[News] Hasbara or Za’bara

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Salman Abu Sitta – Hasbara or Za’bara

By 
<http://palestinethinktank.com/author/guest-post/>Guest Post • Apr 16th, 2010
http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/04/16/salman-abu-sitta-hasbara-or-za%E2%80%99bara/

Part of the First Word War

To maintain a façade of moral code, you do not 
kill a friend, you kill an enemy.  You do not rob 
another man’s house, you recover your 
long-forgotten property.  These are the 
principles adopted in all wars and 
conflicts.  That is why it was always the mission 
of the aggressor to depict the target of killing, 
i.e. the enemy, as an evil, bad person or people 
who deserve to be defeated, and if killed, that 
would be a natural end for their bad behaviour. 
Similarly it was the mission of the occupier to 
claim that he is not robbing someone else but 
merely recovering back his property which he neglected to do for centuries.

Nobody perfected this art of deception, or 
double-speak, better than the Zionist 
agents.  How else could you explain the success 
of a Hungarian man, like Herzl, sitting in a 
Vienna Café, and professing that a Jews’ State 
will be established in 50 years in a faraway land 
he had never lived in?  His success, almost 
solely in Europe at the time, was manifested by 
convincing colonial powers of the advantages of 
supporting his colonial project and convincing 
their people, the Europeans, that this conquest, 
killing, plunder and destitution of a people is a 
divine will, a miracle and a victory for western civilization.

Nobody had to create so many myths and falsehoods 
in their endeavours more than the Zionists.  The 
reason is simple: they did not have credible 
facts to prove their case, so they had to invent 
dubious alternatives, relying on the readiness of 
the gullible people and the opportunistic politicians to believe them.

Take the slogan: “Palestine is a land without 
people”. It was terra nullius, they say.  Of 
course, Zionists knew that people lived there and 
built over 1000 towns and villages, most are 2000 
years old, according to Eusebius the Bishop of 
Caesarea (313 AD) who recorded them.  Yet 
Zionists submitted a map to the Versailles Peace 
Conference in 1919, showing Palestine as ‘a 
grazing land for nomads’.  They presented this 
map to the colonial powers, particularly the 
British and the French.  The irony of course is 
that the British had finished their voluminous 
survey of Palestine, 40 years earlier, in 10 
volumes, listing 12,000 historical sites 
including towns and villages, and the French 
finished their survey through their scholar, 
Victor Guerin, in 1863, who produced 8 volumes of 
his journey to almost every Palestinian 
village.  Yet they chose to believe the Zionists 
and hoodwinked their public to support this 
‘noble and moral’ conquest, in churches, newspapers and public debates.

What then is the meaning of terra nullius?  It 
does not mean (to them) an empty land.  It means 
that those who live there do not matter, they are 
worthless.  It is like clearing woods from dry bushes and insects.

These are the exact words of Herzl,

“If we move into a region where there are wild 
animals to which Jews are not accustomed – big 
snakes etc. – I shall use the natives, prior to 
giving them employment in the transit countries 
[read: expulsion], for the extermination of these animals.”

  Of course he did not say this in his published 
book, only in his then unpublished diary.

Balfour said as much:

“
 in Palestine, we do not propose even to go 
through the form of consulting the wishes of the 
present inhabitants of the country.  Zionism [is] 
of profounder impact than the desires and 
prejudices [not the rights] of the 700,000 Arabs 
who now inhabit this ancient land.”

How was this colonial project in Palestine 
packaged in the diplomatic language?  In Balfour 
Declaration, they called it a “home” for the 
Jews, national at that, not a state to the 
exclusion of the inhabitants of the country, in 
Palestine, not of Palestine.  What about those 
inhabitants?  Of course, there is a reference to 
them: “without prejudice to the existing 
non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, all 92 
percent of them.  A civilized afterthought indeed.

If your home and family are threatened by an 
unwelcome flood of (Jewish European) immigrants 
and you rise to fight it, you are called a 
“bandit”.  Your house is destroyed, your supplies 
are burnt, your son and father are killed or 
imprisoned.  That is what the British did in 1939.

Ten years later, when the Zionists depopulated 
675 Palestinian towns and villages and committed 
over 70 massacres, during al Nakba ethnic 
cleansing, some people naturally tried to return 
home, at least to rescue an old father, to water 
the garden or to feed the animals left 
behind.  No one believed the exile would last 
over a couple of weeks.  These returnees were 
shot by Israelis on the spot.  Complaints were 
made to the Mixed Armistice Committee that those 
killed were “infiltrators”, by the very same 
people who “infiltrated” Palestine only a few years earlier.

Thus conventional wisdom would have it that those 
who waded into the shores of Palestine from a 
smuggler’s ship in the darkness of night are not 
“infiltrators”, they are the masters of the land, 
and the real house owners who were expelled from 
their homes and tried to return home are “the infiltrators”.

Twenty thousand five hundred days later this ruse 
is still applied.  At the time of writing, Israel 
issued Military Order No. 1650 (Second Amendment) 
in which seventy thousand Palestinians residing 
in the West Bank from other parts of Palestine 
are liable to be deported as “infiltrators”.  By 
the same analogy, an Italian from Napoli found 
living in Rome under the Nazi occupation in WWII 
would be liable to be deported to Albania as an 
“infiltrator”.  One must concede that the crime 
of ethnic cleansing, regularly described by the 
Israeli propaganda machine as “transfer of 
population”, has now reached new heights of 
sophistication.  It is now called “Prevention of Infiltration”.

A story is often told about Ein Haud, a lovely 
small village south of Haifa, with beautiful 
stone houses.  Its population was expelled but 
they managed to remain within Israel.  They built 
shacks on the opposite hill, looking every day at 
their houses, now occupied by artists from 
Romania who turned it into an "artists 
colony".  Their land and houses were confiscated 
under the Absentees Property Law of 
1950.  “Absentees” means the expelled refugees.

The logic is that the state of Israel takes over 
the property of those who are “absent”, because 
they “abandoned” their property, probably to 
spend their lovely exile days at the Riviera, not 
a refugee camp.  Hence it is the duty of a 
“democratic” state to take care of their property 
(to use, rent, utilize) for the benefit of Jews 
only.  This logic does not allow for the fact 
that they are absent because they were 
expelled.  If they returned, they will be shot as “infiltrators”.

The irony has no end.  If somehow the village 
inhabitants remained in the area conquered by 
Israel, they have to be counted and given 
IDs.  Therefore they are “present”.  But their 
property must be confiscated because they are 
“absent”.  Hence they acquired the oxymoron appellation of “present-absentees”.

Wonders never cease.  One of those 
“present-absentees” from Ein Haud could not bear 
it.  So one day he walked across to the opposite 
hill and knocked on the door of his house.  A 
Romanian artist answered.  The owner asked who he was:

-          I am Ephraim

-          Where are you from Ephraim?

-          From here of course, Ein Haud.  Why do you ask? Who are you any way?

-          I am Abu Ahmed, from Romania.

The massive ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which 
took place in 1948/49, the year of al Nakba 
(Catastrophe), unprecedented in modern history, 
has to have an appropriate name in the Zionist 
lexicon which hides its ugliness.  They called it 
“War of Independence”, which is precisely what 
the Palestinians were engaged in since Balfour’s 
Declaration of 1917, that is, since the betrayal 
of the Allies and the collusion with the Zionists 
to deprive them of their homeland.  This Zionist 
term was adopted, by Jewish immigrants who 
infiltrated Palestine, to describe the ethnic 
cleansing of the original inhabitants of 
Palestine.  It was widely accepted by the 
West.  Mercifully, cracks now started to appear 
in this edifice of deception. Now it is against 
the law in Israel to mention al Nakba. The 
monopoly remains exclusively for the deception.

The Green Line is often used to describe the line 
dividing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian 
Territory (OPT) in the West Bank and Gaza.  What 
is this line? Why it is green?  Its proper name 
is the “Armistice Line of 1949”.  It is the line 
at which Israeli invading forces stopped in 1949, 
whereby 78% of Palestine was conquered.  That was 
a big jump from 5.5% Jewish-owned land during the 
Mandate and in excess of 24% over the suggested 
allocation of the Partition Plan.  Israel signed 
4 Armistice Agreements with Arab 
countries.  Article 2 of these agreements states 
clearly that this line does not confer or deny 
rights to either party and has no legal 
meaning.  No military forces are allowed to cross 
it, hence the armistice.  It is simply a line 
separating Palestine that was occupied in 1948 
from that occupied in 1967.  Israel did cross it 
in 1967 in violation of international law.  To 
obscure the legal meaning of the line and its 
crossing, it was dubbed by Israel as the Green 
Line, the colour of the pencil used by Israel on 
its maps.  This simple device of renaming the 
line enables Israel to imply in its media machine 
that it has not violated any law and has not 
conquered any land.  Thus, Netanyahu can announce 
boldly in CNN interviews that Jews should be able 
to live anywhere (in Palestine) without fear of 
contradiction.  Now Israel removed this line altogether from its maps.

