B.M.

Bethlehem, Palestine, January 2022

The shrine of Nabi Musa, built in 1269 near Jericho, Palestine. Photo from 2022.

Mar Saba Monastery, Palestine Founded in 483, between Bethlehem and the Dead Sea.

The fellahin of Mullabis were driven out of their village already in the 1880s to be replaced by the Jewish settlement of Petah Tikva.

We genuinely don't talk enough about how the 1858 Ottoman Land Code set up Palestinian displacement. That to avoid taxes, peasants were convinced to put land deeds in the names of elite absentee landlords. Only for those landlords to sell the land to Zionist organizations like the Jewish National Fund, "legally" evicting thousands and thousands Palestinians from their land.

The Palestinian peasants who were uprooted in the 19th century, to be replaced by Jewish settlers, were mostly illiterate, with no connections whatsoever in the media, the political establishment and the higher classes, so almost no one even heard in real time about the blatant injustice that was done to them. Even more than a century later, their stories remain, for the most part, completely untold. Even when people do talk about the Zionists' ethnic cleansing of Palestine, those indigenous fellahin, who were some of the first to physically resist the Zionist colonization of Palestine, are almost never mentioned. Many of them suffered further forced displacement in 1948. And then in 1967. etc. In the image - the villages of Zamarin and Shefeia in the PEF map from 1880, and Zichron Ya'akov and Meir Shfeya, two of the earliest Zionist settlements, which replaced the villages, in a map from the 1940s. The villagers of Shefeya, after being forced to leave their village, burned all the houses in protest before they left.

The fellahin of Mullabis were driven out of their village already in the 1880s to be replaced by the Jewish settlement of Petah Tikva.

The Palestinian peasants who were uprooted in the 19th century, to be replaced by Jewish settlers, were mostly illiterate, with no connections whatsoever in the media, the political establishment and the higher classes, so almost no one even heard in real time about the blatant injustice that was done to them. Even more than a century later, their stories remain, for the most part, completely untold. Even when people do talk about the Zionists' ethnic cleansing of Palestine, those indigenous fellahin, who were some of the first to physically resist the Zionist colonization of Palestine, are almost never mentioned. Many of them suffered further forced displacement in 1948. And then in 1967. etc. In the image - the villages of Zamarin and Shefeia in the PEF map from 1880, and Zichron Ya'akov and Meir Shfeya, two of the earliest Zionist settlements, which replaced the villages, in a map from the 1940s. The villagers of Shefeya, after being forced to leave their village, burned all the houses in protest before they left.

"They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions." This isn't a quote from a current report on WB settler violence, but from a report by Ahad Ha'am published in June 1891.➡️ Ahad Ha'am (the pen name of Asher Ginsberg) was the founder of "Cultural Zionism". This excerpt is a part of a report he wrote called "Truth from the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael)" that was published on the pages of HaMelitz, a Hebrew newspaper printed in the Russian Empire. --------------------------- 1891 was six years before the official birth of the modern Zionist movement, or "Political Zionism", sixteen years before the establishment of the first Zionist militia in Palestine (Bar Giora) and 26 years before the Balfour Declaration. But at this point in time already at least five Palestinian villages were uprooted to make room for pre-Zionist Jewish settlements. Zionism was always a colonialist, violent, racist movement. Zionists never saw Palestinians as humans, equal to them. The supremacist tendencies were always there, built-in within the colonial settlers' minds, who raised the next generation on the same values. The next generation, in turn, kept the indoctrination going, and so forth. And now, 133 years later, we are seeing the inevitable culmination of this supremacist way of thought. The Zionists are committing an unimaginably horrific genocide against the native people of Palestine. And somehow, the world still turns a blind eye, just like it ignored the warnings all the way back in the 19th century. --------------------------- Here is the full relevant excerpt from Ginsberg's report: "We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in our dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do our brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their Diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey [the Ottoman Empire] can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ["eved ki yimlokh" – when a slave becomes king – Proverbs 30:22]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put an end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. Our brothers indeed were right when they said that the Arab only respects he who exhibits bravery and courage. But when these people feel that the law is on their rival's side and, even more so, if they are right to think their rival's actions are unjust and oppressive, then, even if they are silent and endlessly reserved, they keep their anger in their hearts. And these people will be revengeful like no other." In the attached image: The excerpt in HaMelitz newspaper from June 26, 1891

ISRAEL BOMBED A SYNAGOGUE IN IRAN

1/3 "A-P-P-O-L-O-G-I-Z-E! to Force 100 fighters," part of a right-wing campaign in Israel against Channel 12 journalists who exposed CCTV footage of an alleged gang rape of a Palestinian detainee in the Sde Teiman detention camp by a group of Force 100 soldiers.

What Israel is doing in Lebanon is unambiguously genocidal against Shias. And it is unambiguously an attempt to reoccupy and even annex a huge part of the country. It’s infuriating that we’re pretending that there’s a ceasefire. And even more infuriating that Western media continues to turn a blind eye to Israel’s endless colonial expansion and insatiable hunger for Arab land.

The murderous Operation Cast Lead (1st Gaza War) started in 2008 with a 4-minute simultaneous strike against civilian police across the Gaza Strip. 251 Palestinian policemen were massacred, including dozens of cadets who just graduated from the police academy. I remember my shock and rage when hearing about it in real time. The Israeli government who ordered the war was widely considered "leftist", headed by now-convicted felon Ehud Olmert, with war criminal and Epstein affiliate Ehud Barak serving as Minister of Defense.

After Israeli soldiers defaced the memorial for the 1948 massacre in Hula, Lebanon, spraying the inscription "A good Shia is a dead Shia" and Stars of David, they destroyed it too, of course. Another, bigger memorial in the village, was completely destroyed as well.