The ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians or the never ending Nakba

Source: ISM

While we are still desperately concealing, denying and repressing our major ethnic cleansing of 1948 - over 600,000 refugees, some who fled for fear of the Israel Defense Forces and its predecessors, some who were expelled by force - it turns out that 1948 never ended, that its spirit is still with us. Also with us is the goal of trying to cleanse this land of its Arab inhabitants as much as possible, and even a bit more. After all, that's the most covert and desired solution: the Land of Israel for the Jews, for them alone.

...The cry of the dispossessed has now been translated into numbers: 140,000, only until the Oslo Accords. Students who went to study at foreign universities, businessmen who tried their luck abroad, scientists who went abroad for professional training, native Jerusalemites who dared to move to the West Bank temporarily - they all met the same fate. All of them were taken by the wind and expelled by Israel. They couldn't return.

Most amazing of all is the reaction of those responsible for the policy of ethnic cleansing. They didn't know. Maj. Gen. (res. ) Danny Rothschild, formerly the chief military governor with the euphemistic title "coordinator of government activities in the territories," said he heard about the procedure for the first time from Haaretz. It turns out that not only is the cleansing continuing, so is the denial. Every Palestinian child knows, and only the general doesn't. Even today there are still 130,000 Palestinians registered as "NLR," a heartwarming IDF acronym for "no longer a resident," as though voluntarily, another euphemism for "expelled." And the general who is considered relatively enlightened was unaware.

This is an absolute refusal to allow the return of the refugees - something that would "destroy the State of Israel." It's also an absolute refusal to allow the return of the people recently expelled. By next Independence Day we'll probably invent more expulsion regulations, and on the next holiday we'll talk about "the only democracy."

Nakba: A remembrance

Ali Abunimah: the falsifications of the New York Times about the Nakba

Angry Arab: Our pledge to the Palestinians

Jadaliyya: They won't destroy our determination.

Palestinian-Israeli conflict for beginners.

The museum of Palestine.

Nakba day protests in pictures



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

''I cannot come, I do not want to come, and I am not coming''

British director Mike Leigh pulls out of Israeli film festival citing Israel's policies, the loyalty oath being the last straw.

Image from Sarah Lee, The Guardian

Other actors , musicians, and performers have pulled out from festivals, venues and performances in Israel recently.

Sleeping with the ennemy

Having sex with an Arab is considered as a psychological anomaly in Israel.

A local authority in Israel has announced that it is establishing a special team of youth counsellors and psychologists whose job it will be to identify young Jewish women who are dating Arab men and “rescue” them.

It's time for a boycott

More than time. Time for a boycott of Israel has passed and come again. let's do it !
This time the call comes from Naomi Klein.

The time for appeasing Israel is long past.

A history of Boycott campaigns against Israel:
Academic boycott UK, March 2008
UK academic boycott, July 2007
A list of organisations and campaigns to boycott Israel

Gaza: Cry Freedom

Palestinians will never surrender to Israeli brutality and the complicity of 'moderate' Arab regimes.
Palestinian children take part in a human chain protest, near the Erez crossing, against the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Photograph: Suhaib Salem/Reuters
Gazans form human chain along Israeli border in protest at blockade.

And in January Gazans toppled their prison wall on the Egypt border.

News from the Gaza ghetto

Robert Malley: The Gaza Time Bomb

Irish bishops: Israel has turned Gaza Strip into a 'large prison'

The Associated Press via Haaretz, 27-02-07

''A group of Irish Roman Catholic bishops on Tuesday called into question Ireland's commercial ties with Israel, saying Israel has made the Gaza Strip "little more than a large prison" for Palestinians.

"Where there is evidence of systematic abuse of human rights on a large scale, as in the Occupied Territories, there are questions that must be asked concerning the appropriateness of maintaining close business, cultural and commercial links with Israel," said auxiliary Bishop of Dublin Raymond Field.
Field, chairman of the Irish Commission for Justice and Social Affairs (ICJSA), which advises Ireland's top Catholic clerics on social issues, described travel restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as an "injustice.""We are calling for an end to restrictions on family reunification, and an end to humiliating treatment of people at checkpoints," Field said in an ICJSA statement ahead of a meeting with Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern.Field said restrictions, which Israel says protect it against Palestinian attacks, also make it difficult for Christians to worship at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem."In effect, the communities of Bethlehem and East Jerusalem are forced to live divided by a 25 foot wall," said Field."We also intend to raise with Minister Ahern the intolerable situation that is the daily lot of the Palestinians who live in Gaza," Field said.

The ICJSA's statement also questioned the way in which the European Union handled its dealings with Israel."While we welcome cooperation between the EU and its neighbouring countries, nevertheless such cooperation should not be at the expense of a large segment of the indigenous population - in this case the Palestinians."

Occupied territories are a large lawless prison where Israel can enter any time, destructs, assassinates, demolishes, and shoots anybody it wants to shoot, and it has been doing so since the second intifada under the watch of the international community.

Read here the report of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs which monitors the Israeli occupation for movements of people, casualties, land theft, restrictions, demolitions, and damage to property, for the only month of November 2006.

See here a map of Gaza access as of march 2006, the situation has been worsening since.
Here you can find resources for other reports and maps monitoring the Israeli occupation and colonisation of what is left of Palestine.

The Segregation Map in the West Bank

Monitoring Israeli colonising Activities in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza

A Voice from Gaza City: We Are Being Suffocated

''For Israel to have begun an inflammatory dig at one of the entrances to the holy city of old Jerusalem - on the first day of the talks in Mecca - was clearly not without calculation. Yesterday, the morning after the Palestinian agreement had been reached, Israeli forces attacked Jerusalemites protesting at the project and barred Muslims from the al-Aqsa mosque.''

Criticism of Israel becoming mainstream in the US ?

Thanks to the paper on the Israel lobby by Mearsheimer and Walt and to the recent book by former president Jimmy Carter 'Peace not Apartheid', criticism of Israel is becoming mainstream in the US, despite current perceptions.

Read here the comments of Norman Finkelstein on Carter's book and on the attempt by some pro-zionist or zionist wary media to discredit Carter's arguments, most notably the comparison Carter makes between the state of Israel as it is now and the south African Apartheid.

The Lebanese daily Star Rami Khoury's ''Israel's dominance may be going into slow reversal'' offers us an analysis of the moves by the Israeli government during the last six monts and concludes that since the July war on Lebanon, Israel is in trouble.

Check Sabbah's post featuring two opinions on the central question in Carter's book: Israel as an apartheid state.

UPDATE: I received an insult from one commentator on this post but I did not publish it. However I can publish the IP of this commentator who is from the US:205.188.117 (aol commercial)
That's just a proof that insults are one of the methods Zionists resort to in order to silence criticism...Other means are: lobbying, Blackmailing, Bombing, Intimidating and Targeted Killings...