Spanish Translation http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=51117
French Translation http://www.protection-palestine.org/article.php3?id_article=5090
(Hat tip to Carlos and Ana)
Origional Article
Part I http://www.akramawad.com/2007/05/messages-in-memory-of-nakba-part-1.html
Part II http://www.akramawad.com/2007/05/messages-in-memory-of-nakba-part-2.html
Palestinians have experienced several periods of major displacement, beginning in 1947-48 war, followed by a second major displacement in the 1967 war. Additional displacement has resulted from Israeli government policies and practices inside Israel and in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories, including land confiscation, house demolition, revocation of residency status, and deportation.
The state of Israel opposes the return of Palestinian refugees based on the desire to maintain Israel as a ''Jewish state'' characterised by a solid demographic Jewish majority and Jewish control of the land.
This quiz aims to test your knowledge on the Palestinian refugees issue and to give you an insight into their unique 59-year struggle.
Good luck!
Leave your score in the comments
Also, please leave any comments, suggestions or ideas for future quizzes in the comments section.
[UPDATE]
Total of 11,550 visitors took the quiz
Suggested references about the Palestinian refugees and the right of return:
http://palestineremembered.com/
Last Saturday, 12th of May, Sheffield city centre was occupied (legally) by pr0-Palestine activists from all around the North of England. The Palestine North rally was organised by Sheffield PSC in support of the Palestinians and their freedom and return. It had almost everything: A huge rally, Speakers, Dabkeh (Palestinian traditional dancing), Palestinian food, information stalls, Palestinian products stalls, Photo Exhibition, A massive model of the apartheid wall in West Bank. I even got to meet an old lady who just arrived from Palestine and turned out to be from my town and she knew my grandma!
The funniest, yet most irritating, part of the day was the Checkpoint Street Theatre. We all wanted to take part in the role play so we ended up waiting in a very long queue, and to make things worse it started raining heavily! The Israeli soldiers didn't allow us to find a shelter and the progress was deadly slow. The floor was full of fruits and vegetables as they emptied someone's basket and didn't allow him in with his harvested crops. I missed my university exam because the stubborn soldier insisted not to let me into the city with my expired ID card and ordered me to renew my ID in another city, which has been blocked by another checkpoint and no one was allowed in or out for almost three days.
That was just a role play. Reality is far more worse.
Here are some pics from my camera
Akram Awad
Thursday, 17 May 2007
This year marks the 59th anniversary of the Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe) in which the Zionist Jewish militias committed a horrendous number of massacres and crimes which led to the displacement of half of the Palestinian nation (around 750,000) from their villages and towns and the occupation of most of Palestine. In the memory of the Palestinian holocaust I have five messages that I would like to send to different people who have a lot to do with this continuing catastrophe: Palestinians living in Palestine, Palestinians living outside Palestine, Palestine solidarity movement activists, the international community and Jews worldwide. Part 1 of this article contained my message to the Palestinians. Part 2 carries my message to the rest of the world.
To the Palestine Solidarity movement activists
My third message goes to the Palestine solidarity movement activists around the world. The Palestinian nation salutes you for defending their rights, increasing the awareness of your people about the Palestinian cause and exposing the Israeli brutality and the evil face of Zionism. I can tell from my experience that there are non-Palestinians who are more Palestinian than some Palestinians. We are grateful for every single moment you spend for us and we will never forget your struggle with us.
I would just like to remind myself and you that the role of a solidarity movement is to defend the rights of a nation and mobilise people to support those rights. It is worrying though to notice a few examples where this red line is crossed by making compromises on behalf of the Palestinians and proposing "solutions" that drop some of the Palestinian rights. So that we don't lose the plot, we should always remind ourselves of our primary aim and that is to support all the Palestinians' rights (and not picking some and neglecting others). It is only the Palestinian nation -as a whole- that has the authority to decide for its future. We stood by the Black South Africans until the apartheid regime was dismantled. We did not impose solutions on them but supported the end of apartheid. Likewise, we should support all rights of the Palestinian nation including their right in their independent sovereign state and the right of all refugees to return to their original villages and towns and their right to compensation.
To the International community
My fourth message is for the international community. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." It is ironic that this statement is also 59 years old and it's yet to see the light in this wild world. If you think you have no hand in the suffering of the Palestinians for 59 years -or even more- then you have to rethink about it.
