1. In todays’ online version of the Jerusalem Washington New York Times Post we are treated to the following by Ellen Nakashima and Ruth Eglash:
“BEERSHEBA, Israel — This city in the heart of the Negev desert was once a melting pot of Jewish immigration, teeming first with new arrivals from Arab lands, and then with Russian speakers. Today, it is fast becoming a high-tech hub. Soon, it will be populated by the military, drawing in career soldiers and their families.”
Apparently the town didn’t have a history before Jews. But what would you expect from Ruth Eglash who used to work for the Washington Post’s in-effect parent organization, the Jerusalem Post? Her husband, Michael Eglash “has been deeply involved in efforts to promote Israel and Israeli government policy for years and this is now his main business.” His firm has ties to all sorts of outfits that we’ve written about on this site, to include the Jewish National Fund and Birthright Israel. Ruth Eglash is a also a speaker for the JNF.
But it gets worse, with Zionism it always does. First take a good look at Ali Abunimah’s expose.
Then take a look at this piece of pure Zionist bullshit in the so-called Washington Post. She’s being nothing more than a mouth-piece for an Israeli government official who essentially maintains that it is anti-semitic to criticize the holy state. I love the title of the piece: Israeli minister: Criticizing Israel is the new anti-Semitism.
However, causing the shit below to happen is perfectly okay: (Note to Shas Party members, red highlights are by today’s guest editor Mustafa Badreddine, Haifa Wehbe.)
“Another ominous-sounding name was given to the operation in the Beersheba-Hebron area: ‘Python’. Apart from the small town of Beersheba, which with its 5,000 inhabitants was occupied on 21 October, two large villages, Qubayba and Dawaymeh were taken. Habib Jarada who today lives in the city of Gaza, remembered the people of Beersheba being driven out at gunpoint to Hebron.His most vivid image is that of the town’s mayor beseeching the occupying officer not to deport the people. ‘We need land, not slaves’, was the blunt answer.”
That’s from Ilan Pappe’s “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.”
I like this quote too about the Nakba as a whole.
“For the Palestinians it is remembered as Yawm an-Nakba, meaning “Day of the Catastrophe” or just Nakba Day. During the 1948 Palestine War, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were Expelled, and Hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated and destroyed. These refugees and their descendants number several million people today, divided between Jordan (2 million), Lebanon (427,057), Syria (477,700), the West Bank (788,108) and the Gaza Strip (1.1 million), with at least another quarter of a million internally displaced Palestinians in Israel and many more around the world. Later, a series of laws passed by the first Israeli government prevented them from returning to their homes, or claiming their property. They, along withmany of their descendants remain refugees. The expulsion of the Palestinians has since been described by some historians as ethnic cleansing.”
What Eglash is reporting today on the anniversary of the Nakba is nothing more than the latest phase of the Nakba’s hit on that ethnically-cleansed town.
2. Hubby’s company sure does look interesting. From the Upstart Activist homepage:
Jerusalem. Our home. | Israel. Our focus. | Impact. Our goal.
Upstart Activist educates about Israel. We develop and deliver unique media-rich presentations, effective leadership training seminars and creative educational resources that draw upon deep knowledge of Israel and decades of proven activist experience in N. America.
But the site looks old, out of date. Kind of odd looking. Ah, but that is because the name got changed to Upstart Ideas. That site is even weirder. Like it is trying to hide something.
3. “Ever since 1948 the Nakba is dismissed, and must be dismissed, from the consciousness of the Zionist subject, because its existence challenges the basis on which it was built – a people without land for a land without people. Recognition of the Palestinian Nakba signifies the destruction of the ground underneath the feet of this subject which understands itself as autonomous, or as a closed unit [MONADA]. Therefore, any such recognition, or even the attempt to look at this tragedy as something that happened to somebody else here, is outrageous and almost incomprehensible. It is possible to recognize that some massacres happened here and there, as a result of local battles and fighting; it is possible to recognize that all Arab armies tried to destroy us, the subject that wished to form itself. It is impossible, however, to look at the Nakba as a catastrophe committed by this subject in order to form itself, or as a necessary process for the Zionist subject.”
4. Video time.
For reasons I can’t quite grasp at the moment, Birdy’s rendition of this song is something I keep coming back to. Beautifully done, very sad. Sometimes I look at it as a metaphor for all of us.
