Nota bene. Lisa has noted under separate cover that a logical argument based on (anti)Semitism is wrong in every respect since both people share the common patriarch Abraham. In 2016 we’re still talking about his two sons: Ishmael and Isaac, brothers where the branches of the Semitic tree meet. Oz & Nichols.
1500 BC, Old Testament prophet Abraham banishes Hagar and her son Ishmael into the wilderness after the birth of Isaac to his aged, barren wife Sarah. Genesis, chapter 16. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Today’s question: is it possible to use maps as propaganda (הַסְבָּרָה)?
On your next tour of the “Holy Land” bring home souvenir maps that follow guidelines for “Public Diplomacy: Israel.”
An excerpt from a recent Haaretz article describing the brochure below:
“The only Muslim site listed is the Dome of the Rock. It’s clear that the map’s editors took pains to omit the Arabic names of sites in the Old City. For example, it uses the terms “Har Habait,” “Temple Mt.” and “Mt. Moriah” for the Temple Mount area, but omits what most Old City residents call it – Haram al-Sharif, or Al-Aqsa. In fact, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is illustrated but not named; the area east of it is marked as Solomon’s Stables.”
Actually I remember Dr. Laurence G. Wolf once mentioning this topic around 1967 in a geography class at the University of Cincinnati. It was the year of the 1967 War, when Israel occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights. Now in 2016 Israel has only returned the Sinai Peninsula (to Egypt), but no land ever to a single Palestinian: the original residents of Palestine. Before May 14, 1948 most Palestinians lived near the Mediterranean Coast
I haven’t yet found examples for the Czech map mentioned in that class but I do remember that it depicted the Sudetenland as a range of sharp teeth about to champ on a tasty morsel. The German cartographers fashioned maps to represent a clear and present danger: militant Polish horse-powered troops getting ready to thrust their force into 1939 Germany.
Looks like Prague could devastate the German Reich, quick as a snap.
A knife to the soft underbelly of Greater Germany, or bloody teeth? Your guess or mine I guess.
Obviously the links do not take you to the activist website but rather to an internal link. Here is what happens when you click the Canary resource for BDS.
Canary is not about freedom, justice or equality. It’s about learning from Senator Joseph McCarthy.
BDS Movement (this site is about Freedom/Justice/Equality)
Canary uses a dark agenda funded by a secret sponsor seeking to remove the privacy of innumerable activists and destroy their futures, i.e. a cleansing.
Hasbara works by achieving a deft balance between information availability and media participation. It helps to have billions of dollars available to combat free and open society. Success depends upon promoting democratic principles on the de jure side while using fascist techniques on the de facto side. Then to proclaim that they continue the good fight as the only democracy in the Middle East: one protected by the most moral army in the world.
Corporate ownership (NYT, Time) and corporate sponsorship (NPR, PBS) permits bias to enter the news. The big lie requires billions of dollars to grow but it has shallow roots.
When the sun set on the British Empire, Palestine bordered the priceless Mediterranean Sea.
Today this beach, re-named Gordon Beach is just one of the brilliantly beautiful beaches seized in the Nakba. The following link provides poignant photographs from 1948: From eminence to ethnic cleansing.
Shaking off the yoke of empire is always the dream of the colonized. The Arabic expression for shaking off a yoke is “انتفاضة intifada.” An obvious and overdue response to colonialism? Yes, of course, but, what if the land is stolen out from under you? As clever a crime as a Moriarty might craft:
Picture to yourself the pilot fish with the shark, the jackal with the lion—anything that is insignificant in companionship with what is formidable: not only formidable, Watson, but sinister—in the highest degree sinister. That is where he comes within my purview. ‘You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?’
‘The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks -‘
‘My blushes, Watson!’ Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice.
‘I was about to say, “as he is unknown to the public”.’
‘A touch! A distinct touch!’ cried Holmes. ‘You are developing a certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard myself. But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law…
— A. Conan Doyle, “The Valley of Fear.”
Speaking of uttering libel in the eyes of the law:
Israel and America conjoin to bomb the Palestinians back to the stone age.
The sun set on the Mediterranean Sea (literally the Sea at the Middle of the Earth) on the day of Nakba.
Many brought their house keys with them. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights assures the right of return. So it’s prudent to bring the house keys when driven from your home. Don’t forget the keys.
1948: 700,000 unarmed Philistines were forced out of their homes and out of their homeland by well armed militants. They brought only what they could carry.
The right to return is encapsulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
A land for me but not for thee. In 1948 another tribe lived under the same Mandate for Palestine. Empire-speak: promise the same thing to the divided and conquered. Lord Balfour was a functionary of the conquerers write the history, but when they write about it, truth is strictly optional.
Arabic cities with long histories got a facelift by the new boss (same as the old boss). The cities were renamed in Hebrew.
What was destroyed? Palestinian culture, traditions, culture, family, livelihoods, fashions, ethnic recipes, hectic markets, crowded schools, incomparable coastlines. The Mediterranean Sea was at the middle of the known world conquered by earlier empires, but the Palestinians abide.
New keys on old doors for new “settlers.” Demolish some more, build some more, grow some more, have children, grandchildren. To the victor goes the spoils.
Pave Paradise, Occupy Palestine.
We can do whatever we want, whenever we want. Get used to it loser. Signed: just another hasbara troll. get used to it loser. Ever heard of survival of the fittest Loser? Huh, ever heard of it? We won. You lost. Go back to Gaza and blank your mother.
Refugees ended up in an open-air prison (Gaza) or on the West Bank of the Jordan River — or all over the Earth.
The beautiful Mediterranean Coast out of sight but not out of mind after 1948. So they were shoved away in 1948, but at least they were not occupied. 1967 changed even that. There began a war of swift occupation with tanks, planes, assault rifles, white phosphorous, etc. Decades go by. An endless list of IDF “Operations” routinely bomb the open-air prison: GAZA.
Birthright (aliyah) tours available if your mother is related to Isaac. Youth are sold on something called a once in a lifetime $10,000 Birthright Tour. The trip itinerary does not include a visit to the West Bank or Gaza. Who wants to visit a prison while on vacation?
There are also opportunities called Hasbara Fellowships: something to sell the brand.
“There were Arabs selling rosaries and holy water. Why are they doing that? I don’t know. I just don’t trust them, you know.”
It’s getting a little crowded in the old promised land. I mean, who can afford to live with rents so high. And all that land on the West Bank is wasted on the Arabs. I mean, it’s all G-d gave us and it’s already too small.
No, there is no low to which many won’t go.
Demolish homes upon whim, build gated communities and connect them with modern highways, all fenced along each shoulder to keep things nice and safe. .
West Bank settlers spray graffiti on the outside walls of Palestinian homes they destroy. “Kill them All” is another.
Ironically 700,000 Palestinians were exiled in 1948. 70 years later 700,000 settlers live in the West Bank.
Israel insists that it is still the underdog in the Middle East. Danny Ayalon, well known for his video series The Truth about Israel, is a familiar countenance on the pro-Israeli internet. He explains Underdogland with familiar maps and graphics, available at the click (such as the link above). The presentation has high production qualities, the music is rousing and the end-tone is dramatic. Favored mightily by those who like echo-chamber metaphors.
Wie weit zur Heimat?
Something happened at Harvard and Microsoft recently: two prestigious shakers and movers (lifelong Zionists) endorsed a boycott of Israel, a ‘single state.’ It became the most read article on the Washington Post. This does not mean that they have joined the BDS Movement but it’s a step.
Consider diaspora: the Syrians these last five years, the Palestinians these last sixty-seven years? To be ousted from ancestral lands along the Mediterranean and shoved to the east. Then, in 1967 (Naksa) occupied by the same people who shoved you eastward in 1948: (Nakba).
But what about Lebensraum for the people of choice?
Perhaps a current dweller thinks “The Mediterranean coast is beautiful, but we need more living space for more living rooms. May the houses all look like the ones in California where the climate is the same.”
Descendants of Abraham: Ishmael and Isaac. A great lesson learned from those who occupied all of Palestine, the British and their Empire. A semantic sleight of hand and, magically, the Palestinians no longer exist. But a magician’s trick does not stay a secret forever. It turns out Palestinians were there all along with a history, a culture, families, friends, acquaintances, businesses, interests, festivals, religions, works of literature, restaurants, theaters, tourist trade, traditions…and tragedies.
1500 BC, Old Testament prophet Abraham banishes Hagar and her son Ishmael into the wilderness after the birth of Isaac to his aged, barren wife Sarah. Genesis, chapter 16. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
At present, a two-state solution (State of Israel/State of Palestine) remains challenged by Realpolitik.
Immigration, emigration, visiting exiled family in other climes. Travel back and forth between Gaza and the West Bank? It’s onerous. The two territories are not contiguous. It is also expensive, time-consuming and dangerous.
I’ll be home for…you can plan on me…
Did you know that most Israelis are not interested in visiting the occupied territories? To go through generations without once meeting the “other.” Believing only their own propaganda.
Palestinians are also de facto victims of extrajudicial executions. There are no Palestinian soldiers, there is no Palestinian military force. Israeli soldiers know they can simply attack fellow humans using their own judgment, without disciplinary action. Did you know that records detailing criminal acts are sometimes lost by the authorities entrusted with preserving them? I’ve hear that it happens.
Highways connecting settlements are modern and rimmed with security. Fences built to complement the security wall lengthen.
Existing Palestinian homes are demolished daily, reason optional. Unemployment is so high in the occupied sectors that many Palestinians work as domestic help in the very homes they lost to “settlers”. Yes, this is humiliating, but those who humiliate know that a mean-spirited, tough, single-minded determination and persistence may bring blossoms of fear and submission. The New York Times and NPR do not remove bias from their reporting. Both news giants are either corporations or corporately funded.
What happens when Rupert Murdock purchases media? The Wall Street Journal was once a newspaper of integrity, now it’s a tabloid. National Geographic was an institution and cultural icon. Guess who owns NG now. Readers and listeners are left to wonder: just who are these tattered keffiyeh-sporting angry people in the street, those with weapons slightly more modern than those of the Ottoman Empire, with knives and stones: stones right at-hand, produced from rubble left by incendiary bombs equipped with the latest technology, dropped on civilians (collaterals) by the fourth largest military on our planet.
![Israel vê a ONU como território hostil. Por isso manda embaixadores militantes da anexação, cuja resposta-padrão a qualquer crítica é a acusação de ‘antissemitismo’ – diz Vijay Prashad.O governo de Israel não aprecia a ONU. Cartaz frequente nas ocupações de colonos ilegais é “UNwelcome” [ONU não é bem-vinda].](https://billziegler1947.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/usa-ref-world-isr-pal.jpg?w=300&h=141)
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