Thousands commemorate anniversary of Kafr Qasim massacre KAFR QASIM (Ma‘an) 29 Oct — Thousands of Palestinians participated in a march on Wednesday in Israel commemorating the 58th anniversary of the Kafr Qasim massacre, amid a comprehensive strike across the city. Thousands marched to remember the deaths of nearly 50 Palestinian citizens of Israel shot dead in 1956 when a curfew was imposed on the village with no warning, a memory that evokes strong feelings in the 1.2 million strong Arab community. Participants in the march dressed in black as a group of students performed a representation of the massacre dressed in Israeli army uniforms and carried guns as they set a checkpoint in the center of the city below a sign announcing a mock curfew. A statement released by a local popular committee marked the 58th anniversary of the massacre, highlighting that Israeli border guards killed “youths, elderly, women, and children as they were returning home” from the fields … The 1956 massacre took place on the first day of the Suez Canal war, as Israel expected Jordanians to launch an attack in solidarity with Egypt and thus imposed a 24-hour curfew on all Palestinians inside Israel on Oct. 29, 1956 with no prior warning. Residents of the village who returned from their nearby agricultural lands after curfew were slaughtered on sight by Israeli border guards, and the police officers who were found responsible for the deaths were never held responsible. The incident occurred only eight years after the 1948 Nakba in which around 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in what is today in Israel, and it provoked fears that the slightly more than 100,000 who had managed to remained would be forced to flee as well. Until 1966, all Palestinians inside of Israel lived under martial law, and today continue to face widespread discrimination in all sectors of society. maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=736149 Young Palestinians protect history and heritage in Galilee village TARSHIHA (Electronic Intifada) 30 Oct by Yara Hawari — On Friday, 24 October, the village of Tarshiha in the upper western Galilee region of present-day Israel commemorated its fall to Zionist forces during the Nakba. Palestinians marked remembrance of the forced expulsion from their homeland in the late 1940s, in an event that they call Yom Tarshiha (Tarshiha Day). Yom Tarshiha has become an important day on the calendar for Palestinians in the Galilee. Nizar Hawari, one of the local Tarshiha Day organizers (and this reporter’s aunt), explained that the annual event is an attempt to make sure that the new generation in Tarshiha remembers the village’s history through the sharing and passing on of historical narratives. “Tarshiha is special,” she said. “It is an example of what happened to Palestine as a whole. Remembering what happened to our village is also important because time is running out for the older generation. We need to make sure their stories do not die with them.” The village was subjected to aerial bombardment and relentless artillery barrage on 28 October 1948. Many homes and buildings were destroyed and dozens of people were killed. By 1 November, most of the villagers had been forced to flee their homes into neighboring countries. According to historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal work The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, the order was given by the Zionist forces to “clear” Tarshiha. However some of the villagers remained close by to the village and were eventually allowed back to settle … Today, the village has a population of approximately 5,000 including both Muslims and Christians. It is encircled by Jewish Israeli towns which are encroaching on their land and trying to marginalize the Palestinian identity of the village. electronicintifada.net/content/young-palestinians-protect-history-and-heritage-galilee-village/13987 Talab Abu Arar: Israel’s demolition policy will push the 1948 Arabs to explode NAZARETH (PIC) 30 Oct — Knesset member Talab Abu Arar said that Israel’s persistence in demolishing homes and Mosques in the Arab towns of the 1948 occupied lands would push the Arabs to explode in the face of the occupation. In a speech to the Knesset on Wednesday, Abu Arar stated that during one year, Israel had demolished several mosques with its premises in the 1948 occupied lands, the last one was in Al-Zarnuk village. He added that during the same period, hundreds of Palestinian homes were also razed in unrecognized Arab villages in the Negev desert. “The occupation’s actions has created wide resentment among the Palestinian youths, and the situation is on the verge of explosion any moment,” the lawmaker said. english.palinfo/site/pages/details.aspx?itemid=68489 - See more at: mondoweiss.net/2014/11/palestinian-commemorate-explosion#sthash.S9RFty7x.dpuf
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 16:39:38 +0000