By Qassam Muaddi October 9, 2024

A year ago, Palestinians began to experience new levels of their
ongoing catastrophe, the Nakba, which started 76 years ago. In
response to the attack that killed roughly 1,200 Israelis and caused a
major embarrassment to the Israeli army and intelligence, Israel
unleashed an extermination campaign on Gaza, leveling entire
residential blocks, destroying education and health institutions,
eliminating the basic infrastructure needed to sustain a society, and
burying entire families under the rubble. In the West Bank, Israeli
settlers set out to forcibly expel Palestinian rural communities and
steal the lands of Palestinian towns and villages. The Israeli army
ramped up its spree of raids on refugee camps, destroying their
infrastructure, and systematically forcing inhabitants to live in a
situation similar to the one lived in Gaza.

I have lived in Palestine almost all my life. The Nakba has always
been part of my consciousness. Its continuity has been my reality.
However, there are particular dimensions to the experience of living
the Nakba that I had never known, except in the memories of those who
lived in its early years. My father, who grew up in the 1950s and
1960s, always struggles to contain his tears when he describes the
refugee families, expelled from West Jerusalem, Lydd, Ramleh, and
their surrounding villages, and how they were still sleeping in
stables and caves in our hometown in the late 1950s because all the
houses were taken. He would describe how they had lost all their
possessions and were forced into underpaid labor in the fields to
sustain themselves, how some of their children had bare floors for
beds, and how they had gradually started to become part of the town’s
social fabric. Some of them, with peasant origins, took their sick
children to the church in our Christian town and, despite being
Muslims, had them baptized out of simple religiosity, imploring the
Virgin, the saints, and the prophet Muhammad to heal them because they
couldn’t afford medical care.

The fresh face of the Nakba

When he was 17, my father and his friends were guarding the town’s
entrance with sticks during the 1967 war. A Jordanian officer stopped
to ask for a cup of water from his car on his way out of the town and
told them: “Go home boys, the country is lost.” Every time he tells
this story, my father shakes as he weeps. His voice trembles and his
eyes take a devastating look of deep sorrow, as if he had just
witnessed his entire world crumble before his eyes. He had grown up
listening to refugees telling the terrifying stories of Zionist
massacres in Qibya, Deir Yassin, and Dawaymeh, and watched them live
through the humiliation and misery of being homeless, gradually losing
every hope of going back to their homes. My father and his entire
generation felt, during the Arab defeat of 1967, that their turn had
come and that their entire world, their memories, their traditions,
their life in their town, their future dreams, all crumbled before
their eyes. That aspect of experiencing the Nakba first-hand is
something I didn’t know until last year.

On October 12, 2023, I decided not to work from home, despite the
Israeli checkpoints and settlers blocking or threatening roads all
around us. I stayed in Ramallah until late in the night, refusing to
give up the slight piece of “normality” I had in my everyday life. But
the roads were completely closed after settlers attacked Palestinian
cars, and I was forced to stay that night away from home. Then, at
around midnight, in a popular cafe in Ramallah, the fresh face of the
renewed Nakba, which Palestinians in Gaza were already reliving,
looked at me through my phone screen. A friend sent me video footage
of my town’s streets, a few minutes prior, where tractors loaded with
mattresses and furniture were rolling down the road. Israeli settlers
had just expelled 40 Palestinian Bedouin families from their community
in Wadi Siq, 10 minutes away from our town. They had lost their
grazing lands, their homes, and part of their livestock, and were
looking for an empty lot of land to stay the night.

As I watched, terrified, I received another message from a colleague
who thought I was at home, telling me not to go out because settlers
had shot at a Palestinian car two hours earlier on the road to
Ramallah, the same road I take every day just 10 minutes away from
town in the opposite direction. A Palestinian family from the
neighboring town was in the car returning from a family dinner. The
mother was wounded, and her 17-year-old son, whom I had known as a
child, was killed.

I could hear the voice of that officer whispering in my ear from 56
years away: “Go home, boy, the country is lost.”

My voice trembled, and my eyes were suddenly taken by a deep,
devastating sorrow, as I could picture my entire world crumbling. My
tears blurred my phone screen.

