May 7, 2008
Posted by yaman
Israel at 60
If we have to pretend states have birthdays, we have to take the metaphor to its logical conclusion…
Apparently, Israel is turning 60.
You know what that means? Israel is only two years away from reaching the legal retirement age!
That’s right, maybe when it turns 62, Israel will finally pack its bags, move to Florida, and let the Palestinians return to their homes and live in peace.
If you want to know what all the fanfare is about, why Israel out of all countries in the world is the only one that has to mobilize a multi-million dollar campaign to celebrate its “birthday” in places that are… not Israel… read up about some of complications that accompanied Israel’s birth: namely, a little problem called “the Palestinian people,” who were dispossessed of their lands, homes, rights, and security in 1947 and 1948, and continue to live mostly under military law (aka, brute force) in the West Bank and Gaza, thanks to billions of dollars of birthday gifts that the United States gives Israel every year.
Editorial in the SF Chronicle: Mayor Newsom’s Israel trip is ill-advised on the 60th anniversary of the Nakbah
On May 15, my family will commemorate an-Nakba, Arabic for “the catastrophe,” which is the dark underbelly of Israel’s foundation. Sixty years ago, Jewish militants and, later, the Israeli army, forced 2 out of every 3 Palestinians – more than 700,000 people – to flee their homes. Many Palestinians who resisted expulsion or were unable to leave were massacred in cold blood, as were those who returned to harvest food from their orchards or gather personal belongings left behind. The Palestinians who fled now constitute the oldest unresolved refugee population in the world, despite their internationally recognized right to return. Meanwhile, Israel permits any Jew from anywhere in the world to immigrate and obtain citizenship.
General Resources about the Nakbah: Electronic Intifada’s Nakbah page.
I’m afraid Israel can’t wish that problem away when it blows out the candles next week.
11 Comments
May 7, 2008
We’re not celebrating Israel’s anniversary
In May, Jewish organisations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-semitism and Hitler’s genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasised, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba is to the Palestinians.
In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa’s market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorised the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the state. We will not be celebrating.
In July 1948, 70,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in Lydda and Ramleh in the heat of the summer with no food or water. Hundreds died. It was known as the Death March. We will not be celebrating.
In all, 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. Some 400 villages were wiped off the map. That did not end the ethnic cleansing. Thousands of Palestinians (Israeli citizens) were expelled from the Galilee in 1956. Many thousands more when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Under international law and sanctioned by UN resolution 194, refugees from war have a right to return or compensation. Israel has never accepted that right. We will not be celebrating.
We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.
We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.
Seymour Alexander
Ruth Appleton
Steve Arloff
Rica Bird
Jo Bird
Cllr Jonathan Bloch
Ilse Boas
Prof. Haim Bresheeth
Tanya Bronstein
Sheila Colman
Ruth Clark
Sylvia Cohen
Judith Cravitz
Mike Cushman
Angela Dale
Ivor Dembina
Dr. Linda Edmondson
Nancy Elan
Liz Elkind
Pia Feig
Colin Fine
Deborah Fink
Sylvia Finzi
Brian Fisher MBE
Frank Fisher
Bella Freud
Catherine Fried
Uri Fruchtmann
Stephen Fry
David Garfinkel
Carolyn Gelenter
Claire Glasman
Tony Greenstein
Heinz Grunewald
Michael Halpern
Abe Hayeem
Rosamine Hayeem
Anna Hellman
Amy Hordes
Joan Horrocks
Deborah Hyams
Selma James
Riva Joffe
Yael Oren Kahn
Michael Kalmanovitz
Paul Kaufman
Prof. Adah Kay
Yehudit Keshet
Prof. Eleonore Kofman
Rene Krayer
Stevie Krayer
Berry Kreel
Leah Levane
Les Levidow
Peter Levin
Louis Levy
Ros Levy
Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky
Catherine Lyons
Deborah Maccoby
Daniel Machover
Prof. Emeritus Moshe Machover
Miriam Margolyes OBE
Mike Marqusee
Laura Miller
Simon Natas
Hilda Meers
Martine Miel
Laura Miller
Arthur Neslen
Diana Neslen
Orna Neumann
Harold Pinter
Roland Rance
Frances Rivkin
Sheila Robin
Dr. Brian Robinson
Neil Rogall
Prof. Steven Rose
Mike Rosen
Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead
Leon Rosselson
Michael Sackin
Sabby Sagall
Ian Saville
Alexei Sayle
Anna Schuman
Sidney Schuman
Monika Schwartz
Amanda Sebestyen
Sam Semoff
Linda Shampan
Sybil Shine
Prof. Frances Stewart
Inbar Tamari
Ruth Tenne
Martin Toch
Tirza Waisel
Stanley Walinets
Martin White
Ruth Williams
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
Devra Wiseman
Gerry Wolff
Sherry Yanowitz
May 8, 2008
So much effort is being made to show that Israel is strong and vibrant, yet it is weaker than a spiders cobweb…
May 9, 2008
Nice bost.
