Sunday, January 01, 2006
Criticising Zionism: Punishable By Death
Dr. Anis Sayegh writes
I am one of the seven million Palestinians prohibited by Israel from living in my homeland to enjoy my national sovereignty and rights which are guaranteed me by numerous covenants and charters, so that I may live a free and dignified life and practice my traditions, develop my culture and carry on my heritage, so that I may establish a democratic system - which most people desire. The only thing I can do when I am overwhelmed with longing to see the beautiful house where I was born and raised, is to go to the Um Qays heights [Gadara, one of the Decapolis cities during the time of Jesus] in the north-western strip of the East Bank (Jordan) and look across the comforting lake with the beautiful and enchanting town behind it. My childhood memories of the first 16 years of my life appear before my eyes, accompanied by images of Jesus, his deeds and sermons as they were imprinted in my mind from Sunday school and Bible readings at home and in church. It was near this town and its lake that Jesus gave most of his sermons and performed many of his miracles. He chose most of his disciples from around Tiberias and healed people there. I see them all in my imagination, from afar, on the hill of Um Qays which overlooks the lake. But I can never go down to the banks of the lake or enter the town or sit under the shade of the mimosa tree at the entrance of our house. Because I am an Arab and the Arab, rightful owner of the land, its child for thousands of years, is not allowed to return. One of five million immigrants (or children of immigrants) who have flooded into Palestine over the past 100 years will have taken my place and raped the land which is not theirs.
Many Palestinians wonder why citizens of Russia, Poland, Germany, Holland and dozens of other countries have the right to come to a foreign land after the expulsion of its inhabitants and establish a homeland.
This question, which may seem naive within the context of the international political game, is directed to Cohen (I don't know the rest of his name), the Chinese Jew who allowed himself the liberty of living in my family's house in Tiberias (actually the Scottish missionary house). Part of the house was turned into a fish restaurant for tourists, visitors and pilgrims coming to the holy sites in Tiberias. But the question is asked more insistently and with astonishment, of those who made it easier for Cohen and people like him to leave their native countries and come to Palestine to occupy homes and land. Perhaps Cohen and his companions were weak-willed when faced with the temptations of coming to Palestine. However, what excuse do Western Christians have to offer to justify their role in implementing this conspiracy, by encouraging the Zionist movement and supporting it from its birth one hundred years ago, after it openly announced its plans to occupy Palestine? [The West] gave the Zionists a helping hand - financially, militarily, politically and in the media, and ensured an internationally "legitimate" cover-up for the implementation of the conspiracy in all its consecutive stages: from the infiltration of Palestine in the first fifty years (1897-1948) through the establishment of the state of Israel.
Dr. Sayegh, while in London, was the victim of an Israeli letter bomb. Dr. Sayegh, the son of a Protestant minister from Tiberias, writes the following in "The Zionist Terrorism File":
May the British reader allow me to address him bitterly. I was, personally, one of the first writers who wrote an analysis regarding the Oslo agreement, and I tried to stick to the limits of objectivity and impartiality, and I called for the fall of the Oslo agreement through democratic means. Is it right to consider what I wrote (and what I still write) to be a terrorist act or an act to incite terrorism?
May the British reader also allow me to talk more about myself. I am a person who is skilled in writing and research. I never carried a gun in my hands (not even a child’s gun) or a bomb (not even Christmas fire crackers) or a sword, dagger or bayonet. Believe it or not. But I run away from the sight of bloodshed, even an animal’s, or the sight of fire or even a lighter! This peaceful person was put by the Israelis (they probably still do I do not know) on the list of terrorism, and was followed by their terrorist, who tried to assault me twice, with explosives and rockets, and on the third time they succeeded, with a letter bomb, they took away my hearing and sight and left me disfigured. With his only crime being writing, teaching, publications, educating the coming generation on writing and criticizing Zionism as a thought and practice, exposing, opposing and resisting it, within the limits of scientific research.
Marion Woolfson writes further about Zionist terrorism attacks on Palestinian academics and writers:
Israel then decided to "eliminate the leadership" so that academics, doctors, lawyers, writers and teachers were targeted on the spurious pretext of "incitement" of the Palestinians. A total of 1,560 educated Palestinians were summarily expelled from their country. A typical example was Dr Hanna Nasir, principal of Bir Zeit University who, at midnight on 21 November 1974, was arrested without charge, blindfolded, handcuffed and dumped, along with a group of other Palestinians, on Lebanese territory and forbidden to return to his homeland. Often the deportees would be dumped in Maronite-held areas so that they were in great danger.
Even Palestinians living abroad were not safe. Mahmoud Hamchari, a writer and representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Paris, died a horrible death after a bomb was attached to his telephone. Naim Khader, a young academic and PLO representative in Brussels, was killed by a bomb. Bassam Abu Sharif, who later became Yasser Arafat's spokesman during the so-called peace negotiations, was also mutilated by a Mossad letter-bomb, as was Dr Anis Sayegh, who ran the PLO Research Centre in Beirut. When he was due to visit Britain for medical treatment and was to receive an award at his old college in Cambridge, a headline in the Daily Mirror said: "Cambridge to honour a terrorist." The famous Palestinian poet, Ghassan Kanafani, and his 17-year-old niece were killed by a car bomb. Palestinian intellectuals and leaders of the PLO, Abu Youssef, Kamal Adwan and Kamal Nasser, were killed by what the world's media described as "Israeli commandos" who broke into their block of flats in Beirut and shot them dead (as well as Abu Youssef's wife and their next-door neighbour, an elderly Italian lady, Mrs Clara Morelli, and five other bystanders.) It was said that the murderers used forged British passports but, in fact, it is common knowledge in Israel that foreign Jewish supporters of Israel "lend" their passports to Mossad.
