NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
8 items tonight.
Item 1 is a recommendation to a documentary, which, as soon as I had seen the subject I knew that I had to see the film. Fortunately, it played today in Tel Aviv, and spouse and I did see ‘The Law in These Parts’
(שלטון החוק)
It is about the rule of law in the OPT, that is to say, the rule of military courts in the OPT. The film is excellent and revealing. Should it come your way, I highly recommend it. Am grateful to John for calling my attention to it.
The subject of the film reminded me of something that I probably should have mentioned when I distinguished between military courts and civilian courts—Israeli kids who overtly refuse to be inducted if brought to trial are brought to military courts rather than to civil ones. The reason for this is that every 18 year old is considered to be a soldier, will it or nil it. Thus refusal is considered to be disobeying an order. Yep. I’m serious. That’s the way it is in Israel.
Item 2 is an appeal from the Freedom Theatre for donations. It is a worthy cause.
Item 3 reports on the Palestinian prisoner release that supposedly will take place tomorrow. If it does, I’ll report further on it.
Item 4 relates that Palestinian citizens of Israel protest the mosque bill (well wouldn’t you were you a Muslim?)
In item 5 members of the CPT report on an IOF incursion into a school and civilian homes as part of a training exercise. Yes, you heard correctly—as part of a training exercise! Such ethics! One wonders how Israeli kids who join combat units ever come out sane!
Item 6 is a sad tale of a woman whose death was hastened by Israeli intransigence. This is not merely a sad story about a single human being. It is what happens if not always, then often. Palestinian life is cheap in these parts!
Newt Gingrich’s insistence that there is no such thing as Palestine and Palestinians has created a large number of responses. Item 7 is Uri Avnery’s go at it.
Item 8 is (you guessed correctly) ‘Today in Palestine’ for December 16. The first item in it is the same as item 6 below. Of all the items, one that you definitely should not miss is in the 1st section, and is titled “Ah, Wilderness.”
That’s it for tonight.
All the best,
1 Dorothy, apropos your comments . . ., I wonder if you know of or have seen an excellent documentary, ‘The Law in these Parts’? It is an Israeli film dealing with many of the issues of the military tribunals in the West Bank and has some chilling interviews with military judges and with one of the Presidents of the Supreme Court.
http://www.thelawfilm.com/eng
With good wishes.
John.
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2 From The Freedom Theatre
The Show Must Go On
Things are really looking up at The Freedom Theatre! After a devastating year – the unsolved murder of our General Director, friend and co-founder of The Freedom Theatre, Juliano Mer Khamis – we are back on our feet and moving forward with projects new and old, continuing the struggle for individual and collective freedom through art.
As the year comes to an end, we say goodbye to the first class of Acting School students as they have successfully completed the three year Acting School programme. While we say goodbye to them as students, we are happy to report that some of them will continue on with The Freedom Theatre in wide-ranging ways, allowing them to move from students to instructors or as participants in one of the theatre’s many projects. Additionally, our current first year Acting School students, who through the support of people like you have continued to receive educational grants to assist them in their studies, will enter into their second year of training in 2012.
To visualize the experiences of life under oppression we have recently started training several Playback Theatre troupes. Playback theatre is a tool for community building, dialogue and trauma recovery. In a Playback Theatre performance, audience members relate life experiences and a team of actors and musicians transform these accounts into improvised theatre pieces. Playback Theatre helps to foster community health through the sharing of stories that remind us of our humanity and our capacity for resistance, survival and creativity.
The New Year will prove to be an active one for The Freedom Theatre as we move to the streets, involving the residents of Jenin Refugee Camp both in the process of creating and performing a production that will be staged as part of a Street Art Festival. Moving further afield, you can catch us on the bus – the Freedom Bus that is – as we travel to key sites of oppression and resistance within the West Bank, listening to and enacting the experiences of community members using Playback Theatre techniques. Supporters from around the world are encouraged to join the ride to learn more about life in Palestine and we hope to see you on board!
The accomplishments of The Freedom Theatre over the past six years are many and we are confident that we will continue implementing creative projects that change the lives of children and youth in the local community – but we need your assistance. You can best help us by signing up for a monthly donation program, becoming a long-term partner of The Freedom Theatre. We hope to get 1000 people from around the world to donate at least 10 USD/EUR or equivalent per month.
To contribute to this goal, please go to http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/support.php
where you can make a one-time end-of-year donation or sign up to make monthly donations which will last us throughout the year.
