Every clipping in this archive printed between 1970 and 1979: 102 of them, oldest first, as plain text that can be read, searched and quoted without running any code. Each entry links to its own record, where the scan is.
· The News
Arab Refugees
Harry Golden, “Only In America”
“I think it incumbent upon the objective reporter to present points of view before drawing moral conclusions, which I am not going to draw today… They remain a static problem for a variety of reasons, one of which I have discussed, Israeli intransigence… For 20 years newsmen from the world have traversed these dirt streets taking pictures and interviewing the inhabitants and they haven’t offered any compelling ideas on the subject either.”
The longer of two printings of the same syndicated column. Golden walks a camp on the Bethlehem hills with an Israeli escort, quotes an Israeli captain and an Israeli major, and announces that drawing moral conclusions is not the objective reporter’s job. Not one refugee speaks. He then names the failure of his own trade, four paragraphs from the end.
Black Panthers Hit Jews, Zionism and Racism as Same
Party Decline Charged in Diatribe; Assails “Zionist” Judges in US
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, San Francisco
“SAN FRANCISCO — (JTA) — The Black Panthers have discarded their barely concealed anti-Semitism, insisting in the past they were not against Jews but only against Zionism, and have now declared that Jewishness, Zionism and racism are identical. Connie Matthews, international co-ordinator of the Black Panther Party, now blames dwindling support for the organization since it ‘took its stand on the (support of) the Palestinian people’s struggle’ on the ‘fact’ that the ‘white left in the USA is comprised of a large percentage of the Jewish population.’ Miss Matthews observes that since the BPP’s stand the white left ‘started floundering and became undecided. This leaves us with no alternative than to believe that a large portion of these people are Zionists and are therefore racists.’ This venomous diatribe by Miss Matthews appears in the latest issue of the BPP official organ, The Black Panther. As evidence of the basic Jewish-Zionist-racist character of the white left, she notes that a ‘Zionist judge, Judge (Julius J.) Hoffman’ allowed ‘Zionist’ defendants in the ‘Chicago conspiracy’ trial to go free while jailing Bobby Seale to four years for contempt of court… The BPP official reiterates the organization’s support of the Palestinian people’s struggle ‘against Israeli imperialism and Zionism aided and abetted by U.S. imperialism,’ and declares: ‘The one-eyed bandit from Tel Aviv (General) Moshe Dayan must be hunted down and killed.’ Miss Matthews does not elaborate further on this… What Miss Matthews did not state was that only two of the remaining seven defendants — Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin — were Jewish.”
A news agency for the Jewish press, reporting one official’s article in one issue of one party paper, and checking her arithmetic in the last paragraph. The piece carries plain antisemitism: the claim that judges ruled as Zionists, and a call to kill a named man. It is here because the standard account of the 1975 resolution says the Soviet Union invented the formula, and this is an American paper watching the same words move through American politics five years earlier.
“The Palestinian revolution has officially adopted the creation of a democratic, none-sectarian Palestine, where Christian, Jews and Moslems can live, work and worship without discrimination, as the ultimate objective of it’s liberation struggle. Establishment of a progressive open society for all the Palestinians is the only humanitarian and permanent solution to the problem. It certainly is superior to ‘throwing the Arabs to the desert’ or ‘throwing the Jews in the sea.’… The Palestinians have out grown their bitterness and prejudice in a relatively short time through armed struggle. A few years ago, discussing this proposal would have been considered as a complete ‘sell out’ or high treason… Annihilation of the Jews or the Palestinian exiles and the creation of an exclusive racist state in Palestine, be it Jewish, Christian or Moslem, is totally unacceptable, unworkable, and cannot last. The oppressed Palestine masses will fight and make all needed sacrifices to demolish the oppressor. The Israelis are greatly irritated by the idea of a democratic Palestine; it reveals the contradictions of Zionism. The adoption, by several significant progressive Jews of the new goal, scares world Zionism. The Zionists are stepping up their campaign to discredit the idea, especially among the Jews. Their effort has been in vain; the force of logic and the effect of years of presecution are opening the eyes of Jews and others in the world to the only permanent solution that will bring lasting peace and justice to Palestine.”
A reader’s letter, printed in full. Its spelling is the letter’s own throughout. This Samir Salameh is not the painter of the same name, and not the Samir Salameh who appears in the archive in 1996 as a bombing suspect’s brother; four different men of that name run through this material and none of them are linked here. Earliest record in the archive from 1970.
“An Egyptian leftist in Paris had referred me to Ghrassan Kanafani, editor of the Popular Front’s ‘Al Hadaf’ magazine and who is Dr. Habash’s representative in Beirut. He is a charming young man who has written several novels based on the Palestinian plight, and is generally regarded as an intellectual hero of the Palestinian revolution. His office looked like a political campaign headquarters. In one corner he had a pile of captured Israeli bombs, and in another the seat taken from the American Embassy in Amman. Walls were papered with posters of Dr. Habash, flanked by others of Lenin and Che Guevara, and there were photos of alleged Israeli brutality in the occupied West Bank, slogans for the liberation of Palestine, and a detailed street map of Jerusalem. While we spoke, Leila Khalad, the skyjacker who spent some time in a London jail, was typing herself into a frenzy in an outer office. I asked Mr. Kanafani to describe the Popular Front’s ultimate goal for Palestine, and he outlined a secular, democratic binational state in which Jews and Arabs would live together as brothers — ‘after we have driven out the Zionists’… Shortly, a man with very proper deportment, accompanied by a woman journalist, walked in and introduced himself as Bonn’s representative in Beirut… began by admiring Mr. Kanafani’s toys. He oh-ho’ed the American Embassy seal, and then started bouncing one of the Israeli bombs in his hands. ‘What have we here?’ he chuckled. ‘I would advise you to be careful — that bomb is live,’ Mr. Kanafani exhorted, looking up from a letter with icy nonconcern. The German looked abashed and gently replaced the bomb to its corner… ‘You know,’ the diplomat said, ‘some people are calling you barbarians and criminals, and surely you don’t want that.’ Mr. Kanafani exploded: ‘You dare to speak to me of our “crimes.” How long will these Zionist agents of imperialism commit crimes against our people? Where is the truth about these new Nazis, these murderers who do worse things to Arabs than were ever done to Jews? We are the Jews, we are the ones being butchered. Moshe Dayan is far worse than Hitler — and the only thing keeping him from exterminating all the Arabs under his rule now is that he lacks the technical means.’… ‘There are no Palestinians on the West Bank,’ he asserted, ‘only so many Quislings. The Palestinians are all in prison, or here with us, fighting for the liberation of our homeland.’ Those practicing law in Ramallah or operating a business in East Jerusalem, for example, evidently have no right to call themselves Palestinians, in the guerrillas’ view.”
“GHASSAN KANAFANI — Writer and editor”
Twenty-one months before he was killed, and this paper’s caption under his photograph reads Writer and editor. It is also the clipping in which he is hardest to defend: he compares Moshe Dayan to Hitler, and he tells the reporter that the million Palestinians living on the West Bank are Quislings and not Palestinians at all. The reporter puts the million back in. Both stay.
“‘Let us agree,’ he said seriously, ‘that the refugees constitute a terrible human problem… Israel is not going to solve the problem because of its moral implications…’ Since the one chance to disagree had been forthwith subtracted from the dialogue, I listened… The Arab refugees are now into their third generation. No one has come up with an alternative.”
The shorter printing, and it ends on a sentence that opens a paragraph in the longer one. Four paragraphs are missing from the bottom: the one naming Israeli intransigence, the one describing returning refugees as “300,000 potential enemies” whose homes had been razed for highways and kibbutzim, and the two closing paragraphs in which Golden says twenty years of visiting newsmen had produced nothing. The paper cut from the bottom, which is how columns are cut. The paragraphs nearest the bottom were the ones assigning responsibility.
“JEBELIYE REFUGEE CAMP, Occupied Gaza Strip — The young boys crowded around the truck loaded with watermelons, dickering with the seller over the price and blocking all other traffic along the main street of Jebeliye’s market. Groups of men sat in open-air cafes over long-finished glasses of coffee, shielded from the sun by corrugated tin roofs held in place by large stones. Others shopped, along with a handful of women dressed in the traditional peasant garb of Palestine. The otherwise peaceful scene was briefly interrupted by three armed Israeli soldiers walking slowly down a side road, Uzi submachine guns ready for use. The youths walked several yards apart—protection if a grenade is tossed—and one of them turned to give a warning stare at a group of boys when a pebble was thrown. Then the soldiers walked on, and the men in the cafes resumed their talk, the women their investigations of fruits and vegetables. But when dusk comes, the scene is far different… Even within the camps’ mud shacks, many refugees are not safe. Almost 70 murders were committed in Gaza in the first six months of 1971, about half of them in Jebeliye. Some are committed with automatic weapons, others with knives. Often women are beaten to death—perhaps because their husbands ‘collaborated’ with the Israelis, perhaps during an attempted rape… And though many Arabs acknowledge that some of the murders are personally motivated, few are willing to accept the Israeli verdict that most of them are unconnected with politics.”
The same Copley dispatch the Jonesboro Sun ran three days later, under a different headline. This version opens on boys buying watermelons and keeps the paragraph about women beaten to death, and the sentence saying few Arabs accept the Israeli explanation.
“JEBELIYE REFUGEE CAMP, Occupied Gaza Strip — The young boys crowded around the truck loaded with watermelons, dickering with the seller over the price and blocking all other traffic along the main street… At night few residents venture outside their homes. The only ones on the streets — other than armed Arab terrorists — are occasional Israeli vehicular patrols… Even within the camp’s mud shacks, many refugees are not safe. Almost 70 murders were committed in Gaza in the first six months of 1971, about half of them in Jebeliye. The terrorists themselves are not immune to the nightly violence… The murders are not all that unusual, spokesmen for the military government in Gaza insist. Murders are often the outcome of family feuds or a way to avenge the besmirched honor of a wife, daughter or sister. But the pace of the killings has risen sharply… ‘We see these killings as primarily for political reasons,’ one long-term Gazan said. ‘The man is murdered because he is working for the Jews either publicly or secretly and the woman because she refuses to tell the fadayi (guerrillas) where the man is.’ Murder isn’t the only form of guerrilla activity in Gaza, ‘home’ to some 360,000 people, 220,000 of them classified as refugees by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and 163,000 in camps—50,000 in Jebeliye alone. Attacks on Israeli soldiers and the ‘collaborating’ population — such as the 12,000 Gazans who travel each day to Israel to work—also take their toll. Through mid-June authorities recorded nearly 200 incidents — a grenade tossed into a bus loaded with Arab workers or at an Israeli soldier stationed at an intersection. In those daily incidents 37 were killed — six Israelis and 31 Arabs — and well over 300 injured, 80 per cent of them Arabs… Israeli spokesmen admit security forces have never made house-to-house weapons searches in all of Gaza town and the refugee camps. ‘We don’t want to disturb normal life too much,’ one officer said… The Israeli buses that make daily runs to Gaza from Ashkelon and Beersheba have heavy wire mesh over their windows to ward off grenades. Barbed wire has created one-way streets in areas where incidents are common, blocking escape paths… Israeli spokesmen insist little can be done about the frequent murders and that, as Defense Minister Moshe Dayan recently told reporters, the security situation is ‘satisfactory.’”
“STREET near Jebeliye Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip is quiet by day; is often the scene of violence when the sun goes down. Arab guerrilla groups harass refugees.” CNS Photo.
Gaza in 1971, sixteen years before the intifada and seventeen before Hamas. The dateline reads Occupied Gaza Strip. The dead are counted by side — six Israelis and 31 Arabs — and 80% of the injured are Arabs. A map runs beside it with Gaza in Arabic and Hebrew at the top.
Israeli Program Ousts Number of Refugee Families in Gaza Strip
By Richard Eder, New York Times Service, Gaza
“GAZA — In the swarming, bone-white refugee camp of Jabaliya, five mukhtars, or headmen, sit on a bench outside the camp office, asking futile questions and making futile complaints about the bulldozer that is razing houses nearby. An old mukhtar in a black, gold-threaded robe, speaks, pushing out his phrases and letting them hang in the air, tiredly. ‘The Israelis know the guerrillas’ names,’ he said. ‘If they are caught, they are killed or arrested. That is individual punishment. But as for the demolition of our houses and the eviction of our families, that is a collective punishment for which the refugees have no crime or fault.’ The Israelis, without major publicity and without making their ultimate intentions completely clear, are evicting families from the three most crowded camps here, offering them other quarters — mostly in El Arish, south of the Gaza Strip — and bulldozing their houses. More than 1,200 families have been ousted so far and the program continues… It has been like a minor earthquake in Gaza, the quarter-century-old monument to the wretchedness that the conflict of Arabs and Jews has brought to the Middle East… The population has protested without effect. A general strike, like others in the past, fizzled this week after the army sealed 15 striking shops and threatened similar measures against others. The terrorists threw grenades, but the victims were the refugees themselves… Israeli officials are not yet prepared to discuss fully the long-range aspects. They say they are legally justified in moving refugees from Gaza into occupied Egyptian territory in Sinai Peninsula.”
The earliest of the three printings of this dispatch, and the reporter is named here: Richard Eder. Nine days and three papers later the same sentences carry three different headlines — ousts, relocating, bulldozed by Jews. It runs beside a half-price dress shirt advertisement and a revolving charge account.
By Richard Eder, New York Times Service, Gaza Strip
“In the swarming, bone-white refugee camp of Jabaliya, five mukhtars, or headmen, sit on a bench outside the camp office, asking futile questions and making futile complaints about the bulldozer that is razing houses nearby. An old mukhtar in a black, gold-threaded robe speaks, pushing out his phrases and letting them hang in the air, tiredly. ‘The Israelis know the commandos’ names,’ he said. ‘If they are caught, they are killed or arrested. That is individual punishment. But as for the demolition of our houses and the eviction of our families, that is a collective punishment for which the refugees have no crime or fault.’ The Israelis, without major publicity and without making their ultimate intentions completely clear, are evicting families from the three most crowded camps here, offering them other quarters — mostly in El Arish, south of the Gaza Strip — and bulldozing their houses. More than 1,200 families have been ousted so far and the program continues. The immediate purpose is to clear roadways through the camps to permit Israeli patrols to go through in their quest for terrorists… It is the first far-reaching effort to change conditions in the strip, where more than 300,000 Palestinian refugees sit in squalor, frustration and fear that have lasted since 1948, when they fled after Israel was established… The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides food, educational and health services to the refugees, has been studying the situation. It has said nothing publicly, other than to deny that it had agreed to the evictions, but its field officers appear deeply disturbed. The Israelis point to the paralysis and hopelessness, and above all to the terror, that have dominated the camps. Apart from killing five Israeli soldiers and injuring 85 in the last year, members of Palestinian resistance groups have assassinated 135 residents of Gaza and injured more than 500. Fifty-six terrorists have been killed by the Israelis and more than 50 captured… Israeli officials are not yet prepared to discuss fully the long-range aspects. They say they are legally justified in moving refugees from Gaza into occupied Egyptian territory in Sinai Peninsula… The refugees complain about the quarters in El Arish. The Israelis say that they are at least as good as the camp houses and that most — among them flats abandoned by Egyptian officers at the time of the 1967 war — are much better… ‘I would rather eat sand in Gaza than go to El Arish,’ an old man called out. ‘When Jews are arrested in Russia, the world hears about it. Aren’t we human, too?’… ‘These camps seem like hell to me, but I can see that they might seem like paradise to them,’ said a senior Israeli officer. ‘They have lived here 23 years, the UNRWA gives them free food and suddenly we transfer them.’”
The headmen of Jabaliya on a bench outside the camp office while the bulldozer works, and one of them naming the distinction the whole page turns on: individual punishment for the men they want, collective punishment for everyone else. Both sides’ counts are printed in consecutive paragraphs, and the Israeli officer’s explanation is the last word. The word for moving people out of Gaza, in the Israeli officials’ own sentence, is transfer.
· estimated · The Morning Union · Springfield · page 1
Bulldozers in Jabalia
John de St. Jorre, Special to The Union, First of Two Parts
A little over a week ago, at 8 o'clock in the morning, a giant bulldozer nosed its way into Jabalia camp in the Gaza Strip and methodically began to reduce to rubble houses that Palestinian refugees had lived in for almost 20 years. The operation was watched by senior Israeli army officers and protected by an unusual display of force. The occupants of the houses had been warned beforehand but many refused to leave their homes. In order to avoid burying them alive, the Israeli soldiers went into the houses and drove them out with blows from sticks and batons. Within a few days a swath 30 yards wide and 100 yards...
Correction: {'note': 'arrived uncaptioned; it is the second half of a clipping held here as image160, The Morning Union, 25 August 1971'}
“A little over a week ago, at 8 o’clock in the morning, a giant bulldozer nosed its way into Jabalia camp in the Gaza Strip and methodically began to reduce to rubble houses that Palestinian refugees had lived in for almost 20 years. The operation was watched by senior Israeli army officers and protected by an unusual display of force. The occupants of the houses had been warned beforehand but many refused to leave their homes. In order to avoid burying them alive, the Israeli soldiers went into the houses and drove them out with blows from sticks and batons. Within a few days a swath, 30 yards wide and 100 yards long, had been cut along one edge of the camp. Fifty houses had crumbled into dust and 500 people, half of them young children, were homeless. On the Sabbath the soldiers—and the bulldozers—rested. That day I went into Jabalia. The camp, built and looked after by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which has been responsible for feeding, housing and educating the Palestinian refugees since 1949, was in an uproar. Long lines of houses along another perimeter and down the center of the camp had been marked for demolition with red crosses. The bulldozer, we were told, was due back the following morning to continue the work of widening roads around and through the camp to improve security, and to encourage resettlement. Thirteen of the dispossessed families had been taken for ‘resettlement’ by the army to a smaller camp called Bureij 10 miles away. Appalled at what they found there, the refugees had returned to Gaza town. We later went to Bureij. The accommodation consisted of half a dozen tumbledown and derelict houses, most of them without roofs. The other alternative offered by the Israeli authorities to the growing number of homeless was in the town of El Arish, six miles down the coast and outside the Gaza Strip in occupied Egypt. The nature of the accommodation and the method of getting there were, according to the refugees, not specified. The rest of the homeless squeezed in with friends and relatives.”
A reporter walks into Jabalia the day after the bulldozer and counts what it did: a swath thirty yards wide and a hundred long, fifty houses, five hundred people, half of them children. The red crosses marking the next row are in the sixth paragraph. The word resettlement is in quotation marks in the paper’s own sentence, and the place they were resettled to had no roofs.
“GAZA — In the swarming, bone-white refugee camp of Jabaliya, five mukhtars, or headmen, sit on an old bench outside the camp office asking futile questions and making futile complaints about the bulldozer that is razing houses nearby… More than 1,200 families have been ousted so far and the program continues… A visitor to a group of houses marked for demolition found men, women and children at work tearing down the rooms they had added to the houses and loading the stones aboard the trucks along with their furniture. They will use them to put up new shelters. They clustered, in obvious anguish, around the visitor. ‘I would rather eat sand in Gaza than go to El Arish,’ an old man called out. ‘When Jews are arrested in Russia, all the world hears about it. Aren’t we human, too?’ The refugees complain about the quarters in El Arish. The Israelis say that they are at least as good as the camp houses and that most — among them flats abandoned by Egyptian officers at the time of the 1967 war — are much better. Another point, one partly conceded by the Israeli authorities, is that jobs are scarce in El Arish and that a refugee working in Gaza finds it impossible to move so far. The central objection is to leaving the strip… ‘These camps seem like hell to me, but I can see that they might seem like paradise to them,’ said a senior Israeli officer. ‘They have lived here 23 years, the U.N.R.W.A. gives them free food and suddenly we transfer them.’ The refugees fear that the plan for El Arish is simply the opening move to scatter them through Israeli-administered Arab territories and thus end the Gaza problem. That they feel, would eliminate their one bargaining counter before world opinion: Their miserable concentration in what is still a no-man’s land and possibly the only important populated territory in the world that no nation claims… A high Israeli officer was watching the demolitions in Shati when a woman came up to him. Things are much better, she told him. She liked the new, wide streets. How about the neighbors who had to move? the officer asked. She was sure they were happy. ‘But, sir,’ she added, ‘just don’t touch my house. Be blessed.’”
