Excerpts from Gilad Atzmon - Living on Borrowed Time in a Stolen Land by Gilad Atzmon -
Communicating with Israelis may leave
one bewildered. Even now when the Israeli Air Force is practicing
murder in broad daylight of hundreds of civilians, elderly persons,
women and children, the Israeli people manage to convince themselves
that they are the real victims in this violent saga.
Those who are familiar intimately with Israeli people realize that they are completely uninformed about the roots of the conflict that dominates their lives. Rather often Israelis manage to come up with some bizarre arguments that may make a lot of sense within the Israeli discourse, yet make no sense whatsoever outside of the Jewish street. Such an argument goes as follows: ‘those Palestinians, why do they insist upon living on our land (Israel), why can’t they just settle in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon or any other Arab country?’ Another Hebraic pearl of wisdom sounds like this: ‘what is wrong with these Palestinians? We gave them water, electricity, education and all they do is try to throw us to the sea’.
Astonishingly enough, the Israelis even within the so-called ‘left’ and even the educated ‘left’ fail to understand who the Palestinians are, where they come from and what they stand for. They fail to grasp that for the Palestinians, Palestine is home. Miraculously, the Israelis manage to fail to grasp that Israel had been erected at the expense of the Palestinian people, on Palestinian land, on Palestinian villages, towns, fields and orchards. The Israelis do not realize that Palestinians in Gaza and in refugee camps in the region are actually dispossessed people from Ber Shive, Yafo, Tel Kabir, Shekh Munis, Lod, Haifa, Jerusalem and many more towns and villages. If you wonder how come the Israelis don’t know their history, the answer is pretty simple, they have never been told. The circumstances that led to the Israeli Palestinian conflict are well hidden within their culture. Traces of pre-1948 Palestinian civilisation on the land had been wiped out. Not only the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians, is not part of the Israeli curriculum, it is not even mentioned or discussed in any Israeli official or academic forum.
Those who are familiar intimately with Israeli people realize that they are completely uninformed about the roots of the conflict that dominates their lives. Rather often Israelis manage to come up with some bizarre arguments that may make a lot of sense within the Israeli discourse, yet make no sense whatsoever outside of the Jewish street. Such an argument goes as follows: ‘those Palestinians, why do they insist upon living on our land (Israel), why can’t they just settle in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon or any other Arab country?’ Another Hebraic pearl of wisdom sounds like this: ‘what is wrong with these Palestinians? We gave them water, electricity, education and all they do is try to throw us to the sea’.
Astonishingly enough, the Israelis even within the so-called ‘left’ and even the educated ‘left’ fail to understand who the Palestinians are, where they come from and what they stand for. They fail to grasp that for the Palestinians, Palestine is home. Miraculously, the Israelis manage to fail to grasp that Israel had been erected at the expense of the Palestinian people, on Palestinian land, on Palestinian villages, towns, fields and orchards. The Israelis do not realize that Palestinians in Gaza and in refugee camps in the region are actually dispossessed people from Ber Shive, Yafo, Tel Kabir, Shekh Munis, Lod, Haifa, Jerusalem and many more towns and villages. If you wonder how come the Israelis don’t know their history, the answer is pretty simple, they have never been told. The circumstances that led to the Israeli Palestinian conflict are well hidden within their culture. Traces of pre-1948 Palestinian civilisation on the land had been wiped out. Not only the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians, is not part of the Israeli curriculum, it is not even mentioned or discussed in any Israeli official or academic forum.
Excerpts from Militarist Dad PROUD of his Natural Born Killer, it fulfils his "Israeliness" by Mary Rizzo
You
really have to hand it to the Israelis, especially those who came from
some other place first. In an article that romanticizes militarism,
they see their participation in war as a fulfillment of their very
essence of being. If the same article were written from a “Jihadi”, I
wonder what the reaction might be. At any rate, not to tilt the scales
of fantasy too far, I would like to simply address the article that
Jewish immigrant to “Israel” has written to the Washington Post, and
thank Nancy of www.umkahlil.blogpost.com for having brought it to my attention.
And, without further ado, a simple deconstruction of a paper entitled (without a hint of irony, because the author truly believes that War is what makes an Israeli an Israeli and… hey, he is right!)
As My Son Goes To War I Am Fully Israeli At Last
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202196.html
By Yossi Klein Halevi
Sunday, January 4, 2009; Page B01
JERUSALEM
And, without further ado, a simple deconstruction of a paper entitled (without a hint of irony, because the author truly believes that War is what makes an Israeli an Israeli and… hey, he is right!)
As My Son Goes To War I Am Fully Israeli At Last
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202196.html
By Yossi Klein Halevi
Sunday, January 4, 2009; Page B01
JERUSALEM
