Sabbah Report » Nazareth

The great book robbery of 1948

SR Editor — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:30:11 +0000

Stolen Palestinian books labeled "absentee property." (Courtesy of The Great Book Robbery: http://thegreatbookrobbery.org/)

By Arwa Aburawa * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

A new documentary reveals a hidden chapter in the history of the Nakba -- the Palestinian expulsion and flight at the hands of Zionist militias as Israel was established in 1948 -- which saw the systematic looting of more than 60,000 Palestinian books by Israeli forces and the attempted destruction of Palestinian culture.

As the violence which came to mark the formation of Israel erupted, Palestinian families living in the urban centers and villages of the country fled their homes in search of safety and refuge. One Palestinian family after another escaped, and believing that they would soon return, many left behind their most precious belongings. As Palestinian homes sat silent in the haze of conflict, however, a systematic Israeli campaign was underway to enter the homes and rob them of a precious commodity -- their books.

Between May 1948 and February 1949, librarians from the Jewish National Library and Hebrew University Library entered the desolate Palestinian homes of west Jerusalem and seized 30,000 books, manuscripts and newspapers alone. These cultural assets, which had belonged to elite and educated Palestinian families, were then "loaned" to the National Library where they have remained until now. Furthermore, across cities such as Jaffa, Haifa, Tiberias and Nazareth, employees of the Custodian of Absentee Property gathered approximately 40,000-50,000 books belonging to Palestinians. Most of these were later resold to Arabs although approximately 26,000 books were deemed unsuitable as they contained "inciting material against the State [Israel]" and were sold as paper waste.

This untold story of the Nakba has remained hidden over the years until, by complete accident, Israeli graduate student Gish Amit stumbled across archives documenting the systematic looting of Palestinian books. "I came across this topic quite accidentally," Gish admits. "I spent the first few months of my doctoral studies at various archives, among them the archive of the Jewish national and university library, where one day, I discovered the first documents regarding the collecting of the Palestinian libraries left behind during the 1948 war. Anyhow, it took me a few more weeks -- and dozens of documents -- to realize that there was a story to tell. A story that hasn't yet been told and one that might enrich our knowledge about the Palestinian culture and its erasure."

Although many Palestinian families were aware that their books were taken during the aftermath of 1948, they had no idea that there was a systematic and conscious effort to appropriate their books.

Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian activist and author who lived in Jerusalem until 1948 when her family was forced to flee, recalls that her father was an avid reader and had an impressive personal library. "My family was part of the small, relatively educated elite in Palestine at the time which has lots books," she explains. "For the Zionists to steal those books ... I don't know, it's shocking. Well, they stole everything so I guess it doesn't surprise me at all."

The cultural destruction that occurred during the Nakba has remained a relatively marginalized aspect of the wider narrative of Palestinian suffering. It is seen as a small, irrelevant detail which affected a small minority of urban elites living in the cities, as apposed to the complete annihilation of Palestinian villages that affected a large portion of the Palestinian population.

"What you need to understand is that the Palestinian loss was so massive that such details were overwhelmed," says Karmi, who now lives and works as a university lecturer in the UK. She is also the author of several books including In Search of Fatima, a memoir of her family's experience during the Nakba. "People lost their homes, their lives, their land and I guess the loss of books in the homes of a small Palestinian elite would not have been high up on the scale. Now that all these years have passed since the Nakba, these details are starting to emerge and their importance is being acknowledged."

In fact film director Benny Brunner, Arjan El Fassed (co-founder of The Electronic Intifada) and others have made it their task to highlight the state-sponsored looting of 1948-49. The Great Book Robbery is a project and documentary in the making which hopes to expose the untold story of the book looting and help Palestinians reclaim their cultural heritage and even revive it (a brief video is available on the film website).

Brunner, a Dutch and Israeli citizen who has worked on various films related to Israel and the Palestinians, says "The story is really significant because it's more than the fact that 60,000 books were looted -- it's about the destruction of a culture. That's the real impact of this event; that's the real significance and I think that needs to be communicated. And if possible, efforts have to be put in resurrecting the lost cultural world that was destroyed in 1948."

