Thursday, June 05, 2008
Hey, there, lonely [Palestinian] boy
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-pearl-bisharat16-2008may16,0,112718.story?page=2
I was too late to get this comment published in response to Judah Pearl's ode to Zionism; George Bisharat's op-eds at the same link are eloquent and moving (it's really hard to express in words the revulsion his quote inspires: a mixture of audacity, indifference, willful ignorance and just plain evil wrapped up as good to which Palestinians are so subject):
Mr. Pearl states:
"I couldn't help but imagine how lonely it must be for a Palestinian boy not to be able to sing "Canaan, My Hero!" in the language of his ancestors, not to have Canaanite role models after which to name songs, towns and holidays and, more lonely yet, to be taught by teachers who had never heard of his Canaanite ancestors."
What sophistry in light of Zionists' eradication of Palestinian society and culture:
"One of the most historically destructive actions that David Ben Gurion . . . did to establish Jewish dominance over the Arab population and land from a historical point of view was to create a committee of scholars, geographers, and theologians in the same week of February 1949 in which Israel signed its armistice agreement with Syria, whose goal was to 'erase' all the names used in historic Palestine for the past five thousand years and to create new Hebrew names. 'They wanted to make these names a symbol of the old link with Palestine, but unfortunately they could not find genuine Hebrew names for more than five percent of the names previously used,' said Abu Sitta. These new maps and new names erased the vocabulary of the life of the people, he added, because of the way the names had recorded historic events like weddings and battles."
http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/images/fortherecord.php?ID=235
I was too late to get this comment published in response to Judah Pearl's ode to Zionism; George Bisharat's op-eds at the same link are eloquent and moving (it's really hard to express in words the revulsion his quote inspires: a mixture of audacity, indifference, willful ignorance and just plain evil wrapped up as good to which Palestinians are so subject):
Mr. Pearl states:
"I couldn't help but imagine how lonely it must be for a Palestinian boy not to be able to sing "Canaan, My Hero!" in the language of his ancestors, not to have Canaanite role models after which to name songs, towns and holidays and, more lonely yet, to be taught by teachers who had never heard of his Canaanite ancestors."
What sophistry in light of Zionists' eradication of Palestinian society and culture:
"One of the most historically destructive actions that David Ben Gurion . . . did to establish Jewish dominance over the Arab population and land from a historical point of view was to create a committee of scholars, geographers, and theologians in the same week of February 1949 in which Israel signed its armistice agreement with Syria, whose goal was to 'erase' all the names used in historic Palestine for the past five thousand years and to create new Hebrew names. 'They wanted to make these names a symbol of the old link with Palestine, but unfortunately they could not find genuine Hebrew names for more than five percent of the names previously used,' said Abu Sitta. These new maps and new names erased the vocabulary of the life of the people, he added, because of the way the names had recorded historic events like weddings and battles."
http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/images/fortherecord.php?ID=235