Palestine was granted to the Zionist Jews through the Balfour declaration 90 years ago which was then followed by mass immigration of the Jews from Europe and USA to Palestine where their camps were secured by British forces. Although Britain had no right in the first place to offer the land of the Palestinians to someone else they still issued a white paper clarifying that the Jews had no right to form their own state in Palestine, and that is when Zionist terror escalated against both the Palestinians and the British -with the King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem being one example of that terror-. When the British lost control of the Zionist Jewish terrorist groups they simply decided to leave the Palestinians to their fate and leave the country! By that time the Americans were the main source of aids and funds to the Zionist terror militias and supplied them with all their military needs including air fighters.
It was in that decade when the Holocaust was committed against the Jews and other ethnicities. The sympathy with the Jews led 33 states -of which the most were either European countries or controlled by major powers- to vote for the UN partition plan of Palestine in 1947. But hold on, what do the Palestinians have to do with all of this?! There is only one answer; European states recognised the suffering of the Jews but still didn't want to host them. This brings to my mind the Aliens Act of 1905 which was enacted by the then-prime minister Arthur Balfour -Yes the same Balfour!- to restrict the immigration of Jews to the UK.
We didn't vote for Balfour, the British people did. We didn't vote for any foreign government that supported the Zionists before or after the declaration of their illegal state in 1948, the western nations did. Unfortunately, most of us only care about what the governments would do for us and ignore their support to the Zionists and their crimes. You have been paying taxes for ages; you probably received good health and social services in return, but how many times did you question the tax money redirected by your government to fund the killing of the Palestinians by the Israeli army? You enjoyed your freedom to vote for your representative in your Parliament, but only very few were caring enough to blame their governments for starving the Palestinians for practising their right to vote for a party other than what the Zionists prefer. Palestinians do not ask for anyone’s apology; All what they ask for is to help them end their catastrophe, which they had no hand in creating, and to support their freedom and their return to the land Zionists wouldn’t have taken without getting empowered by the US and many European governments.
Is it bliss to be ignorant? Not when it makes you involved in the crime. Your favourite shop is Marks & Spenser because it offers you good value for money, but then it is also your money that helps M&S to support Israel with hundreds of millions of US dollars every year. You open your bank account with Barclays, a bank which shamelessly sponsored the celebrations of "Israel's birthday", and you still justify it for yourself believing that closing your account won't make even a tiny difference. You will still insist to buy your makeup from Estee Lauder even when you are told that its Chairman, Ronald Lauder, is a Zionist working with the land-grabbing Jewish National Fund (JNF), opposing the right of return for Palestinians. What is worse is that you may be donating to the JNF charity in your country to help them erase any remaining signs of the Arab villages flattened by the Zionists since 1948. If you want to be passive and do nothing to help the Palestinians and pressure your government, the minimum I can ask you for is not to take part in their killing and daily suffering with your money… BOYCOTT!
To all Jews worldwide
My fifth and final message is dedicated to the Jews worldwide. Our problem is not with you; it's with Zionism. We lived in Palestine hundreds of years in peace and harmony as one Palestinian nation: Muslims, Christians, Jews, Druze and others. We understand the suffering many of you had to undergo in Europe and the US but this should never give the Zionists the justification to cause another nation even worse suffering in your name. Muslims, Christians and Jews believe in the same God, a just and merciful God, a God who will never give one nation the right to expel another nation from their land and replace them, a God who will never allow a Jew to kill an Arab to secure a "Jewish state", a God whose wrath is sure to be provoked by the racist Zionist ideology and its adopters and implementers, specially when they claim to speak in the name of God.
As a Jew you may be thirsty to speak against Zionism, and I do understand the risks you will have to undertake considering the Zionist attempts to silence you, but believe me it's worth the risk. You won't be alone; the majority of silent Jews are non-Zionists, and all what you need to do is to break your silence and add your name to the honour list of Jewish heroes who dare to speak out for Judaism and against Zionism. It may sound a bit pragmatic for a Palestinian to encourage non-Zionist Jews to speak out the truth about their faith to unveil the lies of the Zionists who pretend to represent the Jews, but I'm sure even the non-Zionist Jew dreams of the day when, for people all over the world, the word "Judaism" becomes attached to peace, justice and equality instead of Zionism, racism, occupation, war and "Nakba".
