Al-Nakbah : 56 years later,
the Saga continues
Today, 56 Palestinian homes
were demolished and 1500 Palestinians were made
homeless refugees. Isn’t it enough to be a refugee for 56 year? Isn’t
it enough to be born and live all your life as a refugee? If that is not enough,
now they are Terrorized Homeless Refugees.
Some of them were forced to leave their homes 56 years ago in 1948. May
15 must go down in infamy as humanity’s most shameful day ever. 56 years later
the world still watching Israel commit atrocities against the Palestinian people
with no relief in sight for the unarmed innocent men, women, and children. 56
years later the terrorist state is able to function in a world that claims war
on terrorism.
Back
in 1948 the Israelis massacred thousands of Palestinians, demolished entire
towns and forced its inhabitants to flee or be killed. Today Israel is using the
same type of tactics with 21st century technology against the unarmed
Palestinian population. If you are
having a hard time defining terrorism, let me define it for you. It is going to
someone’s house in the middle of the night with killer dogs ransack bedrooms
and terrorizing little children. Imagine Mr. and Mrs. World a pack of dogs
attacking you in your bed room in the middle night while you and your children
are sleep in the safety of your home. Can those of you who have little children
just imagine that seen? It sends chills down my spine just to think about it,
imagine going through it! That’s
what the Israeli army use before they enter Palestinian houses. By the way, most
Palestinian families have lots of children, so it is normal to have six or seven
children sleep in one room.
May
15 commemorates the day when Israel became a state and the Palestinians became
known as refugees. Why did the Palestinians leave their homes in Palestine in
1948? Let us look at the saga of the Palestinian people in 1948.
Moshe Sharette, Israel first
Prime Minister wrote on June 16 1948:
”I am particularly amazed by the flight of the Arabs. This is a more
extraordinary episode in the annals of this country than the establishment of a
Jewish state. Truly astonishing is that the Arabs have disappeared from a whole
section of the country”. He is talking as if the Palestinians had a choice in
the matter. Like if they collectively woke up one morning and decided to leave
their homes, farms, animals, and all their belongings to the newly-arrived,
illegal Jewish immigrants, and go somewhere else bare footed with only the
clothes on their backs.
The British Mandate over Palestine was ending on May 14, 1948. The British were
supposed to bear responsibility for preserving law and order until midnight, May
14, 1948. On several occasions they defended Jewish settlements and
neighborhoods. They did not however, attempt to prevent the advance of the
Haganah- Jewish terrorist group- or the flight and expulsion of the Arabs. In
some cases they even helped the Arabs leave their homes. At the same time they
coordinated the transfer of many aspects of government with the Jewish agency.
This smooth transfer of power was Britain’s final contribution to the Jewish
national home.
By the end of the fighting in
1949, almost a million Palestinians were forced off their land. More than 400 of
the 500 Arab villages in Palestine had been taken over by the Israelis. The
inhabitants of these villages were driven out or fled in terror, their land was
confiscated and they were forbidden to return to their land
Early May 1948 speaking to the
People’s Council, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion claimed
that no Jewish settlement to date had been abandoned in the war- in contrast
with “ some hundreds Arab settlements” He asserted that “the Arabs had
abandoned cities with great ease, after the first defeat, even though no danger
of destruction or massacre confronted them. Indeed it was revealed with
overwhelming clarity which people is bound with strong bonds to this land”.
But in fact it was
exactly the danger of destruction and the massacres that were the cause of the
Arab abandonment of their homes. At the same moment that Ben-Gurion was saying
that, the Palmah- a Jewish terrorist group-was massacring some seventy
Arab prisoners near Ein az Zeitun and several Arabs in the village itself.
To help Sherret’s with his
amazement and to expose Ben-Gurion’s lies that the Palestinians were in no
danger when they left their homes in 1948 let us look at a small sample of what
was happening in 1948:
SAFSAF- a
Palestinian village- 52 men tied with a rope and dropped into a well and shot.
10 more were killed. Women pleaded for mercy, three were raped, and a girl aged
14 was raped. Another 4 were killed.
At Sabbarin, the village fled after
20 were killed in the village, an IZL armored car fired at the fleeing
villagers. “More than one hundred old people, women and children, who had not
fled from Sabbarin and other villages, were held for few days behind barbed
wires at an assembly point in Sabbarin, after which they were expelled to the
Arab town of Umm al Fahm. The Jewish troops combed the villages to ascertain
that they were empty and to make sure they remain empty. In the town of Lydda, a
massacre took place. 300 to 400 Israeli troops entered the town. They were
ordered to shoot at any thing that moves. The town people took fright at the
sounds of shooting outside believing that a massacre was taken place, they
rushed into the streets, and were cut down by Jewish fire. In accordance with
the Zionist plan, the Haganah and other Zionist groups launched a series of
military attacks, the fully anticipated result of which was the Arabs’ flight
from Palestine. These attacks were the most important single factor in the
exodus of April-June from both the cities and villages. This is demonstrated
clearly by the fact that each exodus occurred during and in the immediate wake
of each military assault. No town was abandoned by the bulk of its population
before Jewish attack. Haifa, an Arab city of 70,000 strong in 1947, in April
1948, an attack on Arab refinery workers caused some 15,000 to 20,000 to flee
the city. The attacking Jewish forces brought in Jeeps broadcasting recorded
horror sounds including shrieks, wails and anguished moans of Arab women. The
wail of sirens and the clang of firearm bells, interrupted by a sepulchral voice
calling in Arabic: Save your souls, all ye faithful, flee for your lives.
