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.

Being Muslims, many of our brothers and sisters are not working for peace. They are misguided, mistaken and spreading the virus of hatred and revenge through telling deliberate lies, disinformation and false accusations, which is resulting in death and misery for number of innocent people living around the world at the hands of merciless

KILLER MUSLIMS and also bringing bad name to Mohammed (PBUH) who never killed anyone in his life time.
Instead of teaching about Good & Evil, certain Radical Muslim Clerics are only “Trading in Religion”. They teach us about accusing, abusing and killing the non-Muslims. They try to hypnotize us to Hate and Kill the non-Muslims and brethren of other sects or be killed and without using any common sense, we readily believe in whatever is being said

by these Hate Mongers. Actually, they are “Agents of Satan” who is paying them heavily and in return they are cutting at the very roots of the Ummah. Instead of “Mourning” most of the Muslims are rejoicing on the brutal killings of the non-combatant innocent civilians and “The Murderers” have always been “Our Great Heroes”.

Before it is too late and the Curse Of God falls upon us, we should use common sense, find out the TRUTH and must change ourselves to save Muslims from becoming the most “Hated, Isolated, Discredited and Suspicious” people in the world. We must start working for promoting “Sectarian Harmony and Religious Tolerance” in the society

and should prove to the WORLD through our deeds that Islam is not a religion of Zero Tolerance and Mohammed (PBUH) teaches “Love & Peace” and not Terrorism, Barbarism, Extremism, Sectarianism, Cruelty, Inhumanity and “Hatred & Killing” of the innocent civilians.

Islam is a religion of peace. Islam teaches respect and love for all even the animals. But many narrow-minded Muslims have so far failed to learn anything good from the teachings of Mohammed (PBUH) who preaches love for the peoples of all religions. We are far away from the basic principle of Islam i.e. “Enjoining the people to do Good and

forbidding them from Doing Evil” and thus, possess no quality of the civilized society. Unfortunately, many of us show Zero Tolerance towards others and have wrongly learnt few thing to be called as good Muslims and those are “hate” the non-Muslims and “Accusing, Abusing and Cursing” the non-Muslims. …act of madness?

The killing of others in the name of religion is a Sin. Can a FATHER ever teach his Children to be the permanent Enemies of each other? The time has come for us to stop readily believing in whatever is being said, read and written by the LIARS / Hate Mongers. Unfortunately, some misguided-Muslims believe that the Holy Koran and Holy Prophet

(PBUH) both have instructed Muslims that the opponents be KILLED and that they are simply following the orders. We should use our own common sense and only believe which is logical, convincing and in the best interest of the humanity.
Why do we hate others so much, may be they are better humans then what we are. My feeling is that the Muslims should unite to discredit and deactivate the fringe mullahs (Preachers of Hate) who promise a quick trip to paradise to people who have little and sacrifice themselves with bombs strapped to their bodies. If the mullahs (THE LIARS)

thought that it really was a way to paradise they would be strapping bombs to themselves! Their followers are kept too ignorant to see this for themselves and enlightened Muslims should educate them. We must promote understanding and peace. We are all watched by the same God and need to help one another, not Hate and Hurt.

Our contention is that the WORLD should resolve the conflicts facing the Muslim World to stop the terrorism. Unfortunately, all the disputes facing the Muslim World are our self created. The root causes of all the disputes are based on the Muslim Philosophy of Hate against the non-Muslims. The Muslim literature, teachings and preaching are

spreading and injecting this hatred in hearts and minds of the Muslims. Our intolerant behavior is further proved by the root causes of all the pending conflicts that we (Muslims) cannot live side by side in peace with the non-Muslims. All the disputes facing Muslim World can be resolved easily, only if we (the Muslims) are able to condemn the

“Philosophy of Hate” created in us by our past and present elders who have divided the peoples of the world in the name of “Religion, Cast and Creed”.
Fellow Muslims! If God is one and he loves mankind, we should value each others life and strive to protect each other than thinking that if we kill we shall have reward. God looks at human beings not as belonging to different religions; that is why the rain falls to all, the sun shines to all and we all breathe the air freely. We are all created or given life in the very same way- whether Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jew etc. Let us learn to love each other sincerely. The change of heart and mind is possible to achieve if we keep up our

relentless efforts for a violence free and peaceful world. We need to preach love, kindness and humanity with extremist devotion and mission. The mullahs (THE LIARS) and the preachers of HATE must be excommunicated at every level and we should stop giving them donations as it is our money which is being used by them to spread HATRED for

killing of the innocents.
We must also stop dividing the World into Muslim and non-Muslim blocks. Our political leaders and religious teachers must offer positive ideas. Without the ability to imagine a better world, we cannot build anything together. Tolerance of the beliefs of other peoples in the world, warmth and friendship across racial cultures MUST be the objective of all peace loving people worldwide. What is being offered today through religion is “Death, Destruction and Suffering”.

