[oman-l] Urge your local paper to run this article (fwd)

[Tommy Erik Back]

Pardon me for saying so, but filthy mail can reach anyone who has an e-mail
account, you don't have to be a member of the Oman mail list for that. Would
you give up your e-mail account if you had unpleasant mail coming to you?
The right thing has been done, members of this list and with interest for
this list have mailed complaints to <abuse@hotmail.com>. That's a positive
and creative way sorting a problem out. As Joachim said, something has gone
wrong as the person could enter our list without being reviewed by himself.
This can happen to any mail-list around. The list will be just as good as
you and I make it.

As for the article below: Well, it isn't exactly belonging to the Oman-mail
list, but quite related. Is it so bad to be reminded of genoside still
happening right here, right now? For the Omanis, the Palestinian struggle
for a life in something else but dirty refugee camps is certainly something
of high priority.
If the article below is upsetting you, it can be for no other reason that
you disagree with the contents. And the contents of the article is nothing
more than what is recognized by UN, most governments and most educated
people.

Every day for the last month we have been reminded in CNN, BBC and NBC etc
of 1948 - 1998:  Israels 50 years celebration - but nowhere of
1948 - 1998:  50 Years of Palestinian Dispossession.


If you have disagrements on that, stay on the list and we can discuss it.
I'm sure, even the Palestinian disaster can be reviewed on this list that
has just a couple of articles/week.

If you still really want to chicken out, there's a procedure to follow to
unsubscribe. When you subscribed to this list you also recieved those
procedures, so you will have to check your old mail. But I'm sure the list
will gain on having you staying.

