There are six parts to this talk; absolutely brilliant. PLus a Q and A session. Go to Youtube by clicking in the screen.
Assembled, translated & edited by Shimon Tzabar
The political and Military Background in Palestine in 1948:
The British left Palestine on the 15th of May 1948. Until that time there was no Israeli government, and no Israeli Army. Until that time, the Jewish military force consisted of three independent groups: The larger one was the Hagana. Within the Hagana there was a strike force known as the Palmah. Outside Hagana there were two more independent smaller forces. The biggest of the two was Etzel, which was the underground terrorist organisation of the opposition party led by Menahem Begin, and the smaller one was Lehi, known also as the Stern Gang, a splinter group which separated from the Etzel a few years previously.
There are many versions of what happened in Deir Yassin on the 9th of April 1948. Some of these versions are propaganda pieces, some of which will be dealt with later on. I wanted to find an Israeli version from a reliable eye-witness, if something like that existed. I sifted through the Israeli Hebrew press for many years until I found something that sounded more or less reliable. I say more or less, because this account is also biased (as we shall see). The account I found was a report done by Dr. Me’ir Pa’ill who is today a member of the Knesset representing the Meretz party. Fifty three years ago however, in April 1948, he was known as Colonel Me’ir Pilavski, a liaison officer representing the Palmah in the headquarters of the Hagana in Jerusalem.
The story of Colonel Me’ir Pilavski appeared in an interview which he gave to Ron Maiberg. The interview was published in the magazine Monitin, no. 32, April 1981, page 36.
5 mai 2010 — Saison 2010 Ép. 60 — (Classement :TV-Y) The acclaimed documentary “Budrus” has chronicled the peaceful protests of Palestinians in the West Bank , inspired by community organiser Ayed Morrar, which forced Israel to change the course of its separation wall. After the success of “Budrus”, should Palestinians resort to non-violent struggle against Israel’s occupation?
The film “Targeted Citizen” (15 minutes), produced by filmmaker Rachel Leah Jones for Adalah, surveys discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. With the participation of experts Dr. Yousef Jabareen of the Technion and Dr. Khaled Abu Asbeh of the Van Leer Institute, as well as Adalah attorneys Sawsan Zaher, Abeer Baker and Hassan Jabareen, inequality in land and housing, employment, education and civil and political rights are eloquently addressed. These interviews are reinforced by the contrasting informality of on-the-street conversations conducted by Palestinian comic duo Shammas-Nahas and punctuated by the hard-hitting rhymes of Palestinian rap trio DAM. The film’s theme song “Targeted Citizen,” written and recorded by DAM especially for Adalah, tells it like it is without missing a beat. DO NOT MISS THE VERY END !
I tutor a girl at the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Every Wednesday, I see John: tallish black-haired Irish guy walking around the space near the picnic tables where staff (generally Gazan) have coffee. Tomorrow maybe I will go shake John’s hand. Why? Because of this:
Israeli sources have confirmed that Israel will make an official request to the United Nations for clarification of how an official representative of the United Nations could call for European countries to send ships to Gaza without authorization and prior coordination with Israel. John Ging, the Director of Operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), has called upon the international community to break the siege on the Gaza Strip by sending ships loaded with desperately-needed supplies to the beleaguered territory.
In an interview with a Norwegian newspaper, Mr. Ging said, “The international community must take responsibility on this issue and embrace practical ways to break the siege, because it is possible to break it.” In urging the world to send ships to the shores of Gaza, he added, “We believe that Israel will not intercept these vessels because the sea is open, and human rights organizations have been successful in similar previous operations proving that breaking the siege of Gaza is possible.”
According to Mr. Ging, Egypt and Israel are responsible for the continuation of the blockade. “How could Israel evade responsibility for the siege, and how could Egypt not agree to show flexibility in order to bring aid to Gaza?” he asked. “It is time for the international community to facilitate assistance by sea as it did in Haiti.”
Officials in Israel were taken aback by the statements and noted that they are unprecedented and very serious. Hebrew radio reported that several overseas aid organizations have taken John Ging’s statement to heart and preparations are already being made to send ships carrying food supplies to Gaza.
I think Ging probably snapped. The Gazan economy is shuddering. There’s too little of the lubrication that normally enables economic systems to run smoothly. Not enough cash, inflated prices, no jobs, no raw materials. And the additional Hamas taxes–necessary, because there’s a dearth of hard cash, a perennial problem that is now at a crisis point–will make the lives of the petty capitalist service providers and merchants that are what’s left of Gaza’s economy much harder. I’m sure Ging knows this and he is probably sick of UN strictures that suggest that he clamp his mouth shut vis-a-vis the illegal siege. Only suggest. Here is the spin: Farhan Haq, a UN spokesman, said, “The United Nations has no plans to use sea routes in Gaza, but will consider all legal options available to bring in assistance and commercial supplies.” Ging didn’t suggest using the sea route, he endorsed it. By endorsing it, he contributed to the flotilla’s symbolic legitimacy. By strengthening the ships’ symbolic legitimacy, Israel will look sillier and sillier when it makes its habitual threats against those amazing ships. Anyway, there are activists on those ships who will be quite willing to sail them into the Israeli bullets that will cross in front of their bows.
