Sunday, December 07, 2008

To all readers...

Gaza is still under seige....

23 comments:

A.D.K. said...

EID MUBARAK

علوش said...

كل سنة وأنت سالم يا رب، وعقبال تتحقق كل أحلامك، ونشوفك بكل خير انشاء الله.

Maysaloon said...

ADK,
Thank you, Eid Mubarak to you too.

علوش,
لك شكراً و كل سنة و أنت سالم حبيبي. ان شاء لله العام الجديد بتشوف في كل خير و بركة

sasa said...

Eid Mubarak to you too. Now is a good time for the Arab news channels to forget Gaza.

MJ said...

eid mubarak to you too, all the best inshallah for the coming year :)..

Lirun said...

eid mubarak

now is not a good time to forget the starving people of gaza or the towns surrounding it who are being pelted with qassams..

may your prayers bring peace to our region..

Maysaloon said...

Lirun, eid mubarak, but my prayers are for an end to Zionism, which will truly bring peace to the region...you can join me if your intentions are really as benign as you claim.

Maysaloon said...

Sasa, Jabz,
Adha mubarak to you both, inshallah next year you will be on Arafat...the mountain that is... :)

Lirun said...

hey maysaloon..

zionism is not a single unified concept.. i dont know how you define zionism.. i cant join you in empty prayers.. i can join you in meaningful ones..

i wish for peace in my region.. i dont see that as inconsistent with my wishes for a jewish homeland.. but i do see the endeavour to erase me as a guaranteed way to eliminate any option for peace..

Lirun said...

ps loved that use of the term benign - very hegemony theory.. reminds me of when i studied international relations for my masters degree

qunfuz said...

Lirun - your Jewish homeland could have only come into existence in a land with a massive non-Jewish majority by large-scale ethnic cleansing. That's what Zionism is. It could only expand to the West Bank and Gaza by apartheid and brutal occupation. That's Zionism too. But I know the Jews are not exactly the same as European colonists, because they were so badly treated in Europe. Therefore, as soon as a majority of Israeli Jews are able to recognise the crimes they have committed, and choose to live in a binational state with equal rights for all ethnic and religious groups, I will be the first to defend them and to encourage peaceful coexistence.

Lirun said...

and how will you defend us qunfuz? like the brits defended the jews of hebron in 1929? or like they defended my grandma in yaffo in 1947? didnt anyone speaking up during our regional boycott initiated in 1921 by all arab nations either..

im not even going to raise the wonderful defense of the jews a decade before that..

i think we're done being "defended" and also quite sick of being attacked.. i think when that is understood the international community may have a better idea of how to contribute to the resolution of our regional issues..

no one is really keen to go back to the days when were neatly packed onto salty lots and left to cure in our quaint m'lah - as long as we paid special taxes - praying that it wont be too soon before the next time a local tribe goes haywire and butchers a bunch of us..

its so easy to simplify the movie we're in.. and its not that simple..

untangling the past wont deliver us peace.. restructuring the future might..

im happy to say that even though gaza has been pelting us with rockets these past few days.. the crossing points were open today..

thank god!

i dont like the gazans suffering one bit..

qunfuz said...

Lirun - you are responding to an imaginary opponent when you talk about special taxes. I wrote about "a binational state with equal rights for all ethnic and religious groups".

No time (I should be working) to go into the specific events you mention, except to say that it is natural for a population to respond with violence when there is a violent attempt to uproot them and steal their land.

How will I defend you? I won't defend you. I will defend Israeli Jews who have renounced Zionism. How? Only by speaking and writing, I'm afraid. I don't own a gun.

I am very interested in structuring the future. I mentioned my opinion on your blog. (It seems we are communicating on three blogs now!)

La Luz said...