Tommy Back


>Please delete my name from this mailing list. What started out as a
>very pleasant mail list with articles on a very unique and pleasant
>country, i.e. Oman, has now degenerated into a forum for filth, as
>evidenced by a very recent mailing and now, politics as evidenced by
>the attached article.
>
>Edgar F. Cook
>>
>> The following article appeared on the SaudiList... I thought that it
might
>> be of interest to some on this list.
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Abdulla
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1998 21:23:22 -0400
>> From: Abdulfattah Zahed <bz936@torfree.net>
>> Reply-To: Saudi Arabia mailing list <saudi-l@haynese.winthrop.edu>
>> To: Multiple recipients of list saudi-l <saudi-l@haynese.winthrop.edu>
>> Subject: Urge your local paper to run this article
>>
>> From: zahi damuni, zdamuni@classic.msn.com/ Alhambra,
>> alhambra@globedirect,com (.com)
>>
>> Dear Friends,
>>
>> We need to act quickly!!!
>>
>> A version of the following piece (see below) ran in the Baltimore Sun
>> (Sunday, May 31,1998). It was just put out over the LA Times - Washington
>> Post wire.
>> As I understand it, this means that hundreds of papers around the country
>> have access to it.
>> I suggest we contact our local papers (the opinion page editor,
>> particularly
>> the Sunday editor) and urge them to publish this piece.
>>
>> If they do not have access to the wire, you can e-mail them the article
>> (see
>> below).
>>
>> Many thanks,
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
>> ---
>> -------------------------------------------
>> Celebrate 50 Years? Of What?
>> by Sam Husseini
>>
>> It was the most loving fax I've ever received. I had just come back to
the
>> office from asking Benjamin Netanyahu a few questions at a press
>> conference
>> during his visit in January. I was astonished to learn that my dad, now
in
>> Amman, Jordan saw it on CNN International. "You were fantastic," he wrote
>> me.
>>
>> I was thinking of dad -- and the fact that he and 700,000 other
>> Palestinians
>> were forced from their homes 1948 -- as I asked the Israeli leader if it
>> was
>> not time that Israel acknowledged this wrong that it has committed. The
>> most
>> he conceded was that the Palestinian people have indeed suffered because
>> of their own bad leadership.
>>
>> During Netanyahu's visit earlier this month, the Israeli Prime Minister
>> managed to squabble with the Clinton administration possibly the most
>> pro-Israeli in history.  He rejected even the paltry pullback from 13
>> percent of the West Bank the administration favors. Palestinians are to
be
>> denied even the slightest face-saving deal. Rather, they will, if Israel
>> gets its way, be subjugated to Bantustans -- dense population areas and
>> limited control of areas surrounding them. Israel wants to continue to
>> control the population flow from various cities and most of the land and
>> the
>> water resources in the West Bank. As Netanyahu stalls for time, he
>> confiscates more Palestinian land, heaps more injustice upon an injured
>> people and sows the seeds of more Palestinian resentment.
>>
>> The inability of the Clinton administration to make any sort of progress
>> prompted the French and the Egyptians to call for an international peace
>> conference. That could put the issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
>> were it was 50 years ago: In the hands of the United Nations.
>>
>> I talked to dad on his birthday -- April 9, but it was low key. Neither
of
>> us mentioned it, but it was 50 years to the day after the massacre of
Deir
>> Yassin, a village near Jerusalem, virtually the only massacre of
>> Palestinians by pro-Israeli forces that has any recognition, but it is
>> only
>> one of many, including one where my father was in a village called
>> Eilaboun
>> in the Galilee. Last time I was in the Mideast, I visited the towns and
>> villages where he was in 1948 and he put some flesh on events that he had
>> hinted at for years.
>>
>> One evening we walked around Terra Sancta College where my father was a
>> boarder at the end of the British mandate, in a largely Jewish part of
>> Jerusalem. On a similar evening in 1947, he was puzzled when he heard
>> jubilation and dancing in the streets. Another student said that the UN
>> apparently made a decision the Jews liked. The UN had voted to partition
>>
>> Palestine. They had good reason to celebrate. The Jewish state was
>> allocated
>> 56 percent of Palestine, even though Jews only owned 6 percent of the
land
>> and made up one-third of the population and most of them were mandate-era
>> immigrants.
>>
>> We visited Tiberias, where my dad was born. We saw the lovely stone house
>> he
>> was raised in, now abandoned, overlooking the Sea of Galilee. I had
>> visions
>> of it becoming a museum for what happened in 1948 -- before it is
>> demolished
>> to make room for another hotel. Despite my prodding, my dad, hardly a shy
>> man, did not want to try to get into the house.
>>
>> My dad told me of his earliest memories of his own father, who was
>> vice-mayor of Tiberias, gerrymandering election maps. But a Christian, no
>> matter how adept at dividing up districts, could not secure reelection
>> without substantial Jewish and Muslim support. There certainly were
>> prejudices, but the intermingling of the faiths contradicts the "ancient
>> hatreds" mantra we hear so often. Two of my uncles nursed by neighbors,
>> since my grandmother had problems lactating. One had a Muslim wet nurse,
>> another was breast-fed by a Jewish neighbor. We went to a gaudy hotel not
>> far from the house and got a room at about the same level as the house.
>> They
>> gave us the tourist rate, since we "weren't from there."
>>
>> I resented much of what I saw, but my dad chummed around with the clerk,
>> who
>> was an Israeli Arab. Later, I would complain about the price of film in
>> Israel -- my dad was amused, "they steal the whole country from us and
>> you're upset about a roll of film?"
>>
>> He wasn't seeking justice he just wanted to enjoy his special place.
>> Swimming in the lake, I saw my dad as a child, telling me of his exploits
>> with friends, catching crabs, stealing fruit from nearby orchards and
>> other
>> devious deeds I never dreamed of as a kid.
>>
>> We went to a lawyer's office and he showed us the land records with my
>> grandfather's name, "Yousef Habib Husseini" in English, crossed out as
>> owner
>> and the "Israeli Authority of Construction" written in Hebrew. My
father's
>> claim to the property of his parents, though fully documented have been
>> rejected by the Israeli authorities who regard him as an "absentee," and
>> thus not a legitimate inheritor. Never mind that he was made an
"absentee"
>> at the point of a gun. This even as the World Jewish Restitution
>> Organization gets restitution and ownership of Jewish owned property in
>> Europe.
>>
>> Tiberias fell to Israeli forces fifty years ago. It was then that my dad
