More Photos from Monday's Protest at Consulate of Israel

Daily missile/rocket launches by Palestinians in Gaza into Israel are acts of war. Kidnapping soldiers for hostages violates the Geneva Convention. But I guess this is acceptable as long as its funded by "anti-zionist" (anti-semitic) sources instead of US Taxes.

or the ongoing land theft/confiscation, extra-judicial assassinations, ect.
When Israeli terror stops, they may have peace...

IF the Palestinian side gives up their war then there will be peace

Yes, the Palestinians have been oppressed and it was caused by THE ARAB LEAGUE! Blaming Israel is what is leading to more deaths.

C'mon, wakey wakey.

Never heard of a shofar? God, you lefties are sure good with that whole "multicultural" thing, huh? I don't know any Jews, and I still know what you were describing in your ridiculously ignorant comments.

If you support Palestine, you hate Israel. There is no way around it. You protest Israel when it (morally and legally) invades the territories after terrorists continue unabated. The Arabs started the cycle of violence, it is their job to end it.

You people make me sick. America would be better off with less of you morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest automatons.

"or the ongoing land theft/confiscation, extra-judicial assassinations, ect.
When Israeli terror stops, they may have peace..."

Hmmm Israel gave Gaza totally to the Palestinians, and what happend the next day? A suicide bombing. Why did Israel have control of Gaza, the West Bank, and Golan? Because the three nations controlling these lands attempted to wipe them off the face of the planet.

Israel has been fighting this war with one hand tied behind their back. I'm surprised there hasn't been a sequel to Operation Wrath of God yet, the PA is asking for it.

Why do Palestinians want to destroy Israel and drive Israeli Jews into the sea? (this is the commone propaganda/talking point/lie)

This is the question asked most frequently by Israelis and Zionists. We will answer the question indirectly by asking the question below:

Are you aware that Israeli Zionists, during the 1948 war, pushed over 150,000 Palestinian refugees into the sea?

For a long time, Zionists have been propagating fear based propaganda to their followers, probably this picture can tell you a bit of the real story, click here for more details. It's misleading and unfair to focus on what Palestinians might allegedly do in the future, while the past and present of Palestinians are filled with Israeli war crimes. These types of accusations are meant to deflect and confuse the core issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The core issues of the conflict are the collective DISPOSSESSION and ETHNIC CLEANSING (compulsory population transfer) of the Palestinian people for the past five decades. It should be emphasized that the conflict would have been at the same level of intensity, even if both warring parties had been Muslims, Christians, or even Jewish.

Since the inception of Zionism, its leaders have been keen on creating a "Jewish State" based on a "Jewish majority" by mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, primarily European Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. When a "Jewish majority" was impossible to achieve, based on Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionist leaders (such as Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann) concluded that "population transfer" was the only solution to what they referred to as the "Arab Problem." Year after year, the plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous people became known as the "transfer solution". David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, eloquently articulated the "transfer solution" as the following:

* In a joint meeting between the Jewish Agency Executive and Zionist Action Committee on June 12th, 1938:

"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." (Righteous Victims p. 144).

* In a speech addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947:
"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176 & Benny Morris p. 28)

* And on February 8th, 1948 Ben-Gurion also stated to the Mapai Council:.

"From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema [East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood]. . . there are no [Palestinian] Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been Jewish as it is now. In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180-181)

* In a speech addressing the Zionist Action Committee on April 6th, 1948:.

"We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area ..... I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 181)


For Israelis and Zionists to excuse themselves from any war crimes, such as compulsory population transfer (Ethnic Cleansing) and dispossessing the Palestinian people, they've resorted to a myth that Palestinians left their homes, farms, businesses, banks, boats, cars, etc. based on their free will
Jaffa May 1948, Palestinians were being pushed into the see by the attacking Israeli Army

There is no denying the fact that some Palestinians think as many Zionists do (a Palestinian version of Zionism), and very possibly they do so because they were the victims of such treatment themselves. Regardless of whether it's right or wrong, you have to agree that it is human nature to respond to terror with terror, and to racism with racism, these are facts that all decent people must accept and deplore simultaneously. No matter what the circumstances are (such as the urge to seek vengeance, revenge, reprisals, etc.), targeting civilians to achieve political or military objectives, in either war or non-war situations, is terrorism. It should be noted that the Palestinian people have been on the receiving end of Israeli terrorism (the chief aspect of which are the collective DISPOSSESSION and ETHNIC CLEANSING of 8.5 million Palestinians) for the past five decades.

Finally, the Palestinian mainstream does not and will not condone massive ethnic cleansing such as that which Israelis and Zionists have perpetrated against to the Palestinian people. Palestinians, as Muslim and Arabs, have a long history and track record which proves exactly the opposite. Omar Ibn al-Khatab's and Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem are solid proof of how Arabs and Muslims treated their defeated subjects fairly during the Byzantines and the Crusades respectively. Ironically, many of today's Christian Palestinians trace their roots to the Crusades, such as the famous Rock family of Jaffa. In other words, if freeing Palestine would imply perpetrating war crimes similar to the ones perpetrated against the Palestinian people, Palestinians will wait for another Omar or Saladin to right the wrongs of the past. The Muslim Arabs have their history to prove their tolerance towards their subjects, however, the Israelis and Zionists have their track record to speak for them. Palestine Remembered has been explicitly built to expose and uncover Israeli war crimes and to AMPLIFY the voices of the Palestinian refugees.

"the chief aspect of which are the collective DISPOSSESSION and ETHNIC CLEANSING of 8.5 million Palestinians) for the past five decades. "

Just one of those "facts" you throw in. ( 8.5 million ? ) I hope your finances are better than your sources of numbers. There weren't even 3 million people in the British Mandate in 1948 whether Jews or Palestinians. Your sources comes from a book that is so off the wall with incorect numbers you might as well start quoting from the Wizard of Oz for facts also.
How about those Jewish REFUGEES ( 800,000 + ) thrown out of every Arab country with total assets exceeding over 125 times more than the Arab Refugees. How about a swap ? The Palees were told to leave by their Arab cousins in 1948. They refused in 1947, 1956 1963, 1967, 1973, 1984, 1993, 2000 to resolve this entire issue. WHAT HAS BEEN THEIR ANSWER ? I want it all.

The Palestinians remind me of the game show" Lets Make a Deal" and they always pick door #3 whith the Porcelin Pig instead of the Cadillac. They have the misfortune of alway missing the fortune.

...it's Phil Ochs, not "Phil Oaks"!

estimates of the Palestininians "dispossessed" range from 200,000- 750,000, depending on your sources.
Now there are approximately 3 million Palestinians. How is that ethnic clensing?(Gaza Palestinians have among the highest birthrates in th eworld, BTW) And where does the 8.5 million figure come from?

Many thanks to Indymedia for featuring this important news story about the 1,000 people protesting the latest genocidal actions perpetrated by the US military base in the Middle East, Israel, for which we US taxpayers pay $4 billion above the table annually to protect US oil profits in the Middle East. We know from reading the local capitalist rag that this news story was not published in the SF Chronicle, being superseded by the reports on the fog making the fireworks less visible and other such trivia.

Please also note that the antiwar songwriter from the US war against Vietnam era was Phil Ochs. The lyrics and music of Phil Ochs and others were the good part of that era. The bad part was the protests against Israel were not as good as this. Our peace movement has grown and broadened, and one sign of that is the now routine demand of our peace movement to end US aid to Israel. Considering this was the 4th of July holiday weekend when many people are on vacation, having such a large crowd to support the Palestinian liberation struggle was extraordinary. We should also note the difference in size and style of the US fascists and their Zionist lickspittles and the pro-Palestinian peace demonstration. It is clear that the Zionists have no mass base but rather are Nazi USA's puppet in the Middle East.

Contrary to Ms. Sklar's statements, this is not a matter of 2 more or less equal sides having a political disagreement. This is sharp struggle of the heavily armed oppressor, US imperialism and its puppet, Israel, perpetrating genocide of the Palestinians, and broadening the US war against the people of the Middle East in its effort to conquer oil and strategic geographical dominance, including flying over Syria in this latest episode.

The Zionists (who were former Nazi Germany collaborators), with the aid of their imperialist masters, kicked 750,000 Palestinians off their land in 1948, and massacred many others, including at Deir Yassin in order to form Israel, where the Zionists now collaborate with Nazi USA.. It is now a miserable hellhole of some 4 million Zionists, most of whom do not benefit from this warmongering, theocratic, racist state. There is now an Israeli peace movement and it is sure to grow bigger as Israel's war economy delivers less and less goods and services, just like in the US, as no society can have guns and butter. The only hope for peace in the Middle East is a secular, socialist Middle East, and for that, we need a labor movement, both the in the US and in the Middle East. We saw a good beginning of that labor movement in the US on May Day.

The Zionists (who were former Nazi Germany collaborators)....What absolute trash


Oh, poor confused dear...let me remind you...it was the palestinainan Arabs under the Grand Mufti al- hussani that were the nazi collabatorators, and who worked towards the final solution of the jews of Palaestine

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/155235_comment.php#155371

That would be Hajj Amin al Husseini, who was given bureaucratic authority and a large budget by the British when they made him Mufti of Jerusalem in 1920, after Hajj Amin demonstrated that he could organize large-scale terrorist attacks against innocent Jews in British Mandate ‘Palestine.’ He used this power to organize another terrorist riot in 1921 (after which the British expanded his budget and bureaucratic authority), and then a much larger attack in 1929, followed by an even bigger attack in 1936-37 (this last one was called the ‘Arab Revolt’ and was organized with weapons provided by the Nazis). Each time, Hajj Amin’s attacks were against civilians, and they included, for example, such things as torturing Jewish children to death. In 1941 Hajj Amin met Hitler in Berlin. Hitler promised to conquer the Middle East and exterminate all the Jews living there, after which Hajj Amin would be installed as the local leader. Hajj Amin, for his part, immediately became one of the supreme leaders of the Final Solution in Europe, organizing large SS divisions in Bosnia composed of tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslim volunteers who carried out large-scale exterminations of Serbs, Jews, and Roma (gypsies) in Yugoslavia. He also played an important role in getting hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews sent to Auschwitz, and in speeding up the operation of the death camps. Yasser Arafat proudly explained to his Arab audiences that Hajj Amin was his mentor and hero.

The Palestinian Authority (qua Hamas at this point) maintains one of the largest prison systems and secret police apparatus in the Arab world. Why is it that there are zero Jews in Palestinian prisons? Could it possibly be that Jews are killed immediately (including women and children) when they are seized?
I can go to any Israeli city and sit down with and converse with Arabs at any time of day. Why can't I find a single Jew in Ramallah, Jenin or Nablus? Who is the ethnic cleanser?

Aren't Palestinians as responsible as their leader al-Hajj Amin Hussieni who collaborated with the Nazis during WW II? (let's debunk the zionist lies/myths)



Unfortunately, to the Palestinian people this question implies that they should pay the price for the collaboration of a single person with the Nazis! Although there were a minority of Palestinians who collaborated with the Nazis, a whole nation cannot pay the price for the choices of a few. It's not just that the Palestinian people (and most of the Arab countries as well) aided the allies with men and logistical support, they also ignored the call for Jihad, against the Allies, that was declared by al-Hajj Amin in April, 1941 (Righteous Victims, p. 165).

Since the Palestinian people were promised full independence in 1949, and strict limitation on Jewish immigration to Palestine, based on the 1939 White Paper, the Palestinian people had an incentive to help the Allies win the war. It should be noted that several Palestinian brigades were enlisted into the British Army, and the Palestinian resistance to the brutal British occupation almost completely ceased during and after WW II.

In general, the Palestinian people are proud of the fact that they were among the few who did not collaborate openly with Nazis. On the other hand, the peoples and governments of France, Italy, Japan, Romania, Croatia, Chechnya, Bulgaria, Switzerland, ... etc. all collaborated openly with the Nazis. Tragically, many of these peoples and governments happily pointed out their Jewish citizens to the Gestapo. So it's unfair, if not outright criminal, to exploit al-Hajj Amin's conduct in order to eternally condemn the Palestinian people as Nazis, while ignoring the choices made by most European peoples and governments who openly collaborated with the Nazis.

In that regard, it's worth noting that Josef Stalin, the Soviet premier and dictator, forcibly transferred the people of the Caucasus to Siberia as a collective punishment for their collaboration with the Nazis during WWII. However, the same people were allowed to return to their homes in 1958 when the scale of the war crime became known to Khruschev, Stalin's successor in the 1950s. If the people of the Caucasus were allowed to return to their homes under Communist rule, why can't the Palestinian refugees return to their homes under Israeli rule?

IRONICALLY, the shocking truth is that it has been proven that the Jewish Stern gang received funding and arms from the Italian Fascists to resist the British Mandate in Palestine. In fact, the Stern gang's collaboration with the Fascists and Nazis was going on while their Jewish brothers were being persecuted in Nazi concentration camps. It should also be noted that when the Americans, British, and their Arab allies were busy blocking the Desert Fox's (Erwin Rommel) advances in north Africa, the Stern gang's leader Yitzhak Shamir and the Irgun gang's leader Menachem Begin were busy ambushing British soldiers, blowing up the vital Haifa-Cairo railroad supply line, and terrorizing British and Palestinian civilians (Righteous Victims, p. 174). And when Yitzhak Shamir, Israel's future Prime Minister in the 1980s, was asked to explain their collaboration with the Fascists, he replied:

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." (One Palestine Complete , p. 464).

Since these findings have only have only JUST started to surface lately (and are kept smothered in many Jewish communities), we feel it's necessary to directly quote one of the MOST pro-Israel historians, Martin Gilbert, who wrote:

"Avraham Stern who had formed a breakaway 'Irgun in Israel' movement (also known as the Stern Gang), tried to make contact with Fascist Italy in the hope that, if Mussolini were to conquer the Middle East, he would allow a Jewish State to be set up in Palestine. When Mussolini's troops were defeated in North Africa, Stern tried to make contacts with Nazi Germany, hoping to sign a pact with Hitler which would lead to a Jewish State once Hitler had defeated Britain. After two members of the Stern's Gang had killed the Tel Aviv [British] police chief and two of his officers, Stern himself was caught and killed. His followers [chief among them Yitzhak Shamir who led the Stern Gang after Stern's death] continued on their path of terror." (Israel: A History, p. 111-112)

What makes many Palestinians and Arabs EXTREMELY ANGRY is that the memories of the Holocaust are being exploited to paint Palestinians as Nazis. Such dangerous comparison and propaganda tactics are continuously fed to many Israeli school children from inception, especially upon visiting the Holocaust museum at Yad Vashem. It should be emphasized that many life size pictures of al-Hajj Amin standing alongside Hitler are on display at Yad Vashem, just West of Jerusalem not far from DEIR YASSIN. It's hypocritical to hold Palestinians responsible for the "ill fated" choice of al-Hajj Amin, while Israelis and Jews still blind themselves to the choices some of their leaders made during WW II.

