palestinian cause, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu held a government meeting on Sunday, 30 May 2011, near the Tower of David in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem, where “a plan to strengthen the status of Jerusalem” as a tourist city, and as a center for scientific, development and industrial research was approved. The plan allocates US$ 100 million for this purpose over the next five years.

This meeting came on the eve of the anniversary of the June 1967 war, and the occupation and annexation of Jerusalem to Israel in violation of the international law.  This action is just one of many actions by the Israeli government to ensure Jewish domination and a Jewish majority in the city. This motivation is evident because some of the funded projects will ‘renovate’ historic sites in an effort to highlight a Jewish history at the expense of any other historical narrative.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns holding the meeting of the Israeli government in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem, and also the planning and implementation of new projects that are aimed to undermine the historical nature of the city in effort to achieve a Judaization of the city. These actions constitute an insolent provocation for the whole international community.  PCHR emphasizes that the failure of the international community to confront the Israeli government’s policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and the permanent impunity granted by successive US administrations, including the administration of President Obama, to these polices undoubtedly encourage Israel to continue its policies at the expense of international law and the realization of international justice for the Palestinian people.

PCHR strongly condemns all Israeli settlement activities and other arbitrary measures in occupied East Jerusalem, and:

1)      Confirms that East Jerusalem is an integral part of the Palestinian Territory that was occupied by Israel on the 5^thof June 1967;

2)      Emphasizes that all settlement activities in occupied East Jerusalem constitute a war crime under international humanitarian law;

3)      Stresses that all measures taken by the Israeli occupation authorities following the occupation of the city, the Israeli Knesset’s decision on 28 June 1967 to apply Israeli law and jurisdiction over the occupied city, its decision on 30 July 1980 which stated “all united Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” and the decision to expand the boundaries of the city explicitly violate the international law and United Nations resolutions;

4)      All decisions taken, plans, and policies implemented by the Israeli occupation authorities in occupied East Jerusalem will not change the legal status of the city;

5)      Measures taken by the Israeli occupation authorities in Jerusalem will serve to escalate the volatile situation in the OPT.

Accordingly:

1)      PCHR calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, jointly or individually, to fulfill their legal and moral obligations to ensure respect for the Convention by Israel in the OPT, according to Article 1 of the Convention. PCHR believes that the conspiracy of silence practiced by international community encourages Israel to act as a State above the law and to perpetrate more violations of international human rights law and humanitarian law, including measures to create a Jewish demographic majority in occupied East Jerusalem.

2)      PCHR calls upon the international community to immediately intervene to compel the Israeli government to stop all settlement activities in the OPT, including in occupied East Jerusalem.

3)      PCHR calls upon the EU and/or Member States to activate Article 2 of the Euro-Israel Association Agreement, which sets Israel’s respect for human rights as a precondition for economic cooperation between the two sides. PCHR appeals to the EU Member States to stop dealing with Israeli goods and commodities, especially those produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the OPT.

Public Document

***********************************

Pchr_e mailing list
[email protected]
http://pchrgaza.ps/mailman/listinfo/pchr_e_pchrgaza.ps

====================================

4.

PCHR Palestinian Centre for Human Rights Press Release

Ref: 48/2011

Date: 30 May 2011

PCHR Condemns Israeli Government’s Meeting in the Old City of Jerusalem and Its Decision to Allocate Additional Amounts of Money to Create Jewish Demographic Majority in Occupied Jerusalem

In a blatant challenge to the international community, and US President Barack Obama’s statement relating to his vision for the resolution of the Palestinian cause, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu held a government meeting on Sunday, 30 May 2011, near the Tower of David in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem, where “a plan to strengthen the status of Jerusalem” as a tourist city, and as a center for scientific, development and industrial research was approved. The plan allocates US$ 100 million for this purpose over the next five years.

This meeting came on the eve of the anniversary of the June 1967 war, and the occupation and annexation of Jerusalem to Israel in violation of the international law.  This action is just one of many actions by the Israeli government to ensure Jewish domination and a Jewish majority in the city. This motivation is evident because some of the funded projects will ‘renovate’ historic sites in an effort to highlight a Jewish history at the expense of any other historical narrative.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns holding the meeting of the Israeli government in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem, and also the planning and implementation of new projects that are aimed to undermine the historical nature of the city in effort to achieve a Judaization of the city. These actions constitute an insolent provocation for the whole international community.  PCHR emphasizes that the failure of the international community to confront the Israeli government’s policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and the permanent impunity granted by successive US administrations, including the administration of President Obama, to these polices undoubtedly encourage Israel to continue its policies at the expense of international law and the realization of international justice for the Palestinian people.

PCHR strongly condemns all Israeli settlement activities and other arbitrary measures in occupied East Jerusalem, and:

1)      Confirms that East Jerusalem is an integral part of the Palestinian Territory that was occupied by Israel on the 5^thof June 1967;

2)      Emphasizes that all settlement activities in occupied East Jerusalem constitute a war crime under international humanitarian law;

3)      Stresses that all measures taken by the Israeli occupation authorities following the occupation of the city, the Israeli Knesset’s decision on 28 June 1967 to apply Israeli law and jurisdiction over the occupied city, its decision on 30 July 1980 which stated “all united Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” and the decision to expand the boundaries of the city explicitly violate the international law and United Nations resolutions;

4)      All decisions taken, plans, and policies implemented by the Israeli occupation authorities in occupied East Jerusalem will not change the legal status of the city;

5)      Measures taken by the Israeli occupation authorities in Jerusalem will serve to escalate the volatile situation in the OPT.

