Zochrot visit to Beersheba
I just came across this brief account of a visit to Beer Sheva organized by Zochrot, the Israeli organization that’s trying to counter sixty years of Israeli efforts to erase the Palestinian past from Israeli consciousness. This visit last summer went to parts of the city I visited a few months later. It begins with a stop at the mosque I referred to a few weeks ago:
We met on Saturday afternoon, July 8, 2006, to drive to the old city of Beersheba, to rummage through memories and perhaps also a bit to change them. Two buses – one from Tel Aviv and one from Jaffa, Ramle, and Lod – drove southward, to the place where most of the refugees now under the Israeli offensive in Gaza came from.
About 150 men and women gathered in the courtyard of what was once an active mosque for Muslims from Bir al-Seba and the surrounding area. Today the mosque is dormant, looks neglected, and the municipality refuses to permit its use for prayer. In the past the municipality tried to turn the mosque into a museum. Today it just stands neglected. The struggles against the Muslim residents were carried out with typical Israeli high-handedness. A statue hinting of the figure of a woman was erected in the courtyard of the mosque, and when the residents intended to protest, the Deputy Mayor scattered garbage around the mosque to deter them. Actions at the mosque revealed the intention of Jewish leaders that Arabs/Muslims disappear from the public eye.
Zochrot aims to resurrect Palestinian names and history in the face of Israel’s destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages during and after the 1948-49 war. That’s not easy, given the hostility even simple sign-posting has created. I suspect this hostility will escalate as a result of the recent calls by Israel’s Palestinian citizens for true equality.
I’ve been reading more of Jonathan Cook’s excellent book. Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. In one section he describes Israel’s destruction of those hundreds of Arab villages as designed to prevent expelled Palestinians from returning to their homes, which they were doing in the thousands as soon as the fighting ended. Cook brings the story up to date, and offers a wealth of depressing detail to those willing to read the documented history without ideological blinders.