First, my apologies to the photographer for getting her name wrong, and my compliments to her on the excellent photographs. Thank you so much for your efforts.

Second, Lenni Brenner and Ralph Schoenman have documented the Zionist-Nazi Collaboration thoroughly. It should come as no surprise to anyone since they have the same capitalist, racist, supserstitious, imperialist, anti-communist ideology, just like the United States, today's leading warmongering fascist state. See:

(a) Lenni Brenner:
Books:
51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis (2002) Barricade Books, New Jersey, ISBN 1-56980-235-1

Zionism in the Age of Dictators (1983) Lawrence Hill, Connecticut, ISBN 0-88208-164-0 and at the
Website: http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/

The Iron Wall (1984) Zed Books, distributed in US by Biblio Distribution, New Jersey ISBN 0-86232-217-0 and at the Website: http://www.marxists.de/middleast/ironwall/

(2) Ralph Schoenman
Pamphlet:
The Hidden History of Zionism at the website:
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/

"Unfortunately, to the Palestinian people this question implies that they should pay the price for the collaboration of a single person with the Nazis! Although there were a minority of Palestinians who collaborated with the Nazis, a whole nation cannot pay the price for the choices of a few. "

The difference of course, was that the "single person" was the leader of the Plaestinian people. And the folks mentioned in the above post were literal footnotes to history. Double standard in evaluating history. What does that mean to you?

http://www.ifamericansknew.org

The founders of the US military base known as Israel were all Nazi collaborators, admitted terrorists (known as the Stern Gang) and proud promoters of accommodation to imperialism. The most infamous act of these lackeys of imperialism with the Transfer Agreement, whereby the Zionists agreed to break the worldwide boycott of Nazi goods to save some Zionist lives, if the Jews could be shipped to Palestine. their colonial project, rather than resisting anti-Semitism and joining forces with those who were fighting back. This is all described in the above books by Brenner and Schoenman. Another good book on Zionist-Nazi collaboration is The Third Reich and the Palestine Question by Francis Nicosia (1985) University of Texas Press.

As to what Americans know, most Americans do not care to know anything about politics at all. This information on Israel is available for those who care to learn it and hs been available at the putlic library for the entire 58 year occupation of Palestine known as Israel. The average American does not care to think about politics just as most of us do not care to think about football. The consequences of not thinking about politics are of course serious. Our money is spent on wars to benefit the rich while we have urgent social needs at home and Americans, especially Americans who refuse to think about politics, end up getting killed in wars which they do not understand and have no business perpetrating. The website If Americans Knew is excellent but I guarantee you the average American will never read it. Perhaps you could change the name to: How Our Tax Dollars Are Spent. The only thing the average American cares about is the paycheck.

Ok how about we look at who represents/supports the Nazis ideology today.

Public television throughout the ME routinely run programs supporting Nazi inspired concepts; the Protocols of the Elders of Zion being foremost amongst them. Leaders in the 'occupied territories' and throughout the the ME also routinely praise Hitlers actions during the Holocaust while amazingly at the same time putting forward the concept that the Holocaust itself was merely an invention of Zionists to create sympathy for Jews. A Hamas representative who goes by the nickname Hitler was elected to their parliament in the last election. And don't forget that in much of the ME it is almost a capital offence to merely be Jewish.

Now compare that to Israel, which not only allows people of Palestianian/Arab descent to live there but has several elected officials of such backgrounds in the Knesset, with all the equal rights and protections of any other Israeli citizen. Even allowing one to plainly state "I admit here that I am not loyal to a state that is Zionist and Jewish." without any reprecussions. And a recent survey of Palistinian Israelis (sorry can't find link) clearly indicated that they overwhelmingly favored staying Israeli citizens even if a new Palistine was formed.

A Timeline of the Zionist Program

By Joachim Martillo

Al-Jazeerah, March 10, 2005




1897



Theodor Herzl organizes the first Zionist conference in Basle, Switzerland. The conference concludes with the adoption of resolutions that amount to an explicit decision to steal Palestine from the native population.

1902



Forced transfer of native Palestinian population proposed by Zionist leader Theodor Herzl.

1908



Racist Eastern European settlers organize to terrorize the native people of Palestine.

1933-39



Zionists collaborate with Nazis to fund the creation of a Jewish State on Palestinian land.

1934





Arab leaders offer asylum to European Jews fleeing the Nazis and present a plan for legal Jewish immigration to Arab countries. Zionist leader Ben-Gurion refuses offer and condemns millions of Jews to death.

1947-48



Zionists begin genocide of Palestinians to create a racist Jewish State. Arab states attempt humanitarian intervention but fail.

1948-56



Israel destroys hundreds of Biblical villages, murders or expels 700,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians.

1956-67



Israel wages two aggressive, premeditated wars against Arab nations, grabs land from Syria, Egypt, and Jordan, expels hundreds of thousands of people, and kills thousands of Egyptian and Palestinian prisoners.

1982



Israel invades Lebanon and starts a war in which 20,000 Lebanese civilians are killed. 2,000 unarmed Palestinian women, children and old men are massacred at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps.

1988



Arafat initiates the Middle East Peace Process at the UN General Assembly in Geneva.

1993



Oslo agreement solidifies Israel’s apartheid system and disenfranchises Palestinian refugees.

2000



Arafat rejects Israel's “generous offer” to imprison Palestinian natives on isolated reservations.

2002



Israel begins construction of a 650-km Wall to surround and starve Palestinian population areas.
Israel attacks Jenin refugee camp with bulldozers and buries Palestinians alive in the rubble.

2003



Israeli bulldozer deliberately crushes and kills 23-year old American peace activist Rachel Corrie while she takes part in nonviolent protest to stop the demolition of a Palestinian doctor's home.

2003-04



Worldwide Boycott of Israeli products, vacations, and investments gains momentum.

2003-05



Racist Ethnic Ashkenazi Neoconservatives manipulate the USA into attacking Iraq for the benefit of Israel and to the detriment of the US national interest. Americans die for Israel. American wealth is wasted for Israel. The increasing debt needed to support Zionist-dictated policy threatens the economic well being of all Americans. Now the USA is directly involved in the same sort of criminal occupation that the State of Israel maintains. Increasing hatred of the USA spreads throughout the world.

Support the Palestinian Right to Return.





Galilee October 1948, Ethnically Cleansed Palestinians on their way to Lebanon.



israelinspires-racism.org
Endnotes and References

1897 Max Nordau, whose ideas of racial purity, racial degeneracy and eugenics, equally influenced German Nazism and Zionism, which he called Muskeljudentum (Muscle Judaism), realized that Zionists would be able to perpetrate practically any atrocity against the native population if the Zionists managed to operate within some legal sounding framework. Thus, the Basle program (see http://www.mideastweb.org/basleprogram.htm) is prefaced with the sentence: Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law. The German Nazis used the same legalistic cover to render their anti-Jewish measures acceptable to the German and world public (see The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Koonz).

1902 Muhammad Ali Khalidi details the forced transfer plan in “Utopian Zionism or Zionist Proselytism?” The Journal of Palestine Studies, 120, Volume XXX, Number 4, Summer 2001, pp. 55-67. A careful reading of Altneuland by Herzl is also worthwhile. A carefully prepared edition may be found in “Wenn ihr wollt, ist es kein Märchen” from Jüdischer Verlag bei Athenäum. Walid Khalidi reproduces and analyzes the forced transfer text in “The Jewish-Ottoman Land Company: Herzl’s Blueprint for the Colonization of Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (Winter 1993), pp. 30-47.

1908 Zionist paramilitary groups existed before 1908, but השומר (haShomer), which is the best known, was founded in that year. Asher Ginzburg (העם אחד or Ahad ha`Am) criticizes them; he even accuses them of “fundraising,” creating incidents that could be used in campaigns to solicit contributions. Rashid Khalidi provides a good discussion in Palestinian Identity on pp 89-117 of Bar Giora and HaShomer, which were paramilitaries established to prevent Palestinians from exercising water rights. Zionism and the Arabs (1882 – 1948) by Yosef Gorny (p. 100) discusses Ahad ha`Am’s opinion of Zionist attempts to suppress the native population. Dr. B. Hofman discusses the Zionist militias and their intimidation and terrorization of the native Palestinian population in ישראל ארץ אין רײזע מײן (Meyn Reyze in Erets Yisroel). Anita Shapira includes a somewhat mendacious discussion of early Zionist terrorism in היונה חרב (Hereb hayyonah).

1933-39 Because of the close collaboration of Zionists and Nazis during the 1930s, Hannah Arendt called this period the Zionist phase of Nazism (viz. Heidegger’s Children by Richard Wolin). Edwin Black’s book, The Transfer Agreement, is the standard text on Nazi-Zionist collaboration. It makes clear that the transfer of funds from Nazi Germany under this agreement made the Jewish State possible.

1934 Al-Jabiri, Ihsan, “La Visite de M. Ben Gurion à la délégation Syro-Palestinienne à Genève,” La Nation Arabe (Nov-Dec 1934), 144-146. If the Zionists had accepted the offer, at least one million more European Jews could have survived WW2.

1947-48 The international legal definition of genocide is assumed (viz. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP2.HTM). Benny Morris’ The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, is the basic text on Zionist ethnic cleansing. The War for Palestine, Rewriting the History of 1948, edited by Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, updates Morris’ data and conclusions. The web page, http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/arab_invasion.html, gives a somewhat inadequate translation of the Arab League’s declaration of reasons for humanitarian intervention in Palestine in 1948. The Arabic title of the document uses the phrase humanitarian intervention and not invasion.

1948-56 The web site, http://www.palestineremembered.com, provides a tremendous amount of data on this issue. Facts on the Ground by Nadia Abu el-Haj discusses the ideology of destroying the physical record of the presence of Palestinians as does Meron Benvenisti’s Sacred Landscape: Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948.

1956-67 How Israel Was Won, A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Baylis Thomas (pp 115-172) provides a reasonable summary (with citations) of the history of the premeditated aggressive war by UK, France and Israel’s against Egypt in 1956. Thomas discusses the issue of the 1967 aggression on p. 165, and his assessment is not much different from what Moshe Dayan has said in his memoirs and comments on the 1967 war. The web page, http://www.time.com/time/international/1995/950828/israel.html, discusses the IDF killing of Egyptian POWs in 1956. The web page, http://www.mideastfacts.com/pow_ap.html, discusses the IDF killing of Egyptian and Palestinian POWs in 1967.

1982 Robert Fisk’s Pity the Nation provides the standard description of Israel’s aggression against Lebanon.

1988 Arafat’s speech to the UN General Assembly (http://mondediplo.com/focus/mideast/arafat88-en) speaks for itself.

1993 The Oslo Agreement gave the Israeli State the legal basis for setting up the checkpoint and pass system within the occupied territories that is so similar to (actually much worse than) Apartheid South Africa. The Oslo Agreement ignores refugee claims. Uri Savir’s The Process discusses the history of Oslo. The web page, http://www.cardamon.org/oslo/oslo_documents.htm provides an index of Oslo documents.

2000 The web page, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article518.shtml, provides a good summary with maps of the proposed Palestinian reservations.

2002 The relationship of the Wall to increasing Palestinian hunger is clear on visiting Palestine. Food must be shipped through the checkpoints, and the IDF hinders such shipments. But perhaps a more important issue has been the confiscation of Palestinian farmland near the Wall and on what is now the Israel side of the Wall. Palestinians are still mostly an agricultural population. If Israel takes away their farmland, it takes away their food. Jenin Jenin starring and directed by Mohamad Bakri addresses the IDF rampage through Jenin. It is worth noting that Jenin (Biblical `Ein Gannem) is probably the second oldest city on the planet. The web document, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hfc/mideast/d9jenin.pdf, describes the attack on Jenin from the standpoint of an Israeli reservist.

2003 Senior IDF commanders seem to have decided to try to drive internationals out of the Occupied Territories (by treating them like Palestinians) in order to obtain the freedom to commit greater acts of terrorism and brutality. In short succession the IDF murders Rachel Corrie, mortally wounds Tom Hurndall and shoots the face off Brian Avery (see http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1358.shtml and http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1332.shtml.

2003-04 The Israeli tourism industry is for all intents and purposes dead. Investment in Israel has dried up, and Israeli academics are personae non gratae throughout Europe.

2004-05 Presidential advisers Perle, Feith and Wurmser wrote A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm) as a strategy to serve Israeli interests. This strategy has become US policy. Either these advisers cannot distinguish US interests from Israeli interests, or they can. In either case, their behavior is probably treasonous, and Bush by accepting this policy recommendation has effectively renounced his duty to serve the USA and to uphold the constitution for the sake of Israel. Bush is now guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. He should be impeached, convicted, removed from office, and sent to Guantanamo so that he can be interrogated to determine the extent of his treason.



Israel is racist. Zionism is un-American and racist because Zionism presumes that the “national, ethnic or historical rights” of Jews to Palestine are superior to the human rights (including property rights and residence rights) of the native population – a statement of völkisch and colonialist racism. The only workable solution in Palestine requires without limitation: (1) absolute rejection of the concept of an ethnicity-based nation state as unethical, (2) establishment of a nonracial multicultural democracy in Palestine, (3) a sincere apology from Zionists to the Palestinian people, (4) complete restitution to Palestinians for their losses, (5) return of all property to its rightful owners, (6) repatriation of all Palestinians, who will receive full citizenship in the nonracial state, and (7) creation of Nuremberg-style tribunals for all Zionist perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Supporting the existence of Israel as a State for Jews is a total betrayal of fundamental American values.

Author Biography

Joachim Martillo is an engineer in his day job. He does business in the USA, Europe, South America, Asia and the Middle East (Egypt, Israel [stolen Palestine], Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories [Occupied Palestine]). He aspires to be a screenwriter with a focus on Palestine and the Middle East.


Historiography of Pre-State Zionism.

Zionism And Its Impact
By Ann M. Lesch
The Zionist movement has maintained a striking continuity in its aims and methods over the past century. From the start, the movement sought to achieve a Jewish majority in Palestine and to establish a Jewish state on as much of the LAND as possible. The methods included promoting mass Jewish immigration and acquiring tracts of land that would become the inalienable property of the Jewish people. This policy inevitably prevented the indigenous Arab residents from attaining their national goals and establishing a Palestinian state. It also necessitated displacing Palestinians from their lands and jobs when their presence conflicted with Zionist interests.