>> and
>> his younger brother went to the small village of Eilaboun where they had
>> relatives. Today, my extended family there are educated, but they retain
a
>> simplicity I haven't experienced elsewhere. They are technically Israeli
>> citizens, but since they are not Jewish, are distinctly third class
>> citizens. They and other Christians and Muslims cannot buy or lease land
>> on
>> 90 percent of Israel, controled by quasi-governmental organizations such
>> as
>> the Jewish National Fund -- even land confiscated from my family.
>>
>> The "who is a Jew" debate only matters because Jews in Israel are granted
>> rights that others, like my relatives, are denied because of their
>> religion
>>
>> -- Christianity. Yet we are constantly told that Israel is a democracy.
>> They
>> even do not dare go on picnics on Independence Holiday for fear of
attacks
>> from Jewish extremists this after 50 years of being Israelis.
>>
>> Dad showed me the square where the massacre at Eilaboun took place. On
>> October 30, 1948, most everyone from the village was in the church as the
>> Arab irregulars were withdrawing. The bombing from the Israeli forces
came
>> closer and closer until finally, a loud voice in the village yard
adjacent
>> to the church said "He who wants to live let him come out." They rushed
>> outside with hands held high. The Israeli soldiers occasionally shot
those
>> coming out of the church. The priest, with a white flag in hand, watched
>> in
>> horror.
>>
>> Fourteen civilians from the village were put on a truck and lead the
>> convoy
>> going north -- to Lebanon. They were told that they were at the front
>> incase
>> of land mines. The Israelis proceeded to force the rest of the people,
>> young
>> and old to walk. When they wanted people to stop, the Israeli soldiers
>> would fire, sometimes into the crowd. A three year old girl was shot in
>> the
>> arm as her mother was carrying her. My dad, then 16, jumped on top of his
>> 10
>> year old brother, who was very frail because of rheumatic fever figuring
>> that only one body would be exposed. When his father later found out
about
>> this, it was the one and only time my dad saw grandpa cry.
>>
>> People walked all day with no food to eat. When a truck with some bread
>> came
>> by, and people rushed towards it, soldiers shot at them, killing a fifty
>> year old man, Samaan Shufani, who was standing next to my dad moments
>> earlier. Later, the Israeli soldiers took all the money from the men,
>> strip
>> searched them, and threatened to kill 10 men if the women didn't fork
over
>> 100 Palestinian Pounds. My aunt Julia came through -- as she would years
>> later, having saved several of my grandfather's letters. The village
later
>> repaid her.
>>
>> The 14 men on the truck included some distant (by my standards) relatives
>> and they were eventually taken back to Eilaboun and shot in the town
>> square. The other villagers were thrown on the Lebanese border. These
were
>> all relatively fortunate. My father was lucky because an uncle who was an
>> officer in the Jordanian army took him in and he continued his studies in
>> Terra Sancta Collage, which moved to Amman, Jordan. Other Eilabounites
>> made
>> their way back to their village the Israelis turned a blind eye to them,
>> apparently in part because the church had protested the massacre of the
>> fourteen villagers.
>>
>> Hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians are to this day in refugee
>> camps
>> in southern Lebanon -- periodically getting bombed by Israel. As we drove
>> around Galilee, we stopped at the village Lubya. Or rather, all that
>> remains
>> of it. It is one of 418 villages that were razed by the Israelis after
>> they
>> "ethnically cleansed" the 2000 inhabitants. All you see now are hints of
>> rows of stones tracing the foundations of homes -- as well as some
>> cactuses, the anti-theft system of village life.
>>
>> Atrocities by Israeli forces were more than just flukes, but part of a
>> sustained effort by the Israeli forces to drive non-Jewish Palestinians
>> out.
>> It's a picture of Israel that most Americans even more than Israelis
>> shrink
>> from, but it is the historical record.  Israel's "new historians" are
>> noting
>> often sugar-coating the crimes of Zionist forces that
>> Palestinians have been noting for decades.  The former director of the
>> Israeli army archives wrote that "in almost every Arab village occupied
by
>> us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined
>> as
>> war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes."
>>
>> As Elie Wiesel and others condemn ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, they refuse
>> to
>> acknowledge that Israel has done basically the same. Ted Koppel has
>> falsely
>> claimed that the Palestinians left voluntarily in 1948. Michael Lerner of
>> the liberal Jewish magazine Tikkun has disavowed Jewish culpability in
>> driving Palestinians from their homes.  Early in Schindler's List, a Jew
>> is
>> shown pleading with Nazis, saying that their seizure of his property
>> violates the Geneva Convention. But Israel violates the very same laws as
>> it
>> continues to confiscate Palestinian land. Steven Spielberg joined in a
>> recent celebration for Israel on CBS.
>>
>> Nineteen forty-eight resonates for Palestinians not just because it was a
>> catastrophic event, but because the process of getting Palestinians off
>> their land has never really stopped. Through out the fifties and sixties,
>> present-day Arab Israeli citizens lived under suffocating military
>> mandates.
>> Similarly, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have contended with
>> Israeli military occupation government schemes permits, checkpoints,
>> closures pressure them into leaving. Another mass exodus from the West
>> Bank took place in the 1967 war, and Israel continued expelling political
>> leaders and others into the 1990's.
>>
>> In 1989, after the massacre in Tiananmen Square, the Israeli Deputy
>> Foreign
>> Minister, said "Israel should have exploited the repression of the
>> demonstrations in China, when the world attention focused on that
country,
>> to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories." That
>> Minister was Benjamin Netanyahu.
>>
>> The threat of another mass expulsion is useful to Israel as many
>> Palestinians are accepting a peace based on anything but equality under
>> the
>> Oslo accords -- better to be subservient but still have a stake in your
>> home
>> goes the reasoning. What is needed first is to get rid of the myths. What
>> is
>> needed is a Truth and Reconciliation Commission like South Africa's. Real
>> peace can only come from facing the past.
>>
>> Sam Husseini is former Media Director of the American-Arab
>> Anti-Discrimination Committee.
>>
>> Sam Husseini
>> Institute for Public Accuracy
>> 915 National Press Building
>> Washington, DC 20045
>> 202-347-0020; Fax: 347-0290
>