The creation of the Palestinian Diaspora of 1948, in which over 750,000 people were forced to leave their homes, was made virtually at gunpoint. This year, as Israelis celebrated their 60th birthday, Palestinians remembered their Nakba of destruction and turmoil, signified by their uprooting from their land. This monstrous contrast has to be highlighted so that the world is educated about the crimes perpetuated against Palestinians.

Yet instead the Nakba of 1948 is remembered in passing. Death and destruction are treated like a casual event. Sure the Nakba is bemoaned, but the depth of the tragedy is not made apparent, as nobody has the right to question Israel.

Today Israel is seen as a a member of the world community, a nation with military and economic muscle, as well as a democratic state. Yet the facts of its creation are swept under the carpet.

Established Zionist politicians and military leaders understood there would come a day when the cat would be let out of the bag and the terrible reality of the massacres, transfers, expulsions, and destructions of whole villages would be broadcast to the whole world.

That’s why they’ve sought to legitimize themselves through literature and books written in English, targeting the hearts and minds of Western audiences and politicians. The Palestinians, the injured party, were secondary, peripheral, meaningless, as if they didn’t exist in all of this.

Over a 60-year period politicians such David Ban Gurion, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres, have all sought to write a “history of their struggles” in Palestine/Israel and how they made it work.

The biographies and histories soon became powerful weapons and public relations tools to buy time and American support for Israel, despite the fact that the country was built on the blood of the Palestinian people, young and old, men and women, children and toddlers.

Through organizations and paramilitary groups like the Haganah, the Palmach (its strike force), the Irgun and the Stern gang, some of whom were trained and supplied by the British authorities, 13 massacres were committed in 1948 alone, and up to 100 massacres total. This is according to none other than Jewish historians.

Massacres like Dier Yassin in which around 245 women, men, children, old, young, and even pregnant women were slaughtered at point-blank are slowly being remembered for their ferocity. A ferocity that many Jews seem to be proud of.

It was 8 April 1948, a day that should be considered a black day not only for Palestinians and Arabs, but for the world and for Israelis themselves, whose establishment of a home cost another people so much.

Others massacres were ‘small’, as low as five people, but many went up to 50 and a 100. The massacres began as early as around 1946 when Zionist terrorists bombed the King David Hotel in which 91 people were killed. They continued in 1947 and increased through out 1948, so that as much land as possible could be taken.

Called their operation Plan Dalet, the Jewish paramilitary groups which, together with the reservists, were comprised of 100,000 armed men went against around an Arab army of 14,000 or so. They waanted to take as much land as possible, more than what was allocated to them by United Nations resolutions that divided historical Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Israeli.

Plan Dalet was an attempt to drive the Palestinians out through instilling fear into the local Palestinian villagers and town dwellers and force them to leave their land and their houses. People were panic-stricken, a mass-flight was induced, loudspeakers bellowed, telling people to leave for their own safety, sirens wailed.

Palestinians were made into refugees overnight. They left under bombardment. Of those captured many were killed as a lesson to others, that they too would be killed if they harbored any signs of resistance.

Despite the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee urging people not to leave, Palestinians ran to avoid being massacred and/or raped.

Palestinians left still hanging on to the keys to their homes, some at first sought refuge in nearby villages, some went over into neighboring countries into Lebanon and Syria where the idea of borders were still rudimentary. People genuinely believed it would be a matter of days and weeks before they could return to their lands, and they couldn’t that their exile would become permanent.

Survivors alive today said that when they were exiled to Jordan they tried to go back via a taxi, which was doubly difficult in those days, found that their homes had already become occupied by Jewish families.

These homeowners were ironically, the lucky ones. Other villages were quickly decimated soon after they were depopulated. To erase any memory of a prior Palestinian entity more than 500 villages were destroyed in 1948.

Meanwhile, a body of literature has built up over the years, examining just why the Palestinians were made into refugees and increasingly questioning the Israeli narrative claiming that the Arab countries told the people to leave.

Erskine Childers, an Irish journalist, wrote in the early 1960′s, in the Spectator in London, stating he found no evidence to suggest that it was the Arab countries that were responsible for the creation of the Palestinian exodus. On the contrary, he claimed that it was the Jewish paramilitaries that created the situation.

Palestinian academic Dr Walid Al Khalidi also sought to expose this Zionist myth, and so did Rosemary Al Sayigh, a British writer and academic who wrote extensively on the Palestinian uprooting. In the 1980′s Michael Palumbo also wrote about 1948.

These writings may have influenced Jewish academics that also begun to examine the creation of their own state. Dubbed as the “new historians”, they first gained prominence in the 1990s onwards. By examining state archives that were made available, many of them concluded that Israeli officials were indeed behind the Palestinian flight from their towns and villages and homes.

The author is the Responsible Chief Editor of Jo Magazine, a monthly produced in Amman. He worked previously as the Managing Editor of the Star, also in Amman between 1993 till 2003 and writes frequently on Arab and Palestinian affairs.

Tom Segev is the columnist of Ha’aretz, a left-wing Israeli newspaper, and a historian who chronicles the lives of Israelis in 1967.

Many of books have analyzed the roots of the Six-Day War and its significance to the history of the Middle East. Segev illustrates how the fear of another Holocaust drove Israel to launch wars against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, grabbing land and starting a tradition of excess.

If you believe in the mainstream discourse regarding the Six-Day War and in the image of an infallible Israel, you may not like this book. It is a book full of controversial ideas, and it makes harsh statements about the Jewish state.

Taking references from thousands of interviews, official and unofficial materials, Segev’s book distinguishes itself because of its reliance on materials both from archives and diaries of regular people. For example, the third section of the book was fully based on the diary of Private Yehoshua Bar-Dayan, who leaves his wife and son to join the army to prepare for war. The diary challenges the myth of heroism of normal Israelis and Kibbutz members. Many pretended to be courageous in order to avoid losing face in front of relatives and friends.