If you would like more information about our activities please do not hesitate to contact us.
Thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,
The Freedom Theatre
The Freedom Theatre Foundation – Ägostigen 5, SPÅNGA, 163 44, Sweden
++++++++++++++++
3 Independent
Friday, 16 December 2011
Palestinian prisoner swap completed
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/palestinian-prisoner-swap-completed-6277607.html#
Catrina Stewart
Israel is preparing to free 550 Palestinian prisoners this weekend in the final part of a swap deal with Hamas for the Jewish soldier Gilad Shalit.
The country has largely excluded high-profile members of Fatah, the party led by the moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, from the exchange. The latest tranche, selected solely by Israel, is understood to comprise mainly those who have served more than two-thirds of their sentences and who were jailed for committing minor security offences.
Israel freed 450 prisoners – many of them serving life sentences – in the first phase of the deal in mid-October. In exchange, it secured the immediate release of Sgt Shalit, who was abducted in a cross-border raid by Palestinian militants five years ago, and held in captivity in Gaza ever since.
It had initially been anticipated that Israel’s right-wing government would use the opportunity to make a gesture to Mr Abbas by freeing prominent members of his party, but officials have made clear that the moderate Palestinian leadership would not be rewarded for pursuing its unilateral statehood bid at the United Nations.
++++++++++++
4 Ynet
Saturday, December 17, 2011 14:25
Mosque Photo: Doron Golan
Arab-Israelis protest ‘mosque bill’
Hundreds of Arabs urge State to respect freedom of religion, rally across Israel against torching of mosques, proposed ban on Muslim calls for prayer
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4162802,00.html
Hassan Sha’alan
Hundreds of Arabs across Israel took to the streets Saturday to rally against attacks on mosques and the so-called ‘mosque bill,’ which aims to prohibit mosques from sounding public calls for prayer.
The protesters carried signs reading: “We won’t agree to silence the Muezzin”, “A democratic state doesn’t attack freedom of religion” and “Transfer state.” Demonstrators also chanted against the torching of mosques in Jerusalem and in the West Bank.
Dozens of demonstrators gathered in the Arab-Israeli towns of Umm al-Fahm and Shfaram, with more protestors joining in various other communities, including Baka al-Garbiyeh, Tira, Taiba, Sakhnin, Tarshiha, Nazareth, Rahat, Jaffa, Kabul and Jisr az-Zarqa.
One protester from Rahat, Jumah Zabarka, told Ynet: “The State of Israel didn’t prosecute those responsible for the ‘Price Tag’ operations. Torching mosques is an act of chutspa because it hurts the Arab residents in Israel and the Arab population across the world.”
Arabs protest ‘mosque bill’ (Photo: Balad Party)
He added that the reaction to the mosque torching was insignificant compared to the reactions after the settler attack on Colonel Ran Kahane at the Ephraim Brigade’s base in the West Bank. “The entire country spoke up and the prime minister harshly condemned the dangers. But if somebody hurts us – they’d rather not discuss it,” he said.
While discussing the ‘mosque bill’ Zabarka explained this is a very sensitive issue. “They want to humiliate us at any price. We’re sending out a message to the State that we’re not going to allow for a ‘second Nakba.'”
Knesset Member Jamal Zahalka (Balad) spoke blatantly about the issue at hand: “The torching of the mosques and the ‘mosque bill’ are part of a war declared against the Arab and Muslim population by the racists and settlers. The sound of the Muezzin, the church bells and the blowing of the shofar have always existed.”
The proposal, initiated by MK Anastassia Michaeli (Yisrael Beiteinu), aims to prohibit mosques from sounding the nighttime and early morning calls of the Muezzin – who uses a public address system to beckon worshipers to pray – in order to avoid disrupting nearby residents. The bill bases its premise on complaints by hundreds of thousands of Israeli who suffer daily noise caused by the Muezzin, particularly in the morning hours.
++++++++
5. From: cpthebron@yahoogroups.com [mailto:cpthebron@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011
To: cpthebron@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [cpthebron]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
17 December 2011
AL-KHALIL/HEBRON: Soldiers enter Ibrahimi school grounds; invade civilian homes as part of training exercises
On 15 December 2011, CPT AL-Khalil/Hebron team received a phone call from the principal of Ibrahimi School around 8:30 in the morning, saying that Israeli soldiers had entered the school grounds.By the time CPTers arrived, the soldiers had left. Members of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) and the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC) also arrived around the same time.