Before the Nakba scattered the Palestinian elites, cities such as Jerusalem and particularly Jaffa were a hive of cultural and political activity. Well-educated elites published newspapers, magazines, books and poetry and intellectual clubs thrived and cafes served as venues for discussion of important issues. This all came to an abrupt end in 1948 and is now an almost completely forgotten chapter in Palestinian cultural history.

While the books seized by Israel were initially marked with the names of the Palestinian owners, in the 1960s this policy was changed and the books were later marked with just two letters: "AP" or "abandoned property." As time passed, these became "Israeli" books especially as a vast majority of them were embedded in the national collection and so it became impossible to trace the looted Palestinian books. "They became 'our' books and part of 'our' cultural heritage," says Brunner.

As Karmi explains, "What's really horrible about the book thefts is that it's like saying, 'I'm not only going to steal your home and your land but also an intellectual heritage' because they took these books, put in them in their Israeli libraries and then pretended that they were always there. Therefore we're in a fight because we're not just trying to reclaim something which has been sitting there gathering dust -- we're trying to reclaim something before it's destroyed. And that's why it's so urgent and why [Brunner's] project is extremely valuable."

Right now, Brunner is trying to trace more Palestinians who either witnessed the looting or lost their books in the Nakba. "We want people to tell us how they see the event, to analyze it and to contribute to us, not only financially -- although that would help -- but with their stories."

"If people care about their past and making a serious attempt to revive part of the cultural heritage they need to be a part of this project," says Brunner. He urges Palestinians to "look into your family history and see if there is anything you can contribute to this project" and to get in touch directly if they can.

Karmi emphasizes the urgency of reclaiming this part of Palestinian history and the significance of this moment: "We are no longer in a stage of trauma or shock which Palestinians have been in for a very long time. The actual shock of losing everything and having to build yourself up again has occupied people's energies for a very long time. Now, it's time to reclaim our history, our culture, our towns, our architecture, our geography before the Israelis demolish everything."

But even Karmi admits that some things have been lost forever. Manuscripts which were never published, books sold as paper waste, personal diaries or even the Arabic-English dictionary which Karmi's father was working on at the time of the Nakba is now lost forever. Even so, both Karmi and Brunner believe that Israel must return the 6,000 books that are clearly marked as Palestinian property to their rightful owners.

Karmi also adds that it's time for a Palestinian movement to emerge -- parallel to the movement reclaiming Jewish and other cultural artifacts lost under the Nazis -- dedicated to relocating pieces of cultural heritage lost during the Nakba. The Great Book Robbery aims to highlight the scale of the loss and hopefully act as a first step in this direction.

* Arwa Aburawa (http://arwafreelance.wordpress.com/) is a freelance journalist based in the UK who writes on the Middle East, the environment and various social issues.

(The Electronic Intifada)

Rabbis’ edict bars renting to Arabs

Jonathan Cook — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 14:47:40 +0000

By Jonathan Cook * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Safed chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu

The tranquility of Safed, a small Israeli city nestled high in the hills of the Upper Galilee close to the Lebanese border, is not usually disturbed except by the occasional pilgrimage by Madonna or other famous devotees of the Jewish mystical teachings of Kabbalah.

But in the past few weeks, Safed – one of Judaism's four holy cities – has been making headlines of a very different kind. Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, last week declared it "the most racist city in the country".

The unflattering, and hotly contested, epithet follows an edict from Safed's senior rabbis ordering residents not to sell or rent homes to "non-Jews" – a reference to the country's Palestinian Arab citizens, who comprise a fifth of Israel's population.

At an emergency meeting, called last month to discuss the dangers of "assimilation" caused by Arab men dating Jewish women, the 18 rabbis warned that Safed was facing an "Arab takeover". Jewish residents were told to inform on neighbours who try to sell or rent to Arabs.

