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<h2><b>Salman Abu Sitta – Hasbara or Za’bara</b></h2><font size=2>By
<a href="http://palestinethinktank.com/author/guest-post/">Guest Post</a>
• Apr 16th, 2010 <br>
<a href="http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/04/16/salman-abu-sitta-hasbara-or-za%E2%80%99bara/" eudora="autourl">
http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/04/16/salman-abu-sitta-hasbara-or-za%E2%80%99bara/<br>
<br>
</a></font><font size=3>Part of the First Word War<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Take the slogan: “Palestine is a land without people”. It was <i>terra
nullius, </i>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.<br><br>
What then is the meaning of <i>terra nullius</i>? 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.<br><br>
These are the exact words of Herzl,<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>“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.”<br><br>
</dl> Of course he did not say this in his published book, only in
his then unpublished diary.<br><br>
Balfour said as much:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“… 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.”<br><br>
</dl>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Ten years later, when the Zionists depopulated 675 Palestinian towns and
villages and committed over 70 massacres, during al Nakba</i> 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.<br><br>
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”.<br><br>
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”.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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”.<br><br>
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”.<br><br>
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:<br><br>
- I am
Ephraim<br><br>
- Where are you
from Ephraim?<br><br>
- From here of
course, Ein Haud. Why do you ask? Who are you any way?<br><br>
- I am Abu Ahmed,
from Romania.<br><br>
The massive ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which took place in 1948/49,
the year of al Nakba</i> (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</i> 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</i>. The monopoly remains exclusively for the
deception.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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).<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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”.<br><br>
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”.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
The Hasbara</i>, fabricating Israel’s lilly-white image, is a refined
art. Its tools have been exposed recently in the Israel’s Project’s
Secret Hasbara </i>Handbook at the link:<br><br>
<a href="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/</a>
<br><br>
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</i> is best described by a similar sounding Arabic word,
Za’bara,</i> which means: meaningless, convoluted loud words.<br><br>
The world will be a better place, and justice will have a chance to
prevail, when Hasbara</i> is recognized as it really is: merely
Za’bara.</i> When truth shines, it expels the clouds of
myths.<br>
<br>
Salman H. Abu Sitta (b. 1938) is a Palestinian researcher and writes
about Palestinian refugees and Palestinian right to return to
Palestine.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
* Former member of Palestine National Council (20
years).<br>
* Researcher on refugee affairs and author of over 200
papers on the subject.<br>
* Director of international development and
construction projects.<br>
* Founder and President of the Palestine Land Society
(PLS).[3]<br>
* General coordinator of al-Awda the Palestinian Right
of Return Coalition <br><br>
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.<br><br>
"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."<br><br>
Published works<br><br>
* The Return Journey (2007) Palestine Land Society
ISBN 0954903412<br>
* Atlas of Palestine, 1948 Palestine Land Society
(January 2004) ISBN 0954903404<br>
* The Palestinian Nakba 1948: The register of
depopulated localities in Palestine (Occasional Return Centre studies)
(1998 reprinted 2000) Palestinian Return Centre ISBN 1901924106<br><br>
<br><br>
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