The Theft of Palestinian Culture

It was not enough for Israel to ethnically cleanse 800,000 Palestinians from their homes, raze their villages, pollute their wells and then shot at them to prevent them from exercising their right to return. It was not enough that Israelis got their Jewish state. They then proceeded to deny not only the crimes of 1948 - al-Nakba - but the very existence of the Palestinian people. As Golda Meir once stated: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” As she stated that to the Western press that she wrote in her memoirs that the procreation of the very people she denied existed kept her up at night. That is how vulgar, blatant and casual in their racism Israelis are.

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In their effort to deny the Palestinian people their heritage, history, narrative - their very being; Israel began a process of destroying Palestinian culture. Not only where Arab towns renamed with Hebrew titles, Israel banned the very mention of the word ‘Palestine’ for the so-called ‘’48 Arabs’ (those Palestinians not ethnically cleansed or relocated to another part of Palestine which now feel under 1948 Israeli occupation) and any literary references to Arab attachment to the land were also strictly forbidden.

Israel has numerous Palestinian literary collections and other artifacts stolen from Palestinian notables hidden in its archives. It refuses to hand them over to Palestinians. Can you imagine if a nation refused to hand over artifacts belonging to European Jews that were stolen by the Nazis and now vaulted in, say, Polish archives? The uproar would be international, swift and rightly so. And Israel has been very aggressive in reclaiming on behalf of European Jewry Swiss bank accounts of massacred Jews in the Holocaust. But their sympathy is tribal and never extends to the Palestinians (but the Haitian people may be exploited). Numerous Palestinian families have been denied to the right to obtain their families stolen estates. Here’s one such example:

"The Israeli army’s "looting" of books belonging to Palestinian intellectuals is the subject of a documentary being made by Dutch-Israeli film maker Benny Brunner. He claims as many as 30,000 Arabic books and manuscripts, some of them rare and valuable, ended up in Israel’s National Library after the 1948 war. Brunner’s interest in the story was sparked by an article written by young Israeli academic Gish Amit who stumbled across books while researching his Ph.D. According to Mr Amit, the library "collected" the books from the private collections of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes in 1948."

After the Holocaust world Jewry united to reclaim the stolen possession of Jews by the Nazis. But today the Jewish state maintains a stolen collection of Palestinian belongings and refuses to hand them back. If any other nation did this to Jews there would be a hearing on Capital Hill for the decried "antisemitism". For goodness' sake, the Israelis have refused to give back an old Torah to Iraq - which was taken by U.S. troops and given to Israel - simply because by tradition it belongs to the Jewish state. But Palestinians have actual proofs of their personal belongings, to say little of the land stolen, and Israel clings to its thievery.

But why would it not? The entire concept of Zionist is based and mandates the immoral theft of another people's land and rights and all between. Nothing less should be expected of Zionists.

Another illustration of the very immoral foundation and bankruptcy of this state. And then it has the temerity to complain about de-legitimization. It deserves neither peace nor legitimacy nor permanent existence. And shall it be.