Good evening. Welcome to Salam Shalom, report on Palestine-Israel. I'm Mark Hage. This
show is a production of Remoders for Adjust Peace in Palestine-Israel. We begin tonight
with some good news. The government of South Africa is issuing an order stating that any
products grown or manufactured in illegal Jewish colonies in the occupied Palestinian
territories must be labeled as such. They can no longer say made in Israel. Imagine that,
truth in advertising, and not in Palestine. In 1948, 85% of the Palestinians living in the
areas that became the state of Israel were made refugees. They totaled approximately 750,000.
Hundreds of Palestinian villages were systematically cleansed of their residents and destroyed to
prevent their return. Israel celebrates this conquest and ethnic cleansing as its war of
independence. Palestinians, though, call it the Nakba, the catastrophe. After the war's end in
1949, the most common crime in Palestinian urban areas that had been cleansed was looting by Jewish
troops and civilians, both the official and the private kind. Israeli forces and officials
targeted and stole large quantities of sugar, flour, barley, rice, and wheat that had been
earmarked by the British government for the Arab population. This booty was taken to Jewish
settlements. Palestinian community centers, religious sites, and secular establishments
were also vandalized and plundered. Mosques and churches were profaned, and Jewish thieves had
their way in convents and schools. In the city of Yaffa, once one of the cultural and economic
hubs of Arab Palestine, Jewish looters stole anything—furniture, clothing, toys, cutlery—that
might be useful to the new Jewish immigrants that were flooding into the country. Palestinians
who were present during the looting or who tried to stop it were often arrested or beaten. One
Palestinian businessman complained to Israel's minister of minorities about the looting in Yaffa,
saying, quote, there's not one house or shop which was not broken into, the goods were taken from
the port and stores, food commodities were taken from the inhabitants. As it turns out,
the machines in his own factory were also taken and the business looted. According to Israeli
historian Ilan Papay, quote, the scope of both the official confiscation and private looting all
over urban Palestine was so widespread that local commanders were unable to control it, end quote.
The new Israeli government also oversaw the expropriation of Palestinian bank accounts. These
assets were seized by Jewish authorities from financial institutions after May of 1948. Additionally,
3.5 million dunams of Arab land in rural Palestine was confiscated by Israel. The first governor of
Israel's national bank, David Horowitz, estimated the combined value of property formally in the
possession of Palestinians at 100 million pounds. The looting sprees by Israeli security forces
and civilians also included the targeting and theft of tens of thousands of Palestinian books
and manuscripts. In 2008, an Israeli Jewish doctoral student discovered how massive this so-called
collection effort by Israeli forces in 1948 had been when he was doing research at Israel's
National Library. The documentary we're about to show you, The Great Book Robbery, explores the
appropriation of Palestinian books and manuscripts in 1948 and its meaning and implications today.
The film was produced and directed by Benny Bruder and comes to us courtesy of Al Jazeera.
Yes.
Of course. I have maybe a part of the looting. Yeah. I'm actually, I was one with the looters.
After 1946, when the King David Hotel was blown up by Jewish terrorists, our area was targeted.
Us, Katamon, Talbi, all the Baqaa, all these areas in the West became increasingly threatened.
The thing I really picked up, and it affected me, was that my parents became more and more troubled
and more and more frightened. And as we came into early 1948, that feeling of danger in the air,
of fear intensified.
The first book I found was a very short book written in 1948 by one of the writers who wrote
it.
And there, he found a letter in the government that talks about the total disaster.
It is such a reminder of the fact that the university is a man and a woman who goes in the hope that the army
and other books from the orphanage houses in Jerusalem.
We left our house, we left everything.
Most of the furniture was stolen.
Most of the books, private books of our, I'm talking about my, were stolen.
But this is not nothing compared with the treasures of literature which was stolen from the house of my uncle,
his hafiz, which was unique. It was known for its wealth.
In the rare copies of manuscripts of the Quran or the Hadith, what happens with his books?
What happens with his private library? Where is it? Who took it?
When I started working, I started working with the books that were stolen from the library,
what was known as the private books of private books.
