Saturday, June 24, 2006
Shellshocked By More Than Just Rockets
My response to a feature story in the Washington Post today on the inhabitants of Sderot: "Shellshocked By More Than Just Rockets"
letters@washpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062301540.html
Dear Editor:
Sderot is today home to many Russian and Ethiopean immigrants living on village lands of the defaced and ethnically cleansed village of Najd, one of 418 depopulated Palestinian villages documented by Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi in All That Remains.
Najd's villagers were mainly farmers and engaged in animal husbandry. "Fields of grain and fruit trees surrounded Najd on all sides," according to Khalidi. There were 82 houses in Najd and its children went to school in the nearby village of Simsim, also obliterated. Palestinian Arabs owned 12,669 dunums of land in 1944/45; whereas Jews owned 495.
The key to peace in Palestine is implementation of the Palestinian refugees' inalienable rights as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, Section 2: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." Palestinian personal, human, civil, and historic rights must not be relative to those of Jewish immigrants.
Nancy Harb Almendras
Wiesbaden, Germany
letters@washpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062301540.html
Dear Editor:
Sderot is today home to many Russian and Ethiopean immigrants living on village lands of the defaced and ethnically cleansed village of Najd, one of 418 depopulated Palestinian villages documented by Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi in All That Remains.
Najd's villagers were mainly farmers and engaged in animal husbandry. "Fields of grain and fruit trees surrounded Najd on all sides," according to Khalidi. There were 82 houses in Najd and its children went to school in the nearby village of Simsim, also obliterated. Palestinian Arabs owned 12,669 dunums of land in 1944/45; whereas Jews owned 495.
The key to peace in Palestine is implementation of the Palestinian refugees' inalienable rights as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, Section 2: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." Palestinian personal, human, civil, and historic rights must not be relative to those of Jewish immigrants.
Nancy Harb Almendras
Wiesbaden, Germany