The Zionist movement—and subsequently the state of ISRAEL—failed to develop a positive approach to the Palestinian presence and aspirations. Although many Israelis recognized the moral dilemma posed by the Palestinians, the majority either tried to ignore the issue or to resolve it by force majeure. Thus, the Palestine problem festered and grew, instead of being resolved.

Historical Background
The British Mandate
The Zionist Movement
Practical Zionism
Policies Toward the Palestinians
Conclusion
Historical Background
The Zionist movement arose in late nineteenth-century Europe, influenced by the nationalist ferment sweeping that continent. Zionism acquired its particular focus from the ancient Jewish longing for the return to Zion and received a strong impetus from the increasingly intolerable conditions facing the large Jewish community in tsarist Russia. The movement also developed at the time of major European territorial acquisitions in Asia and Africa and benefited from the European powers' competition for influence in the shrinking Ottoman Empire.

One result of this involvement with European expansionism, however, was that the leaders of the nascent nationalist movements in the Middle East viewed Zionism as an adjunct of European colonialism. Moreover, Zionist assertions of the contemporary relevance of the Jews' historical ties to Palestine, coupled with their land purchases and immigration, alarmed the indigenous population of the Ottoman districts that Palestine comprised. The Jewish community (yishuv) rose from 6 percent of Palestine's population in 1880 to 10 percent by 1914. Although the numbers were insignificant, the settlers were outspoken enough to arouse the opposition of Arab leaders and induce them to exert counter pressure on the Ottoman regime to prohibit Jewish immigration and land buying.

As early as 1891, a group of Muslim and Christian notables cabled Istanbul, urging the government to prohibit Jewish immigration and land purchase. The resulting edicts radically curtailed land purchases in the sanjak (district) of JERUSALEM for the next decade. When a Zionist Congress resolution in 1905 called for increased colonization, the Ottoman regime suspended all land transfers to Jews in both the sanjak of Jerusalem and the wilayat (province) of Beirut.

After the coup d'etat by the Young Turks in 1908, the Palestinians used their representation in the central parliament and their access to newly opened local newspapers to press their claims and express their concerns. They were particularly vociferous in opposition to discussions that took place between the financially hard-pressed Ottoman regime and Zionist leaders in 1912-13, which would have let the world Zionist Organization purchase crown land (jiftlik) in the Baysan Valley, along the Jordan River.

The Zionists did not try to quell Palestinian fears, since their concern was to encourage colonization from Europe and to minimize the obstacles in their path. The only effort to meet to discuss their aspirations occurred in the spring of 1914. Its difficulties illustrated the incompatibility in their aspirations. The Palestinians wanted the Zionists to present them with a document that would state their precise political ambitions, their willingness to open their schools to Palestinians, and their intentions of learning Arabic and integrating with the local population. The Zionists rejected this proposal.

The British Mandate
The proclamation of the BALFOUR DECLARATION on November 2, 1917, and the arrival of British troops in Palestine soon after, transformed the political situation. The declaration gave the Zionist movement its long-sought legal status. The qualification that: nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine seemed a relatively insignificant obstacle to the Zionists, especially since it referred only to those communities': civil and religious rights, not to political or national rights. The subsequent British occupation gave Britain the ability to carry out that pledge and provide the protection necessary for the Zionists to realize their aims.

In fact, the British had contracted three mutually contradictory promises for the future of Palestine. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 with the French and Russian governments proposed that Palestine be placed under international administration. The HUSAYN-MCMAHON CORRESPONDENCE, 1915-1916, on whose basis the Arab revolt was launched, implied that Palestine would be included in the zone of Arab independence. In contrast, the Balfour Declaration encouraged the colonization of Palestine by Jews, under British protection. British officials recognized the irreconcilability of these pledges but hoped that a modus vivendi could be achieved, both between the competing imperial powers, France and Britain, and between the Palestinians and the Jews. Instead, these contradictions set the stage for the three decades of conflict-ridden British rule in Palestine.

Initially, many British politicians shared the Zionists' assumption that gradual, regulated Jewish immigration and settlement would lead to a Jewish majority in Palestine, whereupon it would become independent, with legal protection for the Arab minority. The assumption that this could be accomplished without serious resistance was shattered at the outset of British rule. Britain thereafter was caught in an increasingly untenable position, unable to persuade either Palestinians or Zionists to alter their demands and forced to station substantial military forces in Palestine to maintain security.

The Palestinians had assumed that they would gain some form of independence when Ottoman rule disintegrated, whether through a separate state or integration with neighboring Arab lands. These hopes were bolstered by the Arab revolt, the entry of Faysal Ibn Husayn into Damascus in 1918, and the proclamation of Syrian independence in 1920. Their hopes were dashed, however, when Britain imposed direct colonial rule and elevated the yishuv to a special status. Moreover, the French ousted Faysal from Damascus in July 1920, and British compensation—in the form of thrones in Transjordan and Iraq for Abdullah and Faysal, respectively—had no positive impact on the Arabs in Palestine. In fact, the action underlined the different treatment accorded Palestine and its disadvantageous political situation. These concerns were exacerbated by Jewish immigration: the yishuv comprised 28 percent of the population by 1936 and reached 32 percent by 1947 (click here for Palestine's population distribution per district in 1946).

The British umbrella was CRITICALLY important to the growth and consolidation of the yishuv, enabling it to root itself firmly despite Palestinian opposition. Although British support diminished in the late 1930s, the yishuv was strong enough by then to withstand the Palestinians on its own. After World War II, the Zionist movement also was able to turn to the emerging superpower, the UNITED STATES, for diplomatic support and legitimization.

The Palestinians' responses to Jewish immigration, land purchases, and political demands were remarkably consistent. They insisted that Palestine remain an Arab country, with the same right of self-determination and independence as Egypt, Transjordan, and Iraq. Britain granted those countries independence without a violent struggle since their claims to self-determination were not contested by European settlers. The Palestinians argued that Palestinian territory COULD NOT AND SHOULD NOT be used to solve the plight of the Jews in Europe, and that Jewish national aspirations should not override their own rights.

Palestinian opposition peaked in the late 1930s: the six-month general strike in 1936 was followed the next year by a widespread rural revolt. This rebellion welled up from the bottom of Palestinian society—unemployed urban workers, displaced peasants crowded into towns, and debt-ridden villagers. It was supported by most merchants and professionals in the towns, who feared competition from the yishuv. Members of the elite families acted as spokesmen before the British administration through the ARAB HIGHER COMMITTEE, which was formed during the 1936 strike. However, the British banned the committee in October 1937 and arrested its members, on the eve of the revolt.

Only one of the Palestinian political parties was willing to limit its aims and accept the principle of territorial partition: The NATIONAL DEFENSE PARTY, led by RAGHIB AL-NASHASHIBI (mayor of JERUSALEM from 1920 to 1934), was willing to accept partition in 1937 so long as the Palestinians obtained sufficient land and could merge with Transjordan to form a larger political entity. However, the British PEEL COMMISSION's plan, announced in July 1937, would have forced the Palestinians to leave the olive- and grain- growing areas of Galilee, the orange groves on the Mediterranean coast, and the urban port cities of HAIFA and ACRE. That was too great a loss for even the National Defense Party to accept, and so it joined in the general denunciations of partition.

During the PALESTINE MANDATE period the Palestinian community was 70 percent rural, 75 to 80 percent illiterate, and divided internally between town and countryside and between elite families and villagers. Despite broad support for the national aims, the Palestinians could not achieve the unity and strength necessary to withstand the combined pressure of the British forces and the Zionist movement. In fact, the political structure was decapitated in the late 1930s when the British banned the Arab Higher Committee and arrested hundreds of local politicians. When efforts were made in the 1940s to rebuild the political structure, the impetus came largely from outside, from Arab rulers who were disturbed by the deteriorating conditions in Palestine and feared their repercussions on their own newly acquired independence.

The Arab rulers gave priority to their own national considerations and provided limited diplomatic and military support to the Palestinians. The Palestinian Arabs continued to demand a state that would reflect the Arab majority's weight—diminished to 68 percent by 1947. They rejected the UNITED NATIONS (U.N.) partition plan of November 1947, which granted the Jews statehood in 55 percent of Palestine, an area that included as many Arab residents as Jews. However, the Palestinian Arabs lacked the political strength and military force to back up their claim. Once Britain withdrew its forces in 1948 and the Jews proclaimed the state of Israel, the Arab rulers used their armed forces to protect those zones that the partition plans had ALLOCATED to the Arab state. By the time armistice agreements were signed in 1949, the Arab areas had shrunk to only 23 percent of Palestine. The Egyptian army held the GAZA STRIP, and Transjordanian forces dominated the hills of central Palestine. At least 726,000 of the 1.3 million Palestinian Arabs fled from the area held by Israel. Emir Abdullah subsequently annexed the zone that his army occupied, renaming it the WEST BANK.

The Zionist Movement
The dispossession and expulsion of a majority of Palestinians were the result of Zionist policies planned over a thirty-year period. Fundamentally, Zionism focused on two needs:

to attain a Jewish majority in Palestine;



to acquire statehood irrespective of the wishes of the indigenous population. Non-recognition of the political and national rights of the Palestinian people was a KEY Zionist policy.

Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, placed maximalist demands before the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919. He stated that he expected 70,000 to 80,000 Jewish immigrants to arrive each year in Palestine. When they became the majority, they would form an independent government and Palestine and would become: "as Jewish as England is English". Weizmann proposed that the boundaries should be the Mediterranean Sea on the west; Sidon, the Litani River, and Mount Hermon on the north; all of Transjordan west of the Hijaz railway on the east; and a line across Sinai from Aqaba to al-Arish on the south. He argued that: "the boundaries above outlined are what we consider essential for the economic foundation of the country. Palestine must have its natural outlet to the sea and control of its rivers and their headwaters. The boundaries are sketched with the general economic needs and historic traditions of the country in mind." Weizmann offered the Arab countries a free zone in Haifa and a joint port at Aqaba.

Weizmann's policy was basically in accord with that of the leaders of the yishuv, who held a conference in December 1918 in which they formulated their own demands for the peace conference. The yishuv plan stressed that they must control appointments to the administrative services and that the British must actively assist their program to transform Palestine into a democratic Jewish state in which the Arabs would have minority rights. Although the peace conference did not explicitly allocate such extensive territories to the Jewish national home and did not support the goal of transforming all of Palestine into a Jewish state, it opened the door to such a possibility. More important, Weizmann's presentation stated clearly and forcefully the long-term aims of the movement. These aims were based on certain fundamental tenets of Zionism:

The movement was seen not only as inherently righteous, but also as meeting an overwhelming need among European Jews.



European culture was superior to indigenous Arab culture; the Zionists could help civilize the East.



External support was needed from a major power; relations with the Arab world were a secondary matter.



Arab nationalism was a legitimate political movement, but Palestinian nationalism was either illegitimate or nonexistent.



Finally, if the Palestinians would not reconcile themselves to Zionism, force majeure, not compromise, was the only feasible response.

First
Adherents of Zionism believed that the Jewish people had an inherent and inalienable right to Palestine. Religious Zionists stated this in biblical terms, referring to the divine promise of the land to the tribes of Israel. Secular Zionists relied more on the argument that Palestine alone could solve the problem of Jewish dispersion and virulent anti-Semitism. Weizmann stated in 1930 that the needs of 16 million Jews had to be balanced against those of 1 million Palestinian Arabs: "The Balfour Declaration and the Mandate have definitely lifted [Palestine] out of the context of the Middle East and linked it up with the world-wide Jewish problem....The rights which the Jewish people has been adjudged in Palestine do not depend on the consent, and cannot be subjected to the will, of the majority of its present inhabitants."

This perspective took its most extreme form with the Revisionist movement. Its founder, Vladimir Jabotinsky, was so self-righteous about the Zionist cause that he justified any actions taken against the Arabs in order to realize Zionist goals.

Second
Zionists generally felt that European civilization was superior to Arab culture and values. Theodor Herzl, the founder of the World Zionist Organization, wrote in the Jewish State (1886) that the Jewish community could serve as: "part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism."

Weizmann also believed that he was engaged in a fight of civilization against the desert. The Zionists would bring enlightenment and economic development to the backward Arabs. Similarly, David Ben-Gurion, the leading labor Zionist, could not understand why Arabs rejected his offer to use Jewish finance, scientific knowledge, and technical expertise to modernize the Middle East. He attributed this rejection to backwardness rather than to the affront that Zionism posed to the Arabs' pride and to their aspirations for independence.

Third
Zionist leaders recognized that they needed an external patron to legitimize their presence in the international arena and to provide them legal and military protection in Palestine. Great Britain played that role in the 1920s and 1930s, and the United States became the mentor in the mid-1940s. Zionist leaders realized that they needed to make tactical accommodations to that patron—such as downplaying their public statements about their political aspirations or accepting a state on a limited territory—while continuing to work toward their long-term goals. The presence and needs of the Arabs were viewed as secondary. The Zionist leadership never considered allying with the Arab world against the British and Americans. Rather, Weizmann, in particular, felt that the yishuv should bolster the British Empire and guard its strategic interests in the region. Later, the leaders of Israel perceived the Jewish state as a strategic asset to the United States in the Middle East.

Fourth
Zionist politicians accepted the idea of an Arab nation but rejected the concept of a Palestinian nation. They considered the Arab residents of Palestine as comprising a minute fraction of the land and people of the Arab world, and as lacking any separate identity and aspirations (click here, to read our response to this myth). Weizmann and Ben-Gurion were willing to negotiate with Arab rulers in order to gain those rulers' recognition of Jewish statehood in Palestine in return for the Zionists' recognition of Arab independence elsewhere, but they would not negotiate with the Arab politicians in Palestine for a political settlement in their common homeland. As early as 1918, Weizmann wrote to a prominent British politician: "The real Arab movement is developing in Damascus and Mecca...the so-called Arab question in Palestine would therefore assume only a purely local character, and in fact is not considered a serious factor."

In line with that thinking, Weizmann met with Emir Faysal in the same year, in an attempt to win his agreement to Jewish statehood in Palestine in return for Jewish financial support for Faysal as ruler of Syria and Arabia.

Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, and other Zionist leaders met with prominent Arab officials during the 1939 LONDON CONFERENCE, which was convened by Britain to seek a compromise settlement in Palestine. The Arab diplomats from Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia criticized the exceptional position that the Balfour Declaration had granted the Jewish community and emphasized the estrangement between the Arab and Jewish residents that large scale Jewish immigration had caused. In response, Weizmann insisted that Palestine remain open to all Jews who wanted to immigrate, and Ben-Gurion suggested that all of Palestine should become a Jewish state, federated with the surrounding Arab states. The Arab participants criticized these demands for exacerbating the conflict, rather than contributing to the search for peace. The Zionists' premise that Arab statehood could be recognized while ignoring the Palestinians was thus rejected by the Arab rulers themselves.