MY PRAYER FOR PEACE:

Merciful God, please give to peoples of the world, the required wisdom and determination, to Forgive and Forget the bitterness of the past and learn to live in peace like brothers and sisters, by condemning the divisions and hatreds created in us by our past and present elders.

(Amen)

but … we will not die in the harbors”

Samih Al Qasem

My dear diary, what if my father were to read this? And what if my mother were to read this as I disrobe letter by letter before their very eyes? Would they discover my secret or would they believe this to be fiction not related to reality in any way? I’m afraid it may sadden them to discover how lost I am, how afraid I am of my present, of my future, of a heritage I inherited not by choice, within an existence where I ask myself everyday: when will my life begin?

I was named after Fadwa Toukan, but on the inside I am nothing but tumult and turmoil. My inner turmoil started long ago, somewhere between the consciousness of a child and the uncertainty of a consciousness. I wrote my hesitant words in my mind before jotting them in this notebook, in English, in Arabic; using new colors I invented to draw my own shades. I scribble my words here, putting no date to a life that exists outside the boundaries of time. I walk through non-history; existence senses not my existence nor does absence sense my absence.

I spent my whole life scattered between Arab cities where one felt no Arabness, and in foreign cities where one had the right to feel whatever one wanted. I belonged neither to city, nor neighborhood, neither to walls of a house, nor to soil. Nothing but a gypsy carrying my memories in a bundle, upon my soul accumulating more dust with every new trip. I leave behind the echo of my voice to melt into nowhere, and my footsteps on the sands of the beach to be swallowed by the waves of timelessness. When I stop to catch my breath, I look behind me and I see no evidence of my passage.

But … when I am asked where I come from, I reply enthusiastically that I am Palestinian. Yes, Palestinian! I wear my Palestinianness like a valuable old shirt that warms my existence. Its sleeves too long, its shoulders too wide. I do not know when I wore this shirt or when it wore me. I walk on, apprehensively, nervously, eagerly, cautiously, in bewilderment. I find nothing that pleases me, nor anything that comforts me. Every time I move to a new place, I remember, with warmth and nostalgia, the old place which, at that time, neither pleased nor comforted me.

Wherever I go I am surrounded by words and labels which frighten me, words which increase my nervousness and my apprehension; words which squeeze me into a tight container, which is in turn squeezed into an even tighter container, then into another and another . . . like Russian Dolls. Ever since I can remember I have been feeling my way across the shrapnel of the word “Palestinian.” There are the Arabs of Palestine, Israeli Arabs, the Arabs of 1948, Palestinians with Arab citizenship, Palestinians with foreign citizenship, Palestinians returning from Kuwait, Palestinians fleeing Kuwait, Palestinians fleeing Iraq, Palestinians who hold passports, Palestinians who hold travel documents, Palestinians who hold travel documents and ID cards. There are terrorists, nationalists, suicidal-bombers, martyrs… there are Palestinians who do not know Palestine. And there is me and my shirt. My shirt which is woven from the delicate threads of my father’s memories and my grandfather’s stories. My shirt, which is soiled with racism and tattered from constant upheaval. How I wish that I had remained in one corner all my life, a corner which I would have memorized and which would have memorized me, so that if I moved away I would miss even its garbage cans!

My corner is but my shirt. My boundaries are but my shirt. My shroud is but my shirt, for there is no equality even in death. I realized this when my father-in-law died. He was a man saturated with his city, Jerusalem; if he left it for a few days, its scent would seep from his fingertips, from his breath. He wrote his own history in the pain of his city’s history, and on his death, his city carried his coffin upon its shoulders. As for me, I will end up a stranger in a strange land, even if fate would have me die in Palestine. Despite my shirt, I am a stranger to it, and it to me. It will not recognize me. It will reject me, like a body rejects the implantation of foreign organs.

I will soil its soil.

My dear diary, I will bury you before I am buried. I will shroud you with the remains of my shirt into which I used to shrink and which now shrinks inside me. I will bury you under the first olive tree I meet along my way. I have only written in you when I have been very sad, and I have written in you very often.

You are the wall on which I can express the freedom of writing freely, and my freedom has only been the limits of your pages.

You only know that with which I have defiled your white pages. With the axe of my words I have dug into you a well for my pains. You have contained my vacuum. You have eagerly awaited our meeting every sunset and I have emptied myself into you, my dear diary. Where should my emptiness go now? Nothing left of me but letters that dampen my feet. I bend down to dry them in vain. My letters are many, and my shirt, darned so many times, can withstand no more.

