How Israel wages war on Palestinian history
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Jonathan Cook reports on the Israeli government’s ongoing war – against History – it’s own history of never-ending war against the Palestinians.
As part of it, archives are being sealed off, with Israel’s state comptroller, a watchdog body, revealing that more than one million archived documents were still inaccessible, even though they had passed their declassification date.
The suppression of the past extends into the schools, where the green line is disappeared as is the concept – and reality – of occupation.
This article was originally published by Jonathan Cook's blog on Thu 20 Aug 2020. Read the original here.
How Israel wages war on Palestinian history
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Attempts to erase a People’s history and culture do, of course, contribute to the definition of ‘genocide’.
Returning from Jenin in 2002 I showed Mahammad Bakri’s documentary film Jenin, Jenin at an exhibition I put on of photos of the wall and destruction that was taking place at that time. I still have the film. It’s captures the situation well as you say, the brutality, death and destruction which outrageously continues today by Israel. I hadn’t realised the high price Bakri has faced over the years by making it. There is no end to this injustice by Israel while the world remains silent. And the leader of our opposition signs the Board of Deputy pledges.
This is saddening and maddening. How can the world stand by and watch? Nobody appears to have learned from history.
All power to your elbow in making known Palestinian history and in countering the re-writing which has been attempted. I have a memory of an article here which completely contradicts the claim about the “invitation to return” of Palestinians – forgive me if my account is sketchy .
The article linked to the account of what happened during “Nakba” to a single (Christian) village. The inhabitants initially fled – but pleaded for the right to return. In 1951 the Israeli Supreme Court did indeed establish that right but before the villagers could do so the Israeli Army destroyed their Village.
It would be very interesting to read (and publicise) the arguments put forward in the 1951 Israeli Supreme Court Ruling. .. and the reasons given (if any!) of the actions of the Army in disobeying the Court.
Eradication of villages from maps & locking up of archives also prevents Palestinians from reclaiming their land. Forensic Architecture based at Goldsmiths College has done some brilliant work on this and IDF lies about current evictions & killings
A documentary has recently been made about a coup engineered by the
US CIA and the UK MI6 in 1953 :
(See for example the following concerning the CIA who in 2013
” .. publicly admitted for the first time its involvement in the 1953 coup against Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh …”)
The documentary has indicated how the coup likely paved the way to the Iranian Revolution. There were other international implications of the coup – the film has been praised by Newspapers of all political persuasions. There have been requests that the UK “fesses up” about the coup which has soured relations between the UK and Iran for nearly 70 years .
Isn’t it time for a similar documentary about the Nakba using the newly discovered documents in Israel and of course the experiences of those. who survived?
Thank you Jonathan Cook. More evidence of history being written by the conqueror. In the case of the Palestinians the silence about their ethnic cleansing is deafening. We must continue to publicise the crimes committed against them by the colonial settler Israeli regime. Their history and their lives matter!