Denial of humanity

Three days earlier, on October 9, Israel’s war minister, Yoav Gallant,
announced to the entire world what his state was going to do to the
people of Gaza. “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza; there will
be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel,” Gallant said, and then
concluded with one of the most honest expressions by an Israeli leader
ever: “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”

Gallant didn’t say that his siege targeted only Hamas, nor did it. The
siege he announced and that his army continues to impose includes two
million Palestinians, half of whom are children. Israel had just told
the entire world, unchecked, that it sees all Palestinians in Gaza as
less than humans, closer to animals. And since there is no essential,
intrinsic difference between any Palestinian in Gaza and any
Palestinian anywhere else, that declaration includes all of us,
Palestinians; the 14 million of us around the world. The ‘radicals’
among us and the ‘moderate’. The political and less political ones.
The young and the old, men and women, Christians and Muslims, and even
those who collaborate with Israel. It is an entire nation that was
excluded from the human race, officially, by a key minister of a state
who is a key ally of the world’s only superpower.

What followed was the wiping out of the entire material components of
Gaza’s civilization, and the physical elimination of 2 to 3 percent of
its population by Israel. The siege that Gallant announced provoked
the spread of starvation and disease in the Gaza Strip. But this
racist, criminal logic has been doubled down by the leaders of the
majority of Western countries. As the U.S. president and his secretary
of state continue to insist that they are trying their best to reach a
ceasefire, the U.S. administration continues to provide arms and
political support to Israel. According to a recent report by Brown
University’s ‘Costs of War’ project, the U.S. has provided 17.9
billion dollars worth of military assistance to Israel since October
7, more than in any year since the U.S. began to grant military
assistance to Israel. It has also been the year in which Israel has
killed more Palestinians than in any other year since Israel’s
foundation.

Palestine at the heart of a new world

With every school bombed, with every hospital destroyed, with every
family expelled from its home, the leaders of the Western world,
especially the U.S., have been telling us straight in the face that we
are human animals. That our lives aren’t worth anything. That our
existence is undesired. However, this has also been a year of
Palestinian steadfastness, and of global solidarity with our people.
After a year of genocide, 18 years of blockade on Gaza, 56 years of
occupation, and 76 years of Nakba and ethnic cleansing, Gaza is not
dead. Its social cohesion still stands. The resolve of its people to
start life from scratch has proven time and time again, after every
Israeli withdrawal from any destroyed neighborhood, to be unbroken. In
the West Bank, in Jerusalem, and everywhere else on our land,
Palestinians continue to live and recreate life every single day,
without having submitted. It has been a year of resilience and
perseverance. Something that only humans, on the highest levels of
humanity, can do.

“The country is ours,” my father and his friends replied to that
defeated officer in 1967. “We won’t leave.”

57 years later, as I watched the Nakba renewed on my phone screen and
the voice of that officer whispered in my ear, my father’s young voice
sounded in my other ear: “We won’t leave.”

That voice, also coming from the rubble of Gaza and its tent camps has
grown over the past year. It has been amplified by the millions of
citizens in the streets of all major cities around the world against
the deafening silence of their governments. They are all replying to
all those who continue to deny our humanity.

We won’t leave our land, and we won’t leave history because neither
history nor geography would make any sense without us.

We, the “human animals,” gave the world Christianity and with it, the
values of compassion, justice, and human fraternity upon which all
modern humanist philosophies were built. We are part of the Arab and
Muslim civilizations that gave humanity mathematics, chemistry, and
modern medicine. We, the “human animals” gave the Western imagination
the names of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and continue to give
these names, through our resilience, the life that makes them more
than mere names in the Western imagination.

On 10/10/24 13:24, NefeshBarYochai wrote:
> By Qassam Muaddi October 9, 2024
> A year ago, Palestinians began to experience new levels of their
> ongoing catastrophe, the Nakba, which started 76 years ago. In
> response to the attack that killed roughly 1,200 Israelis and caused a
> major embarrassment to the Israeli army and intelligence, Israel
> unleashed an extermination campaign on Gaza, leveling entire
> residential blocks, destroying education and health institutions,
> eliminating the basic infrastructure needed to sustain a society, and
> burying entire families under the rubble.
>
Quite stupid of the Palestinians to refuse the offer of their own
country in 1947.
Even stupider, refusing the offer arranged by POTUS Clinton in 2000.

And now, to top all stupidity, start a war by massacring over 1,200
and kidnapping over 200 in Oct. 2023 on an important Jewish Holiday.
Lay down your weapons and release the hostages.

