On May 6, 2021, the residents of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem woke up to the decision of the Israeli Supreme Court to expel seven Palestinian families from their homes in order to accommodate Zionist settlers who claimed ownership of their lands[1], an event that erupted the recent clashes last year, and a wave escalated with them The Palestinian resistance took place the next day on the "Friday of Farewell" after thousands of Israeli occupation police - in a provocative operation - stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque and attacked worshipers, resulting in the injury of more than 205 Palestinian civilians in Al-Aqsa Mosque, Bab Al-Amoud and Sheikh Jarrah[2].
This incident, whose memory has not yet disappeared from the Arab memory, was only one episode of the Palestinian-Zionist identity struggle in Palestine and Jerusalem in particular.
It is preceded by another episode dating back to 2008, when the Palestinian al-Ghawi family was forced to evict their home in favor of Jewish settlers, and an older episode dating back to 1982, when a Jewish settler association filed lawsuits against 24 families demanding the eviction of their homes[3].
These serial episodes were only a result of the Judaization scheme practiced by the Zionist occupation for more than a century, but its pace escalated after the Nakba of 1948, and exacerbated more blatantly with the setback of June 1967. In this context, we return again to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, but with The story of the most prominent conflict between the Palestinians of the neighborhood and the "Nahalat Shimon" organization, which claims to own the lands of the Palestinian Jerusalem neighborhood[4].
This organization was established in April 2000 under the management of the Israeli-Canadian businessman "Seymour Brown", who has a long experience in financing settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967, and he leads the organization in the campaign of identity struggle in this ancient neighborhood.
Contrary to the Palestinian narrative, the organization claims a biblical right in the neighborhood attributed to Rabbi “Simon al-Siddiq,” whose biblical accounts claim the presence of his tomb in the neighborhood 400 years ago, and that it was the Jewish travelers who named the neighborhood as “Nahalat Simeon” (Shimon’s property) in 1891[5] ].
This incident, in turn, takes us to a busy path of Judaization and Hebrew practiced by the Zionist movement throughout its existence in the land of Palestine, through a set of processes and mechanisms aimed at annihilating the Palestinian memory and destroying its cultural and historical heritage in the mind of the world in general, and among the emerging Palestinians in particular.
History is the present
The famous German philosopher "George Wilhelm Hegel" believes that "the universe is what has been", which means that what is now achieved in the present is only the result of a set of factors and influences that existed in the past[6].
For this reason, the leaders of the Zionist project realized early on that history does not expire as a whole and go with the past, but rather extends some of it to flow into the present and make its content.
Therefore, owning land alone - and usurping it - is not a sufficient event to make the Israeli entity cut off from any historical root. Rather, this Zionist project must invent the past and monopolize it to strike roots for its narrative in our world.
To achieve this purpose, the Jewish Bible was the reference that provided Zionism with claims of owning and monopolizing the past of Palestine and assassinating the true history of ancient Palestine [7].
Contrary to what might be thought, Zionism did not begin the Judaization of Palestinian history with the stage of the emergence of the Children of Israel, but rather they went further, and the "prehistoric" era, as they called it, was not spared from attempts to create Zionist myths.
As Dr. "Issam Sakhnini"[8] mentioned in his book "The Holy Crime", all the peoples and nations that inhabited Palestine before the biblical kingdom of "David" or Israel in 1004 BC (BC) were Israeli according to the Zionist narrative;
Being merged later in the Kingdom of the Children of Israel.
Rather, the Israeli archaeologist, Amichai Mazar, described the historical peoples of Palestine as “the nucleus that provided the establishment of the Israeli state,” and that is why he considers them “Israelis in this sense.”
In other words, the only historical value of these peoples is that they were "the necessary precursor to the establishment of the Israelite nation"[9] and nothing else.
This clear and arbitrary reduction of the identity of the peoples of Palestine was completed by removing satanic characteristics that justify the historical genocide and marginalization of these peoples. Palestine was later named after them), but he annihilated them morally by drawing a picture of them filled with all kinds of evils that can be attached to any people.
And that image, in turn, extended to contemporary European culture, as the word “Philistine” became in its languages bearing meanings indicating brutality, inferiority and ignorance, to the extent that some dictionary meanings in the English language of the word “Philistine” became meaning “dull, vulgar, puritan, motivated by material values.” Instead of rational values, the arrogance belongs to a despised class and lacks originality and moral sensitivity”[10].
The Jewish Bible did not deny the existence of the ancient "Philistines", but it exterminated them morally by drawing a picture of them full of all kinds of evils that can be attached to any people.
(Reuters)
A Canadian study for the Department of Geography at the University of “Lethbridge” described the matter, saying: “The degrading of the Philistines to a situation that lacks civilization is something that should be considered a crime.”[11] What was confirmed by Niles Peter, a professor at the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Copenhagen, saying: “The biblical picture of ancient Israel is incorrect, and it contradicts any picture of the ancient Palestinian society that can be based on ancient sources from Palestine itself”[12].
