(Video: guardian.co.uk)
Neve Gordon writes in The Guardian about arriving in the Bedouin village of al-Arakib as Israeli bulldozers finish razing it to the ground:
The signs of destruction were immediately evident. I first noticed the chickens and geese running loose near a bulldozed house, and then saw another house and then another one, all of them in rubble. A few children were trying to find a shaded spot to hide from the scorching desert sun, while behind them a stream of black smoke rose from the burning hay. The sheep, goats and the cattle were nowhere to be seen – perhaps because the police had confiscated them.
Scores of Bedouin men were standing on a yellow hill, sharing their experiences from the early morning hours, while all around them uprooted olive trees lay on the ground. A whole village comprising between 40 and 45 houses had been completely razed in less than three hours.
I suddenly experienced deja vu: an image of myself walking in the rubbles of a destroyed village somewhere on the outskirts of the Lebanese city of Sidon emerged. It was over 25 years ago, during my service in the Israeli paratroopers. But in Lebanon the residents had all fled long before my platoon came, and we simply walked in the debris. There was something surreal about the experience, which prevented me from fully understanding its significance for several years. At the time, it felt like I was walking on the moon.
This time the impact of the destruction sank in immediately. Perhaps because the 300 people who resided in al-Arakib, including their children, were sitting in the rubble when I arrived, and their anguish was evident; or perhaps because the village is located only 10 minutes from my home in Be'er Sheva and I drive past it every time I go to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem; or perhaps because the Bedouins are Israeli citizens, and I suddenly understood how far the state is ready to go to accomplish its objective of Judaising the Negev region; what I witnessed was, after all, an act of ethnic cleansing.
1 alec July 28, 2010 at 7:33 pm
I can’t believe my eyes. Black clad storm troopers driving people from their homes and bulldozing them.
To be honest, outside of Star Wars what this most looks like is WWII footage I’ve seen from the Eastern Front.
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. 2 MRW July 29, 2010 at 7:13 am
Heartbreakingly criminal and horrifying.
Criminal pigs do this. Cochons.
How anyone can justify this is in 2010 as an acceptable Jewish thing to do is staggering to me. That any American Jewish group can go along with this is a disgrace and a shame. Look at those children’s eyes losing their home. The IDF bulldozed their houses? For what? Zionism? Because of the Holocaust 65 years ago? Because they’ve got their hate on for The Other?
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. 3 eljay July 29, 2010 at 7:21 am
>> The IDF bulldozed their houses? For what? Zionism? Because of the Holocaust 65 years ago? Because they’ve got their hate on for The Other?
Nuances. “Generation to generation” fear. Lack of hugs. Destabilizing narratives. Self self-determination. Maximalism. Tiny blue dot in a sea of green. A covenant with gawd. No “better arguments”. Remember the Holocaust!
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. 4 Mooser July 29, 2010 at 9:59 am
It was a photograph something like the scene displayed on the screen which first made me question Zionism, which before than I had envisioned as something like Jewish back-to-the-land-hippies.
I can still see the photograph in my head.
That’s when I realised there was no magic Jewish way to get a country which wasn’t yours, you had to do it the old-fashioned way, you had to steal it.
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. 5 Mooser July 29, 2010 at 10:00 am
That was a photo from the 67 war or just after.
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. 6 Mythbuster July 29, 2010 at 11:09 am
You don’t really need to steal a Western inclusive democracy anymore. You can just declare it. But then you need to have a State of All Your Citizens. And that sucks if you are an Ethnic Supremacist.
The stealing is required in this case because G od “gave” the land to the mythological patriarchs before he asked the Palestinians to move.
I love ribbing fundies with this paradox: If God is love, then why didn’t he arrive with Uhauls and a map to the Palestinians own land of Milk and Honey? I mean if having Jews in the Holy Land is necessary for God’s Divine Plan, then is offering a relocation bonus to the natives too much to ask?
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. 7 potsherd July 28, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Volvo.
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. 8 annie July 28, 2010 at 8:09 pm
that is exactly what i logged in to say
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. 9 hayate July 28, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Volvo?