On 10/10/24 13:24, NefeshBarYochai wrote:
> By Qassam Muaddi October 9, 2024
>
> A year ago, Palestinians began to experience new levels of their
> ongoing catastrophe, the Nakba, which started 76 years ago. In
> response to the attack that killed roughly 1,200 Israelis and caused a
> major embarrassment to the Israeli army and intelligence, Israel
> unleashed an extermination campaign on Gaza, leveling entire
> residential blocks, destroying education and health institutions,
> eliminating the basic infrastructure needed to sustain a society, and
> burying entire families under the rubble.

Hey Qassam, do you agree it was a crime to not accept in 2000?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit#:~:text=The%20proposal%20demanded%20any%20territory,narrow%20strip%20of%20Israeli%20land.

"Clinton's initiative led to the Taba negotiations in January 2001,
where the two sides published a statement saying they had never been
closer to agreement

Clinton blamed Arafat after the failure of the talks, stating, "I regret
that in 2000 Arafat missed the opportunity to bring that nation into
being and pray for the day when the dreams of the Palestinian people for
a state and a better life will be realized in a just and lasting peace."
The failure to come to an agreement was widely attributed to Yasser
Arafat, as he walked away from the table without making a concrete
counter-offer and because Arafat did little to quell the series of
Palestinian riots that began shortly after the summit.[56][57][58]
Arafat was also accused of scuttling the talks by Nabil Amr, a former
minister in the Palestinian Authority.[59] In My Life, Clinton wrote
that Arafat once complimented Clinton by telling him, "You are a great
man." Clinton responded, "I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you
made me one."[60]

Ross also quoted Saudi Prince Bandar as saying while negotiations were
taking place: "If Arafat does not accept what is available now, it won't
be a tragedy; it will be a crime."[62]

On Thu, 10 Oct 2024 15:21:52 -0700, a425couple
<a425couple@hotmail.com> wrote:

>On 10/10/24 13:24, NefeshBarYochai wrote:
>> By Qassam Muaddi October 9, 2024
>> A year ago, Palestinians began to experience new levels of their
>> ongoing catastrophe, the Nakba, which started 76 years ago. In
>> response to the attack that killed roughly 1,200 Israelis and caused a
>> major embarrassment to the Israeli army and intelligence, Israel
>> unleashed an extermination campaign on Gaza, leveling entire
>> residential blocks, destroying education and health institutions,
>> eliminating the basic infrastructure needed to sustain a society, and
>> burying entire families under the rubble.
>>
>Quite stupid of the Palestinians to refuse the offer of their own
>country in 1947.

The offer they refused was to give up half of the land they had lived
on for centuries, to Europeans and Americans who had no right to this
place. To sign that away to intruders would have been treason.

>Even stupider, refusing the offer arranged by POTUS Clinton in 2000.

Same reason as just explained above

>
>And now, to top all stupidity, start a war by massacring over 1,200
>and kidnapping over 200 in Oct. 2023 on an important Jewish Holiday.
>Lay down your weapons and release the hostages.

The Zionist didn't like it when those they've imprisoned with an
embargo and a brutal occupation force strike back. True to form, the
Zio-nazis retaliated as the original Nazis did to Warsaw in August
1944.

On 10/10/24 18:05, NefeshBarYochai wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Oct 2024 15:21:52 -0700, a425couple
> <a425couple@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 10/10/24 13:24, NefeshBarYochai wrote:
>>> By Qassam Muaddi October 9, 2024
>>> A year ago, Palestinians began to experience new levels of their
>>> ongoing catastrophe, the Nakba, which started 76 years ago. In
>>> response to the attack that killed roughly 1,200 Israelis and caused a
>>> major embarrassment to the Israeli army and intelligence, Israel
>>> unleashed an extermination campaign on Gaza, leveling entire
>>> residential blocks, destroying education and health institutions,
>>> eliminating the basic infrastructure needed to sustain a society, and
>>> burying entire families under the rubble.
>>>
>> Quite stupid of the Palestinians to refuse the offer of their own
>> country in 1947.
>
> The offer they refused was to give up half of the land they had lived
> on for centuries, to Europeans and Americans who had no right to this
> place. To sign that away to intruders would have been treason.
>
Jewish people had also lived there for thousands of years.
But the Moslems always insisted that they had to be in charge.
Surprise - the Palestinians mad too many serious mistakes
to be left in charge of the whole area.
Split it in half and let them each be in charge of their area.
But fool Palestinians refused to do any compromise.

Seventy six years later, how is that working out for you?