How, from the very beginning, I had feared this to be my end! How I had feared finding nothing but tatters when I grew old! I grew old, my dear diary, but my shirt did not. And no matter how much I wash it, never again will it return to its original whiteness. I wear it, I feel cold. I feel cold, my dear diary, I feel cold yet I forsake it not. Every harbor knows me, it is true, and every airport … and there I remain still, writing my story in the waiting room.

We sat in silence, but I could hear his thoughts ricocheting like bullets around the walls of his mind, until finally, his whole being was about to be ripped apart in his restless search for a shelter from the simple, three-word question; What am I?

What am I? My son asked: what am I? Am I Canadian because I have Canadian citizenship, even though no one asked me if I wanted it? Am I Emirati, because I was born in the United Arab Emirates, even though I don’t have UAE citizenship? Am I Palestinian because you say I am Palestinian?

I took a painful breath, hoping to gain some time to collect my splintered thoughts, but he was relentless, launching one attack after another.

How can I be Canadian? I lived there for only three years and I don’t remember any of it. How come I am not Emirati? I was born in the UAE and all my memories live there. How can I be Palestinian? I have never even seen it!!

Silence once more. He looked to me as someone whose ancient age ensures knowledge of all the mysteries of the world. He looked to me as his mother and his only hope in solving this insistent, haunting dilemma.

I, too, searched in the silence. I, too, looked for that place which will shelter me from the feelings of loss and anxiety I have carried heavily on my back, along with my equally heavy school bag, since I was just as young.

What are we? Are we refugees? A nameless people forced by Zionism into becoming refugees? Are we returnees? A people scattered like dust around the world, settling a while on sands that cannot bear our prints, only to be dusted off once more by the hands of time and scattered yet again.

What exactly are we, when all this displacement has fragmented our unique traditions and culture? We no longer have the opportunity to eat grandma’s cooking, our spices are lost within the spices from North Africa, Latin America and India, and everyone now prefers to eat hamburgers anyway! Even our dialect struggles to maintain its own identity. We no longer hear the distinctive accent of the Jerusalemites, nor the Hebronites’ elasticized drawl, or the accent that is spoken by the people of Nablus, which I should know, but which I never hear. We have lost it, or most of us have lost it, as it dissipates into the Jordanian, the Libyan, the Tunisian, the Egyptian, the Syrian, the Lebanese, even the British and American!!

How can I explain to my son what it means to be Palestinian, while I, too, suffer the heart wrenching consequences of this Diaspora? Would he understand that being Palestinian means he won’t be able to run around his neighborhood playing with his friends, as his dad used to do? Or that he won’t have friendships that begin with the beginning of his memories and won’t fade away with the color of his hair?

Would he understand that being Palestinian means he will always be subject to loss, mistreatment and distrust? And that despite the international decrees which assert every child’s right to hold a citizenship, and despite the sense of belonging he may feel, if he were lucky enough to obtain one, he will always, always remain an outsider, a suspect, even a criminal? And that he will not find refuge in any of the citizenships he may hold when crossing state borders where even his blood type is suspect? How do I explain to him that for a Palestinian, citizenship will neither create a new person, nor will it allow him to remain the same?

Which words should I use to tell him all of this as I watch his rights, especially his right to return, continually being raped? How should I tell him that if ever he could enter his homeland, it would only be as a tourist? How can I explain that I, too, was deprived of knowing my own country, and that I only know the Palestine inherited from my father, my mother’s memories and my grandma’s stories?

Perhaps I need not explain, for as he turned his attention to the TV screen, I could see in his eyes the answers to his own questions. Fayrouz was singing her famous song – which when translated means, “Now and not tomorrow, the bell tolls for our return!” – As children hurled the stones stored in the womb of this Holy Land to defend themselves against Israeli tanks. This is the same womb that now cradles countless martyrs’ bodies. He sat there, just as I had, many years ago, his heart full of emotion, beating in fear and anger. He had unknowingly wrapped himself in his “Palestinianism”, just as I had before him. As his whole being absorbed it thread by thread, he was certain that he was not Canadian, even though this country recognizes his full rights, he was definitely not Emarati …

But, as I continued to watch him, I knew better. I knew to expect more questions. Perhaps tomorrow he will ask me; what will we be after tomorrow? Will the questions that bombard his soul now transform into actions I know not of?

How will I explain to him after tomorrow, that because of the world’s indifference and the Arab world’s shameful feebleness today, his children may listen to Fayrouz yet again on some holographic TV of the future and watch 3D images of Israeli’s continued genocide against everything Palestinian?