". .  . memory is not just an idle capacity. Rather, who can remember, and who can be made to forget, is, fundamentally, an expression of power." George Bisharat in today's San Francisco Chronicle

Link for George Bisharat's For Palestinians Memory Matters: It Provides a Blueprint for Their Future in today's San Francisco Chronicle

Bisharat provides definition for Al-Nakba (Catastrophe) in his powerful and poignant op-ed:  

A living, breathing, society that had existed in Palestine for centuries was smashed and fragmented, and a new society built on its ruins. Few Palestinian families lack a personal narrative of loss from that period - an uncle killed, or a branch of the family that fled north while the others fled east, never to be reunited, or homes, offices, orchards, and other property seized.

Bisharat notes the importance of memory for Palestinians amidst admonishments from some Israelis and Americans that it "doesn't get us closer to a solution."

American, do you realize,
that the taxes that you pay
feed the forces that traumatize
my every living day?

The bulldozers and the tanks,
the gases and the guns,
the bombs that fall outside my door,
all due to American funds.
Gihad Ali, Palestinian-American, Chicago, Illinois.

Danish group Outlandish's Look Into My Eyes, based on Gihad's lyrics, which reached #1 on Danish charts.

Please continue to read Palestinian refugee Mahira Dajani's story.

President Jimmy Carter's courageous stand on behalf of occupied Palestinians has sparked a surge of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices appearing in the mainstream media.  For example the LA Times' News Blog reprinted a story, which was first published in 1957, by the late Ambassador Robert G. Neumann.  Neumann, according to the Times was an "Austrian who was held in a Nazi concentration camp for his political activities," and a "UCLA professor who wrote frequently about world events for The Times . . . ."

Neumann's suggestion in 1957 for Middle East Peace:

Arab states must accept existence of Israel as an integral part of the area.
 
Israel must accept principal responsibility for the return, resettlement or compensation of refugees.

Both sides must recognize that fear of aggression is mutual and genuine.
 
Arab leaders must realize that their frequent blood-curdling statements render a poor service to their cause.  
   
Israel must recognize that as long as there is worldwide agitation for Jewish immigration into Palestine, Arab fears of Israel's aggrandizement will persist.

"Do you believe in Israel's right to exist?" has replaced "What do you think about suicide bombing?" as the number one question posed to Palestinians since the past elections in the occupied territories. In fact, the Palestinians' refusal to answer the former question in the manner prescribed by their occupiers has effectively put them on Israeli government advisor Dov Weinglas's 'starvation diet,' which means thousands of Palestinian Authority workers aren't getting paid because of sanctions imposed by the US and Palestinians' own tax revenues withheld by Israel.

Of course the question remains, whether mighty Israel really gives two shakes whether the weak and occupied Palestinians recognize their "right to exist," or uses it as a cover to buy time in order to effect its continuing cantonization of the miniscule remaining patch of historic Palestine.

Some of the mainstream media, however, have dealt rather cogently with Israel's demand, sparing readers the usual mantra voiced repeatedly by politicians that Palestinians must eschew violence and recognize Israel's right to exist before they may eat a balanced diet again.

Much of my review of Route 181 appeared originally at my personal blog umkahlil.  The film takes its name from UN Resolution 181, which divided historic Palestine. I post it here because I highly recommend it for US citizens seeking a nuanced and riveting presentation of the Israel/Palestine problem.  You may order the film here. Ha'aretz reports today that the film's Israeli, Anti-Zionist co-director Eyal Sivan, has been given NIS 650,000 to make a film marking Israel's 60th anniversary.

Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan’s Route 181 is reminiscent of Marcel Ophuls' 1972 documentary, The Sorrow and the Pity in two ways: both are four and one-half hours in length, and both deal with the occupier and the occupied; Ophuls’ documentary dealt with oral histories of collaborators, resistance fighters, and of the apathetic of Vichy France, while Route 181 deals with the people on both sides of the Palestine-Israeli conflict. The stories that emerge from both documentaries are both personal and universal.

Yesterday the New York Times ran a feature, Give Them Shelter: Where Rockets and Drums Go Boom.  

Many Palestinian-Americans reading the feature about the town's rock bands will sigh and shake their heads. They most likely will recall a Palestinian village, maybe their own, that no longer exists.  Many years ago, when I  noticed some trees on the way from Ben Gurion Airport to Ramallah, my Aunt Jamila filled me in that those trees used to be a Palestinian village, like ethnically cleansed and demolished Najd. Sderot 'Rock City,' as the New York Times admiringly terms it, is built upon Najd's village lands.

It is essential that context is provided regarding the Israel/Palestine situation for Americans so that we can move further toward resolution of the problem. If you would like to know what the New York Times left out, please read on.

Permission from  This Week in Palestine to repost from Rima Nasir Tarazi's The Palestinian National Song: A Personal Testimony and Kamal Nasir: The Conscience and the Poet

Beloved, if word of my death reaches you
And the lovers cry out:
The loyal one has departed, his visage gone forever,
And fragrance has died within the bosom of the flower
Shed no tears...smile on life
And tell my only one, my loved one,
The dark recesses of your father's being
Have been touched by visions of his people.

From Kamal Nasir's Last Poem

"When you are the underdog in the fight, your weak position gives you the opportunity to fight on the side of beauty," said Golden Globe winner Hani Abu Assad to the Guardian.  

Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) has granted permission to post this story in full.

http://imeu.net/...

"When people understand the contributions that Palestinians are making and that our goals are to benefit all people, then our rights as Palestinians will be recognized as well."

At the Stanford University School of Medicine, Palestinian-American physician-scientist Basil M. Hantash is overseeing a team of researchers working on nothing less than a stem cell-based cure for bloodborne cancers. This cure could be ready for application in humans in as little as 3-5 years.

. . .the Lobby is quite clear in its efforts to suppress any congressional dissent from the policy of complete support for Israel which might hurt annual appropriations. Even one voice is attacked, as I was, on grounds that if Congress is completely silent on the issue, the press will have no one to quote, which effectively silences the press as well. Any journalists or editors who step out of line are quickly brought under control by well organized economic pressure against the newspaper caught sinning. Former Senator James Abourezk

There is, however, some progress as the US mainstream media slowly provides more coverage for Palestinian voices and Americans seem to appreciate it, if letters to editors and comments sections are any indication.

Pennsylvanian Anne Selden Annab's letter supporting the Vermont Guardian's contributor, Mohammad Omer, appeared yesterday. She was responding to Mohammad's letter which was published on April 12. Mohammad was reacting to a letter written by Robert Grossenbaum questioning the veracity of Omer's reports.

We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees.  And still we dare to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name.  Instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and trying to undo some of the evil we committed . . . we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them.  Nathan Chofshi

(Childers, Erskine.  "The Other Exodus." From The Spectator, May 12, 1961, pp. 672-75 in Khalidi, Walid, From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem Until 1948.  Washington: The Institute for Palestine Studies, 1987)

In the preface to Before Their Diaspora, Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi writes that Zionism presented Palestinians "with the deadliest threat, short of physical annihilation, to which a people can be subjected--the denial of their birthright in their ancestral home, Palestine (13).

I am a Palestinian/Syrian American school teacher.  Since I have been posting on Daily Kos, a few commentators have inferred that I am fostering hate, for to some when I speak lovingly of my heritage, it is by implication hatred of Israel.

My mother is a Roosevelt Democrat and throughout her life has exhibited unswerving loyalty to the Democratic Party. My late father was a Republican; like many Palestinians who immigrated to the United States, my father was a businessman, which is probably why he gravitated toward the Republicans.

My two previous posts on Right of Return do nothing more than advocate that Israel abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which clearly states "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."  Let me quote Eleanor Roosevelt, who was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

" . . . a solution divorced from the context of its problem is a solution built on quicksand"   (Khalidi xxiv).

Since many Palestinian-Americans find the "old country" somewhat provincial compared to our adopted homes in Europe and North America, we find it humorous when European and North American Jews, with no previous ties to historic Palestine, wax eloquently about "home" upon first stepping foot on Ben Gurion (Lod) airport soil.

In no time the "olim," (newcomers to Israel) are swapping hummus and falafel recipes,  which has been appropriated as "Israeli" food.  One Palestinian woman lamented recently that she had to pull out a history book to convince an American friend that falafel was an Arabic dish. In just a matter of time, the recent immigrants, or "transplants," as a Palestinian journalist refers to them, are calling one another "habbibi," Arabic for darling, and filling up comments boxes on their blogs with "yallas," and "ya annis" (other appropriated Arabic sayings).

At the Doha Debates sponsored by BBC World, eighty-two percent of the audience rejected the motion: 'This House believes the Palestinians should give up their full right of return.'  Arguing against the motion were Ali Abunimeh, son of Palstinian refugees, and Ilan Pappe, Israeli historian. Abunimeh and Bassem Eid, Palestinian refugee and human rights worker, who argued in favor of the motion, continued the debate in a series of e-mail exchanges published in the UK Guardian's Comment is Free.

Abunimeh wrote to Eid,

I really hope you will join us and join the growing movement that understands that peace will only come in a decolonised Palestine where Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or any other arbitrary characteristics.

Eid's points, reiterated in the Guardian story, were hardly arguments, mainly the lamentations of a man in the grips of despair.  As Abunimeh commented, it was easy to see why he lost.

Six Palestinian citizens of Israel, who were peacefully protesting the confiscation of their land in the Galilee were shot dead thirty-one years ago today.

Palestinians in the occupied territories, Israel, and the diaspora commemorate this day, another in a long line of commemorations significant in the one hundred year struggle against an enemy determined to possess a land without its people.

According to http://www.miftah.org/...,

Israeli authorities had announced that 5,500 acres of Palestinian-owned land would be confiscated from villages in the Galilee in what is now northern Israel. Palestinian communities inside Israel declared a general strike and took to the streets in protest where they were violently confronted by Israeli police. The area was declared a closed military zone and was later utilized for massive illegal settlement expansion in the Galilee area.

In 1948, the villagers of Kfar Bir'im in Galilee were evicted from their homes.  Some lived in caves thinking that they could return in two weeks.  Seven children died. In 1953 they watched from a hill, called today the "Wailing Hill," as Israel bombed their houses from the air.  The third generation of internally displaced villagers continue their struggle to return to their land.

Kfar Bir'im is a microcosm of Palestine's tragedy.  What follows is Dr. Salman Abu Sitta's story in today's Guardian.  Dr. Abu Sitta is a scholar and a refugee from Ain Al Sitta in Beersheeba.  He is author of the monumental Atlas of Palestine.Kfar Bir'imAtlas of Palestine