The same New York Times dispatch the Minneapolis Tribune ran a week earlier under the headline “Relocating of Gaza refugees upsets many.” Here the headline is Gaza Strip Homes Bulldozed by Jews. The copy is the same; the subheadings are “1,200 Families Ousted,” “Protests Fizzle” and “Eat Sand in Gaza.” It ends on a woman in Shati telling an officer she likes the wide new streets and asking him not to touch her house. It runs beside a full-page Sears furniture sale.
“GAZA STRIP (AP) — The cease-fire on the Suez front has gone on a year, but war continues in the Gaza Strip between Israeli and Arab. It involves camps crowded with Palestinean refugees in this coastal rectangle adjoining Israel and the Sinai. Grenades are often thrown at Israeli army personnel, and there are collaborators—Arabs who in any way co-operate with the occupying Israelis. This year authorities have counted 83 such murders in the Gaza Strip, nearly half of them in the Jabaliya refugee camp. ‘The hunt for the hablanim goes on all the time. I don’t remember when we ever stopped searching for them,’ says a swarthy corporal of 21… ‘Hablanim’ is Hebrew for saboteurs—Arab guerrillas, fedayeen, terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on one’s sympathies… Another soldier admits that innocent Arabs may be killed or injured in the fighting. He explains: ‘We have orders to fire in the direction of the attacker. It’s the only way, otherwise the hablanim would always attack us from the crowds, and we wouldn’t be able to do a thing.’… The Israelis have seen the problem grow in the four years since they captured the Gaza Strip. In July they started moving Jabaliya families to new habitation, bulldozed old homes into rubble and built new asphalt roads—for security purposes—in their stead. In all, the Israelis plan to resettle a third of the strip’s 210,000 refugees. Arab states have complained bitterly, calling it expulsion, but the bulldozers work on inexorably… An officer is asked about Arab claims that camp residents are brutally treated. ‘Well, I don’t think that’s fair,’ he says. ‘For instance, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s stopping a man to search him, or check his papers. In seconds, hundreds of women and children have gathered. They scream and curse, and it’s difficult to keep cool and not start shooting when they start hitting and throwing stones. There’s not much point in being brutal. But we are firm. That’s the best word, I think. No nonsense. If we see somebody in the street after curfew has started, we fire one burst into the air. If he doesn’t stop, we shoot at him. Sometimes we catch a hablan. We know his comrades are somewhere in the area. If he won’t tell us where, we might slap or kick him. It’s all that’s required, usually. Don’t forget, what’s happening in the camps is a war. We have to win it. And anyway, there have been 40 murders in Jabaliya alone this year. Collaborators, they call them. What’s collaborating? Working in Israel for better wages? Sometimes women and children get murdered. What have they done to deserve it?’… ‘And once, a particularly tough force was moved into Gaza. They mistreated some civilians. There was an official inquiry, because the Arabs complained. The committee made its investigation, and some high officers were reassigned, because of the rough treatment. So I don’t think it’s fair to accuse Israeli soldiers of brutality. You get into trouble with your own commanders for being too rough.’ Under regulations, the military men spoke with the understanding their names would not be used.”
Israeli soldiers in Gaza talking to the Associated Press in 1971 on condition of anonymity, and the paper printing what they said at length. The demolition of Jabaliya is described as moving families and building asphalt roads for security purposes, and the next sentence gives the word the Arab states used for it: expulsion. The last column is an officer explaining the rules for shooting after curfew. “Palestinean” is the paper’s.
“Kamal Boullata is a political artist for the simple reason that he believes every human being is a political animal. He is a Christian Arab born in Jerusalem and after leaving in 1966 to exhibit his paintings at a one-man show in Beirut, Lebanon, he was denied his return after the six-day war of 1967. Boullata had been a refugee once before when his family fled to Bethlehem in 1948… But after the fall of Jerusalem in 1967, ‘I felt that my whole history as a person had been reduced to the size of a bag I was carrying from one country to another,’ said the 29-year old poet-artist in an interview this week… As a refugee from his home city, Boullata became a kind of ward of the Quakers who he said were aiding about 18,000 West Bank students, and about a million refugees in all… ‘It was during that year,’ he recalled, ‘that I was able to form my political views. All my life I was a-political. Ironically, it was among the Quakers that I discovered the differences between defensive violence and offensive violence, the violence of the oppressed and the violence of the oppressors.’ The Arab-Israeli conflict, he believes, ‘might come from a specific religious group, but I am not against the Jews. Because today I feel more of a Jew than a Christian. When I read the Old Testament, it applies to the Palestinians who were born in Palestine and who have centuries of history there, and who today are being denied that.’… ‘They are the people I can hope in. These are the people I want to share the land with,’ he explained, citing the Israeli League for Human Rights and its leader, Israel Shahak. Shahak, he says, who lost his family in Germany during Nazi persecution, then fought the Arabs. ‘Now he stands up to Israel.’… ‘At heart I feel that anyone who supports the state of Israel is anti-Semitic,’ Boullata said… ‘But it is harmful to Palestinians. It is of our own interest that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist,’ Boullata said. ‘I believe in an ideology that doesn’t solve the question of Jews in the world. I feel that anti-Semitism is a Western concept. Arabs stood up for the Jews in the German holocaust. We are all Semites.’”
Boullata is 29 and three years into exile. The paper notes his appearance was “counterbalanced” four days later by Israel Kessar of the Histadrut speaking at the University of Virginia on “Minority Problems in Israel.” Photo caption: “KAMAL BOULLATA, PALESTINIAN ARTIST — His Paintings are on Display at Westminster Church.”
“BEIRUT (UPI) — Ghassan Kanafani, 34, official spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was killed today in an explosion in his car, police sources said. They said a bomb apparently went off as he got into the vehicle in the ground floor garage of his apartment building in the Hazmieh suburb of Beirut. Kanafani’s 14-year-old niece, Lamice Fayez, also was killed in the blast, they said. Kanafani’s Danish wife Anna and their two young children, a boy and a girl, were not with him at the time of the blast and were unhurt… Kanafani’s body was virtually blown to pieces. A hand was found on the roof of a neighboring house and policemen were gathering up the remains. The car, an Austin 1100, was unrecognizable. The biggest single piece was a battered door. The dead girl, another niece and their mother — Kanafani’s sister — were visiting the Kanafanis and had stayed overnight, neighbors said. Kanafani, an extreme leftist and a graduate of the American University of Beirut, paid several visits to Scandinavia on behalf of the PFLP. Kanafani, editor of the magazine Al Hadaf, issued statements in the name of the front, including one in May claiming responsibility for the Tel Aviv airport massacre in which 28 persons were killed and scores injured.”
The United Press version. It gives his age as 34 and the niece as Lamice Fayez, 14. It calls him an editor and does not mention that he wrote novels. The Associated Press version, moving the same day, gives his age as 36, the niece as Lamiss Nejim, 15, and says he was well known in the Middle East as an author of books, short stories and poems. Both are in this archive.
“BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused Israel of assassinating one of its leaders Saturday and vowed to avenge his death with ‘a most ruthless strike.’ Ghassan Kanafani, 36, was killed by an explosion that demolished his sports car after he turned on the ignition outside his suburban Beirut apartment. His niece, Lamiss Nejim, 15, also was killed in the blast… ‘The front vows by his blood to take revenge… The front has proven its ability to pursue the enemy everywhere and inflict painful blows. We declare our reply this time will be the most ruthless and most painful.’… Guerrillas said Kanafani’s death was a reprisal for the attack because some Western newspapers had described him as its mastermind. Kanafani, editor of the leftist weekly Al Hadaf, was well known in the Middle East as an author of books, short stories and poems, many of them about the plight of the Palestinians. One collection of stories has been translated into Hebrew.… A military demolition expert estimated that about 10 pounds of dynamite was wired in the exhaust pipe of the brown Austin 1100 car and went off when Kanafani started the car at 11 a.m.”
The Associated Press version keeps the novels, the short stories and the poems, and the detail that a collection of them had been translated into Hebrew. The headline is about who is accused.
Mideast guerrillas pledge to revenge chief’s bomb death
The Associated Press, Beirut
“BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused Israel of assassinating one of its leaders Saturday and vowed to avenge his death with ‘a most ruthless strike.’… Kanafani, a slight, personable intellectual who chain-smoked and carried a revolver, was born in Acre, Palestine, in 1936, but the family moved to Lebanon after the 1948 war. He was graduated from Damascus University in Syria and taught in Kuwait before returning to Beirut to become a journalist and join the front. He is survived by his mother, his Danish widow Annie and three children.… Leila Khaled, the woman hijacker who failed in an attempt at the same time to hijack an Israeli airliner was a close friend of Kanafani. She was reported to be in Berlin.”
The same Associated Press dispatch as CP-1972-005, run longer and under a different headline. The word this version reaches for is intellectual. He was eleven when his family left Acre.
“BEIRUT (UPI) — Gassan Kanafani, a leader of the extremist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was assassinated yesterday when a powerful explosion blew his car to pieces. His 14-year-old niece also was killed in the blast so powerful it split and partially melted Kanafani’s handgun, scattered bits of metal and flesh over a wide area and left a foot deep hole in a concrete parking lot. Kanafani was official spokesman and high ranking leader of the front which took ‘complete responsibility’ for the May attack in Israel’s Lod International Airport that killed 27 civilians… A statement by the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of which the front is a member, said: ‘The martyr-fighter and hero Gassan Kanafani, one of the leaders of the PFLP and an information expert in the Arab homeland, was martyred this morning as a result of a treacherous assassination incident.’… He was married to a Dane, Anna, and had two young children — a boy and a girl… The girl who died, Lamice Fayez, was the daughter of Kanafani’s sister and had been visiting the Kanafani’s with her mother at the time.”
“Gassan Kanafani, Palestinian guerrilla leader killed by a bomb in Beirut, Lebanon” · Associated Press Wirephoto
The hardest headline of the five this archive holds for the same killing. Set beside the Anchorage Daily Times of two days later, the range runs from artist to terrorist over one man in one week. This version spells him Gassan and, like the other United Press copy here, does not mention that he wrote novels.
“BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused Israel of assassinating one of its leaders Saturday and vowed to avenge his death with ‘a most ruthless strike.’ Ghassan Kanafani, 36, was killed by an explosion that demolished his sports car after he turned on the ignition outside his suburban Beirut apartment. His niece, Lamiss Nejim, 15, also was killed in the blast… Kanafani, editor of the leftist weekly Al Hadaf, was well known in the Middle East as an author of books, short stories and poems, many of them about the plight of the Palestinians. One collection of stories has been translated into Hebrew.… Kanafani, a slight, personable intellectual who chainsmoked and carried a revolver, was born in Acre, Palestine, in 1936, but the family moved to Lebanon after the 1948 war. He was graduated from Damascus University in Syria and taught in Kuwait before returning to Beirut to become a journalist and join the front. He is survived by his mother, his Danish widow Annie and three children.”
“Ghassan Kanafani”
The sixth printing of this killing in the archive and the sixth different headline. The photograph carries his name and nothing else. One of the six, in Anchorage, called him an artist.
“BEIRUT — Ghassan Kanafani, 26-year-old Palestinian revolutionary and spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the most violently inclined radical organizations in the world, gently reproved a friend last week who expressed concern over Kanafani’s safety. ‘I am determined not to be assassinated,’ Kanafani said. But he continued to move about Beirut without any special security precautions, despite speculation that reprisals might be taken against officials of his group for the killing of 26 persons May 30 at Tel Aviv’s Lod Airport. KANAFANI’S reassuring words were erased yesterday by a bomb blast that instantly killed the quiet intellectual. The bomb exploded at about 10:30 a.m. when Kanafani turned on the ignition of his small, British-made automobile outside his home in the Beirut suburb of Hazmiya. Kanafani’s 19-year-old niece, Lamis Najem, a passenger in the car, was also killed. Lebanese police said they were investigating the blast. Kanafani’s revolutionary colleagues in the PFLP immediately issued a statement that asserted that ‘the imperialist Zionist camp’ was behind the assassination, whoever may have actually planted the bomb… LOCAL SECURITY officials would not rule out the possibility that Kanafani’s murder may have been connected with internal antagonisms and competition within the Palestinian movement, although they stressed that there was no evidence of this immediately available.… Some Palestinians blame the Popular Front for provoking the clashes between the guerrillas and the Jordanian army that resulted in the guerrillas being expelled from Jordan after heavy Palestinian losses last year. The Popular Front’s spectacular airliner hijackings and its political consistency had been winning increasing support among young Palestinians, however, and producing a more radical movement within Al Fatah… Sitting in his office at Al Hadaf, a weekly news opinion magazine he published and edited, Kanafani two weeks ago defended the attack on Lod as necessary to the PFLP. He dismissed criticism from the West and from among some moderate Palestinians as an ‘unscientific, unmoral reaction that condemns only us and ignores other tragedies, especially those committed by Israel.’”
“Only rubble remains of car in which Kanafani died.” · UPI Photo
The eighth American printing of this killing held here and the fullest, filed by a Washington Post correspondent in Beirut. It is also the one that complicates him most: two weeks before he died he sat in his own magazine office and defended the Lod airport attack, in which twenty-six people were killed, and dismissed criticism of it. The clipping stays whole for that reason. It carries one line nobody else has — a friend worried about his safety the week before, and Kanafani answering, I am determined not to be assassinated. The phrase this reporter reaches for is the quiet intellectual. Across the eight printings the archive holds, his age is given as 34, 36 and here 26, and his niece’s as 14, 15 and here 19.
“BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused Israel of assassinating one of its leaders Saturday and vowed to avenge his death with ‘a most ruthless strike.’ Ghassan Kanafani, 36, was killed by an explosion that demolished his sports car after he turned on the ignition outside his suburban Beirut apartment. His niece, Lamiss Nejim, 15, also was killed in the blast. A statement issued by the Marxist-Leninist Front mourned the ‘martydom’ of Kanafani and declared, ‘No matter who did it, the origin is the imperialist-Zionist-reactionary enemy camp’… Kanafani, the front’s ‘information commissar’ or spokesman and member of its Politburo, announced the front’s responsibility for the Tel Aviv airport, massacre May 30, in which three Japanese trained gunmen, by the front, killed 28 persons, and wounded scores more. Guerrillas said Kanafani’s death was a reprisal for the attack because some Western newspapers had described him as its mastermind. Kanafani, editor of the leftist weekly Al Hadaf, was well known in the Middle East as an author of books, short stories and poems, many of them about the plight of the Palestinians. One collection of stories has been translated into Hebew.… The possibility that a group that had split with the front earlier this year was involved was not ruled out. A military demolitoin expert estimated that about 10 pounds of dynamite was wired in the exhaust pipe of the brown Austin 1100 car and went off when Kanafani started the car at 11 a.m. The car hit the overhang of the building under which it was parked and landed 50 feet away, police said. The blast blew in doors and shattered windows in the middle-class neighborhood of Hazmieh, southeast of Beirut. Police said Kanafani returned home after midnight and the device was planted sometime during the night. A high-ranking government security official said ‘suspicious elements’ had been inquiring about various front leaders in recent weeks, but he refused to elaborate… Leila Khaled, the woman hijacker who failed in an attempt at the same time to hijack an Israeli airliner was a close friend of Kanafani. She was reported to be in Berlin.”
A portrait, captioned simply “KANAFANI”.
The ninth American printing of this killing held here, the fullest of the Associated Press versions, and the only one carrying his photograph. It gives both halves of him without deciding between them: the front’s information commissar, who announced its responsibility for the Lod airport attack, and an author of books, short stories and poems, one collection of which had been translated into Hebrew. The paper’s spellings, martydom, demolitoin and Hebew, are kept. Ten pounds of dynamite in the exhaust pipe, planted after he got home past midnight.
“BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused Israel of assassinating one of its leaders yesterday and vowed to avenge his death with ‘a most ruthless strike.’ Ghassan Kanafani, 36, was killed by an explosion that demolished his sports car after he turned on the ignition outside his suburban Beirut apartment. His niece, Lamis Ndjim, 15, also was killed in the blast.… Kanafani, the Front’s ‘information commissar’ or spokesman and member of its Politburo, announced the Front’s responsibility for the Tel Aviv airport massacre May 30, in which three Japanese gunmen, trained by the Front, killed 28 persons, and wounded scores more… Kanafani, editor of the leftist weekly Al Hadaf, was well known in the Middle East as an author of books, short stories and poems, many of them about the plight of the Palestinians. One collection of stories has been translated into Hebrew.… A military demolition expert estimated that about 10 pounds of dynamite was wired in the exhaust pipe of the brown Austin 1100 car and went off when Kanafani started the car at 11 a.m.… Kanafani, a slight, personable intellectual who chain-smoked and carried a revolver, was born in Acre, Palestine, in 1936, but the family moved to Lebanon after the 1948 war. He was graduated from Damascus University in Syria and taught in Kuwait turning to Beirut to become a journalist and join the front. He is survived by his mother, his Danish widow Annie and three children.… Leila Khaled, the woman hijacker who failed in an attempt at the same time to hijack an Israeli airliner was a close friend of Kanafani. She reported to be in Berlin.”
“GHASSAN KANAFANI”
The tenth American printing of this killing held here. It carries the fullest life: born in Acre in 1936, the family leaving for Lebanon after the 1948 war, Damascus University, teaching in Kuwait, then Beirut and journalism. He was eleven or twelve when they left. It also gives the fifteen-year-old girl who died beside him a fourth spelling. Across the ten printings she is Lamiss Nejim, Lamice Fayez, Lamis Najem and here Lamis Ndjim, and her age is given as fourteen, fifteen and nineteen. Ten American newspapers reported her death in one week and could not agree what she was called.
Palestinian Guerrillas Vow To Avenge Kanafani Killing
The Associated Press, Beirut
“BEIRUT (AP) — Palestinian guerrilla groups here vowed Sunday to avenge the killing of Ghassan Kanafani by dealing ‘ruthless blows’ at the Israelis. In Tel Aviv, Israeli authorities denied involvement in the death of the Arab guerrilla official in his booby-trapped car. They claimed the killing was linked to the mailing of ‘parcels containing bombs to personalities in Israel and abroad.’ Kanafani, 36, was a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — PFLP — and editor of the leftist magazine Al Hadaf. He was killed Saturday by a bomb explosion when he started his car. The funeral is scheduled for Monday afternoon. Beirut newspapers bannered such headlines as ‘Israel Did It,’ and ‘Zionist and Imperialist Agents Killed Kanafani.’ The PFLP issued a statement saying, ‘Our revenge this time will be proportionate to our bereavement…Our reply to the enemy will be most ruthless and most painful.’ The Palestinian news agency WAFA claimed investigators at the scene of the explosion had found a slip of paper bearing an image of the Israeli Menorah candelabrum and another reading, in English: ‘With the compliments of the Israeli Embassy in Copenhagen.’ A police spokesman in Tel Aviv said the slips did not prove Israeli involvement. He observed that Kanafani was married to a Danish woman, and it could have been easy to obtain a slip from the embassy there. He said Israeli law agencies had warned last week of a possible renewed spate of mailed bombs similar to those of last December. The Israeli press called Kanafani’s death ‘an outcome of his own deeds,’ and denied Israeli involvement. But Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization said: ‘We must be fully alert against Zionist criminal conspiracies aimed at destroying our very existence.’… The Lebanese government said it was investigating the assassination.”