How could you steal a whole cake and eat it?  You 
first steal half a cake.   With no deterrent, you 
steal the other half.  You eat the whole cake 
under the ‘principle’ that the two halves must be “unified” (in your stomach).

Israel occupied West Jerusalem in 1948 and East 
Jerusalem in 1967.  Israel claimed that the city 
must remain “unified” under its control.  The 
“unification” tag is meant to disguise the fact 
that both acts are not only illegal in view of 
international law, but, surprisingly, they are 
contrary to Israeli founding laws.

Israel’s Declaration of ‘Independence’ states 
that its international legitimacy, feeble as it 
was, rests on the Partition Plan recommendation. 
But this Plan never puts Jerusalem under 
Israel.  Israel occupied West Jerusalem, Lydda, 
Ramle, Galilee and parts of the south in 
violation of the Partition Plan.  Israel’s 
admission to the UN membership was conditional 
upon its compliance with the Partition Plan and 
the return of the refugees’ resolution.  It never 
complied.  Needless to say that the occupation of 
the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is a 
clear violation of “the inadmissibility of 
military conquest”.  Yet the “unification of 
Jerusalem” is touted by Israel and AIPAC as the 
justification to build anywhere (for Jews only) 
“in Israel’s eternal capital, which is not a settlement”.

Similarly, occupation of the West Bank is labeled 
as “liberation of Judea and Samaria”.  The 
Apartheid Wall, condemned by the International 
Court of Justice, is named the “security 
fence”.  The redeployment of occupation forces is described as “withdrawal”.

Nothing can be more misleading than the 
withdrawal from Gaza Strip.  Israel controls its 
land, above it, below it and around it.  Gaza 
starvation has been described by Israeli 
officials as “putting the population on diet”, a 
new device for slow death designed not to make world headlines.

The real name of this tragedy is “war crimes” and 
“genocide” according to articles 6 and 8 of the 
Rome Statute of 1998 creating the International 
Criminal Court.  These two articles describe exactly the situation in Gaza.

The Gaza Palestinians are promised water, food 
and medicine and (partial?) removal of the 
blockade if they comply with the Quartet 
conditions: recognizing the Israeli occupiers and 
ceasing the resistance to them.  Blair did not 
spare a media microphone without bleating into it 
that $ 4.5 billion are waiting to rebuild 
demolished Gaza if only Palestinians accept the Quartet conditions.

Blair is a patent liar.  The media believed him 
or acted so.   No official, no journalist, no 
learned ‘expert’ tells him he is lying.  Only one 
man.  Alvaro de Soto, the UN Mediator, in his End 
of Mission report, in May 2007, says in para 79, 
that the Quartet never imposed any 
conditions.  These are US and European Union 
conditions based on their own policies, using UN 
and Russia as a shield for their demands.

A familiar name on TV screens is Sderot, the 
Israeli settlement, the victim of kitchen pipe 
projectiles which broke a window and killed one 
person in 8 years.  Sderot mayor expresses his 
perennial fear of the unbelievably crowded Gaza 
Strip, the hotbed of terrorism, and is visited by 
dignitaries from European capitals and US Congress.

None of these dignitaries know, or wish to 
declare, that Sderot is a settlement built on the 
land of Najd village, whose expelled population 
lives mere two kilometers away in a refugee 
camp.  They are throwing their home-made 
projectiles on their own land, at its occupiers, 
in a symbolic gesture to assert their right for 
their homes in the occupied land.

Those dignitaries lament the crowded conditions 
in Gaza, the misery, the poverty and the 
hopelessness.  They shake their heads in 
sorrow.  The brave ones visit Gaza in a whirlwind 
tour of two hours, with no contact with the real 
people, huddled by UN relief officials, to 
protect them from being devoured by the hungry people.

Did any one of those distinguished visitors ask 
why is Gaza Strip crowded and miserable?  It is 
crowded because it is where the population of 247 
Palestinian villages, the victims of ethnic 
cleansing in 1948, were crowded in an open air 
prison with an area of 1% of Palestine.  They are 
crowded at a density of 6,000 persons per square 
kilometer whereas Sderot mayor and co. roam their 
land at a density of 6 persons per square kilometer.