Fifth
Finally, Zionist leaders argued that if the Palestinians could not reconcile themselves to Zionism, then force majeure, not a compromise of goals, was the only possible response. By the early 1920s, after violent Arab protests broke out in Jaffa and Jerusalem, leaders of the yishuv recognized that it might be impossible to bridge the gap between the aims of the two peoples. Building the national home would lead to an unavoidable clash, since the Arab majority would not agree to become a minority. In fact, as early as 1919 Ben-Gurion stated bluntly: "Everybody sees a difficulty in the question of relations between Arabs and Jews. But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution! There is a gulf, and nothing can fill this gulf....I do not know what Arab will agree that Palestine should belong to the Jews....We, as a nation, want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs."

As tensions increased in the 1920s and the 1930s Zionist leaders realized that they had to coerce the Arabs to acquiesce to a diminished status. Ben-Gurion stated in 1937, during the Arab revolt:

"This is a national war declared upon us by the Arabs....This is an active resistance by the Palestinians to what they regard as a usurpation of their homeland by the Jews....But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict, which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves."

This sober conclusion did not lead Ben-Gurion to negotiate with the Palestinian Arabs: instead he became more determined to strengthen the Jewish military forces so that they could compel the Arabs to relinquish their claims.

Practical Zionism
In order to realize the aims of Zionism and build the Jewish national home, the Zionist movement undertook the following practical steps in many different realms:

They built political structures that could assume state functions



Created a military force.



Promoted large-scale immigration.



Acquired land as the inalienable property of the Jewish people



Established and monopolistic concessions. The labor federation, Histadrut, tried to force Jewish enterprises to hire only Jewish labor



Setting up an autonomous Hebrew-language educational system.


These measures created a self-contained national entity on Palestinian soil that was ENTIRELY SEPARATE from the Arab community.

The yishuv established an elected community council, executive body, administrative departments, and religious courts soon after the British assumed control over Palestine. When the PALESTINE MANDATE was ratified by the League of Nations in 1922, the World Zionist Organization gained the responsibility to advise and cooperate with the British administration not only on economic and social matters affecting the Jewish national home but also on issues involving the general development of the country. Although the British rejected pressure to give the World Zionist Organization an equal share in administration and control over immigration and land transfers, the yishuv did gain a privileged advisory position.

The Zionists were strongly critical of British efforts to establish a LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL in 1923, 1930, and 1936. They realized that Palestinians' demands for a legislature with a Palestinian majority ran counter to their own need to delay establishing representative bodies until the Jewish community was much larger. In 1923, the Jewish residents did participate in the elections for a Legislative Council, but they were relieved that the Palestinians' boycott compelled the British to cancel the results. In 1930 and 1936 the World Zionist Organization vigorously opposed British proposals for a legislature, fearing that, if the Palestinians received the majority status that proportional representation would require, then they would try to block Jewish immigration and the purchase of land by Zionist companies. Zionist opposition was couched indirectly in the assertion that Palestine was not ripe for self-rule, a code for not until there's a Jewish majority.

To bolster this position, the yishuv formed defense forces (Haganah) in March 1920. They were preceded by the establishment of guards (hashomer) in Jewish rural settlements in the 1900s and the formation of a Jewish Legion in World War I. However, the British disbanded the Jewish Legion and allowed only sealed armories in the settlements and mixed Jewish-British area defense committees.

Despite its illegal status, the Haganah expanded to number 10,000 trained and mobilized men, and 40,000 reservists by 1936. During the 1937-38 Arab revolt, the Haganah engaged in active defense against Arab insurgents and cooperated with the British to guard railway lines, the oil pipeline to Haifa, and border fences. This cooperation deepened during World War II, when 18,800 Jewish volunteers joined the British forces. Haganah's special Palmach units served as scouts and sappers for the British army in Lebanon in 1941-42. This wartime experience helped to transform the Haganah into a regular fighting force. When Ben-Gurion became the World Zionist Organization's secretary of defense in June 1947, he accelerated mobilization as well as arms buying in the United States and Europe. As a result, mobilization leaped to 30,000 by May 1948, when statehood was proclaimed, and then doubled to 60,000 by mid-July—twice the number serving in the Arab forces arrayed against Israel.

A principal means for building up the national home was the promotion of large-scale immigration from Europe. Estimates of the Palestinian population demonstrate the dramatic impact of immigration. The first British census (December 31, 1922) counted 757,182 residents, of whom 83,794 were Jewish. The second census (December 31, 1931) enumerated 1,035,821, including 174,006 Jews. Thus, the absolute number of Jews had doubled and the relative number had increased from 11 percent to 17 percent. Two-thirds of this growth could be attributed to net immigration, and one third to natural increase. Two-thirds of the yishuv was concentrated in Jerusalem and Jaffa and Tel Aviv, with most of the remainder in the north, including the towns of HAIFA, SAFAD, and Tiberias.

The Mandate specified that the rate of immigration should accord with the economic capacity of the country to absorb the immigrants. In 1931, the British government reinterpreted this to take into account only the Jewish sector of the economy, excluding the Palestinian sector, which was suffering from heavy unemployment. As a result, the pace of immigration accelerated in 1932 and peaked in 1935-36. In other words, the absolute number of Jewish residents doubled in the five years from 1931 to 1936 to 370,000, so that they constituted 28 percent of the total population. Not until 1939 did the British impose a severe quota on Jewish immigrants. That restriction was resisted by the yishuv with a sense of desperation, since it blocked access to a key haven for the Jews whom Hitler was persecuting and exterminating in Germany and the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe. Net immigration was limited during the war years in the 1940s, but the government estimated in 1946 that there were about 583,000 Jews of nearly 1,888,000 residents, or 31 percent of the total Seventy percent of them were urban, and they continued to be overwhelmingly concentrated in Jerusalem (100,000) the Haifa area (119,000), and the JAFFA and RAMLA districts (327,000) (click here for a map illustrating Palestine's population distribution in 1946). The remaining 43,000 were largely in Galilee, with a scattering in the Negev and almost none in the central highlands.

The World Zionist Organization purchasing agencies launched large-scale land purchases in order to found rural settlements and stake territorial claims. In 1920 the Zionists held about 650,000 dunums (one dunum equals approximately one-quarter of an acre). By 1930, the amount had expanded to 1,164,000 dunums and by 1936 to 1,400,000 dunums. The major purchasing agent (the Palestine Land Development Company) estimated that, by 1936, 89 percent had been bought from large landowners (primarily absentee owners from Beirut) and only 11 percent from peasants. By 1947, the yishuv held 1.9 million dunums. Nevertheless, this represented only 7 percent of the total land surface or 10 to 12 percent of the cultivable land (click here for a map illustrating Palestine's land ownership distribution in 1946)

According to Article 3 of the Constitution of the Jewish Agency, the land was held by the Jewish National Fund as the inalienable property of the Jewish people; ONLY Jewish labor could be employed in the settlements, Palestinians protested bitterly against this inalienability clause. The moderate National Defense Party, for example, petitioned the British in 1935 to prevent further land sales, arguing that it was a: life and death [matter] to the Arabs, in that it results in the transfer of their country to other hands and the loss of their nationality.

The placement of Jewish settlements was often based on political considerations. The Palestine Land Development Company had four criteria for land purchase:

The economic suitability of the tract



Its contribution to forming a solid block of Jewish territory.



The prevention of isolation of settlements



The impact of the purchase on the political-territorial claims of the Zionists.


The stockade and watchtower settlements constructed in 1937, for example, were designed to secure control over key parts of Galilee for the yishuv in case the British implemented the PEEL PARTITION PLAN. Similarly, eleven settlements were hastily erected in the Negev in late 1946 in an attempt to stake a political claim in that entirely Palestinian-populated territory.

In addition to making these land purchases, prominent Jewish businessmen won monopolistic concessions from the British government that gave the Zionist movement an important role in the development of Palestine's natural resources. In 1921, Pinhas Rutenberg's Palestine Electric Company acquired the right to electrify all of Palestine except Jerusalem. Moshe Novomeysky received the concession to develop the minerals in the Dead Sea in 1927. And the Palestine Land Development Company gained the concession to drain the Hula marshes, north of the Sea of Galilee, in 1934. In each case, the concession was contested by other serious non-Jewish claimants; Palestinian politicians argued that the government should retain control itself in order to develop the resources for the benefit of the entire country.

The inalienability clause in the Jewish National Fund contracts included provision that ONLY JEWS could work on Jewish agricultural settlements. The concepts of manual labor and the return to the soil were key to the Zionist enterprise. This Jewish labor policy was enforced by the General Foundation of Jewish Labor (Histadrut), founded in 1920 and headed by David Ben-Gurion. Since some Jewish builders and citrus growers hired Arabs, who worked for lower wages than Jews, the Histadrut launched a campaign in 1933 to remove those Arab workers. Histadrut organizers picketed citrus groves and evicted Arab workers from construction sites and factories in the cities. The strident propaganda by the Histradut increased the Arabs' fears for the future. George Mansur, a Palestinian labor leader, wrote angrily in 1937:

"The Histadrut's fundamental aim is 'the conquest of labor'...No matter how many Arab workers are unemployed, they have no right to take any job which a possible immigrant might occupy. No Arab has the right to work in Jewish undertakings."

Finally, the establishment of an all-Jewish, Hebrew-language educational system was an essential component of building the Jewish national home. It helped to create a cohesive national ethos and a lingua franca among the diverse immigrants. However, it also entirely separated Jewish children from Palestinian children, who attended the governmental schools. The policy widened the linguistic and cultural gap between the two peoples. In addition, there was a stark contrast in their literacy levels (in 1931):

93 percent of Jewish males (above age seven) were literate



71 percent of Christian males



but only 25 percent of Muslim males were literate.


Overall, Palestinian literacy increased from 19 percent in 1931 to 27 percent by 1940, but only 30 percent of Palestinian children could be accommodated in government and private schools.

The practical policies of the Zionist movement created a compact and well-rooted community by the late 1940s. The yishuv had its own political, educational, economic, and military institutions, parallel to the governmental system. Jews minimized their contact with the Arab community and outnumbered the Arabs in certain key respects. Jewish urban dwellers, for example, greatly exceeded Arab urbanites, even though Jews constituted but one-third of the population. Many more Jewish children attended school than did Arab children, and Jewish firms employed seven times as many workers as Arab firms.

Thus the relative weight and autonomy of the yishuv were much greater than sheer numbers would suggest. The transition to statehood was facilitated by the existence of the proto state institutions and a mobilized, literate public. But the separation from the Palestinian residents will exacerbated by these autarchic policies.

Policies Toward the Palestinians
The main view point within the Zionist movement was that the Arab problem would be solved by first solving the Jewish problem. In time, the Palestinians would be presented with the fait accompli of a Jewish majority. Settlements, land purchases, industries, and military forces were developed gradually and systematically so that the yishuv would become too strong to uproot. In a letter to his son, Weizmann compared the Arabs to the rocks of Judea, obstacles that had to be cleared to make the path smooth. When the Palestinians mounted violent protests in 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936-39, and the late 1940s, the yishuv sought to curb them by force, rather than seek a political accommodation with the indigenous people. Any concessions made to the Palestinians by the British government concerning immigration, land sales, or labor were strongly contested by the Zionist leaders. In fact, in 1936, Ben-Gurion stated that the Palestinians will only acquiesce in a Jewish Eretz Israel after they are in a state of total despair.

Zionists viewed their acceptance of territorial partition as a temporary measure; they did not give up the idea of the Jewish community's right to all of Palestine. Weizmann commented in 1937: "In the course of time we shall expand to the whole country...this is only an arrangement for the next 15-30 years."

Ben-Gurion stated in 1938, "After we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine." A FEW EFFORTS were made to reduce Arab opposition. For example in the 1920s, Zionist organizations provided financial support to Palestinian political parties, newspapers, and individuals. This was most evident in the establishment and support of the National Muslim Societies (1921-23) and Agricultural Parties (1924-26). These parties were expected to be neutral or positive toward the Zionist movement, in return for which they would receive financial subventions and their members would be helped to obtain jobs and loans. This policy was backed by Weizmann, who commented that: "extremists and moderates alike were susceptible to the influence of money and honors."

However, Leonard Stein, a member of the London office of the World Zionist Organization, denounced this practice. He argued that Zionists must seek a permanent modus vivendi with the Palestinians by hiring them in Jewish firms and admitting them to Jewish universities. He maintained that political parties in which Arab moderates are merely Arab gramophones playing Zionist records would collapse as soon as the Zionist financial support ended. In any event, the World Zionist Organization terminated the policy by 1927, as it was in the midst of a financial crisis and as most of the leaders felt that the policy was ineffective.

Some Zionist leaders argued that the Arab community had to be involved in the practical efforts of the Zionist movement. Chaim Kalvarisky, who initiated the policy of buying support, articulated in 1923 the gap between that ideal and the reality: "Some people say...that only by common work in the field of commerce, industry and agriculture mutual understanding between Jews and Arabs will ultimately be attained....This is, however, merely a theory. In practice we have not done and we are doing nothing for any work in common.

How many Arab officials have we installed in our banks? Not even one.



How many Arabs have we brought into our schools? Not even one.



What commercial houses have we established in company with Arabs? Not even one."


Two years later, Kalvarisky lamented: "We all admit the importance of drawing closer to the Arabs, but in fact we are growing more distant like a drawn bow. We have no contact: two separate worlds, each living its own life and fighting the other."

Some members of the yishuv emphasized the need for political relations with the Palestinian Arabs, to achieve either a peacefully negotiated territorial partition (as Nahum Goldmann sought) or a binational state (as Brit Shalom and Hashomer Ha-tzair proposed). But few went as far as Dr. Judah L. Magnes, chancellor of The Hebrew University, who argued that Zionism meant merely the creation of a Jewish cultural center in Palestine rather than an independent state. In any case, the binationalists had little impact politically and were strongly opposed by the leadership of the Zionist movement.

Zionist leaders felt they did not harm the Palestinians by blocking them from working in Jewish settlements and industries or even by undermining their majority status. The Palestinians were considered a small part of the large Arab nation; their economic and political needs could be met in that wider context, Zionists felt, rather than in Palestine. They could move elsewhere if they sought land and could merge with Transjordan if they sought political independence.

