By John Spritzler

Turn the World Upside Down

Palestinians carried a symbolic key during a “nakba,’’ or catastrophe, rally yesterday in Gaza City. (Mohammed Salem/ Reuters)

AP reporter Rizek Abdel Jawad broke a taboo by providing truthful background in his report today on Palestinians in Gaza marching to commemorate the Nakba, which mean "catastrophe" in Arabic and refers to the Zionist removal of Palestinians from what is now Israel in 1948. Jawad may have sacrificed his career by letting the cat out of the bag: he broke an American mass media taboo by explaining why the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state is a catastrophe for Palestinians. This is what he wrote in an article titled Palestinians recall ’48 displacement:

"The plight of the refugees--who fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 Israeli-Arab war--is one of the most emotionally charged issues for Palestinians and Israel to resolve...Some 4.7 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants are scattered across the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, according to UN figures. About one-third still live in UN-supported refugee camps... "Palestinian negotiators have demanded at least partial repatriation. Israel has refused, saying an influx of refugees would dilute Israel's Jewish majority and threaten the existence of the state."

The Boston Globe ran this report below the fold on page A17, where relatively few people will read it. Nonetheless, it may be the first time that a Globe article informed its readers about what "Israel's right to exist" really means. Because Israel officially defines itself as a Jewish state, a state of "The Jewish People" and not a state of all its citizens, a state that, in order to be a "Jewish state," must use ethnic cleansing (i.e. removal) of non-Jewish Palestinians to ensure that Jews are at least 80% of the population allowed to live inside it, a state that considers non-Jewish citizens to be a "dilution" of its very essence, because of this the phrase "Israel's right to exist" really means the right of Zionists to enforce the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews from their homes and villages by refusing to allow them to return. For perhaps the first time a Globe reader who puts two and two together could figure out that denying Israel's right to exist (as Albert Einstein did) is not anti-Semitism but rather is what decent people who oppose ethnic cleansing must do.

I doubt we will see this cat being let out of the bag too often in the future. The Globe and the rest of America's mass media don't want the American public to understand why Palestinians are so angry at the Israeli government; they want us to think it is just that Arabs and Muslims are and always have been anti-Semitic. They don't want us to know that before the Zionist project to make most of Palestine an exclusively Jewish state Arab Muslims and Jews got along fine in Palestine.

America's wealthy ruling elite want us to believe the lie that Arabs and Muslims are hate-driven anti-Semitic fanatics who "hate Israeli and American freedom." Why? Because that lie is how our rulers get us to obey them.

"Do what we order you to do," our leaders say, "because we are protecting you from terrorists."



"Send your sons and daughters to fight and die in wars to overthrow foreign governments and install regimes we like because this is necessary to defeat the terrorists," they say. "Give up your jobs and pensions and affordable health care," they say, "and give up teachers for your children and public services like libraries and a social safety net so that we can transfer trillions of dollars to the bankers, because this is required to make America strong so we and our great ally--Israel--can win the war on terror."

America's ruling plutocracy needs a boogie man to control us, and with the Communist boogieman now vanished "anti-Semitic" Palestinians and their Arab/Muslim sympathizers must fill the bill. Do not, therefore, be surprised if honest reports like the career-ending one from Rizek Abdel Jawad remain scarce as hens’ teeth.

Turn the World Upside Down