Accordingly:

1)      PCHR calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, jointly or individually, to fulfill their legal and moral obligations to ensure respect for the Convention by Israel in the OPT, according to Article 1 of the Convention. PCHR believes that the conspiracy of silence practiced by international community encourages Israel to act as a State above the law and to perpetrate more violations of international human rights law and humanitarian law, including measures to create a Jewish demographic majority in occupied East Jerusalem.

2)      PCHR calls upon the international community to immediately intervene to compel the Israeli government to stop all settlement activities in the OPT, including in occupied East Jerusalem.

3)      PCHR calls upon the EU and/or Member States to activate Article 2 of the Euro-Israel Association Agreement, which sets Israel’s respect for human rights as a precondition for economic cooperation between the two sides. PCHR appeals to the EU Member States to stop dealing with Israeli goods and commodities, especially those produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the OPT.

Public Document

**************************************

For more information please call PCHR office in Gaza, Gaza Strip, on +972 8 2824776 – 2825893

PCHR, 29 Omer El Mukhtar St., El Remal, PO Box 1328 Gaza, Gaza Strip. E-mail: [email protected], Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org

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5.  Today in Palestine http://www.theheadlines.org/11/29-05-11.shtml

Do not miss the section on “Land, property, resources, theft, and destruction/Ethnic Cleansing/settlers

One of the items of particular interest there is Joseph Dana’s report about police arresting an 8 year old Palestinian child. EIGHT YEARS OLD!

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6.  Al Jazeera,

30 May 2011

Are Palestinian children less worthy?

Although Palestinian children endure lives of suffering, Obama’s love for their Israeli counterparts knows no limit.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/201152911579533291.html

Joseph Massad

During the first and second intifada, more than 700 Palestinian children were killed, and a further 313 children died in the Israeli shelling of Gaza in December 2008-July 2009 [GALLO/GETTY]

What is it about Jewish and Arab children that privileges the first and spurns the second in the speeches of President Barack Obama, let alone in the Western media more generally? Are Jewish children smarter, prettier, whiter? Are they deserving of sympathy and solidarity, denied to Arab children, because they are innocent and unsullied by the guilt of their parents, themselves often referred to as “the children of Israel”? Or, is it that Arab children are dangerous, threatening, guilty, even dark and ugly, a situation that can only lead to Arabopaedophobia – the Western fear of Arab children?

Innocence and childhood are common themes in Western political discourse, official and unofficial. While it is a truism to state that since the end of European colonialism the US and Europe have been, at the official and unofficial levels, friendly to and supportive of the Zionist colonial project and hostile to Palestinians and Arabs in their resistance to Zionism, the expectation would be that a West that insists rhetorically on the “universalism” of its values would show at least a rhetorical commitment to the equality of Arab and Jewish children as victims of the violence visited on the region by Zionist colonialism and the resistance to it. Yet, the only Western sympathy manifest is to Jewish children as symbols of Zionist and Israeli innocence. This Western sympathy is deployed primarily to denounce Arab guilt, including the guilt of Arab children.

Indeed, the only time Arab children received any sympathy at all in the West was a few years ago when Israeli and US propaganda outlets, official and unofficial alike, mounted a major propaganda campaign to save these children from their barbaric Arab and Palestinian parents, who allegedly trained them to commit violent acts, or who unlovingly placed them in the middle of danger, sacrificing them for their violent political goals. It was not Israel who was to blame for killing Palestinian children, but the children’s own uncaring and cruel parents who placed them in the path of Israeli Jewish bullets, which left Israeli Jews no choice but to kill them. This of course is an old Israeli casuistry used to justify Israel’s carnage of Palestinians. Golda Meir had famously articulated the workings of Israel’s Jewish conscience thus: “We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.”

In the official discourse of post-World War II US power, Jewish children have been often invoked to illustrate the innocence of Israel, a tradition carried faithfully by Barack Obama’s rhetoric. Refusing to even acknowledge Arab children as victims of Israel, on June 4, 2009, Obama told Arabs in his Cairo speech: “It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.” He reiterated this in his May 19, 2011 “winds of change” speech, declaring: “For decades, the conflict between Israelis and Arabs has cast a shadow over the region. For Israelis, it has meant living with the fear that their children could get blown up on a bus or by rockets fired at their homes, as well as the pain of knowing that other children in the region are taught to hate them.”

A Gazan boy sells vegetables in the rain after the Israeli blockade crushed the economy in the coastal territory [GALLO/GETTY]

Later that week, in his speech to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on May 22, Obama expressed sympathy with the hardship colonising Jews experience while appropriating the lands of the Palestinians: “I saw the daily struggle to survive in the eyes of an eight-year old [Jewish] boy who lost his leg to a Hamas rocket.” He averred that the US and Israel, presumably unlike Palestinians or Arabs more generally, “both seek a region where families and their children can live free from the threat of violence”.

