My Story by Jane McArthur
As a 70's hippy I made the obligatory journey to Israel to work in a kibbutz. In the communal dining room I saw a table where only the Bedouins sat. When I asked the kibbutzim why everyone ignored them, as not one person acknowledged their presence, I was told "we never speak to them" with no explanation as to why. For years I never forgot this experience and continually puzzled over it.
Over the years I heard/read things that made the dots turn into a picture about the longest occupation in modern history-longer than that of Tibet. I would hear stories that were shocking to me:- a favourite sport of Israeli occupation soldiers was to shoot fishermen in their boats and watch them drown. I watched a documentary about the Deir Yessin massacre 1948 in which an elderly Palestinian recalled witnessing horrific acts of brutality. He could never get over the memory of the Palestinian baker who's baby was thrown into the oven and then he was thrown in by Zionist militia after he started screaming. I have never forgotten him struggling to contain himself when telling this story. The old man who witnessed it as a boy never recovered from seeing this. I learnt those acts of horrific brutality and depravity were one of the catalysts for the Nakba when terrified Palestinians fled their homes and villages to make up the 3/4 million who left Palestine at gun point. When these stories are remembered and told by Palestinians who aren't allowed to speak about their pain and suffering they are often called liars. I watched the film "Tantura" which documented the Zionist Alexandroni Brigades as old men talking about their acts of atrocities. Laughingly they recounted their crimes of rape and murder in 1948 "we had to, it was us or them".
I am now witnessing the continuation of the ethnic cleansing by an occupation started by the British when they gifted Palestine to the Zionist movement in 1918 after the WW1. I learnt that the British Army taught the Zionist militia night raids, curfews, searches, checkpoints, the rounding up of men and shooting them because they objected to their land being stolen. Much of what the British did in their 30 years rule over Palestine is in British military archives. I heard about Plan Dalet 1948 after the creation of Israel - the plan was to ethnically cleanse Palestine of all Arabs which is being played out now in fast time. As Ben Gurion said, "if I was Palestinian, I would hate us too for stealing their land". There were stories of unbelievable cruelty , vandalism and deliberate maliciousness towards Palestinians from 1948 onwards by the Israeli Occupation eg: cementing of ancient water springs, cutting water pipes, stealing generators, bulldozing homes and farm structures, killing animals, land theft, burning olive trees all to move them off their land. I heard that over 350 villages during the Nakba 1948 were demolished and many kibbutz's were built on the remains of these.
John Pilger and New Internationalist were early sources of information for me. I would read that a New York couple can come over to Israel and steal a Palestinian family's house because they were Jewish and how Hebron has suffered economic collapse because of military checkpoints and closure of roads after a massacre of 29 Muslims in the Ibrahimi mosque by an American settler in 1994 who was killed by the Palestinians. The Palestinians were punished for it by the virtual closure of Hebron. I heard about 4 boys playing on a beach who were killed by a bomb, a young boy who was kidnapped and had petrol poured down his throat and set alight. I heard about the Israeli occupation forces going into refugee camps shouting threats from loudspeakers in the middle of the night, and the bulldozing of ancient Bedouin caves where people could live in the intense heat of the Naqab desert. I'd hear about child detainees as young as 12 sent to military courts, adults in prison without charges /trials, Palestinians being denied planning permission whereas Israelis were granted permission resulting in home demolitions which Palestinians would have to pay for. The cards are always stacked against Palestinians. I'd hear famous people speaking up for the Palestinian people:- Gerald Kaufman MP, Vanessa Redgrave, Harold Pinter, Mandela, Archbishop Tutu, Martin Luther King JR. When westerners tried to help they were either shot like the young British reporter Tom Hurndall whilst trying to rescue children from snipers, bulldozed to death like American Rachel Corrie trying to stop a demolition, or stopped from trying to send aid to a starving Gazan population in 2010 like the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Mavi Marmera ship which was boarded by Israeli soldiers who killed 10 people.
"You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all, but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back" Noam Chomsky.