Dear Neighbor from Hell

A 9 January letter from Israeli PR Central under the name of David Rosenblatt, Sarigim, Israel appeared today as a comment on my last post. It should come as no surprise then to learn that 'David' 's letter is popping up all over the blogosphere. Here is my Palestinian response:-

Dear Neighbor from Hell,

Thank you for your, er, shall we say, interesting letter. So happy you live in a "beautiful house by the woods" in my occupied homeland. And that "lovely view from the balcony" from which you can see your jets bombing us here in Gaza, that must really be something special. I imagine it's best at night, like watching fireworks, no? That white phosphorus, so beautiful - from a distance. And thanks so much for your kind offer of a cuppa at your place. I'm glad you said, "someday," because actually I'm rather busy now, what with the stumps that were my legs still awaiting prostheses, trying to scrounge a bite to eat every other day, and an amazing number of funerals to attend.

You say it's time I knew the truth. The Israeli version, you mean? No, I never actually had cause to wonder why my parents and I were born in a refugee camp in "poverty and filth" and "despair and hatred" as you put it. You see, I knew from my earliest days that my grandparents came from occupied Palestine (or 'Israel' as you prefer to call it). And no, don't believe that Zionist fairy tale you've been told, David. You know, the one about Palestinians lured from their homes in 1948 by siren calls from Cairo and Damascus. Codswallop. My grandparents were forced out of their village by the bombs and bullets of Jewish soldiers who wanted their land for a Jewish state. And since you've asked me if I'd ever wondered why I was living in a refugee camp, may I ask you if you've ever wondered about who once owned the land you're now living on in Sarigim? No? I thought not. Well, I'll tell you. Sarigim was built on the lands of the Palestinian village of 'Ajjur, the population of which was - surprise, surprise - driven out by Zionist forces in 1948. And where do you imagine those villagers and their descendents are now, David? They're probably in a refugee camp somewhere just like me.

Ah yes, the Holocaust! I knew it wouldn't be long before you invoked that. But, David, think - that happened in Europe, not in the Middle East. My grandparents weren't members of the SS, just Palestinian farmers with a few dunums on which they grew wheat. So please spare me your Holocaust, both the history lesson and the practical one we're presently getting here in Gaza. I was going to move on, David, but seeing you've raised the issue, have you heard about the Palestinian Holocaust? No, I thought not. It began 60 years ago with a Big Bang, the Nakba or Catastrophe as we call it, and it's been going on, sometimes cold, sometimes hot, sometimes very hot, like now in Gaza, but non-stop to this very day! Imagine if you can, generation after generation, and Palestine just gets smaller and smaller, its population more and more confined, walled in, choked. A Holocaust by degrees, if you will, a hundred deaths today, 2 or 3 tomorrow. A Holocaust that just keeps keeping on. OK, I just know your pale blue eyes are glazing over, so I'll move on. But remember what you wrote: "We will never forget what was done to our people and you better not either." It seems that you have forgotten that what was done to your people was done by fellow Europeans, not by us, and that what they did to you, you are doing to us. You are, as they say, very sick puppies indeed.

You say you do not hate us. Your F-16s drop love bombs on us, then? Your Merkava tanks fire love shells? Your Apache helicopters love missiles? Amusingly, you say you do not want our land. Well then, David, feel free to give it back. And you don't want to murder our children? Fine, then don't. You say you treat our "Arab brothers as equals." Our Arab brothers? You mean those of us who somehow managed to avoid being expelled in 1948? Why then, if you can treat our brothers in occupied Palestine, sorry, Israel, as brothers, you won't mind treating us as equals too. Would you be so kind as to send me a citizenship application, David? You say that your hand has been extended in peace to your Arab neighbors since day one? So the wars of 1956, 1967, 1978, 1982, and 2006 were just figments of my fevered Arab imagination then? You say that Israel's peaceful intentions are proven "time and time again through numerous negotiations and extensive compromise." Forgive me, but for a time in the 90s we Palestinians were motivated by the belief (how naive this sounds in retrospect) that if we conceded the 78% of Palestine you now call Israel, you'd withdraw your army of occupation from the remaining 22% and we'd form a Palestinian state, a whopping compromise if ever there was one. But guess what? Almost a decade on and that 22% is sinking under the weight of your settlements and related infrastructure.

