umkahlil

Comment I left re a post entitled "The Other Side of Collective Punishment" in the Guardian by once-upon-a-time London stockbroker turned lion for Zion Seth Freedman. In the past three years ten Israelis have been killed by Qassams. In the first week of November, Israel's Occupation Forces killed five Palestinians in Gaza, but in typical weird London stockbroker occupier assumes role of victim mode, Freedman in his ode to Sderot admonishes Palestinians not to play the 'numbers' game.

Gosh, right now a Zionist will accuse me of not being "nuanced," of disregarding the vast "complexities" of the situation, of spouting dogma . . .

The Other Side of Sderot

Sderot was settled by Jews in 1951. According to Walid Khalidi in All That Remains, it along with the settlement of Or ha-Ner, founded in 1957, were established on the village lands of Najd, which means "elevated plain" in Arabic.

Najd's Palestinian villagers, approximately 620 in 1945, were expelled on 13 May 1948, before Israel was declared a state and before any Arab armies entered Palestine (Khalidi 128). According to UN Resolution 194 and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, Section 2, the villagers of Najd have a right to return home to their personal property and to their native village.

Today, according to Khalidi on page 128 of All That Remains, "some old trees grow" on the site of the village. It is "overgrown with cactuses and Christ's thorn and sycamore trees and contans the crumbled walls of unidentified buildings...."

There were 82 houses in Najd. Children went to school in Simsim, two kilometers away. According to Palestine Remembered (http://www.palestineremembered.com) the village has been completely "defaced."

In 1596 Najd's population was 215 (Khalidi 128).

In 1838, Edward Robinson, an American biblical scholar "observed the villagers winnowing barley by throwing it into the air against the wind with wooden forks" [Robinson (1841) III: 260 as quoted in Khalidi 128].

Najd's villagers were mainly farmers and engaged in animal husbandry, according to Khalidi. "Fields of grain and fruit trees surrounded Najd on all sides"(Khalidi 128).
Najd is fourteen kilometers from Gaza. Palestinian Arabs own 12,669 dunums in Najd although Israel refuses to honor their rights to their personal property, and refuses them their inalienable right to return home. In 1945 Jews owned 495 dunums of land in Najd and public lands consisted of 412 dunums (Khalidi 128).

Source:
Khalidi, Walid, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated By Israel in 1948. Institute for Palestine Studies: Washington, D.C., 1992.