Endorsing Israel’s illegal occupation of East Jerusalem, he asserted: “We also know how difficult that search for security can be, especially for a small nation like Israel in a tough neighbourhood. I’ve seen it firsthand. When I touched my hand against the Western Wall and placed my prayer between its ancient stones, I thought of all the centuries that the children of Israel had longed to return to their ancient homeland.” Aside from borrowing anti-Black American white racism with the use of terms like “tough neighbourhood” – a term first borrowed by Binyamin Netanyahu to refer to the Middle East over a decade ago – wherein Arabs are the “violent blacks” of the Middle East and Jews are the “peaceful white folks”, Obama’s endorsement of the Israeli claim that East Jerusalem is part of the Jewish homeland is the first such official US endorsement of Israel’s illegal occupation of the city.

Nonetheless, Obama’s attention lay elsewhere, in the fear he expresses of Arab children. He first articulated this fear in his May 19 speech: “The fact is, a growing number of Palestinians live west of the Jordan River.” In his speech to AIPAC three days later, Obama reiterated his fear once more, as the first “fact” and threat that Israel, Jews, and the US must face: “Here are the facts we all must confront. First, the number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories.” This is hardly a new fear, as Israelis have annual conferences, and have developed all kinds of political and military strategies, to deal with their fear of Palestinian children, whom Israel’s President Shimon Peres calls a “demographic bomb” that he wants to defuse. Golda Meir herself once revealed in the early seventies that she could not sleep worrying about the number of Palestinian children being conceived every night. If children are the future – except that Arab children are a negation of it – then the crux of the argument is simple: Israel can only have a future with more Jewish children and fewer Arab children.

Murdering Arab children

The story of Arab children, and especially Palestinian ones, is not only tragic in the context of Israeli violence, but one that also remains ignored, deliberately marginalised, and purposely suppressed in the US and Western media – and in Western political discourse. When Zionist terrorists began to attack Palestinian civilians in the 1930s and 1940s, Palestinian children fell victims. The most famous of these attacks include the Zionist blowing up of Palestinian cafes with grenades (such as occurred in Jerusalem on March 17, 1937) and placing electrically timed mines in crowded market places (first used against Palestinians in Haifa on July 6, 1938).

While the violence of the 1930s was the first introduction to the Middle East of such horrific terrorist violence, it is in the 1947-48 Zionist invasion of Palestinian villages and towns that Palestinian children were deliberately not spared. In December 1947, one of the first attacks by the Haganah (the pre-Israel Zionist paramilitary army) first attacks – which would become typical in this period – targeted the Palestinian village of Khisas in the Galilee and killed four Palestinian children. This proved to be a small number compared with the subsequent mass murders awaiting the Palestinians. In the village of Al-Dawayimah, where the Haganah committed a massacre in October 1948, an Israeli army soldier, quoted by Israeli historian Benny Morris, described the scene as such:

The first [wave] of conquerors killed about 80 to 100 [male] Arabs, women, and children. The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead… One commander ordered a sapper to put two old women in a certain house… and to blow up the house with them. The sapper refused… The commander then ordered his men to put in the old women and the evil deed was done. One soldier boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot her. One woman, with a newborn baby in her arms, was employed to clean the courtyard where the soldiers ate. She worked a day or two. In the end they shot her and her baby.

Palestinian children were murdered along with adults in April 1948 in the Deir Yassin massacre, to name the most well known slaughter of 1948. This would continue not only during Israel’s wars against Arabs in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1978, 1982, 1996, 2006, and 2008, when thousands of children fell victim to indiscriminate Israeli bombardment, but also in more outright massacres: in Qibya in 1953 where even the school was not spared Israel’s destruction; in Kafr Kassem in 1956 where the Israeli army massacred 46 unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel, 23 of whom were children. This trend would continue. In April 1970, during the War of Attrition with Egypt, Israel bombed an Egyptian elementary school in Bahr al-Baqar. Of the 130 school children in attendance, 46 were killed, and over 50 wounded, many of them maimed for life. The school was completely demolished. The first Israeli massacre at Qana in Lebanon in 1996 spared no child or adult, and the second massacre in the same village in 2006 did the same – adults aside, 16 children were killed that year.

The number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers in the first intifada (1987-1993) was 213, not counting the hundreds of induced miscarriages from tear gas grenades thrown inside closed areas targeting pregnant women, and aside from the number of the injured. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that “23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada”, one third of whom were children under the age of ten years old. In the same period, Palestinian attacks resulted in the death of five Israeli children. In the second intifada (2000-2004), Israeli soldiers killed more than 500 children with at least 10,000 injured, and 2,200 children arrested. The televised murder of the Palestinian child Muhammad al-Durra shook the world – but not Israeli Jews, whose government concocted the most outrageous and criminal of stories to exonerate Israel. In the Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2008, 1,400 Palestinians were killed, of whom 313 were children.