You say you just want to be left in peace. What, so you can enjoy our Palestinian homeland while we rot in exile? We too were once a people who just wanted to be left in peace. But no, in flooding into our country uninvited and under the protection of British bayonets in the 20s, 30s and 40s, you disturbed our peace then, and you've gone on disturbing it ever since. Does the principle 'do unto others' mean anything to you? No, sorry to have to tell you this, but there is no peace, as they say, for the wicked, and we'll go on disturbing your peace until we win our just demands.

You say your soldiers are not "motivated by hate," just "determination." Funny, I must have misinterpreted that graffiti left behind in Zeitoun by your soldiers when they invaded Gaza: 'ARabs need 2 die', 'Arabs are pieces of shit' and '1 is DOWN 999,999 TO GO'. (Israel may face war-crimes case for alleged atrocities, Tim Butcher, Telegraph/SMH, 21/1/09). Love notes, obviously. Anyway, it's not their hatred or their love that worries me, it's really their determination - their determination to dispossess us, cage us, and when the fancy takes them, blow us away. You say you will "kill and die" to protect 'your' land and your way of life. By your land, you mean the land which was once ours, ethnically cleansed by you in '48. It may come as a revelation to you, but that's how we feel too.

You say a "terrorist is a terrorist." A "coward." Not a "hero." Then please explain how your terrorists and ethnic cleansers - Ben-Gurion, Begin, Shamir, Sharon & Co - became prime ministers of 'your' country. And while you're at it, please explain the coming choice in February between those two political heirs of Begin - Livni and Netanyahu. And if, as you say, our 'terrorists' should emulate your terrorists - those currently running amok here in Gaza - and die for our people rather than among them, kindly prevail upon your government to open the Gaza crossings so that we can acquire comparable terror weapons to yours.

You say "Israel exists and belongs to the Jewish people." So that means Jews everywhere, right? Jews living comfortably in the United States or Australia as citizens with every possible right and then some? But not to me, or to my stateless, disenfranchised people here in Gaza or the West Bank or Lebanon or Jordan? Is this your famous chutzpah, my friend? When I drop in for that cuppa one day, would you like me to prostrate myself, to kiss your hand? Do the dishes, perhaps? Sweep the floor? You complain about our school books. 'Israel' has been omitted from their maps you say. I'm sorry I don't have any to hand here in Gaza so I can check. You see, they've all been incinerated, along with the schools and the schoolkids. Maybe you could send me a map of 'Israel' that shows the fabled green line between 'Israel' and the West Bank - sorry, Judea and Samaria - if you're not too busy working on the old Zionist project of wiping Palestine (literally) off the map, that is.

"You are not getting [our beautiful country]. This was explained to you in 1948. You got your country and we got ours." And you're still explaining this to us as I write, aren't you? And with much the same teaching style as you used in 1948. Trouble is, beating the shit out of students if they fail to remember their lines or ask difficult questions doesn't really work anymore, if it ever did. You see, David, the world has moved on since the glory days of the British Empire when you could just swan into someone else's country and lord it over the natives. Your friends in South Africa got it, but you and yours, it seems, still don't. As I said earlier, very sick puppies indeed.

One day, David, when we refugees return to our homeland, 'your' land will be both yours and mine. Then maybe we can have that cuppa - at your place or mine - because, guess what, we're going to be real neighbors, as in right-next-door neighbors.

I'll leave you with this thought from one of your countrymen, a friend of mine actually, name of Oz Shelach: "Self-congratulatory conversation is part of Israeli decorum, and confirming that our beauty is in our problemacy is common about the dinner table. 'How beautiful a language is ours', said a linguist to his companion in an Arab restaurant. 'How open and accomodating it is' (read: we are so open and accomodating). 'We say this coffee is ya'ni 'ala kefak. 'Ala kefak, superb; ya'ni, that is to say. Arabic words, adopted by our ever-absorbant language'... Of course, many words remain, unadopted, with the people of this country, ya'ni Falastin. Try saying it." (Picnic Grounds)

Remember, we're going to be neighbors.

Just another Mohammed from Gaza, Palestine, January 21, 2009

Sir Bob Wows JNFaithful at Galah Dinner

[If you haven't already done so, first read my 31/10/08 post The JNF Rocks. If you're new to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), read my other posts on the JNF, particularly A Certain Jewish Tree Planting Group (14/6/08).]