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. 10 potsherd July 28, 2010 at 8:56 pm
The bulldozer shown knocking down the home is a Volvo. The logo on the front is bright and visible.
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. 11 Antidote July 28, 2010 at 9:18 pm
yes, the bulldozer is a Volvo. So? I don’t get it either
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. 12 hayate July 28, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Thanks, potsherd.
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. 13 Taxi July 29, 2010 at 12:10 am
Means boycott Volvo (AND Caterpillar).
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. 14 Citizen July 29, 2010 at 7:56 am
Both. The dozer itself said CAT, while the plow apparatus said VOLVO?
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. 15 potsherd July 29, 2010 at 8:56 am
Means at least writing Volvo to demand they explain themselves.
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. 16 Mooser July 29, 2010 at 10:02 am
That’s right. Volvo is a big manufacturer. Caterpillar we know deals direct with Israel. The Volvo stuff may have come from anywhere. Used? Or, it may not.
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. 17 azythos July 28, 2010 at 8:02 pm
“the Bedouins are Israeli citizens”
This is for the Zionist “one state proposal”. Make no mistake.
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. 18 RoHa July 28, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Arab citizens of Israel have full equality and human rights and they can build houses in Jerusalem and eat cherry tomatoes and are not discriminated against at all and anyone who say otherwise is an anti-Semite.
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. 19 lobewyper July 28, 2010 at 8:55 pm
Thanks for this. for a moment there, I was starting to wonder if Israeli society was a real, honest-to-goodness democracy…
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. 20 RoHa July 28, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Of course it is. It is the only democracy in the Middle East and has sexy beach girls.
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. 21 Mythbuster July 29, 2010 at 11:10 am
Intermarriage is helping with that.
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. 22 hayate July 28, 2010 at 8:44 pm
I think it’s obvious the israeli society is a thoroughly criminal society.
ILA razes dozens of homes in unrecognized Beduin village
Residents of an unrecognized Beduin village in the Negev on Tuesday vowed to rebuild their homes, hours after they were demolished by the Israel Lands Administration.
Kafr al-Arakib resident Awar Abu Farich, 48, said that hundreds of police officers began surrounding the village at 2:30 a.m., and began to move in and evict residents around 5 a.m.
Police used excessive force in evicting the residents from the dozens of structures slated for demolition, Abu Farich said.
“We will build our houses again and we will never leave. Our dream was to have a respected, recognized home, but the authorities won’t let us become official,” he said.
Abu Farich said that his family and many others in the village had lived there since before the founding of the state. He added that like many others in the village, he owned a house in the nearby Beduin city of Rahat, which he said he built so his children could attend school there.
The Gush Shalom NGO called the demolitions “an act of war” and said they left over 300 people, more than 200 of them children, homeless.
The organization took issue with the contention that the residents had no valid claim to the land, saying, “Residents of al- Arakib are neither squatters nor invaders: Their village existed many years before the creation of Israel in 1948. Residents were evicted by the state in 1951, but returned to the land on which they live and which they cultivate.”
Southern District police denied that they used excessive force, and added that they deployed nearly 1,300 officers to secure the demolitions and deter the use of violence by locals and protesters from outside the village.
“There wasn’t any excessive force. Police used as little force as possible and tried to use other means,” a spokeswoman for the Southern District police said. “The scene was relatively quiet and the use of force was proportionate and reasonable. Most of the people understood that it was not in their interest to use violence [against the officers].”
Six people were arrested during the demolitions.
Rahat Mayor Sheikh Faiz Abu Seheban called the demolitions “a dangerous precedent” that could lead to a serious degradation in relations between Beduin and the state.
“Today, the state took steps that caused serious harm to relations with its Beduin citizens,” Abu Seheban told The Jerusalem Post. “Destruction is not a solution; it will lead to the destruction of relations between Beduin and the state.”
Abu Seheban said there is great anger in Rahat over the demolitions and that the town will host a mass prayer session on Friday that will include Arab leaders from across the country as well as prominent left-wing activists.
