The year of remembrance; the year of Keys
Sixty years ago this month, on the 29 November 1947, a number of terrorist groups in what is often called the “Middle East” were rewarded for their murderous brutality: the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181. That resolution partitioned British Mandate Palestine into two states: a “Jewish state” on 55 percent of the land and an “Arab state” on 45 percent of the land. This despite the fact that, at the time, Jews made up only 30 percent of the population and owned only seven percent of the land.
Ironically, the only state established on that land has not been a state for the indigenous people but the state of Israel, a state for mostly immigrants with no lineage connection to the land. Today, that state covers about 80 percent of the land and has colonised the other 20 percent. It was a state established, on the 15th May 1948, on dispossession, murder, theft, colonialism and racism. It still is a state based on dispossession, murder, theft, colonialism and racism.
The months surrounding these two dates witnessed a number of brutal massacres, resulting in the murder and maiming of thousands of people. These months also resulted in about 750,000 members of the indigenous population being forced out of their homes and made into refugees. Today, they and their descendants number more than six million refugees.
This month marks the 60th anniversary of that fateful resolution adopted in New York, the resolution that condemned an entire people to decades of misery and to refugeehood. Sixty years later, it is time that the world corrected that injustice.
And next year will mark 60 years of what Palestinians refer to as their catastrophe, or Al-Nakba. It is time for the nakba to end!
As in South Africa, where Black people are requested ad nauseum to “forget the past”, “not live in the past” or “don’t blame the past”, Palestinians too are constantly told to forget this history, to move on as if the events of 60 years ago never happened, to wipe the slate clean and begin, not a new chapter but a new book. These demands are unjust and contemptible.
Does anyone in South Africa ask Afrikaners to forget the South African War (formerly called the Anglo-Boer)? Or to forget the concentration camps they were confined to by the English? Does anyone ask Jews to forget the Nazi genocide against them in the middle of the twentieth century when six million of their number were systematically killed? No!
Why, then, should Black people forget the crimes of Apartheid that we were subjected to? Why should Palestinians forget the crimes of Zionism that they were subjected to (and continue to be subjected to)?
It is true that history is written by the victors, not the victims. The powerful are usually the ones to shape how the story gets told. But memories are not the property of the powerful, to use, abuse, discard and forget at their whim. Oppressed people have long memories; memories are weapons and they are given up only voluntarily.
The next 13 months, for Palestinians, will be a demonstration of just how important memory is. It will be a commemoration of a humanitarian catastrophe and a celebration of six decades of resistance and of remembering.
Palestinian memories are not just in their heads and their hearts; there are also physical manifestations of these memories. Thousands of older Palestinians still have, neatly wrapped in cloth, their house keys with which they locked up their homes as they fled from the Zionist terrorists. Thousands of younger Palestinians, too, have these keys, handed down to them from their parents or grandparents, keys for houses that still stand, occupied by settlers who would prefer that those keys and those memories did not exist.
But they do. And 2008 will be remembered all over the world as the Year of the Keys, the year to open the door for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, the year of making known that the keys to peace and justice do exist for Palestinians, that peace and justice in the Middle East (or, as many Indian and Pakistani friends prefer to say, “West Asia”) is possible – when the refugees are allowed to return and allowed to open the doors of their homes long colonised.
Palestinian historian, Dr Salman Abu Sitta, compiled a list of 531 villages and towns ethnically cleansed in 1947-48 by Zionist terrorists; their populations converted into refugees communities. The majority of those that belonged to these depopulated localities, and their descendants, now live in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Many villages were razed to the ground, destroyed, in an attempt to remove all trace that there were people who lived on this land, who belonged to the land and who owned the land.
One of those villages was Lubya. Lubya does not exist anymore; its people are refugees. Instead, money was collected from South African Jews to establish – on the ruins of Lubya – the “South Africa Forest”. And since this oppressive colonialist forest bears the name of our country, I will briefly describe what Lubya was and known for.
Lubya was (is) in Northern Palestine. It is known as the hometown of Abu Bakr al-Lubyani, a prominent Muslim scholar of the fifteenth century who taught Islamic religious sciences in Damascus. Most Palestinians cannot stop talking about the beauty of the Palestinian villages they had come from. Not so the people of Lubya which, it seems, was not known for its beauty. Instead, its reputation derived from the ingenuity and intellectualism of its people and their legendary folkloric narratives. And its cactus.
Lubya was attacked in July 1948 as part of the Israeli “Operation Dekel”. It was occupied on the 16 July and all 596 houses were razed to the ground. The village was successfully ethnically cleansed and its 2726 inhabitants forced to become refugees.
This year of remembrance, the Year of the Keys, is one that South Africans must commemorate, beginning on the 29th November, when protests will be held globally. The United Nations calls it the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. In protests, rallies and exhibitions around the world, it will be the beginning of the commemoration of 60 years of Al-Nakba.