I loved the work in international books.
I would go to the Arabic language of all the new books.
I would play with them, play with them, play with them, play with them.
The collection of the books that were stolen from the library was stolen in front of the house,
where they would bring the books and work on them.
The books in Arabic, the books of books, the books of Arabic literature,
the books of literature, the books of literature on the library,
on the books of books that were stolen and stolen in the history of Arabic.
The books were important to me.
From the moment a house was taken, there were two kinds of looting, if you want.
There was the partisan looting, the individual looting,
where people from different units took whatever they wanted, either to their homes,
and maybe if you were a university professor, you took books to the library,
and a few hours later would appear the collective looters, the official looters.
70,000 to 75,000 of the partisans were quite rich in terms of what they had.
Money-wise, assets-wise, nothing is left.
Nothing is left.
I mean, the Israelis really took everyone.
They may not have expelled everyone, but they definitely made sure that they take every penny
that the Palestinians have every piece of furniture.
Until the war began, things began to go round and round around the library.
Those who lived in the Forbidden Schools in scrape Jerusalem were dies down to home,
and dancing,paced bandmates playing with music, and sortied books…
which was written in the hand of Shalom Hoshonam,
the same man who had been appointed to the list of books.
Here it is written, it is written that the heroes were the first to arrive at this event,
and it is said, until the end of time, there was a spontaneous movement,
which was between the heroes and the people of the national book,
and it continues and says that in a few weeks,
the events on the books of the Nettoshim or the Azubim,
there were many such events, until we, the national book,
did not expect to arrive at the time, to the books, and to the end of the books,
and at the end of the day, it is said, and who knows how many books have been published
in the course of a series of unlawful, unlawful decisions.
It was 29th of October.
A military officer came and he said he is the military governor in Isdun.
When they came, they asked people to go out from their houses
and gather in the market space there,
then they put women, children aside.
All these people were driven out of the village.
To Almachdal, Ashkelon, or to Gaza?
Ashkelon, first of all, and they put the young people in another place.
We were taken to Seraphand.
When I was a prisoner of war, I was with a group of prisoners called group 37.
My number was 6.
6704, yes.
That was my number.
We used to go to houses and get many things from the Arab houses.
We went to Ramli, we went to my village, Isdoud,
and we went to many places, some places which I don't know exactly.
Ramli was also taken to the house where we lived.
Do you remember this?
No, I don't remember.
What do you see from the 12th?
King, yes.
Ramli was also taken to the island of Gidret.
It was a very beautiful island.
It was very beautiful, it was something special.
Ramli was a beautiful island, it was in the 8th, the 7th,
and it was in Odellain, all the houses in that village were in America.
It was huge, I saw hundreds of Arab people,
women, children, children, not children,
not even children, not even children, not even children, not even children.
They were human beings, we were going to return.
And there were some people who only came to the island, they didn't know Hebrew.
They said, they're not from us, they're not from here.
We were taken to Ramli for many days, not for one day only,
for many days, working from home to home,
taking things from the houses and piling them while cars come,
and we put this furniture in the car, you know.
They were not taking care of how we put them.
Because of this, I thought they are wanting to get rid of them,
not to take them to another place.
Some of these were the books.
What they told you about the books?
Take the books, put them alone in the pickup.
We went from house to house, we found this house, some tens, some other 100, some other three, two.
We took the books and put them in the pile of the books.
Then they pick up, come and take them, we did nowhere, of course, at that time.
Between April 1948, until February 1949,
the national books were at least 30,000 books,
from the houses in the Western areas of the Arab and Jerusalem.
These books were published in the hands of Saffrani, the National Library,
in connection with the events of the University and the army.
They were written in the AP version, the Band and Property,
that is, in books that were written in the National Library.
Do you have anything important?
I don't know, but all the books are here.
6000.
In 1787, there were seven books.
Until today, 60 years later, that this historical edition was seen,
on the basis of the historical collection of these books, there is still the written AP.
And on the right side of you, it's not AP? No, it's not AP, it's just a piece of paper.
These are AP books.