The seventh American printing of this killing held here, and the seventh headline. One of the seven called him an artist. This version, like the two United Press ones, gives his occupation as spokesman and editor and does not mention that he wrote novels. It is the only one that carries the slip of paper the Palestinian news agency said was found at the scene, printed in English with the compliments of an embassy, and the Israeli press describing his death as an outcome of his own deeds.
“Editor’s Note: Times staff writer Mike Doogan spent the summer of 1970 in the Middle East studying the situation of Palestinian refugges and guerrilla organizations as preparation for a model United Nations meeting held in San Francisco in November. The following are his remembrances of Ghassan Kanafani, guerrilla spokesman, editor and novelist who was killed in a booby trapped car in Beirut, Lebanon last Friday… Ghassan Kanafani came in out of the afternoon sun looking like a man who had been dragged through a strainer. His green sport shirt and tan pants were rumpled and sweat stained and there were stress lines running from the corners of his dark eyes toward his short sideburns. ‘I must apologize for being late,’ he said as he moved around the scarred wooden desk and slouched into a swivel chair behind it, ‘but I have been extraordinarily busy. Last night someone tried to kill a man in our organization and we have been looking for him.’… ‘telling was not enough. So I joined the Front and work on the newspaper. I work where I am most effective, but I will fight too. We all fight.’ He was serious about the fighting but he had no illusions about it. ‘I carry a gun you know,’ he said and produced a black automatic from a pocket. He set it down on the table and looked at it. ‘I can see what will happen when they come for me. I’ll say, “Wait a minute” and try to get the gun out. They’ll shoot me full of holes while I am trying to get the gun out.’ He was laughing and so were his dinner companions. ‘It will make headlines in all the papers: “Ghassan Kanafani got caught with his pants up but his gun down”.’… The woman, dressed entirely in black, sat on the curb, begging. She had been driven from her home in southern Lebanon by the continued fighting between fedayin and Israelis and the resultant collapse of the area’s chronically depressed economy… ‘That’s why we struggle,’ Kanafani said, gesturing at the woman with the end of one in a chain of smoldering cigarettes, ‘we struggle for these people and the people in the (refugee) camps.’ He turned back into the room. ‘I would rather have peace,’ he said. ‘I would rather have the time to spend with my family, my wife and daughter, and my writing. But because of these people, we must continue the struggle.’ He shrugged and sat with the cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘Please,’ he said to a visitor who was fingering an antipersonnel grenade of Eastern European manufacture, ‘put that down carefully. Out of all my decorations, you are now handling the one that is not deactivated and we could all be gravely inconvenienced. I don’t have time to be blown up, I have too much to do.’”
Ten American papers in this archive carried his killing. This is the only one whose headline calls him an artist. Two years before the car bomb he acted out for a reporter how they would come for him, and made a joke about what the headline would say. The headlines said Arab militant leader, and guerrilla chief, and one of its leaders. The paper’s own spelling, refugges, is kept.
“BEREM, Israel (AP) — Twenty-four years ago, with war raging in the Middle East, an Israeli army officer drove into this Arab village and ordered its 800 inhabitants to leave. He promised they could return ‘in a short time’ after the Israelis had cleared the nearby border with Lebanon of mines and enemy pockets. The Arabs claim the officer said 15 days. But when the villagers tried to return to Berem they were blocked by Israeli troops. They appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, which ordered their return home on the grounds no formal expulsion order had been issued. The army hurriedly wrote out the orders and dodged the court ruling. Then, in 1955, the Israel Defense Forces blew up every house in the village. The Arabs were given alternative housing nearby and each subsequent request to return to Berem was rejected ‘on security grounds.’ It seemed like the end of the affair. Now Berem is back in the news, haunting Israelis at the highest level. It Happens Again. Berem — along with the villagers of neighboring Iqrit who suffered the same fate — appears to be a replay of the murky, time worn controversy over what really happened in 1948: were the Arabs expelled by the Israelis to make way for the Jewish state, or did the indigenous Arabs obey the orders of their leaders to evacuate for the invading Arab armies? The Israelis have said the Arabs in 1948 abandoned their homes when they ran away from the fighting. The Arabs claimed they were ordered out by the Israelis who feared a large Arab population inside the burgeoning Jewish state. This argument will be at the center of any agreement reached on the return of the Arab refugees to Israel or on payment of indemnity. The Israeli government says it has kept Berem empty because its proximity to the Lebanese border could provide shelter for Arab guerrillas attacking Israel. There have been dozens of incidents in the area in the past three years, including an attack on an Israeli bus near Berem that killed 12 school children. Demands Renewed. Now, Berem and Iqrit residents once again are pressing their demand to return home… Jewish Supporters. What has helped the villagers stir favorable public opinion is that the Beremites are of the Maronite Catholic faith, remembered here for the solid support it voiced for European Jewry under Hitler. The Beremites also proved their allegiance to Israel by testifying in favor of the Jews to various British committees that sought a peaceful settlement of the Palestine problem in the 1940s. The Rev. Kemal Farah, 29-year-old spiritual leader of Berem, rejects Israel’s argument on security, pointing out that displaced villagers have been resettled in Gush Halav, only two miles east of Berem and equally accessible to infiltrators. Today, Berem is a heap of rubble, overgrown by wild grapevines. Next to it stands the remains of a third-century Jewish synagogue. The synagogue has been fenced in and a small park built for tourists. But the signposting says nothing about a Christian village or church, and foreign visitors have no idea that 24 years ago people lived on the hill. Part of Berem’s 3,000 acres of farmland row belong to Jewish settlements, Israel’s attorney general, Meir Shamgar, says ample compensation was offered the villagers, but only six out of 90 families accepted. The six received a total of some $50,000, plus 10 building plots and farm acreage equal to what they owned in Berem. Despite the government decision not to allow them to return, the Beremites have vowed to fight on. ‘We have owned this land for 600 years,’ said Riad Suliman.”
Kafr Bir’im, the village the Batrice family came from — a photograph of its ruins runs with the 2021 Courier-Journal column in this archive, forty-nine years later. The villagers are Maronite Catholics. The paper sets both accounts of 1948 side by side and says the argument will decide any settlement on the refugees. The archive holds this village three times: 1972, 1973 and 2021.
Arabs Seek Recovery of Town Taken by Israelis 24 Years Ago
Marcus Eliason, The Associated Press, Berem, Israel
“BEREM, Israel (AP)—Twenty-four years ago, with war raging in the Middle East, an Israeli army officer drove into this Arab village and ordered its 800 inhabitants to leave. He promised they could return ‘in a short time,’ after the Israelis had cleared the nearby border with Lebanon of mines and enemy pockets. The Arabs claim the officer said 15 days. But when the villagers tried to return to Berem they were blocked by Israeli troops. They appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, which ordered their return home on the grounds no formal expulsion order had been issued. The army hurriedly wrote out the orders and dodged the court ruling. Then, in 1955, the Israel Defense Forces blew up every house in the village… Berem—along with the villagers of neighboring Iqrit, who suffered the same fate—appears to be a replay of the murky, time-worn controversy over what really happened in 1948: were the Arabs expelled by the Israelis to make way for the Jewish state, or did the indigenous Arabs obey the orders of their leaders to evacuate for the invading Arab armies? The Israelis have said the Arabs in 1948 abandoned their homes when they ran away from the fighting. The Arabs claimed they were ordered out by the Israelis who feared a large Arab population inside the burgeoning Jewish state… ‘We have owned this land for 600 years,’ said Riad Suliman, a 24-year-old student. ‘We would not give it up any more than the Jews give up Israel. The fact that only six out of 90 families from Berem accepted compensation speaks for itself.’… Then, in 1955, the Israel Defense Forces blew up every house in the village… Part of Berem’s 3,000 acres of farmland now belong to Jewish settlements. Israel’s attorney general, Meir Shamgar, says ample compensation was offered to the villagers, but only six out of 90 families accepted.”
“Berem, near Lebanese border, today is heap of rubble.” (AP Wirephoto)
The photograph of the ruins runs above the headline as part of the same clipping. The record previously carried ‘The village’ as its headline; that phrase is not on the scan.
Correction: {'note': 'Headline corrected on re-read: the record had “The village”, which is not printed on this page.'}
“The United Nations has failed shamefully in its duty by declining to take any action against international terrorism. UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim himself had urged the General Assembly to act. But since his call came right after the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, the Arab states were opposed. They didn’t want anything even resembling condemnation of the Palestinian terrorists. They were joined by the African bloc, which feared that a meaningful anti-terror move could hamper guerrillas in South Africa, Rhodesia and Portuguese colonies in Africa… This showed that with its Afro-Asian-Communist majority, the United Nations is incapable of acting constructively whenever the issue of ‘Zionism,’ ‘racism,’ ‘white rule,’ ‘imperialism’ or ‘capitalism’ is raised — even spuriously.… It is the United Nations which is losing credibility. Its looking more like a political jungle than a forum where men can seek the rule of law.”
Three years before the vote, an American editorial already files Zionism and racism together in a list of the words it puts in quotation marks. The paper’s own Its for It’s is kept.
Israeli Arabs and Jews unite for right of villagers to return
Tel Aviv (by mail)
“TEL AVIV, (By mail) — The government, alarmed by the tide of public opinion in favor of the right of the former inhabitants of Biram and Iqrit to return to their villages, has declared that region to be a ‘closed area.’ This means that no one will be allowed to enter this area without permission from the military authorities. In using these strongarm tactics, the government is trying to isolate the struggle. On the 24th anniversary of the eviction of the inhabitants of Biram and Iqrit and on the 21st anniversary of the demolition of the villages in contradiction to the orders of the court, large meetings were held, on the initiative of the national council for solidarity with the villagers of Biram and Iqrit, in which over 1,000 people participated including Jewish and Arab citizens from all over the country. Among the public figures who participated was the writer Mordechai Avi-Shaul, who brought a letter of solidarity with the villagers from the ‘Israeli League for Human Rights,’ Knesset member A. Levenbraun; members of the political bureau of the Communist Party of Israel, Emil Habibi and David (Uzi) Bornshtein; Alkas Masis, from ‘Ha Olam Ha Zey,’ and members of Matzpen and Siah. Archbishop Joseph Ria, leader of the solidarity committee, briefly surveyed the history of the eviction from Biram and Iqrit on Dec. 23, 1948, and the struggle to return.”
Biram is Kafr Bir’im. The archive now holds this village three times, across forty-nine years: evicted here in 1973 on the twenty-fourth anniversary, told at length by the Associated Press in 1972, and photographed in ruins beside a Palestinian American’s column in the Courier-Journal in 2021. Jewish and Arab citizens are in the same meeting, and the paper names them.
“Downing Airliner Also Terrorism. In an editorial of Feb. 23, you make the statement that the Israelis ‘have been besieged by all manner of terrorism for years.’ Indeed, bandits living in a stolen house might fear the owners’ attempts to recover it. Israeli bombing of refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria caused hundreds of civilian deaths — but you do not call this ‘terrorism!’ The Israeli ‘tragedy’ is that a Jewish state could only exist by the genocide of Palestine. That genocide has continued for 50 years. Apparently you favor religious apartheid in the Holy Land.”
A reader in Kent, Ohio, answering the paper’s own editorial. Both “genocide” and “apartheid” are used here in 1973, in a letters column, by a correspondent with an American name.
“Mrs. Donald Hanna, the former Norma Pennon, discussed Palestinian wedding customs. ‘Weddings are usually large and elaborate,’ she said. ‘There is a lot of singing and dancing. In fact, guests go to the home of either the bride or the groom several nights before the wedding, so that there is a series of parties.’ The guests compose songs spontaneously in Arabic and make specific references to the bride and groom. The odd, bamboo flutes and the durbaeque are used to welcome the guests. The durbaeque is a small, highly-ornamented drum. The Hannas were of the Syrian Orthodox faith and are now members of the Episcopal Church. Hanna has never returned to his hometown, Ramallah. The town had been the scene of considerable fighting during World War I when he was still a boy. Their home was 10 blocks from the downtown area and cannons sounded for four or five days during one fight between the Turks and the English. Other homes were destroyed, but the Hannas’ house was not hit.… ‘Family ties are very strong and we are stricter with our children than most people,’ Dr. Hanna said. ‘Grandparents play an important role; they are looked up to and their wisdom is depended on.’… ‘When I was growing up here, I learned what discrimination was because people thought I was a Mexican-American,’ Dr. Hanna said. ‘I used to tell them that if they wanted to dislike me, then do it for what I was.’ He helped in the grocery story and later worked his way through college and dental school as an ice man, in a filling station, as an oilfield roughneck and as a Fuller Brush salesman… His father said that sometimes discrimination closed doors to Middle Eastern immigrants. He recalled not being able to eat in places in Refugio when he was still traveling… The number of Arabic-speaking families in Corpus Christi was still under a dozen when Mr. and Mrs. Said Karam and their daughter, Amelia, came here from Omaha, Neb., in 1929.”
A family group of thirteen, three generations of Hannas, named individually in the caption: Mrs. Fahed Hanna holding Robert Hanna Jr., Gail Hanna, Fahed Hanna, Iris Hanna and Kelly Hanna in the foreground; Dr. and Mrs. Donald Hanna and Chrissy in the middle row; Owen Hanna, Mrs. Robert Hanna and Robert Hanna behind.
A Sunday feature on the Arabic-speaking families of Corpus Christi, in which the Palestinian one gets its own standing head: Palestinian food, music survive. What survives is a wedding — nights of parties before the day, songs composed on the spot in Arabic naming the bride and groom, bamboo flutes and a small ornamented drum the paper spells durbaeque. A dentist who worked oilfields and sold Fuller brushes says the discrimination he grew up with was for being taken for Mexican-American. Thirteen members of the family are named in the photograph caption.
Arabs and Jews: To whom was the "Promised Land" promised?
To whom was the “Promised Land” promised? An historical perspective on the Middle East war.
Robert Cochnar
“The Palestinian Refugees. An armistice was arranged in 1949, but there was no peace. The Palestinian Arab state was never created. Instead, Jordan annexed the territory west of the Jordan river, Egypt assumed a protectorate over the Gaza Strip, and Israel absorbed a part of Jerusalem, the Negev and parts of Galilee. The general Arab reaction to the establishment of Israel was ‘one of bitterness, frustration, and a sense of humiliated impotence,’ according to the AFSC. ‘Their chief satisfaction for a long time came from a war of propaganda rarely matched in passion and vituperation . . . But they have believed that their cause was just and that it would prevail in the end.’ But the establishment of Israel had another, more specific, result: a group of Palestinian Arabs, who had been promised a separate state, were now homeless refugees. Today a second generation of refugees live in squalid camps, eating food supplied by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, clinging to a dimmed hope that they will one day return to Palestine, a land which technically no longer exists. The refugees have no home left. Nor have they been compensated for the property they lost. This is the source of their bitterness — a bitterness which has spawned the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the El Fatah, the Black September Movement and other groups which, encouraged by the Arab states, have staged hijackings, murders and terrorist attacks of protest around the world. Moreover, the Palestinian refugees have been abandoned by the rest of the world. Arab countries have not attempted to resettle refugees because, they say, a successful resettlement would help the world forget Israeli injustice and would solidify the existence of Israel as a fait accompli.”
Printed during the October war, in Wisconsin, as background. The AFSC is the American Friends Service Committee, cited earlier in the same piece. The section runs beside advertisements for Halloween costumes and Schlitz.
“Dear Editor: The racist attitude of Israel and the world’s press has caused a surging rash of liberalism among ‘progressive’ elements of the Santa Barbara community. In order to build an effective mass, anti-imperialist movement, Palestine must clearly be recognized as the oppressed of the Middle East. The Palestinian movement should also be considered in the same perspective as other national liberation struggles. The masses should not fall prey to bourgeois press influence and their classification of Palestinian guerrilla organizations as ‘terrorists’; these courageous people are fighting for their liberation, not for the annihilation of the Jews… Israel attacks Palestinian refugee camps with napalm armed Phantoms which have been supplied by the United States. The Palestinian peasants find very little protection against Israeli bombs from their canvas tents… Zionism should be recognized in the proper light; as outright racism. Every document of the Palestinian movement makes it very clear as to how all Jews will be treated under a free Palestine; a non-sectarian, multi-religious state where all people will be free to worship as they please. It must also be immediately recognized that President Nixon’s massive annihilation bombings in Vietnam and Cambodia for the purpose of freeing American POW’s was a much greater crime against humanity than any guerrilla activity directed against Zionism… Thank you, Terry D. Post. P.S. The above views should be considered as my own, and not representative of Vietnam Veterans Against the War/Winter Soldier Organization of which I am a member.”
Eighteen months before the General Assembly voted, in a letters column, by a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War who takes care to say he is not speaking for them. The American route to the phrase runs through Vietnam.
“What an irony! The whole world condemns Russia for holding its Jews captive until large sums of money are paid to the state, and now here is Israel doing the exact same thing to some of its Jews. Where are all the voices of protest? This is simple racism when a state recruits one man from Argentina to come to Israel just because he is Jewish, but refuses to allow native Palestinians to return because they are not Jewish. Such is the irrationality of creating a ‘Jewish’ state.”
A reader in Worcester answering two syndicated columns the paper had run about Zionist agencies recruiting Jews out of Argentina. A year before the vote he states the argument in one sentence, as a matter of who is allowed to arrive and who is not.
“‘Children’s Testimony at a Time of War’ is a selection of crayon drawings by Palestinian refugee children that will be on display during the month of March in the Huber Art Center at Shippensburg State College. Kamal Boullata, a Palestinian artist living in Washington, D.C., will speak at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 5… The 35 pictures were done by children, ages 5 to 14, who were made refugees as a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Many of them were children of parents living in refugee campus near Jericho when the 1967 war began, but all of them came to live in the Baqaa Refugee Camp north of Amman, Jordan, where they fled from the fighting in what John P. Richardson of ANERA describes as ‘the terrifying trek east to escape attacking soldiers and warplanes.’ Richardson also describes the camp which accommodated 36,000 persons. ‘The shelters, sanitary facilities, water supplies, clinics and schools that were established were rudimentary. The entire situation conspired to oppress the spirit as well as the body.’ A young artist from Amman, Mona Saudi wanted to do something for the children in the camp, so in 1968, she left her studies in Paris and went to Baqaa camp with paper and crayons giving the children an opportunity to express themselves freely outside of school… Titles of some of the pictures are ‘Girl, Tent and Apple,’ Fatima Salem, 6; ‘Planes: Birds of Prey,’ Fatima Abdul Fattah, 9; ‘Shepherd Watching His Sheep,’ Neimeh Salem, 6; ‘Assifa Goes to Battle,’ Mustafa Hussein, 11; and ‘Mosque of Omar,’ Muhammad Kandil, 11. Neimeh Salem spoke of the children’s ordeal, ‘We walked in the mountains and the valleys all day, passing the dead, the bombs… the planes were following us wherever we went… it was like walking in a dream.’ The artist Boullata praised the children, ‘In front of the human monumentality of these naked works created by the tiny hands of sincere children, I feel all my best work is now reduced to the size of a postage stamp.’”