This thinking led logically to the concept of population TRANSFER. In 1930 Weizmann suggested that the problems of insufficient land resources within Palestine and of the dispossession of peasants could be solved by moving them to Transjordan and Iraq. He urged the Jewish Agency to provide a loan of £1 million to help move Palestinian farmers to Transjordan. The issue was discussed at length in the Jewish Agency debates of 1936-37 on partition. At first, the majority proposed a voluntary transfer of Palestinians from the Jewish state, but later they realized that the Palestinians would never leave voluntarily. Therefore, key leaders such as Ben-Gurion insisted that compulsory transfer was essential. The Jewish Agency then voted that the British government should pay for the removal of the Palestinian Arabs from the territory allotted to the Jewish state.

The fighting from 1947 to 1949 resulted in a far larger transfer than had been envisioned in 1937. It solved the Arab problem by removing most of the Arabs and was the ultimate expression of the policy of force majeure.

Conclusion
The land and people of Palestine were transformed during the thirty years of British rule. The systematic colonization undertaken by the Zionist movement enabled the Jewish community to establish separate and virtually autonomous political, economic, social, cultural, and military institutions. A state within a state was in place by the time the movement launched its drive for independence. The legal underpinnings for the autonomous Jewish community were provided by the British Mandate. The establishment of a Jewish state was first proposed by the British Royal Commission in July 1937 and then endorsed by the UNITED NATIONS in November 1947.

That drive for statehood IGNORED the presence of a Palestinian majority with its own national aspirations. The right to create a Jewish state—and the overwhelming need for such a state—were perceived as overriding Palestinian counterclaims. Few members of the yishuv supported the idea of binationalism. Rather, territorial partition was seen by most Zionist leaders as the way to gain statehood while according certain national rights to the Palestinians. TRANSFER of Palestinians to neighboring Arab states was also envisaged as a means to ensure the formation of a homogeneous Jewish territory. The implementation of those approaches led to the formation of independent Israel, at the cost of dismembering the Palestinian community and fostering long-term hostility with the Arab world.

—Ann M. Lesch

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abu Lughod, Janet L. "The Demographic Transformation of Palestine." In The Tansformation of Palestine, ed. by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod. Evanston, Ill.: Northestern University Press, 1971.

Caplan, Neil. Palestine Jew1Y and the Arab Question, 1917-25. London: Frank Cass, 1978.

Farsoun, Samih K., and Christina Zacharia. Palestine and the Palestinians. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996.

Flapan, Simha. Zionism and the Palestinians. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979.
Granott (Granovsky), Avraham. The Land System in Palestine. London: Frank CaBs, 1978.

Hadawi, Sami. Bitter Harvest Palestine 1914-1979. Rev. ed. Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan Books, 1979.

Hattis, Susan Lee. The Bi-National Idea in Palestine during Mandato1Y Times. Haifa: Shikmona Publishing Co., 1970.

Hertzberg, Arthur, ed. The Zionist Idea. New York: Atheneum, 1969.

Hurewitz, J. C. The Struggle for Palestine. Reprint. New York: Schocken Books, 1976.

Lesch, Ann Mosely. Arab Politics in Palestine, 1917-1939. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979.

Mandel, Neville. "Attempts at an Arab-Zionist Entente, 1913-1914," Middle Eastern Studies 1 (1965).

----."Turks, Arabs, and Jewish Immigration into Palestine, 1882-1914," St. Antony's Papers 17 (1965).

Mansur, George. The Arab Worker under the Palestine Mandate. Jerusalem: Commercial Press, 1937.

Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement 1918-1929. London: Frank Cass, 1974.

----.Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1929-1939. London: Frank CaBs, 1977.

Ro'i, Yaacov. "The Zionist Attitude to the Arabs, 1908-1914." Middle Eastern Studies 4 (1968).

Ruedy, John. "Dynamics of Land Alienation." In The Transformation of Palestine, ed. by Ibrahim Abu- Lughod. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press 1071

The Above article was quoted from Encyclopedia Of The Palestinians, edited by Philip Mattar.


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Home > Shington-report.org > Html > Zionism And Its Impact

FIERCE CRY FOR LIBERATION ...
Israeli Massacres:
Details and Numbers

Although the Image that Israel distributes about herself is that of an oppressed nation, it is with heavy hearts that we present these crimes that stand for themselves for the brutality of the Israeli Army and the heartlessness of its soldiers who seem to have a thirst for blood. It is for the hope that the world may see a clearer picture that we present these painful facts. It is interesting to notice that today's media does not dwell on these crimes as they do on the Holocaust. They are reported in the news for a week or two and then swept into the sea of oblivion. Those who attempt to revive the true history of Israel are charged of being anti-Semitic. So with the hope to keep those memories in mind we present this shameful history of Israel that seems to have found that the role of Goliath is more interesting than that of David.


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The following list of massacres is by no means exclusive, but they reflect the nature of the Zionist occupation of Palestine and Lebanon and show that massacres and expulsions were not aberrations that happen in any war, but organized atrocities with only one aim, that is to have a Zionist state which is 'goyim rein'.
The King David Massacre
The Massacre at Baldat al-Shaikh
YEHIDA MASSACRE
KHISAS MASSACRE
QAZAZA MASSACRE
The Semiramis Hotel Massacre
The Massacre at Dair Yasin
NASER AL-DIN MASSACRE
THE TANTURA MASSACRE
BEIT DARAS MASSACRE
THE DAHMASH MOSQUE MASSACRE
DAWAYMA MASSACRE
HOULA MASSACRE
SHARAFAT MASSACRE
Salha Massacre
The Massacre at Qibya
KAFR QASEM MASSACRE
Khan Yunis Massacre
The Massacre in Gaza City
AL-SAMMOU' MASSACRE
Aitharoun Massacre
Kawnin Massacre
Hanin Massacre
Bint Jbeil Massacre
Abbasieh Massacre
Adloun Massacre
Saida Massacre
Fakhani Massacre
Beirut Massacre Sabra And Shatila Massacre
Jibsheet Massacre
Sohmor Massacre
Seer Al Garbiah
Maaraka Massacres
Zrariah Massacre
Homeen Al-Tahta Massacre
Jibaa Massacre
Yohmor Massacre
Tiri massacre
Al-Naher Al-Bared Massacre
Ain Al-Hillwee Massacre
OYON QARA MASSACRE
Siddiqine Massacre
AL-AQSA MOSQUE MASSACRE
THE IBRAHIMI MOSQUE MASSACRE
THE JABALIA MASSACRE
Aramta Massacre
ERETZ CHECKPOINT MASSACRE
Deir Al-Zahrani Massacre
Nabatiyeh (school bus) Massacre
Mnsuriah Massacre
The Sohmor Second Massacre
Nabatyaih Massacre
Qana Massacre
Trqumia Massacr
Janta Massacre
24 Of June 1999 Massacres
Western Bekaa villages Massacre:


The King David Massacre:

The King David Hotel explosion of July 22, 1946 (Palestine), which resulted in the deaths of 92 Britons, Arabs and Jews, and in the wounding of 58, was not just an act of “Jewish extremists,” but a premeditated massacre conducted by the Irgun in agreement with the highest Jewish political authorities in Palestine-- the Jewish Agency and its head David-Ben-Gurion.
According to Yitshaq Ben-Ami, a Palestinian Jew who spent 30 years in exile after the establishment of Israel investigating the crimes of the “ruthless clique heading the internal Zionist movement,”
The Irgun had conceived a plan for the King David attack early in 1946, but the green light was given only on July first. According to Dr. Sneh, the operation was personally approved by Ben-Gurion, from his self-exile in Europe. Sadeh, the operations officer of the Haganah, and Giddy Paglin, the head of the Irgun operation under Menachem Begin agreed that thirty-five minutes advance notice would give the British time enough to evacuate the wing, without enabling them to disarm the explosion.
The Jewish Agency’s motive was to destroy all evidence the British had gathered proving that the terrorist crime waves in Palestine were not merely the actions of “fringe” groups such as the Irgun and Stern Gang, but were committed in collusion with the Haganah and Palmach groups and under the direction of the highest political body of the Zionist establishment itself, namely the Jewish Agency.
That so many innocent civilian lives were lost in the King David massacre is a normal part of the pattern of the history of Zionist outrages: A criminal act is committed, allegedly by an isolated group, but actually under the direct authorization of the highest Zionist authorities, whether of the Jewish Agency
during the Palestine Mandate or of the Government of Israel thereafter.

The following is a statement made in the House of Commons by then British Prime Minister Clement Attlee:
On July 22, 1946, one of the most dastardly and cowardly crimes in recorded history took place. We refer to the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
Ninety-two persons lost their lives in that stealthy attack, 45 were injured, among whom there were many high officials, junior officers and office personnel, both men and women. The King David Hotel was used as an office housing the Secretariat of the Palestine Government and British Army Headquarters. The attack was made on 22 July at about 12 o’clock noon when offices are usually in full swing. The attackers, disguised as milkmen, carried the explosives in milk containers, placed them in the basement of the Hotel and ran away.

The Chief Secretary for the Government of Palestine, Sir John Shaw, declared in a broadcast: “As head of the Secretariat, the majority of the dead and wounded were my own staff, many of whom I have known personally for eleven years. They are more than official colleagues. British, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Armenians; senior officers, police, my orderly, my chauffeur, messengers, guards, men and
women-- young and old-- they were my friends.

“No man could wish to be served by a more industrious, loyal and honest group of ordinary decent people. Their only crime was their devoted, unselfish and impartial service to Palestine and its people. For this they have been rewarded by cold-blooded mass murder.”

Although members of the Irgun Z’vai Leumi took responsibility for this crime, yet they also made it public later that they obtained the consent and approval of the Haganah Command, and it follows, that of the Jewish Agency.

The King David Hotel massacre shocked the conscience of the civilizedworld. On July 23, Anthony Eden, leader of the British opposition Conservative
Party, posed a question in the House of Commons to Prime Minister Atlee of the Labor Party, asking “the Prime Minister whether he has any statement to make on the bomb outrage at the British Headquarters in Jerusalem.” The Prime Minister responded:
“…It appears that, after exploding a small bomb in the street, presumably as a diversionary measure-- this did virtually no damage-- a lorry drove up to the tradesmen’s entrance of the King David Hotel and the occupants, after holding up the staff at pistol point, entered the kitchen premises carrying a number of milk cans. At some stage of the proceedings, they shot and seriously wounded a British soldier who attempted to interfere with them. All available information so far is to the effect that they were Jews. Somewhere in the basement of the hotel they planted bombs which went off shortly afterwards. They appear to have made good their escape.
“Every effort is being made to identify and arrest the perpetrators of this outrage. The work of rescue in the debris, which was immediately organized, still continues. The next-of-kin of casualties are being notified by telegram as soon as accurate information is available. The House will wish to express their
profound sympathy with the relatives of the killed and with those injured in this dastardly outrage.”

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The Massacre at Baldat al-Shaikh:

January 30-31, 1947(Palestine) : This massacre took place following an argument which broke out between Palestinian workers and Zionists in the Haifa Petroleum Refinery, leading to the deaths of a number of Palestinians and wounding and killing approximately sixty Zionists. A large number of the Palestinian Arab workers were living in Baldat al-Shaikh and Hawasa, located in the southeast of Haifa. Consequently, the Zionists planned to take revenge on behalf of fellow Zionists who had been killed in the refinery by attacking Baldat al-Shaikh and Hawasa.1
On the night of January 30-31, 1947, a mixed force composed of the First Battalion
of Palmakh and the Carmelie brigade (estimated at approximately 150 to 200
Zionist terrorists) launched a raid against the two towns under the leadership of
Hayim Afinu'am.]2 They focused their attack on the outskirts of Baldat al-Shaikh and
Hawasa. Taking the outlying homes by surprise as their inhabitants slept, they pelted
them with hand grenades, then went inside, firing their machine guns.3 The terrorist
attack led to the deaths of approximately sixty citizens inside their homes, most of
them women, elderly and children.4 The attack lasted for an hour, after which the
Zionists withdrew at 2:00 a.m., having attacked a large number of noncombatant
homes.5 According to a report written by the leader of the terrorist operation, "the
attacking units slipped into the town and began working on the houses. And due to
the fact that gunfire was directed inside the rooms, it was not possible to avoid
injuring women and children."6

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YEHIDA MASSACRE:
13 December 1947(Palestine) : men of the Arab village of Yehiday (near Petah Tekva, the first Zionist settlement to be established) met at the local coffee house when they saw a British Army patrol enter the village, they were reassured espeically that Jewish terrorists had murdered 12 Palestinians the previous day. The four cars stopped in front of the cafe house and out stepped men dressed in khaki uniforms and steel helmets. However, it soon became apparent that they had not come to protect the villagers. With machine guns they sprayed bullets into the crowd gathered in the coffee house. Some of the invaders placed bombs next to Arab homes while other disguised terrorists tossed grenades at civilians. For a while it seemed as if the villagers would be annihilated but soon a real British patrol arrived to foil the well organized killing raid. The death toll of 7 Arab civilans could have been much higher. Earlier the same day 6 Arabs were killed and 23 wounded when home made bombs were tossed at a crowd of Arabs standing near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. In Jaffa another bomb killed six more Arabs and injured 40.
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KHISAS MASSACRE:
18 December 1947(Palestine) : Two carloads of Haganah terrorists drove through the village of Khisas (on the Lebanese Syrian border) firing machine guns and throwing grenades. 10 Arab civilians were killed in the raid.
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QAZAZA MASSACRE:
19 December 1947(Palestine) : 5 Arab children were murdered when Jewish terrorists blew up the house of the village Mukhtar.
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The Semiramis Hotel Massacre:
5/7/1948(Palestine): The Jewish Agency escalated their terror campaign against Palestinian Arabs.
They decided to perpetrate a wholesale massacre by bombing the Semiramis Hotel in the Katamon section of Jerusalem, in order to drive out the Palestinians from Jerusalem. The massacre of the Semiramis Hotel on January 5, 1948, was the direct responsibility of Jewish Agency leader David Ben-Gurion and Haganah leaders Moshe Sneh and Yisrael Galili. If this massacre had taken place in World War II, they would have been sentenced to death for their criminal responsibility along with the terrorists who placed the explosives.
A description of the massacre of the Semiramis Hotel from the United Nations Documents follows, as well as the Palestinian Police report on the crime sent to the Colonial Office in London:
January 5, 1948. Haganah terrorists made a most barbarous attack at one o’clock in the early morning of Monday…at the Semiramis Hotel in the Katamon section of Jerusalem, killing innocent people and wounding many. The Jewish Agency terrorist forces blasted the entrance to the hotel by a small bomb and then placed bombs in the basement of the building. As a result of the explosion the whole building collapsed with its residents. As the terrorists withdrew, they started shooting at the houses in the neighborhood. Those killed were: Subhi El-Taher, Moslem; Mary Masoud, Christian; Georgette Khoury, Christian; Abbas Awadin, Moslem; Nazira Lorenzo, Christian; Mary Lorenzo, Christian; Mohammed
Saleh Ahmed, Moslem; Ashur Abed El Razik Juma, Moslem; Ismail Abed El Aziz, Moslem; Ambeer Lorenzo, Christian; Raof Lorenzo, Christian; Abu Suwan Christian family, seven members, husband, wife, and five children.
Besides those killed, 16 more were wounded, among them women and children. The following is a text of a cable by the High Commissioner for Palestine to the Colonial Office about the massacre:
Jerusalem. 0117 hours, Urban. At approximately 0117 hours, a grenade was thrown into the Semiramis Hotel, Katamon Quarter, causing superficial damage but no casualties. During the ensuing confusion, a charge was placed in the building and it exploded about one minute later, completely demolishing half the hotel. Witnesses have stated that the perpetrators arrived by way of the Upper Katamon Road in two taxis. Four persons are reported to have alighted from the first taxi, and one person, who apparently covered the main party, from the second. All were wearing European clothes…