A question that seems interesting, what is the meaning of the fact that these books
have been preserved, what is the meaning of the fact that they received the AP signature?
By the time these AP signatures were created,
these books were given to the beginning to be preserved, to be preserved as a period of time.
You can go to the University and study, you can do it in the National Library,
until they are preserved.
A piece of poetry, a painting, a rare copy of the Qur'an written by hand,
decorated by gold, how could you bring this back?
How?
In the late 19th century, the books were still preserved in the site of the Potorops,
but they are still preserved in the site of the Potorops, to be returned.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Hello, it's Ali-Assalamu ala alaykum.
Yes.
Do you know the story of the Palestinian prisoners who were killed in 1948 by the prisoners of the UN?
It's a story about you.
I don't know.
I don't know if it started.
I just wanted to ask you something.
I don't know how to explain it.
I don't know how to explain it. I just wanted to ask you if there is a plan for your project?
There is no link.
I just wanted to ask you something about your project.
I just wanted to ask you to go through all the time to get to know the project.
So I just wanted to ask you if you know the project and you can share it with us.
Okay.
Music plays.
Music plays.
Music plays.
Music plays.
Music plays.
Music plays.
Music plays.
Music plays.
Music plays.
Music plays.
I lived in this house until the age of eight when we had to leave.
It would have been nice really for us to go into the house and show it on the inside.
And the current Israeli owner, should I call him an owner?
He didn't give his permission.
It's a tree.
Same tree.
My God.
Same lemon tree.
My father was a book lover.
He was a book collector.
And he was very concerned with language.
He was a linguist.
My memory of him in that house in childhood was of a man sitting at his desk,
two bookcases behind him at an angle.
He had started to write an English-Arabic dictionary.
Now, this might sound ordinary somehow today, but it was anything but ordinary at the time.
You know, very few people were sitting writing dictionaries.
Very few Arabs were doing it.
Now, anybody who's tried to do anything like that will understand how much work went into that,
how many books he had to have in order to compare meanings and so on.
And he had got some way into that dictionary.
God knows what it must have meant to him when, in 48, we left it.
He left his books. He left the unfinished dictionary.
As we left, of course, everything.
MUSIC
57 pages.
MUSIC
65 pages.
18 pages.
in Israel, here we have a group of Jews, I would say.
What are the Jews?
What are their parents and mothers?
Their parents and mothers are not only local people,
but also the cultural heritage that is able to help the community.
Israel is the most beautiful country in the world.
Israel is the most beautiful country in the world.
Peace be upon you. How are you?
Peace be upon you. How are you?
How are you, brother?
How are you doing?
We are not praying, we are talking about good things.
Israel is the most beautiful country in the world.
Because it is built in the heart of the Arab world.
Because you are an Arab of Israel.
This is your history.
You are a member of this small group.
But I am not an Arab of Israel.
I am an Arab of the Arabs.
Until today, 2011,
every discussion about Palestinian or Arabism is changing.
Why do you think it is more than a public debate?
What makes you an Arab of Israel?
What do you need for your blood?
And Cairo and Beirut?
Haifa was in Tabarzel,
where there was a connection between blood and Cairo.
Haifa was a member of the world.
She was not a politician.
Now, Beirut, the Israeli president,
today it is Nasrallah, it is Hezbollah.
It is Lebanon.
Maybe it is Bashar al-Assad.
But the position I want to live in,
is much more than politics.
I do not care about Nasrallah and Bashar,
about my political position.
I care about Beirut,
about living in Laila,
about the Kulnoa,
about the Maratek throne.
It is very important to me.
You were able to live in Hezbollah.
You were able to live in Hezbollah.
You were able to live in Beirut.
You were able to live in Hezbollah.
So, this connection,
it was not only a connection
between me,
Kalkali, Tabuti,
all together.
This is how Jews lived in Tel Aviv.
He could not live without the Tabuti center,
the Jewish center, the Hebrew center.
You are a human being.
You are really laughing at him.
How can he live in this center?
And because Tel Aviv
is the center of my society,
it never existed before.
It was also because of the language.