Six Palestinian children named with their ages, and one of them, Neimeh Salem, aged six, quoted at length. The archive holds a companion piece printed six days later that names none of them.
“SHIPPENSBURG — A selection of crayon drawings by Palestinian refugee children, ‘Children’s Testimony at a Time of War,’ are on display this month in the Huber Art Center at Shippensburg State College. The 35 pictures were created by children, ages five to 14, who became refugees as a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The exhibit originated through the combined efforts of Kamal Boullata, a Palestinian artist living in Washington, D.C., and another Palestinian artist, Vladimir Tamari, who lives in Beirut. Tamari assembled the drawings and shipped them to the United States where Boullata selected the works and supervised the arranging and mounting. The exhibit is on display in the Huber Art Center from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.”
The same exhibition, in the same county, six days after CP-1975-008. That paper printed six of the children’s names and their ages and quoted Neimeh Salem, aged six, on walking all day past the dead. This one names the two adult artists and the opening hours. Nothing was cut from a shared dispatch here: these are two papers making the same choice differently, and the whole difference is whether a child gets a name.
Kissinger's current peace effort stirring debate among Israelis
“In one movement that might indicate the seriousness with which Kissinger’s efforts are being viewed in the Middle East, some Arab groups outside Egypt have begun attacking what they evidently consider to be an imminent Sinai disengagement pact. ‘This American agreement, which now seems to be getting into the stage of actual implementation, poses the greatest danger to the nationalist cause — that is, the Arab struggle with Zionism — since the June 1967 war,’ commented Zuhair Mohsin, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s military department and leader of the Syrian-backed guerrilla group, Al Saiqa. Yesterday a Beirut daily, Al Sharq, which usually reflects official Syrian views, mentioned a reported understanding that would commit Egypt to a position of nonbelligerency, which it said violated a standing Arab agreement on ‘no separate solutions and the necessity of prior consultations on each solution.’ The Iraqi-supported daily, Beirut, yesterday attacked the prospective Sinai accord for the first time, charging that it means ‘an end to the Palestine struggle … and the overall Arab struggle for the liberation of Palestine.’”
Resolutions Set U.N. Stage for Vote on Zionism as Racism
Associated Press, United Nations, N.Y.
“UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. (AP) — The General Assembly adopted two pro-Palestinian resolutions Monday, drawing heated reaction from Israel, and set the stage for a vote later on a third measure equating Zionism with racism. It appeared, too, would pass. One of the approved resolutions, adopted by a vote of 93-18 with 27 abstentions, in effect bypasses Security Council decisions about Israel’s right to existence and stresses instead the rights of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property. Israel criticized the resolution as aimed at its destruction. The other resolution calls for the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization ‘in all efforts, deliberations and conferences on the Middle East’ held under U.N. auspices. The vote was 101-8 with 25 abstentions. The United States voted against both measures. In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin flatly rejected the resolutions, saying they ‘sabotage efforts to achieve peace between Israel and Arab states.’ He added that Israel will not cooperate with any committee set up to enforce an earlier resolution ensuring the Palestinians’ right to sovereignty and a return to land in what is now Israel, and will not talk with the PLO. Last-minute efforts to block General Assembly approval of the resolution equating Zionism with racism apparently failed, and the anti-Israel coalition at the United Nations claimed enough votes for its approval. They beat back an attempt by Western and nonaligned nations to delay the vote until next year by a vote of 67-55 with 15 abstentions. One European representative said he feared the expected assembly action would touch off hostile reactions to the world organization in the U.S. Congress, among the public and throughout Western Europe. The U.S. House of Representatives, in a resolution sponsored by 436 of its 437 members, asked the assembly to reject the resolution.”
Two resolutions on Palestinian rights of return and PLO participation, with the vote counts, printed on a page otherwise given over to advertisements for Young Frankenstein, the Righteous Brothers and a seafood buffet.
Vote Is 72-35; Arab-Led Resolution In Assembly Opposed By U.S., Israel
Associated Press, United Nations
“UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. (AP) — The U.N. General Assembly overrode bitter opposition from the United States and Israel Monday night to approve an Arab-inspired resolution that labels Zionism ‘a form of racism and racial discrimination.’ The vote was 72-35 with 32 abstentions. ‘A great evil has been loosed upon the world,’ U.S. Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan told the 143-nation assembly after casting the U.S. vote against the resolution. ‘The abomination of anti-Semitism has been given the appearance of international sanction.’ Among those voting against were the United States, Israel, the nine members of the European Common Market, Australia, and Canada. Supporters of the resolution equating Zionism with racism said it was anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic. They argued that Zionism — the movement for a Jewish national homeland in Palestine — is exclusive and thus racist. Mr. Moynihan said the assembly had granted ‘symbolic amnesty, and more, to the murderers of the six million European Jews’ during World War II. He added that the United States ‘does not acknowledge, will not abide by, will never acquiesce in this infamous act’… Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog, taut with emotion, charged that the United Nations ‘is on its way to becoming the world center of anti-Semitism.’ It was fitting, he said, that the decision was voted on Nov. 10 — the date in 1938 when Nazi stormtroopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues throughout Germany, smashing so many windows that it became known as ‘Krystal Night.’… Secretary General Kurt Waldheim said the vote ‘reflects a deep and bitter division among the membership at a time when the need for understanding on a wide range of critically important questions is more than ever necessary’… The votes followed approval of two resolutions on the Palestine Liberation Organization. One of the approved resolutions, adopted by a vote of 93-18 with 27 abstentions, in effect bypasses Security Council decisions about Israel’s right to exist and stresses instead the rights of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property… The other resolution calls for the PLO’s participation ‘in all efforts, deliberations, and conferences on the Middle East’ held under U.N. auspices. The vote was 101-8 with 25 abstentions. The United States voted against both measures.”
ANGRY MR. MOYNIHAN DENOUNCES U.N. ACTION — Assembly told U.S. will never accept ‘infamous act’
The vote itself, on the front page in Toledo, with the count, the losing arguments and the winning ones. Two other resolutions passed the same night and are reported in the same column: the right of Palestinians to return to their homes and property, 93 to 18, and a seat for the PLO at every United Nations conference on the Middle East, 101 to 8. The paper spells it Krystal Night.
Communists’ Reactions Differ On Zionism-Racism Resolution
Associated Press
“The Italian Communist party, the largest in the West, differed with Moscow and criticized the U.N. General Assembly vote equating Zionism with racism, saying it was damaging to the Arab cause. The Soviet news agency Tass hailed the resolution, and said Zionism is racism of the same kind that was practiced in Hitler’s Germany… French Communists straddled the issue, indicating that opposition to Zionism was not the same thing as advocating the destruction of the Israeli state… AFL-CIO President George Meany said, ‘It was a cowardly, reprehensible act, reminiscent of the days of Hitler and appeasement.’ He added: ‘The U.S. Congress must immediately re-evaluate continued United States participation in the U.N. How long can the American taxpayer be expected to bear a disproportionate share of the U.N.’s bills when it produces this kind of evil?’… The Canadian House of Commons, in a step similar to that taken Tuesday by the U.S. Congress, unanimously condemned the U.N. action and said it was dangerous to the continued survival of the world organization. The resolution was greeted by cheers from both sides of the Commons. The president of the U.S. Catholic Conference, Archbishop Joseph Bernadin of Cincinnati, expressed ‘profound disagreement’ and ‘great disappointment’ at the vote. Mayor Pete Wilson of San Diego said he has quit the board of the United Nations Association of San Diego in protest and said the United States ought to pull out of the United Nations itself.”
The same dispatch in Alabama, under a headline about Communists rather than the world. It runs on page 16. The paper spells the archbishop Bernadin.
Zionism Vote in U.N. Splits Russian, Italian Communists
Associated Press
“The Italian Communist party, the largest in the West, differed with Moscow and criticized the U.N. General Assembly vote equating Zionism with racism, saying it was damaging to the Arab cause. The Soviet news agency Tass hailed the resolution and said Zionism is racism of the same kind that was practiced in Hitler’s Germany.”
The third printing of the same dispatch, cut to two sentences and a headline about a split between Communists. What survives compression is the disagreement between Rome and Moscow. Everything about what the Palestinians said, and everything about the American reaction, is gone.
“The Italian Communist party, the largest in the West, differed with Moscow and criticized the U.N. General Assembly vote equating Zionism with racism, saying it was damaging to the Arab cause… The Italian Communist organ Unita said, ‘for reasons of principle we do not accept the equation between Zionism and racism.’ ‘We regard this . . . as damaging the Arab cause itself, which thus loses rather than gains allies in those countries of Western Europe from which a positive contribution might have come toward a just and peaceful settlement in the Middle East,’ the newspaper said. The Soviet news agency Tass hailed the resolution… ‘One need hardly cite other facts to prove that daily practice of Zionism is racism pure and simple of the same kind that is being practiced today by South Africa and Rhodesia and was practiced in the not too distant past by Hitler’s Germany,’ it added. Tass cited the eviction of Palestinians from their own land as testimony ‘to the fact that the Israeli Zionist authorities have made anti-Semitism’s methods their own.’… AFL-CIO President George Meany called the vote ‘a cowardly, reprehensible act, reminiscent of the days of Hitler and appeasement’… Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, at a news conference in Pittsburgh, Pa., called the vote ‘extremely unhelpful and highly irresponsible’ in efforts to bring lasting peace to the Middle East. He said, however, ‘We must now not swing to the other extreme of not realizing some of the benefits that the U.N., with all of its failings, still has for the United States.’… Iraq and Libya told the 138-nation assembly of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome that Israel should be expelled from the big U.N. agency. ‘There is no place for racism in this humane organization,’ said Iraqi Agricultural Minister Hassan Fahmy Jumah. But he offered no specific resolution.”
One Associated Press dispatch on how the world answered the vote, printed in three papers in this archive on the same day under three different headlines. New Orleans calls it varied.
“I don’t agree with the resolution. We should do more for the Zionists. They are people who have done nothing but good. The Israelis have the right to the land. The Arabs don’t have rights to the land because all they do is fight and they don’t want peace. The Isarelis want to live in peace and make the land prosperous for everyone there. They should have the land. Zionism is not racism. You can’t say that if you want to live in peace. We shouldn’t pull out of the UN. We should all try to live in peace, the Israelis and the Arabs too. They shouldn’t leave a minority group like the Zionists out without a country. Israel has gone through too much to have other countries, especially America, forget about them.”
A street interview in New Rochelle four days after the vote, printed with the speaker’s name, occupation and full home address, which was ordinary practice. The paper spells Isarelis. This is what the Harris Survey was measuring, one person at a time.
“New York demonstrators denounce United Nations resolution equating Zionism with racism.” The lead letter is by Benjamin Varon, former Ambassador of Israel to the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Paraguay, of Brookline. Five more follow, headed “Vote ‘a disgrace’” (Norman B. Meisner, Newton Centre), “Day of infamy” (Louis Lowy, Newton Highlands), “Zionism means freedom” (Steve Copeland, Hull), “Aimed at Christians” (Harry Cotton, Worcester) and “Get UN out of US” (Leo F. Kahian, Middleboro).
New York demonstrators denounce United Nations resolution equating Zionism with racism.
A full letters page a week after the vote, printed under a news photograph of a Jewish Defense League demonstration in New York. Three placards are legible in it. One reads NEVER AGAIN. One reads 20 COUNTRIES FOR ARABS ONE FOR JEWS. The third reads ANTI-ZIONISM CODE WORD FOR ANTI-SEMITISM — which is the argument that would be made in a headline forty years later, already on a stick, three weeks after the resolution passed.
“EDITOR, The News-Sentinel: The editorial ‘The UN Against Israel’ printed Nov. 12 in which you refer to ‘the vicious and unfair move by the United Nations General Assembly in calling Zionism a form of racism,’ while emotionally strong in its thrust, was relatively weak in its analysis of the situation. Zionism is an international political movement intended to ingather the Jews of the world into Palestine to create a national home for the Jewish people. It is differentiated from Judaism, a monotheistic religion of universalist values. Since there are Jews who are not Zionists and Zionists who are not Jews, it is essential to keep in mind the distinction between Zionism and Judaism. The aim of the Zionist movement, as formulated by the First Zionist Congress held in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897, was stated thusly: ‘Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.’ The congress went on to state that Zionism would be achieved by ‘the promotion on suitable lines of the colonization of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers’ (‘Zionism,’ Leonard Stein, p. 62). At this time, when plans were being formulated for colonization of Palestine by world Jewry, the Jewish population of Palestine was less than 2 per cent of the total population of Palestine, while the Christian and Moslem population constituted the remaining 97 per cent of the population. It is then that Theodore Herzl, known as the father of modern Zionism and the first president of the World Zionist Organization, wrote ‘The Jewish State.’ This book, first published in 1896, was an important foundation of the Zionist movement. Herzl went on to write about the Palestinian population: ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country’ (Complete Diaries, Vol. I, p. 88). In 1948, the Zionists proclaimed the State of Israel, and it was forceably defended in the war of 1948-1949. At this time over 750,000 Palestinians were made refugees. They were not allowed to return to their homes and villages. During this war, Yigal Allon, then commander of the Palmach, the underground Zionist army, and later to become Israeli foreign minister, talked about the Palestinians in the Galilee area of Palestine. Said Allen, ‘We saw a need to cleanse the Inner Galilee and to create a Jewish territorial succession in the entire area of the upper Galilee’ (‘Palestine Is The Issue,’ Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1975). During the war of 1948-1949, a well-known incident occurred at the Palestinian village of Deir Yasin. As reported by the International Red Cross, 254 Palestinian men, women and children were killed by members of the Irgun and the Stern Group, two Zionist military units. Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, commented on the incident: ‘The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the victory at Deir Yasin’ (‘The Revolt: Story of the Irgun,’ Menachem Begin, 1951). After the State of Israel had been created and after the 1967 war, which saw more Palestinian land occupied and more Palestinians made refugees, Moshe Dayan, defense minister of Israel, said that the Palestinian refugees created by the 1967 war could be taken back by Israel, but that Israel would not do so because Israel would become ‘either a binational or poly Arab/Jewish state and we want to have a Jewish state. We can absorb them, but then it won’t be the same country’ (‘New York Review of Books,’ Aug. 3, 1967, p. 3, I. F. Stone). And commenting on the fact that the Palestinians had lived in Palestine long before the Zionists/Israelis, Moshe Dayan later told a group of students at the Haifa Technion that ‘there is not a single Jewish village in this country that has not been built on the site of an old Arab village. The village of Nahalal took the place of the Arab village of Mahloul. . . . Gifat took the place of Jifta. . .’ (‘The Guardian,’ Nov. 14, 1973, p. 16). These examples reflect Zionism and the goals and objectives that Zionists have historically pursued, particularly as those goals and objectives related to the Palestinians. But even more revealing is a quote by Golda Meir, then prime minister of Israel, which reflects the Zionist mentality toward the Palestinians as a people. Mrs. Meir said ‘There was no such thing as Palestinians . . . It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist’ (Sunday Times, London, June 15, 1969). Obviously the Zionists would not consider themselves racists, for if the Palestinians as a people do not exist, then there is no one to be racist toward. The world, however, knows different. We know the Palestinians exist. We know that they have lived in the land of Palestine for centuries, held together by a strong and lasting culture. What we must now decide is whether this political movement of Zionism is in fact racist in nature toward the Palestinian people. Herzl’s Zionist mentality was that the only security for the Jews, and the only cure to anti-Jewishness, was to ingather all Jews into the Jewish state. That is why the Zionists want an exclusively Jewish state. That is why Israel will not let the Palestinians return to their homeland. That is Zionism. What is wonderful about the Zionists of Israel is that they fought back against tyranny and oppression and anti-Jewishness throughout the world. They seized their own destiny and became masters of their own fate. What is terrible about the Zionists is that the creation of the State of Israel occurred at the expense of the Palestinian people.”
A reader answering the paper’s editorial, at the length of a column, with a page citation after every quotation. The paper printed it whole.
“I was shocked when the U.N. voted for a resolution stating that Zionism is racism… Zionism was started as a protection against racism, not to promote it.”
Nine days after the vote, a reader in Des Moines sets out the four courses he says were open to Jews after the Russian pogroms — assimilation, revolution, tradition, and Zionism — and answers the resolution with the fourth. His full street address is printed under his name.
“Emanuel Shimoni, consul general of the Israeli Consulate in Philadelphia, concentrated on what he regards as the three major current issues involving Israel during an interview yesterday afternoon in Allentown. These were the United Nations resolution which equated Zionism with racism, the proposed extension of a U.N. force on the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria, and a proposed $2.3 billion in American aid to Israel. The interview was at the Allentown Jewish Community Center, where Shimoni spoke at a rally in the evening. During the interview, his wife Rayla was visiting at the home of her cousin, Mrs. Dorothy Roth of Allentown. Mrs. Shimoni and Mrs. Roth have known each other since childhood in South Africa. The envoy said the reaction of Jews to the U.N. resolution branding Zionism as racism ‘is one of outrage and also of an attempt to explain to the world there is no relationship whatsoever between Zionism and racism.’ He said the U.N. resolution was an attempt by a group of nations, led by Arabs and supported by Moslems, Communists and a number of African countries, to discredit Israel and the Jewish people. ‘Although the resolution talks about Zionism, today anyone who supports Israel and believes in the right of the Jewish people to have a state of their own is a Zionist. Anti-Zionism is that effort to suggest that there should be no State of Israel politically and to place Israel in the position where, if attacked by the Arab states, she will not have the support of the world for her existence as she has in the past. The resolution is part of an overall strategy of the Arabs to isolate Israel politically and to place Israel in the position where, if attacked by the Arab states, she will not have the support of the world for her existence as she has in the past. The nations that supported the anti-Zionism resolution include all the dictatorships, the Communists, the countries that have used repression and have been lacking in humanity. The resolution was opposed by all the enlightened nations of the world, led by the U. S., supported by Western Europe, Scandanavia and a number of Central American and African states, despite the pressure of the Arabs on them. The Jews all over the world are reacting vehemently to this resolution. It has in it the grains of a new anti-Semitism which represents a threat to Jews and Jewish communities everywhere.’ Shimoni declined to comment specifically on a boycott by American Jews of Mexican tourist spots. Mexico voted for the U.N. resolution. ‘But it does not surprise me,’ he said, ‘that anybody who considers himself a Zionist should not want to visit a country which has supported a resolution denigrating Zionism and calling for its elimination.’… Shimoni said the Middle East conflict has been globalized because the Arabs have obtained ‘tremendous quantities of arms and military equipment’ from Russia, plus additional purchases from Western Europe and even the U.S. ‘Israel is unable to match what the Arabs have with her own resources. Therefore, we have asked the U.S. to insure the balance of power in the Middle East by providing us with the means to purchase arms.’ He said the Arabs have obtained $15 billion in arms since October 1973. Israel considers a ‘reasonable balance’ of armaments being outnumbered 4-1, he said. But this balance can only be achieved through U.S. assistance, he added.”
“Emanuel Shimoni — Explaining dilemma…” · “… need for U.S. aid”
An Israeli consul interviewed in Allentown three weeks after the Zionism-is-racism vote, given the whole column. The reporter records where his wife spent the afternoon.