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The Massacre at Dair Yasin:

9/4/1948(Palestine): The forces of the Zionist gangs Tsel, Irgun and Hagana, fitted out with the Zionist terrorist strategy of killing civilians in order to achieve their aspirations, began stealing into the village on the night of April 9, 1948. Their purpose was to uproot the Palestinian people from their land by coming upon the inhabitants of the village
unawares, destroying their homes and burning them down on top of those inside, thereby making clear to the entire world to what depths of barbarism Zionist had sunk. The attack began as the children were asleep in their mothers' and fathers' arms. In the words of Menachim Begin as he described events, "the Arabs fought tenaciously in defense of their homes, their women and their children." The fighting proceeded from house to house, and whenever the Jews occupied a house, they
would blow it up, then direct a call to the inhabitants to flee or face death. Believing the threat, the people left in terror in hopes of saving their children and women. But what should the Stern and Irgun gangs do but rush to mow down whoever fell within range of their weapons. Then, in a picture of barbarism the likes of which humanity has rarely witnessed except on the part of the most depraved, the terrorists began throwing bombs inside the houses in order to bring them down on whoever was
inside. The orders they had received were for them to destroy every house. Behind the explosives there marched the Stern and Irgun terrorists, who killed whoever they found alive. The explosions continued in the same barbaric fashion until the afternoon of April 10, 1948.7 Then they gathered together the civilians who were still alive, stood them up beside the walls and in corners, then fired on them.8 About twenty-five men were brought out of the houses, loaded onto a truck and led on a
"victory tour" in the neighborhood of Judah Mahayina and Zakhroun Yousif. At the end of the tour, the men were brought to a stone quarry located between Tahawwu'at Shawul and Dair Yasin, where they were shot in cold blood. Then the Etsel and Layhi "fighters" brought the women and the children who had managed to survive up to a truck and took them to the Mendelbaum Gate.8 Finally, a Hagana unit came and dug a mass grave in which it buried 250 Arab corpses, most of them women, children
and the elderly.9

A woman who survived the massacre by the name of Halima Id describes what happened to her sister. She says, "I saw a soldier grabbing my sister, Saliha al-Halabi, who was nine months pregnant. He pointed a machine gun at her neck, then emptied its contents into her body. Then he turned into a butcher, and grabbed a knife and ripped open her stomach to take out the slaughtered child with his
iniquitous Nazi knife."10 In another location in the village, Hanna Khalil, a girl at the time, saw a man unsheathing a large knife and ripping open the body her neighbor Jamila Habash from head to toe. Then he murdered their neighbor Fathi in the same way at the entranceway to the house.11 A 40-year-old woman named Safiya describes how she was come upon by a man who suddenly opened up his trousers and pounced on her. "I began screaming and wailing. But the women around me were all meeting the same fate. After that they tore off our clothes so that they could fondle our breasts and our bodies with gestures too horrible to describe."12 Some of the soldiers cut off women's ears in order to get at a few small earrings.13 Once news of the massacre had gotten out, a delegation from the Red Cross tried to visit the village. However, they weren't allowed to visit the site until a day after the
time they had requested. Meanwhile the Zionists tried to cover up the evidence of their crime. They gathered up as much as they could of the victims' dismembered corpses, threw them in the village well, then closed it up. And they tried to change the landmarks in the area so that the Red Cross representative wouldn't be able to find his way there. However, he did find his way to the well, where he found 150 maimed corpses belonging to women, children and the elderly. And in addition to the bodies which were found in the well, scores of others had been buried in mass graves while
still others remained strewn over street corners and in the ruins of houses.14
Afterwards, the head of the terrorist Hagana gang which had taken part in burying the Palestinian civilians wrote saying that his group had not undertaken a military operation against armed men, the reason being that they wanted to plant fear in the Arabs' hearts. This was the reason they chose a peaceable, unarmed village, since in this way they could spread terror among the Arabs and force them to flee.15

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NASER AL-DIN MASSACRE:
13-14 April 1948(Palestine) : a contingent of Lehi and Irgon entered this village (near Tiberias) entered the village on the night of 13 April dressed as Arab fighters. Upon their entrance to the village the people went out to greet them, the terrorists met them with fire, killing every single one of them. Only 40 people survived. All the houses of the village were raised to the ground.
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Abu Shusha Massacre
(coming soon)



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THE TANTURA MASSACRE:
May 15, 1948 (Palestine): "From testimonies and information I got from Jewish and Arab witnesses and from soldiers who were there, at least 200 people from the village of Tantura were killed by Israeli troops...

"From the numbers, this is definitely one of the biggest massacres," Teddy Katz an Israeli historian said Tantura, near Haifa in northern Palestine, had 1,500 residents at the time. It was later demolished to make way for a parking lot for a nearby beach and the Nahsholim kibbutz, or cooperative farm.

Fawzi Tanji, now 73 and a refugee at a camp in the West Bank, is from Tantura he said:
I was 21 years old then.They took a group of 10 men,lined them up against the cemetery wall and killed them.Then they brought another group, killed them, threw away the bodies and so on, Tanji said. I was waiting for my turn to die in cold blood as I saw the men drop in front of me.

Katz said other Palestinians were killed inside their homes and in other parts of the village. At one point, he said, soldiers shot at anything that moved.

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BEIT DARAS MASSACRE:
21 May 1948(Palestine): after a number of failed attempts to occupy this village, the Zionists mobilized a large contingent and surrounded the village. The people of Beit Daras decided that women and children should leave. As women and children left the village they were met by the Zionist army who massacred them despite the fact that they could see they were women and children fleeing the fighting.

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THE DAHMASH MOSQUE MASSACRE:
11 July 1948 (Palestine): after the Israeli 89th Commando Battalion lead by Moshe Dayan occupied Lydda, the Israelis told Arabs through loudspeakers that if they went into a certain mosque they would be safe. In retaliation for a hand grenade attack after the surrender that killed several Israeli soldiers, 80-100 Palestinians were massacred in the mosque, their bodies lay decomposing for 10 days in the mid-summer heat. The mosque still stands abandoned today. This massacre spread fear and panic among the Arab population of Lydda and Ramle, who were then ordered to march out of these towns after they were stripped of all personal belonging by Israeli soldiers. Yetzak Rabin, Brigade Commander then says: - There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march ten to fifteen miles to the point where they met up with the legion-. Most of the 60,000 inhabitants of Lyda and Ramble came to refugee camps near Ramallah, around 350 lost their lives on the way through dehydration and son stroke. Many survived by drinking their own urine. The conditions in the refugee camps were to claim more lives.
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DAWAYMA MASSACRE:
On October 29 Palestine): the Israeli army brutally massacred about 100 women and children, precipitating a massive flight of people from that village on the western side of the Hebron mountains. Mr. Walid Khalidi, author of All That Remains, says that the Palestinian inhabitants at Dawayma faced one of the larger Israel massacres, though today it is among the least well-known.
The following are excerpts of a description of the massacre published in the
Israeli daily ‘Al ha Mishmar, quoted in All That Remains:

The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house
without dead…one commander ordered a sapper to put two old women in a certain
house…and to blow up the house with them. The sapper refused…the commander then ordered his men to put in the old women and the evil deed was done. One soldier boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot her…

A former mukhtar (head of a village) of Dawayma interviewed in 1984 by the Israeli daily Hadashot, also quoted by Mr. Khalidi, offered another description:

The people fled, and everyone they saw in the houses, they shot and killed. They
also killed people in the streets. They came and blew up my house, in the presence of eye-witnesses…the moment that the tanks came and opened fire, I left the village immediately. At about half-past ten, two tanks passed the Darawish Mosque. About 75 old people were there, who had come early for Friday prayers. They gathered in the mosque to pray. They were all killed.

About 35 families had been hiding in caves outside Dawayma, according to the
mukhtar, and when the Israeli forces discovered them they were told to come out, line up, and begin walking. “And as they started to walk, they were shot by machine guns from two sides…we sent people there that night, who collected the bodies, put them into a cistern, and buried them,” the mukhtar told the Israeli daily.

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HOULA MASSACRE:
26/10/1948 (Lebanon) :Houla is located in southern Lebanon, only a few kilometers from the Israeli border. When Arab volunteers gathered to liberate Palestine from "Israeli" occupation, they established their headquarters in Houla, on hills overlooking Palestine. The force was successful in fending off major attacks on Lebanese villages, but the fighters suddenly withdrew on October 26, 1948." "Jewish militants attacked the town to avenge the residents' support of Arab resistance forces. On October 31, Jewish militants dressed in traditional Arab attire entered the border village. Residents gathered to cheer the men, thinking Arab volunteer fighters had returned. They were wrong. The militants rounded up 85 people and detained them in a number of houses, firing live ammunition at the civilians and killing all but three. That was not enough. Jewish militants blew up the houses with dead corpses inside. They confiscated property and livestock. The three who survived the massacre, of whom one is still alive, and other town residents fled to Beirut. Following the armistice agreement between Lebanon and "Israel" in 1949, village residents returned to find their houses in rubbles and their farms burnt. Houla remains under Israeli occupation today, and has suffered the brunt of "Israeli" animosity towards Lebanon. Only 1,200 out of 12,000 people remain in the village. The Houla massacre was one of a series of massacres committed by "Israel" against Lebanese civilians.

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Salha Massacre:
1948 (Lebanon) : After forcing the population together in the mosque of the village, the occupation forces ordered then to face the wall, then started shooting them from behind until the mosque was turned into bloodbath, 105 person were mrytyred.
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SHARAFAT MASSACRE:
7 Febraury 1951(Palestine): Israeli soldiers corssed the armistice line to this village (5Km from Jerusalem) and blew up the houses of the Mukhtar and his neighbors. 10 were killed (2 elderly men,raeli soldiers corssed the armistice line to this village (5Km from Jerusalem) and blew up the houses of the Mukhtar and his neighbors. 10 were killed (2 elderly men, 3 woemen and 5 children) and 8 were wounded.
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The Massacre at Qibya:
14-15/10/1953 (Palestine): On the night of October 14-15, 1953 , this village was the object of a brutal "Israeli" attack which was carried out by units from the regular army as part of a pre-meditated plan and in which a variety of weapon types were used. On the
evening of October 14, an Israeli military force estimated at about 600 soldiers
moved toward the village. Upon arrival, it surrounded it and cordoned it off from all of
the other Arab villages. The attack began with concentrated, indiscriminate artillery
fire on the homes in the village. This continued until the main force reached the
outskirts of the village. Meanwhile, other forces headed for nearby Arab towns such
as Shuqba, Badrus and Na'lin in order to distract them and prevent any aid from
reaching the people in Qibya. They also planted mines on various roads so as to
isolate the village completely. As units of the Israeli infantry were attacking the village
residents, units of military engineers were placing explosives around some of the
houses in the village and blowing them up with everyone in them under the protection
of the infantrymen, who fired on everyone who tried to flee. These acts of brutality
continued until 4:00 a.m., October 15, 1953, at which time the enemy forces
withdrew to the bases from which they had begun.16 There was a particular sight the
memory of which remained in the minds of all who saw it: an Arab woman sitting on a
pile of debris and casting a forlorn look into the sky. From beneath the rubble one
could see small legs and hands which were the remains of her six children, while the
bullet-maimed body of her husband lay in the road before her.17
This vicious terrorist attack resulted in the destruction of 56 houses, the village
mosque, the village school and the water tank which supplied it with water. Moreover,
67 citizens lost their lives, both men and women, with many others wounded.18
Terrorist Ariel Sharon, the commander of the "101" unit which undertook the terrorist
aggression, stated that his leaders' orders had been clear with regard to how the
residents of the village were to be dealt with. He says, "The orders were utterly clear:
Qibya was to be an example to everyone."19

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KAFR QASEM MASSACRE:
On October 29, 1956 (Palestine): the day on which Israel launched its assault on Egypt , units of Israel Frontier guards started at 4:00 PM what they called a tour of the Triangle Villages. They told the Mukhtars (Aldermen) of those villages that the curfew from that day onwards was to start from 5:00 PM instead of the usual 6:00 PM, and that the inhabitants are requested to stay home. The Mukhtar (Alderman) protested that there were about 400 villagers working outside the village and there was not enough time to inform them of the new times. An officer assured him that they will be taken care of.
Meanwhile, the officers positioned themselves at the village entrance. At about 4.55 PM, unaware of the ambush awaiting them, the innocent farmers started flocking in after a hard day of work. The Israeli soldiers started stepping out of their military trucks and ordered the villagers to line up. Then the officer in charge screamed "REAP THEM," and the soldiers
riddled the bodies of the Palestinian villagers with bullets in cold blood. With the massacre practically over, the soldiers moved around finishing off whoever still had a pulse in him.

The government of Israel took great pains to hide the truth, but after the investigation was concluded, Ben Gurion, the Israeli Prime Minister, announced that some people in the Triangle had been injured by thefrontier guards. The press also was part of the conspiracy to cover up the incident. The Hebrew press wrote about a "mistake?" and a "misfortune" , when it mentioned the victims, and it was difficult to tell whom it meant.
More absurd than the trial of accomplices was their light sentences. The court found Major Meilinki and Lt. Daham guilty of killing 43 people and sentenced the former to 17 years and the latter to 15 years. What was remarkable about the Israeli official attitude was that various authorities competed to lighten the killer's sentences. Finally, the committee for the release of prisoners ordered the remission of a third of the prison sentence of all those who were convicted. In September 1960, Daham was appointed in the municipality of the city of Ramle as officer for the Arab Affairs.