It comes down to a pretty simple question.

Do you trust the knowledge, judgement, and decision making of
leaders like Winston Churchill and Harry Truman (or more recently
on a rare topic that both Don Trump and Joe Biden agree on),
joined by a super majority of the United Nations,

I will go with our leaders who have done the best they knew
how, to shape the world to be better than they found it.

-----------

Both groups, Jews and Palestinians had populations there.
But it was a thinly populated area. Terraces that had been
productive when Jews had the majority, but lost to military
conquest to Muhammad lay mostly neglected.
As many said, "A people without a land, for a land without a people."

But the Palestinians continued to make bad choices.
They picked the wrong side in WWI.
They picked the wrong side in WWII.
They refused to compromise, and refused the UN offer in 1947.
They chose to fight, and even with 5 organized Arab Armies against
the Jewish militia and, surprising all, lost in 1948-49.
They made the bad choice to start a war in 1956.
They made the bad choice to start a was in 1967, and lost much land.
They made the bad choice to start a war in 1973.
They made the bad choice to start a war in 1982.
They made the bad choice to start a war in 2006.
They made the bad choice to refuse what POTUS Carter negotiated.
They made the bad choice to refuse what POTUS Clinton negotiated.
----------

Yes, the Palestinians do deserve a right to a homeland.
They were offered one, just as the Jews were offered one
when the UK gave up it's UN mandate.
The Jews accepted what was offered, even tho it was far
from ideal. They created Israel, and have flourished
and they made the desert bloom.
The Palestinians refused to share, and decided to kill
the Jews rather than share. Surprise! Even with the
Armies of five nations helping the Palestinians,
they failed.

And have been consumed by hatred, and refusal to share
for the last 75 years. Every time the Palestinians
are offered a chance to have their own state and
live in peace, they refuse.

Please read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Partition of Palestine" redirects here. For the partition of Palestine
into Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, see 1949 Armistice
Agreements.
UN General Assembly
Resolution 181 (II)

UNSCOP (3 September 1947; see green line) and UN Ad Hoc Committee (25
November 1947) partition plans. The UN Ad Hoc Committee proposal was
voted on in the resolution.
Date 29 November 1947
Meeting no. 128
Code A/RES/181(II) (Document)
Voting summary
33 voted for
13 voted against
10 abstained
Result Adopted
The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the
United Nations, which recommended a partition of Mandatory Palestine at
the end of the British Mandate. On 29 November 1947, the UN General
Assembly adopted the Plan as Resolution 181 (II).[1]

The resolution recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish
States and a Special International Regime for the city of Jerusalem. The
Partition Plan, a four-part document attached to the resolution,
provided for the termination of the Mandate, the progressive withdrawal
of British armed forces and the delineation of boundaries between the
two States and Jerusalem. Part I of the Plan stipulated that the Mandate
would be terminated as soon as possible and the United Kingdom would
withdraw no later than 1 August 1948. The new states would come into
existence two months after the withdrawal, but no later than 1 October
1948. The Plan sought to address the conflicting objectives and claims
of two competing movements, Palestinian nationalism and Jewish
nationalism, or Zionism.[2][3] The Plan also called for Economic Union
between the proposed states, and for the protection of religious and
minority rights.[4] While Jewish organizations collaborated with UNSCOP
during the deliberations, the Palestinian Arab leadership boycotted it.[5]

The proposed plan is considered to have been pro-Zionist by its
detractors, with 62% of the land allocated to the Jewish state despite
the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish
population.[6] Consequently, the partition plan was accepted by Jewish
Agency for Palestine and most Zionist factions who viewed it as a
stepping stone to territorial expansion at an opportune time.[7][5] The
Arab Higher Committee, the Arab League and other Arab leaders and
governments rejected it on the basis that in addition to the Arabs
forming a two-thirds majority, they owned a majority of the lands.[8][9]
They also indicated an unwillingness to accept any form of territorial
division,[10] arguing that it violated the principles of national
self-determination in the UN Charter which granted people the right to
decide their own destiny.[5][11] They announced their intention to take
all necessary measures to prevent the implementation of the
resolution.[12][13][14][15] Subsequently a civil war broke out in
Palestine[16] and the plan was not implemented.[17]

