Gideon Levy’s “right of return”?

Note: This article was posted on uruknet, the so called “resistance” website that CONTINUES promoting zionist jewish maggots but refuses to publish a counter argument like the following, even though this was recommended to that two faced cow, paolo.

Non-Jews need not apply
Gideon Levy
December 18, 2008

The Israeli national flag flies high, defiant and arrogant over the Palestinian home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Such a “defiant, arrogant” way to start the article, “Israeli national flag flies high, defiant and arrogant over the Palestinian….”; Keep in mind “Palestinian home” for later in this article.

This flag has never looked as repulsive as it does in the heart of this Palestinian neighborhood, above the home of a Palestinian family that suddenly lost everything.

The head of the house, Mohammed al-Kurd, died 11 days after the eviction.

Nothing about how Mohammed died, like suffering a heart attack which was most likely brought on as a result of being evicted.

Now his widow lives in a tent. The house is reached via a narrow alley: Here Moshe and Avital Shoham and Emanuel and Yiska Dagan live happily. They are the settlers who managed to expel the Palestinian tenants and take over another outpost, in the heart of East Jerusalem.

Who helped these “settlers” manage to take over “another outpost”, wouldn’t be Israel, including its government, military, corporations, religious groups, civilians etc? Why isn’t East Jerusalem mentioned as being Arab?

House after house, the transfer here is especially quiet: The media barely report on these houses of contention.

Remember that “Palestinians home”? Well now it’s a “house of contention” and not necessarily a “Palestinian home” anymore. Why wasn’t that “Israeli national flag” flying “high, defiant and arrogant” over a “house of contention”? Maybe the reason the media barely report on these violent ethnic cleansing acts is because the majority of the  israeli public SUPPORTS ethnic cleansing the Palestinians.

Israeli greed knows no bounds: It sends its tentacles into the homes of refugees who already experienced, in 1948, the taste of expulsion and evacuation and being left with nothing.

“Expulsion and evacuation” but nothing about murder, rape, ethnic cleansing, terrorism and theft.
Poor Israelis, they are just greedy, that’s all. Then suddenly the “greed” takes on its own life form with “it sends its tentacles”, as if this “greed” didn’t belong to any human form. Meaning, it’s not the Israeli human that is invading the “homes of refugees” but this “greed” thing. No one knows where this greed lives, what it eats, whether it sleeps or not, if it even speaks but Gideon knows “it” and not the Israelis, invades the homes of refugees. The “taste” of expulsion? Implying that in 1948, the Palestinians didn’t really experience ethnic cleansing just the “taste”.

Now they are refugees for a second time. Another 27 families here can expect a similar fate, and all under the aegis of the Israeli court system, the lighthouse of justice and the beacon of law, which approves, whitewashes and purifies deceptive and distorted ways of evicting these children of refugees from their homes for the second time. The family keeps, as an eternal souvenir, the keys to the house in Talbieh that was stolen from them and the banana warehouse in Musrara that was taken from them. Now they have another key that opens nothing: the key to the home in Sheikh Jarrah, which they received decades ago from the Jordanian government and the United Nations as compensation for their lost home.

If, in 2008, the ethnic cleansing is under the “aegis” of the israeli court system, then under what “aegis” was the ethnic cleansing committed in 1948? Was it under the “aegis” of the terrorist irgun and stern gangs? Stating the family keeps the keys to the homes, they were violently expelled from by the jewish terrorists, as a “souvenir” is Gideon’s way of telling the Palestinians they will NEVER get their homes back. These keys are more than just “souvenirs” to the people who were ethnically cleansed, these keys are the only physical PROOF some have left of the homes the jewish terrorists now occupy.

The right of return: The original owners of those houses, the Sephardic Community Committee, has this right forever.

That “Palestinian home” which became a “house of contention”, is now owned by the “Sephardic Community Committee”. Nice little cross over there from Gideon. We now have jewish ownership of that “Palestinian home” and have neatly thrown in the “right of return”, comparing the Palestinian Right of Return – which is enshrined with a UN Resolution – and this Jewish “right of return” that has no legal standing nor backing in international law, nor is it recognized by the UN. There is no comparison between a Palestinian ethnically cleansed from Palestine in 48 – the cause of the  Right of Return UN resolution – and a Jewish person living in Brooklyn, New York suddenly “discovering” he/she has ancestory that came from occupied Palestine.

There is no judge in Jerusalem who can explain this double standard, this racist right of return for Jews only.

This is incredible, a Jewish court deciding whether a Jewish person has a “right of return” to a house this Jewish person has nothing what so ever to do with, has never stepped foot in this Palestinian home, more than likely migrated from the US and now wants “right of return”. Give me a break.

Why is the Sephardic Community Committee allowed, and the committee of Palestinians not?

The Right of Return is being used cynically to show that Palestinians want a right of return but when the Jews exercise that right, the Palestinians won’t accept the “right of return” for a Jewish person.

What are the tycoons and the politicians who stand behind this hostile takeover thinking to themselves? What is going through the minds of the judges who permitted it? And what about the policemen who violently evicted a sickly man in a wheelchair in the middle of the night, without even letting him remove the contents of his house?

Cause of death?

And what are the Jews now living in these stolen houses feeling?

Everyone but the average Israeli citizen, even though the average Israeli citizen elects these “politicians” and the police are part of the Israeli population.

White smoke rises from several corners of the empty lot a few steps from the American Colony Hotel. The lot was cleaned this week before Christmas. These are the twig bonfires on which they are baking pita with za’atar, heating coffee and preparing tea for the many guests who have come to visit the new refugee encampment. On Sunday several delegations of Israeli Arabs from the Galilee came to express identification with Fawziya and the 27 families who will probably soon join her in this tent.

What did Livni recently call Palestinians living in their homeland, was it “as we call them, Israeli Arabs”?

Israel does not like this encampment, the municipality has already tried to evacuate it. Photographs of refugee tents in the heart of the unified capital are not good for Israeli public relations. Such pictures, which have already been splashed across several international newspapers in recent weeks – of course not in the Israeli press, which turns a blind eye – remind their readers of similar tent camps, those of 1948.

Public relations is more important than the actual suffering of the Palestinians. I wonder, if the Israeli could ethnically cleanse Palestine without it being “splashed across several international newspapers”, would Gideon worry?

The Arabic poster at the edge of the lot leaves no room for compromise: “Al-Quds [Jerusalem] is Arab, Muslim and Christian.”

See those Arabs, they leave ‘no room for comprise” and want the Jews out as they clearly state “Arab, Muslim and Christian” but no Jew.

The refreshment tables are full of the best Palestinian cuisine from the Galilee: labaneh, majadera of rice, lentils and onions, baked goods and more, including olive oil from the recent harvest.

The harvest that wasn’t destroyed by Israel, meaning, next to nothing.

Guests mill around. Prof. Jamal Amro, former head of the architecture department at Birzeit University, attracts a crowd. The last time we met was in 1999, inside the American Colony. Amro told me then about his torture by Shin Bet security service interrogators, when “Captain Dvir” came to his home in the middle of the night and told him: “Say goodbye to your wife and children.”

Amro underwent a terrifying, 25-day interrogation, including 15 consecutive days without sleep and a sack reeking of urine over his head. The Shin Bet tried to recruit him as a collaborator, and as usual all means were fair: “Suck, dog, suck,” one of the interrogators told him, “many men are now doing the same thing to your wife.” Captain “Martin” placed his foot on Amro’s neck and told this professor and architect: “You’re like a dog on the floor.”

Notice how no mention of violence being used even though in the next sentence, Gideon tells us about the “scars” Amro has as a result of being tortured. It’s made to appear as though the torture was in fact just verbal and mild when, in fact, quite the opposite is the truth.

Amro, an impressive, refined man whose son died of cancer just a few days ago, compares Shin Bet scars on his arms with another visitor, a refugee from Lifta who was also tortured.

Print worker Nasser Ghawi, a native of Sheikh Jarrah, relates the story in literary Hebrew: He is 46 and was born in the house now scheduled for eviction. I was born in the house, he emphasizes, not in the hospital.

“The claim of the other side is that they came here 120 years ago, although our houses were built 52 years ago.” Ghawi’s family fled to Jerusalem from Sarafand (Tzrifin). In 1956 the Jordanian government and the UN Relief and Works Agency built these 28 homes of refuge in Sheikh Jarrah for the families of the new refugees, in exchange for waiving their refugee cards.

The Jordanian government built these houses but, according to Gideon, they belong to the “Sephardic Community Committee”, even though the Palestinian family have been living in that house since it was built.

Gideon also manages to turn this into a “dispute” between two “equal” parties over a “right of return” and a Palestinian insistence of “ownership”.

Nobody can compare with Ghawi when it comes to telling their story in English, especially the events since 1972, five years after the capture of East Jerusalem, when the Israeli court declared them “protected tenants” in the houses that according to the court belong to the Sephardic Community Committee.

The houses were built by Jordan but after the 67 war the suddenly became the property of the “Sephardic community committee” and the true owners became “protected tenants”. Can the Israelis dream up any other sick and disgusting ways of stealing from the Palestinians, while the world not only sits by but praises Israel.

