On This Day

1 May

THE JNF'S SICK ANTI-RACISM-THEMED FOREST
On this day in 1948, the village of Ayn Al Zaytoun was a scene of massacre, immortalised in the novel (and 2005 film adaptation) Bab El-Shams by Elias Khoury. To conceal the remains of destroyed villages, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) plants forests, usually giving them names like British Park or Canada Park to flatter their donors. But in an insult to the memory of one of the world's best known anti-racist icons, the forest that hides the ruins of the ethnically cleansed Ayn Al Zaytoun village was named: the Coretta Scott King Forest.

اهانة لاشهر الرموزالمناهضة للعنصرية ، ج. ن.ف (ذات السجل الاجرامي)  تطلق الاسم على غابة لتخفي جرائمها

The Coretta Scott King Forest, is built over the ruins of six destroyed Palestinian villages located in the Safad region – Dayshym, Alma, Qaddita, Birrya, Amqa, Ayn al-Zaitoun. All these villages were obliterated in the Nakba, and their inhabitants killed or expelled.

From Pappé, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine:

“Ayn al-Zaytun is the best known of the three massacres because its story formed the basis for the only epic novel on the Palestinian catastrophe we have so far, Bab El-Shams by Elias Khoury.  See https://www.countercurrents.org/tabar300410.htm

Operation ‘Broom' provided a chance for the Hagana's elite unit, the Palmach, “not only to cleanse the village in accordance with Plan Dalet on 2 May 1948, but also to settle 'old accounts', namely the hostility with which the Palestinian villagers had viewed and received the settlers.”

“The operation was entrusted to Moshe Kalman, who had already successfully supervised savage attacks on Khisas, Sa'sa and Husayniyya in the same distinct. His troops encountered very little resistance, as the Syrian volunteers positioned there left hurriedly once the shelling of the village started at dawn: heavy mortar bombardment followed by the systematic throwing of hand grenades. Kalman's forces entered the village towards noon. Women, children, old people and a few younger men who had not left with the Syrian volunteers came out of hiding waving a white flag. They were herded into the village centre. A hooded informer scrutinised the men; those whose names appeared on a pre-prepared list were identified, taken to another location and shot dead. When other men rebelled or protested, they were killed as well. In one incident (which the film captured extremely well), one of the villagers, Yusuf Ahmad Hajjar, told his captors that he, like the others, had surrendered and thus 'expected to be treated humanely'. The Palmach commander slapped him in the face and then ordered him, by way of punishment, to pick thirty-seven teenagers at random. While the rest of the villagers were forced into the storage room of the village mosque, the teenagers were shot with their hands tied behind their backs.”

“In his book, Hans Lebrecht offers another glimpse of the atrocities, and explains that 'at the end of May 1948, I was ordered by the military unit in which I served to build a temporary pump station, and to divert the "deserted" village's stream, Ayn Zaytun, to supply water to the battalion. The village had been totally destroyed, and among the debris there were many bodies. In particular, we found many bodies of women, children and babies near the local mosque. I convinced the army to burn the bodies'.”

“These graphic descriptions are also found in the Hagana military reports, but how many of Ayn al-Zaytun's villagers were actually executed is hard to tell. The military documents reported that all in all, including the executions, seventy people had been shot; other sources give a much higher number.”

“Oral histories, which provided Elias Khoury with the material for Bab al-Shams, also reinforce the impression that the archival material does not tell the full story: it is economical about the methods employed and misleading about the number of people killed on that fateful day in May 1948. As noted, each village served as a precedent that would become part of a pattern and a model that then facilitated more systematic expulsions. In Ayn al-Zaytun, the villagers were taken to the edge of the village where the Jewish troops then started firing shots over their heads as they ordered them to flee. The routine procedures were followed as well: the people were stripped of all their belongings before being banished from their homeland. The Palmach later seized the nearby village, Biriyya, and, as in Ayn al-Zaytun, ordered all the houses to be burnt in order to demoralize the Arabs of Safad."

"The JNF’s…job it is to prevent all acts of commemoration at these 'forests', let alone visits of return, by Palestinian refugees." (p229)

The JNF forests have a role to play in obliterating history and replacing the nauseating reality of Zionism with a palatable fiction: “Ein Zeitun has become one of the most attractive spots within the recreational ground as it harbors large picnic tables and ample parking for the disabled. It is located where once stood the settlement Ein Zeitun, where Jews used to live ever since the medieval times and until the 18th century. There were four abortive [Jewish] settlement attempts. The parking lot has biological toilets and playgrounds. Next to the parking lot, a memorial stands in memory of the soldiers who fell in the Six Day War."

Fancifully meshing history and tourist tips, the text totally erases from Israel's collective memory the thriving Palestinian community Jewish troops wiped out within a few hours.” 

Also on this day...

On this day in 1921, large scale rioting broke out in Jaffa in which 47 Arabs and 48 Jews were killed and many more were injured. The British Govt set up the Haycraft Commission of enquiry to investigate and report on the causes. Palestine: Disturbances in May 1921 was published in October 1921 and found that the main causes were Government policy “not to the equal benefit of all Palestinians…[which] placed the interests of the Jews above all others...[and] an undue proportion of Jews in the government”.

1 مايو

في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1921 ، اندلعت أعمال شغب واسعة النطاق في يافا وقُتل فيها 47 عربيًا و 48 يهوديًا وجرح عدد أكبر. شكلت الحكومة البريطانية لجنة هايكرافت للتحقيق وتقديم تقرير عن الأسباب. نَشرت صحيفة فلسطين في تشرين الأول (أكتوبر) 1921: ان الأسباب الرئيسية للاضطرابات في أيار (مايو) 1921 كانت سياسة الحكومة "لم تكن لصالح جميع الفلسطينيين على قدم المساواة ... [اذ] وضعت مصالح اليهود فوق مصالح الآخرين ... [وان] هناك نسبة عالية من اليهود في الحكومة لا داعي لها ".

Although the Haycraft Commission's findings placed the blame for the riots on the Arab Palestinians, it also noted the widespread Muslim and Christian Arab fears of the Zionists' activities and plans for the future. This provoked the UK Jewish Chronicle to a racist outburst of the sort it maintained until its recent demise:

“Imagine the wild animals in a zoological garden springing out of their cages and killing a number of spectators, and a commission appointed to enquire into the causes of the disaster reporting first and foremost that the animals were discontented with and hostile to the visitors who had come to see them! As if it were not the first business of the keepers to keep; to know the habits and disposition of the animals, and to be sure that the cages were secure!”
Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete