so many villages gone

The red dots on the map below indicate Palestinian towns that have been eliminated from 1948 to date in the state of Israel. The green dots are Palestinian towns that remain. Note that Gaza and the West Bank are blank. Gaza is no longer a place of settlement for Israelis since the unilateral withdrawal of Jewish settlements in 2005 by the Sharon government. This was done because of the impossibility of the Jews in the settlements growing in number enough to be a majority of the populace. It was Sharon's admission of his concern to keep a Jewish majority in the Jewish State.

Since that time, Sharon is out of the picture and settlement in the West Bank is proceeding with vigor, ignoring Sharon's fear that such activity would create the need for a system of apartheid. The alternative of a real democracy, allowing Palestinians to be full citizens of an expanded Israel, is not a consideration, while the placement of settlements leaves no room for a Palestinian state. It is this dilemma that is behind the comments now heard from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and others that Israel is committing national suicide with the settlements. A state for only one group of people won't survive in the 21st century.

Recently, Israeli businessmen have been warning Prime Minister Netanyahu that the apartheid label is going to kill the economy of Israel.

We came to inherit the land

Amnon Neumann, a former soldier in the Palmach, the army that expelled the Arabs from areas that the future state of Israel would hold as its own, recounts some of his experiences (but not all, some being unmentionable).

Concerning the erasing of what is called by the Palestinians the catastrophe (Nakba), he says on reflection, "my whole world view of what happened in the war changed completely. I saw that this was a deliberate deception of the Zionist movement. And they did it successfully, a major success"



This video was produced by Zochrot, which means remembering in Hebrew. From the website:

Zochrot seeks to raise public awareness of the Palestinian Nakba, especially among Jews in Israel, who bear a special responsibility to remember and amend the legacy of 1948. The principal victims of the Nakba were the Palestinians, especially the refugees, who lost their entire world. But Jews in Israel also pay a price for their conquest of the land in 1948, living in constant fear and without hope.

The Nakba destroyed the fabric of relations that existed between Jews and Palestinians before 1948. In recognizing and materializing the right of return lies the possibility for Jews and Palestinians to live in this country together.

Where are the Nakba museums?

There is a new Holocaust museum within easy bike riding distance of my home. In downtown Chicago there is the excellent Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies.

The State of Illinois, by law, requires study of the Holocaust before students reach high school and also in high school. Here is the motivation for the law:

In November 1987, an outbreak of vandalism directed against Jewish stores and synagogues, prompted Erna I. Gans, Holocaust survivor and President of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, to issue a call for action to combat such violence with education in the form of a state mandate.

Everyone should know about the Holocaust and the Spertus Museum and the Holocaust Museum are excellent places for learning.

But the fact that a catastrophe is going on as we speak, as we visit the Spertus Institute or the Holocaust Museum, and by the very folks who are descendents of those who suffered, who are so well represented in these places - that this current, ongoing, United States funded catastrophe has nothing but silence to represent it, is a hypocrisy that is stunning.

How many times do we hear that two wrongs do not make a right? Are Palestinians any less innocent than were the Jews of Europe? It's quite true that Israel is not executing Palestinians outright (that would eventually happen during the Great March of Return on the Gaza border with Israel), but to push a people out of their own land, to subject them to military justice, to deprive them of water, to prevent them building on their own property, to keep them from using the roads in their own land, to arrest them without warrants, without any reason given, to take them to prisons where their families cannot visit, to demand they have permits to leave and enter their own land - is this any less a catastrophe?

Today I am writing to my state representative and state senator. Here's my letter -

Senator Schoenberg:

In November 1987, an outbreak of vandalism directed against Jewish stores and synagogues, prompted Erna I. Gans, Holocaust survivor and President of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, to issue a call for action to combat such violence with education in the form of a state mandate.

The result was the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Mandate.

I am writing to you today to ask if you would be willing to help me get started on a similar campaign to educate Illinois youth on the long-term, yet current dispossession of Palestinians in the occupied territories held by Israel. There is only silence on this subject and I am concerned that our children, and even our citizens in general, are not aware that the United States is sending $3 billion yearly to a country that is systematically evicting an entire people from their homeland.

This is far more damaging than the acts of vandalism that spurred Ms. Gans effort, because it is being done by our country as a whole and, though the Holocaust is history, the eviction of the Palestinians, their loss of their land, is ongoing and has been for several decades. Unlike the Holocaust which we shamefully did nothing about, the horrors visited on the Palestinians as the Israeli settlements push them aside can be stopped immediately, if only more people were aware of how the United States supports it by continued yearly funding of Israel. You, as my state senator, are in an excellent position to get the word out.

You may reach me by return email or by telephone. As all the Israeli human rights organizations would agree - there is no time to lose on this issue.

Clif Brown

UPDATE - as of July, 2012 (almost two years since this post) there has been no reply from Mr. Schoenberg.