Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 14:13:14 -0700 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: One-page flyer about Al Nakba to distribute
Dear Friends, As many of you know, it is now 60 years since Israel was founded and over 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes. Unfortunately, most Americans are completely uninformed about this massive act of ethnic cleansing and the continuing injustice against these Palestinian refugees and their descendants. We have created a one-page trifold brochure to explain this expulsion as clearly as possible to Americans. Please download it, print it out, and distribute it to as many people in your community as possible. In addition, you may wish to disseminate it during vigils and other Nakba events. Download printable brochure: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/download/NakbaTrifold-sml.pdf Download full-bleed brochure (to have professionally printed) Front: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/download/NakbaTrifold.pdf Back: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/download/NakbaTrifold2.pdf Below is the text on the flyer: Ethnic Cleansing: How Palestine Became Israel In the late 1800s a small, fanatic movement called "political Zionism" began in Europe. Its goal was to create a Jewish state somewhere in the world. Its leaders settled on the ancient and long-inhabited land of Palestine for the location of this state.1 Palestine's population at this time was approximately ninety-five percent non-Jewish (primarily Muslim an d Christian).2 Over the coming decades Zionist leaders used various strategies to accomplish their goal of taking over Palestine: 1. By encouraging Jewish emigration to Palestine, partly through the invention of such deceptive slogans as "a land without a people for a people without a land," when, in fact, the land was already inhabited.3 2. By convincing a "Great Power" to back this process. By turn, Zionists approached the Ottomans, the British, and the US to further their cause. While the Ottomans turned them down, the British (being promised that American Zionists would push the U.S. to enter World War I on the side of England) eventually acceded, as did the U.S. (due to concerns of politicians like Harry Truman that they would lose elections otherwise).4 3. By buying up the land (sometimes through subterfuges), proclaiming it Jewish for all eternity, and refusing to allow non-Jews to live or work on the purchased land. This was called "redeeming" the land and was financed by a variety of means, including by such wealthy banking families as the Rothschilds.5 4. By violence, if such financial dispossession should fail or prove too slow – as it did.6 In the 1930s, Jewish land ownership had increased from approximately 1% to just over 6% of the land, and violence had increased as well. With the emergence of several Zionist terrorist gangs (whose ranks included a number of future Prime Ministers of Israel), there was violent conflict. Numerous people of all ethnicities were killed – then, as now, the large majority of them Christian and Muslim Palestinians.7 The Catastrophe This growing violence culminated in Israel's ruthless 1947-49 "War of Independence," in which at least 750,000 Palestinian men, women, and children were expelled from their homes – half of them even before any Arab armies joined the war. At every point in this war, Zionist forces greatly outnumbered Arab forces. This massive humanitarian disaster is known among Palestinians and others as 'The Catastrophe,' al Nakba in Arabic.8 Between December 1947 and December 1950, Zionist forces committed at least 33 massacres9 and destroyed over 531 Palestinian villages and towns. Author Norman Finkelstein states: "According to the former director of the Israeli army archives, 'in almost every village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes'...Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that 'every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.'"10 Count Folke Bernadotte, a former vice chairman of the Swedish Red Cross who saved thousands of Jews during World War II and was appointed U.N. mediator in Palestine in 1948, said of the Palestinian refugees: "It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes."11 Injustice Continues Over the 60 years since Israel's founding on May 14, 1948, this profound injustice has continued. Palestinian refugees are the largest remaining refugee population in the world. Seven million of the ten million living Palestinians are refugees or displaced people. 1.3 million Palestinians live in Israel as "Israeli citizens." Despite their status as citizens, they are subject to systematic discrimination. Many are prohibited from living in the villages and homes from which they were violently expelled, and their property has been confiscated for Jewish-only uses. In Orwellian terminology, Israeli law designates these internal refugees as "present absentees."12 In 1967 Israel launched its third war and siezed still more Palestinian (and other Arab) land. It militarily occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip – the final 22% of mandatory Palestine – and began building settlements for Jewish Israelis on land confiscated from Palestinian Muslims and Christians. It has demolished more than 18,000 Palestinian homes since 1967. In 2005 Israel returned Gazan land to its owners, but continues to control its borders, ports, and air space, turning Gaza into a large concentration camp, where 1.5 million people are held under what a UN Human Rights Commissioner described as "catastrophic" conditions. Approximately 11,000 Palestinian men, women, and children are imprisoned in Israeli jails under physically abusive conditions (many have not even been charged with a crime) and the basic human rights of all Palestinians under Israeli rule are routinely violated.14 American Involvement American taxpayers give Israel approximately $7 million per day – far more than we give to all of sub-Saharan Africa put together. In its 60 years of existence, Israel, the size of New Jersey, has received more of our tax money than any other nation on earth. While most Americans are unaware of these facts, our governmental actions are making us responsible for a continuing catastrophe of historic proportions (and which is, in addition, creating extremely damaging enmity to the US itself).15 As more and more U.S. citizens across the political spectrum and of all ethnicities become informed on this issue, they are demanding that their elected representatives change current policies. In recent history, the Berlin Wall has fallen, Northern Ireland has achieved peace, and South African apartheid has ended. Change is possible and justice attainable – when people become informed.16 * Footnotes online at www.IfAmericansKnew.org ------------------------------------ *************************************************************************** {Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.} (Holy Quran-16:125) {And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah's (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: "I am one of the Muslims."} (Holy Quran-41:33) The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "By Allah, if Allah guides one person by you, it is better for you than the best types of camels." [al-Bukhaaree, Muslim] The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) also said, "Whoever calls to guidance will have a reward similar to the reward of the one who follows him, without the reward of either of them being lessened at all." [Muslim, Ahmad, Aboo Daawood, an-Nasaa'ee, at-Tirmidhee, Ibn Maajah] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recommended: http://www.ikhwanweb.com http://www.islamonline.net http://www.islam-guide.com http://www.prophetmuhammadforall.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------- All views expressed herein belong to the individuals concerned and do not in any way reflect the official views of IslamCity unless sanctioned or approved otherwise. If your mailbox clogged with mails from IslamCity, you may wish to get a daily digest of emails by logging-on to http://www.yahoogroups.com to change your mail delivery settings or email the moderators at [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the title "change to daily digest". Yahoo! 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