Translating for the principal, the HRC representative said that the boys had been at a school assembly celebrating the end of semester before exams when the soldiers arrived, accusing the boys of throwing a handful of plastic chips painted in a metallic color from the schoolyard.
As the people gathered took pictures of the chips, the principal received word that an officer in the paratroopers brigade currently occupying the H-2 area of Hebron wished to speak to him.The officer told the principal that rather than throwing the plastic chips from the schoolyard, the boys had thrown a small piece of glass from a beer bottle at the soldiers near the Qitoun checkpoint. The officer told the principal to report to the Israeli District Coordinating Office (DCO) later that morning, but the Hebron District Ministry of Education told the Israeli military it was inappropriate for the DCO to make that demand without first consulting the Ministry, so the principal did not attend the meeting. Pictures of the objects the military accused the boys of throwing and the officers talking to the principal are available at http://cpt.org/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=24823.
Later that day, the team learned from other internationals that members of the paratroopers brigade invaded the apartment building where the internationals and Palestinian families were living, telling them that they needed to do so for practice.CPTers observed them conducting a similar invasion of a building in the Old City in the late afternoon. The soldiers were laughing and joking as they pounded on the doors of people’s homes, demanding access. (The soldiers left shortly after TIPH officers arrived.)
Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “[n]o one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence. Article 17(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Israel is a party, also protects individuals against “arbitrary or unlawful interference with [their] privacy, family, and home. The International Red Cross/Red Crescent Commentary on Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention stipulates that “[t]he family dwelling and home are protected; they cannot be the object of arbitrary interference.”
6. guardian.co.uk,
Friday 16 December 2011
Samira Hassassian, who died this year of cancer. Photograph: Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/16/palestinian-wife-forced-jerusalem-cancer-envoy-claims?INTCMP=SRCH
Israeli authorities made the wife of the Palestinian ambassador in London interrupt a course of chemotherapy in order to return to Jerusalem or risk losing her residency rights, a trip that hastened her death from cancer, her family claim.
Samira Hassassian was infected by a virus on her plane journey back to London in May and died three months later, aged 57. Her husband, Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian envoy to the UK since 2005, said the Israeli government had extended her Jerusalem identity papers in 2010 for a year after she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in late 2009, but refused to grant a second extension this year, although the disease had by then metastasised to her bones and she was several weeks into intensive chemotherapy.
“They forced her to go back,” Hassassian said. “The doctors had told me she had maybe until the end of the year, so this trip just expedited the process, but it also caused her pain and suffering.”
The Israeli embassy in London denied that Hassassian had been refused a second extension. A spokesperson said an extension was granted by the minister of interior, although by then she was already back in Jerusalem.
“If there is a health issue there is no question that she would have had to travel. There is no such policy. It is the strangest allegation I think I’ve ever heard,” the spokesperson said.
Samira Hassassian’s London oncologist, Professor Paul Ellis, wrote a medical opinion to support her appeal for an extension on March 29, saying: “She is right in the middle of very intensive treatment and it is definitely not a good time for her to travel. There is the potential for significant infection and she is also extremely disabled by fatigue and nausea.”
The embassy spokesman confirmed that a copy of Ellis’s letter was in interior ministry files but said it had been unnecessary as an extension was not in doubt. He also suggested that Manuel Hassassian had insisted his wife return unnecessarily to Jerusalem for political motives.
“What kind of husband sends his wife on such a trip when her health and life are at stake? This really is quite low,” the spokesman said.
Hassassian said the decision to return was taken by his wife, a US-trained chemist, lecturer in business studies and patron of Palestinian cinema. He says she was determined not to lose what she saw as her rights.
“As far as she was concerned, she was not going to die. She saw herself as battling with cancer. But to force her to go back or lose her rights was inhuman,” Hassassian said.
The Israeli embassy claims Samira Hassassian had gone to Jerusalem to seek a second opinion from Hadassah hospital. Her family say she had consulted doctors there so that her condition could be assessed while she was in Jerusalem but that was not the aim of the trip and she would not willingly have broken off a course of chemotherapy to make the journey.
Samira Hassassian’s daughter, Nadine, said the ailing woman had tried for several weeks to persuade the Israeli consulate in London to grant a second extension.