Because these families refused to pay rent to the Sephardic Community Committee and to the Committee of the Knesset of Israel – both religious bodies – which transferred the property to the Nahalat Shimon settler association, they were doomed to eviction.

Now the Palestinians have become delinquent tenants that have not paid their “rent” to the “right of return” jewish owners. I am trying very hard not to rip into Gideon for “its” dishonesty.

Just as with the more famous “House of Contention” in Hebron, there are suspicions of forged documents and biased judgments, Jewish tycoons and MKs who encourage disagreement, a nearby religious site (the grave of the Jewish saint Shimon Hatzadik, which Palestinians say is in fact the grave of a member of the Hijazi family) (its not the israelis that “say” it’s the “grave of the jewish saint shimon hatzadik”, only the Palestinians who “say”. and nationalist motives – to “create a barrier” between Sheikh Jarrah and the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. But above all, the inequality in the discussion of the right of return conducted in the Israeli justice system cries out from afar.

Let me get this right. A person breaks into my home, evicts me and my family, and then his/her friends ask this person’s permission to move into a part of my home and call it “right of return”.

Whatever the case, Ghawi’s family was forced to leave its home in 2002 by court order.

“Its” home? Is that a Freudian slip by Gideon? For those unaware, one uses the word “it” to refer to animals or objects.

In 2006 they won the right to return to it, after drawn-out and expensive legal deliberations.

Which were a foregone conclusion and an extremely cruel way to steal both the Ghawi’s home AND money.

Now they are once again facing eviction. Ghawi’s father, Abd al-Fatah, 87, could be sent to prison, like the father of the neighboring Hanun family, who has already spent three months in jail for contempt of court.

“Whatever the case”??? No, it’s not “whatever the case” for the family that lost a husband/father/brother because of the eviction. And NO, it’s not “whatever the case” for the family that now lives in a tent with no electricity, no clean running water, no sewerage

The weather is deceptive, one moment sunny, the next moment the skies darken above the row of tents and a cold wind whips against your face. On November 9, the Kurds were evacuated from their home of 52 years, since it was built. Fawziya will never forget that night. “I wish nobody had seen it and nobody had ever experienced it, what I went through that night.”

She is 56, a mother of five and grandmother of 16. She was born in the Old City, to which her family fled in 1948 from Talbieh, in West Jerusalem. In 1970 she married Mohammed, a refugee from Jaffa, and moved to his home in Sheikh Jarrah.

She “fled”, not ethically cleansed but “fled”.

Their troubles also began in 1972. Since then she has seen everything. She says MK Benny Elon came to her house a few years ago, offering an enormous sum for the house. A pistol was placed in the yard in an effort to frame her. Dirty diapers were thrown at her doorway. The sewage pipe was blocked by her uninvited neighbors. She was forced to pay their electricity bills when they tapped into her meter. The settlers frequently held noisy parties in what had been her childrens’ home. Fawziya says that since their eviction in 2001 there were new settlers every few months – Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia, Yemen, America, in her backyard.

The eviction: “Everything I had experienced until then was nothing compared to that night,” Fawziya related. “They knew I had a sick and paralyzed husband.” At 3:30 A.M. they heard knocking. She was holding a bedpan for her husband. Several dozen local police and Border Police officers burst in. “What are you doing?” she shouted, and then two police officers grabbed her arms from behind and dragged her outside. She says her husband slipped and fell off the bed. They took her by force into the street, far from the house, and dragged her husband to the neighbor’s house.

According to Gideon (because he didn’t put what “she says” in quotes) the husband “slipped and fell” but according to the wife, the husband was “paralyzed”. Gideon wouldn’t want us knowing how “kind” the Israeli police are to the Palestinians, so the husband simply “slipped”.

Everything was left behind, all their belongings. Her husband in pajamas, she in a nightgown, that’s all they had. “I asked a policewoman for water and she shouted: ‘Shut up!’ They were so violent, that’s why I’ll never forgive them. My husband was crying and they were laughing.”

Fawziya tells us they were “violent” but no mention of that violence anywhere by Gideon.

The next night they were already in the white tent. “Had you been in my husband’s place, all his life in this house and suddenly in the street, what would you have said? What would you have felt? If you lost a cell phone – how angry you would be, and he lost his home. All his money and his entire life and suddenly he is thrown out into the street.”

Mohammed stayed in the tent, but on the 11th day his strength ran out. He was rushed to the French Hospital in East Jerusalem, after refusing to be taken to an Israeli hospital.

Look how nice the Israelis are, they evict a man from his home and give it to a jew from