May 13, 2008
legal retirement age, lol.
but you may be on to something …. the avg age of israeli jews i think is much higher than the palestinian avg….if one day they find services for elderly to be lacking, florida may seem like a tempting option…
May 13, 2008
Haha, well, to be clear I wasn’t suggesting Israelis should move to Florida. I was kind of referring to “Israel” abstractly as an occupation state and the framework of laws that makes Palestinian lives miserable. But Israelis themselves should not be made to move.
May 13, 2008
“That’s right, maybe when it turns 62, Israel will finally pack its bags, move to Florida, and let the Palestinians return to their homes and live in peace.”
Anti-Semitism
May 13, 2008
You’re going to have to back that claim up.
May 14, 2008
it’s always funny when some tool sets itself up as the voice of truth. but on the bright side, it can save you the time you would have wasted looking at what they say by letting you know that they’re full of shit up-front.
May 16, 2008
سو٠نبدأ تØركنا الآن – شاركنا
We will start now – PARTICIPATE
http://palref.net
June 7, 2008
You forget that if the Palestinians had accepted the 1947 partition plan, there would be not one Palestinian refugee, and there would be a Palestinian state.
You also forget that we are not “colonists,” but that there is an age-old link between the Jewish religion and the land of Israel. Just read any one of the Psalms, especially the one that begins “by the waters of Babylon.” Read the book of Lamentations, about the lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah after the first Temple is destroyed. Read Yehuda Halevi’s medieval poem, “My heart is in the east, but I am in the utmost west…” And why do you think religious Jews, when they pray, face Jerusalem? You cannot wipe out our entire history.
There’s more than enough room in Palestine-Israel for both groups of people. You can advocate for the rights of the Palestinians without de-legitimizing and insulting the dignity of the other party.
Raanan G
June 7, 2008
Raanan, with all due respect, the partition plan itself was a colonial plan (since when does the UN have the right to partition other coutries?) that was based on British plans during the Mandate of Palestine. I don’t deny that there is a ‘link’ between the Jewish religion and Jerusalem or the area of Palestine. There is a similar ‘link’ (here I feel like it is purely religious) with Christians and Muslims. But that does not translate into a right (1) to create a state that privileges Jews over non-Jews (2) to settle Jewish immigrants at the expense of non-Jewish indigenous people or (3) to deny the rights of the non-Jewish inhabitants of that area both to live there and to live there as equals. Notice that these are not features of Judaism. They are features of Israeli state policy and 20th/21st century political Zionism. I never claimed there was not enough room for both peoples, and I certainly would NEVER claim that the Jewish inhabitants of Israel-Palestine should be forced to leave–but it is especially ironic that this is precisely what happened to the Palestinians in 48 and after. There is room for all people in Palestine in Israel–but it won’t happen under the supremacist ideology of Zionism.
Leave a comment