“In answer to our ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Moynihan, and his savage attack on the UN resolution… Ben-Gurion, quoted by I. F. Stone: ‘. . . Israel is the country of the Jews and only of the Jews.’ Moshe Dayan on ‘Face the Nation’: ‘There are about a million Arabs whom we don’t want as citizens in Israel . . . it would turn Israel into either a bi-national or an Arab-Jewish state instead of a Jewish state, and we want a Jewish state.’ Golda Meir to the Knesset: ‘I want a Jewish state with a decisive Jewish majority which cannot change overnight . . . I always believed this was plain Zionism.’… Moshe Dayan to students in Haifa: ‘There is not a single Jewish village in the country that has not been built on the site of an Arab village. The village of Nahalal took the place of the Arab village of Mahloul . . . Gifat took the place of Jifta.’… Joseph Weitz of the Jewish Agency Colonization Department, in Davar: ‘The only solution is Palestine without Arabs . . . not one village, not one tribe should be left.’”
A month after the vote, a reader answers Moynihan not with an argument but with a stack of quotations from Israeli leaders, assembled and printed as he assembled them. The paper runs its own rules for letter writers in a box alongside: keep them to 250 words or fewer, be fair, be factual, disagree if you must, but try not to be disagreeable. These are quotations as the letter printed them, not as this archive has verified them.
“A 49-9 per cent plurality of the American people disapproves of the recent United Nations resolution proclaiming that ‘Zionism is racism and a form of racial prejudice.’ However, a significantly high 42 per cent either are not sure of how they feel about the issue or simply have not followed the event… A 66-12 per cent majority of the college educated disapproved, as does an even higher 70-8 per cent majority of professional people… On a straight-out sympathy question between the Israelis and the Arabs, the margin is now eight to one pro-Israel, which had dropped close to five to one just this past summer… The main reason that people are opposed to the U.N. action is the feeling that ‘Jewish people are entitled to have a homeland of their own.’ And no more than 9 per cent of the American people believe that ‘Zionism is racism.’”
A national poll, 1,475 adults, taken between November 22 and 29, 1975. The single largest figure in the table is 42 per cent not sure. Among those with eighth-grade schooling or less, 63 per cent were not sure; among college graduates, 22 per cent.
“New York — ‘Zionist propaganda’ is working to obscure the issues underlying last month’s anti-Zionism resolution in the United Nations and to confuse the world body’s legitimate condemnation of Israel’s ‘racist’ policies in the Arab-Israeli conflict, an Arab spokesman here believes. Marwan Kanafani, information director at the Arab League’s Office of the Permanent Observer to the United Nations, said recently that many Americans who sympathize with the Israelis in their struggle against the Arab states would nonetheless disapprove of the racial discrimination that he alleged is being practiced in Israel… ‘This has nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism as a faith,’ he said. ‘In this resolution, the international community has condemned a political ideology which manifests itself in concrete practices.’… Kanafani said the resolution is constructive in that it frames this issue in proper terms. ‘We are not anti-Semites. We are Semites ourselves. We are especially aware in the Middle East of the difference between Judaism as a faith and Zionism as a political ideology, and the international community has now shown that it agrees with us.’… ‘Whatever I tell you about New York,’ he said, ‘it will be understandable. There are more Jews here than in Israel. But you must remember that New York is not the whole world.’… ‘Those are beautiful letters,’ he added, smiling. ‘The other group…,’ his smile faded, ‘they cut our ads and put dirty words on them and send them back. You ought to see some of them. You would be ashamed to be an American.’… ‘You can criticize anyone here in the United States,’ he said with a smile, ‘but you can’t criticize Israel. Oh, you can go out onto the street corner and say bad things about Israel, but just try to get it on television or in the newspapers. You can’t do it.’… ‘These people just write dirty words,’ he said. ‘They do not discuss; they do not make sense. They just take it for granted that if you talk against Zionism, you are talking against the Jews.’… ‘I was born in Palestine,’ he said. ‘My father was born there. My great-grandfather was born there. The Israelis say we do not deserve to be citizens in Israel. But Golda Meir, who was born in Russia and raised in the United States — she is a Jew, and she thinks she automatically has to have full citizenship.’ Kanafani, a Moslem, said, ‘I believe I am closer to a Palestinian Jewish young man than I am to a Pakistani Moslem. But a Jew from anywhere in the world is thought to be closer to an Israeli Jew than an Arab from 10 miles away.’ Kanafani brushes aside Israeli arguments that Arabs are citizens in Israel and that some occupy very prominent positions. Arabs are only ‘third class’ citizens, he said, and those who are in high positions are placed there only for propaganda purposes. ‘The president of France, under Vichy, was French,’ he said, referring to the World War II pro-Nazi government… In contrast to the ‘aggressive, exclusivist, and expansionist’ state of Israel, he said, the P.L.O. seeks a democratic secular state in which no distinctions as to race or religion would be drawn.”
A Palestinian official taking apart the difference between a faith and a political ideology, printed down a narrow column on page 8A. The rest of the page is a JCPenney toy sale: Sunshine family van, now 8.44; Big Jim’s Sky Commander, now 2.99; Merry Christmas from JCPenney. Nothing was cut. The argument simply runs beside the toys.
“A 49-9 per cent plurality of the American people disapproves of the recent United Nations resolution proclaiming that ‘Zionism is racism and a form of racial prejudice.’ However, a significantly high 42 per cent either are not sure of how they feel about the issue or simply have not followed the event. A 66-12 per cent majority of the college educated disapproved, as does an even higher 70-8 per cent of professional people… nowhere in the country does approval of the U.N.’s action reach a mark higher than 14 per cent… The main reason that people are opposed to the U.N. action is the feeling that ‘Jewish people are entitled to have a homeland of their own.’ And no more than 9 per cent of the American people believe that ‘Zionism is racism.’… By 54 per cent, a majority takes the U.N. vote as a sign that ‘anti-semitism is high in many parts of the world’… On a straight-out sympathy question between the Israelis and the Arabs, the margin is now eight to one pro-Israel. This had dropped close to five to one just this past summer… Between Nov. 22 and 29, the Harris Survey asked a cross section of 1,475 adults nationwide… The United States may have been outvoted in the recent United Nations debate on whether Zionism is indeed racism, but in the process, U.S. support for the U.N. has been seriously weakened.”
The second printing in this archive of the same syndicated column, the same day as the Longview Daily News version already held. This one prints both tables in full, broken down by schooling and by job: approval never rises above 12 per cent in any group, and among people who left school at eighth grade, 63 per cent have no view at all. Nine per cent of Americans agreed with the resolution. Forty-two per cent had not followed it.
“PARIS (AP) — Arab states Wednesday pushed through a vote at a meeting of the United Nations Scientific, Educational and Cultural Organization — UNESCO — introducing the explosive ‘Zionism equals racism’ resolution adopted by the U.N. General Assembly this year. Grim-faced members of the U.S. delegation, who had led a fight against any reference to Zionism at a meeting on the work of the mass media, consulted immediately with Washington on their future action here. There have been suggestions that the United States and some other Western nations were contemplating walking out of the meeting if the vote went through. The Israeli delegation said before the vote that if it was accepted ‘we will see no further purpose in this meeting.’ The vote came at a meeting of government experts preparing a draft declaration on ‘fundamental principles governing the use of the mass media in strengthening peace and international understanding, and in combating all war propaganda, racism and apartheid.’ The meeting voted, 36 to 22, with seven abstentions, and the rest of the 80-odd delegations absent, to include in the preamble references to the General Assembly’s Zionism resolution and two previous U.N. votes on Zionism. The vote was on a Yugoslav proposed compromise giving only the numbers of the resolutions, after Arab states led by Algeria had put forward a wording spelling out the alleged link between Zionism and racism. The document on the mass media has been under discussion at various levels since the idea was first proposed by the Soviet Union in 1972… Voting with the Arab nations were a scattering of other Third World countries and most of the Soviet bloc nations. Many African nations were absent from the session for the vote… U.S. chief delegate Robert F. Stowe, assistant legal adviser for United Nations affairs at the State Department, said the vote ‘was as much as we had expected, but we had hoped to avoid a vote.’ The United States, backed by the nine European Common Market countries, Australia and Canada, among others, had called for the meeting to continue the consensus policy it had adopted on other portions of the text.”
The aftermath of the General Assembly resolution, six weeks later, at a meeting about the mass media. No Palestinian is quoted in it.
“Two aspects of the recent U.N. resolution labeling Zionism as racist both shocked and surprised me. Shocked because of all the people in the world, the Jews have not only suffered particularly from racist persecution, they have done more than any other people in history to expose and condemn racism. Generations of Jewish social scientists and scholars have labored long and hard in every field of knowledge, from anthropology to psychology, to lay bare and refute all claims of racial inferiority and superiority. To condemn the Jewish survival doctrine of Zionism as racism is a travesty upon the truth… I have the deepest sympathy for the Palestinian people in their search for justice, but I see no net gain for freedom and human dignity in the world if power blocs, because of their ability to underwrite sagging economies for a season, are able to ram through the U.N. resolutions repugnant to human reason and historical fact. I believe that the time has come to reexamine the credentials of all the members of the General Assembly. Why should all these little so-called countries with minuscule populations have a vote equal in weight to that of the United States? The so-called hardline adopted at the U.N. by Ambassador Moynihan seems too soft to me… It may seem paradoxical that I write these words from a prison cell in California. I am certainly not a stranger to racism — I have personally experienced it in the ghettoes and prison yards of America.”
A guest column written from a prison cell in California by a founder of the Black Panther Party, six years after a party official had declared in the party paper that Jewishness, Zionism and racism were identical. The column also carries a sweeping charge against Arabs as a people, which is printed here as the paper printed it. Two months later a professor in Honolulu answered it by name.
By Yasumasa Kuroda, Professor of Political Science, University of Hawaii
“Little has been said in the United States in defense of the Third World and its sponsorship of the resolution… The British authority reports that less than seven per cent of the land in Palestine belonged to Jewish owners at the end of the mandate in 1948. There is no democratic way or peaceful means through which Zionists could have realized their goal of developing an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine without jeopardizing the civil rights of non-Jews. There are only two ways. You either drive the natives out into the desert or subjugate them as third class citizens. How else can anyone build a country on somebody else’s land?… The Israeli Law of Return gives every Jew, just because one is a Jew, the right to immigrate at any time to Israel and to obtain Israeli nationality. On the other hand, even Gentiles who were born in Palestine are not allowed to return to their homes in Palestine just because they happened to be either Christians or Moslems. Foreigners such as Soviet Jews are welcomed in Israel but native Palestinians are not allowed to return to their homes. If this is not racism, what is?… Even Americans of Palestinian origin are treated differently as they enter Israel. They are asked to go through a special and separate gate at Tel Aviv International Airport… Why do our mass media call those who resisted the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia freedom fighters while we continue to refer to those who resist the Israeli occupation of Palestine ‘terrorists’? Are we in our zeal to prove our freedom from antisemitism, inadvertently transferring our antipathy from one Semite group to the other, i.e., anti-Jewish to anti-Arab?”
A signed op-ed defending the resolution in an American daily, which is rare, by a political scientist in Hawaii who is neither Arab nor Jewish. It answers Eldridge Cleaver’s column of two months earlier by name. Its last question — whether opposing antisemitism has been turned into antipathy toward Arabs — is the argument that would be running in American papers forty years later, made here in 1976 and pointed the other way. The paper spells Ashkanazi.
Plight of four schoolgirls illustrates frustration of West Bank occupation
World Affairs
William Frye
“RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, Israel — Four distressed high school girls, aged 16 to 18, sat in Mayor Karim Khlaf’s office and told a story that epitomizes the sadness and the frustration of the Israeli occupation of the Jordanian West Bank. The girls had taken part in a demonstration in their 11th and 12th grade classrooms at the Ramallah Secondary Girls School, cheering for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and against Israeli occupation. Israeli soldiers came and took some of them away. They were brought before a military court and 20 of them were fined between 5,000 and 6,000 Israeli pounds each. This is a sum equivalent to between $677 and $800. They could not pay. The court gave them a month to raise the money. The deadline was near, and they were terrified. If they did not pay, their fathers would be taken to jail. The girls sat near the mayor’s desk, twisting their hands and trying to fight back the tears. Their parents, one said, tossing black pigtails defiantly, supported them. But naturally, the fathers did not want to go to jail. Mayor Khalaf, a 38-year-old Palestinian, said he would try to get the fines reduced, and if that failed would see if he could raise the money among Ramallah businessmen. The girls left with a ray of hope… The spokesman, David Zohar, said there were many such cases each year. The fines, a spokesman said, range between ‘some hundreds and some thousands of pounds.’ In the Israeli view, this is a relatively mild security measure. In one school, the Kadri Toukan School in Nablus, 73 youngsters were hurt by club-swinging soldiers. In another, the Al Bireh Secondary Girls School near Ramallah, a 26-year-old teacher, Floranda Lahham, blocked the soldiers’ way in a doorway and was sentenced by a military court to five years in prison. The jail term was later commuted, but Lahham had to pay a 2,500-pound ($340) fine and was suspended from her job without pay for six months. Her mother is dead and her father is unemployed. The four girls spilled out these stories, and others, with great earnestness and deep concern. Their sincerity was evident. The mayor and an Anglican priest, the Rev. Audeh G. Rantisi, head of a nearby evangelical home for boys, supported their account… Thirteen college men were hospitalized and five were fined 3,500 pounds (almost $500) each. The mayor and city council later resigned in protest… Children have taken to the streets because their elders do not dare protest openly and they do, it is said.”
Schoolgirls of sixteen to eighteen, fined more than a year’s wages for cheering in a classroom, sitting in the mayor’s office trying not to cry because their fathers will go to prison if they cannot pay. One of them tosses her pigtails and says her parents are behind her. A twenty-six-year-old teacher, Floranda Lahham, stood in a doorway to stop the soldiers and was given five years, commuted to a fine and six months without pay. Her mother is dead and her father has no work, and the paper prints that too.
“DEIR HANA, Israel (UPI) — Security forces opened fire on a crowd of rioting Arabs today, killing three demonstrators in the early hours of the first general strike by the nation’s minority Arabs. The renewed violence raised the death toll in northern Galilee to four in what may be the worst outbreak of Arab rioting in Israel since the birth of the Jewish nation. A government spokesman said troops and police shot and killed three Arab youths in the village of Sakhnin hours after killing another young Arab in nearby Deir Hana. The spokesman said the security forces fired warning shots first in an attempt to break up a crowd of Arabs hurling stones, bottles and firebombs. He said the troops fired into the crowd when the Arabs ignored the warning. Nine policemen and soldiers were wounded in the confrontation. Seventy Arabs were arrested… Tens of thousands of Arabs went on strike in Israel, bringing economic life to a halt in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Nazareth, Galilee’s major town. Authorities reported sporadic disturbances all across Galilee this morning in the strike called to protest the seizure of thousands of acres of Arab land. The predominantly Arab Israeli Communist party accused troops of beating up children without provocation during the morning in Nazareth, but the Israeli government reported the city quiet. Arab sources said police arrested dozens of youngsters in towns and villages around Nazareth. They reported a ‘total strike’ on the West Bank with the region’s major towns—Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jenin—brought to a standstill. One Arab was killed and at least 16 were injured Monday night. Authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew on three Galilee towns and sealed them off from the rest of Israel… The overall impact of the walkout among the 400,000 Arabs living in Israel was not known. But a sympathy strike by Arabs on the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River and in East Jerusalem appeared more successful. Arab sources there reported virtually all stores and schools closed in Bethlehem, Nablus, Hebron and Ramallah, the major West Bank cities, as well as in the Old City of Jerusalem.”
Land Day, the day it happened, in an Illinois daily. Four hundred thousand Arabs living in Israel, a general strike against the seizure of their land, and four of them shot. The government account and the Arab account are printed in consecutive paragraphs. The headline calls it rioting.
By Ohad Gozani, United Press International, Deir Hana, Israel
“DEIR HANA, Israel (UPI) — Arabs hurling rocks, torches and fire bombs clashed with Israeli troops in northern Galilee today in the worst outbreak of Arab rioting in Israel since the birth of the Jewish state 27 years ago. Authorities said six persons were killed and 69 persons wounded, including 38 policemen and border patrol troops, and hundreds arrested as the first general strike by the nation’s minority Arabs crippled commerce in Galilee, the West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem. Arab and Jewish sources told of flareups across Galilee but the worst of the unrest was at the three-village complex of Deir Hana, Sakhnin and Arabe… Hundreds of Israeli troops backed by armored cars sealed off the villages, drove the rest of Israel and refused to let reporters past the outskirts of Deir Hana. Israeli troops fanned out among the olive trees ringing the hilltop village as demonstrators chanting anti-Israeli slogans gathered… About 10,000 Jordanians marched across the East Bank from Amman to the edge of the Jordan River to show their support for the strike, called to protest the Israeli takeover of thousands of acres of Arab land in Galilee. The Jordanian government closed the Allenby Bridge between the East Bank and West Bank, which Israel captured during the 1967 Middle East War… Tens of thousands of Arab students, teachers and shopkeepers went on strike across Israel. The recently formed ‘Committee to Protect Arab Lands’ called on the 400,000 Arabs living in Israel to honor the 24-hour walkout.”
Land Day on a Pittsburgh front page, under the tornado that hit Cabot, Arkansas, and beside a photograph of George Burns holding an Oscar. Six killed, sixty-nine wounded, hundreds arrested, four hundred thousand Arabs living in Israel, and a committee formed to protect Arab land. The headline puts “Worst Arab Riot” in quotation marks and attributes it to nobody.
“DEIR HANA, Israel (UPI) — Arabs hurling rocks, flaming torches and firebombs battled Israeli forces in northern Galilee today in the worst outbreak of Arab rioting in Israel since the birth of the Jewish state 27 years ago. Authorities reported six persons were killed, dozens wounded and hundreds arrested as the first general strike by the nation’s minority Arabs crippled commerce in Galilee, West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem. Left-wing Arab officials citing ‘information from the people,’ told of one more death and accused the battle-equipped Israeli troops of provoking the violence… A government communique said troops and police shot three Arab youths to death in Sakhnin Tuesday morning after killing a young Arab man in Araba the night before… Israeli troops fanned out among the olive trees ringing the hilltop village as hundreds of chanting Arabs demonstrated inside Deir Hana. A large cloud of black smoke hung over the town. One reporter managed to get within 200 yards of the demonstrators before being forced by Israeli troops to leave the area. Dozens of gunshots could be heard amid the chants of the demonstrators… refused to let reporters past the outskirts of Deir Hana.”
The Texas version of the Land Day wire, with the reporters kept two hundred yards back and then turned away altogether. The headline calls it rioting; the line under it calls it the worst outbreak in twenty-seven years.
“Tel Aviv (AP)—Israeli police patrolled in force in tense but calm Arab villages in Galilee today as villagers prepared to bury six Israeli Arabs killed by police and Army gunfire. In occupied west Jordan, where spasms of anti-Israeli rioting have erupted for weeks, military officials said demonstrators stopped cars and lit bonfires in the streets of some towns, but no violence was reported. There were fears that the funerals in Galilee would ignite new rioting. But Police Minister Shlomo Hillel ordered security forces not to shoot unless lives were threatened. He lifted a curfew imposed on villages north of Nazareth… Five of the Arabs were killed Tuesday during riots that accompanied a 24-hour strike by Arab citizens of Israel which the Israeli Communist party called to protest government purchase of some 1,600 acres of arid Arab land for housing and development projects. Another Arab was killed in a pre-strike riot Monday night. Authorities reported 31 Israeli Arabs and about 50 police and soldiers were injured during the riots, and at least 285 persons were rounded up for investigation… Tewfik Zayad, the Communist mayor of Nazareth and the leader of the strike, charged that ‘police clashes came only “when police provoked the people.”’ He claimed the police ‘ran after people and shot at them.’ The fighting was the first between Israeli troops and Arab citizens since Israel became a state in 1948. The Arabs who chose Israeli citizenship then rather than join the Palestinian exodus to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and their children now make up 16 per cent of the population of Israel. They have equal rights with Jews under the constitution and enjoy the highest Arab standard of living in the Middle East. But they have not been allowed to form their own political parties, and the youngest generation has turned away from Israel’s ruling Labor party to the anti-Zionist Communist party and the Palestine Liberation Organization.”
