"Like all foreigners, the Jewish settlers sailed first to Alexandria, took a ferry to Jaffa, and were taken ashore by small boats. This mundane arrival at the shore appears in the settlersâ statements as aggressive and alien treatment: âAravim Hetikifu Ottanuâ â âthe Arabs assaulted usâ â is the phrase used to describe the simple act of Palestinian boys helping settlers to small boats on the way to Jaffa; they shouted because the waves were high and asked for baksheesh [tips] because this was how they managed to live. But in the settlersâ narrative they were assailants. Noise, presumably a normal feature of life in the
Jewish townships of Eastern Europe, becomes menacing when produced by Palestinian women wailing in the traditional salute of joy to the sailors returning safely home. For the settlers this was the behaviour of savages, âwith fiery eyes and a strange garroted language.â Whether the topic is their language, their dress or their animals, reports back to Europe concerning the Palestinians were all about unpleasantness and weirdness.
... Again and again, Zionist settlers behaved as a people who had been insulted â either objectively in the form of a physical attack, but more often simply by the very presence of Palestinians in Palestine. ... The Zionist settlers instituted retaliation for âtheftâ, which was how
they characterised the rural tradition of cultivating state land, a practice that was legal under Ottoman law. Picking fruit from roadside orchards became an act of robbery only after Zionism took over the land. The words shoded (robber) and rozeach (murderer) were flung about with ease when Palestinians involved in such acts were described. After 1948 these terms would be replaced with âterroristâ and âsaboteurâ.
... Cleansing the land of its farmers and tenants was done at first through meeting in the Zionist madafa and then by force of eviction in Mandatory times. The âgoodâ Palestinians were those who came to the madafa and allowed themselves to be evicted. Those who refused were branded robbers and murderers. Even Palestinians with whom the settlers sometimes shared ownership of horses or long hours of guard duty were transformed into villains once they refused
eviction. Later on, wherever Israelis would control the lives of Palestinians, such a refusal to collaborate would be the ultimate proof for Palestinian choice of the terrorist option as a way of life.
... Following the 1967 war ... both Israeli academics and Israeli media commonly used the term âterrorismâ when referring to any kind of Palestinian political, social and cultural activity. âPalestinian terrorismâ was depicted as having been present from the very beginning of the Zionist project in Palestine and still being there when academic research into it began in earnest. This characterisation was so comprehensive and airtight that it assigned almost every chapter in Palestinian history to the domain of âterrorismâ and absolved hardly any of the organisations and personalities that made up the Palestinian national movement from the accusation of being terrorists."
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
jbbartram-illu
dededos
annaxmalina
