Many years back, I would wander around Planet Earth via my short wave
radio. One program I was able to pick up was Voice of America. While
some of it was interesting, the blatant propaganda depicting the
Wonderful Life here in Paradise was very embarrassing.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/20/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mondoweiss
Israel’s bogus history lesson
Israel/Palestine
Jonathan Cook on October 19, 2016
(Screenshot: YouTube)
It was presumably intended as an Israeli history lesson to the world. A
video posted to social media by Israel’s foreign ministry shows an everyday
Jewish couple, Jacob and Rachel, in a home named the “Land of Israel”. A
series of knocks on the door brings 3,000 years of interruptions to their
happiness. First it’s the Assyrians, followed by the Babylonians,
Hellenists, Arabs, Romans, Crusaders, Mamluks, and Ottomans – all straight
out of Monty Python central casting.
Jacob and Rachel are forced by the warring factions to relocate to ever
smaller parts of their home until finally they have to pitch a tent in the
garden. Their fortunes change only with the arrival of a servant of the
British Empire, who returns the title deeds. A final knock disturbs their
celebrations. On the doorstep are a penniless Palestinian couple, craning
their necks to see what goodies await them inside.
The chauvinism in portraying Jacob and Rachel as the only normal folk,
stoically enduring barbarians butchering each other in their living room, is
ugly enough. But it is harder still to take seriously an account in which
the Palestinians suddenly appear out of nowhere in 1948, as Britain
departs.
A mile from my home in Nazareth are the ruins of Saffuriya, a centuries-old
Palestinian town until the Israeli army expelled the inhabitants in 1948 and
blew up their homes. More than 500 villages were similarly razed.
In places where buildings were left untouched, it is Jews – not Palestinians
– who squat in someone else’s home. But the falsification runs deeper.
Next to the rubble of Saffuriya lies the much older Roman city of Sephoris,
where Jews settled nearly 2,000 years ago after their failed revolts against
the Roman empire. A surviving synagogue’s mosaic floor reveals that the Jews
of Sephoris worshipped the sun, so close had they grown to the area’s pagan
population.
Other entanglements abound. In Nazareth’s old city is the world’s only
“synagogue church”, where Jesus reputedly delivered his first sermon. It is
a reminder that many local Jews would soon be calling themselves Christians,
and later Muslims. Farther north, in the town of Bokaya, an ancient
synagogue can be found next to churches and mosques. For centuries the
Abrahamic faiths lived alongside each other in a communal harmony unknown in
Europe.
In fact, contrary to Israel’s version of history, the most violent clashes –
aside from the Jewish revolts – coincided with invasions by Europeans,
whether the aggressive sectarianism of the Crusaders, or the British-backed
creation of an ethno-religious “Jewish state” by Zionists. More usually,
Palestine’s past was marked by cultural tolerance and genetic diversity.
Conversions and intermarriages meant the region was a melting pot of
identities and beliefs.
Israel, of course, prefers to obscure that history, because it leads to an
obvious conclusion: the region needs less, not more, tribalism and dogma of
the sort Israel favours.
The Jewish majority in Israel lives almost entirely apart from the
Palestinians who stayed on their land and are today nominally citizens.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank – known to Israelis as the Biblical kingdoms of
“Judea and Samaria” – Jewish settlers lord it over a ghettoised Palestinian
population subject to military rule.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been drafting a basic law defining
Israel as belonging to a globalised “Jewish nation”, not the country’s
citizens. And he insists that peace talks take place only once the
Palestinians under occupation recognise Israel as such a Jewish state – a
condition that, once viewed as risible, has now been adopted by Washington.
In a sign of the prevailing mood, Israel’s education ministry has recently
banned from the curriculum two novels featuring romantic attachments between
Jews and Arabs. At the same time, the “green line” that once demarcated the
occupied Palestinian territories has been erased from Israeli classroom
maps, implying instead that it is all Greater Israel.
Faced with Israel’s zero-sum policies and diplomacy, Palestinians have grown
increasingly anxious about the future.
Last week a resolution from Unesco, the UN’s scientific and cultural body,
gave voice to their concerns. It highlighted Israeli threats to the most
important Muslim and Christian heritage sites under occupation.
Recognising the importance of Jerusalem “for the three monotheistic
religions”, the resolution nonetheless warned that Israel was exploiting its
illegal control to erase the Palestinians’ connection to such sites,
especially Al Aqsa mosque.
Hoping to deflect attention away from these criticisms, Israel railed
against the UN for denying primacy to its narrative. Al Aqsa must be billed
equally as Temple Mount, Mr Netanyahu insisted, referring to a long-lost
Jewish temple believed to be buried under the Jerusalem mosque.
But the ruined temple’s likely location leads to the opposite conclusion Mr
Netanyahu has reached: not that the Jews have a stronger claim to
sovereignty, but that the region’s peoples and religions are impossibly
intertwined.
That should be the chief lesson for the current Jacobs and Rachels, many of
them living in armed and relentlessly expanding colonies on stolen
Palestinian territory.