Segev paints a detailed picture of the Israeli society before the war. It also illustrates Israeli social problems that still exist today. Discrimination against Mizrahim Jews and Arab Israelis, whom some Israeli politicians repeatedly called to expel, is one of the problems. The biggest issue, however, is the struggle between the religious and secular. It is harder to solve the Palestinian conflict when religious settlers and rabbis, who believe themselves to be more righteous, have wielded more influence in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament).

This book will bring discomfort to those who do not wish to challenge established narratives. The popular argument supporting the Israeli decision to go to the war goes as follows: “ Nasser ordered Egyptian troops to be stationed in Sinai Desert and to launch blockades in Red Sea and Suez Canal. Syrian Troops also mobilized themselves in Golan Heights. So were Jordanian soldiers, who were deployed in West Bank… Israel was forced to attack and occupied Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem to protect itself from another war.”

This book challenges this argument by describing the political struggle between the “old” and “new” Israeli politicians. The strike against Egyptian troops was finalized when “Old” elites such as Levi Eshkol and Abba Eban gave in to the military generals such as Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Rabin. Plus, criticism of the 1948 leaders for not taking all of the Biblical land added to the cultural and social turmoil which in turn resulted in the decision to enter the war.

The most shocking fact is the Israeli attempt to transfer 100,000 Palestinian refugees to Iraq. The cause behind the collapse of the plan is unknown. Neither was the number of refugees leaving their homes published by Israel. Though, the refusal to accept an offer from America, which, under the Senator Edward Kennedy, proposed a 200,000 quota for Palestinian refugees, forces people to question whether or not remaining behind was a bad idea as far as the Palestinians are concerned.

This is a wonderful book which documents the lives of both the Israeli people and the increasing influence of military in their politics. Its first-hand account vividly depicts how the ecstasy from victory has turned out to be the biggest curse for the Jewish state, Palestinians, and the possibility of peace in the Middle East. Its focus is narrow, but its lessons are immense.

Just today, we are getting news of a fourteen-year-old child losing her life after a typically heavy-handed Israeli raid erupted in violence. Israel is showing the Gazans who’s boss. Vote for Hamas? Pay the price.

And yet, who was it exactly that the Gazans were supposed to vote for? Previous attempts at establishing a measure of good government have failed spectacularly. If you feel that your very existence is under siege, who do you turn to? That’s right, the guys with the guns.

I have no love lost for Islamic hard-liners. However, when I look at Israel’s policies toward this region, it seems to me that at this point, it’s as if no one is even searching for an actual solution. Gaza is troublesome and unstable, and who wants to deal with that? Why not just bleed it dry? Demoralize it to the point of it fading away?

The horrors of European anti-Semitism have paved the way for a series of new horrors elsewhere.

For example, I don’t blame Jews for wanting to leave the beloved, albeit struggling, country of my birth, Ukraine. A Ukrainian gentile is privileged in a way that a Ukrainian Jew is simply not. Swastikas spray-painted on the walls of residential buildings say it all. This side of the issue must be considered if a solution to the conflict can one day be reached.

It’s easy to talk “peace” when you don’t have to worry about grenades flying through your window at any given moment, but I would like to try.

There have been atrocities on both sides of this ongoing debacle, and the ensuing bitterness has solidified into rock-hard contempt. Fundamentalist nihilism has blossomed alongside collective punishment and impotent diplomacy.

Things cannot go on like this indefinitely. A perpetually embattled Israel, surrounded by disgruntled neighbours, is not sustainable. Who wants to live like that? No one wants to live like that.

My question is, how many Muslim, Jewish, and Christian deaths will it take before there is a collective shift in thinking?

The Pope should issue a global fatwa banning newspapers and policymakers around the world from engaging in this infantile, overused discussion of “but what about the terrorists.”

Perhaps then the American citizenry can read about Jimmy Carter man-hugging Hamas official Nasser Shaer with enough neutrality to form an informed opinion.

Carter paid tribute to Arafat by laying a wreath on his grave, before meeting Hamas officials in Egypt after Israel denied him access to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Undeterred, Carter said he would meet with exiled Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal in Syria on Friday.

More annoying than the media’s portrayal of Carter as backstabbing terrorist (how could you not appreciate Sen. John McCain’s opinion on the matter?) is its dangerous disregard of far-reaching context. Anyone who understands history knows Carter owes Palestinians a little more than just a hug.

Carter, unlike any other U.S. President, tried to negotiate an evenhanded solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict, acting as the chief negotiator in the Camp David accords which called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, halt all settlements, and grant full autonomy to the Palestinians in exchange for peace with its Arab neighbors. However, Israel never disguised its intention to continue its settlements and obstruct a Palestinian state. Carter was wrong to convince the Arabs to accept an agreement that he could only hope Israel would meet.

Until this day, Arabs are bleeding from the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty Carter tempted them with. When Sadat fell for the trap, Israel’s main opposing force was eliminated and any aspiration for Arab unity was crushed, alongside Arab morale and hope for Palestine.

Carter helped solidify America’s role as Israel’s partner in crime and inexhaustible sugar daddy, so that Israel could continue systematic oppression without the threat of retaliation. Carter’s negotiation meant Israel would resume its role as a glorified bounty hunter: fencing-in the enemy, cutting-off electricity, water, and medical supplies, jailing, and settling on land are considered tactics of defense, even if they violate international law.

One would think Israel would provide the man with a warmer greeting. So why the cold shoulder? Israeli officials are afraid that in meeting with Hamas, Carter will subvert the myth that Hamas is out to destroy Israel, so in typical fashion, they refused to speak with him. They also dismiss Carter’s visit by using the issue of terrorism to divert attention away from the crimes they are committing in Gaza and the West Bank.

Despite America’s unsubtle attempts to cripple Hamas (shame on the European community for going along with it), Hamas remains a major player in Palestinian politics, not only because it’s the legislative majority in the Palestinian Council or because it controls Gaza, but because it is invested in the Palestinian cause. Any peace agreement that does not include Hamas is superficial. Unfortunately, Carter is the only U.S. politician bold enough to come out and say that.

Carter’s willingness to meet with Hamas should be seen as an act of honest diplomacy, a willingness to provide some retribution for a population that is continually made to suffer collective punishment. The former president’s courage and humanity should be emulated and applauded, instead it is being criticized and undermined simply because it turns the tables on the aggressor:

Israel is being asked to recognize Hamas, not the other way around.

Yusra Tekbali is a Journalism and Near Eastern studies major, impatiently awaiting her graduation from the University of Arizona this year. She is also an Arab nationalist.

During the last three weeks before the onslaught, after an upsurge in rocket attacks coming from the Gaza Strip, Israel had imposed a tight blockade, refusing to allow anything but some humanitarian aid to trickle into the region, and not much of that. Two weeks later, the Israelis opened the doors to allow heating oil only. That same day, three more rockets were fired off at Israel from the Strip.

The Gaza Strip is roughly 25 miles long by 8 miles wide. Except for a seven mile southern border with Egypt, it is surrounded by Israel to the north and east, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. The area has been occupied almost continuously since the time of ancient Egyptians, with Philistines, Arabs, Christian Crusaders, the Ottomans, the British and the Israelis as overseers. It was even occupied by modern Egypt in the aftermath of the First Arab-Israeli War in 1948. Israel took control during the 1967 Six-Day War, along with the Golan Heights, the West Bank of the Jordan River, east Jerusalem and the Sinai Peninsula.

Israel withdrew its physical occupation from parts of the Strip in accordance with the 1979 Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords also affirmed the Palestinian right to self-government. The Palestinian National Authority and Israel then shared control in the Gaza Strip until 2005, when Ariel Sharon unilaterally ended Israeli’s military presence and withdrew all Israeli settlements, making the Strip the first territory to come completely under the PNA. The peace, however, did not to last.

Yasir Arafat’s PLO had become cynically corrupt, tired, and had generally lost its way. As we know, in 2007, Hamas, a militant group and determined foe of Israel, was voted in by the Palestinians to replace the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, causing a schism with the Fatah party, the PLO’s political wing, which dominates Palestinians in the West Bank.

Since the reluctant withdrawal of the Israeli settlements in 2005, Gaza is almost entirely Palestinian Arab. At least 99 percent of the population are Sunni Muslim with a scattered few Christians. The region saw a massive shift of population following the conflict of 1948, when Israel was created. By 1968, the region had grown in population six times. Right now 1.5 million people live in the Gaza Strip and it has, at 146 square miles, one of the highest population densities in the world. Eighty percent of Gazans live below the U.N.’s poverty level.

Israel and Egypt signed a treaty in 1979 that returned control of the Sinai Peninsula, which borders the Strip, to the Egyptians. As part of that treaty, a 100 meter wide band of land was designated as the Philadelphi corridor was set up as a buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt. Israel subsequently built a corrugated sheet metal barrier there during the intifadas of the early 2000s. The barrier is topped by barbed wire.

Egypt and Israel then enacted a military accord in 2005 after the Israeli military pullout. This agreement was ostensibly built on the 1979 peace pact. This pact specified a deployment of 750 Egyptian border guards along the length of the border, which is, remember, seven miles long. These guards were to man the border helping Israel defend against terrorism, arms smuggling and other illegal behavior. That was the deal.

The Rafah Crossing, the only entry-exit point along those seven miles had been controlled by Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. The E.U. was to monitor any Palestinian impulses to misbehave on their side of the wall. However, in July 2007, the E.U. pulled out after Hamas defeated Fatah in their elections for the right to speak for the Gazans. At the time of the pullout, Egypt and Israel agreed to shut down the Rafah Crossing, effectively sealing Gaza off from the rest of the world. The Israelis hoped that such a blockade would choke off Hamas-directed mortar and rocket attacks into southern Israel. It did not stop those attacks, but it did stop anything (i.e. heating oil, baby diapers, blankets, coffee and so on) from getting in. It was winter, and it was bitterly cold (Western observes, of course, regularly assume that the entirety of the Middle East is hot year-round).

Last week, Egyptian troops successfully managed to close the breaches, but not before thousands of Gazans broke out of the blockade to flood the nearby Egyptian towns for supplies. Before many of these people could return to their homes, the border slammed shut, trapping hundreds if not thousands of Gazans in Egypt. Israeli authorities pointed out that militants were among those locked outside. The militants, the Israelis claimed, were now free to cross the porous Israeli border elsewhere in order to cause more mayhem. Hamas has denied these allegations.

Those Gazans trapped inside the Gaza Strip are growing unhappy with Hamas’s continuing attacks on Israel from their staging points in Gaza. This, of course, is Israel’s strategy in the first place: squeeze Gaza and the Gazans themselves will stop Hamas’s rocket attacks. But the rockets have continued.

Israel has vowed to keep pounding suspected Hamas hide-outs with air strikes, even in the face of international criticism that Israel is using the rockets as a pretext for collective punishment in Gaza. Israel denies the charge.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he is helpless to stop the Hamas rockets since Hamas took control of Gaza last June. However, on February 4, rockets were fired into Israel from the West Bank, not Gaza, thus provoking Israel to demand that Abbas take stronger action against Hamas.

Enter the assassins.

On February 12th, Imad Mugniyah’s car was blown up with him in it in a tony neighborhood of Damascus. No one has claimed responsibility for killing Mugniyah, a famously elusive militant suspected of masterminding bombings that killed hundreds of American and French troops in Beirut during the 1980s. However, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, pointed the finger at Israel. So have many others, citing the sophistication of the bomb itself as evidence of the involvement of Israeli Intelligence, Mossad.

Israel again denied the charge, and was not the only one to point out that Syria’s intelligence service also had the wherewithal to come up with such a weapon. Syria has also denied the charge. Nasrallah then threatened to intensify his group’s conflict with Israel and to retaliate against Israeli targets anywhere in the world.