According to an eyewitness’s account of a Haganah officer “the threats to
use poison gas and atomic weapons against the Arabs made the Arabs of Haifa flee
the city.” By the end of the war, only 3500 Arabs remained in the city.
Watching the Arabs flee Ben-Gurion exclaimed, “What a beautiful sight”.
David Ben-Gurion was the architect of the 1948 War and the expulsion of the
Arabs. As far back as the late 1930s, Ben-Gurion said: “I
support compulsory transfer. I don’t see in it anything immoral”.
Ad Dawayima in late
October. A soldier eyewitness described how the IDF, capturing the village
“without a fight first killed about 80-100 Arab men, women and children. The
children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house
without dead. The remaining Arabs were then closed off in houses without food
and water, as the village was systematically razed”.
SA’SA-
cases of mass murder, over 1000 dead. People lifted white flags. A sacrifice was
offered to feed the troops. The whole village was expelled. Saliha- 94 people
were blown up with a house.
The Palestinians left their homes for two
reasons, the first and for most they were expelled from their homes by force,
and the second, they were afraid for their lives from the terror and the horror
stories they had heard of the Jews massacring men, women, and children as they
had done in the village of Deir Yassin. The Jewish campaign of ethnic
cleansing started way before Israel became a state, and before the British army
left the country. On April 3 1948 the Haganah, forced the 994 residents of
Khirbet Azzun to leave their village. On April 10, the 620 Arab residents of Ad
Dumeir, the 910 Bedouins from Arab an-Nufeiat, and 340 Bedouins of Arab al-foqara
were expelled from their homes. On April 15, some 650 Arabs from Miska and an
uncounted number from Khirbet as-Sarkas were kicked out of their homes. On May
12 1948, 600 residents of Najd and 1200 residents of Sumsum were forced out.
Zarnuga and Kaukaba, with population of 2600 and, 1870 were forced out on May 27
19 48 by the Givati Brigade and 800 Arabs from the village of Huj were forced
out on May 28th. Arab Rubin’s 1550 residents were
expelled on June 1st, and Yibna with a population of 5920, was
emptied by force on June 4th.
This was only a partial list of what had
happened in Palestine in 1948. None of these expellees were allowed to
return to their villages once the war was over. One of the most famous massacres
took place at the village of Deir Yassin in the hills on the outskirts of
Jerusalem. Its residents were considered passive, peaceful and friendly to the
Jews. Its leaders had agreed with an adjacent Jewish neighborhood, Givat Shaul,
that each side would prevent its own people from attacking the other side. The
city had not been in any way a threat militarily to the Jews. The Irgun
and Lehi Jewish terrorist groups headed by Menachem Begin laid plans for an
attack on the village. A force of 120 men went into the village. One of its
leaders, Benzion Cohen, later said of the men who participated in the attack,
“The majority was for liquidation of all men, in the village and any other
force that opposed us, whether it is old people, women, or children.”
256 people were murdered in the village. No one was spared, Old men, women and
children. Pregnant women were killed and their babies were cut out of their
wombs with knives and daggers. Bodies were left in the street for the others to
see. Some of the survivors were put in the back of trucks, blindfolded and hands
bound were paraded through the streets of the Jewish controlled side of
Jerusalem. News of this massacre sent shock waves through Arab communities,
where Deir Yassin quickly became a name of infamy and a source of terrible fear
for the Arab population of Palestine. After this “excellent” and,
“great” operation Menachem Begin, who later became Israel’s prime minister
issued a message to his troops: “Accept my congratulations on this
splendid act of conquest. Convey my regards to all the commanders and soldiers.
We shake your hands. We are all proud of the excellent leadership and the
fighting spirit in this great attack. Tell the soldiers: you have made history
in Israel with your attack and your conquest. Continue thus until victory. As in
Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou
hast chosen us for conquest.”
56 years and counting, the
Palestinians are still faced with the same atrocities they were faced with back
in 1948. Thousands of Palestinians were killed by the Israelis in the last three
years alone. The Security Council of the United Nations issued resolution 194
back in 1948 requiring the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homes,
the United nations re-affirmed this position in numerous other resolutions since
then with the latest resolution on the issue in May 2004, where again the UN
stated and re-affirmed the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to return
to their homes which they were forced to leave in 1948.
56 years later, refugees are still refugees, and Israel is still a member
of the United Nations.
The Palestinians are being
asked to “eliminate their militant groups” if they want a state, but who
will eliminate the terrorism government of Ariel Sharon in Israel today that is
trying to accomplish another Nakbah or ethnic cleansing with its massive 25 foot
high concrete structure called a “fense” choking the life out of what’s
left of Palestinian towns and villages?
Hesham
Tillawi
May 2004
Tillawi@AOL.com