This exhibition of atrocity is not simply about regurgitating the history and present of Israel’s murder of Arab children for the past six decades and beyond – a history well-known across the Arab world – but to demonstrate how obscene Obama’s references to Jewish children are when he insists to Arabs that they must show sympathy with Jewish children, without ever enjoining Jews to show sympathy with the far larger number of Arab children killed by Jews. But Obama himself shows no sympathy with Arab children. Had he attempted to mourn the Arab children who fell and fall victim to Israeli violence at the rate of hundreds, if not thousands, of Arab children to one Jewish child, Arabs might have forgiven him this indiscretion.

Alas, Obama has no place in his heart for Arab children, only for Jewish ones. He even manages to infantilise Israeli Jewish soldiers who kill Palestinians, as nothing short of innocent children whose families miss them. In his AIPAC speech, Obama calls on Hamas “to release Gilad Shalit, who has been kept from his family for five long years”, but not on Israel to release the 6,000 Palestinian political prisoners, who include 300 Palestinian children, languishing in Israel’s dungeons for many more years. Perhaps Obama could have at least mentioned the reports of Israeli soldiers’ torture of detained Palestinian children issued in late 2010 by Israeli human rights groups. In the case of detained Palestinian sixth graders, in addition to being beaten up and deprived of sleep by Israeli soldiers, two thirteen-year old children testified that “the most awful thing that happened, was when the soldiers went to the bathroom, they peed on us and did not use the toilet. One of them videotaped it.” But Obama was not moved by their plight, for they were not Jewish children.

Zionism and Jewish children

Interestingly and unlike Obama, Zionism did not always show similar love towards Jewish children, whom it never flinched from sacrificing for its colonial goals. In the Nazi period, Zionist leaders, for example, protested strongly against granting European Jews refuge in any country other than Palestine. In December 1938, David Ben-Gurion responded to a British offer, in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, to take thousands of German Jewish children directly to Britain by saying: “If I knew it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel), then I would opt for the second alternative, for we must weigh not only the life of these children but also the history of the people of Israel.” In November 1940, the Zionists responded to the British-imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine, long demanded by the Palestinian people, by blowing up a ship with Jewish civilian passengers in Haifa – killing 242 Jews, including scores of children. For Zionism, Jewish children are as expendable as Palestinian and Arab children, unless they serve its colonial goals. In light of this, it becomes clear that it is not simply the Jewishness or Arabness of children that makes them expendable or not, but their insertion into a political project as figures that can advance its goals or constitute obstacles to them.

Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006 [AP]

Israel’s recruitment of Jewish children in paramilitary organisations, which began in 1948, continues apace, and is perhaps best exemplified in its Gadna [“Youth Battalions”] programme, where young Jewish boys and girls are prepared early for their future military service in the most militarised state on earth. The most outrageous use of Jewish children, however, would be illustrated when the Israeli army invited them to write messages of hate on the missiles about to be launched against Lebanese children during Israel’s July 2006 invasion of Lebanon. Captured by an Associated Press cameraman, the picture of blond Jewish girls near the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona writing messages of death to Lebanese children circulated the globe – though it remains unclear if they ever made their way to Obama’s desk. It is important to note that Obama might have met these same blond girls when he visited Kiryat Shmona a few months earlier, in January 2006. He recalled later that the town resembled an ordinary suburb in the US, where he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children “at joyful play just like my own daughters”.

Teaching children to hate

Given this history, not only are Palestinian children guilty of hating Israeli Jews, but also, Obama insists, they have no reason to hate Jews unless their evil elders indoctrinate them to do so. Binyamin Netanyahu himself, in his speech before Congress last week, reiterated Obama’s condemnation of Palestinians who allegedly “continue to educate their children to hate”. But what about Israeli Jewish children’s hatred of Arabs? A March 2010 poll by Tel Aviv University found that 49.5 per cent of Israeli Jewish high school students believe Palestinian citizens of Israel should not be entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel; 56 per cent believe they should not be eligible for election to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. According to a report in January 2011 in the largest Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, Jewish teachers in Israel stated that anti-Arab racism among Jewish students reached alarming levels, advocating killing Palestinians. The teachers found graffiti written on school walls and even on exam papers stating “Death To Arabs”. According to the report, a student at a school in Tel Aviv told his teacher during class that his dream is to become a soldier so he can exterminate all Arabs; several students in his class applauded in support of him. This, in no small amount, is the direct result of the racist Israeli school curricula with which Jewish children are regularly indoctrinated.

In his speech to Congress, Prime Minister Netanyahu correctly diagnosed the situation on the ground. He declared: “Our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state.” It is the establishment of a Jewish settler colony that the Palestinians must accept to ensure a future for Jewish children and terminate a future for Palestinian children. Indeed it is precisely the refusal of Arabs to adopt Arabopedophobia that is the biggest impediment to peace in the region. Obama hopes that a Palestinian bantustan could limit the threat that Palestinian children constitute to the nightmare that is “the Jewish and democratic state”. He recognises that the world can no longer claim to support universalism while endorsing Israel’s right to discriminate against non-Jews. In his AIPAC speech, he said as much when he told Israel’s lobby that the entire world, including Asia, Latin America, Europe (and he could have added Africa, which he inexplicably excluded) and the Arab World can no longer tolerate Israel’s institutionalised racism; that America in fact stands alone with Israel today. Clearly, Obama’s love for Jewish children knows no limits. His Arabopedophobic views, however, are not accidental, but are motivated by his great love for the “children of Israel”, a love that can only be realised through continued hatred and containment of all Arabs, children and adults alike.

Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. He is author of The Persistence of the Palestinian Question (Routledge, 2006).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

=========================

7.  The Independent,

30 May 2011

Who cares in the Middle East what Obama says?

President Obama has shown himself to be weak in his dealings with the Middle East, says Robert Fisk, and the Arab world is turning its back with contempt. Its future will be shaped without American influence

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/who-cares-in-the-middle-east-what-obama-says-2290761.html

This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States. More than that, it has witnessed the lowest prestige of America in the region since Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945.

While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama grovelling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed. Obama waffled on about change in the Middle East – and about America’s new role in the region. It was pathetic. “What is this ‘role’ thing?” an Egyptian friend asked me at the weekend. “Do they still believe we care about what they think?”

And it is true. Obama’s failure to support the Arab revolutions until they were all but over lost the US most of its surviving credit in the region. Obama was silent on the overthrow of Ben Ali, only joined in the chorus of contempt for Mubarak two days before his flight, condemned the Syrian regime – which has killed more of its people than any other dynasty in this Arab “spring”, save for the frightful Gaddafi – but makes it clear that he would be happy to see Assad survive, waves his puny fist at puny Bahrain’s cruelty and remains absolutely, stunningly silent over Saudi Arabia. And he goes on his knees before Israel. Is it any wonder, then, that Arabs are turning their backs on America, not out of fury or anger, nor with threats or violence, but with contempt? It is the Arabs and their fellow Muslims of the Middle East who are themselves now making the decisions.

Turkey is furious with Assad because he twice promised to speak of reform and democratic elections – and then failed to honour his word. The Turkish government has twice flown delegations to Damascus and, according to the Turks, Assad lied to the foreign minister on the second visit, baldly insisting that he would recall his brother Maher’s legions from the streets of Syrian cities. He failed to do so. The torturers continue their work.

Watching the hundreds of refugees pouring from Syria across the northern border of Lebanon, the Turkish government is now so fearful of a repeat of the great mass Iraqi Kurdish refugee tide that overwhelmed their border in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war that it has drawn up its own secret plans to prevent the Kurds of Syria moving in their thousands into the Kurdish areas of south-eastern Turkey. Turkish generals have thus prepared an operation that would send several battalions of Turkish troops into Syria itself to carve out a “safe area” for Syrian refugees inside Assad’s caliphate. The Turks are prepared to advance well beyond the Syrian border town of Al Qamishli – perhaps half way to Deir el-Zour (the old desert killing fields of the 1915 Armenian Holocaust, though speak it not) – to provide a “safe haven” for those fleeing the slaughter in Syria’s cities.

The Qataris are meanwhile trying to prevent Algeria from resupplying Gaddafi with tanks and armoured vehicles – this was one of the reasons why the Emir of Qatar, the wisest bird in the Arabian Gulf, visited the Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, last week. Qatar is committed to the Libyan rebels in Benghazi; its planes are flying over Libya from Crete and – undisclosed until now – it has Qatari officers advising the rebels inside the city of Misrata in western Libya; but if Algerian armour is indeed being handed over to Gaddafi to replace the material that has been destroyed in air strikes, it would account for the ridiculously slow progress which the Nato campaign is making against Gaddafi.

Of course, it all depends on whether Bouteflika really controls his army – or whether the Algerian “pouvoir”, which includes plenty of secretive and corrupt generals, are doing the deals. Algerian equipment is superior to Gaddafi’s and thus for every tank he loses, Ghaddafi might be getting an improved model to replace it. Below Tunisia, Algeria and Libya share a 750-mile desert frontier, an easy access route for weapons to pass across the border.

But the Qataris are also attracting Assad’s venom. Al Jazeera’s concentration on the Syrian uprising – its graphic images of the dead and wounded far more devastating than anything our soft western television news shows would dare broadcast – has Syrian state television nightly spitting at the Emir and at the state of Qatar. The Syrian government has now suspended up to £4 billion of Qatari investment projects, including one belonging to the Qatar Electricity and Water Company.

Amid all these vast and epic events – Yemen itself may yet prove to be the biggest bloodbath of all, while the number of Syria’s “martyrs” have now exceeded the victims of Mubarak’s death squads five months ago – is it any surprise that the frolics of Messrs Netanyahu and Obama appear so irrelevant? Indeed, Obama’s policy towards the Middle East – whatever it is – sometimes appears so muddled that it is scarcely worthy of study. He supports, of course, democracy – then admits that this may conflict with America’s interests. In that wonderful democracy called Saudi Arabia, the US is now pushing ahead with a £40 billion arms deal and helping the Saudis to develop a new “elite” force to protect the kingdom’s oil and future nuclear sites. Hence Obama’s fear of upsetting Saudi Arabia, two of whose three leading brothers are now so incapacitated that they can no longer make sane decisions – unfortunately, one of these two happens to be King Abdullah – and his willingness to allow the Assad family’s atrocity-prone regime to survive. Of course, the Israelis would far prefer the “stability” of the Syrian dictatorship to continue; better the dark caliphate you know than the hateful Islamists who might emerge from the ruins. But is this argument really good enough for Obama to support when the people of Syria are dying in the streets for the kind of democracy that the US president says he wants to see in the region?