If Hezbollah were to strike at Israel outside the borders of Lebanon and Israel, it would be a complete turnaround from the group’s current policy. The last time it did so was in the 1990s, when Mr. Mugniyah, ironically, was accused of planning bombings of Israeli targets in Argentina. Hezbollah has denied any connection to the bombings in Buenos Aires.

Mr. Mugniyah’s murder was followed two days later by an Israeli air strike that killed a Hamas commander in Gaza as well as four other Hammas soldiers.

This is the stink of war. The acrid smell of cordite, blood, fear, fire and grief.

In the Gaza Strip, spring is on the way. Not peace, of course, just spring. Flower boxes are reappearing on window sills, clothes are hung out to dry in the sun. The old men have started playing checkers and backgammon in the coffeehouses.

Life, in some fashion, goes on.

I’m not one of those people who believes that Israel out to be destroyed, “pushed out into the sea,” or whatever. But I do believe that Israel needs to take steps toward change. This has to do with the fact that I see a real problem with the way that this nation’s leaders have conducted themselves in the region. I see a further problem with most American politicians’ blind support for practically anything Israeli politicians say or do. Of course, anything other than blind support may quickly earn you the title of anti-Semite and/or terrorist supporter (now, now, I don’t think that anti-Semitism is not a serious issue, but the way in which it gets invoked in regards to the present conflict does make it seem as though some folk have decided to hijack the cause against it). Don’t like what’s happening in Gaza today, for example? Keep your trap shut, you just might get smeared.

I also see a problem with any sort of blind support of the activities of the Palestinian leadership. Palestinian leadership has not been great. At all. The violence of various factions have not gotten Palestine anywhere. And Hamas in particular doesn’t know PR (among other things they clearly don’t know). I’ve often wondered if Hamas cares about the terrible present conditions and the people affected by them as much as they care about ideas. Now, it’s easy for me to talk smack about a group of folks that have been living under severe restrictions for many years. It’s easy for me to lecture Palestinians from the relative safety of my present home. Yet, a serious conflict requires serious solutions nonetheless.

Speaking of solutions, there is a variety of them on the table. Both Jews and Muslims have been busy trying to work things out. And yet, we rarely hear about progress and the possibility of progress. As Gaza shivers in winter, all we hear about is the seeming inevitability of conflict, suffering, and destruction. Many of us resign ourselves to it. We shift the paper aside, and shrug, and pour a cup of coffee, and listen to the latest round of grotesque Britney gossip, and go on with our day.

So here is my question: where the hell is Bono? Where is that multitude of glamorously somber celebrities to draw our glitter-hungry gaze to what’s happening, right now, right in this very moment, to the Gazans? To remind us to stop being so heartless, to speak out? Where is that topical MTV music video with passionately flailing guitars? That magazine cover? Don’t tell me they’ve got no clue as to what is going on over there.

Sure, people have their pet causes. They can’t be in ten different places at the same time. Private jet fuel doesn’t come cheap. And lots and lots of people besides Gazans are also suffering as I type this piece. I get that part. And yet it strikes me as particularly telling that Gaza, and the latest crisis that has the entire world’s attention, is being virtually ignored by people who make their living from getting attention.

Are the issues just too tough? The possibility of being labeled an anti-Semite, or, better yet, “a self-loathing Jew” (can’t speak for everyone, but many of my Jewish friends who have criticized Israel’s policies have gotten that label, and pretty forcefully too) just too daunting? Or is it the more radical subset of the Left that celebrities simply don’t want to get involved with (sometimes, I can’t say I blame them)? Is there such a thing as a “trendy” cause, and does Palestine in general, and Gaza in particular, not conform to whatever requirements needed to be awarded such status?

So what’s going on here? Am I being silly in even asking such questions? Surely not. Bloggers for Palestine (and various non-profit organizations) clearly are paying attention to how media coverage and rhetoric play into the ongoing conflict.

And in today’s world, the cover of Vanity Fair can play as crucial a role as a statement from a top-level politician. So where is it?

Do most big celebrities and their handlers only really “care” about others for as long as it’s convenient to do so? Do these people just squeeze their publicist-approved activism in between the latest awards ceremony and waxing appointment, making sure it isn’t too complicated or difficult to talk about? Nothing personal against Bono and people like Bono (for the record: Bono does strike me as someone who, in fact, cares about the miserable state of our sorry little world), but you do have to wonder.

Is this the way it’s always going to go, for Gaza, for Palestine?

Motorcycle Diaries Part VII was deemed too “local” for our tastes, but we do hope you enjoy the triumphant return of the series in Part VII.

(This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)

I lost my gloves one day in a coffee shop in Geneva, and I tell you, it’s difficult to ride without them when it’s really cold. So as I was paying for a new pair with a credit card, the salesman, whom I knew was from Israel, tried to start some small talk by asking me what my family name means. I told him that it relates to the city of Nablus where my family is originally from.

Suddenly, the most bewildered look was plastered on his face. “Where is Nablus?” he asked, “I’ve never heard of it.” Then, after realizing that I knew he was bullshitting me, he pretended to remember, “Ah, Shkheim you mean?”With my insistence not to learn these ugly names that the deranged Zionists have dug up from oblivion to erase our identity, that name certainly didn’t ring a bell. But now it was my turn. Although I knew where he was from, I asked “And you’re… from?” As he smiled while reminding me, I replicated the same look on his face moments ago. “Israel? Where is that?” Then after a brief pause, “Ah, the land of Canaan you mean. Palestine”.

You see if you want to get biblical on me, there is no such thing as Israel either, and I made that clear to this smartass. Here we were all of a sudden; my family descended from a place called Shkheim, and this guy a Palestinian. God does work in mysterious ways, but I still thanked Him for His small mercies that at least my name was not Zaid Shkheimy. “Have a nice day”, I told my Israeli friend. It was in fact a very cold, but still magnificently sunny day to hit the roads. The gloves warmed up my grip on the bike, but my heart was still frozen. I just cannot stand thieves who steal your gloves, or any other kind of thieves.