Akram Awad
Thursday, 17 May 2007
This year marks the 59th anniversary of the Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe) in which the Zionist Jewish militias committed a horrendous number of massacres and crimes which led to the displacement of half of the Palestinian nation (around 750,000) from their villages and towns and the occupation of most of Palestine. In the memory of the Palestinian holocaust I have five messages that I would like to send to different people who have a lot to do with this continuing catastrophe: Palestinians living in Palestine, Palestinians living outside Palestine, Palestine solidarity movement activists, the international community and Jews worldwide.
To Palestinians living in Palestine
My first message is to the Palestinians living in Palestine. Your struggle and resistance of the Zionist Israeli occupation and apartheid made you the role model for all freedom fighters and all those who seek justice around the world. We outside Palestine have always been proud of being Palestinians, not because of what we have done for our cause, but rather because of your steadfastness in the face of the Zionist terror that has been imposed on you for the last 59 years. We would love to stand side-by-side with you and face the Zionist occupation together in Palestine, but unfortunately this is out of our hands. The majority of Palestinians outside Palestine are refugees who are denied the right to return and, for those who are not, there is always a need for Palestinians to be all over the world in order to spread the message about the Palestinian struggle and to defend the Palestinian cause and rights wherever the Zionist propaganda twists facts and delivers a distorted picture about the history of the Palestinian struggle and the ongoing Israeli crimes against the Palestinians.
It took other nations hundreds of years to get rid of colonisation and gain their freedom. It took India four centuries to get its freedom and independence, and it took the Algerians 130 years to end the French colonisation. Palestine is no less than any of these and therefore we should not expect to pay a cheaper price for our freedom. Always bear in mind that life without dignity is worse than death, and life without freedom loses all its dignity. If you think that compromising parts of the nation's rights, fought for by three generations, will do you any good you are very much mistaken. There will always come a day when a new generation starts seeking their dignity and, once again, they will realise it is found in their freedom and their return to their home land. Neither the Israeli occupation nor its collaborators should let you down or drive you to give up your rights.
It is fate that every coloniser and occupier recruits collaborators from within the colonised nation to pave their way in. We heard about many examples in the past and the modern history, with Iraq probably being the most recent example. We also have them in Palestine, but this should never make you ashamed of being Palestinian because the moment a collaborator helps the enemy they lose their Palestinian identity. I have no doubt that the recent clashes in Palestine have been ignited and directed by the Zionists and their collaborators. But how are we going to identify them? It is not that difficult. I'll be very frank and reveal to you my simple approach to point them out. Question the loyalty of everyone who hugs a Zionist, whose hand is full of Palestinian blood. Question the loyalty of everyone who accepts military and logistic aid from the same countries starving the Palestinians. Question the loyalty of everyone whose militias are freely allowed in and out of Palestine while the Palestinians have to wait for days or even weeks on border points –and in several cases die from illness while waiting. Question the loyalty of everyone who says no to a temporary state but welcomes the road map, and says yes to the right of return but is willing to negotiate it and make compromises. To conclude my message to the Palestinians inside I shall say again: you made us proud of you for 59 years and this shall continue until we all declare a Palestinian state over the whole of Palestine.
To Palestinians living out of Palestine
My second message is for the Palestinians living outside Palestine. I shall remind myself and you that what makes someone a Palestinian is the Palestine deeply rooted in their heart. So a true Palestinian should live as a Palestinian no matter where they are, and will raise their family to appreciate the Palestinian culture, traditions and lifestyle because this is part of our struggle to preserve the Palestinian identity which the Zionists have been striving to erase ever since they took our land.
It is not a luxury, but rather an obligation, to educate people whom we live with about our cause, our rights, our history and our culture. No one is capable of speaking on behalf of the Palestinians better than the Palestinians themselves. This is conditional on having Palestinians who understand, and are able to communicate with, the communities they live amongst. Never assume others are going to be the ones to take on such a role; Let it be you. Educate yourself about your cause and don't be shy to speak out about the Palestinian struggle wherever you are. We always blame the world for not standing with us but we never asked ourselves if we have ever made an effort to tell the world what they should know about our just cause. Someone may keep saying something for ages but that will be useless if he speaks a language his audience do not understand!