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Khan Yunis Massacre:
3/11/1956 (Palestine): Another massacre is committed on November 3, 1956 when the Israelis occupy the town of Khan Yunis and the adjacent refugee camp. The Israelis claim that there was
resistance, but the refugees state that all resistance had ceased when the Israelis arrived and that all of the victims were unarmed civilians.
Many homes in Khan Yunis are raided at random. Corpses lie everywhere and because of the curfew no one could go out to bury them. (An UNRWA investigation later found that the Israelis at Khan Yunis and therefugee camp had murdered 275 civilians that day ).

After the Israelis withdrew from Gaza under American pressure, a mass grave
was unearthed at Khan Yunis in March 1957. The grave contained the bodies
of forty Arabs who had been shot in the back of the head after their hands
had been tied. ("IMPERIAL ISRAEL", Michael Palumbo; London; Bloomsbury Publishing; 1990 pp. 30 - 32, citing UN General Assembly: Official Record, 11th session supplement, nop.)

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The Massacre in Gaza City:
5/4/1956 (Palestine): On the evening of Thursday, April 5, 1956, Zionist occupation forces fired 20-mm mortar artillery on the city of Gaza. The shelling was concentrated against the city center, which was teaming with civilians going about their day-to-day affairs.29 Most of the shelling was directed against Mukhtar Street, Palestine Square and nearby streets, as well as the Shuja'iyya district.30 As a result of this terrorist massacre carried out by gangs belonging to the Zionist Army against the Palestinian people, 56 people were killed and 103 were injured, the victims including men, women and children. Some of the wounded died subsequently, bringing the death toll to 60,
including 27 women, 29 men and 4 children.31

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AL-SAMMOU' MASSACRE:
13 November 1966(Palestine): Israeli forces raided this village, destroyed 125 houses, the village clinic and school as well as 15 houses in a neighbouring village. 18 people were killed and 54 wounded.
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Aitharoun Massacre:
1975 (Lebanon) :The 1sraelis perpetrated this massacre starting with a booby-trapped bomb. Then Israeli's detained three brothers, and killed them. They threw Their bodies on the road. 9 cicvlians were killed, 23 were wounded.

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Kawnin Massacre:
15/10/1975(Lebanon): An Israeli tank deliberately ran over a car carrying 16
people, and none of them escaped death.

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Hanin Massacre :
16/10/1976(Lebanon): After a two- month siege and hours of shelling, the occupation forces stormed the village and turned it into a bloodbath. 20 perosn were mrtyred.

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Bint Jbeil Massacre :
21/10/1976(Lebanon):The crowded market was the target of a sudden barrage of Israeli bombs, slaughtering a lot of people. 23 were killed, 30 were wonded.

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Abbasieh Massacre :
17/3/1978 (Lebanon): During the invasion of 1978, the Israeli warplanes destroyed the
mosque of the town on the heads of the women, children and the elderly who used the holy place as a shelter from the heavy Israeli shelling.80 perosn were martyred.

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Adloun Massacre :
17/3/1978 (Lebanon): At Adloun on march 17, two cars carrying 8 passengers came under Israeli fire while they were on their way to Beirut. One passenger only escaped death.

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Saida Massacre :
4/4/1981 (Lebanon) :One of Saida’s residential areas was targeted by the Israeli artillery which resulted in killing of many civilians and damaging to many buildings.20 perosn were kiled, 30 were wounded.

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Fakhani Massacre :
17/7/1981 (Lebanon):A horrible massacre took place when Israeli warplanes raided a crowded residential area using the most developed weapons killing and wounding many citizens. 150 perosn were killed, 600 were wounded.

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Beirut Massacre :
17/7/1981 (Lebanon)Israeli warplanes staged several raids on many parts of Beirut, Ouzai, Ramlet Al baida, fakhani, chatila and the area of the Arab University, killing many citizens. 150 person were killed, 600 were wounded
.

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The Massacre at the Sabra and Shatila Camps:
A number of events led to the decision of an extremist terrorist group of the Lebanese kata'ib forces and forces belonging to the Zionist Army to carry out massacres against the Palestinians. From the beginning of the Zionist invasion of Lebanon, the Zionists and their agents were working toward being able to extirpate the Palestinian presence in Lebanon. This may be seen from a number of massacres of which the world heard only little, carried out by Israeli forces and militias under their command in the Palestinian camps in south Lebanon (al-Rushaidiya, 'Ayn al-Hilu, al-Miya Miya, and others).32 This massacre was thus the outcome of a long mathematical calculation. It was carried out by groups of
Lebanese forces under the leadership of Ilyas Haqiba, head of the kata'ib intelligence apparatus and with the approval of the Zionist Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon and the Commander of the Northern District, General Amir Dawri. High-level Israeli officers had been planning for some time to enable the Lebanese forces to go into the Palestinian camps once West Beirut had been surrounded.33
Two days before the massacre began - on the evening of September 14 - planning and coordination meetings were held between terrorist Sharon and his companion, Eitan. Plans were laid to have the kata'ib forces storm the camps, and at dawn, September 15, Israel stormed West Beirut and cordoned off the camps. A high-level meeting was held on Thursday morning, September 16, 1982 in which Israel was represented by General Amir Dawri, Supreme Commander of the Northern Forces.
The job of carrying out the operation was assigned to Eli Haqiba, a major security official in the Lebanese forces. The meeting was also attended by Fadi Afram, Commander of the Lebanese Forces.34
The process of storming the camps began before sunset on Thursday, September 16,35 and continued for approximately 36 hours.
The Israeli Army surrounded the camps, providing the murderers with all the support, aid and facilities necessary for them to carry out their appalling crime. They supplied them with bulldozers and with the necessary pictures and maps. In addition, they set off incandescent bombs in the air in order to turn night into day so that none of the Palestinians would be able to escape death's grip. And those who did flee - women, children and the elderly - were brought back inside the camps by Israeli soldiers to face their destiny.36 At noon on Friday, the second day of the terrorist massacre, and with the approval of the Israeli Army, the kata'ib forces began receiving more ammunition, while the forces which had been in the camps were replaced by other, "fresh" forces.37 On Saturday morning, September 18, 1982, the massacre had reached its peak, and thousands of Sabra and Shatila camp residents had been annihilated.
Information about the massacre began to leak out after a number of children and women fled to the Gaza Hospital in the Shatila camp, where they told doctors what was happening. News of the massacre also began to reach some foreign journalists on Friday morning, September 17.38
One of the journalists who went into the camps after the massacre reports what he saw, saying, "The corpses of the Palestinians had been thrown among the rubble that remained of the Shatila camp. It was impossible to know exactly how many victims there were, but there had to be more than 1,000 dead. Some of the men who had been executed had been lined up in front of a wall, and bulldozers had been
used in an attempt to bury the bodies and cover up the aftermath of the massacre.
But the hands and feet of the victims protruded from the debris."
Hasan Salama (57 years old), whose 80-year-old brother was killed in the massacre, says, "They came from the mountains in thirty huge trucks. At first they started killing people with knives so that they wouldn't make any noise. Then on Friday there were snipers in the Shatila camp killing anybody who crossed the street. On Friday afternoon, armed men began going into the houses and firing on men, women and children. Then they started blowing up the houses and turning them into piles of
rubble."40
Author Amnoun Kabliyouk [p. 10] writes in his book about the tragedy of a young Palestinian girl who, like the rest of the children in the camp, faced this horrific massacre. Thirteen years old, she was the only survivor out of her entire family (her father, her mother, her grandfather and all her brothers and sisters were killed). She related to a Lebanese officer, saying, "We stayed in the shelter until really late on Thursday night, but then I decided to leave with my girl friend because we couldn't breathe anymore. Then all of a sudden we saw people raising white flags and handkerchiefs and coming toward the kata'ib saying, 'We're for peace and harmony.'
And they killed them right then and there. The women were screaming, moaning and begging [for mercy]. As for me, I ran back to our house and got into the bathtub. I saw them leading our neighbors away and shooting them. I tried to stand up at the window to look outside, but one of the kata'ib fighters saw me and shot at me. So I went back to the bathtub and stayed there for five hours. When I came out, they grabbed me and threw me down with everybody else. One of them asked me if I was Palestinian, and I said yes. My nine-month-old nephew was beside me, and he was crying and screaming so much that one of the men got angry, so he shot him. I burst into tears and told him that this baby had been all the family I had left. That made him all the more angry, and he took the baby and tore him in two."41
The massacre continued until noon on Saturday, September 18, leaving between 3,000 and 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians dead, most of them women, children and elderly people.42

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Jibsheet Massacre :
27/3/1984(Lebanon): The occupation forcers’ tanks and helicopters fired at a crowded people killing many civilians. 7 perosns were martyred, 10 were wounded.

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Sohmor Massacre :
19/9/1984 (Lebanon): The occupation forces stormed the town with tanks, and military
vehicles and ordered the inhabitants to congregate at the town's mosque where they fired at them. 13 martyrs, 12 wounded.

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Seer Al Garbiah Massacre :
23/3/1985 (Lebanon): The massacre took place at Al- Husseinieh building where people took shelter from the shelling of the Israeli soldiers who stormed the town with a huge number of military vehicles.7 persons were martyred.

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Maaraka Massacres:
5/3/1985(Lebanon): The occupation forces planted an explosive device in the Husseinieh building of the town .It was detonated during the distribution of aid to the citizens who lost their lives. 15 perosns were killed.

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Zrariah Massacre :
11/3/1985(Lebanon): Following heavy shelling the occupation forces stormed the town with about 100 vehicles and perpetrated a butchery, killing children, women and the elderly. 22 civlians were slaughtred.

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Homeen Al-Tahta Massacre :
21/3/1985(Lebanon): After attacking the village with 140 army vehicles, the occupation forces ordered the inhabitants to gather at the school of the village. They then destroyed it over their heads. 20 incoent person were martyred.

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Jibaa Massacre :
30/3/1985(Lebanon): A huge enemy force attacked the town and put it under siege, .When some people tried to escape the siege, the enemy soldiers fired at them, killing and wounding a lot of them. 5 perosn were killed, 5 were wounded.

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Yohmor Massacre :
13/4/1985 (Lebanon): At one O’clock in the morning, an Israeli armored force entered the town using civilian cars and opened fire at the houses which resulted in the killing of 10 people, among them a family of six people.
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Tiri massacre :
17/8/1986 (Lebanon): Merciless crimes against civilians increased in the town with the occupation forces cutting the hands and ears from the head. 4 perosns were killed, 79 were crippled and wounded.

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Al-Naher Al-Bared Massacre (Palestinian camp):
11/12/1986(Lebanon): The Israeli warplanes raided this Palestinian refugee camp killing many of the refugees. 20 person were killed , 22 were wounded.
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Ain Al-Hillwee Massacre(Palestinian Camp) :
5/9/1987(Lebanon): The enemy jet fighters launched two raids killing 31 and wounding 41 others. The refugees were hit by a thin raid while they were evacuating
casualties, 34 more being killed.
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OYON QARA MASSACRE:
20 May 1990, an Israeli soldier lined up Palestinian labors and murdered seven of them with a sub-machine gun. 13 Palesinians were killed by Israeli forces in subsequent demonstrations at the massacre.

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Siddiqine Massacre:
25/7/1990(Lebanon): The Israeli warplanes bombed a house, among the 3 killed a four years old child.

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AL-AQSA MOSQUE MASSACRE:

October 8, 1990:

As an extension of the Zionist policy based upon exercising control over the city of Jerusalem and emptying it of its [Arab] residents by various and sundry means, such as Zionist terrorism and shedding the blood of the Palestinian people - a policy which Zionists have acted upon on numerous occasions - Zionist authorities undertook on Monday, October 8, 1990 to carry out this heinous massacre against Palestinian worshippers.
Several days before the events of the massacre began, the "Temple Trustees" group distributed a statement to the media on the occasion of a religious festival of theirs which they call "the Throne Festival". In the statement the organization announced that it intended to stage a march to the Temple Mount (or so they call it). The statement called upon Jews to participate in this march since, according to the statement, it would involve the decisive act of placing the foundation stone for what is
called "the Third Temple." In addition, the founder of the organization, Ghershoun Salmoun, announced that "the Arab-Islamic occupation of the temple area must come to an end, and the Jews must renew their profound ties to the sacred area." The march, in which 200,000 Jews took part, headed toward al-Aqsa Mosque in order for "the foundation stone" of the so-called "Third Temple" to be put in place.43 At the same time, that is, at 10:00 a.m. and a half-hour before the beginning of the
massacre, Israeli occupation forces began placing military barriers along various roads leading to Jerusalem in order to prevent Palestinians from getting to the city.