One of the vainest elements of American foreign policy towards the Middle East is the foundational idea that the Arabs are somehow more stupid than the rest of us, certainly than the Israelis, more out of touch with reality than the West, that they don’t understand their own history. Thus they have to be preached at, lectured, and cajoled by La Clinton and her ilk – much as their dictators did and do, father figures guiding their children through life. But Arabs are far more literate than they were a generation ago; millions speak perfect English and can understand all too well the political weakness and irrelevance in the president’s words. Listening to Obama’s 45-minute speech this month – the “kick off’ to four whole days of weasel words and puffery by the man who tried to reach out to the Muslim world in Cairo two years ago, and then did nothing – one might have thought that the American President had initiated the Arab revolts, rather than sat on the sidelines in fear.

There was an interesting linguistic collapse in the president’s language over those critical four days. On Thursday 19 May, he referred to the continuation of Israeli “settlements”. A day later, Netanyahu was lecturing him on “certain demographic changes that have taken place on the ground”. Then when Obama addressed the American Aipac lobby group (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) on the Sunday, he had cravenly adopted Netanyahu’s own preposterous expression. Now he, too, spoke of “new demographic realities on the ground.” Who would believe that he was talking about internationally illegal Jewish colonies built on land stolen from Arabs in one of the biggest property heists in the history of “Palestine”? Delay in peace-making will undermine Israeli security, Obama announced – apparently unaware that Netanyahu’s project is to go on delaying and delaying and delaying until there is no land left for the “viable” Palestinian state which the United States and the European Union supposedly wish to see.

Then we had the endless waffle about the 1967 borders. Netanyahu called them “defenceless” (though they seemed to have been pretty defendable for the 18 years prior to the Six Day War) and Obama – oblivious to the fact that Israel must be the only country in the world to have an eastern land frontier but doesn’t know where it is – then says he was misunderstood when he talked about 1967. It doesn’t matter what he says. George W Bush caved in years ago when he gave Ariel Sharon a letter which stated America’s acceptance of “already existing major Israeli population centres” beyond the 1967 lines. To those Arabs prepared to listen to Obama’s spineless oration, this was a grovel too far. They simply could not understand the reaction of Netanyahu’s address to Congress. How could American politicians rise and applaud Netanyahu 55 times – 55 times – with more enthusiasm than one of the rubber parliaments of Assad, Saleh and the rest?

And what on earth did the Great Speechifier mean when he said that “every country has the right to self-defence” but that Palestine would be “demilitarised”? What he meant was that Israel could go on attacking the Palestinians (as in 2009, for example, when Obama was treacherously silent) while the Palestinians would have to take what was coming to them if they did not behave according to the rules – because they would have no weapons to defend themselves. As for Netanyahu, the Palestinians must choose between unity with Hamas or peace with Israel. All of which was very odd. When there was no unity, Netanyahu told us all that he had no Palestinian interlocutor because the Palestinians were disunited. Yet when they unite, they are disqualified from peace talks.

Of course, cynicism grows the longer you live in the Middle East. I recall, for example, travelling to Gaza in the early 1980s when Yasser Arafat was running his PLO statelet in Beirut. Anxious to destroy Arafat’s prestige in the occupied territories, the Israeli government decided to give its support to an Islamist group in Gaza called Hamas. In fact, I actually saw with my own eyes the head of the Israeli army’s Southern Command negotiating with bearded Hamas officials, giving them permission to build more mosques. It’s only fair to say, of course, that we were also busy at the time, encouraging a certain Osama bin Laden to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan. But the Israelis did not give up on Hamas. They later held another meeting with the organisation in the West Bank; the story was on the front page of the Jerusalem Post the next day. But there wasn’t a whimper from the Americans.

Then another moment that I can recall over the long years. Hamas and Islamic Jihad members – all Palestinians – were, in the early 1990s, thrown across the Israeli border into southern Lebanon where they spent more than a year camping on a freezing mountainside. I would visit them from time to time and on one occasion mentioned that I would be travelling to Israel next day. Immediately, one of the Hamas men ran to his tent and returned with a notebook. He then proceeded to give me the home telephone numbers of three senior Israeli politicians – two of whom are still prominent today – and, when I reached Jerusalem and called the numbers, they all turned out to be correct. In other words, the Israeli government had been in personal and direct contact with Hamas.

But now the narrative has been twisted out of all recognition. Hamas are the super-terrorists, the “al-Qa’ida” representatives in the unified Palestinian leadership, the men of evil who will ensure that no peace ever takes place between Palestinians and Israeli. If only this were true, the real al-Qa’ida would be more than happy to take responsibility. But it is not true. In the same context, Obama stated that the Palestinians would have to answer questions about Hamas. But why should they? What Obama and Netanyahu think about Hamas is now irrelevant to them. Obama warns the Palestinians not to ask for statehood at the United Nations in September. But why on earth not? If the people of Egypt and Tunisia and Yemen and Libya and Syria – we are all waiting for the next revolution (Jordan? Bahrain again? Morocco?) – can fight for freedom and dignity, why shouldn’t the Palestinians? Lectured for decades on the need for non-violent protest, the Palestinians elect to go to the UN with their cry for legitimacy – only to be slapped down by Obama.

