Owen Jones Goes To Palestine

"Hello from Palestine! This is Lifta. It was a Palestinian village just outside of Jerusalem. In 1948, Zionist paramilitaries massacred local residents and launched repeated attacks. They drove out the local population. This was one example of the horrors of the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and 15,000 were murdered. Today only the ruins remain, but a few of the survivors - and many thousand descendants - live on." Owen Jones

 Owen Jones

@owenjonesjourno

 

"Hello from Palestine! This is Lifta. It was a Palestinian village just outside of Jerusalem. In 1948, Zionist paramilitaries massacred local residents and launched repeated attacks. They drove out the local population. This was one example of the horrors of the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and 15,000 were murdered. Today only the ruins remain, but a few of the survivors - and many thousand descendants - live on."

  AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK (or tweet) TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

Ramadan Memories By Mike Odetalla #Palestine #Community #Respect #BeitHanina

Lifta - لفتا: One Of Many From Lifta's Homes Still Stand As A Truth Witness. Palestine Remembered

 Ramadan Memories

By Mike Odetalla

 

The holy month of Ramadan is once again upon us, and its fasting. Muslims will fast from sun-up till sun down, abstaining from food, water, and intimate relationships. 

 

Each year around this time, my memories of Ramadan in our small village of Beit Hanina, a suburb of Jerusalem which was still without electricity, whereby people carried lanterns to light their way in the darkness as they went first to the mosque and from there to visit friends and family: a special part of Ramadan, are once again rekindled. 

 

Beit Hanina had a drummer, charged with the pre-dawn task of awakening the village to sahoor, the light meal whose end marked the beginning of each day’s fast. Closing my eyes and thinking real hard, still brings back the sound of Beit Hanina’s drummer banging away, and the delightful memories of joining the other children, carrying our decorated fanoosia lanterns with candles burning brightly inside them, as we ran along behind the drummer, singing, laughing and shouting to help awaken the sleeping adults and start them on sahoor and their new day. How I admired the drummer; how I wanted his job and to share his fun. 

 

In Ramadan 1979, my first visit back to Palestine since the ’67 expulsion, my cousin and I, both 18 and living in the US, finally became the Ramadan drummers of Beit Hanina. The Israeli invasion of 1967 and the subsequent occupation made the drummers’ job very high risk and today they are scarce: Ramadan drummers were often stopped, even beaten, and some have been killed by the Israeli occupying army. 

 

By 1979, the village had not enjoyed a drummer in 5 years, so my cousin and I delighted in our job of walking through the village each morning banging away on large tin cans. It must have been a very humorous sight: the elderly were happy to hear us; the younger people thought we were a great joke and made fun of the ‘bored Americans’. But everyone agreed that we had renewed some “life” that had been lost as we broke through the dark still nights of Ramadan. For me, however briefly, I was transported back to a happy childhood whose memories had never left me for a moment.

I still remember sitting by the family’s transistor radio with my siblings listening to the special programs as we awaited the “cannon” to go off, signaling that it was time to break our fast. The “cannon” was a World War I era English relic and merely made a loud bang, which was all that it, was good for. 

 

Ever since my children were very small, I had regaled them with the many stories of my childhood in Palestine, enjoying the look of fascination on their faces as they implored me to tell them yet “another story of when you were young in Palestine”… 

 

This past summer, I took my children to visit the grave of my grandmother which is located on a hillside cemetery off of Salah Eddin Street in the Old City. The cemetery is actually located inside the boundaries of the Palestinian village of Lifta which was ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian inhabitants, which included my wife’s family, by the Zionists in 1948. Many people, including my grandmother and her family members are buried there, although now it is considered part of Jerusalem.

As we made our way through the cemetery gates and up the hill so that we could read Al-Fatiha, which is the opening verse of the Quran at her graveside, I noticed a an old rusty cannon sitting on the top of the hill, virtually buried beneath the overgrown weeds. I decided to head up the hill and take a closer look. Much to my surprise, the cannon was an exact copy of the very same cannon that I had remembered as a youth. I called my children up the hill and showed them the cannon, surmising that the cannon was used to alert the residents of Jerusalem when to break their fast before the city fell under Zionist control. 