“She sent a letter but got no response. They never got in touch with the doctors. On the phone, they told her it wouldn’t work. She has to go back to Jerusalem,” she said. Manuel Hassassian said that after that, his wife had tried going to the consulate in person, but was not allowed in.
In the face of the Israeli refusal to grant a medical extension, the family said Samira felt she had no choice but return to Jerusalem or lose her East Jerusalem identity papers and the travel documents that those papers entitled her to, and potentially lose the right to return to Jerusalem to live. She flew to Jerusalem in April and returned to London in May, dying on August 19.
Palestinians from East Jerusalem living abroad have to return every two years to renew their residency rights. After seven years overseas those rights are revoked permanently even if the Palestinian involved was born in the city to a family with historical roots there. The rules date back to the 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem, when Palestinian residents were given the status of residents rather than citizenship. They have the option of applying for Israeli citizenship, but many refuse for political reasons, seeing it as recognition of the annexation.
Palestinians and Israeli civil rights groups describe the bureaucracy surrounding residency rights as a weapon in Israel’s efforts to reduce the Palestinian population of the fiercely contested city and undermine future challenges to its sovereignty there.
“This has been the consistent policy of Israeli governments, leftist and rightist alike,” Sarit Michaeli, of human rights organisation B’Tselem, said. “I lived for 11 years in London and in the US but when I moved back as an Israeli Jew I was able to renew all my residency and citizenship rights. Had I been a Palestinian that would have been impossible.”
The Israeli revocation of residency rights has waxed and waned over the years. It reached a peak in 2008 with nearly 4,600 revocations, according to B’Tselem, but last year the number was only 191. It is unclear whether the decline reflects a less rigorous enforcement of the policy or whether fewer Palestinians now meet the criteria.
Civil rights groups say that the physical isolation of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank by a security barrier has also served to reduce its Palestinian population, as have the discriminatory granting of building permits and the demolition of houses without permits.
Hassassian said after his wife’s burial he made a point of returning her Jerusalem identity papers and laissez-passer to the Israeli interior ministry.
“They have their papers back now,” he said. “They know she does not exist any more.”
++++++++++++++++
7. Uri Avnery
December 17, 2011
“With Friends Like These “
MY GOD, what a bizarre lot these Republican aspirants for the US presidency are!
What a sorry bunch of ignoramuses and downright crazies.
Or, at best, what a bunch of cheats and cynics! (With the possible exception of the good doctor Ron Paul)”.
Is this the best a great and proud nation can produce? How frightening the thought that one of them may actually become the most powerful person in the world, with a finger on the biggest nuclear button!
BUT LET’S concentrate on the present front-runner.
(Republicans seem to change front-runners like a fastidious beau changes socks.)
It’s Newt Gingrich. Remember him? The Speaker of the House who had an extra-marital affair with an intern while at the same time leading the campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton for having an affair with an intern.
But that’s not the point. The point is that this intellectual giant – named after Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist ever – has discovered a great historical truth.
The original Newton discovered the Law of Gravity. Newton Leroy Gingrich has discovered something no less earth-
shaking: there is an “invented” people around, referring to the Palestinians.
To which a humble Israeli like me might answer, in the best Hebrew slang: “Good morning, Eliyahu!” Thus we honor people who have made a great discovery which, unfortunately, has been discovered by others long before.
FROM ITS very beginning, the Zionist movement has denied the existence of the Palestinian people. It’s an article of faith.
The reason is obvious: if there exists a Palestinian people, then the country the Zionists were about to take over was not empty. Zionism would entail an injustice of historic proportions. Being very idealistic persons, the original Zionists found a way out of this moral dilemma:
they simply denied its existence. The winning slogan was “A land without a people for a people without a land.”
So who were these curious human beings they met when they came to the country? Oh, ah, well, they were just people who happened to be there, but not “a” people. Passers-by, so to speak. Later, the story goes, after we had made the desert bloom and turned an arid and neglected land into a paradise, Arabs from all over the region flocked to the country, and now they have the temerity – indeed the chutzpah – to claim that they constitute a Palestinian nation!
For many years after the founding of the State of Israel, this was the official line. Golda Meir famously exclaimed:
“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people!”
(To which I replied in the Knesset: “Mrs. Prime Minister, perhaps you are right. Perhaps there really is no Palestinian people. But if millions of people mistakenly believe that they are a people, and behave like a people, then they are a people.”)
