Sunday, September 28, 2014

Dear friends,
I am posting up an image of rare Israeli archival document about the Palestnian Nakba. The image of the document was originally posted by my fellow activist, Israeli-Canadian academic Noa Shaindlinger who is currently conducting PHD research on  --- Noa came across the document a few weeks ago during her research

Noa notes "That contrary to the efforts of Israel, the issue of the Nakba has never ceased to elicit public interest and that the plight of the Palestinian refugees keeps being widely discussed. I urge everyone to keep the refugees in mind and to actively advocate for the only just solution, which is repatriation and reparations".





Comment about the document  by Israeli historian, Professor Ilan Pappe:

The Ethnic Cleanser’ Horror List


The document below is a horrific shopping list of the Israeli army for a period of seventeen days between 12 May to 29 May 1948. It details the ethnic cleansing of dozens of villages and small towns within that short period which ended with the forced displacement of 35,000 men, women and children in the second wave of the massive de-Arabizaiton of Palestine (in the first way all the cities and towns of Palestine were depopulated).

It is a rare document in its explicit language and graphic description. For each village there is the original number of population, a date of occupation, a comment on the scope of the eviction (in this case all those mentioned were fully evicted) and the reason for the depopulation. In most cases the cause is ‘our action’, in others ‘the result of terrorising and intimidation through rumours’, yet in others ‘our ultimatum’ and in few cases the eviction of a nearby village was enough to convince the population in neighbouring villages to leave.

It begins three days before the declaration of the state of Israel, before the Arab governments decide to send troops into Palestine, while Britain is responsible for law and order and while the Israeli David allegedly was fight[ing] for his life. So people were not expelled because there was a war or because they took part in a war. They were expelled because there is no way of having a Jewish state in Palestine without ethnic cleansing of the native population.

There was no beheading of journalists, this is true, there were however many summary executions not of enemy soldiers but of villagers and the rape was much more limited that the one reported by the poor Yazidi survivors, but it did happen. The big picture was DAASHI enough. The difference was that not one Western Government condemned or rebuked this crime against humanity. A silence that contributed to the dismal reality we live through today in the Middle East.

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