It was then that it finally occurred to me. Zionism is a sickness, for it takes much more than just a twisted ideology to make people think like that. It requires a profound leap of immorality of a higher order to instill this mentality in your followers. Zionism is not merely a political movement, but in its essence represents a deeply disturbed view of the world, which is a reflection of a terrible disease of the mind.

Indeed, to deny the existence of a vibrant community such as the Palestinian society in the early twentieth century and describe Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land” is a disease of the mind.

To assert property claims over real estate after the lapse of more than 2000 years with the same certainty of title as if one resided there yesterday is a disease of the mind.

To describe the colonial immigration to Palestine of a European people with no proven historical link to the ancient Israelites – and whose great, great recorded ancestors have never set foot there – as some kind of a “return” to that land is indicative of a perverted misunderstanding and misapplication of the verb to “return” and can only be a result of a disease of the mind.

To blame the Palestinians for being unreasonable in rejecting a partition plan in 1947 which gave the Jews, who only owned 7 percent of the land, an astonishing half of Palestine, is a disease of the mind.

To demand of the Arabs at the time to peacefully succumb to such partition, where 86 percent of the land designated for the proposed Jewish state was Palestinian-inhabited and owned land, is a disease of the mind.

To eventually grab 78 percent of Palestine through war and to force the flight of the population through deliberate massacres and then call it a war of independence is a disease of the mind.

To deny the orchestrated massacres and eradications of hundreds of Palestinian villages in 1948 and then denounce the Israeli historians who later exposed this truth as self-hating Jews is a disease of the mind.

To claim that having escaped the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Dachau is a justification for the murder, expulsion, and occupation of another guiltless people is a disease of the mind.

To legislate that any resident of Poland, Hungary, New York, Brazil, Australia, Iceland, or even Planet Mars, who happens to be blessed with a Jewish mother (yet cannot point to Palestine on the map) has a superior right to “return” and settle in Palestine to someone who has been expelled from his very own land, confined to a squalid refugee camp, and still holds the keys to his house, is a disease of the mind.

To blame God for the theft and occupation of someone else’s land by claiming that it was He who had pledged this land exclusively to the Jews, and to seriously promote the myth of a land promised by the Almighty to His favorite children as an excuse for this crime, is a disease of the mind.

To milk the pockets of the world for the atrocities of the Nazis, while stubbornly refusing a simple admission of guilt, let alone compensation or repatriation, for the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people is a disease of the mind.

To keep reminding and blackmailing the world of the plight of the Jews under Hitler 70 years ago, while at the same time inflicting on the Palestinians today the same fate of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, is a disease of the mind.

To impose a collective guilt overshadowing Western civilization for the Holocaust and then to criminalize all legitimate historical debate of the nature and extent of that horrific event is a disease of the mind.

To virtually incarcerate the Palestinian people inside degrading cages, destroying their livelihoods, confiscating their lands, stealing their water and uprooting their trees, and then to condemn their legitimate resistance as terrorism is a disease of the mind.

To believe you have the right to chase the Palestinians into an Arab capital city in 1982 and to indiscriminately bombard its civilians for a relentless three months, murdering thousands of innocent people is a disease of the mind.

To encircle the civilian camps of Sabra and Chatila after evacuating the fighters and to unleash on them trained dogs (while providing them with night-illuminating flares for efficiency) and then deny culpability for the carnage is a disease of the mind.

To publicly declare a policy of breaking the bones of Palestinian stone-throwers to prevent them from lifting stones again and to enact this policy is a disease of the mind.

To have the sadistic streak of exacting vengeance on the innocent families of suicide bombers by punishing them with the dynamiting of their home is a disease of the mind.

To describe the offer of giving the Palestinians 80 percent of 22 percent of 100 percent of what is originally their own land as a “generous” offer is a disease of the mind.

To believe that you have the right to continue to humiliate the Palestinians at gun point by making them queue for hours to move between their villages, forcing mothers to give birth at check-points is a disease of the mind.

To flatten the camp of Jenin on its inhabitants and deny any wrongdoing is a delusional condition which is symptomatic of a serious disease of the mind.

To build a huge separation wall under the pretext of security, which disconnects farmers from their farms and children from their schools, while stealing even more territory as the wall freely zigzags and encroaches on Palestinian land is a disease of the mind.

To leave behind, in the last 10 days of a losing war in Lebanon, more than one million cluster bombs which have no purpose except to murder and maim unsuspecting civilians is a product of an evil disease of the mind.

To believe that the entire world is out to get you and to denounce any critic of the racist policies of the State of Israel as an anti-Semite, the latest victim being none other than peace-making Jimmy Carter, is an acute stage of mass paranoia, which is a disease of the mind.

To possess, in the midst of a non-nuclear Arab world, more than 200 nuclear warheads capable of incinerating the whole planet in addition to having the most advanced arsenal of weaponry in the world while continuing to play the role of a victim is a disease of the mind.

Yes, and for that salesman in peaceful Geneva to be so insecure as to refuse to acknowledge the name of the largest West Bank city under his country’s brutal military occupation is, sadly, nothing but an infectious disease of the mind.

That’s all what it is, ladies and gentlemen: Zionism is an incurable disease of the mind.

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

2. Israel as a strategic ally is a fallacy and U.S. tax payer’s money is wasted. Israel was not able to help out in the first or the second Gulf War and was not able to help itself in Lebanon. Israel is strongest against the weak, but Hezbollah ate their lunch with chutzpah.

3. The assertion of Israel from the river to the sea is a pipe dream. To expand you need to occupy and subjugate. This is no longer in the realm of reason.

4. This war was inevitable and part of a broader strategy to engage Syria & Iran into a wider war. Hezbollah should not carry the blame for it.

5. Hezbollah should not disarm as Israel will attack unarmed people and break U.N. resolutions at will and with impunity.

6. Hezbollah gave us pride and confidence at the expense of destruction to their homes and their peoples. Yes, parts of Lebanon were devastated but Lebanon will be rebuilt with Arab money and within a short period of time and will endure to be the shiniest democracy in the Arab world.