A huge propaganda machine – both in Israel and abroad – was employed to “prove” that there was no Palestinian people. A lady called Joan Peters wrote a book (“From Time
Immemorial”) proving that the riffraff calling themselves “Palestinians” had nothing to do with Palestine. They are nothing but interlopers and impostors. The book was immensely successful – until some experts took it apart and proved that the whole edifice of conclusive proofs was utter rubbish.
I myself have spent many hundreds of hours trying to convince Israeli and foreign audiences that there is a Palestinian people and that we have to make peace with them. Until one day the State of Israel recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the “Palestinian people”, and the argument was laid to rest.
Until Newt came along and, like a later-day Jesus, raised it from the dead.
OBVIOUSLY, HE is much too busy to read books. True, he was
once a teacher of history, but for many years now he has
been very busy speakering the Congress, making a fortune as
an “adviser” of big corporations and now trying to become
president.
Otherwise, he would probably have come across a brilliant
historical book by Benedict Anderson, “Imagined
Communities”, which asserts that all modern nations are
invented.
Nationalism is a relatively recent historical phenomenon.
When a community decides to become a nation, it has to
reinvent itself. That means inventing a national past,
reshuffling historical facts (and non-facts) in order to
create a coherent picture of a nation existing since
antiquity. Hermann the Cherusker, member of a Germanic
tribe who betrayed his Roman employers, became a “national”
hero. Religious refugees who landed in America and
destroyed the native population became a “nation”. Members
of an ethnic-religious Diaspora formed themselves into a
“Jewish nation”. Many others did more or less the same.
Indeed, Newt would profit from reading a book by a Tel Aviv
University professor, Shlomo Sand, a kosher Jew, whose
Hebrew title speaks for itself: “When and How the Jewish
People was Invented?”
Who are these Palestinians? About a hundred years ago, two
young students in Istanbul, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak
Ben-Zvi, the future Prime Minister and President
(respectively) of Israel, wrote a treatise about the
Palestinians. The population of this country, they said,
has never changed. Only small elites were sometimes
deported. The towns and villages never moved, as their
names prove. Canaanites became Israelites, then Jews and
Samaritans, then Christian Byzantines. With the Arab
conquest, they slowly adopted the religion of Islam and the
Arabic Culture. These are today’s Palestinians. I tend to
agree with them.
PARROTING THE straight Zionist propaganda line – by now
discarded by most Zionists – Gingrich argues that there can
be no Palestinian people because there never was a
Palestinian state. The people in this country were just
“Arabs” under Ottoman rule.
So what? I used to hear from French colonial masters that
there is no Algerian people, because there never was an
Algerian state, there was never even a united country
called Algeria. Any takers for this theory now?
The name “Palestine” was mentioned by a Greek historian
some 2500 years ago. A “Duke of Palestine” is mentioned in
the Talmud. When the Arabs conquered the country, they
called it “Filastin”, as they still do”. The Arab national
movement came into being all over the Arab world, including
Palestine – at the same time as the Zionist movement – and
strove for independence from the Ottoman Sultan.
For centuries, Palestine was considered a part of Greater
Syria (the region known in Arabic as ‘Sham’). There was no
formal distinction between Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians
and Jordanians. But when, after the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire, the European powers divided the Arab world between
them, a state called Palestine became a fact under the
British Mandate, and the Arab Palestinian people
established themselves as a separate nation with a national
flag of their own. Many peoples in Europe, Asia, Africa and
Latin America did the same, even without asking Gingrich
for confirmation.
It would certainly be ironic if the members of the
“invented” Palestinian nation were expected to ask for
recognition from the members of the “invented”
Jewish/Israeli nation, at the demand of a member of the
“invented” American nation, a person who, by the way, is of
mixed German, English, Scottish and Irish stock.
Years ago, there was short-lived controversy about
Palestinian textbooks. It was argued that they were anti-
Semitic and incited to murder. That was laid to rest when
it became clear that all Palestinian schoolbooks were
cleared by the Israeli occupation authorities, and most
were inherited from the previous Jordanian regime. But
Gingrich does not shrink from resurrecting this corpse,
too.
All Palestinians – men, women and children – are
terrorists, he asserts, and Palestinian pupils learn at
school how to kill us poor and helpless Israelis. Ah, what
would we do without such stout defenders as Newt? What a
pity that this week a photo of him, shaking the hand of
Yasser Arafat, was published.