Let them go back to their land and you will have 
no crowd, no poverty and no “terrorism”.  If you 
do not like that, give them what the Israelis 
have: F16 and Merkava tanks.  “Terrorism” will 
stop and a nice lovely war will begin.

Israel gives itself the license to destroy any 
village and kill its people under the rubric 
“pre-emptive operation”, sometimes called 
“retaliation”.  Under this principle, you are 
allowed to think that your neighbour has nasty 
looks and he may one day decide to kill you.  So 
you decide to take action at once by catching him 
unaware and kill him.  You do not need to see 
advancing tanks. You do not need any proof. Your 
mental mindset is enough, especially if you are a 
racist. That was the explanation given by Israel 
for the killings in Bureij camp, Qibya, Samou’ 
and a dozen other places.  This policy entered 
the language of international diplomacy as a 
respectable word.  You see it now splashed on the 
newspapers’ headlines, although it is in stark 
violation of the word and spirit of the UN Charter.

 From the above examples, it is clear that the 
media manipulation and the loaded terminology are 
the undeclared army of the Zionists.  This kind 
of army cannot be pinned down by Goldstone, 
Dugard or Falk.  But it commits crimes just the same.

The Hasbara, fabricating Israel’s lilly-white 
image, is a refined art.  Its tools have been 
exposed recently in the Israel’s Project’s Secret Hasbara Handbook at the link:

<http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/07/10/the-israel-projects-secret-hasbara-handbook-exposed/>http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/07/10/the-israel-projects-secret-hasbara-handbook-exposed/ 


No need to elaborate.  But for those who are keen 
to know the facts, and they are luckily 
increasing in number, for those good people 
around the world who are guided by their moral 
compass and for the Palestinians of course, 
carriers of the burden of untold truths, for all 
those, the Israeli Hasbara is best described by a 
similar sounding Arabic word, Za’bara, which 
means: meaningless, convoluted loud words.

The world will be a better place, and justice 
will have a chance to prevail, when Hasbara is 
recognized as it really is: merely 
Za’bara.   When truth shines, it expels the clouds of myths.

Salman H. Abu Sitta (b. 1938) is a Palestinian 
researcher and writes about Palestinian refugees 
and Palestinian right to return to Palestine.

Abu-Sitta was born in Bir al-Saba' ("Beersheba"), 
British Mandate of Palestine, in what is now the 
Southern District of Israel. After making a 40 
kilometer journey to his home on foot from his 
boarding school, Abu-Sitta escaped a few days 
later with his family to Gaza and joined the 
first wave of Palestinian refugees. Abu-Sitta 
moved to the prestigious al-Saidiya secondary 
school in Cairo where he graduated with 
"excellence", ranking first in Egypt. After 
graduating from Cairo University's Faculty of 
Engineering in 1958, Abu-Sitta went to the United 
Kingdom to continue his post-graduate studies, 
receiving his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of London.

     * Former member of Palestine National Council (20 years).
     * Researcher on refugee affairs and author 
of over 200 papers on the subject.
     * Director of international development and construction projects.
     * Founder and President of the Palestine Land Society (PLS).[3]
     * General coordinator of al-Awda the 
Palestinian Right of Return Coalition

Abu-Sitta, has spent 40 years digging for any 
detail of information about, or related to, 
Palestine before, during and after the creation 
of Israel. Abu-Sitta’s self-imposed mission has 
encompassed not only documenting al-Nakba, but 
also ensuring that "the memories and identity of 
the occupied homeland are never lost". The 
documentation process began when he was 30 
years-old, when he stumbled on the memoirs of the 
Turkish chief of Beersheba, when Palestine was 
under Ottoman rule. The document dated back to 
the early years of the last century.

     "It sort of started from there, and it has 
never stopped," Abu-Sitta says. "I kept 
collecting all and any material on every inch of my homeland."

Published works

     * The Return Journey (2007) Palestine Land Society ISBN 0954903412
     * Atlas of Palestine, 1948 Palestine Land 
Society (January 2004) ISBN 0954903404
     * The Palestinian Nakba 1948: The register 
of depopulated localities in Palestine 
(Occasional Return Centre studies) (1998 
reprinted 2000) Palestinian Return Centre ISBN 1901924106




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