Having read all of the “Palestine Papers” which Al-Jazeera revealed, there is no doubt that “Palestine’s” official negotiators will go to any lengths to produce some kind of statelet. Mahmoud Abbas, who managed to write a 600-page book on the “peace process” without once mentioning the word “occupation”, could even cave in over the UN project, fearful of Obama’s warning that it would be an attempt to “isolate” Israel and thus de-legitimise the Israeli state – or “the Jewish state” as the US president now calls it. But Netanyahu is doing more than anyone to delegitimise his own state; indeed, he is looking more and more like the Arab buffoons who have hitherto littered the Middle East. Mubarak saw a “foreign hand” in the Egyptian revolution (Iran, of course). So did the Crown Prince of Bahrain (Iran again). So did Gaddafi (al-Qa’ida, western imperialism, you name it), So did Saleh of Yemen (al-Qa’ida, Mossad and America). So did Assad of Syria (Islamism, probably Mossad, etc). And so does Netanyahu (Iran, naturally enough, Syria, Lebanon, just about anyone you can think of except for Israel itself).

But as this nonsense continues, so the tectonic plates shudder. I doubt very much if the Palestinians will remain silent. If there’s an “intifada” in Syria, why not a Third Intifada in “Palestine”? Not a struggle of suicide bombers but of mass, million-strong protests. If the Israelis have to shoot down a mere few hundred demonstrators who tried – and in some cases succeeded – in crossing the Israeli border almost two weeks ago, what will they do if confronted by thousands or a million. Obama says no Palestinian state must be declared at the UN. But why not? Who cares in the Middle East what Obama says? Not even, it seems, the Israelis. The Arab spring will soon become a hot summer and there will be an Arab autumn, too. By then, the Middle East may have changed forever. What America says will matter nothing.

========================

8.  The Guardian

29 May 2011

The ruined village Palestinians will never forget

The ruins of Lifta are the final remains of the Palestinian hamlets that fringed Jerusalem until 1948. Now plans to bulldoze them are causing outrage

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/29/ruined-palestinian-village-lifta-development

[to watch the video, and you should, use the link]

Harriet Sherwood guardian.co.uk, larger | smaller Article history

Yacoub Odeh shows film-maker Mat Heywood around his deserted home village, now under threat from Israeli plans to build a luxury resort Link to this video

In the soft golden light of a late spring evening, as yellow flowers are beginning to bloom on giant cacti, Yacoub Odeh climbs up through knee-high grass to the ruin that was his childhood home. For a man in his eighth decade, he is surprisingly nimble as he navigates ancient stones that litter the ground. But behind his light step is the weight of painful memories of a lost youth and a fading history.

“Here is my house,” he says, sitting on the remains of a stone wall in whose crevices wild flowers and saplings cling. “Now only the corners remain. Here is the taboun [outdoor oven] where my mother used to bake bread. The smell!”

With distant eyes, he describes an idyllic childhood in a place he calls paradise, where families helped one another and children played freely amid almond and fig trees and on the rocks around the village’s natural spring.

The place is Lifta, an Arab village on the north-western fringes of Jerusalem, for centuries a prosperous, bustling community built around agriculture, traditional embroidery, trade and mutual support. But since 1948, shortly before the state of Israel was declared, it has been deserted. The population, according to the Palestinian narrative of that momentous year, was expelled by advancing Jewish soldiers; the people abandoned their homes, say the Israeli history books.

Lifta was one of hundreds of Arab villages taken over by the embryonic Jewish state. But it is the only one not to have been subsequently covered in the concrete and tarmac of Israeli towns and roads, or planted over with trees and shrubs to create forests, parks and picnic areas, or transformed into Israeli artists’ colonies. Some argue that Israel set out to erase any vestige of Palestinian roots in the new country.

Now, 63 years on, the ruins of Lifta are finally facing the threat of bulldozers and concrete mixers. A long-term proposal to sell the state-owned land for the construction of luxury housing units and a boutique hotel on the site is awaiting the authorities’ final approval. It has caused a furore. Opponents of the plan include those who believe Lifta should be preserved as a monument to history; those who want to retain its charming environs as a rambling spot; and those – Odeh among them – who insist that one day they will return and reclaim their homes.

For many Palestinians, Lifta is a symbol of the Nakba, literally the “catastrophe”, of 1948 in which 700,000 people were dispossessed. It embodies their longing for their land, and their bitterness at their continued refugee status. It is, wrote Palestinian author Ghada Karmi in a letter to the Los Angeles Times, “a physical memory of injustice and survival”.