I am one of the seven million Palestinians prohibited by Israel from living in my homeland to enjoy my national sovereignty and rights which are guaranteed me by numerous covenants and charters, so that I may live a free and dignified life and practice my traditions, develop my culture and carry on my heritage, so that I may establish a democratic system - which most people desire. The only thing I can do when I am overwhelmed with longing to see the beautiful house where I was born and raised, is to go to the Um Qays heights [Gadara, one of the Decapolis cities during the time of Jesus] in the north-western strip of the East Bank (Jordan) and look across the comforting lake with the beautiful and enchanting town behind it. My childhood memories of the first 16 years of my life appear before my eyes, accompanied by images of Jesus, his deeds and sermons as they were imprinted in my mind from Sunday school and Bible readings at home and in church. It was near this town and its lake that Jesus gave most of his sermons and performed many of his miracles. He chose most of his disciples from around Tiberias and healed people there. I see them all in my imagination, from afar, on the hill of Um Qays which overlooks the lake. But I can never go down to the banks of the lake or enter the town or sit under the shade of the mimosa tree at the entrance of our house. Because I am an Arab and the Arab, rightful owner of the land, its child for thousands of years, is not allowed to return. One of five million immigrants (or children of immigrants) who have flooded into Palestine over the past 100 years will have taken my place and raped the land which is not theirs.
Many Palestinians wonder why citizens of Russia, Poland, Germany, Holland and dozens of other countries have the right to come to a foreign land after the expulsion of its inhabitants and establish a homeland.
This question, which may seem naive within the context of the international political game, is directed to Cohen (I don't know the rest of his name), the Chinese Jew who allowed himself the liberty of living in my family's house in Tiberias (actually the Scottish missionary house). Part of the house was turned into a fish restaurant for tourists, visitors and pilgrims coming to the holy sites in Tiberias. But the question is asked more insistently and with astonishment, of those who made it easier for Cohen and people like him to leave their native countries and come to Palestine to occupy homes and land. Perhaps Cohen and his companions were weak-willed when faced with the temptations of coming to Palestine. However, what excuse do Western Christians have to offer to justify their role in implementing this conspiracy, by encouraging the Zionist movement and supporting it from its birth one hundred years ago, after it openly announced its plans to occupy Palestine? [The West] gave the Zionists a helping hand - financially, militarily, politically and in the media, and ensured an internationally "legitimate" cover-up for the implementation of the conspiracy in all its consecutive stages: from the infiltration of Palestine in the first fifty years (1897-1948) through the establishment of the state of Israel.
Dr. Sayegh, while in London, was the victim of an Israeli letter bomb. Dr. Sayegh, the son of a Protestant minister from Tiberias, writes the following in "The Zionist Terrorism File":
May the British reader allow me to address him bitterly. I was, personally, one of the first writers who wrote an analysis regarding the Oslo agreement, and I tried to stick to the limits of objectivity and impartiality, and I called for the fall of the Oslo agreement through democratic means. Is it right to consider what I wrote (and what I still write) to be a terrorist act or an act to incite terrorism?
May the British reader also allow me to talk more about myself. I am a person who is skilled in writing and research. I never carried a gun in my hands (not even a child’s gun) or a bomb (not even Christmas fire crackers) or a sword, dagger or bayonet. Believe it or not. But I run away from the sight of bloodshed, even an animal’s, or the sight of fire or even a lighter! This peaceful person was put by the Israelis (they probably still do I do not know) on the list of terrorism, and was followed by their terrorist, who tried to assault me twice, with explosives and rockets, and on the third time they succeeded, with a letter bomb, they took away my hearing and sight and left me disfigured. With his only crime being writing, teaching, publications, educating the coming generation on writing and criticizing Zionism as a thought and practice, exposing, opposing and resisting it, within the limits of scientific research.
Marion Woolfson writes further about Zionist terrorism attacks on Palestinian academics and writers:
Israel then decided to "eliminate the leadership" so that academics, doctors, lawyers, writers and teachers were targeted on the spurious pretext of "incitement" of the Palestinians. A total of 1,560 educated Palestinians were summarily expelled from their country. A typical example was Dr Hanna Nasir, principal of Bir Zeit University who, at midnight on 21 November 1974, was arrested without charge, blindfolded, handcuffed and dumped, along with a group of other Palestinians, on Lebanese territory and forbidden to return to his homeland. Often the deportees would be dumped in Maronite-held areas so that they were in great danger.
Even Palestinians living abroad were not safe. Mahmoud Hamchari, a writer and representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Paris, died a horrible death after a bomb was attached to his telephone. Naim Khader, a young academic and PLO representative in Brussels, was killed by a bomb. Bassam Abu Sharif, who later became Yasser Arafat's spokesman during the so-called peace negotiations, was also mutilated by a Mossad letter-bomb, as was Dr Anis Sayegh, who ran the PLO Research Centre in Beirut. When he was due to visit Britain for medical treatment and was to receive an award at his old college in Cambridge, a headline in the Daily Mirror said: "Cambridge to honour a terrorist." The famous Palestinian poet, Ghassan Kanafani, and his 17-year-old niece were killed by a car bomb. Palestinian intellectuals and leaders of the PLO, Abu Youssef, Kamal Adwan and Kamal Nasser, were killed by what the world's media described as "Israeli commandos" who broke into their block of flats in Beirut and shot them dead (as well as Abu Youssef's wife and their next-door neighbour, an elderly Italian lady, Mrs Clara Morelli, and five other bystanders.) It was said that the murderers used forged British passports but, in fact, it is common knowledge in Israel that foreign Jewish supporters of Israel "lend" their passports to Mossad.