And please don’t show him the textbooks used in some of our
schools, especially the religious ones!
IS IT really a waste of time to write about such nonsense?
It may seem so, but one cannot ignore the fact that the
dispenser of these inanities may be tomorrow’s President of
the United States of America. Given the economic situation,
that is not as unlikely as it sounds.
As for now, Gingrich is doing immense damage to the
national interests of the US. At this historic juncture,
the masses at all the Tahrir Squares across the Arab world
are wondering about America’s attitude. Newt’s answer
contributes to a new and more profound anti-Americanism.
Alas, he is not the only extreme rightist seeking to
embrace Israel. Israel has lately become the Mecca of all
the world’s racists. This week we were honored by the visit
of the husband of Marine Le Pen, leader of the French
National Front. A pilgrimage to the Jewish State is now a
must for any aspiring fascist.
One of our ancient sages coined the phrase: “Not for
nothing does the starling go to the raven. It’s because
they are of the same kind”.
Thanks. But sorry. They are not of my kind.
To quote another proverb: With friends like these, who
needs enemies?
Uri Avnery
December 17, 2011
“With Friends Like These “
MY GOD, what a bizarre lot these Republican aspirants for the US presidency are!
What a sorry bunch of ignoramuses and downright crazies.
Or, at best, what a bunch of cheats and cynics! (With the possible exception of the good doctor Ron Paul)”.
Is this the best a great and proud nation can produce? How frightening the thought that one of them may actually become the most powerful person in the world, with a finger on the biggest nuclear button!
BUT LET’S concentrate on the present front-runner.
(Republicans seem to change front-runners like a fastidious beau changes socks.)
It’s Newt Gingrich. Remember him? The Speaker of the House who had an extra-marital affair with an intern while at the same time leading the campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton for having an affair with an intern.
But that’s not the point. The point is that this intellectual giant – named after Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist ever – has discovered a great historical truth.
The original Newton discovered the Law of Gravity. Newton Leroy Gingrich has discovered something no less earth-
shaking: there is an “invented” people around, referring to the Palestinians.
To which a humble Israeli like me might answer, in the best Hebrew slang: “Good morning, Eliyahu!” Thus we honor people who have made a great discovery which, unfortunately, has been discovered by others long before.
FROM ITS very beginning, the Zionist movement has denied the existence of the Palestinian people. It’s an article of faith.
The reason is obvious: if there exists a Palestinian people, then the country the Zionists were about to take over was not empty. Zionism would entail an injustice of historic proportions. Being very idealistic persons, the original Zionists found a way out of this moral dilemma:
they simply denied its existence. The winning slogan was “A land without a people for a people without a land.”
So who were these curious human beings they met when they came to the country? Oh, ah, well, they were just people who happened to be there, but not “a” people. Passers-by, so to speak. Later, the story goes, after we had made the desert bloom and turned an arid and neglected land into a paradise, Arabs from all over the region flocked to the country, and now they have the temerity – indeed the chutzpah – to claim that they constitute a Palestinian nation!
For many years after the founding of the State of Israel, this was the official line. Golda Meir famously exclaimed:
“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people!”
(To which I replied in the Knesset: “Mrs. Prime Minister, perhaps you are right. Perhaps there really is no Palestinian people. But if millions of people mistakenly believe that they are a people, and behave like a people, then they are a people.”)
A huge propaganda machine – both in Israel and abroad – was employed to “prove” that there was no Palestinian people. A lady called Joan Peters wrote a book (“From Time
Immemorial”) proving that the riffraff calling themselves “Palestinians” had nothing to do with Palestine. They are nothing but interlopers and impostors. The book was immensely successful – until some experts took it apart and proved that the whole edifice of conclusive proofs was utter rubbish.
I myself have spent many hundreds of hours trying to convince Israeli and foreign audiences that there is a Palestinian people and that we have to make peace with them. Until one day the State of Israel recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the “Palestinian people”, and the argument was laid to rest.
Until Newt came along and, like a later-day Jesus, raised it from the dead.
OBVIOUSLY, HE is much too busy to read books. True, he was
once a teacher of history, but for many years now he has
been very busy speakering the Congress, making a fortune as
an “adviser” of big corporations and now trying to become
president.
Otherwise, he would probably have come across a brilliant
historical book by Benedict Anderson, “Imagined
Communities”, which asserts that all modern nations are
invented.
Nationalism is a relatively recent historical phenomenon.