 

During Ramadan, my mother would always invite friends and relatives to our home to break the fast with us. As Muslims, we are obligated to share breaking our fast with others, especially those less fortunate than us. It is considered a blessing to do so. It is something that we continue to do here in America as we invite friends and loved ones to share in our blessing on this Holy Month, the essence of which are a time of prayer, fasting, and charity. 

 

Some of the best memories that I carry with me are connected to the month of Ramadan in Palestine when I was a child. The closeness and feeling of “community” that I felt during those times is something that is almost beyond description. The sound of the drummer, the Muezzin call to prayer, the static emanating from the transistor radio, the “boom” of the cannon, the enticing aroma of the special foods that we only ate during Ramadan, the sight of families huddled together on a mat covered floor around the evening meals, illuminated by the flickering light of a kerosene lantern, enjoying their meals, as humble as it may have been, in the company of family and loved ones… 

 

These are my memories of Ramadan before the Israeli invasion and subsequent brutal and inhumane occupation which has destroyed many families and communities and is now in the process of causing further havoc as Israel continues to erect its Apartheid Walls, checkpoints, and roadblocks which have reduced many Palestinian villages and cities to nothing more than walled off ghettos and open air prisons. 

 

Unfortunately, these will constitute the next generation of Palestinian children’s memories and experiences… 

 

Mike Odetalla 2003-2105 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Rima.... a poem by Anne Selden Annab in Growing Gardens for Palestine

 

Growing Gardens for Palestine

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Rima

Rima Najjar in a traditional Palestinian Embroidered Thobe

 

Rima 

 

Rima- connected

by family and Palestine.

She travels the world online and on foot,

following the art and the history

of and for Palestine.

Rima's goodness

(her greatness)

has a reach far beyond

the leap of literary awareness

and books, far beyond

the rainbow colors and hues of paint

and tile and trees and flowers in spring

all for and of Palestine.

Rima shares, shares the beauty she finds,

shares the challenges and routes

whereby humans connect

over and over through the years.

Rima shares knowledge and facts

and empathy and compassion

and character

Rima is as exquisite

as the roses her sister tends.

Where music and art for Palestine might be

she is there, in body or spirit

she is there for and of Palestine.

poem copyright © 2022 Anne Selden Annab

Save Lifta, Save Sheikh Jarah, Save Yaffa, Save Silwan, SAVE PALESTINE !!!!

 

‘The girl on the bus comes back to me–she reminds me to wait for the adhan, the call to prayer. The sun to rise. The church bells to ring. I’m in Bethlehem.’ Photograph: Nathalie Handal

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine (& America ...etc...)]

http://www.theguardian.com/books/the-writing-life-around-the-world-by-electric-literature/2015/dec/04/crucifixion-nathalie-handal-on-being-palestinian-writing-and-enduring-love

Guardian Books Network  

Friday 4 December 2015 : In the latest in our series of essays on what life and work are like for writers around the world, Nathalie Handal describes an existence where hearts race so fast it’s hard to find time for grief

Crucifixion: Nathalie Handal on being Palestinian, writing and enduring love

By Nathalie Handal for The Writing Life Around the World from Electric Literature

I sit by the window and wait for her to finish her story. She has the posture of a ballerina. Her honey-colored eyes against her hot magenta headscarf offer a striking contrast. We are on a bus at the Bethlehem checkpoint en route to Jerusalem. The anthology of Arabic verse I’m carrying inspired the exchange. She tells me that each time she enters Damascus Gate she recreates the day that changed her forever. Then adds that she has eleven versions so far. I don’t know what she is speaking about and for a second the sky’s paleness distracts us. She explains... READ MORE

Congratulations to الدكتورة عايدة النجار Dr. Aida Najjar as she launches her new book today (10/19/2015) Her book is on the depopulated and destroyed Palestinian village of ‪#‎Lifta‬.

Congratulations to الدكتورة عايدة النجار Dr. Aida Najjar as she launches her new book today (10/19/2015) at Abdul Hameed Shoman Public Library in Amman, Jordan. Her book is on the depopulated and destroyed Palestinian village of ‪#‎Lifta‬.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201101806904722&set=a.10201101725022675.1073741927.1755387677&type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/issa.abuothman/media_set?set=a.10201101725022675.1073741927.1755387677&type=3 

الدكتورة عايدة النجار Dr. Aida Najjar

Israeli court grants reprieve to abandoned Palestinian village

View [Washington Post] Photo Gallery — Court ruling caps legal fight seen as test case for preservation of Palestinian heritage in Israel.