Some words are hard to pronounce—
He-li-cop-ter is most vexing
(A-pa-che or Co-bra is impossible)
But how it can stand still in the sky
I cannot understand—
What holds it up
What bears its weight
(Not clouds, I know)
It sends a flashing light—so smooth–
It makes a deafening sound
The house shakes
(There are holes in the wall by my bed)
Flash-boom-light-sound—
And I have a hard time sleeping
(I felt ashamed when I wet my bed, but no one scolded me).
Plane—a word much easier to say—
It flies, tayyara,
My mother told me
A word must have a meaning
A name must have a meaning
Like mine,
(Hadeel, the cooing of the dove)
Tanks, though, make a different sound
They shudder when they shoot
Dabbabeh is a heavy word
As heavy as its meaning.
Hadeel—the dove—she coos
Tayyara—she flies
Dabbabeh—she crawls
My Mother—she cries
And cries and cries
My Brother—Rami—he lies
DEAD
And lies and lies, his eyes
Closed.
Hit by a bullet in the head
(bullet is a female lead—rasasa—she kills,
my pencil is a male lead—rasas—he writes)
What’s the difference between a shell and a bullet?
(What’s five-hundred-milli-meter-
Or eight-hundred-milli-meter-shell?)
Numbers are more vexing than words—
I count to ten, then ten-and-one, ten-and-two
But what happens after ten-and-ten,
How should I know?
Rami, my brother, was one
Of hundreds killed—
They say thousands are hurt,
But which is more
A hundred or a thousand (miyyeh or alf)
I cannot tell—
So big–so large–so huge—
Too many, too much.
Palestine—Falasteen—I’m used to,
It’s not so hard to say,
It means we’re here—to stay–
Even though the place is hard
On kids and mothers too
For soldiers shoot
And airplanes shell
And tanks boom
And tear gas makes you cry
(Though I don’t think it’s tear gas that makes my mother cry)
I’d better go and hug her
Sit in her lap a while
Touch her face (my fingers wet)
Look in her eyes
Until I see myself again
A girl within her mother’s sight.
If words have meaning, Mama,
What is Is-ra-el?
What does a word mean
if it is mixed
with another—
If all soldiers, tanks, planes and guns are
Is-ra-el-i
What are they doing here
In a place I know
In a word I know—(Palestine)
In a life that I no longer know?
bandannie : applied fairly it is the only solution
by Philip Weiss on April 29, 2010 · 41 comments
Amazing. My heart is leaping. Once again, the Israeli press and the Israeli discourse is way ahead of the American one, where the belief in a thriving “Jewish democracy” stops all free thinking. Here is the speaker of the Knesset, Reuven Rivlin, saying that Palestinians are a part of Israel, we ate the West Bank a long time ago, so let’s forget about this two-state crap and make them citizens. He meets Ali Abunimah on Abunimah’s fair and democratic ground. He dismisses the New Republic’s hysteria about the delegitimization of the Jewish state. He answers the great challenge to the Israeli psyche– At the end of every sentence in Hebrew is an Arab smoking a hookah– with ringing affirmation.
Note that Rivlin is a Likudnik, about the same age as Judge Goldstone. Note that you will never see such creative thinking in Washington, where the Diaspora Jews are about 50 lightyears behind the realities of the Middle East, locked in fearful, reactive Holocaust consciousness and dumb to the murderous occupation and the cycle of violence. Will anyone in the US pick up the ball? Put another way, How many times have friends murmured to me, I’d be for a binational state [translation, I’d be for democracy] if only there wouldn’t be a ton of bloodshed getting there. I’ve murmured that myself. Well isn’t that just a matter of imagining? The most disputed territory is the space between American Jews’ ears. Enough drumroll, Haaretz:
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said Thursday that he would rather accept Palestinians as Israeli citizens than divide Israel and the West Bank in a future two-state peace solution.
Speaking during a meeting with Greece’s ambassador to Israel Kyriakos Loukakis, Rivlin said that he did not see any point of Israel signing a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority as he did not believe PA President Mahmoud Abbas “could deliver the goods.”
Referring to the possibility that such an agreement could be reached, Rivlin said: “I would rather Palestinians as citizens of this country over dividing the land up.”
band annie's Weblog 