The development plan was approved by the Jerusalem municipality five years ago, but earlier this year the Israel Lands Administration – the state agency that took ownership of Lifta’s land under the Israeli law governing property deemed to be abandoned – began marketing the plot to private developers. A legal challenge stayed the tender process, but a decision is due any day on whether to proceed. The proposal is for 212 luxury housing units, expected to be advertised to wealthy expatriate Jews, a chic hotel and shops, and a museum. It suggests that some of the ruins be restored. But Lifta as a sanctuary and de facto heritage site will be lost.

Ultra-orthodox Jewish teenagers swimming in the village spring in the ruins of Lifta. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum

Shmuel Groag, one of the architects of the original proposal, has since reversed his position and has backed the campaign to preserve the ruined village. “I have changed my mind about conservation in general, and about Lifta in particular,” he says. The site, he argues, should be “frozen”. Others have appealed to Unesco to declare Lifta a world heritage site, saying that work must begin to halt further decay and the theft of valuable stones from the ruins. Alongside the ramblers, drug-users and illicit lovers frequent the ruins. Crowds of ultra-orthodox Jewish teenage boys, stripped to their underwear, swim in the spring, and light barbecues on the rocks. Graffiti scars many of the fragmented walls. For Odeh, this is distressing. “Why should they have free access to my home when I am stopped by security guards and questioned about my right to be here,” he asks. “When I see these people coming here, I feel sorrow and anger.”

The remains of the village are bounded by roads, along which traffic rumbles to and from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem’s suburbs and settlements. On the ridge above Lifta, concrete mixers and diggers are at work on a high-speed rail link to Tel Aviv; deep in the valley below is a guarded complex, said to be the site of the Israeli government’s underground nuclear bunker. Out of sight of Lifta’s ruins, but built on its former farmlands are the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), the supreme court, the Hadassah hospital, the Hebrew University and the city’s central bus station.

In 1948, the village owned 1,200 hectares but they have long gone, along with olive, fig, apricot, almond, plum, pomegranate and citrus trees plus the fields of spinach, cauliflower, peas and beans that gave Lifta its prosperity. “Life was rich,” recalls Odeh. “The spring watered the village gardens. We had more olives than we needed so we sold them and the oil in Jerusalem.”

As we walk amid the ruins, Odeh points out the old landmarks. “Here was the mosque. This was the sheriff’s house. Here was the olive press. There is the house where I was born, and where my father was born. Over there is the cemetery. This was the sahn [courtyard] where people shared happy occasions and sorrowful occasions. Here I breathed my first breath. The first water I drank, I drank here.” It is painful, he says.

He points out what is remaining of the beautiful architecture of the houses, with arched windows, columns and graceful balconies. Over a door, a lintel is inscribed with Arabic writing. Enter in safety, it says; the owner of this house is God. “The people of the village cut the stones and built their houses themselves. They were proud of that. They helped each other build and harvest the olives. The village lived as a family, one family.”

But in 1948, when Odeh was eight years old, the bucolic life of Lifta came to an end. At the gateway to Jerusalem, Lifta was strategically important to the advancing Jewish troops. A series of violent skirmishes caused fear and panic, he recalls. There was firing and attacks from both sides. And then came the day his family left.

“My mother was preparing a fire to warm the house. I was with my little brother. The gangs began to shoot in the direction of Lifta. My brother was shouting: ‘Mama! Mama! They’re shooting us.’ My mother took us inside and put us in a corner. The people of Lifta were crying to one another.”

Odeh’s father, then 33, carried the youngest of the eight children, and the family crossed the valley and climbed up to the main road to Jerusalem. His mother took the key to the house but they left everything they owned. “We had nothing but the clothes we were wearing. We had everything – and in one moment we had nothing. We became beggars.” As the villagers left, Jewish soldiers blew holes in the roofs of the houses to make them uninhabitable.

Odeh’s father stayed in Lifta for a few more days. After boarding a truck heading away from the village, the rest of the family slept under fig trees. They spent the following two years in Ramallah before moving to Jerusalem’s Old City. His father, a broken man, developed stomach problems and died at the age of 35. His mother suffered from asthma from the time she left Lifta until her death. Many of the 3,000 residents of Lifta scattered across the West Bank and beyond to Jordan, but a core still live in East Jerusalem within a few kilometres of their former homes. Odeh himself later joined the armed resistance against Israel and spent 17 years in prison.

Now, in his twilight years, he is as impassioned as ever about his home. “We will never forget nor forgive the destruction of our village. Lifta is in our memory and in our history. It is our fathers’ and grandfathers’ graveyard. The spring, the trees, the land – we will never forget it.”

He is unshakeable in his belief in the Palestinians’ right to return to their homes – something that cannot be countenanced by Israel because it would threaten the state’s Jewish majority and hence its Jewish nature. “We still dream of coming back,” says Odeh. “I’m sure the time will come to return to Lifta, to my home.” There can be no lasting peace until the refugee issue is resolved, he adds. But he knows time may be running out. “Lifta is an eyewitness to history, to what happened in the Nakba. If we can’t come back, then leave the village to this history.”

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Going back to Lifta: a Palestinian exile returns – video

Yacoub Odeh, a Palestinian who fled from Lifta, west Jerusalem in 1948, shows film-maker Mat Heywood around his deserted home village, now under threat from Israeli plans to build a luxury resort