‘The Only Democracy in the Middle East’ Murders 13 Unarmed Demonstrators

The latest killings, 13 at the latest count, occurred when peaceful and unarmed demonstrators at the Lebanese border, the Golan Heights and Gaza’s Erez Junction, among other places, were killed in cold blood and hundreds injured, tear gassed and arrested as they commemorated the Day of the Nakba.

Nakba means ‘Catastrophe’ and that is how it is seen by Palestinians. Between 1947 and 1948, Zionist militias deliberately massacred thousands of Palestinians in order to ‘encourage’ ¾ million Palestinians to leave for neighbouring Arab countries, never to return. The aim was the creation of a ‘Jewish’ State in Israel on May 15^th 1948. To establish a state with a decisive Jewish majority in a land where the majority of the population were non-Jewish, it was absolutely vital to expel the vast majority of Palestinians from the area of that State. That was why ‘Transfer’ Committees had been set up under the Jewish Agency to plan the mechanics of the expulsion.

In subsequent years Israel wove the myth about how the Arabs had voluntarily left their homes in order that the armies of the neighbouring Arab states could enter. In time Israeli historians, such as Simha Flapan [The Birth Of Israel Myths And Realities], Benny Morris [The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,1947–1949] and Ilan Pappe [The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine] demolished this revisionist attempt to rewrite history, although Morris’s views have become the Zionist equivalent of the Nazi attitude to Jews.His only regret now is that the expulsion of the Palestinians wasn’t completed and 100% had been expelled.

Ever since 1948 Israel had been engaged in trying to erase the collective memory of the Nakba. Over 250 villages, the names of which the late Professor Israel Shahak, a holocaust survivor himself, were uncovered as part of the process of rediscovering the memory of 1948. The Jewish National Fund, which today tries to cover itself in ‘green’ credentials planted forests and parks over those villages that the Kibbutzim – the symbol of ‘socialist Zionism’ hadn’t already stolen and built upon.

The articles below are from a number of different angles. The first is from an Israeli protestor, Yossi Schwartz, who describes the arrests and attacks on peaceful demonstrators describes this process of rewriting history. The ‘Nakba Bill’ of the semi-fascist Yisrael Beteinu, effectively outlaws mention of the Nakbah. The Nakba is not to be mentioned in the school curriculum and local authorities that hold events to commemorate it are fined (i.e. Arab local authorities which receive on average one-third per capita grants of similar Jewish local authorities.

But the more the Zionists try to ban and erase the memory of the crimes of 1948, the more it is embedded in the consciousness of Israel’s Palestinians. There is also an account of the various demonstrations and the attacks on them all over Israel and the occupied territories.

Below this is a description of how thousands of Syrians and Palestinians marched to the ‘border’ with Israel – in reality the illegally occupied Golan Heights that Israel captured in 1967. Again Israel used its normal customary force to repel the native population seeking access to their land although they were taken by surprise.

Underneath is a report from the International Solidarity Movement of the demonstration in Al-Walaja, which was also viciously attacked by the Zionist military and noted human rights and peace campaigner Professor Mazen Qumsiyah was arrested.

But whenever things go wrong for Israel’s public relations one can always rely on the BBC to step in to the breach. So John Humphries of the Today programme managed to describe the demonstrations as marking the creation of the State of Israel! Presumably by that feat of logic, Holocaust Memorial Day is really about remembering the creation of the Third Reich! Is it any wonder that people are ignorant of what happens in Israel/Palestine when the BBC deliberately misleads and misinforms. Simon Natas has written an excellent letter of complaint to the BBC about their coverage and I hope you do too.

Tony Greenstein