When a community decides to become a nation, it has to
reinvent itself. That means inventing a national past,
reshuffling historical facts (and non-facts) in order to
create a coherent picture of a nation existing since
antiquity. Hermann the Cherusker, member of a Germanic
tribe who betrayed his Roman employers, became a “national”
hero. Religious refugees who landed in America and
destroyed the native population became a “nation”. Members
of an ethnic-religious Diaspora formed themselves into a
“Jewish nation”. Many others did more or less the same.
Indeed, Newt would profit from reading a book by a Tel Aviv
University professor, Shlomo Sand, a kosher Jew, whose
Hebrew title speaks for itself: “When and How the Jewish
People was Invented?”
Who are these Palestinians? About a hundred years ago, two
young students in Istanbul, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak
Ben-Zvi, the future Prime Minister and President
(respectively) of Israel, wrote a treatise about the
Palestinians. The population of this country, they said,
has never changed. Only small elites were sometimes
deported. The towns and villages never moved, as their
names prove. Canaanites became Israelites, then Jews and
Samaritans, then Christian Byzantines. With the Arab
conquest, they slowly adopted the religion of Islam and the
Arabic Culture. These are today’s Palestinians. I tend to
agree with them.
PARROTING THE straight Zionist propaganda line – by now
discarded by most Zionists – Gingrich argues that there can
be no Palestinian people because there never was a
Palestinian state. The people in this country were just
“Arabs” under Ottoman rule.
So what? I used to hear from French colonial masters that
there is no Algerian people, because there never was an
Algerian state, there was never even a united country
called Algeria. Any takers for this theory now?
The name “Palestine” was mentioned by a Greek historian
some 2500 years ago. A “Duke of Palestine” is mentioned in
the Talmud. When the Arabs conquered the country, they
called it “Filastin”, as they still do”. The Arab national
movement came into being all over the Arab world, including
Palestine – at the same time as the Zionist movement – and
strove for independence from the Ottoman Sultan.
For centuries, Palestine was considered a part of Greater
Syria (the region known in Arabic as ‘Sham’). There was no
formal distinction between Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians
and Jordanians. But when, after the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire, the European powers divided the Arab world between
them, a state called Palestine became a fact under the
British Mandate, and the Arab Palestinian people
established themselves as a separate nation with a national
flag of their own. Many peoples in Europe, Asia, Africa and
Latin America did the same, even without asking Gingrich
for confirmation.
It would certainly be ironic if the members of the
“invented” Palestinian nation were expected to ask for
recognition from the members of the “invented”
Jewish/Israeli nation, at the demand of a member of the
“invented” American nation, a person who, by the way, is of
mixed German, English, Scottish and Irish stock.
Years ago, there was short-lived controversy about
Palestinian textbooks. It was argued that they were anti-
Semitic and incited to murder. That was laid to rest when
it became clear that all Palestinian schoolbooks were
cleared by the Israeli occupation authorities, and most
were inherited from the previous Jordanian regime. But
Gingrich does not shrink from resurrecting this corpse,
too.
All Palestinians – men, women and children – are
terrorists, he asserts, and Palestinian pupils learn at
school how to kill us poor and helpless Israelis. Ah, what
would we do without such stout defenders as Newt? What a
pity that this week a photo of him, shaking the hand of
Yasser Arafat, was published.
And please don’t show him the textbooks used in some of our
schools, especially the religious ones!
IS IT really a waste of time to write about such nonsense?
It may seem so, but one cannot ignore the fact that the
dispenser of these inanities may be tomorrow’s President of
the United States of America. Given the economic situation,
that is not as unlikely as it sounds.
As for now, Gingrich is doing immense damage to the
national interests of the US. At this historic juncture,
the masses at all the Tahrir Squares across the Arab world
are wondering about America’s attitude. Newt’s answer
contributes to a new and more profound anti-Americanism.
Alas, he is not the only extreme rightist seeking to
embrace Israel. Israel has lately become the Mecca of all
the world’s racists. This week we were honored by the visit
of the husband of Marine Le Pen, leader of the French
National Front. A pilgrimage to the Jewish State is now a
must for any aspiring fascist.
One of our ancient sages coined the phrase: “Not for
nothing does the starling go to the raven. It’s because
they are of the same kind”.
Thanks. But sorry. They are not of my kind.
To quote another proverb: With friends like these, who
needs enemies?