Maysaloon - Eid Mubarak to you too. May all your dreams become reality. Your dreams are very beautiful, you know...
Maybe we meet some day, in free Palestine
Salam

Lirun said...

no one was "stealing" land in the twenties..

you are parading a bunch of slogans..

the jews of hebron that were massacred were not "zionist settlers" - they were the ancient jewish community that had always lived in hebron.. little did that help them..

my grandmother's family in yaffo belonged also to a jewish family that had always dwelled in israel.. little did that stop the yaffan from burning the house of her sister in the middle of the night forcing her to flee further into telaviv with only her night gown..

your differentiation between your "settlers" and "jews" is all nice and wonderful in your fantasy land.. but qunfuz you dont represent anyone but yourself..

and so as polite and eloquent as you may seem - your opinion is not really so interesting..

when you actively become part of a movement and/or live here let me know.. i may invest more time trying to see how you feel about the real middle east.. until that time - should you continue to bask in your own cinemantic version - count me out..

qunfuz said...

Lirun - you are a bit more coherent on your own blog. I don't quite understand what you mean by most of your comments here. But about the 20s, by then it had become clear to the Palestinians that the Jewish immigrants planned to establish a Jewish state on the wreckage of their country. I retrospectively condemn, however, attacks against native Palestinian Jews.

And what's this about 'when you live here'? I've spent half of my life in the Middle East, and most of my family are still there. Let's get to the point here: my sister is married to a Palestinian who has never been able to visit his home in Palestine. His village was bulldozed in 48. Could you let him live there, please?

Lirun said...

yeah life sux.. i cant visit my yemenite family homes in kfar haShiloah - now "occupied" by the inhabitants of silwan.. can you ask those who took my grandfather's family homes and kicked out the yemenite jews in the 1930s to give them back?

you dont hear me making that a condition of peace.. and another thing - my israeli family was never any more palestinian than any other jew who moved here.. we have always referred to ourselves as the jews living in the land of israel.. and never as palestinians.. i find the term "arab jews" equally as absurd..

go read up a bit on native title..

G.Gar said...

Eid Mouybarak maysaloom,

Iraq is stil under the Iranian-American occupation

G.Gar said...

Eid Mouybarak maysaloom,

Iraq is stil under the Iranian-American occupation

qunfuz said...

What is 'native title'? And why are you more polite on your own blog than here? Do you have a multiple personality disorder?

Jews were not 'kicked out' of the Arab world. They left as a result of Zionist pressure combined with a stupid Arab nationalism which began identifying them as the enemy when some of their leaders did deals with the British, and when they took the brunt of Zionism. I admit that I don't have a good knowledge about the Yemeni Jews (I will read up). I have better knowledge of the Iraqi Jews. Good book by Abbas Shiblak called "The Lure of Zion" on the Mossad bombs in the Jewish area of Baghdad. Good memoir of Jewish Baghdad by Violet Shamash. Good article by Adam Shatz in a recent London Review of Books.

I was not aware that Arab Jews want to return to their countries of origin. If they do, I fully support them. It was a tragedy that Iraq lost its 100,000 Jews, as great a tragedy as the ethnic cleansing that is happpening there now.

Of course the Arab Jews were Arabs, as much as the Christian and Muslim Arabs are Arabs. Their first language was Arabic. Their culture was Arab. It happens that one of my Syrian uncles was married to a Jew. She died last year, Allah yerhama. She was proud of her Jewish origins, and proud to be an Arab. What else would she be, Chinese? German?

Montag said...

If Palestine cannot be free after 60 years, no one can be free.

Societies unable to do what is right for 60 years and more are societies that cannot do anything moral and ethical, and are now suffering for their ongoing immorality.

Lirun said...

no qunfuz - my family is not arab..

Lirun said...

haha

i just now understood your misunderstanding..

kfar haShiloah is in israel.. my yemenite family (my grandfather's side) came here 8 generations ago and lived outside the walls of jerusalem..

our family along with others was forcefully removed by arabs..

we've moved on.. i would love to know where exactly they lived but we have moved on..

and another thing.. the story of jews being removed from arab countries is not only a tale told by jews.. i have spoken to people in the middle east who have shared with me stories of what their parents did to jews..

so maybe in libya they werent carted out.. but read this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_of_Libya#After_World_War_II

a libyan guy who'se parents were around at the time told me of the way the jews were beaten and humiliated and how their lives were randomly shattered and destroyed..

thanks for not kicking them out..

:) nice of you