Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
30 March
THE JEWISH NATIONAL FUND PREPARATIONS FOR MASS KILLINGS
On this day in 2011, Jeremy Corbyn launched EDM 1677 in the Westminster Parliament: “That this House welcomes the Stop the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Campaign launched by the Palestinian Boycott National Committee, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others to inform the public about the JNF...its ongoing illegal expropriation of Palestinian land, concealing destroyed Palestinian villages and prevention of refugees from returning to their homes…”
استعدادات الصندوق القومي اليهودي لعمليات القتل الجماعي
30 مارس
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2011 ، أطلق جيريمي كوربين الاقتراحات المبكرة 1677 في برلمان وستمنستر/ بريطانيا: "أن هذا المجلس يرحب بحملة :أوقفوا الصندوق القومي اليهودي (ج.ن.ف) والتي أطلقتها اللجنة الوطنية الفلسطينية للمقاطعة ، الشبكة اليهودية الدولية المناهضة للصهيونية وحملة التضامن الاسكتلندية مع فلسطين وغيرها لإطلاع الجمهور على نشاط الصندوق القومي اليهودي ... ومصادرته المستمرة غير القانونية للأراضي الفلسطينية ، وإخفاء القرى الفلسطينية المدمرة ومنع اللاجئين من العودة إلى ديارهم ...
A December 2011 letter from the JNF to MPs reveals "concern” at the potential of EDM 1677 to “tarnish the work of the JNF”and asks for a private meeting with each signatory of EDM 1677 currently before the UK Parliament. Jewish opponents are smeared as linked to Nazis and others as advocates of child murder. Pretty deranged stuff, easily rebutted.
The letter to MPs from JNF CEO Goodman smears supporters of Palestinian freedom as Jewish self-haters or anti-Semites; the substance of the letter, however, is a denial that Israel is working to dispossess its Palestinian citizens on ethnic grounds.
Preparation for mass killings - the JNF Village Files
A Hebrew University historian proposed that the Jewish National Fund should produce a detailed registry of Palestinian villages. Weitz, head of the JNF settlement department, suggesting the village files proposal become a ‘national project’.
Detailed files were gradually built up for each Palestinian village. Precise details were recorded about the topographic location of each village, its access roads, quality of land, water springs, sociopolitical composition, the ages of individual men.
An important category was an index of ‘hostility’ towards the Zionist project, decided by the level of the village’s participation in the 1936 revolt. The JNF drew up a list of everyone who had been involved and the families of those who had lost someone in the fight against the British. Particular attention was given to people who had allegedly killed Jews. In 1948 these last bits of information fuelled the worst atrocities in the villages, leading to mass executions and torture.
Moshe Pasternak, one of many Haganah members who gathered intelligence for the village files, later recalled a 1940 reconnaissance operation: “We had to study the basic structure of the Arab village. This means the structure and how best to attack it…We had to train our ‘Arabists’ how best to work with informants.”
By 1943, Pasternak remembered, there was a growing sense that finally they had a proper network of informants in place. By 1943, the village files included detailed descriptions of the cultivated land, the number of trees, the quality of each fruit grove, average amount of land per family, number of cars, shop owners, members of workshops and names and skills of artisans.
Meticulous detail was added about political affiliations and the information became more explicitly military orientated: number of guards (most villages had none) and quantity and quality of arms at the villagers’ disposal (generally antiquated or even non-existent).
Tuvia Lishanski joined the special projects, in particular supervising the work of the informants. He had earlier worked at intimidating and then forcibly evicting Palestinians from lands their families had cultivated for centuries after the JNF bought the lands.
In 1944 special units in the service of the village files project went out on reconnaissance missions, where the Zionist infiltrators exploited traditional Arab hospitality code, and were even guests at the home of the village headman. Pappe relates a Zionist 2002 memoir of the Palestinian hospitality towards his reconnaissance team on a mission to the Palestinian village Umm al-Zinat, later destroyed and all the inhabitants expelled without any provocation on their part whatsoever.
The 1947 JNF village files created lists of ‘wanted’ persons in each village, used in 1948 by Jewish troops as soon as they occupied a village.
The men would be lined up, those on the lists identified by a hooded collaborator, and were often shot on the spot. Those involved in the Palestinian national movement, or who had participated in actions against the British and the Zionists went on the list. Others were included for having travelled to Lebanon or for being arrested by the British for being a member of a national committee in the village.
Holding prominent positions in the Arab Higher Committee constituted a crime in the eyes of the Zionist experts. The 1947 JNF village files, usually listed 20-30 suspects in villages with about 1500 inhabitants.
(Extracted and condensed from The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, pp17-22)
Son of WWII Dutch resistance hero who saved hundreds of Jews from the clutches of the Nazis condemns the JNF's abuse of his father's name and record to cover up an act of ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villagers.