They also closed the doors of the mosque itself and forbid Jerusalem residents to go in. However, thousands had already gathered inside the mosque before this time in response to calls from the imam of the mosque and the Islamic movement to protect the mosque and to prevent the "Temple Trustees" from storming it and perhaps even imposing Jewish control over it.44 When the Muslim worshippers began resisting the Zionist group to prevent them from placing the "foundation stone" for their so-called temple, Zionist occupation forces began carrying out the massacre, using all the weapons at their disposal: poison gas bombs, automatic weapons, military helicopters, etc. The soldiers,

[Israeli] intelligence men and Jewish settlers resorted to firing live ammunition in the form of a continuous spray of machine-gun fire which came from all directions and in a well planned and coordinated fashion. The result was that thousands of Palestinian worshippers of various ages and nationalities found themselves in a mass death trap. Twenty-three Palestinians were killed, and 850 others were wounded to varying degrees.45 The Israeli soldiers began firing at 10:30 a.m. and stopped 35 minutes later. They opened fire on the Palestinian worshippers randomly and in cold blood.
Then they pursued them with clubs and rifles [outside the mosque].46 Nurse Fatima Abu Khadir, who was wounded by a bullet which fractured her wrist, states, "We went into the mosque precincts in an ambulance. I saw a large number of injured who had fallen on the ground. Then I saw lots of soldiers, hundreds of soldiers. They were about 30 meters from the ambulance and kneeling on one knee the way snipers do, and their weapons were aimed inside the ambulance. After that I couldn't see anything."47
News agencies described the blessed precincts of al-Aqsa Mosque saying that blood had covered "the entire two hundred meters between the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque. Blood was flowing everywhere, all over the wide steps, and had stained the white tile the length of the broad courtyard, as well as the doors of both mosques. The walls of the two mosques had long, crimson lines etched onto them by bleeding hands, and blood had stained the white uniforms of the woman
first-aid workers. Everyone - the wounded and the more fortunate, first-aid workers, journalists, and Israeli soldiers - all of them looked as though they were swimming in blood.48
Physician Muhammad Abu 'Ayila relates what happened to him and to a wounded man to whom he had been trying to administer first aid, and how the Zionists' glee at the sight of Palestinian blood spilled in the precincts of the holy mosque had blinded their eyes so much that they couldn't distinguish between a young child and an old man, between a man and a woman, between a wounded man and one seeking to treat him. He says, "I got out of the ambulance carrying a first-aid kit. I was wearing a
white uniform. The soldiers saw me and knew I was a doctor. But when I got to the wounded person nearest me and bent down to treat him, I got three bullets in my back in the region of the kidney. At that very moment, the wounded man near me died. But he could have been saved if I hadn't been hit."49 Most of the wounds, in fact, were in the head and in the heart.50
Then, in a farce designed to justify the crime which had been committed by Zionists' hands now stained with Palestinian blood, terrorist Yitzhaq Shamir, Prime Minister of the Zionist entity at that time, hastened to form a fact-finding committee which he called the "Zamir Committee" after its head, Tu'fi Zamir, former head of the Israeli Mossad. As for the outcome of the committee's investigation, it was announced by Moshe Almert, head of the Media Office of the occupation government, who said,
"The report confirms clearly that the responsibility and fault for escalating [the conflict] lies on the side of the thousands of Muslim extremists, who were attacking the holy place of the Jews."51

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THE IBRAHIMI MOSQUE MASSACRE:
February 25, 1994 (Palestine):
While worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron were kneeling and
prostrating before God, turning their faces toward the sacred house of God in the
Friday dawn prayer on February 25, 1994, showers of treacherous Zionist bullets
began raining down on them from all directions, felling more than 350 peaceable
worshippers, some of whom were killed, and others wounded. And thus began the
second chapter of this terrorist massacre at the hands of terrorist settler Baroukh
Goldstein and his helpers. As for the first chapter, it had begun at the hour for the
final evening prayer on Thursday, at which time Jewish settlers and soldiers
prevented Muslim worshippers from entering the sacred masque to perform the
evening prayer under the pretext that this was the day of their "Boleme" feast.
Terrorist settlers gathered in the outer courtyards of the mosque and began setting
off fireworks in the direction of the worshippers. Some time after this, the occupation
forces allowed them to go inside the mosque itself in groups. At 10:00 p.m. the
Muslim worshippers were asked to leave the mosque, and Zionist occupation
soldiers began beating many of them as they left.
Hatim Qufaysha, a witness of the Zionist crime, says, "At 5:20 a.m. today everyone
was standing up [in the mosque]. As I took off my shoes, I saw an old man wearing
military clothes who was running along carrying a huge weapon loaded with
ammunition. I was surprised to see him come into the mosque during the prayer. He
opened fire, and I ran away and asked the soldier who guards the area to intervene.
But all he did was beat me up, then I left the mosque area.52
Eye witnesses who survived the massacre say, "We heard the sound of a muffled
explosion. It was followed by the whiz of bullets passing over the heads of the
worshippers." Talal Abu Sunayna, who was shot in both shoulders, adds, "I saw a
settler hiding behind one of the pillars in the mosque' as he fired on the worshippers
with his rifle. Another [Jewish] settler stood beside him loading a second rifle so that
it would be ready to go to work next."53 Muhammad Sari, one of the worshippers
present at the time of the massacre, states, "People are used to attending the dawn
prayer on Fridays in large numbers." He estimated the number of worshippers
present that morning at about 500. Then he added, "the muezzin announced the
beginning of the prayer, so we knelt and made the first prostration. Then all of a
sudden we heard the sound of heavy gun fire coming from behind us. When I turned
around in the direction of the sound, I saw a soldier in full uniform. He had put ear
pieces in his ears, and he was holding a rapid-firing machine gun and firing in the
direction of the worshippers."54 Sari was wounded in both legs when he tried to
stand up. A number of young men were able to get over to where the attacker was
and to protect others in the mosque with their bodies. And within moments Goldstein
had been brought to the ground by the young men.55 But due to the heavy gun fire,
the mosque had turned into something on the order of a slaughterhouse, filled with
pools of blood. Muhammad Sulayman Abu Salih, a custodian at the Abrahamic
mosque, describes the terrifying sight inside the mosque saying, "The terrorist was
trying to kill as many people as possible. The corpses were scattered all over,
spattering the floor of the mosque with blood. Worshippers who had been prostrate
tried to flee in terror, and some of them fell on the floor." Then he adds, "I shouted at
the top of my lungs to the soldiers to come and stop him, but all they did was run
away. The armed man reloaded his rifle at least once and killed at least seven
people at one time, the contents of their skulls scattering all over the floor. He kept on
shooting for ten minutes, and the army didn't step in until the massacre was over."
Sheikh Ibrahim Abdeen, the imam of the mosque, says that the bullets were coming
from several places, that it was a true blood bath. The Israeli soldiers' reaction was
very slow; they actually delayed the arrival of the ambulances.57 Nor did this terrorist
massacre stop with the killing of Goldstein. When the shooting stopped, the soldiers
came pouring into the mosque. According to witnesses of the massacre, the
soldiers, together with a number of Jewish settlers, opened fire on those who had
gathered around Goldstein, and not one of them survived. And thus occurred the
second massacre. Then outside the mosque, the soldiers opened fire on the
ambulance which had arrived at the mosque to treat the wounded; thus occurred the
third massacre, which itself did not stop there, since the soldiers pursued the
wounded and those seeking to treat them as far as the doors of the hospitals, where
they proceeded to kill even more. Other forces pursued their victims' funeral
processions as far as the cemetery gates, where they killed still more. Hence, this
heinous massacre carried out against worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque led to
more than 24 deaths and injured hundreds of others.
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THE JABALIA MASSACRE:
28 March 1994, A Jewish undercover police opened fire on Palestinian activists brutally killing 6 and injuring 49. Some of the wounded activists were taken out of their cars and shot in their heads to death.
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Aramta Massacre:
15/4/1994(Lebanon): After blockading the town, armed men entered and ordered the people to gather at the town's square, where they were assaulted. Then, they took the men and women to the detention camp. Later on they stormed, the district of the town, and killed whomever they saw. 2 perosns were lkilled, 6 were wounded.
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ERETZ CHECKPOINT MASSACRE:
17 July 1994, Palestinian sources reported that the occupation forces had committed Sunday morning a disgusting massacre against Palestinian workers at Eretz checkpoint. Eyewitnesses and Israeli sources reported that 11 Palestinians have been shot dead and 200 injured. Israeli sources also reported that 21 Israeli soldiers including 1 settler were injured. Two soldiers were shot by bullets, one died. As reported by Palestinian and Israeli sources, the scene was described as a war zone which lasted for 6 hours. Four Israeli tanks and helicopters were brought by the occupation forces, while a number of settlers were taking part in firing at Palestinians. Protests had spread all over the Occupied Territories. In Gaza, Palestinians raised black flags and called for revenge. In Ramallah, shops closed while several clashes were reported. Several clashes were reported at Hebron University yesterday, and today two Palestinians were shot in Hebron.
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Deir Al-Zahrani Massacre:
5/8/1994(Lebanon):
The Israeli warplanes fired a "vacuum" missile at a two- story building,in Deir Al-Zahranee which was destroyed over the heads of the inhabitants. 8 people were killed , 17 wee injured.
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Nabatiyeh (school bus) Massacre:
21/03/1994(Lebanon):
The Israeli warplanes targeted school bus ful of puiples 4 childs were killed,10(child) Injured.
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The Sohmor Second Massacre :
2/04/1996 (Lebanon):
The Israeli artillery targeted a civilian car carrying eight passengers, killing all of them .
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Mnsuriah Massacre:

On 13 April 1996, at about 1:30 P.M., an IDF helicopter fired rockets at a vehicle carrying thirteen civilians fleeing the village of al-Mansuri, killing two women and four young girls. The vehicle was a Volvo station wagon with a blue flooding light, a red crescent painted on the hood and the word “ambulance” written in Arabic. Reporters at the scene filmed the incident. The film footage shows, and testimony of UN soldiers who arrived immediately after the car was hit corroborate, that there were no weapons or any other type of military equipment in the car, only some food and clothes. Amnesty’s investigation revealed that none of the passengers were connected to Hizbullah.

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Nabatyaih Massacre:
18 April 1996, Eleven persons were killed and ten injured in an IDF air attack on a house in Nabatiyya al-Faqwah, some three kilometers north of Nabatiyya, in South Lebanon. Eight of those killed were from one family: a mother and her seven children, including a four-day-old baby. Around 6:30 a.m., IDF helicopters fired rockets at three buildings in the village, demolishing one totally and severely damaging the other two. Lebanese families were living in the buildings. The IDF Spokesperson claimed that the helicopters fired at the building in which the eleven were killed because Hizbullah was hiding there after firing the mortars. Investigations conducted by Amnesty and HRW did not confirm this contention The IDF's statement ignored the fact that the IDF fired at two other buildings during the same attack. Back to top



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Qana Massacre :
18 April 1996, The "ethnic cleansing" operations carried out by the Zionist terrorist army have
encompassed not only Palestinian civilians, but Lebanese civilians in south Lebanon
as well.
In an attempt to break the power of the Lebanese Hizbollah organization, Zionist
forces undertook a military operation against south Lebanon. This operation was
likewise based upon the Zionist mentality, supportive as it is of blood-letting and
terrorism and based upon the belief that "exercising pressure against Lebanese
citizens . . . will lead in practical terms to comprehensive, overall pressure on account
of which the Hizbollah organization will be obliged to adhere to a ceasefire."59 Given
this reasoning, the Zionist forces bombed the shelter which was providing refuge to
approximately five hundred Lebanese, most of whom were children, elderly and
women who had been forced out of their homes by Israeli raids on their villages, and
who had been unable to get to Beirut. This bombing led to the deaths of 109
Lebanese civilians and seriously wounded 116 others. During the attack, Israeli
forces used between 5 and 6 advanced bombs designed to explode above their
target in order to cause the largest possible number of casualties. Moreover,
international investigations confirmed that the Israeli forces had deliberately targeted
the shelter.60
Ali, one of those wounded in the attack, says, "I fled in the morning with two friends
and went for refuge to the emergency forces in Qana. I had my wife and my four
children with me. They led us into a shelter where there were about fifty people. Then
suddenly the sound of bombing rang out. A first shell, then a second fell near the
shelter, and as we were trying to get out, another shell hit the shelter directly. I don't
know what happened to my wife and children."61 Fadi Jabir weeps as he talks about
things he saw after the Israeli bombs fell on those who had left their homes to come
to the base for the UN Fayjiya peace-keeping forces. He says, "I heard people
shouting 'Allahu akbar!', and a woman fell down unconscious. I reached out to get an
idea what had happened to her, and her brain fell into my hand."62 As for Sa'd Allah
Balhas, who

One of the most sinister of these clips was broadcast twice last week, according to our research after a three-year absence. The clip features a child actor playing the most famous Palestinian child martyr, Muhammad al-Dura - whose death in a crossfire was broadcast to the entire world - calling to other Palestinian children to literally follow him to Child Martyrs’ Heaven.

“I am waving not to part but to say, ‘Follow me,’” is Dura’s invitation on the TV screen.

The children watching this video are then shown what awaits them if they join Dura in death. The video follows the child actor - “Dura” - joyously frolicking in heaven. He romps on the beach, plays with a kite and runs toward a Ferris wheel. The children are being told that death in conflict with Israel will bring them into a child’s paradise. Muhammad al-Dura is already in this paradise, tranquil and fun-filled. This call to children to seek death, coming from the child who has turned into a Palestinian hero, and broadcast to their children by PA TV, is one of the most odious examples of exploitation of children by the Palestinian Authority. The words sung by the popular singer Aida are as insidious as the pictures. The earth is described as yearning for the children’s death - “its thirst quenched by the gush of blood flowing from the youthful body.”

The main lyrics of the clip are as follows:

“How sweet is the fragrance of the martyrs,
how sweet is the fragrance of the earth,
its thirst quenched by the gush of blood
flowing from the youthful body.”
Caption: “And so he went...”
Choir: “Goodbye to the boy Muhammad” (2x)
Aida (popular woman soloist):
“Goodbye, goodbye.”...
Aida: How sweet is the fragrance of the earth,
Its thirst quenched by the gush of blood
flowing from the youthful body.
Choir: Goodbye, goodbye.
Aida: Goodbye, goodbye...
Choir: O father, ‘til we meet (2x)
Aida (woman soloist):
‘til we meet, my father, ‘til we meet!
I shall go with no fear, no tears,
How sweet is the fragrance of the martyrs!
I shall go to my place in heaven,
How sweet is the fragrance of the martyrs!
Choir: How sweet is the fragrance of the martyrs!
Aida: O my father, ‘til we meet (2x)
Choir: O my father, ‘til we meet ...
Goodbye to the child, Muhammad
Aida: O the children of the world say
Choir: Goodbye to the child, Muhammad!
Aida: ‘til we meet, O Muhammad
Choir: ‘til we meet, O Muhammad

July 7th, 2006 | Posted in Reports, Hebron Region

Today, Friday July 7th, 2006, at noon, over 300 farmers and residents of the Palestinian villages of Beit Ummar and Halhoul held Friday prayers together on their land that has been ravaged by Israeli bulldozers in the past week. International and Israeli supporters accompanied them in a non-violent march to the land in order to observe the activities of the military and the settlers, and support their struggle against the illegal expansion of the settlement Karme Tzur.

They demonstrators marched around the settlement on the land where trees and grape vines have been uprooted because of the construction of a new wall that will enclose the settlement, illegally annexing Palestinian land to it. The residents, mostly men and children, carried signs that said, “No to the Policy of Damaging Land and Human Beings” and other things. The Israeli soldiers attempted to stop the demonstration but eventually they passed.
The march and prayer were beautiful and non-violent, however armed settlers descended on the group and waved their rifles in the air as they called in reinforcements from the military. More military arrived and they lined the hill above the demonstrators as prayer services ended.
While the majority turned back to the village after prayers, the army prevented those who wanted to stay from being on their land. They were told that they were too close to the settlement.
Young kids threw stones at a light pole and then the soldiers began to shoot rubber bullets at the young kids. Eventually the soldiers shot many rubber bullets and tear gas grenades. One young man named Saqir Sadiq Abu Mariya, 35, was shot by a rubber bulet in the torso and taken away by an ambulance. Many people fled the scene because the gas was becoming unbearable.
At 7pm this evening, three jeeps entered the village shooting tear gas, rubber bullets, and sound grenades at people in the streets for about an hour. Keefeh Kamael Bahar, 20, was taken from his home and arrested during the raid of the village.