“ROCK-THROWER ARRESTED—Truncheon-wielding Israeli troops run an Arab youth down the street by his hair after they caught him hurling rocks at police officers and soldiers in the riot-hit town of Nazareth.”
The day after Land Day, with the mayor of Nazareth quoted, the land given as 1,600 acres, and a sentence that says this was the first fighting between Israeli troops and Arab citizens since 1948. The last paragraph says they have equal rights under the constitution and then says they have not been allowed to form their own political parties. The photograph is captioned as an arrest and shows a boy being dragged down a street by his hair.
“NAZARETH, Israel (AP) — Security forces shot and killed five rioting Israeli Arabs as violent clashes shattered years of calm between Israel’s three million Jews and 500,000 Arabs… Towns in occupied West Jordan — already swept by anti-Israeli riots for more than a month — joined the strike in sympathy. Police reports said 38 policemen were injured and 31 Arabs hospitalized. Police arrested 285 demonstrators… In a cable to Waldheim, the 20-member league said Arabs in the occupied territories were being ‘subjected to a wave of barbaric and terroristic measures launched by the Israeli occupying authorities in the ugliest demonstration of hate and violence that the unarmed Arab population has yet faced.’… Israel’s Arab-Jewish Communist party promoted the strike against the forced sale of rocky, unused Galilee land, which the government plans to use for Jewish and Arab development projects… The west bank Arabs are not Israeli citizens. Largely Palestinian, they have lived under Israeli occupation since the 1967 Mideast War. ‘Palestinian Arabs of the west bank are fed up with the occupation,’ said the Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij. ‘We are brothers and sisters of the Arabs of Israel, and we support them.’… ‘The clashes occurred only when police provoked the people,’ Zayad told correspondents. ‘They ran after people and shot at them. They attacked my wife and family.’ Troops stood outside Zayad’s home tossing furniture and flower pots back at demonstrators pelting them from inside the house… Arab leaders who supported the strike insisted it was strictly to protest the takeover of Arab-owned land. ‘Our lands are being confiscated,’ said Deputy Mayor Monen Jarjoura of Nazareth. ‘The number of Arabs is increasing and the size of their land is shrinking,’ protested the mayor of occupied Bethlehem. Israel’s housing minister, Avraham Ofer, however, said the land issue was a pretext for protest. ‘If you want to develop an area you have to confiscate some lands,’ the minister said. ‘We have done this very slowly with extreme consideration and much patience.’”
Three mayors and a housing minister, all quoted, on the same page. The minister’s sentence is the one that settles the argument about what the strike was about: if you want to develop an area you have to confiscate some lands. The last paragraph notes that fifty thousand West Bank Arabs went to work in Israel anyway, some because they feared losing their jobs.
Galilee quiet as Arabs prepare to bury strike riot dead
By David Lancashire, Associated Press Writer, Tel Aviv, Israel
“TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli police patrolled in force in tense but calm Arab villages in Galilee today as villagers in northern Israel prepared to bury six Arabs killed by police and army gunfire… Five of the Arabs were killed Tuesday during riots that accompanied a 24-hour strike by Arab citizens of Israel which the Israeli Communist party called to protest government purchase of some 1,600 acres of arid Arab land for housing and development projects… Tewfik Zayad, the Communist mayor of Nazareth and the leader of the strike, charged the clashes came only ‘when police provoked the people.’ He claimed police ‘ran after people and shot at them.’ Zayad is also a member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Rakah, the Communist party, introduced a motion of no confidence accusing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s government of aggression against Israel’s 500,000 Arab citizens. The fighting was the first between Israeli troops and Arab citizens of the Jewish state since Israel became a state in 1948. The Arabs who chose Israeli citizenship then rather than joining the Palestinian exodus to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and their children now make up 16 per cent of the population of Israel. They have equal rights with Jews under the constitution and enjoy the highest Arab standard of living in the Middle East. But they have not been allowed to form their own political parties, and the younger generation has turned away from Israel’s ruling Labor party to the anti-Zionist Communist party and to the Palestine Liberation Organization. ‘We were wrong for 28 years in thinking we could ignore the ethnic difference,’ said Defense Minister Shimon Perez. ‘You can’t expect an Arab to be a Zionist, support Jewish immigration to Israel and sing the national anthem.’ However, Justice Minister Haim Zadok said the importance of the unrest should not be exaggerated and that the rioting did not mean an ‘uprising’ by Arab citizens… ‘Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank are fed up with the occupation,’ said the mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij. ‘We are brothers and sisters of the Arabs of Israel, and we support them.’”
The Alabama version, and it carries the line the others do not: the Israeli defense minister saying you cannot expect an Arab to be a Zionist or sing the national anthem, and admitting twenty-eight years of being wrong about it. Printed beside a life insurance recruitment advertisement and notice of a 1932 high school reunion.
Elections Scheduled for Arabs In Israeli-Occupied West Bank
United Press International, Nablus, Israeli-occupied Jordan
“Occupation authorities said 18,810 ballots were cast by 11 a.m., 5,897 of them by women, who had the vote for the first time. An 80 per cent turnout was expected… Four women are among the 544 candidates… ‘The voters are voting for a refusal of the occupation and more stubborn candidates will be elected,’ said Cana Abdul Hadi, a Nablus city councilman for 17 years…”
Palestinians voting, covered as an election — turnout, polling places, candidates chatting outside, women voting for the first time. The dateline calls the territory Israeli-occupied Jordan while the headline above it says Israeli-Occupied West Bank: one story, two names, neither of them Palestine.
“Attacking a U.N. resolution which equates Zionism with racism as ‘cynical and vicious,’ an Israeli minister to the United Nations said here Sunday his country will not accept ‘the indefensible borders of 1967.’ ‘Our defense is our own responsibility, which is a major reason why, even though for real peace we are ready to compromise our territory, we will not be pushed back to the indefensible borders of 1967,’ Mordechai Lador told a Zionist Organization of America dinner at Agudath Sholom Synagogue. Mr. Lador serves as ambassador to the permanent mission of Israel at the United Nations. In that capacity, he is a key aide to Israeli U.N. Ambassador Chaim Herzog… The Israeli official warned his audience that once again the world has turned against the Jewish people and is attacking the Hebrew state ‘for no other reason than because it is small and because it is Jewish.’”
How the resolution actually reached American towns: a synagogue banquet in Stamford, an award for a man who supported a technical high school in Israel, and a staff reporter taking notes. The story beside it is a city representative and a city engineer arguing about basement flooding on Sleepy Hollow Lane.
“Wherever I move or turn in this country I see images of my occupied country, Palestine, and its dispossessed people, the Palestinians. Every breathing moment I feel the exile, suffering and pain of it all. As if mankind’s wounds and tragedies are centered in Palestine, in me. And I keep asking: Do Americans really know the suffering of my people? I have seen myself distorted on United States television so many times. ‘Terrorists, infiltrators, murderers.’ Even my five-year-old daughter, born in this country, said suddenly to her mother, ‘Palestinians are bad.’ And we have to explain: No, beautiful one, we Palestinians are good; we want peace, brotherhood, happiness. But very few listen and understand… Of the thousands expelled since 1967 two came here to explain, Hanna Nasir, a humane president of Birzeit College expelled by the Israeli military on Nov. 21, 1974, and Abdel Jawad Saleh, a popular mayor of the town of Al-Birah, expelled on Dec. 10, 1973. No charges, no trial, simply a military order of ‘deportation’ read by Israeli soldiers at the border. They tried to explain here that this is illegal, contrary to Geneva Convention agreements. No response. The only moving thing they did was to speak by telephone to their wives and children, whom they cannot see on the occupied West Bank. I will never forget Mr. Nasir’s emotional words: ‘Don’t worry, son. I will return. I love you all.’… Wael Zeiter, a young Palestinian activist murdered in Rome on Oct. 16, 1972, was denied the right by the Israeli authorities to be buried in his hometown, Nablus… When I applied in 1972, two Israeli officials interviewed me at length in Washington, D.C., and demanded, ‘Why do you want to return?’ Because I love my people and want to live in peace and teach at a college. They made me fill seven long application forms and never replied to me… And we to become like the native Indians, faceless, strangers in our own land, withering away in reservations?… We have learned, however, the humane thought of Jews like Ahad Ha’am and Judah Magnes and Israelis like Israel Shahaq and Felicia Langer who have spoken of justice for Palestinians… I tell my daughter and my angry conscience: We want peace and brotherhood in Palestine. The guns will be turned into plowshares soon, so my child, all children, will play in peace under the ancient olive trees and sing and learn the Arab and Jewish humane heritage and culture.”
A cartoon captioned “A spoonful of sugar …?” shows Uncle Sam spooning U.S. AID into an armed figure standing on the word ISRAEL, beside an untouched cup labelled SEPARATE STATE OF PALESTINE.
A signed Palestinian commentary in a southern Illinois daily. The editor’s note says only that Hatem Hussaini works for the League of Arab States. The archive already holds him speaking two years later at the Palestine Information Office in Washington. Hanna Nasir, Israel Shahak and Felicia Langer each appear in other clippings here across the 1970s and 1980s.
By Alan Merridew, Chicago Tribune Press Service, Vancouver
“The United Nations Conference on Human Settlements [Habitat] Friday night adopted a declaration of principles which by association equated Zionism with racism. The vote in favor was 89-15, with 10 abstentions. Voting no were Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, West Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Britain, and the United States… A general principle in the declaration says it is the duty of all people and governments to join the struggle against ‘any form of colonialism, foreign aggression and occupation, domination, apartheid, and all forms of racism and racial discrimination, referred to in the resolutions as adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations.’ The last phrase was taken to be a link with last November’s General Assembly resolution which equated zionism with racism.… NEITHER OF THESE two amendments named Israel or mentioned Palestinians. But it was clear to all participating that Palestinians living in Israeli occupied territories was the subject… THE ISRAELI SPOKESMAN responded bitterly. The amendment was ‘just one more tired act in the world-traveling Arab circus,’ he said.”
Seven months after the vote the formula turns up at a conference about housing. It would do the same at UNESCO in Paris, at a racism conference in Geneva, at the women’s conferences in Copenhagen and Nairobi, and at Durban. Each time it attaches itself to a meeting convened about something else, and each time the something else is what gets held up. The Tribune sets zionism in lower case in its headline.
Arab-American convention hears horror stories from Israeli Arabs
Andrea Brunais, Times Staff Writer
“NEW YORK — Hanna Nasir already was asleep when Israeli authorities in Birzeit called him to their offices to discuss student demonstrations at Birzeit University. The students had been demonstrating against continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank. It was close to midnight in November 1974 when Nasir got the call, but the president of the Palestinians’ only university did as he was told. There were no discussions, however. Nasir was handcuffed, blindfolded and driven to the Lebanese border with three other West Bank Palestinians. They were told to move north, if they returned they would be shot… Nasir is one of the 1,300 well-educated professionals who have been deported — illegally, they say — from the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan. Nasir left behind his wife and four children, who later joined him in Amman, Jordan, where he continues to run the university in absentia. His expulsion, he said, was part of a systematic policy by the Israelis to eliminate any possibility of leadership among the Palestinians on the West Bank… Felicia Langer, a Jewish author and attorney on the West Bank, described ‘institutionalized terror’ against the Arabs in the occupied territories, including tactics such as illegal deportation, years-long ‘administrative detentions’ without hearing or trial, brutal interrogations, collective punishments and the destruction of homes… Some members of the AAUG hoped the organization would join the struggle to improve the image of the Arab in the minds of the American public. Keynote speaker James Abourezk, Democratic senator from South Dakota, noted that most Americans think of Arabs only as ‘greedy, rich spendthrifts or murderous bandits.’… In deference to the bloodshed in Lebanon, however, the festivities were scrapped. Instead, the outspoken leftist mayor of Nazareth, Tawfiq Zayyad, proved himself as adept at poetry as he is at aggravating the Israeli authorities. He recited one of his poems about Palestine, which set some members of his audience to tears. ‘We will not leave (Palestine),’ he recited. ‘We are staying, to attend our homes, our lands, our fences. We were here in the past, we will maintain it in the present, because the future is ours.’ Tomorrow: Palestinians under Israeli rule.”
A poem recited at a convention and printed by an American paper as news. The parenthesis in “We will not leave (Palestine)” is the paper’s own. Zayyad was mayor of Nazareth and a member of the Knesset — a Palestinian citizen of Israel, which the paper marks in its headline by calling the speakers “Israeli Arabs.”
Arabs within Israel and in the occupied territories complain of second-class citizenship, jailings for political beliefs and terror tactics such as the blowing up of homes.
Andrea Brunais, Times Staff Writer
“NEW YORK — Israel is often referred to as the only democracy in the Middle East. But according to prominent Palestinian Arabs living in Israel and on the occupied West Bank of the Jordan, life is anything but democratic for them. Tawfiq Zayyad, the mayor of Nazareth, described a ‘regime of oppression’ under which the Palestinians — even those who are citizens of Israel — live. The leftist mayor-poet said Israeli authorities are carrying out ‘a policy of national discrimination’ by expropriating Arab lands, implementing ‘spiritual and cultural Judaization’ and retarding the development of Arab cities and villages within Israel. Israeli Arabs are labeled ‘non-Jews’ and they study Arabic by listening to lectures in Hebrew, Zayyad said. As for schools, ‘the vast majority of the existing school buildings should be called stables because they are more for animals than human beings.’ Some Palestinian Arabs, like Zayyad, are citizens of Israel who did not leave when the state was created in 1947. Others do not have Israeli passports, such as those who live in the occupied territories, and life for them is no easier under Israeli military rule. Felicia Langer, a Jewish attorney on the West Bank and author of ‘With My Own Eyes,’ has defended many of the Palestinian Arabs arrested by Israeli authorities for crimes ranging from passing out leaflets to giving a glass of water to a demonstrator. ‘There’s nothing lawful in the eyes of the authorities,’ she said. Four thousand Arabs are in jail for political reasons, said Mrs. Langer, who was born in Poland and whose husband survived Buchenwald. In occupied Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights, more than 19,000 buildings have been destroyed, and with them the myth that the Israelis have brought prosperity to the occupied lands, she said. In the case of some of the Arabs she has represented in court, the homes of their parents were blown up without the parents ever being told why their sons or daughters had been arrested.… Other speakers included Sen. James Abourezk, D-South Dakota; Shafiq el-Hout, director of the Beirut office of the Palestine Liberation Organization; and Clovis Maksoud, a senior editor of Beirut’s al-Nahar… ‘Those of us who understand the forces operating in the area know full well there will be neither peace nor justice in the Middle East if the focus is on the Arab-Israeli issues, and the issue of Palestine is ignored,’ said Elaine Hagopian, president of the Arab-American group and a professor of sociology at Simmons College in Massachusetts. ‘Palestine is and will continue to be the issue.’… Editor Maksoud told the conference, ‘It is not that our enemies plan; it is that we fall into the trap.’ Tomorrow: The Arabs and information.”
The second of a three-part series; the first is CP-1976-008, printed the day before, which ends with Tawfiq Zayyad reciting a poem. The photograph on this one is Felicia Langer, captioned only “…19,000 buildings destroyed.” The third part ran on 14 October under the line the paper prints here: The Arabs and information.
“TEL AVIV—It’s hard to believe that underneath the warm, friendly exterior of Menahem Begin lies the past of an underground Jewish terrorist leader. Despite Begin’s gracious European manners and an eloquence that marked his 29 years as leader of the right-wing parliamentary opposition, there is a fierce nationalism forged by Nazi persecution and the turbulent days before Israeli statehood… Speaking to the nation, Begin set down tough terms for peace with the Arabs and declared that his party was unwilling to withdraw from the occupied Jordanian West Bank under any circumstances and was unwilling to allow a Palestinian state in the West Bank to become a belligerent Soviet satellite… BORN IN POLAND, Begin emigrated to Palestine in 1942 after three years under Nazi rule. He preached a militant philosphy that placed him at odds with the Palestinian Arabs, the ruling British authorities, and the Labor leaders that ruled the Palestinian Jews. He founded the Irgun underground guerrilla group which carried out brutal attacks on Arab villages and British installations and blew up Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946, killing 91 persons. The aim of the Irgun was to establish a Jewish homeland on both sides of the Jordan River, according to biblical prophecy. Begin still dislikes being called a former terrorist. During a visit to Britain three years ago, he told newsmen, ‘You call me a terrorist, but I call myself a freedom fighter.’ HE GAINED respect as the leader of the right-wing Herut Party in Parliament after Israel won its statehood in 1948. But he revived his reputation for militancy by leading violent clashes against the government of Premier David Ben-Gurion over Israel’s decision to accept reparations from West Germany for the Nazi holocaust.”
The morning after the election, in the paper’s own headline: ex-terrorist. The word is not in quotation marks and is not attributed to anyone. Begin’s answer is printed in the same column. The same paragraph uses Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews of the 1940s, and the phrase in Begin’s policy sentence is the occupied Jordanian West Bank. “philosphy” is the paper’s.
Will Thousands of Refugees Ever Have Their Homeland Again?
“More than 600,000 Arabs still live in 63 refugee camps in Israeli-occupied territories, like Gaza… But who are the Palestinians, where are they, and what do they want? Can they have a homeland as Carter has suggested, and if so, where? What are the major obstacles to finding a solution to the ‘Palestinian problem’?… This camp is a good place to start looking for an answer… It is called the Beach Camp. It is in a traditionally Arab area called the Gaza Strip, some 20 miles south of Israel’s Tel Aviv, on the shores of the Mediterranean. The site should be a land developer’s dream. But for nearly 30 years it has been one of the world’s most miserable slums. More than 36,000 Palestinian Arabs live here, supported in part by the United Nations… One young man on the street is Mohammed, 20, who was born in this camp, as were five brothers and a sister. His father, a hospital worker, fled Askelon in 1949, seeking shelter from the Israelis in an Arab area. Mohammed makes his living selling soft drinks in the hot sun but hopes to build a house outside the camp on government land. He has never had a full-time job. Another is Rafi, 23, father of three and expecting a fourth. He lives with his parents, also from a small Arab town now in Israel. He also was born in the camp and he makes some money laying tile. ‘I must get out of this camp,’ Rafi says. ‘I’m working to do it. It is the difference between day and night to be out of this camp.’ He pauses and then blurts: ‘There should be peace. Everybody is waiting for peace.’… There are an estimated 3.3 million Palestinians scattered throughout the world… Nearly half of all Palestinians live under Israeli control, either in occupied territories or in Israel itself. This is a potent political time bomb for the Israelis… ‘Does it make sense?’ asks Dr. Ramzi Rihan, a professor at Bir Zeit University on the West Bank. ‘Economically, I would say no. It is an arid land, largely devoid of natural resources. The Gaza Strip has great potential as a port, however, and Gaza might be developed for light industry.’ Dr. Mohammad Hallaj says: ‘It would fall into the category of a minor, underdeveloped country. But no one really knows what’s here. No studies have ever really been made.’… ‘We did not take the Palestinian problem seriously,’ acknowledges one high U.S. official. ‘We thought the Palestinians would be absorbed by neighboring countries.’ That hasn’t happened, and today we realize it is a major key to a solution in the Middle East. Arabs have claimed that for years. Almost any Palestinian will tell you instantly what he wants: ‘We want our land back.’… Mohammed Esa Dudir, a moderately well-to-do farmer near Hebron, who was born on the West Bank and whose ancestors have farmed land near Hebron for generations, has no vision of what needs to be done. ‘What we need here is peace. We do not want an army,’ he says. ‘What we want is the right to think and act for ourselves.’ He suggests that the West Bank be placed under international trusteeship and totally demilitarized for ‘five or six years’ to learn to get on its own feet. Then he advocates a vote on what should happen next. ‘Maybe we would join Jordan, maybe Syria, maybe neither. I don’t know. But we would like to decide that for ourselves.’”