TU B'SHVAT

"Each spring, sometimes as early as January, when almond trees blossom white and pink, the birthday of trees is celebrated throughout Israel. Thousands of boys and girls in white shirts, and foreign donors congregate at designated sites to plant new starts and expand the forest. One boy in our class, however, called the ceremonies fascist and murderous. He said that pines grow acrid needles and shed them, thereby annihilating all other growth, wild flowers, shrubs, and smaller indigenous trees. He said, obviously repeating words he heard at home, that forestation of land that was not formerly forested, but which seems every year to hold fewer marks of stone terraces, as rubble and orchards disappear among and under the pines, is a part of what he called 'the big lie of our existence'. We had been friends with that boy, but on that celebration of Tu B'Shvat did not share with him the customary foods of the holiday, dried figs, dates and nuts, neatly packed for us by our parents." (Picnic Grounds: A Novel in Fragments, Oz Shelach, 2003)

"Geldof brings star quality to JNF gala," sparkled the headline in The Australian Jewish News (21/11/08).

Now what exactly was it, I hear you ask, that "human rights icon" Sir Bob had to say to the assembled faithful who flocked to the Jewish National Fund gala dinner at the Australian Jockey Club at Sydney's Randwick Racecourse?

"'I have no shame in comparing [the 30 million deaths arising from the Ethiopian famine of 1984] to the Holocaust. ['To the Holocaust! Shame on you, you scruffy, closet anti-Semite!' smouldered the worshippers. But when Sir Bob switched from Africa to the Middle East, enthralling the true believers with the sweep & depth of his knowledge of the latter, his indiscretion was immediately forgotten.]... 'It's no wonder that the great religions came from the desert [Oops - there goes Buddhism]- all the noise and stink of the city is gone - and in that great emptiness, your mind has a psychedelic [ever the hippie, how cute!] understanding of God'. But the desert is not a good friend, he added, unless we have a way to live there. 'And that is what the JNF is doing [wait for it!]- making the desert bloom." (ibid)

Making the desert bloom. The devotees literally swooned at that. This mantra encapsulated what the Israel of their youth was really all about: the great Palestinian Sandy Desert, with the odd Bedouin just trotting by on his camel (or galloping past, if spurred on by a volley from the trusty Sten), reclaimed by heroic Zionist pioneers, dune by dune, nay, sand grain by sand grain. It was just as Israeli prez Shimon Peres, in one of his former incarnations as Minister of (Dis)Information, long ago had preached: "The country [Palestine] was mostly an empty desert, with only a few islands of Arab settlement; and Israel's cultivable land today was indeed redeemed from swamp and wilderness." (David's Sling: The Arming of Israel, Shimon Peres, 1970, p 249) Precisely as former Israeli PM Levi Eshkol had proclaimed: "It was only after the Zionists 'made the desert bloom' that 'they [the Palestinians] became interested in taking it from us'." (Levi Eshkol, Jerusalem Post, 17/2/69).

Sir Bob's rekindling of this first, fine flicker of their youths is sure to result in them going forth and demanding of the Arab-loving U-bloody-N that the JNF immediately receive an international mandate to make [insert desert of your choice:.........................] bloom? Watch this space.

Now if we can just wipe the tears, or the sand, or both from our eyes for a minute, and return to the real world. The hoary Zionist myth thay Israel made the desert bloom was the subject of rigorous examination by Middle East scholar Alan George** in the Winter 1979 issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies. His concluding words: "The major conclusions which thus emerge are: 1. That only about half of Palestine has a true desert climate*; 2. That expansion of the cultivated area was already under way before the occurrence of mass Zionist immigration; 3. That by about 1930 all those areas which could be cultivated by the indigenous Arab population were already being farmed by them; 4. That the area within what became Israel actually being farmed by Arabs in 1947 was greater than the physical area which was under cultivation in Israel almost 30 years later; 5. That the impressive expansion of Israel's cultivated area since 1948 has been more apparent than real since it involved mainly the 'reclamation' of farmland belonging to the [Palestinian] refugees [ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces under cover of war in 1948]; this is probably as true for the Negev desert as for the rest of Israel." ('Making the Desert Bloom'- A Myth Examined, JPS, p 100)

[*The desert half, the Negev, is in the south. ** Alan George is the author of Syria: Neither Bread Nor Freedom, 2003.]