Avi Shlaim: ‘I am proud of my Arab heritage and proud of my Jewish heritage’
CrossFireArabia- October 7, 2024
Editor’s Note: On the first anniversary of the bloody 7 October, 2023, I reprint the story I wrote on Professor Avi Shlaim that was scribbled early this year and published in countercurrents. Avi Shlaim is an eminent Israeli-British historian and international relations expert at Oxford University in the UK with many books on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is part of what is called the “New Historians” who sought to provide a critical analysis of the prevailing Israeli view claiming Palestinians left their land of their own free will and were not forced out in 1948 as Israel was created.
In the light of Israel’s latest genocide in Gaza, he provides what he calls a “personal commentary” of his views as a Jewish Arab and on the current Netanyahu government.
“I am an Arab Jew. I was born in Baghdad and I grew up in Israel. My Iraqi birth certificate gives my name as Ibrahim. So, I am the real Ibrahim Al Baghdadi. The other chap is a fake. He stole my Identity,” he says in a mirthful manner.
Baghdad
“I am proud of my Arab heritage and I am equally proud of my Jewish heritage. The three pillars of Judaism are truth, justice and peace,” the historian, who left Baghdad at the age of five in 1950, emphasizes.
“The Netanyahu government is the opposite of these core Jewish values,” adding “it is the most aggressive, expansionist, overtly racist and Jewish supremacist government in Israel’s history,” Shlaim maintains.
“The essence of Judaism is non-violence.” The present government is the anthesis of this non-violence,” he laments.
“As a Jew and an Israeli, I therefore feel that I have a moral duty to denounce Zionist-settler colonialism and American imperialism and to stand by the Palestinians in the anti-colonial struggle, in the just struggle to live in peace and dignity in their own land,” he concludes.
‘This Key is The Only Thing Left of Our Destroyed House’
- CrossFireArabia
- October 7, 2024
Editor’s Note: On the first anniversary of the bloody 7 October, 2023, I reprint the story I wrote on Mariam Abu Daqqa that was scribbled early this year and published in countercurrents. I then wrote Journalist Abu Duqqa gave us an insight of how she felt about her demolished house in Gaza which the Israelis long destroyed. Together with her family, she lived in a six-story building of six apartments hosting scores of family members, relatives and neighbors. All this, is now rubble and wreckage. Abu Daqqa continues to report on the mayhem in Gaza despite the fact more than 120 of her colleagues were targeted and killed since 7 October, the biggest crime in the history of mankind. Today the number of journalists killed have shot up to 175.
“This small key which I hold in my hand, used to be a key to my apartment,” she tells the camera in a daze.
“This is what has remained from our house, a key to a home that no longer exists,” she laments in an absent-minded way.
“Our house had been targeted long time and was finally struck and demolished into the ground,” she says this almost tracing the steps of when it collapsed into the ground and how they escaped.
“Our house was part of a three-story building of six apartments with our storerooms in the basement where we kept the rest of our belongings, odd stand, table, chair, bric-a-bracs and other things which we thought that we might need one day.
“Too late now. No more, everything had been targeted, destroyed, perished into thin air. What remained of it is this key – the house of memories, of childhood, the home of the family, our forgotten laughter and happy times,” Mariam talks in reverie.
“From the day I knew our home was targeted I kept thinking, and on a daily basis, just thoughts that came to my mind about how are we going to live after the war, ‘where will we live, is it here, somewhere else, where, which part of town.’
Idol thoughts but very real, everything of ours is destroyed, blocks of apartments long gone and what remained turned into debris and wreckage. I don’t think that we will even find a house to rent. Thinking about this is difficult and painful, a creepy character in my head bellows in the back of my mind.
Who is going to rebuild our houses and all the other houses. I try and think about working hard again to make money to rebuild our home but what about the others all, the great majority of the people of Gaza have left their homes hastily and with just this key….”
The scale of destruction in Gaza is phenomenal. Figures can’t tell the truth. One has to see the images to fathom what the Israelis did right across the strip to be able to comprehend the extent of their vengeance – mass murder, mass destruction of property, a genocide for years to come.
Israel Has No Ability to Open Up Two Fronts – Political Scientist
- CrossFireArabia
- September 26, 2024
Political Science Professor specializing in Palestinian affairs Dr. Arej Jabr, said that the proposals of the new deal presented by the United States comes within the framework of attempts to stop the escalation in the region and exit from the state of war within a comprehensive deal.
Jabr added to Jordan24 that the Zionist entity does not have the ability to open up two fronts at once and continue the war in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank, especially in light of the exhaustion of the army due to the performance of the resistance in the Gaza Strip.
She explained that the proposal to stop fighting for 3 to 4 weeks and enter into negotiations leading to a comprehensive deal under the auspices of the United States will be part of the comprehensive settlement in the region.
Jabr indicated that the resistance in Gaza has returned to organize its ranks again and has taken control of large parts of the Strip, which will finally force the occupation to accept the Hamas conditions.
Jabr concluded by saying that the coming days will be decisive, noting that the occupation is betting on weakening Hezbollah after assassinating its first-tier leaders.
Palestine Bids Farewell to Elias Khoury
- CrossFireArabia
- September 16, 2024
Palestine will miss him greatly. Elias Khoury, a leading Lebanese novelist and writers and a staunch advocate for the Palestinian cause, gave up and died, Sunday.
Khoury, a leading voice of Arab literature, had been ill for months and admitted and discharged from hospital several times over the past year until his death, the Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily for which he worked stated.
One of his best-known novels, Gate of the Sun, tells the story of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes in 1948 during the war that coincided with heartache creation of Israel.
“The Catastrophe began in 1948 and it is still going on,” he once wrote referring to Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
On 16 July, he published an article, titled A Year of Pain, recounting his time bedridden in hospital and enduring “a life filled with pain, which stops only to herald in more pain”. He ended his piece by alluding to the Israeli war in the besieged Gaza Strip, which by had rthen aged on for more than nine months.
“Gaza and Palestine have been brutally bombarded for almost a year now, but they stand steadfast and unshakable,” Khoury wrote. “A model from which I have learned to love life every day.”
The Institute for Palestine Studies honored the late Lebanese novelist for his contributions in support of the Palestinian people.
“Elias Khoury was a staunch advocate for Palestine, contributing to the struggle nationally and intellectually,” the institute said in a statement posted on X.
“Even while hospitalised due to illness, Khoury continued to work on the publication of the institute’s Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya journal, “especially during the genocide in the Gaza Strip”, the institute pointed out in a statement
He “paid exceptional attention to the plight of prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons, devoting pages of the journal to this crucial cause”, the statement added according to the Quds News Network.