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza strip are the ones involved in deciding on the best strategies and methods to physically resist the Israeli occupation on one hand, and to run the Palestinian community on the other hand. Palestinians may differ in their approaches to these issues and therefore it is legitimate and understandable that they form different parties and groups representing and promoting those approaches. Palestinians living outside Palestine have no reason or justification however, to split themselves into different camps. We should be an example of unity and harmony for we have one goal we all long to achieve: our freedom and return. A Palestinian living outside should always live and present themselves not as a member of Fatah, Hamas or any other party but only as a proud Palestinian.
Based on my personal experience in Leeds University and the National Union of Students (NUS), I couldn't agree more with the brave ex-Israeli Jewish academic Ilan Pappe when he accused Jewish campus groups in the UK and some Jewish students of being ""ambassadors of Israel". However I could never imagine that the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) is shameful enough to call the Jewish British students for "National Service" in Israel by voluntarily serving in the Israeli Occupation Army.
In their campaign for this summer's activities which was given the motto "Whatever you do this summer, do it in Israel with UJS", UJS offered Jewish students the chance to participate in the Sar-El program. The advert reads "Join students from around the world on a national project with the Israeli army. Spend 2 weeks volunteering with Israeli peers and make a difference where it is really needed!"
Sar-El is an Israeli Army unit which aims at recruiting volunteers from both Israel and the rest of the world to help the Israeli army. The majority of Sar-El volunteers serve in army bases and are assigned a variety of tasks which according to volunteers include " doing maintenance on tanks and heavy vehicles " and "refurbishing used or damaged military equipment, which saves Israel millions of dollars." During their "National Service" volunteers wear the Israeli army uniform and work alongside or under the direction of soldiers.
Although it is not a crime for a British citizen to serve in a foreign army, The Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 makes it a crime for a British subject to enlist in the army of a foreign nation that is at war with any country that the UK is at peace with. On the other hand Israel -since its foundation in 1948- has been in a continuous state of war with the Palestinians (or more accurately against them), the Lebanese and Syrians (whom Israel is occupying part of their lands since 1967) and with most Arab countries. It is obvious that when two states negotiate mutual peace agreements they explicitly -or implicitly- look for an end to the state of war between them, otherwise it won't be true that you make peace with your enemies. The daily crimes of the Israeli occupation army against the Palestinian civilians in West Bank and Gaza strip and the war against Lebanon in 2006 are just examples of that state of war. The UK however is not by any means at war with any of the Arab countries, including the Palestinians and the Lebanese, and hence Jewish British citizens who serve in the Israeli occupation army become theoretically guilty of an offence against the law.
I need not to say, but I will do, that it does not need me to be dictated by the British law to make me realise that it is a betrayal to my humanity to proudly serve in an army which evolved from Zionist terrorist groups which was responsible for hundreds of massacres against the Palestinians in 1948 and 1949 and for the displacement of half of the Palestinian nation from their homeland. It does not need laws to forbid an English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh (whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish or atheist) from involving in the repair and maintenance of the Israeli army artillery which is directly responsible for the killing of thousands of Palestinians and for jeopardising the lives and well being of millions of Palestinians through its practices which include, but are not limited to, hundreds of checkpoints, invasions, curfews, imprisonment of more than 10,000 Palestinians (Men, women and children and quarter of the Palestinian Parliament), building the apartheid wall (including its 40-meter wide electrified fence and 8-meter high concrete wall parts), the ongoing construction of Israeli settlements among Palestinian communities in the Occupied West Bank and the continuous judaisation of the holy city of Jerusalem by demolishing Arab properties and replacing them with Jewish communities.
It is a shame that while only half of the Jewish Britons consider themselves as Zionists (based on a survey pubished by IJV), Zionists still insist to hijack every institution which is supposed to serve the followers of Judaism regardless of their political stances (including UJS and the Board of Deputies) and to silence every Jewish voice which speaks against Zionism or the Zionist regime and its racist and apartheid policies and practices. UJS is already in breach of this common-sense commitment by being a member of the Zionist Youth Council, an organisation which adopts Zionism as a basis for its agenda despite its racist and discriminatory nature and the fact that many Jews disagree with it. The schizophrenia of the UJS proves to be far worse than the most pessimistic could have feared. What else can we expect from a British "National" Union after it openly called its membership to break the law for the sake of another country? Probably officially launching a program to recruit Jewish youth to fight in the Israeli Occupation Army would be the next good idea?!
Until Politicians decide to wake up and shut the UJS unless it stops acting as an Israeli National Union, all universities and colleges in the UK should take a firm stand against the national Union's dual-nationalism by giving no platform to Jewish campus societies that affiliate with UJS "the ambassador of Israel".
Watch the film and read a news article about Hadeel
Another innocent child dies in Israeli bombardment of Gaza
By: Defence for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS)
At 5.30pm on Monday 10 April 2006, at least six artillery shells fired by the Israeli military fell on the family house of Mohammed Rabe'eya Ghaban in Beit Lahiya, in the north of the Gaza Strip. Shrapnel from the shells pierced the skull of Mohammed's eight-year old daughter Hadeel, killing her instantly. The shelling also resulted in the injury of eight other family members, including Hadeel's brothers and sisters:
Rawan Ghaban 1 and a half years old
Rana Ghaban 3 years old
Munir Ghaban 4 years old
Amneh Ghaban 9 years old
Ghassan Ghaban 11 years old
Bassam Ghaban 15 years old
Tahrir Ghaban 17 years oldThe children's mother, 35-year old Sofia, was the eighth family member wounded in the attack.
Several neighbours were also injured including:
Jaqueline Mo'ein Maarouf 11 years old
Mariam Maher Al-‘Assi 15 years oldThe killing of Hadeel and the wounding of her siblings and friends is the latest crime to come out of Israel's escalating aggression against the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip. Despite the physical withdrawal of the Israeli military from the area in August 2005, Israeli occupation forces continue to exercise military control over the entire Strip – intensifying assassination attacks against Palestinian activists, shelling residential areas and imposing a virtual siege on the whole strip by sealing entry and exits points to goods and people.
Since the beginning of this year, 15 Palestinian children have been killed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including eight from the Gaza Strip. Four of the eight were passers by - killed in Israeli extra-judicial assassination attempts against Palestinian activists; two Gaza children were killed by gunfire; one by unexploded ordinance while Hadeel is the eighth Gaza child to die so far this year.
Defence for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS) views with grave concern this growing list of child fatalities and this latest Israeli crime. The recent Israeli military activities, including the bombing of residential areas, preventing food supplies from reaching the population and carrying out extra-judicial killings are considered war crimes under international law.
As such, DCI/PS calls on the international community to assume its moral responsibilities and legal obligations under international law and to act immediately and effectively to stop these gross violations being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians.
I haven't posted on my blog for quite long time as I made the pledge not to touch it until I submit my PhD thesis. But I couldn't resist the email I received from my friend Diana about the judaization of the Holy City of Al-Quds (Jerusalem). As a member of the Coalition for Jerusalem, The Palestinian Counseling Center has been doing a great confronting the the Israeli plans to judaize the city. Their latest achievement is a complete English and Arabic unofficial translation of the proposed Israeli Master Plan for Jerusalem "Jerusalem 2000". In addition, they published a preliminary report on the implications of the plan on Occupied East Jerusalem (and in Arabic as well).
You can find the full translation here (and Arabic). Alternatively, you can go directly to the individual sections using the following links (Arabic links below)
Jerusalem Master Plan 2000
contents
Policy Documents Definition and Goals
Preservation of Building Heritage
الفصل الأول – وثائق سياسات التخطيط – التعريف والأهداف
الفصل الثاني – المناطق المفتوحة
الفصل الخامس – مركز المدينة والأعمال
الفصل السادس – هيكل بناء المدينة
الفصل السابع – السكان والمجتمع
الفصل العاشر – حفظ الميراث المعماري
الفصل الثاني عشر – الخدمات العامة
الفصل الخامس عشر – جودة البيئة
الفصل السادس عشر – البنى الهيكلية التحتية
الفصل السابع عشر - البدائل التخطيطية واختيار البديل الأفضل
So, do you think the game is over? Not Yet
What can you do?
SPREAD THE WORD (Email, Blog, Digg, Post) EDUCATE YOURSELF BOYCOTT
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