Last night, I finally started reading From Haven to Conquest and finished Ilene Beatty’s “The Land of Canaan”, the first reading in the book.
I learnt a lot from reading Beatty’s article. It may be too late to change the ‘facts on the ground’ in Palestine. At least, though, when I think about the conflict, whether for discussion or just to mull over, for my own sanity I now have a better idea of the history of the region. Below is a post by blogger Umkahlil quoting Beatty on the many peoples who visited and who for some time ruled over that piece of land and its original inhabitants.
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Beginning of quote [some formatting added for easier reading & updated as of 1948 with data from the 2005 edition]:
Lords of Palestine
I do not know why I am copying this timeline of “Rulers of Palestine” here other than that it is a refutation of Zionist mythology that Jews are indigenous to Palestine and have a perfect right to expel the real indigenous population, the Palestinians, the amalgamation of everyone who has been through the region, eighty-five percent of whom were ethnically cleansed preceding and during 1948. Why Palestinians should constantly have to refute Zionist misinformation and disinformation was the subject of a wonderful article for which I am awaiting permission to reprint here. Basically, the author said that she didn’t identify as Jewish anymore because she was ashamed of the ongoing ethnicide done in the name of the Jews. She also took to task the author of a long article which painstakingly refuted a letter filled with Zionist disinformation to the British Medical Journal Online. She said that she was tired always having to refute information which even Israeli historians had refuted, and she stated that she refused to do it anymore. I couldn’t agree with her more.
I also read today the write-ups of a dinner which had at its theme, Stand Up For Israel. There, the ambassador to the US from Israel assured Tom DeLay that Israel stood by him and Joseph Lieberman quoted Herzl. So, here is my chart, my way of countering the Zionist misinformation about being indigenous to Palestine and coming back to the place to which they’re indigenous. Not that anyone minds that Jews want to live in Palestine, but why didn’t those who wished to live there just come and buy a house and live peacefully with the people already there. Why the ethnic cleansing? Why the horrible ecocide and changing of a once beautiful landscape? Why the concern about demographics and maintaining Jewish supremacy? Why the vilification of the indigenous population to the extreme of saying that there is no such thing as a Palestinian, that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land?
My educated friend from Canada was shocked when I loaned her my copy of Walid Khalidi’s Before Their Diaspora. She really bought into the lie or was most likely brainwashed that there were no people living in Palestine before the Zionists arrived. The following is taken from Ilene Beatty’s “The Land of Canaan,” which is in From Haven to Conquest, edited by Walid Khalidi.
Rulers of Palestine – Date of Rule (Length of Rule) – Years B.C.
Hopefully this will keep those arguments and debates going a little bit longer. – LINK [End of quote]
Lawrence of Cyberia has posted some wonderful (and heart-wrenching) pictures of the region here.
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