Five Palestinians named and quoted: two men born in the Beach Camp in Gaza who have never had steady work, two professors at Birzeit, and a farmer near Hebron who wants a demilitarised trusteeship and then a vote. The farmer’s answer is the longest in the piece and the least quoted anywhere since. The feature shares its page with a column on the Anita Bryant campaign in Dade County, an essay on how the word gay changed, and the week’s bestseller list.
William R. Frye, Patriot Ledger U.N. Correspondent, United Nations, N.Y.
“UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. — There is a certain wry irony about the public postures being adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel about negotiations with each other. The fact is that the two already have engaged in arms’ length exchanges, and made some progress toward agreement. Key Exchanges. The fact of these exchanges has long been known, but their substance has been closely held. They are carefully disavowed on both sides. But they have been far from unimportant. What has happened is that a group of Israeli doves with excellent Zionist credentials, including Maj. Gen. Mattiyahu Peled, director of the Department of Arab Studies at Tel Aviv University, have met with middle-level PLO officials in a series of talks which began last July in Paris, and continued intermittently thereafter. In their initial meetings, they agreed on a basis for negotiation: creation of a Palestinian Arab state on the West Bank and in Gaza, with boundaries essentially those of 1967; Jerusalem to remain unified, but with sovereignty to be shared by Israel and the Arab Palestine; PLO acceptance of the 1967 Israel — which is to say, in effect, coexistence of Israel and the PLO. The Israeli negotiators reported to the government in Jerusalem the fact of the meeting and the initial accord which had been reached. The Rabin cabinet voiced no objection. It could have cut the talk off by calling them ‘dealings with the enemy,’ a serious crime; it did not. Nor did the Knesset, which debated the matter. No Responsibility. The Israeli government thus permitted the talks to continue. It accepted no responsibility for them, but declined to interfere. Subsequent meetings, over a period of months, evoked from the PLO side a willingness to state publicly that it would recognize the state of Israel and refrain from hostile action against it, provided Israel would promise to respond favorably to this step. The response would include willingness to negotiate with the PLO on establishment of an Arab Palestine. The offer was relayed to Jerusalem, and the answer that came back was ‘no.’ Israel has never fully explained the refusal. One reason, however, was doubt about the authority of the PLO negotiators. The PLO representatives included Said Hammami, the PLO representative in London, and Assam Sartawi, an aide; but it was not clear that they could ‘deliver’ the top PLO leadership, much less survive a challenge from the ‘Rejection Front,’ the PLO group which resists all peace moves… Controlling Majority. Independent specialists believe a large segment, probably a controlling majority, of the PLO is in fact now willing to coexist with it. The Israeli election in May will determine whether moderates are to be in control of the Israeli government. The Cairo meeting next month may determine whether moderates are in control of the PLO. Until then, public postures on both sides are likely to be unyielding — and of relatively little long-range significance.”
An American correspondent reporting in 1977 that the PLO had offered to recognize Israel and that the answer from Jerusalem was no. Both PLO negotiators are named; Said Hammami was assassinated the following January.
“WASHINGTON — Menachem Begin, whose Likud Party won the recent Israeli elections, was speaking fact when he stated that the West Bank of the Jordan River was ‘liberated’ territory and ‘our land.’ By any reasonable reading of history, the West Bank does belong to the Jews, however convenient pundits and State Department types may find it to ignore the facts… 6. The Jews sadly accepted the partition, but the Arabs turned it down. Egypt and Transjordan invaded Palestine. The Egyptians were routed, holding on only to the Gaza Strip which they turned into what has been described as ‘a concentration camp for Palestinians.’… It should be remembered that the ‘legitimate aspirations’ of the Palestinians were satisfied when the British gave them two-thirds of Palestine. If King Hussein has made them second-class citizens in Jordan, the Palestinian quarrel is with him, not with Israel.”
The maximalist case, printed in an American daily in 1977, in a syndicated column. The argument is numbered, one to eight, from the Balfour Declaration to the 1967 war.
“His has been an insistent voice proclaiming Israel’s right to Judea and Samaria—the ‘West Bank’ seized by Jordan in 1948… Israel must express its claims to legitimacy in the West’s shared vocabulary of liberal democratic politics. Its aspirations must be intelligible to the secular people who could not care less what God promised Abraham.”
A nationally syndicated columnist using Judea and Samaria unmarked and bracketing West Bank — five months before the Associated Press explained to readers that the two names were ideological badges. The column is itself about which vocabulary to use with Americans.
“His has been an insistent voice proclaiming Israel’s right to Judea and Samaria—the ‘West Bank’ seized by Jordan in 1948… Israel can not seem to be hearing mysterious voices and obeying strange impulses. It must express its claims to legitimacy in the West’s shared vocabulary of liberal democratic politics.”
The same syndicated column as the Newsday printing, the same Monday. Newsday headlined it as Israel’s right being fragile; this paper headlined it as expansion being costly, and put the contested name in a kicker with a question mark after it. This printing is also the longer of the two and keeps sentences Newsday cut.
“A collection of 50 paintings by 11 Palestinian artists will be on public exhibit noon to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday at Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Sponsored by the Assn. of Arab-American University Graduates in Southern California, the exhibit, the first of its kind, is designed to present the Arabic art and culture of the Palestinian people to the American public. Two of the artists, Issam Badr and Suliman Mansur, are touring with the exhibit. Others whose work is represented in the show are: Bashir Sinwar, Ibrihim Saba, Ismail Ashour, Jamal Badran, Nabil Anani, Samira Badran, Vera Tamari, Laila Al-Shawa and Khalil Dadah.”
Eleven Palestinians named in five lines, four of them women, in a listing so short it carries no byline. Two of these names recur in this archive decades later: Nabil Anani builds an upside-down Statue of Liberty in the rubble at Ramallah in 2002, and Suliman Mansur — spelled Suleiman Mansour by every later paper here — has his gallery closed in 1980 and stands outside Ketziot prison in 1988. The sponsoring body is the same association whose 1976 convention the Tampa Times covered in CP-1976-008.
Pressure growing against laxer immigration policies
Dean Reed, News Washington Bureau
“WASHINGTON — Pressure is growing for reconsideration of new U.S. immigration policies — particularly a recent law change that allows Communist spokesmen and militant Palestinians to travel and speak freely in the United States. The change occurred when Congress approved a legal amendment sponsored by Sen. George S. McGovern, D-S.D., upsetting long-standing U.S. immigration policy barring known troublemakers. Now opposition to the McGovern amendment is coming from such Democratic Party leaders as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y. Moynihan, for example, says the amendment is ‘inviting to our country Soviet government agents masquerading as trade union leaders’. The hard-hitting New York lawmaker referred to a U.S. tour by four Soviet spokesmen in October. The group, Moynihan said, promised not ‘to engage in controversy’ — and then in Pittsburgh said that American unions have fewer rights than Soviet unions. ‘A FINE EXAMPLE of what the Soviets mean by reciprocity,’ said Moynihan… Meanwhile, the American Jewish Congress is protesting to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance the granting of a visa permitting an officer of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to ‘roam the country at will’… At issue is a coming trip by Palestinian Mahmoud Salem Darwish. When asked about his affiliation with the PLO, State Department officials said the information was confidential and won’t be released except in case of a court trial…”
A Washington column on immigration law, and the man whose visa is being protested is named Mahmoud Salem Darwish. This archive holds the poet Mahmoud Darwish being refused a three-day American visa in 1982 under a McCarthy-era clause of the same body of law. Whether the man named here is the same person is not established by this clipping and is not claimed: the middle name does not match the poet’s usual rendering, and the State Department would not say what his affiliation was. What the clipping does establish is the machinery — a 1977 amendment that let Palestinians speak in the United States, the pressure to reverse it, and the same statute still being used to keep one out five years later. The other half of the column is a comic item about a senator trying to find a room to name after Hubert Humphrey.
R. M. Sorge, United Press International, United Nations
“UNITED NATIONS — Israel frequently tortures Arab prisoners with hypnosis, electric shocks and having ‘their manliness mocked’ by Israeli women soldiers, a special U.N. report charges. The lengthy report released Tuesday by the U.N. Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices drew a bitter denial from Israel, which termed it ‘biased, false and one-sided.’ Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog said the report was based on hearsay and unsubstantiated evidence and charged the committee was, ‘like all other U.N. committees dealing with Israel, no more than a tool in the hands of Arab propagandists in their unremitting war against the Jewish state.’ The report by the three-member committee said Israeli security agents make ‘frequent use of torture’ when interrogating Arab prisoners suspected of belonging to Palestinian guerrilla groups. Most of the charges were based on testimony by Mrs. Lea Tsemel, a defense lawyer for Arab prisoners, and reporters from the Sunday Times of London, which published a series of investigative articles on the alleged torture of Arab prisoners in Israeli jails. But the three members of the U.N. committee — Sri Lanka, Senegal and Yugoslavia — also cited International Red Cross reports of severe overcrowding in Israeli jails and Israeli press reports to back up many of the allegations. According to one report, published last summer by the Jerusalem Post magazine, Arab prisoners were sometimes ‘stripped (to) have their manliness mocked by a girl soldier to make them feel small.’ The report said that Israel had refused to cooperate with its investigations and seconded an International Red Cross recommendation that an international commission of inquiry compose of neutral states be established to look further into the matter.”
The charge and the denial in the same column, and the news agency names its sources: an Israeli defense lawyer, the Sunday Times of London, the Red Cross and the Jerusalem Post. “Compose of” is the paper’s.
For Israel, It’s ‘Judea And Samaria’ And Not The West Bank
Sabastiyah, Occupied West Bank (AP)
Associated Press
“Ruins lie upon ruins at Sabastiyah, a Palestinian Arab town with a Greek name honoring a Roman emperor and now administered by Israelis… There are three ways of referring to this disputed area of 2,270 square miles, and each has a different political significance… ‘Don’t call it ‘the West Bank’,’ Prime Minister Menahem Begin admonished reporters after his nationalistic Likud party won last May’s election. ‘It’s ‘Judea and Samaria’…’ ‘This was Palestine until 1948, then it became the West bank,’ a young Arab teacher said in Ramallah. ‘Now we want it to be Palestine again.’ … The 700,000 Arabs of the West Bank have no terms corresponding to Judea and Samaria. They are more likely to divide the area into ‘the Hills of Hebron’ or the ‘Hills of Nablus’… ‘We love to call our places by their biblical names,’ said Dr. Zeev Vilnay, of Jerusalem, a guidebook author, former soldier and member of the Israeli government place-names committee.”
A whole wire article about what to call the territory, datelined from the town the archive tracks as Sebustiye (1929), Sebastia (2013) and Sebastia/Shomron (2023). It enumerates the three names and what each one means, quotes a prime minister instructing American reporters, quotes the Israeli government’s place-names committee, and quotes a Palestinian teacher. It is the only clipping here that records what Palestinians called the region around them.
“WASHINGTON — If there is to be peace in the Middle East, it is generally agreed, the Arabs and Israelis will have to solve what is known as the ‘Palestinian problem’ or, more precisely, the ‘Palestinian refugee problem.’ Who are the Palestinians? Where did they come from and where are they now? Who are their leaders? What do they want and what will they settle for? The answers to some of these questions come easily; to others, with great difficulty, if at all… The vast majority of the approximately 3.4 million Palestinians in the world today live in the Middle East. Curiously, there are more Palestinians (7,000) in the United States than in Libya (fewer than 5,000)… Although not all Palestinians left — there are 460,000 now living in Israel — many poured into Jordan, the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza Strip. According to latest estimates, there are a million Palestinians in Jordan, 700,000 in the West Bank area and 350-400,000 in the Gaza Strip. Syria has approximately 250,000 Palestinians; Lebanon 300,000; Egypt only 20,000-25,000; Kuwait, 140,000; other Persian Gulf states 15,000; Saudi Arabia 20,000; Iraq 15,000, and Algeria 5,000. Palestinians are descendants of the Philistines and, ironically, are sometimes referred to as ‘the Jews of the Middle East.’… It is estimated that about one-third of the Palestinians live in refugee camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon… Palestinians are better educated, in general, than other Arabs in the Middle East. This is, in part, because UNRWA has provided them with a decent school system. Having a good educational start and faced with the need for better qualifications to compete for available jobs, many Palestinians continued their studies on through the universities. According to one observer of the area, Edward Mortimer of the Times of London, more Palestinians, per capita, have graduated from schools of higher education than have Arabs from any other nation and as many as citizens of any West European country. ‘Many of these graduates occupy key positions, especially in the oil-producing states,’ he said. ‘They are found not only in technical posts but also in administrative ones, in both the private and public sectors, and even in the (Arab) diplomatic services, at the United Nations and in embassies abroad.’”
A wire-service explainer that sets out to answer who the Palestinians are, and gets a population figure for every country in the region. It also prints, as fact, that Palestinians are descendants of the Philistines. The paragraph on education is the rarest thing in it: a page of this archive in which Palestinians are being counted for something other than casualties or refugee registrations.
The PLO’s goal is equal rights, say Palestinians in America
“The long-term solution for Palestinians, as uttered by the PLO and all their supporters, has come to be called ‘a democratic secular state’ in what is now Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, where Jew, Moslem and Christian could work out an existence where all had equal social and political rights. Needless to say, even most Palestinians acknowledge that Israeli military power and policies would make such a solution impossible… There are about 732,000 in the West Bank and about 400,000 in Gaza. The non-Jewish population of Israel is 530,000, and it is overwhelmingly Palestinian. So about half of all Palestinians are now under Israeli rule… It is believed that 500,000 more live in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. Of the Palestinians outside of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, about 640,000 live in refugee camps.”
Palestinians living in the United States, interviewed in an American daily in 1977, saying what they want. The piece counts them: about half of all Palestinians then under Israeli rule, and about 640,000 in refugee camps.
“JERUSALEM (AP) — The government won final approval Tuesday for three new and potentially controversial Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River. The go-ahead came one day before Egypt and Israel begin the next stage of peace negotiations… Israeli settlements — about 91 of them scattered across Arab territory captured by Israel in 1967 — are one of the key sticking points in the Egyptian-Israeli peace dialogue, begun by Egypt’s Anwar Sadat last November. President Sadat has said ‘not a single Israeli’ can remain on Arab lands after peace. Israel’s Begin is equally adamant that the settlements will stay.”
Israeli-built apartment buildings, foreground and distant background, in former Jordanian territory annexed to Jerusalem by Israel after 1967 war, will be among considerations in Middle East peace talks. AP Photo.
Ninety-one settlements, counted in a wire story in 1978.
Correction: {'note': 'Slide 11 captions this scan as the Houston Chronicle, 15 October 1980. It reports the foreign ministers’ conference opening in Jerusalem on 16 January and the start of Egyptian-Israeli talks, so it is the 1978 Los Angeles paper.'}
· The Philadelphia Inquirer · Philadelphia · page 1
A land so sacred to all who have held it
“‘One day they came to me at the market and told me, “The Jews are working your land.” I went crazy. I stood right here and threw stones at the bulldozer until they made me go away and there was nothing I could do’… ‘They asked me to take money — 3 million Israeli pounds! But I don’t sell my grandfather’s land. It is my sister. My daughter. How could I sell my land?’… ‘Throwing the Arabs out would be the most humane solution to the demographic problem,’ he said. ‘If we don’t want to be another South Africa with a rule by a small minority, the most humane and life-saving solution would be to put all the Arabs on trucks and carry them outside.’”
The new confronts the very old: The town of Kiryat Arba (foreground) was built in past eight years, across valley from Hebron, a site occupied for 6,000 years. Special to The Inquirer / Gideon Gitai.
A settler proposing removal by truck, in 1978, and naming South Africa as the thing to avoid. The scan is a dense jump page; only passages legible at full resolution are transcribed.
Map shows many of the 90 Israeli settlements in occupied territories. Israeli settlements are triangles; Arab towns, squares; Israeli towns, circles. Large-scale Israeli settlements are identified by name and/or large triangle.
A map, printed a month after another paper in this archive counted about 91. The legend gives Arab towns their own symbol.
Four Million Palestinian Refugees ‘Alienated, Dispossessed, Amputated’
Weekend Focus · Other Comment and Opinion
Hatem I. Hussaini, acting director, Palestine Information Office, Washington DC
The paper’s own introduction: “Americans generally have read and heard more about the Israeli point of view than about that of the Palestinians. Supporters of the Palestinians have contended that their side of the story has not been adequately told. In answer to this, The World-Herald sought out the writer, acting director of the Palestine Information Office in Washington, D.C., who provided this commentary.” And then the writer: “In the United States, very little is known about the Palestinian people. The American media has either ignored them or reduced them to distorted and stereotyped images of violent and destructive terrorists. Thus, the American public has little knowledge about the historical tragedy of the Palestinians, their persecution and exile, their present dispersion and suffering. Of all the nations of the Middle East, the Palestinians, approximately four million, are stateless and homeless. While every people enjoy security, freedom, and national rights in their own state, the Palestinians remain in ‘refugee camps,’ alienated and dispossessed, a whole nation amputated and scattered in different states and continents.”
The same newspaper Sara Pahl writes to in 2018 asking why it carries no coverage. Forty years earlier it went looking for a Palestinian to write for it, printed him at the top of the page with a map, and ran his office address in the byline. The page is dated Oct. 22, 1978, 17-B.
“Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, co-winner of the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with Anwar Sadat, said Saturday he telephoned the Egyptian president to congratulate him and the two agreed that ‘real prize is peace itself.’ New bitterness over the award emerged in some world capitals. The Soviet news agency Tass printed 600 words of international commentaries that variously described the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision as an ‘insult,’ ‘a bad joke’ and an ‘outrage.’ Begin, who had withheld comment until after the Jewish Sabbath, said in Jerusalem he was deeply honored to receive the award. ‘It is a day of joy for us,’ he said. ‘But the real great joy will come on the day when i will be able to announce that the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel is concluded, signed and ratified.’ Sadat, at a villa outside Cairo, said the honor went to the people of Egypt and all who have supported his peace initiative… Begin said he would receive the prize in the name of the Israeli poooople because ‘there is no other nation on Earth that wants peace more than our people. I am only the addressee.’… The Soviet Union has made no direct comment except for Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko’s remark in Paris dismissing the award as ‘a joke.’ The Tass compilation of critical commentaries included one report saying the Nobel Committee could have awarded the prize ‘with equal success’ to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who negotiated the Munich pact, which Chamberlain said would bring ‘peace in our time,’ a year before the outbreak of World War II. In Damascus, Syria, the government-run radio said: ‘It is not an honor for Sadat to share any prize with an anti-Arab terrorist like Menachem Begin.’ A Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman in Damascus said the award comes ‘while Begin is still an aggressor against Palestinian land and rights, while Sadat is Begin’s partner.’ The Algerian government-controlled newspaper El Moudjahid commented, ‘At first sight, one wonders whether to denounce a scandal or a practical joke.’ Describing the two prize-winners as ‘warmongers par excellence,’ the front-page editorial accused them of seeking ‘the disappearance of Palestine and the genocide of the Palestinian people.’ It described Begin as ‘the terrorist leader ... assassin of women and children and perpetual arsonist of the Middle East,’ and Sadat as ‘he who betrayed his people and the entire Arab nation, who denies the existence of the Palestinian people.’”