7. Popular resistance is more effective than traditional armies. Ministers of Defense in the Arab World need to retool: Junk your airforce, tanks, destroyers and submarines and buy some useful hand held antitank and antiaircraft missiles and a lot of rockets. Build intricate tunneling, draw your enemy in, and ravage it.

8. Infantry is your lethal weapon, not the air force, nor the Navy, nor the armored units. Build the Man and turn him into a Knight.

9. Two democracies in the Middle East, Palestine & Lebanon, have been habitually violated. Palestine holds the unique position of being the only occupied democracy in the world; an occupation sanctioned by the U.S. Human Rights abuses in both countries are rife. One wonders how the U.S. can stand up to China and Russia henceforth when it advocates for democracy or preaches on human rights abuses.

10. A policy of conflict resolution worldwide is in the west’s interest, not creative chaos, if there was ever a more stupid term or policy. We have seen what creative chaos engendered in Iraq and Lebanon, to name a few.

11. There will not be a new Middle East. However, we suspect and hope that there will be a new America whose power will be curtailed by other peoples aspirations and where reason, common sense, and a sense of history will prevail.

Conclusion: The U.S. has not been an honest broker. The sooner a tamer Israel wakes up to this fact and closes ranks with its neighbors, the better for them. Arabs and Muslims, who are both chivalrous and merciful, may forgive but will never forget.

The irony is simply too incredible to ignore: A totally isolated and starving civilian population confined in a dreadful ghetto with endless curfews. An oppressed and wronged people with little hope of salvation. An expansionist enemy with an elected sadist at its helm who blames the subjugated victims for their miserable predicament. A desperate uprising that knows it has no chances of military victory, but a resistance movement that is nevertheless determined to die fighting. A long and suffocating military siege, followed by a relentless and indiscriminate onslaught. A bloodbath, heroic martyrdom, a crushed uprising, but the inevitable and unstoppable rebirth of a people.

The shame that decent Jews must feel today is compounded by the fact that the Israeli generals who are bent on crushing the will of the Palestinians today have themselves unremorsefully declared recently that they must learn from the German tactics of suppressing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in their current war against the surrounded Palestinian ghettos (see report by Amir Oren in Haaretz, 25 January 2002). The Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis must be turning in their graves at such repulsive news these days.

Even the small details of the resistance provide a powerfully compelling analogy. Reflect on the following excerpt from an underground Jewish resistance bulletin on April 29, 1943:

“…The ghetto replied with armed struggle. The Jewish Fighting Organization opened a war of the weak against the strong. With scant forces, few arms and little ammunition, without water, blinded by smoke and fire, the Jewish fighters defended streets and individual houses. In the dusk they withdrew step by step, more because of the fire that had taken hold in the close-built houses than because of the enemy who was equipped with modern military arms. They considered it a victory if a part of those imprisoned in the ghetto were able to escape; it was a victory in their eyes to die while their hands still grasped arms….”.

Of course, you will hear and read none of this in the mainstream Western news organisations. They will not tell you that, for example, like their Palestinian counterparts, the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto used to execute Jewish collaborators with the Nazis (contemptuously called Kapos) without trial. Far from it, the obedient Zionist media troops are too busy waging an incessant propaganda war against all manifestations of Palestinian aspirations for freedom.

Recently, after the carnage in the West Bank could not be blacked-out any longer, the only remaining effective weapon of this actively combatant media machine in the West has been to continuously point out the criminality and immorality of intentionally targeting and murdering innocent Israeli civilians by Palestinian suicide bombers – and you can be sure to hear or read little else from them about the origins and sources of the fear and loathing in the hearts of Palestinians.

This manipulative tool of persuasion has been effective because, unfortunately, there has been no focused counter response from the Palestinian side that earnestly and boldly confronts the issue of the suicide bombers outside the popular discourse of glorification or the traditional indulgence in metaphysical certainties.

So, while Israeli tanks and planes have been wreaking destruction and death on the already besieged ghettos of Palestine, and while Israeli soldiers have been destroying ambulances and preventing them from attending to – or even burying – the Palestinians who have been left to bleed to death on the sides of the roads or under the rubble of their destroyed shacks in the refugee camps, the ‘usual suspects’ of pro-Israeli commentators have been coming out yet again in blind defence of Israel, nauseatingly screaming “suicide bombers” and “terrorism” over and over again.

It has all been about stopping the suicide bombings, they remind us, while wickedly drawing outrageous parallels to the September 11 massacres. The random killings of Israeli civilians by Palestinian men and women wrapped with explosives, they tell the world, are simply intolerable and need to be eliminated. So the actions of the Israeli army, according to the Israeli apologists, somehow become a justifiable means of self-defence against the indefensible acts of intentional murder of civilians by the Palestinian Kamikaze men and women.

With this simplistic approach, the shameless warlords disguised as journalists in this crucial media war didn’t have to do much to deceive their audience and readers; on its face value, any position stating that the intentional murder of innocent civilians is wrong – and ending the argument there – does not need much arguing to sound convincing.

The latent, yet immense, evil, however, of this seemingly ethical stand against murder lies not in its rightful condemnation of the act itself but in its deliberate omitting of the full picture. The grave act of deception and dishonesty of the media is manifested in the disgraceful failure to point out not only that the premeditated intentional killing of civilians is an atrocity perpetrated by both sides in the conflict today, but that the leading precedents in this criminal form of warfare have been set by the Israelis and not by the Palestinians.

To unveil this deeply suppressed reality, it is incumbent upon us, Arabs and Palestinians, to remember our history and keep reminding the world of the truth. We cannot tire of reiterating the fact that the deplorable acts of intentional and targeted murder of civilians of which we now stand accused were the novelty not of the Palestinians, but indeed the patented invention of the Israeli colonizers of our land from the very start of this conflict until the present moment

It is always refreshing, therefore, in such clouded times to recount some of the glaring chapters in the biography of Israeli terrorism. Here are but a few.