The number of Arabs in the city, though low, has been steadily rising as Safed Academic College has expanded. There are now some 1,300 Arab students enrolled at the school.

The rabbis' statements have provoked a series of riots by local religious Jews, in which several Arab homes have been attacked to chants of "Death to the Arabs". In one recent incident, three Arab students were beaten as shots were fired.

So far three Jewish youths, including an off-duty policeman, have been charged with participating in the violence. The policeman is accused of firing his gun.

The anti-Arab campaign escalated last week as posters were plastered across the city threatening to burn down the home of an elderly Jew if he did not stop renting to Arab students.

The owner, 89-year-old Eli Zvieli, said the posters appeared after he received phone threats and visits from several rabbis warning him to change his mind.

Jamil Khalaili, 20, a physiotherapy student at the college who rents an apartment with a friend in a Jewish neighbourhood, said the atmosphere in Safed was rapidly deteriorating.

"We're being treated like criminals, like we're trying to steal their homes," he said. "It's got the point where many of my friends are wondering whether to leave. I want to study here but not if it costs me my life."

Leading the opposition to the presence of Arab students in the city is Safed's chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, who is employed by the municipality as head of its religious council.

"When a non-Jew moves in, residents begin to worry about their children, about their daughters. Many Arab students have been known to date Jewish girls," he told Israel National News, the main news agency of the settlement movement.

The 18 rabbis issued their joint statement after learning of the city's plan to build a medical school, which is expected to draw Arab students from across the Galilee.

They urged Jewish residents to shun a "neighbour or acquaintance" who rents to Arabs. "Refrain from doing business with him, deny him the right to read from the Torah, and similarly ostracize him until he renounces this harmful deed," it read.

Infamous rabbi, Ovadia Yosef

They have been given backing by a former chief rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, who used a recent sermon to tell his followers that "selling to [non-Jews], even for a lot of money, is not allowed. We won't let them take control of us here."

Similar anti-Arab sentiments have been heard in two other Jewish cities in the Galilee, Karmiel and Upper Nazareth. Both were established decades ago as part of a government "Judaisation" programme to settle more Jews in the country's most heavily Arab-populated region.

In Karmiel, 30 kilometres west of Safed, advertisements in local newspapers have been promoting a special email address for residents to inform on neighbours planning to sell homes to Arabs. According to Ynet, a popular news website, the email account is overseen by officials for Oren Milstein, the city's deputy mayor until he was fired last week.

Adi Eldar, the mayor, said Mr Milstein had "damaged the city's image" after he gave a newspaper interview in which he boasted that he had prevented the sale of 30 homes to Arab families.

Mr Milstein's replacement as deputy mayor, Rina Greenberg, is a member of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister, who advocates ridding the country of many of its Arab citizens.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Upper Nazareth, Shimon Gapso, who is also allied Yisrael Beiteinu, has announced plans to build a new neighbourhood for 3,000 religious Jews to halt what he called the city's "demographic deterioration".

Hundreds of Arab families from neighbouring Nazareth have relocated to the Jewish city to escape overcrowding. Today, one in eight of Upper Nazareth's 42,000-strong population is Arab.

In August, Mr Gapso said he felt "as happy as if I had a new baby" at the news that 15 extremist families from the former Gaza settlement of Gush Katif were establishing a Jewish seminary in his city.

Hatia Chomsky-Porat, who leads Galilee activists for Sikkuy, a group advocating better relations between Jews and Arabs, said: "The political atmosphere is growing darker all the time. Racism among Jews is entirely mainstream now."

In Safed, the Arab student body, heavily outnumbered by nearly 40,000 Jewish residents, has tried to keep a low profile. However, one small act of defiance appears to have further contributed to Jewish residents' fears of a "takeover".

Inhabitants awoke recently to find a Palestinian flag draped on the top of a renovated mosque – one of the many old stone buildings in Safed that attest to the city's habitation long before Israel's establishment.

