UNMIA

By Ami Isserhoff Zionism-Israel.com

The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was to have been accompanied by creation of an independent Arab Palestinian state. Instead, a war broke out, and at the end of the war, between 600,000 and 711,000 Arab Palestinians had left their homes and were refugees. The defeat of the Arab Palestinians and the creation of the refugee problem is called the “disaster” (Nakba) by pro-Palestinians, and it is blamed on a supposed Zionist conspiracy to “ethnically cleanse” Palestine, and supposed forced expulsion of the Arabs from their homes.

Nakba: Arab Palestinian Refugees

It cannot be disputed that a large number of Palestinian Arabs were displaced during the Israel war of Independence. Their suffering is real. It cannot be disputed that the Jews (and later the IDF) carried out violent acts, often targeting civilians. The Irgun rolled barrels of explosives out of the backs of trucks in the Old City of Jerusalem and elsewhere, and the Haganah and Irgun attacked villages in various reprisal raids. They did it because the Arabs were terrorizing the Jews, attacking Jewish transportation and murdering people in ambushes. …

Khaled Abu Toameh, award winning Israeli-Arab journalist, will be coming to speak in Santa Fe and Albuquerque .
He will speak at Woodward Hall, room 101 on the main campus of UNM in Albuquerque on Monday, April 7 from 6:00 pm -7:30 pm.

Khaled Abu Toameh will speak in Santa Fe at the St. Francis Auditorium from 3 - 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 6. The St. Francis Auditorium is located at 107 West Palace Avenue in Santa Fe.

Both events are free to the public.

Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST
March 25, 2008

Moshav Tzipori, in the Lower Galilee, is a microcosm of the history of the Land of Israel. A regional capital under King Herod, Tzipori was the seat of Jewish learning and the preservation of the Torah through some of the most tumultuous periods of Jewish history.

After the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, refugees from Jerusalem fled to the Galilean town. Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi, who presided over the writing of the Mishna, or oral law, moved to Tzipori from Beit Shearim, and it was there that he codified the six books of the Mishna and died.

The Jews of Tzipori revolted against the Roman Emperor Constantine, refusing to accept Christianity and the city was destroyed. The Jews later returned during the Islamic period. On and off, for the next millennia, Jews settled, were forcibly removed and resettled the city several times under various conquerors of Israel.

During the 1948 War of Independence, the ancient city was the site of a major battle between the new Israel Defense Force and the neighboring Arab villages assisted by invading forces from Syria and Lebanon. The Arabs were routed. In …

by Ido Zelkovitz
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2008, pp. 19-26
http://www.meforum.org/article/1874

Many U.S. and European diplomats contrast Fatah’s Palestinian nationalism with Hamas’s Islamism. At a November 28, 2007 press conference, U.S. national security advisor Stephen Hadley praised Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and cited President George W. Bush’s argument that “Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda [are] different faces of the same evil: a radical ideology seeking to impose its world-view throughout the Middle East and beyond.”[1] But, while Fatah, the core of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), may have its roots in the revolutionary, secular-oriented ideologies of the 1960s and 1970s,[2] Islamist discourse is also integral to the movement.[3] Indeed, even as Western diplomats seek to bolster Fatah’s Abbas as an alternative to Hamas, they underestimate the degree to which Palestinian nationalism now intertwines itself with Islam.[4] Since the 2000 Palestinian uprising, Fatah has fused national and religious symbols in order to use Islam as an instrument of mobilization.[5]
Fatah Imagery in the Twentieth Century

In the 1970s, Fatah graphic art promoted the culture of armed struggle which was at the heart of Fatah’s ideology. (See Figure 1.) This enabled Fatah to mobilize the masses in the absence of a solid ideology among the divided and …