The Israel Lands Administration issued a statement on Tuesday saying the demolitions came after “a legal and physical struggle that stretched over many years.”
Eleven cinderblock buildings and 34 made of tin were demolished, the ILA said.
Some 850 trees were removed and will be replanted elsewhere. The ILA said the uprooted trees had been planted by residents to strengthen their claim to the illegal settlement.
In the statement, the ILA said that residents first “invaded” the area in 1998, were soon evicted, and returned a year later.
The ILA said residents had been asked to rent the land for agricultural purposes for NIS 2 per dunam (0.1 hectare), but “they refused to pay and continued to infiltrate the land year after year.”
After an eviction notice was issued in 2003, the residents filed a petition that made its way to the High Court of Justice.
While the petition was being heard, the residents “continued to infiltrate and squat on state-owned land, and in fact expanded their infiltration through constructing illegal and unproved buildings, crudely trampling on the law,” the ILA said.
In 2007, the Beersheba Magistrates’s Court dismissed residents’ request for a delay in implementation of the eviction orders and ruled that residents were “infiltrators repeatedly seizing state land after being evicted.”
There are tens of thousands of illegal structures in Beduin communities in the country, and several thousand more are built each year; far more than the number the state manages to demolish. Many of these settlements lack basic services, with residents living “off the grid” and not paying municipal taxes.
Attention: The poster known as oolie is kudzu.
The poster named eatshitanddiebitch! is the goat-fucking American Terrorist
The new poster named Hawkin is the Pakistani pedophile Discero-s
All the illegal structures erected by infiltrating Bedouins should be destroyed. Israel is not the Arab desert. One cannot just see land, and start building his huts and tents there. Bedouins should start working, and purchasing land, if they can at all. Israel is a small country, and people should not live in huts, and fuck their livestock in public. People in Israel live in buildings, in apartments and flats.
Only the filthy Koranic toilet paper can view this as ethnic cleansing, while at the same time forgetting the true ethnic cleansing in the Muslim world, especially of the Christian Assyrians in Iraq, Christians in Pakistan, and in other places. Heard of Darfur? Heard of Sudan?
The greatest ethnic cleansing occurring in the Middle East in the last 1000 years is that of the Christian population, including the genocide of the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians, in which about 2,000,000 Christians lost their life.
Attention: The poster known as oolie is kudzu.
The poster named eatshitanddiebitch! is the goat-fucking American Terrorist
The new poster named Hawkin is the Pakistani pedophile Discero-s
The greatest ethnic cleansing occurring in the Middle East in the last 1000 years is that of the Christian population, including the genocide of the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians, in which about 2,000,000 Christians lost their life.
Not so, the greatest/earliest ethnic cleansing occurred in or pre biblical records when ex-slaves from Egypt - called themselves Heebs - ran away with stolen gold - which was caste into a Golden Calf - then proceeded into the land of Canaan , like savage marauding barbarians , slaughtered + nigh exterminated the indigenous Canaanites and stole their land.
All that is said to have occurred , some millenia before Jesus /Christianity or Islam .
Not so, the greatest/earliest ethnic cleansing occurred in or pre biblical records when ex-slaves from Egypt - called themselves Heebs - ran away with stolen gold - which was caste into a Golden Calf - then proceeded into the land of Canaan , like savage marauding barbarians , slaughtered + nigh exterminated the indigenous Canaanites and stole their land.
All that is said to have occurred , some millenia before Jesus /Christianity or Islam .
That is yr history lesson in a nutshell.
A
From a Christian point of view, those atrocities were God's will, and you cannot blame the Hebrews for what they did. Do you doubt the Lord's will?
Attention: The poster known as oolie is kudzu.
The poster named eatshitanddiebitch! is the goat-fucking American Terrorist
The new poster named Hawkin is the Pakistani pedophile Discero-s
From a Christian point of view, those atrocities were God's will, and you cannot blame the Hebrews for what they did. Do you doubt the Lord's will?
Of course it was Gods will, the same God that says only Jews are human beings....you're still a dog fucking asshole Jew...
Please take note of the Talmudic reference also..
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