This deliberate distortion of the historical population of Palestine, according to the British researcher "Keith Withlam", emptied ancient Palestine of any content and meaning, and silenced the old Palestinian history and imposed silence on it[13]. They do not have a present either”[14], and this is the essence of the Judaization that the Zionist movement desired and based on its next practice of annihilating memory.
Jerusalem and Jerusalem
From the distortion of history to the conquest of the place, Zionism practiced its “sacred” process of eroding the Palestinian identity and extending Jewish influence over the entire land of Palestine, that patch of land in which none of the physical documents recorded a historical name except for two names: the name “Kanaan”, and the names are derived from the root "Belst", which developed into Bilstein, and then Palestine.
This fact was acknowledged by the Canaanites, Assyrians, the ancient Egyptians, the Alalakh kingdom in northern Syria, the Phoenicians in Lebanon, the Achaemenid Persians, the Greeks, the Romans and the Arabs who established this part of the land as Palestine. The Land of the Hebrews” over Palestine, and made it the Promised Land and the Holy Land that had to be cleansed of the impurity of the “Philistine” with the exclusion of the name Palestine from the geo-historical memory to be replaced by the name of the Land of Israel[16].
The outpost "Shimon Hatsadeq" was built in homes for the residents of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood (Al-Jazeera)
To complete the task of historical forgery came the role of geographical forgery.
The first attempts at this task began - according to “Sakhnini” - with the American Protestant clergyman “Edward Robinson” and his partner, the Protestant missionary “Ally Smith”, who conducted two archaeological survey tours in Palestine in 1838 and 1852 commissioned by the “Council of Foreign Missions Committees” in the United States, and during The two trips "Robinson" and his companion recorded the outcome of their trip by learning about Palestinian geography, but from a theological perspective, it ignores all historical facts, and even twists its neck.
They searched for the closest biblical name for each Palestinian town, and then claimed its ancestry to an Israeli era, no matter how arbitrary the similarity was.
For example, the biblical village of "Yarim", which means "the village of forests", and the insistence on attributing its name to the Palestinian village of "Al-Anab", as well as the village of "Sukoh", to which they attributed the village of "Shweika".
On this approach, the Zionist movement proceeded in Hebrew and Judaizing Palestinian villages and cities, and this officially began in 1931 when it announced its protest against the list of names announced by the British Mandate for Palestinian geographical locations;
The Mandate took into account the selection of recognized Arab formulas, which was not to the liking of the Zionist National Council and the Jewish Association for the Exploration of Palestine.
Then, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Zionist National Council, sought to submit a detailed memorandum to the Mandate Authority that included amendments to the names in line with the Jewish narrative.
Despite the Mandate's rejection of the memorandum - a desire to contain Arab anger during the great Palestinian revolution - this endeavor did not die, and life came to life with the announcement of the establishment of the Israeli occupation state in 1948, when its first prime minister, "David Ben-Gurion", established a committee called the "Governmental Committee for Names". [18] He made his famous statement in June 1949: “
Within one year, the committee gave Hebrew names to 561 geographical landmarks in the Negev alone. In another report, the committee announced in 1956 that it had changed the names of 113 other geographical locations to biblical Hebrew names[20].
According to an official list issued by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, about 500 Islamic sites were considered holy Jewish sites[21], and the final result of the geo-historical Judaization process was the Hebrewization of about 7000 Palestinian sites and more than 1000 settlements[22].
The little ones will forget
David Ben-Gurion (social networking sites)
"We have to do everything to ensure that they (the Palestinians) never come back... the old will die, the young will forget."
(David Ben-Gurion)
On the other side of the arbitrary historical attempts of radicalization, came the other side of the process of Judaization, which is targeting the younger generations who did not witness the Nakba and did not hear from their parents the stories of Deir Yassin, Sabra and Shatila and other Zionist crimes. ".
According to the Palestinian researcher, “Aws Daoud Yaqoub”[23], the Zionist occupation governments paid great attention to the education sector as one of the episodes of Judaizing Jerusalem, through many measures of the so-called Israeli Ministry of Education, which began as soon as the Zionist occupation of the city in 1967, where the authority of the ministry was imposed All public schools and Arab education directorates in Jerusalem.
It began with the final abolition of Jordanian educational programs, to be replaced by educational programs applied in Arab schools located in the occupied territories in 1948. "Yacoub" added that the authorities then sought to gradually impose the Israeli educational program, by issuing the School Supervision Law No. 5729 of 1969, which It included full supervision of all schools, including schools for religious sects and private schools.