“Prime Minister Begin — ‘a day of joy for us’” · “President Sadat — an honor for the people of Egypt”
The word “genocide” reaching an American paper in 1978 as a quotation from an Algerian editorial, printed without comment alongside the Nobel announcement. “Poooople” is the paper’s typesetting.
“UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. General Assembly voted three times Saturday in favor of a declaration that links Zionism with racism. Zionism is the movement backing Israel as the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Israeli delegate Ilana Ben Ami told the assembly its actions revived ‘the tendentious formula of 1975’ when it passed an Arab-authored resolution calling Zionism ‘a form of racism.’ ‘For the people of Israel, in the same way that Judaism cannot be divorced from Zionism, anti-Zionism cannot be divorced from anti-Semitism,’ she said. The assembly votes centered on a declaration of the U.N.-sponsored World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimation held in Geneva Aug. 14-15. The resolution spoke of ‘increasing relations between the Zionist state of Israel and the racist regime of South Africa’ and accused Israel of ‘racial discrimination’ against the Palestinians. The United States, which boycotted the Geneva conference, did not participate in the assembly voting. U.S. delegate Richard W. Petree said nothing had occurred to change the U.S. position.”
The sentence in the middle of this dispatch is the whole of the later argument, spoken on the floor of the General Assembly in December 1978 by an Israeli delegate: anti-Zionism cannot be divorced from anti-Semitism. Thirteen years before the resolution was repealed and thirty-seven before an American paper ran it as a headline. The Kansas City Star ran the same dispatch the same day and cut that sentence out. The paper spells it Discrimation.
“UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. General Assembly voted three times Saturday in favor of a declaration that links Zionism with racism… Israeli delegate Ilana Ben Ami told the assembly its actions revived ‘the tendentious formula of 1975’… The General Assembly, acting on a recommendation of its social committee, took these actions: Voted 107-18 with 11 abstentions to approve the conference declaration. Voted 101-19 with 15 abstentions for another resolution endorsing the declaration and asked for a study the idea of establishing an international voluntary fund to help ‘national liberation movements in their struggle against racism and apartheid.’ The Palestine Liberation Organization, which has observer status with the assembly, presumably could request money from such a fund. Voted 98-21 with 16 abstentions for a provision ‘welcoming’ the declaration. When the Geneva conference passed the Israeli-South Africa declaration, 12 countries walked out. They were the nine European Common Market members, Britain, Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, West Germany and Italy, along with Australia, Canada and New Zealand. They cast ‘no’ votes Saturday. The United States boycotted the Geneva conference and did not participate in the assembly voting.”
The same dispatch as the Duluth News Tribune, with all three vote counts kept and one sentence removed: the Israeli delegate’s line about anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. This version also records that the United States boycotted a United Nations conference on racism, which it would do again at Durban twenty-three years later.
Are Israelis guilty of systematic torture? Perhaps, U.S. reports cautiously suggest
Perhaps, U.S. reports cautiously suggest · Three Arabs tell tales of brutality and humiliation
T. R. Reid and Edward Cody, Washington Post Service
“Are Israelis guilty of systematic torture? Perhaps, U.S. reports cautiously suggest. WASHINGTON — Amid the routine flow of cable traffic that came clattering through the State Department’s teletypes last May 31 was a confidential message from Jerusalem that opened a new chapter in the old debate over charges that Israel violates the human rights of Palestinian prisoners in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank… ‘Jerusalem 1500’ concluded: ‘Israeli torture of Arab prisoners in the occupied territories may be a widespread and even common practice.’ In an ensuing cable on Nov. 30, 1978 — this was Jerusalem 3239 and classified ‘secret’ — the consulate reported on 14 more cases and drew the more severe conclusion that: ‘Physical mistreatment is systematically used on many Arab security suspects interrogated in the West Bank.’ It seems clear from the research of Ms. Johnson that… Israeli practices on the West Bank go beyond acceptable civilian norms… Three Arabs tell tales of brutality and humiliation. CHICAGO — Elias believes he understands just what the State Department means in the 1979 human rights report by ‘instances of mistreatment.’ He says he learned all about it during a month of questioning, beating and torture by Israeli interrogators on the occupied West Bank. Israel insists that brutality by interrogators is forbidden by Israeli law and that any violations are punished. Elias disagrees. The way he tells it, his education on the subject began when three Israeli security officers, backed up by armored cars and soldiers in the street, entered his family’s house about 1 a.m., tied his hands behind his back, threw him face down in the rear of a Land Rover, and drove him off to prison. It ended, he says, about 30 days later — after a bottle was shoved up his anus twice, after he was twice hung naked in the ‘meat locker,’ his feet off the floor and his hands tied to steel hooks in the wall while interrogators beat him on the back, legs and genitals or squeezed his testicles. Finally, he broke and confessed to what the interrogators wanted ‘just to be able to stand my body.’ ‘Man is only flesh and blood,’ he said in an interview here. He turned away his eyes with a short nervous laugh. ‘I told them what they wanted.’ Elias’ treatment at the hands of Israeli interrogators is one of 29 such cases in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank that make up the body of two classified cables from the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem… All are identified by nicknames or abbreviated versions of their names because of their fears that relatives still in Jerusalem or the West Bank could suffer reprisals… Abu Raad, 32, a Palestinian, says he still suffers stomach pains, digestion trouble and cramps in his right leg because of what was done to him during two weeks of interrogation… Samih, a 1975 graduate of the American University of Beirut, also got to know Abu Ariel, Johnny and Abu Jamil, three interrogators whom Abu Raad had mentioned. He was arrested in April 1976 and taken to the Russian Compound for interrogation… That was the first of many such sessions, he said, sometimes at the rate of eight a day and at other times once every few days.”
Three Palestinians describing what was done to them, and the paper explaining in its own voice why none of them is fully named: their relatives in Jerusalem and the West Bank could suffer for it. The Israeli position — that brutality is forbidden and violations are punished — is in the same paragraph as the first account.
“Sahar Khalifeh is a Palestinian novelist. Her book, ‘Assubbar (Cactus),’ is being translated into English at Georgetown University. It is a story of life on the West Bank in the early 1970s. She is completing her third novel, ‘Aabbad Ashams (The Sun Flower).’ In this excerpt, two women have been thrown into the same jail cell.… Tears stood in Khadra’s eyes. She said, ‘At least, Saadia, you have somebody who cares for you. But for me, mercy on me and my luck. I have no one except an old man and instead of offering me help he increases my burden. I ran away from the first, God tear him to pieces — he used to beat me like hell. I ran away. I thought, I’ll relax, but what’s the use. I told you, we run from suffering, and where we think we’ll have refuge we only have more suffering.… I married another and thought he could support me and would keep me from having to serve in people’s houses, from stealing and prostitution. He turned out to be sick. Instead of him feeding me, I feed him. The poor man, his heart is sick, he has attacks in which he faces death. I feed him and take care of him and buy him medicine. He is warmhearted, his tongue is sweet, he calls me Khadra, The Princess. From him, I’ve heard words I’ve never heard before.’ ‘You know, Saadia? No one can bear what’s in a broken heart except broken people like us. My husband is as old as my father, but he is kind. My father was kind too, until my mother died. After that, he became a wild horse. Whenever one of us said, “Father, I’m hungry,” he would begin beating us all like hell… you don’t know what beating does. When you are beaten the first time, you keep silent. The second time, you keep silent. The third time, you might say, “Savior.” A new light comes in your eyes. You roll up your sleeves and sharpen your teeth and begin biting left and right.’… ‘So, then I learned that the beating which you do not give back is more painful. Even the one who beats you, when he realizes that you can face him, he begins to fear you and be on his guard. And you, if you take revenge and beat him, his beating will not hurt you. It hurts, but not so much as when you keep suffering in your heart and your spleen swells up. By God, Saadia, this is life.’”
An American daily gives most of a page to a Palestinian woman’s fiction, with a studio portrait, under a standing head that reads Writers. The excerpt is about two poor women in a cell talking about their husbands. The occupation is not in it. A year later the same novelist appears in this archive in the Baltimore Sun, spelled Kalifeh, describing how an Israeli government pamphlet cited her as evidence of the freedom she was being allowed.
“The closing of Bir Zeit University, an Arab university on the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River, is a human rights issue, not a political issue, according to the university’s exiled president. ‘Human rights is a non-controversial issue,’ said Dr. Hanna Nasir. ‘If you believe in human rights you must believe in it for all people — Arabs, Jews and Christians.’ Nasir, deported from the West Bank by Israeli military authorities in 1974 after two years as Bir Zeit’s president, addressed a group of about 100 at the Michigan Union Wednesday night. His talk was sponsored by the Palestine Human Rights Commission… The troubles began, Nasir said, when an Israeli, a professor, shot an Arab student in an unprovoked attack, leading to demonstrations by Bir Zeit students. The Israeli army closed the university indefinitely and the next day secured a search warrant which permits them to search the university at any time, he said. The closing of Bir Zeit is only one of several violations of human rights by the Israelis on the West Bank, Nasir said. Others include imprisonment of Palestinians without trial, torture of prisoners and deportation of students and faculty members and of Nasir himself. ‘It is the same story which the Israelis tell of the Nazis,’ Nasir said. ‘They came knocking at my door in the middle of the night. They take you from the area you have worked all your life building up and throw you across the Lebanese border.’ Other schools have been closed by the Israelis, he said, including the Catholic-run Bethlehem University and a United Nations-supported school… ‘Hebrew University was a cornerstone of the state of Israel, and Bir Zeit would be the same for a Palestinian state,’ he said. ‘It is a threat to the Israelis just by the truth it portrays.’… Nasir, born in Palestine and a graduate in physics from Purdue University, said a major problem in the education of Palestinians is the shortage of people with advanced degrees on the West Bank… ‘The first responsibility comes on the Arabs of the United States,’ he said… Nasir said the Israelis pledge of ‘self-autonomy’ for the West Bank is only another term for occupation. ‘The Israelis admit they have no intention of withdrawing after five years or ever,’ he said. ‘How do people expect the Palestinians to rejoice?’… ‘If the Israelis state clearly that they are ready to withdraw from the West Bank and the Gaza, we would provide the next step. Then the whole process of peace would work in the right direction.’”
“Nasir: ‘How do people expect the Palestinians to rejoice?’” News photo by Cecil Lockard.
A deported Palestinian university president photographed and quoted at length in a Michigan daily in 1979, five years after they took him across the Lebanese border in the night. The paper prints his comparison to the Nazis as he made it, and prints his conditions for peace in the last paragraph.
The Closing of Bir Zeit University Ought To Be Reconsidered
By Linda Compton
“ON TOP of the heated controversy surrounding Jewish settlements in occupied Jordan, there is now the dispute over Bir Zeit University, the foremost school for Palestinian Arabs on the West Bank: Israeli military authorities closed it more than a month ago and are giving no indications it will be allowed to reopen. Some 1,100 students are being prevented from finishing the academic year, and the senior class can not graduate. The closing has been called by some critics an infringement on academic freedom. The shutdown of Bir Zeit in the aftermath of student protests has drawn angry complaints from 60 Israeli professors, including Ernst Simon, a founder of Hebrew University, former General Matti Peled and religion professors Galia Golan and Moshe Greenberg. The 60 said in a statement that: ‘The closing of the university denies the tenets of democracy, free speech and free thought. As Israeli educators, we are under special obligation to assure that the Palestinian Arabs are secure in the same rights we demand for ourselves, including the right to higher education.’… The West Bank military governor closed Bir Zeit after disturbances May 2, Israel’s independence day… When armed Israeli demonstrators from the right-wing Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) drove through Bir Zeit in convoy, they opened fire on the Palestinian flags. A Palestinan student was struck in the chest by a bullet; he has recovered… It was founded as a high school by Palestinians in 1924. In 1961 it became a junior college. In 1972—five years after Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in the Six Day War—Bir Zeit started a four-year program… Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman has singled out Bir Zeit as a ‘hotbed of incitement’ against Israel and does not seem inclined to change his mind right now. Dr. Hanna Nasir, the exiled president of Bir Zeit University, rejects the Israeli claim that the university is a political center and not an academic institution. He maintains that Bir Zeit has become a scapegoat for the military authorities who find it increasingly difficult to deal with the deep discontent prevailing in occupied areas. Harsh measures breed resentment and probably work against Israel in the long run. Repressive policies often backfire… Thoughtful Israeli citizens—like the 60 professors—are dismayed by what they see as attempts to curtail education, for it goes against the grain of Judaism’s liberal, humanistic traditions.”
Sixty Israeli professors petitioning for a Palestinian university to reopen, quoted at length, and the exiled Palestinian president of it answering the defense minister. The first sentence of the piece says occupied Jordan; the rest says West Bank. “Palestinan” is the paper’s.
Radical Bir Zeit Unversity ‘Berkeley of the West Bank’
By Paul Hofmann, 1979 N.Y. Times News Service, Bir Zeit, Israeli-Occupied West Bank
“BIR ZEIT, Israeli-Occupied West Bank — Bir Zeit University, a cluster of old school buildings and private houses in this Arab hilltop town 15 miles north of Jerusalem, is sometimes called the ‘Berkeley of the West Bank.’ Like the Berkeley campus in the 1960s, Bir Zeit is in a state of agitation and turmoil. When the Berkeley label was mentioned, the dean of Bir Zeit’s arts department, Dr. Mohammed Hallaj, quickly replied: ‘Berkeley — which one?’ Hallaj said Bir Zeit would like to have the reputation for academic excellence of the University of California at Berkeley, but did not care for the image of radicalism that the California school developed during the Vietnam war… Bir Zeit University, the foremost nondenominational center of higher learning for Palestinian Arabs in the occupied territories, was closed by Israeli authorities for an indefinite period after disturbances on May 2, Israel’s Independence Day, in which military vehicles were stoned and a student was shot in the chest… Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, a lecturer of English at Bir Zeit, said student views at the university, ‘on the whole nationalist, reflect the general mood in the West Bank’… She conceded that many Palestinian Arabs in the region were reconciled to the idea of some kind of permanent coexistence with Israelis, ‘but first give us independence.’ An American professor in the cultural studies department at Bir Zeit, Hugh R. Harcourt, said support for Palestinian nationalism and radicalism among the students was ‘fairly general, but emotional rather than organizational.’ The scholar, who formerly taught at the American University of Beirut, did not hide his distaste for the way the military government administers the West Bank.”
The dateline reads Bir Zeit, Israeli-Occupied West Bank. Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi is a lecturer in English here, quoted in an American paper in 1979, more than a decade before she became the person Americans knew as the Palestinian spokesperson. The headline misspells the word university. The page carries an air-conditioner advertisement across half its width.
Israelis Decide To Reopen Bir Zeit, Palestinian School
Associated Press, Tel Aviv, Israel
“TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The Israeli military government has decided to reopen Bir Zeit University, the Palestinian school in the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River that was closed May 2 after political demonstrations. The decision coincided with the visit of Robert Strauss, President Carter’s special Mideast envoy who will take part in Palestinian autonomy talks… The acting president of Bir Zeit University, Dr. Gabi Baramki, said today that following meetings with Defense Minister Ezer Weizman and the West Bank military governor he was told the school could reopen. Weizman also halted plans to prosecute a number of leading West Bankers for June demonstrations against Israeli settlements in occupied territory, the Israeli press reported. The two actions marked an easing of the tough Israeli stance in the occupied area and appeared to be an attempt to calm Palestinian protests and world criticism of closure of Bir Zeit and Israel’s settlement policy. Baramki said resumption of classes for the 1,100 Palestinian students at the university 15 miles north of Jerusalem awaits only formal notification of the decision. A spokesman for the Defense Ministry said ‘every punishment comes to an end’ and that Baramki had promised that Bir Zeit would operate ‘in peace and quiet.’ The university was closed after a demonstration in which Israeli cars were stoned and an Arab youth was wounded by shots fired by Israelis. More than 100 Bir Zeit students were taken in for questioning about the demonstrations. There had been plans by the military government to bring charges against a number of West Bankers — incluidng Nablus Mayor Bassam Shakaa — for participating in a banned demonstration on June 17 against the new Israeli settlement of Elon Moreh.”
The closing of a university described by a defense ministry spokesman as a punishment, in one sentence: every punishment comes to an end. The word occupied appears four times in the paper’s own voice. “incluidng” is the paper’s.
“TYRE, Lebanon (AP) — A PLO spokesman said a Palestinian guerrilla whose body was returned here Wednesday was tortured to death in an Israeli prison. Israel denied the charge. The Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman, known by the codename Mustafa, said the guerrilla fighter died Dec. 21 after being imprisoned in Beersheba, Israel for nine years. He said an autopsy would be performed on the body of Yasser Faour. An Israeli police spokesman said in Tel Aviv that pathological tests were being conducted to determine how Faour died, but said his death was ‘not the result of violence.’ Faour was arrested in 1970 in the village of Tershiha on the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River as he was returning from a guerrilla operation, PLO officials said. Faour’s father died mysteriously while visiting the imprisoned guerrilla in Beersheba last year, Mustafa said. The dead guerrilla’s body was handed over to Red Cross officials who transported it across the Israel-Lebanon border a day after artillery exchanges in the area. Mustafa, who claimed that five guerrillas have died in Israeli prisons this year, said it was the first time Israel delivered a dead guerrilla across the Lebanese border. Dead guerrillas’ bodies are ususally returned via of Jordan, although prisoner exchanges have been conducted on the Israel-Lebanon frontier. The Red Cross official in charge of southern Lebanon, Marc Dryer, said the transfer was approved by the Israelis and their rightist Lebanese Christian allies. The rightists control a 6-mile-deep border strip of Lebanon and are enemies of the Palestinians. ‘We had the cooperation of all sides,’ he said.”
The paper prints the accusation, the denial, and the detail that the man’s father had died while visiting him in the same prison. “Ususally” is the paper’s spelling.
“TYRE, Lebanon (AP) — A PLO spokesman said a Palestinian guerrilla whose body was returned here Wednesday was tortured to death in an Israeli prison. Israel denied the charge. The Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman, known by the code-name Mustafa, said the guerrilla fighter died Dec. 21 after being imprisoned in Beersheba, Israel for nine years. He said an autopsy would be performed on the body of Yasser Faour, 29. An Israeli police spokesman said in Tel Aviv that pathological tests were being conducted to determine how Faour died, but said his death was ‘not the result of violence.’ Faour was arrested in 1970 in the village of Tershiha on the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River as he was returning from a guerrilla operation, PLO officials said. Faour’s father died mysteriously while visiting the imprisoned guerrilla in Beersheba last year, Mustafa said.”
The charge and the denial in the first paragraph, and a name: Yasser Faour, 29, arrested in 1970, dead on 21 December 1979 after nine years in Beersheba.
Part of Covering Palestine, an archive of 1262 newspaper clippings about Palestinians printed in 512 papers between 1799 and 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles. Nothing here was printed after 6 October 2023.