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israeli-court-grants-reprieve-to-abandoned-palestinian-village/2012/02/07/gIQArC0awQ_story.html

By Joel Greenberg, Updated: Tuesday, February 7, 1:55 PM

JERUSALEM — A Jerusalem court has ruled against plans to build a luxury housing development on the remains of a Palestinian village abandoned in the 1948 war that followed the establishment of Israel.

The court battle was seen as a test case for preservation of Palestinian heritage in Israel, where remains of Arab villages whose residents either fled or were expelled in the fighting have largely vanished under modern buildings, parks and planted forests.

A court petition filed by former residents of Lifta and their descendants, joined by Israeli activists, argued that the ruins of the village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the most extensive remains of such a site from the pre-state era, should be preserved.

The petition cited opinions by preservation experts and architects who said the development plans did not meet local and international preservation standards....READ MORE

My letter to the Washington Post RE their story on Lifta "Development plan for abandoned Palestinian village stirs up a troubled past "

RE Development plan for abandoned Palestinian village stirs up a troubled past http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/development-plan-for-abandoned-palestinian-village-stirs-up-a-troubled-past/2011/06/22/AGL4CWmH_story.html

Dear Editor,

Thank you for publishing Development plan for abandoned Palestinian village stirs up a troubled past, and including the fascinating slide show on Lifta. There are pre-Israeli people scattered all over the world today whose ancestors originally came from Lifta village. The ruins are a poignant and precious reminder of historic Palestine- and a rural past.

It would a huge tragedy if these intriguing ruins overlooking Jerusalem were rebuilt into a modern Israeli housing development. Israel did not totally destroy the remnants of Lifta yet- that fact should not be ignored: Making Lifta a heritage site, for all to enjoy, would certainly go a long way towards starting an end to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict... Imagine a future of sustainable peace and progress where two fully secular, fully sovereign modern nation states (one named Israel, the other Palestine) wisely work together to stop bigotry and injustice for everyone's sake. Tourism for both would thrive and it really could be a win-win situation.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
NOTES

• We asked the children to each choose a short message to send out to the world from Balata/Nablus/Palestine...
• New Ibish article: Bilin shows Palestinian nonviolent resistance to occupation works...
• Lifta... a poem by Anne Selden Annab
• Jerusalem's Armenians face uncertain future
• A message for Israel and Evangelicals: Genesis isn't a policy guide...
• Ziad J. Asali, M.D.: ATFP Backgrounder on the Question of Palestinian UN Initiatives...
• Washington Post: Development plan for abandoned Palestinian village stirs up a troubled past...
• Exploding the myths: UNRWA, UNHCR and the Palestine Refugees...

The Golden Rule... Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Growing Gardens for Palestine

Lifta... a poem by Anne Selden Annab

Lifta - لفتا

Lifta,
your sons and daughters long
for you-
long for the echo
of their childhoods and peace
in Palestine...

Lifta, your children
know your stones.
They know your slopes
and terraces
and paths.
They know your buildings
and the fresh water spring.
They know the heat of summer sun.
They know your shadows
and sweet spots
where herbs grow
and they know
the taste of home made bread.
They know the history of home
and exile...

They know life moves on
with every generation rediscovering
connections to the past.

poem copyright ©2011 Anne Selden Annab

Washington Post: Development plan for abandoned Palestinian village stirs up a troubled past

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/development-plan-for-abandoned-palestinian-village-stirs-up-a-troubled-past/2011/06/22/AGL4CWmH_story.html?wprss=

View Photo Gallery —  Israeli plans to redevelop an abandoned Palestinian village have stirred painful memories.

By Joel Greenberg, Published: June 26

JERUSALEM — Flanked by busy highways and tucked into terraced slopes of the Jerusalem hills, a crumbling Palestinian village abandoned more than 60 years ago has become the focus of a struggle over memory and heritage.

The nearly 3,000 people who lived in Lifta fled during the war that accompanied the establishment of Israel. Experts say the old village homes, with their distinctive stonework, along with a mosque, a spring and remains of granaries and olive presses, are unique remnants of a vanished way of life....READ MORE

Tens of Thousands of dollars in legal fees/lawyers/ court battles later....

Spring 2011 "While posting pictures of my father and grandfather, my 2 1/2 years old grandson was sitting on my lap and I was trying to explain to him that his grandfather (me), also had a grandfather...He got to see a picture of his great-great grandfather! How cool is that?!" Mike Hanini Odetalla (Abu Odeh)

A 100% Authentic Palestinian: Mike Hanini Odetalla's Grandfather, Suleiman, Allah Yirhamu, passed away in 1953, and yet Zionist criminals found a way to forge his signature on a "Sale of Land" documents dated October 1967...Tens of Thousands of dollars in legal fees/lawyers/ court battles later, Mike's family was able to "prove" that he couldn't have signed these documents from his grave.

1979 Palestinians: Musa (Mike's brother), Um Suleiman (Mike's mom), Mike Hanini Odetalla(Abu Odeh), Suleiman (Mike's brother)

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?


Mike's LIFTA Album: Ethnically Cleansed 1948

Through Lifta, We See Our Palestine... By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH

http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=23526&CategoryId=3

Through Lifta, We See Our Palestine

Date posted: May 30, 2011
By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH

In 2001, renowned Palestinian intellectual Ibrahim Abu Lughoud passed away in his home in Ramallah. He was not buried there however, nor was he flown back to the United States where he spent the majority of his life. Instead, Dr. Abu Lughoud, in perhaps the first actual “return” of a Palestinian refugee, was buried in the old cemetery of Jaffa, the place of his birth, alongside his father.

In death, Dr. Abu Lughoud was able to achieve what millions of Palestinian refugees strive to accomplish in life. For many, it is too late. After 63 years in exile, most of Palestine’s original refugees have passed away, passing down the memories of their former life and land to their children and grandchildren. In the case of Dr. Abu Lughoud, Jaffa lived within him no matter where he went and what he did. It was on his insistence that he be buried in Jaffa, a not-so-simple feat since Israel did not want even a dead Palestinian allowed that right to return.

Among the many things Dr. Abu Lughoud embraced both in life and in death, has been the collective will of the Palestinians to remember their homes, to demand that justice be done and to resist any and all attempts at erasure.

Today, this will and determination is represented in the ruined village of Lifta, northwest of Jerusalem. It is the embodiment of all that is Palestinian, all of our history, our past, our nostalgia for what was lost and our determination that it not be thrust into oblivion.

The village of Lifta is the only pre-1948 evacuated village that was not transformed into a highway, a city or a settlement by new Israeli colonists. Today its ruins stand as testimony to a life that once was for its inhabitants – low stone houses, a mosque, olive presses and communal ovens. The land of Lifta, once massive, has been mostly confiscated – the Knesset, Hadassah Hospital and a Hebrew University campus are all built on some of Lifta’s agricultural land. However, the center of the village, where the ancient stone edifices stand have so far been left untouched (save for the original holes blown into the roofs by Jewish gangs to make the houses henceforth uninhabitable). They have been abandoned mostly, with only a few houses on the fringe taken over by Jewish families, the old spring used as a picnic ground and barbeque area for young Israeli teens.

The inhabitants of Lifta either settled in east Jerusalem – only a few kilometers from their original homes or were exiled to other areas of Palestine and across the border. But many can see their abandoned and ruined homes from their own windows, drive by them on their way to Jerusalem’s center or, if in exile, on the many web sites set up in the village’s name. For years, although Lifta remained depopulated and in Israeli hands, at least the Palestinians could see the actual remains and be reminded of what their Palestine looked like over half a century ago.

Today Israel is trying to obliterate even that memory. An Israeli plan is awaiting legal approval to tear down the ruins of Lifta and build luxury houses, a hotel, boutiques and a museum in its place. The physical remains of Lifta, just like the hundreds of Palestinian villages before it, will be wiped off the face of the earth.

There is much opposition to the plan, not least of all by the Palestinians whose memory is etched in the old homes and soil of Lifta. But this is just another chapter in an old/new story. Israel has tried for 63 years to erase the memory of Palestinians, to eradicate their historical narrative and to ensure that nothing remains of the Palestine before Israel.

However, we are not finished. The march to the borders of pre-1948 Palestine on Nakba Day, the symbolic keys hung in the homes of so many refugees, keys to the houses they were forced to leave behind, and the tombstone over a mound of soil marking the grave of one lone Palestinian refugee overlooking the sea of Jaffa all point to a single truth: Palestinians will never forget their history, their homes or their right to return. Nor should they.

Joharah Baker is Director of the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.

The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy

MIFTAH

The ruins of Lifta are the final remains of the Palestinian hamlets that fringed Jerusalem until 1948. Now plans to bulldoze them are causing outrage

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/29/ruined-palestinian-village-lifta-developmentYacoub Odeh surveys the ruins of Lifta: 'This is where I was born. Here I breathed my first breath. The first water I drank, I drank here.' Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum

The ruined village Palestinians will never forget

In the soft golden light of a late spring evening, as yellow flowers are beginning to bloom on giant cacti, Yacoub Odeh climbs up through knee-high grass to the ruin that was his childhood home. For a man in his eighth decade, he is surprisingly nimble as he navigates ancient stones that litter the ground. But behind his light step is the weight of painful memories of a lost youth and a fading history.

"Here is my house," he says, sitting on the remains of a stone wall in whose crevices wild flowers and saplings cling. "Now only the corners remain. Here is the taboun [outdoor oven] where my mother used to bake bread. The smell!"

With distant eyes, he describes an idyllic childhood in a place he calls paradise, where families helped one another and children played freely amid almond and fig trees and on the rocks around the village's natural spring.

The place is Lifta, an Arab village on the north-western fringes of Jerusalem, for centuries a prosperous, bustling community built around agriculture, traditional embroidery, trade and mutual support. But since 1948, shortly before the state of Israel was declared, it has been deserted. The population, according to the Palestinian narrative of that momentous year, was expelled by advancing Jewish soldiers; the people abandoned their homes, say the Israeli history books.

Lifta was one of hundreds of Arab villages taken over by the embryonic Jewish state. But it is the only one not to have been subsequently covered in the concrete and tarmac of Israeli towns and roads, or planted over with trees and shrubs to create forests, parks and picnic areas, or transformed into Israeli artists' colonies. Some argue that Israel set out to erase any vestige of Palestinian roots in the new country.

Now, 63 years on, the ruins of Lifta are finally facing the threat of bulldozers and concrete mixers. A long-term proposal to sell the state-owned land for the construction of luxury housing units and a boutique hotel on the site is awaiting the authorities' final approval. It has caused a furore. Opponents of the plan include those who believe Lifta should be preserved as a monument to history....READ MORE

WATCH VIDEO http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/may/30/palestinian-israel-back-to-lifta-video

My letter to the LATimes RE Israel and Palestinians have conflicting visions for village's future.

Lifta - لفتا : Lifta Homes. Summer 2006. Photo: Annemarie Jacir PALESTINE REMEMBERED

RE: Israel and Palestinians have conflicting visions for village's future. Lifta is the last intact pre-1948 Palestinian village in Israel. The Israelis want to put apartments there, but Palestinians want the area preserved as an open-air museum.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-palestinian-village-20110407,0,5408261.story

Dear Editor,

I very much hope that Lifta, the last intact pre-1948 Palestinian village in Israel, is preserved as an open air museum for future generations of more compassionate and aware Israelis and Palestinians: I also very much hope that the ongoing Nakba stops- that Israel stops demolishing Palestinian homes, stops usurping Palestinian land, stops impoverishing Palestinians, stops subsidizing religious extremism... and stops pushing the native non-Jewish Palestinians into forced exile & despair.

Fully respecting the Palestinian refugees' very real right to return is reasonable- and the right thing to do.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab, American homemaker & poet

Refugees and the Right of Return

Palestinian refugees must be given the option to exercise their right of return (as well as receive compensation for their losses arising from their dispossession and displacement) though refugees may prefer other options such as: (i) resettlement in third countries, (ii) resettlement in a newly independent Palestine (even though they originate from that part of Palestine which became Israel) or (iii) normalization of their legal status in the host country where they currently reside. What is important is that individual refugees decide for themselves which option they prefer – a decision must not be imposed upon them.

NOTES

Growing Gardens for Palestine

Tamam Al-Akhal 1989 "But Education Continues"

"They called it Lifta. Today, the abandoned village is the last intact pre-1948 Palestinian town in Israel. Hundreds of similar Palestinian communities were razed after residents fled during Israel's 1948 war for independence."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-palestinian-village-20110407,0,5408261.story

Israel and Palestinians have conflicting visions for village's future

Lifta is the last intact pre-1948 Palestinian village in Israel. The Israelis want to put apartments there, but Palestinians want the area preserved as an open-air museum.