In 1948, when Jewish forces captured the town, Safed was a mixed city of 10,000 Palestinians and 2,000 Jews. All the Palestinian inhabitants were expelled, including a 13-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, now the president of the Palestinian Authority.

Mr Khaliali said the city's history appeared still to haunt many of its Jewish residents, who expressed fears that Arab students were there to reclaim refugee property as the vanguard of a movement for the Palestinian right of return.

It is not the first time Mr Eliyahu, the son of a former chief rabbi of Israel, has been accused of inciting against the city's Arab population.

In 2002, during a wave of suicide attacks at the start of the second intifada, he called on Safed college to expel all Arab students.

Two years later he launched a campaign against intermarriage, accusing Arab men of waging "another form of war" against Jewish women by "seducing" them.

He narrowly avoided prosecution for incitement in 2006 after he agreed to retract his earlier statements.

The Religious Action Centre, a group of Reform movement Jews, and several Arab MPs have demanded that Yehuda Weinstein, the attorney-general, investigate Mr Eliyahu and the other rabbis for incitement to violence.

* Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair".

(The National)

The Real Bloomers of Palestine

Antoine Raffoul — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:07:04 +0000

By Antoine Raffoul * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1948 Lest We Forget has obtained a copy of the full Survey of Palestine (Including the map survey) for its records. The following outline extracts shed more light on the Zionist lies about Palestine being "a land without people...." We recommend that Survey to all our Supporters.

In December 1945 and January 1946, the British Mandate authorities carried out an extensive survey of Palestine , in support of the work of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. The results were published in the Survey of Palestine, which has been scanned and made available online by Palestine Remembered; all 1300 pages can be read here.

One of the subjects investigated in the Survey of Palestine is land use; specifically, which crops were Palestine's leading agricultural products at the end of the British Mandate, and whose farms were producing them.

So, according to the Survey of Palestine, who really made the barley fields of Beersheba bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestinian farmers produced approximately 210,000 tons of grain.

About 193,400 tons of that grain were cultivated on Palestinian farms; about 16,600 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.

See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click image to enlarge

Who made the melon patches of Jaffa bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestinian farmers produced approximately 143,000 tons of melons.

About 136,000 tons of those melons were cultivated on Palestinian farms; a little over 7,000 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.

See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click image to enlarge

Who made the tobacco fields of Safad bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestinian farmers produced approximately 1,683 tons of tobacco, on 28,169 dunams of land. Virtually all the land under tobacco cultivation was Palestinian.

Who made the vineyards of Hebron bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestines farmers produced approximately 40-50,000 tons of grapes, and between 3-4 million litres of wine. About 86% of the land that produced these products was owned and cultivated by Palestinians.

See a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click to enlarge

Who made the olive groves of Tulkarm bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestinian farmers produced approximately 79,000 tons of olives.

About 78,000 tons of those olives were cultivated on Palestinian farms; a little over 1,000 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.

See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click image to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Who made the banana groves of Tiberias bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestinian farmers produced approximately 8,000 tons of bananas.

About 60% of the land that produced these bananas was owned and cultivated by Palestinians.

See the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click to enlarge

Who made the vegetable fields of the coastal plain bloom?

The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestines farmers produced approximately 245,000 tons of vegetables.

About 189,000 tons of those vegetables were cultivated by Palestinian farmers; about 56,000 tons were cultivated by Jewish farmers.

See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, below:

Click to enlarge

So, on the eve of the partition resolution, in which the United Nations proposed to allocate 55 percent of the land to Jewish Palestine (including those parts that produced most of Palestine's leading crops, with the sole exception of the olive crop), and 45% to Arab Palestine, Palestinian Arabs were producing:

92% of Palestine grain
86% of its grapes
99% of its olives
77 % of its vegetables
95% of its melons
more than 99% of its tobacco
and 60% of its bananas.