On 22 July 1946, under direct orders from the Haganah general command, former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s Irgun Gang detonated 350 kg of explosives in the basement of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing about 90 British, Arab and Jewish innocent civilians, and completely destroying half the building (on the pretext that the hotel housed the British military command). On 4 January 1948, members of the Irgun, again under direct orders from the Haganah, blew up a truck loaded with explosives in the main market square of the Palestinian city of Jaffa, murdering and maiming scores of Palestinian men, women and children. Many of us have also seen the “Wanted Terrorist” mug-shot poster issued by the British government in mandated Palestine, depicting the picture of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir whose Stern Gang assassinated the Swedish UN Peacekeeper, Count Bernadotte, on 17 September 1948 in reaction to a proposition he made to give control of Jerusalem to the Arabs.

Today we all know that the subsequent murderous collaboration of the Irgun and the Stern gangs was not limited only to Deir Yassin. By the admission of many venerable Israeli historians, the carefully coordinated massacres by these armed militias extended to tens of other Palestinian towns and villages, massacres in which Begin, Shamir and other prominent Israelis personally participated. These documented acts of genocide against unarmed innocent Palestinians were carried out not by suicide bombers but by mainstream Israeli politicians, some of whom are today members of the Israeli government and Kenesset, none of whom ever accepted to apologise for the killings which they do not deny they committed to further the Zionist cause. Their calculated objective at that time was to terrorise the remaining Palestinian inhabitants into fleeing Palestine so that the Zionists can have an ethnically cleansed “promised land” for its “chosen people” – which they achieved with notable success.

And before I bore you with history, I must add that we are not crying over spilled milk here when we retell this narrative. We would be more than willing to forgive and live on for the sake of a just and durable peace, had it not been for the fact that the current Prime Minister of Israel – whom Western politicians have no qualms about meeting and embracing at the same time they scold and scorn Arafat – holds most of the Israeli gold medals in the department of intentionally targeting and murdering innocent civilians. I need not list the notorious murderous campaigns of this sworn enemy of peace, from Qibya in 1953, to Sabra and Shatila in 1982, to Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem and the rest of the wretched West Bank and Gaza in 2002, and counting.

So bring it on, and we will not shy away from this topic. Indeed, let’s talk frankly about terrorism. Let’s openly discuss the incidents of the destitute Palestinians who walk into Israeli restaurants and cafes with a zealous determination to annihilate as many Israelis as possible. And let us finally face all the half-truths head on. For the Zionist media brigades have reached new heights of hypocrisy and duplicity with their animated soul-searching and manufactured sincerity in apparently trying to understand why Palestinians would choose to die in order to kill innocent Israelis – pretending all the while that they are but mystified scholars who are trying to decipher the behaviour of vicious aliens from another planet in a phenomenon they have never witnessed in history. It is time we dismantled their lopsided and twisted logic.

To these morally depraved professional pundits, let us once and for all declare that we had enough of their sanctimonious bewilderment at the alleged savagery of the victims of 35 years of the most dehumanising military occupation in history. We have nothing to hide. If these people honestly want to understand why some Palestinians choose this path of indiscriminate violence, they must look at the true pioneers of this art and its real founding fathers in Palestine, for they are the ones who ultimately dictated terror as the only acceptable currency in exchange in this land.

To all the Thomas Friedmans out there we will say, yes, there can be no disputing of the fact that the intentional killing of innocent people is an unjustifiable and horrific crime. But it is a far worse crime to be a witness to such acts of murder being committed by two unequal warring parties and only condemn and punish the weaker and vanquished side, while rewarding the stronger and much more brutal party with silence and impunity. This flagrant bias is the greatest inequity of all, and it is such arrogant attitudes that can only yield more anger and more deaths.

As for those phoney crime pathologists who refuse, in their hair-splitting analyses, to equate both acts of murder, I tell them that the moral culpability of a suicide bomber exploding in a crowded restaurant and that of a tank commander emptying his load on a crowded residential neighbourhood are practically identical. Both know that their actions will almost certainly murder innocent civilians. The only difference is that the perpetrator of the former act has killed himself while the culprit of the latter roams freely, and may even get a medal of honour.

So let us clear things up on this point. I have not a shred of doubt in my mind that all Arabs and Palestinians, including even Hamas and Islamic Jihad, would agree to come out in public to condemn, and forever renounce and abandon, any and all killings of innocent Israelis – provided that the Israeli government would first announce that it will refrain from its wanton killing of Palestinians and that it will return their illegally occupied land without meaningless procrastination. I have no doubt that all Arabs and Palestinians will express an unequivocal position against such suicide bombings if the same Western leaders and politicians who condemn the killings of innocent Israelis would take an equally principled and vociferous stand against the killings of innocent Palestinians as well.

Today, on this poignant anniversary of the slaughter of the Jewish resistance in Warsaw in 1943 by an overwhelming Nazi foe, let it be known to all the descendants of those Jews in Israel that no Arab or Muslim in their right mind would argue with the universal human value that the taking of the life of the innocent is a criminal act, abhorrent before God and man. However, they must understand that it is the bestiality of their military occupation that needs to be eliminated so that all of us can regain our humanity.

Until such time that murdering the innocent is denounced for what it is, not for the nationality, religion or colour of its victims, until such time that the world acknowledges the vast distinction between the oppressor and the oppressed, between the occupier and the occupied, between the butcher and the victim, there will be no end to the grave injustices that have caused the present endless cycle of killing.

The picture I want to draw today is of a mad circus with Sharon running a bizarre show of trained animals. In this number, Sharon, with his long hovering whip, orders Arafat to run after members of Hamas while sadistically preventing him from doing so by tying his feet together. When Arafat starts to run and falls down, more lashes come his way for failing to obey the orders to chase after Hamas. Of course, the whole spectacle has nothing to do with Hamas. The joke is being played on the ageing and helpless Arafat to humiliate and paralyse him.

Or maybe the setting would be in a bull ring with Sharon, the over-sized matador, teasing Arafat, the obliging bull, with Hamas as the muleta (red cloth). When the bull with the poisoned spears dangling from his spine is dared to aim for the muleta, the matador swiftly pulls it away to the cheers of the intoxicated crowds. The elusive red cloth was never the point, you see. The plan all along was to slowly exhaust the big fat bull until the matador could easily aim for the kill.