Background
The British administration was formalized by the League of Nations under
the Palestine Mandate in 1923, as part of the Partitioning of the
Ottoman Empire following World War I. The Mandate reaffirmed the 1917
British commitment to the Balfour Declaration, for the establishment in
Palestine of a "National Home" for the Jewish people, with the
prerogative to carry it out.[18][19] A British census of 1918 estimated
700,000 Arabs and 56,000 Jews.[18]

In 1937, following a six-month-long Arab General Strike and armed
insurrection which aimed to pursue national independence and secure the
country from foreign control, the British established the Peel
Commission.[20] The Commission concluded that the Mandate had become
unworkable, and recommended Partition into an Arab state linked to
Transjordan; a small Jewish state; and a mandatory zone. To address
problems arising from the presence of national minorities in each area,
it suggested a land and population transfer[21] involving the transfer
of some 225,000 Arabs living in the envisaged Jewish state and 1,250
Jews living in a future Arab state, a measure deemed compulsory "in the
last resort".[21][22][23] To address any economic problems, the Plan
proposed avoiding interfering with Jewish immigration, since any
interference would be liable to produce an "economic crisis", most of
Palestine's wealth coming from the Jewish community. To solve the
predicted annual budget deficit of the Arab State and reduction in
public services due to loss of tax from the Jewish state, it was
proposed that the Jewish state pay an annual subsidy to the Arab state
and take on half of the latter's deficit.[21][22][24] The Palestinian
Arab leadership rejected partition as unacceptable, given the inequality
in the proposed population exchange and the transfer of one-third of
Palestine, including most of its best agricultural land, to recent
immigrants.[23] The Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion,
persuaded the Zionist Congress to lend provisional approval to the Peel
recommendations as a basis for further negotiations.[25][26][27][28] In
a letter to his son in October 1937, Ben-Gurion explained that partition
would be a first step to "possession of the land as a
whole".[29][30][31] The same sentiment, that acceptance of partition was
a temporary measure beyond which the Palestine would be "redeemed . . in
its entirety,"[32] was recorded by Ben-Gurion on other occasions, such
as at a meeting of the Jewish Agency executive in June 1938,[33] as well
as by Chaim Weizmann.[31][34]

On Fri, 11 Oct 2024 09:19:28 -0700, a425couple
<a425couple@hotmail.com> wrote:

>On 10/10/24 18:05, NefeshBarYochai wrote:
>> On Thu, 10 Oct 2024 15:21:52 -0700, a425couple
>> <a425couple@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/10/24 13:24, NefeshBarYochai wrote:
>>>> By Qassam Muaddi October 9, 2024
>>>> A year ago, Palestinians began to experience new levels of their
>>>> ongoing catastrophe, the Nakba, which started 76 years ago. In
>>>> response to the attack that killed roughly 1,200 Israelis and caused a
>>>> major embarrassment to the Israeli army and intelligence, Israel
>>>> unleashed an extermination campaign on Gaza, leveling entire
>>>> residential blocks, destroying education and health institutions,
>>>> eliminating the basic infrastructure needed to sustain a society, and
>>>> burying entire families under the rubble.
>>>>
>>> Quite stupid of the Palestinians to refuse the offer of their own
>>> country in 1947.
>>
>> The offer they refused was to give up half of the land they had lived
>> on for centuries, to Europeans and Americans who had no right to this
>> place. To sign that away to intruders would have been treason.
>>
>Jewish people had also lived there for thousands of years.
>But the Moslems always insisted that they had to be in charge.
>Surprise - the Palestinians mad too many serious mistakes
>to be left in charge of the whole area.
>Split it in half and let them each be in charge of their area.
>But fool Palestinians refused to do any compromise.

The problen was never the Jewish people who had indeed lived there for
thousands of years. There could have been a peaceful coexistence
betwee the two peoples in a united Palestine. The issue became the
swarms of Jews who came for Europe and North America and want to claim
that land as their own. The Zionists should have demand a piece of
German land to create their state and leave the Palestinian people
alone.

>
>Seventy six years later, how is that working out for you?

Time will tell

>
>It comes down to a pretty simple question.
>
>Do you trust the knowledge, judgement, and decision making of
>leaders like Winston Churchill and Harry Truman (or more recently
>on a rare topic that both Don Trump and Joe Biden agree on),
>joined by a super majority of the United Nations,
>
>I will go with our leaders who have done the best they knew
>how, to shape the world to be better than they found it.

Your two 'reat leaders' Churchill and Truman are two of history's
worse mass murderes. Truman nuked and Churchill carpetbombed civilian
populations