All these steps were nothing but a prelude to the second stage of Judaizing educational history in the minds of youngsters. The Palestinian researcher “Izdihar Maatouk” stated that the process of educational Judaization took place in full swing to erode the awareness of youngsters in a number of Arab schools under the influence of the occupation;
So, the Israeli independence anthem replaced the Palestinian national anthem, and Jerusalem became the capital of Israel in the curricula, and Haifa and Jaffa became among the most authentic cities of Israel, and the symbols of Israeli aggression and massacres became public and historical figures, to the extent that the memory of the Nakba became a holiday of independence[24].
The stages of Judaization extended and included a wide distortion of educational curricula, as all texts related to the Palestinian cause, the right of return, settlements, Zionist immigration to Palestine, checkpoints, the Intifada, destroyed villages, struggle, developing the spirit of resistance and jihad, glorifying martyrdom and captives, adhering to the land and homeland, and impersonating Palestinian costumes. Incidents of burning Al-Aqsa Mosque, and so on, and they even rejected the term “historic Palestine”[25].
Religious education was not spared from this Hebrew attack, so work was done to hide the surahs that speak of the Children of Israel and their corruption on earth, or the surahs and verses that urge fighting and jihad, to replace them with the teaching of the Torah and Jewish myths.
In the subject of Arabic literature, the study of Arab heroism in Arabic poetry was neutralized in favor of Holocaust Israeli literature.
While the subject of history was divided: half of Arab history as written and seen by Israeli historians, and the other half of Hebrew and Jewish history[26].
But it is worth noting that this process of Judaization has faced - and still is - a struggle and a great rejection by the Palestinian forces and the people, especially with regard to the schools of Jerusalem and the attempts of the occupation to equate them with the Arab schools within the 48 borders. Nevertheless, the Student Parents Union in Jerusalem revealed that some school administrations It has already submitted to the occupation municipality and decided to open classes that teach the Israeli curriculum with the new school year 2022 within what is known as the “Bagrut” system, under the pretext of the need to obtain licenses for educational institutions[27], in addition to other long-detailed practices and abuses.
The episodes of Judaization are getting tighter on the Palestinians, then, as the Zionist entity is trying in various ways to invent a Jewish history for Palestine and monopolize this history in every possible way.
Can the popular Palestinian resistance stand in the face of this Israeli erosion of the Palestinian memory, and attempts to Judaize and reinterpret history, geography and awareness?
The reality tells us that the Palestinians are not deterred, and history also tells us about such things, but it never told us about an entity called Israel, and only days will tell us who can win in the end, Palestinian history with its steadfastness, or the Zionist myth with its authority.
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Sources:
1- Evictions in Jerusalem Become Focus of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
2- Sheikh Jarrah: Dozens of Palestinians were injured in clashes in Jerusalem
3- Between “Sheikh Jarrah” and “Nahalat Shamoun” .. the burning conflict over the identity of Jerusalem
4- What do you know about the terrorist "Nahalat Shimon" and "Lahfa"?
5- The same source.
6- Zakaria Ibrahim, The cycle of time in human life.
7- Issam Sakhnin, The Holy Crime: Genocide from the Ideology of the Hebrew Book to the Zionist Project.
8- The same source.
9- The same source.
10- Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged with Seven Language Dictionary, Editor in Chief Philip B. Gave;
Associate Editors Edward Artin [et al.J, 3 vols.
(Chicago, ILL: Encyclopedia Britannica inc., 1976), val.
2, p.
1697.
11- “Paper on the Philistines, by the Department of Geography at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, on the web www.home.uleth.ca.geo.phlist.
12- Niels Peter Lemche, “On the Problems of Reconstructing Pre-Hellenistic Israelite (Palestinian) (l)History,” Journal of Hebrew Scripture, vol.
3 (2001).
13- Keith W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History.
14- Issam Sakhnin, The Holy Crime: Genocide from the Ideology of the Hebrew Book to the Zionist Project.
15- Same source.
16- Same source.
17- The same source.
18- Nur Masalha, «Remembering the: Palestinian Nakba: Commemoration, Oral History and Narratives of Memory,)) Holy Land Studies>
19- Issam Sakhnin, The Holy Crime... Genocide from the Ideology of the Hebrew Book to the Zionist Project.
20- Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self- Fashioning in the Israeli Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p.
95.
21- Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948.
22- Means of Judaizing Jerusalem - Palestinian News and Information Agency.
23- Aws Daoud Yaqoub, a study entitled Judaizing the education sector at the forefront of Zionist plans to Judaize Al-Quds Al-Sharif.
24- Izdihar Maatouq, Palestinian Memory in the Face of the Desperate Policy of Judaization.
25- Mahmoud Khalil al-Qudra, Judaizing educational curricula in the city of Jerusalem.
26- Mahmoud Khalil Al Qidra, The Impact of the Israeli Occupation on Education in Jerusalem.
27- The Judaization of education is escalating in Jerusalem and trying to penetrate private schools.