Celebrate 50 Years? Of What?

by Sam Husseini

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 Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
http://www.accuracy.org