Palestine's agricultural produce at that time had an annual value of approximately 21.8 million pounds sterling; 17.1 million of which was produced by Arab cultivation, and 4.7 million by Jewish cultivation. (as seen in below table).

Click to enlarge

So, who made the desert bloom? The Palestinians made the desert bloom.

Photos: All the photographs of Palestinian farmers cultivating their crops in Palestine under the British Mandate are from Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History Of The Palestinians 1876 - 1948, by Walid Khalidi.

* Antoine Raffoul is a Palestinian architect living and practising in London. He was born in Nazareth and was expelled with his family from Haifa in April 1948. He is the Founder and Co-ordinator of 1948: Lest.We.Forget. a campaign group for truth about Palestine. He can be reached at info@1948.org.uk.

Israeli attack church in Nazareth

Haitham Sabbah — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 18:50:47 +0000

Three hours ago, a breaking news was on Aljazeera TV, which said that three disguised Jews attacked Basilica of Annunciation in Nazareth. Period. No further details.

I went digging for more details in the MSM, unfortunately I could not find much worth mentioning. However, I noticed what we call biased story coverage. Read on how some of the early coverage was written:

YNet - Israel:

Hundreds of Nazareth resident attacked a man suspected of throwing detonators into the Church of the Annunciation in the city. The man was beaten by the crowd, which is preventing ambulances from entering the area.

Police have arrested three people for suspicion of throwing the detonators.

Haaretz - Israel:

Fire-crackers thrown in Basilica of Annunciation in Nazareth; dozens gather.

LA Time - USA:

Two people disguised as Christian pilgrims threw firecrackers into a revered church in Nazareth Friday, sparking a riot in the biblical Israeli town, police said.

ABC News - USA:

Two people disguised as Christian pilgrims threw firecrackers into a revered church in Nazareth Friday, sparking a riot in the biblical Israeli town, police said. (copy of the above)

Fox News - USA:

Police say at least two people disguised as Christian pilgrims heaved firecrackers into the famed Basilica of the Annunciation. It's one of Christianity's holiest sites.

Only after three hours of the breaking news, some news agency comes to complement Aljazeera.Reuters comes out with alert news which says:

Three Israelis set off firecrackers inside a church in the town of Nazareth on Friday, sparking panic among several worshippers.
A police spokesman said two Jewish women and a man were holed up inside the Church of the Enunciation, one of Christianity's most important sites in the Holy Land. Police had entered the church, he said.

Four hours after Aljazeera, Haaretz and YNet says they are Jews. Not a single American news agency until this moment said they are Jews!

Just imagine if the attackers were Arab or Muslims, I pet all my money that the news would have been the breaking news all over the news media worldwide by now. Lets write the news bulletin again:

Three PALESTINIANS TERRORISTS set off firecrackers inside a church in the town of Nazareth on Friday, sparking panic among several worshippers.

A police spokesman said two MUSLIM MILITATING TERRORIST women and a man were holed up inside the Church of the Enunciation, one of Christianity's most important sites in the Holy Land. Police had entered the church, AND SHOOT DEAD THE SUICIDE BOMBERS, he said.

Would that make a breaking news? I guess it would. Just add the above spice to it, and there you go!

Please allow me to be sarcastic a little. Lets guess what we will hear next:

The Israeli attackers are suffering from mental disorders.
The firecrackers were suppose to be set off outside the church, but accidentally caught fire while three Israeli tourist were carrying them inside there bags.
The Arab Christian mobs are taken to court for attacking the innocent Israelis
Just use your imagination. Trust me it will come true...

This is how you write news so that everyone is innocent, but Arab (Christian and Muslims) are always the terrorist, intolerant, violent, bloodily people!!

Are these Israelis terrorist? By all known definitions of terrorism, Yes.

Is Judaism a violent, intolerant religion? I guess not.

Then why do you blame Arab and Muslims when they call such Israelis as terrorist, and the Arabs are immediately called anti-Semitic. But when the world calls Arab and Muslims terrorist, it is ok and we should accept it?