Friday 16 October 2009
No2Genocide (1)
13 Oct 09, 3:16pm
[note this post attracted 100 recommendations before it was deleted]
I lived in Tel Aviv during the first Palestinian Intifada and I travelled weekly to Gaza during the 1988-2001 uprising [that was before the current siege imposed by Israel, which now suffocates Gaza and makes such visits completely impossible].
Even then, long before the Israeli carpet bombing of Gaza earlier this year, I found horrendous hardship in Gaza in strike contrast to affluent Tel Aviv.
Travelling to Gaza by public transport from Tel Aviv was from … Jaffa. That was a poignant reminder that my journey to visit the refugee camps started from the town from which the Palestinian refugees had been ethnic cleansed in 1948.
As Abe Hayeem eloquently writes, Tel Aviv was built on the ruins of a number of Palestinian communities. The Palestinians were ethnic cleansed, many of them transferred into Gaza.
The propaganda stunt this week of promoting Tel Aviv in the heart of the city of London is despicable not only because of its history, but because Tel Aviv is closely linked to the latest war crimes against Gaza [see the Goldstone Report and Israel accused of war crimes over 12-hour assault on Gaza village at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/18/israel-war-crimes-gaza-conflict, .
For example, the heart of Tel Aviv is the home for the Israeli military, in an area called HaKirya, which has served as the IDF headquarters since its founding in 1948 [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HaKirya ]. It accommodates the Israeli military in numerous buildings and underground bonkers. As an Israeli, I suspect the pre-planning [e.g. the Israeli military legal team authorising the usage of white phosphorous and other lethal attacks on civilians, etc] and the daily orders for the assaults on Gaza were made in HaKirya, in the heart of Tel Aviv.
Celebrating Tel Aviv is like dancing on the graves of Palestinians just before the first anniversary of Israels wanton killings and mass destruction in Gaza.
Yael Oren Kahn
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