This land was always shared, and there will be no peace until it is again.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi
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Israel’s bogus history lesson
Israel/Palestine
Jonathan Cook on October 19, 2016 14 Comments
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valid.
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(Screenshot: YouTube)
It was presumably intended as an Israeli history lesson to the world. A
video posted to social media by Israel’s foreign ministry shows an everyday
Jewish couple, Jacob and Rachel, in a home named the “Land of Israel”. A
series of knocks on the door brings 3,000 years of interruptions to their
happiness. First it’s the Assyrians, followed by the Babylonians,
Hellenists, Arabs, Romans, Crusaders, Mamluks, and Ottomans – all straight
out of Monty Python central casting.
Jacob and Rachel are forced by the warring factions to relocate to ever
smaller parts of their home until finally they have to pitch a tent in the
garden. Their fortunes change only with the arrival of a servant of the
British Empire, who returns the title deeds. A final knock disturbs their
celebrations. On the doorstep are a penniless Palestinian couple, craning
their necks to see what goodies await them inside.
The chauvinism in portraying Jacob and Rachel as the only normal folk,
stoically enduring barbarians butchering each other in their living room, is
ugly enough. But it is harder still to take seriously an account in which
the Palestinians suddenly appear out of nowhere in 1948, as Britain
departs.
A mile from my home in Nazareth are the ruins of Saffuriya, a centuries-old
Palestinian town until the Israeli army expelled the inhabitants in 1948 and
blew up their homes. More than 500 villages were similarly razed.
In places where buildings were left untouched, it is Jews – not Palestinians
– who squat in someone else’s home. But the falsification runs deeper.
Next to the rubble of Saffuriya lies the much older Roman city of Sephoris,
where Jews settled nearly 2,000 years ago after their failed revolts against
the Roman empire. A surviving synagogue’s mosaic floor reveals that the Jews
of Sephoris worshipped the sun, so close had they grown to the area’s pagan
population.
Other entanglements abound. In Nazareth’s old city is the world’s only
“synagogue church”, where Jesus reputedly delivered his first sermon. It is
a reminder that many local Jews would soon be calling themselves Christians,
and later Muslims. Farther north, in the town of Bokaya, an ancient
synagogue can be found next to churches and mosques. For centuries the
Abrahamic faiths lived alongside each other in a communal harmony unknown in
Europe.
In fact, contrary to Israel’s version of history, the most violent clashes –
aside from the Jewish revolts – coincided with invasions by Europeans,
whether the aggressive sectarianism of the Crusaders, or the British-backed
creation of an ethno-religious “Jewish state” by Zionists. More usually,
Palestine’s past was marked by cultural tolerance and genetic diversity.
Conversions and intermarriages meant the region was a melting pot of
identities and beliefs.
Israel, of course, prefers to obscure that history, because it leads to an
obvious conclusion: the region needs less, not more, tribalism and dogma of
the sort Israel favours.
The Jewish majority in Israel lives almost entirely apart from the
Palestinians who stayed on their land and are today nominally citizens.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank – known to Israelis as the Biblical kingdoms of
“Judea and Samaria” – Jewish settlers lord it over a ghettoised Palestinian
population subject to military rule.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been drafting a basic law defining
Israel as belonging to a globalised “Jewish nation”, not the country’s
citizens. And he insists that peace talks take place only once the
Palestinians under occupation recognise Israel as such a Jewish state – a
condition that, once viewed as risible, has now been adopted by Washington.
In a sign of the prevailing mood, Israel’s education ministry has recently
banned from the curriculum two novels featuring romantic attachments between
Jews and Arabs. At the same time, the “green line” that once demarcated the
occupied Palestinian territories has been erased from Israeli classroom
maps, implying instead that it is all Greater Israel.
Faced with Israel’s zero-sum policies and diplomacy, Palestinians have grown
increasingly anxious about the future.
Last week a resolution from Unesco, the UN’s scientific and cultural body,
gave voice to their concerns. It highlighted Israeli threats to the most
important Muslim and Christian heritage sites under occupation.
Recognising the importance of Jerusalem “for the three monotheistic
religions”, the resolution nonetheless warned that Israel was exploiting its
illegal control to erase the Palestinians’ connection to such sites,
especially Al Aqsa mosque.
Hoping to deflect attention away from these criticisms, Israel railed
against the UN for denying primacy to its narrative. Al Aqsa must be billed
equally as Temple Mount, Mr Netanyahu insisted, referring to a long-lost
Jewish temple believed to be buried under the Jerusalem mosque.
But the ruined temple’s likely location leads to the opposite conclusion Mr
Netanyahu has reached: not that the Jews have a stronger claim to
sovereignty, but that the region’s peoples and religions are impossibly
intertwined.
That should be the chief lesson for the current Jacobs and Rachels, many of
them living in armed and relentlessly expanding colonies on stolen
Palestinian territory.
This land was always shared, and there will be no peace until it is again.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi
