No Time to Celebrate as Palestinians Still Suffer
Barbara Harvey and Dave Finkel, Detroit Free Press
The celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary reflects the understandable joy of millions of Jews and their friends who view Israel as the symbol of freedom from centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. But not all Jews are celebrating.
Israel gave haven to several hundred thousand Jewish refugees who had nowhere else to go, in large part because the United States and other Western countries closed their doors to them. Yet the terrible fact is more than 700,000 Palestinians became permanent refugees in the creation of the nation and, 60 years later, an estimated 7 million remain refugees. Many still live in 58 camps. Others are dispersed throughout the world.
That is why creation of the nation of Israel is known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or Catastrophe. And that is why many of us in the Jewish community will not celebrate Israel while our Palestinian sisters and brothers must still fight for their basic human rights.
We remember that:
• In April 1948, the month of the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa's market square, the Israeli military and political leadership's "Plan Dalet" was put into effect, authorizing the systematic destruction of Palestinian villages and expulsion of their people.
• On May 22, 1948, Jewish soldiers entered homes in the village of Tantura and went on a killing spree. Between 110 and 230 Palestinian men were shot and killed by the Alexandroni Brigade.
• On Oct. 28, 1948, Israeli forces occupied the village of Dawayameh, near Hebron. Israeli soldiers describe babies whose skulls were cracked open, women raped and burned alive in their homes, men stabbed to death; 145 men, women and children were killed.
Nor can we celebrate when our own government's massive military and economic aid to Israel subsidizes the bulldozing of Palestinian homes and deliberate starvation of the population of Gaza because they voted for the "wrong" political party.
We will celebrate when Arabs and Jews live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.
BARBARA HARVEY and DAVID FINKEL are board members of the of the Detroit chapter of the Jewish Voice for Peace,www.jvp.org, a nonprofit based in Oakland, Calif. You also may contact them and the other authors on this page in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit 48226 or oped@freepress.com.