* For all those that are interested in the events of 1947-48 and the ethnic cleansing that took place, visit http://www.palestineremembered.com, which contains stories, maps, videos, statistics and oral history.
Ironically, the only state established on that land has not been a state for the indigenous people but the state of Israel, a state for mostly immigrants with no lineage connection to the land. Today, that state covers about 80 percent of the land and has colonised the other 20 percent. It was a state established, on the 15th May 1948, on dispossession, murder, theft, colonialism and racism. It still is a state based on dispossession, murder, theft, colonialism and racism.
The months surrounding these two dates witnessed a number of brutal massacres, resulting in the murder and maiming of thousands of people. These months also resulted in about 750,000 members of the indigenous population being forced out of their homes and made into refugees. Today, they and their descendants number more than six million refugees.
This month marks the 60th anniversary of that fateful resolution adopted in New York, the resolution that condemned an entire people to decades of misery and to refugeehood. Sixty years later, it is time that the world corrected that injustice.
And next year will mark 60 years of what Palestinians refer to as their catastrophe, or Al-Nakba. It is time for the nakba to end!
As in South Africa, where Black people are requested ad nauseum to “forget the past”, “not live in the past” or “don’t blame the past”, Palestinians too are constantly told to forget this history, to move on as if the events of 60 years ago never happened, to wipe the slate clean and begin, not a new chapter but a new book. These demands are unjust and contemptible.
Does anyone in South Africa ask Afrikaners to forget the South African War (formerly called the Anglo-Boer)? Or to forget the concentration camps they were confined to by the English? Does anyone ask Jews to forget the Nazi genocide against them in the middle of the twentieth century when six million of their number were systematically killed? No!
Why, then, should Black people forget the crimes of Apartheid that we were subjected to? Why should Palestinians forget the crimes of Zionism that they were subjected to (and continue to be subjected to)?
It is true that history is written by the victors, not the victims. The powerful are usually the ones to shape how the story gets told. But memories are not the property of the powerful, to use, abuse, discard and forget at their whim. Oppressed people have long memories; memories are weapons and they are given up only voluntarily.
The next 13 months, for Palestinians, will be a demonstration of just how important memory is. It will be a commemoration of a humanitarian catastrophe and a celebration of six decades of resistance and of remembering.
Palestinian memories are not just in their heads and their hearts; there are also physical manifestations of these memories. Thousands of older Palestinians still have, neatly wrapped in cloth, their house keys with which they locked up their homes as they fled from the Zionist terrorists. Thousands of younger Palestinians, too, have these keys, handed down to them from their parents or grandparents, keys for houses that still stand, occupied by settlers who would prefer that those keys and those memories did not exist.
But they do. And 2008 will be remembered all over the world as the Year of the Keys, the year to open the door for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, the year of making known that the keys to peace and justice do exist for Palestinians, that peace and justice in the Middle East (or, as many Indian and Pakistani friends prefer to say, “West Asia”) is possible – when the refugees are allowed to return and allowed to open the doors of their homes long colonised.
Palestinian historian, Dr Salman Abu Sitta, compiled a list of 531 villages and towns ethnically cleansed in 1947-48 by Zionist terrorists; their populations converted into refugees communities. The majority of those that belonged to these depopulated localities, and their descendants, now live in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Many villages were razed to the ground, destroyed, in an attempt to remove all trace that there were people who lived on this land, who belonged to the land and who owned the land.
One of those villages was Lubya. Lubya does not exist anymore; its people are refugees. Instead, money was collected from South African Jews to establish – on the ruins of Lubya – the “South Africa Forest”. And since this oppressive colonialist forest bears the name of our country, I will briefly describe what Lubya was and known for.
Lubya was (is) in Northern Palestine. It is known as the hometown of Abu Bakr al-Lubyani, a prominent Muslim scholar of the fifteenth century who taught Islamic religious sciences in Damascus. Most Palestinians cannot stop talking about the beauty of the Palestinian villages they had come from. Not so the people of Lubya which, it seems, was not known for its beauty. Instead, its reputation derived from the ingenuity and intellectualism of its people and their legendary folkloric narratives. And its cactus.
Lubya was attacked in July 1948 as part of the Israeli “Operation Dekel”. It was occupied on the 16 July and all 596 houses were razed to the ground. The village was successfully ethnically cleansed and its 2726 inhabitants forced to become refugees.
This year of remembrance, the Year of the Keys, is one that South Africans must commemorate, beginning on the 29th November, when protests will be held globally. The United Nations calls it the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. In protests, rallies and exhibitions around the world, it will be the beginning of the commemoration of 60 years of Al-Nakba.
* For all those that are interested in the events of 1947-48 and the ethnic cleansing that took place, visit http://www.palestineremembered.com, which contains stories, maps, videos, statistics and oral history.
posted by na'eem jeenah at 12:50
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