Issue-oriented and thematic papers for PfL’s advocacy work, including statements, campaign materials, articles and updates on developing issues; and links to related resources and information
No. 75 (2009.01.02) – Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony
Editor’s note:
Robert Fisk, one of the most respected Middle East journalists, has a PhD in political science, speaks Arabic, and has lived and traveled widely in the region.
Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony
ROBERT FISK
The Independent
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which—in any other conflict—journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.
That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it—Askalaan in Arabic—were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They—or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren—are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don’t come from Gaza.
Read the full article at:
© 2008 Independent News and Media
Palestine Update is an occasional mailing edited by Ranjan Solomon and sent out by Goa-based Alternatives on behalf of Alternatives/Badayl.
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