Selected photographs and text sometimes use in invited talks given
You may also want to check the Palestine Timeline
Many other photos and maps are available on the web.
Check links for some additional resources
1947-1949 Over 530 Villages and towns depopulated
(shown in red dots, green dots show remaining villages)
75% of natives in what became Israel were made refugees
Half the refugees were created before May 1948 when Israel
"declared independence" and the start of the first "Israeli-Arab war"
Refugees live in surrunding areas
Including 250,000 inside the Green Line
(Israeli "citizens" considered by law "present absentees"
and not allowed back into their villages/towns)
There is room for refugees to return. Most Israelis live in
the three urban areas. Depopulated Palestinian
Villages available for repopulation
This is further demonstrated by this map of location of
current Israeli population centers superimposed on
locations of depopulated Palestinain villages villages
Israel occupied the remaining 22% of Palestine in 1967
Immediately beginning a new round of land confiscation
and colonization efforts. Location of these colonies
(settlements) in the West Bank and Gaza rare critical
Location of colonies (blue) and the wall (blue line) to finish off the
land grab started in 1948 from these two villages near Qalqilia
Qalqilia is a Palestinian city now surrounded by the
wall and cut off from neighboring villages
Settler violence under "protection" of Israeli Soldiers
Hebron: 400 fanatical settlers/colonists, 5000 occupation
soldiers, 100,000 imprsioned and tortured natives
Israeli soldiers and "border police" arresting a
Palestinian Child. Hundreds of Children are in
Israeli jails
Isael is unique in having a set of basic laws that
a) recgnize all members of a particular religion as nationals
(given right to automatic citizenship)
b) concomittantly discriminating against non-Jews
(e.g. by denying Chrsitian and Muslim refugees the right to return).
"If the state of Israel aspires to perceive itself as a democracy,
it should abandon once and for all, any legal and ideological
foundation of religious, ethnic, and demographic discrimination.
The state of Israel should strive to become the state of all its citizens.
We call for the annulment of all laws that make Israel an apartheid
state, including the Jewish law of return in its present form"
(Israeli artists' Declaration, 2002).
"I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs
on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of
a Jewish state. Apart from practical consideration, my awareness
of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state
with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter
how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain,
especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within
our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly,
even without a Jewish state."Albert Einstein, on April 17, 1938,
in a speech at the Commodore Hotel in New York City.
The continuing Ghettoization is made possible with US taxpayer
money
This situation is a classic one demanding a moral stance that
involves Boycotts and Divestment
 | "Above all, let me reiterate, the refugee problem was caused by attacks
by Jewish forces on Arab villages and towns and by the inhabitants' fear
of such attacks, compounded by expulsions, atrocities, and rumors of
atrocities, and by the crucial Israeli Cabinet decision in June 1948 to bar
a refugee return." (Benny Morris, "Revisiting the Palestinian Exodus of
1948", pp. 37-59 in "The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948",
E. L. Rogan and A. Schlaim (eds.), Cambridge University Press. 2001)
More details on the Palestinian exodus is at
http://palestineremembered.com
"In Palestine we do not propose to go through the form of consulting the
wishesof the present inhabitants.... Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or
bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes,
of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs
who now inhabit that ancient land." Lord Balfour in a memorandum to Lord
Curzon, his successor at the Foreign Office on 11 August 1919
"We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And
still we have to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name.
Instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and trying to undo
some of the evil we committed...we justify our terrible acts and even
attempt to glorify them” Nathan Chofshi, Jewish Newsletter,
New York, 9 February 1959, cited in Erskine Childers,
'The Other Exodus' in Spectator, London, 12 May 1961
This picture shows a brief reunion after 50 years between a brother and
his sister. When Israel withdrew quickly from South Lebanon in 1998 these
meetings were possible but only for one day until Israel quickly
sealed the border again.
This picture shows a military supervised (arrow on soldier and
man taking picture) ethnic cleansing.
See http://palestineremembered.com
The Apartheid Wall. In some sections it was called a"fence".
But it is actually worse in those sections where it is described as
a fence. There it is a width of six sets of barriers: fence, ditch (moat), security
road, fence, security road, ditch, and a third fence.
see http://www.stopthewall.org
The Palestinian area of Jebal Abu Ghneim in 1997
and a picture taken after in 2000 in transforming it to Jewish-only
colony of "Har Homa". This was actually the only forested area in Arab
East Jerusalem
The Wall/separation barrier merely makes concrete such
"facts on the ground" more accurately Jewish-only colonies
control of land and natural resources. In building teh wall, billlions
of US tax money is used to destroy hundreds of thousands of lives
(human and other). 300,000 olive and other trees uprooted
just for the wall. These ones are over 2000 years old.
The right to education is constantly violated
Freedom of movement to attend schools is curtailed
See http://right2edu.birzeit.edu for more info
Faris Odeh, 13 y.o, one of 800 children
killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces
in the last four years.
Israeli soldiers posing for photos with a murdered
Palestinian resistance fighter
Hiam is one of four Children we brought to CT for treatment
She lost an eye to an Israeli sniper while she walked along
a quiet street holding her mother's hand (Gaza; picture in
upper right is before prosthetic eye)
We have covered only the tip of the iceberg
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