Endless images are flashing through my head. Of Sharon the safari hunter thinking of Arafat the prey, that got away in Beirut but now will not get away (a little unintentional rhyming there). Or a wood-legged Sharon the sailor holding an old grudge against a keffiya-draped Moby Dick Arafat, swearing to fish him out of the ocean, only for them to be drowned in the same violent storm. Add more variety to the cartoons with a Roman George W. Bush if you like, a ruthless but dumb-witted Caesar at the colloseum, cheering the Israeli lions as they savage the Palestinian gladiators, asking his aides why, unlike in Texas, this entertaining rodeo show has the beasts mounting the cowboys instead.

So dark and surreal is the current scene that mere words cannot do it anymore. But then again, I can’t draw a cartoon to save my life, so I will stick to writing.

I must say here that since the second Intifada erupted, an unprecedented volume of writings, possibly spurred by the internet, outpoured from all over the world, depicting America’s shameless double standards and condemning Israel’s brutality and colonial occupation. Now that Arab intellectuals and their friends seem to have been awakened, I strongly believe that they need to seize this new momentum of awareness and activism to pursue another equally crucial but inward-looking theme. I truly think that a parallel analytical effort is urgently needed to be vigorously undertaken to get our own internal house in order.

It is time that we as Arabs finally underwent a serious phase of self-examination and asked ourselves why our foes have been so much better than us in advancing their causes and achieving their goals while we consistently managed to remain mired in confusion and catastrophic incompetence. We need to understand why we have so miserably lost and they have so triumphantly conquered. We need to soberly ask how we got ourselves into this bottomless pit in the first place – or in the mad circus or the bull ring, for that matter.

Indeed, one of the greatest impediments to the advancement of Arab societies has always been our collective inability to identify and separate the three distinct elements of our division and backwardness as a nation: the cause, the problem, and the solution. We have constantly confused the three. In other words, if the Arabs are today the sick man of the world, as the Ottoman Empire once had been to Europe, then we do not seem to be able to distinguish between the sources of the virus causing our ailment, the diagnosis of the disease itself and its symptoms, and the treatment and cure, if there is any. What we have been unbeatably excelling at, however, is in name-calling the disease with all sorts of eloquent insults and diatribe.

A prime example of our flawed perceptions of our predicament is the way we have failed to challenge the fundamental fallacy implanted in our collective consciousness that Israel is the source of all our troubles – ignoring the fact that Israel is only a symptom of our chronic impotence, a mere manifestation of our weakness. Indeed, it is our simplistic acceptance of this enormous lie that has enabled military dictatorships to hijack entire countries, violate their people and plunder their resources for decades in the name of the higher noble struggle. We all found out of course, to our inconsolable expense, that there had been no struggle whatsoever, only an old-fashioned perpetuation of power and wealth, advanced on a platform of empty slogans.

Yet we still find among us those who have not yet fathomed the equation that we are our own worst enemies, those who continue to look for the blame exclusively at the doorsteps of Israel and America – because they lack the courage to look straight in the mirror. Sadly, these elements today represent the two main active opposition streams on the Arab political landscape, namely, the inheritors of the failed Arab national movements and their offshoots, and the much more influential and mushrooming Islamic movements across the Arab world.

Take first the disorganised remnants of Arab nationalists. Most of these people have not yet realised that there is not much point after more than 80 years to continue to nag and complain that foreign nations are giving us a hard time – if that is all we do. We need to snap out of it. Yes, Israel is a brutal occupying military bully and America is its faithful ally. Despicable situation, isn’t it? Granted, we have been regurgitating this fact for eternity. But have we yet grasped what kind of hard labouring by Zionists in Israel and in the West was accomplished during a whole century to achieve this state of affairs? Have we asked ourselves what we have been contributing all along, apart from the speeches and rhetoric, to counter this imbalance?

The anti-American agitators amongst us never cease complaining about the Israeli lobby in the US, but they rarely ever question why the Arabs, with all their wealth and resources, were unable and unwilling to play the same game of politics and develop a similar, if not necessarily comparable, presence in the US. They still do not comprehend the harsh rules of the game at which they were severely beaten, so they continue to shout foul from the spectators’ seats.

They will tell you that we must fight America because it will never allow us to rise out of our defeat. But why should we expect America or any nation to want us to do that? Since when do superpowers wish success for their subordinates and opponents anyway? Did America really want Germany and Japan to rise out of their ashes and become its main global competitors? Imagine what would have become of Germany or Japan if after the Second World War they adopted these Don Quixotian anti-American attitudes and kept crying over the humiliating conditions of their surrender – instead of silently working to rebuild their nations by decades of selfless sweat and sacrifice.

But our Arab agitators do not seem to appreciate what it takes for a nation to rise again, so they opt for the easy way out by continuously blaming the adversary for being just that, the enemy – without offering any realistic vision for the future. Thus has been their stance for too long; like a climber standing still and then blaming the snow for the avalanche. They are incapable of accepting that the gigantic industrial, technological and economic rift that separates us from the West – whom they seek to antagonise – cannot be bridged overnight and that the West will not be overcome any time soon. Yet all they have ever offered were recipes for military defeats and blunders, and you are the defeatist if you don’t agree.

Because most Arab nationalists today seem to be trapped in a paranoid mindset that the world is out to get them, they have loosely allied themselves with a far more delusional political group, the Islamic movements, the other symptom of our decaying civilisation and the most serious sign of the late stages of our affliction.

The story of political Islam is a long one, but I will start from one of their founding myths. The fundamentalists believe that the utmost overriding priority of the entire world is to destroy Islam – because the Islamic movements offer such utopian models for society that the West feels mortally challenged and must annihilate them before they spread prosperity and justice all over the world (this is not an exaggeration and is how all fundamentalists view the world). I hope to discuss the Islamic movements with examples and in more detail in a later article.