And also because of the culture,
and also because of the eyes.
I need to look for a different center.
I need a different Tabuti center.
And this is what I have been through.
I was able to live without the Tabuti center,
without the joy,
without the hope,
without the dreams,
without the ability
to build a new self
throughout the language
and my culture.
And this is what I will continue.
Until the day.
Hello.
Canadian.
What?
This...
This was the house
of
Khalil Sakakini.
He is really mainly known as an intellectual.
He wrote a wonderful diary
going back really early,
shortly after the Balthaw Declaration.
So you have a very clear picture
of life
as it was
in the 1920s
in Palestine.
Sakakini, in itself,
is a modern art,
not as it was in the Arab-Palestinian history.
He was also in Beirut,
Cairo and Damascus,
and saw how children were raised.
And returned
to Palestine
during the Dostory period,
during the Dostory period.
There were no trains,
no trains.
There was no interaction
and social relations
between the students.
It was an antithesis for everything
that was known about education.
And today,
there are also very few places
where this model exists.
In Mahoto,
he wanted to create a person
who was very smart, smart
and smart.
And if you're talking about 1904
when you look at the book,
it's a concept art,
a modern art.
At the end of the 19th century
and the beginning of the 20th century,
until 1933,
it was the only period
in which there were no trains,
trains, trains,
trains, trains,
modern art
from here to a new age.
Let's take a look at it.
He was a great artist.
He was one of the first
artists
who dedicated his life
to Palestinian culture.
I tried to get
his art
and put it in the art of art.
And also in the art of Christian art.
He told me that
all the art of civilization
did not last
for anything else.
In 1948?
Yes.
His studio was built
in Gamre.
And the important things
are being built today
in the foreign region
of Israel.
I think it was mentioned to me
by a professor
at the Hebrew University.
When I visited the Hebrew University
main campus,
he told me,
of course, I know you.
I know your family.
And I have some of your books.
I said, what?
He said, yes.
Some of your books
which were looted
from your house and came
to the Hebrew University.
We have them here.
And the books are there.
Yes, and
I saw the book
with the
dedication
to Lusat,
the literary man
of literature,
Nasser Nasser Ibi.
And there are hundreds
of such books, similar books
in the
Hebrew library.
What's the name of this particular
book? The name?
The Makramiyat.
The Makramiyat.
And the name of the writer?
Ahmed Qasem
Judah.
And it was one of the books
that I really missed because
I liked the altar.
I liked the Makramiyat.
I liked it.
I love books.
I love books.
I love books.
That's it.
That's how it is.
You have to be a novel
with large volumes
to get into the house
with people and write the book.
I didn't write the book,
the books that were stolen
after the mountains were not in the room.
Because books, they did a good job
and I love them.
And we got rid of it.
And they continued with the books.
The books are still alive today.
The books were published today, and the books are still alive today, and the children are still alive in the world.
In fact, we knew that it would come back in a day or two, and that was the idea behind us.
And we didn't get rid of it.
The students and the Arabs did not get rid of it.
If they wanted to get rid of it, they wouldn't be able to talk about it.
Do you have any complaints that you found?
No, I don't have any complaints about it.
The appropriation and confiscation of the spiritual assets of the Palestinians in my mind is
not different from the appropriation of the land, the territory, the natural resources.
Everything you want, apart from one thing, the people themselves.
I don't care whether the books were well preserved, whether they were nicely categorized, whether
they even contributed to the wealth of information about the history of the land.
It was done in order to defeat the Palestinian narrative.
It was part of the Orientalist production of knowledge that demonized the Arabs, demonized
the Islam, totally through the Palestinians, to total oblivion.
It tried to erase the Palestinians out of history.
I'm not impressed by any care if there was a care.
I think it's a crime.
We cannot get our mouth shut.
I don't know what you're saying.
They were two kinds of wars in Palestine in 1948.
There was a real war, what I call the real war.
The regular military units of the Arab states entered on the borders of the future Jewish state
and conducted a modern warfare in the Middle East.
Sometimes very heroically from the Jewish point of view because there really the balance was sometimes few against many.
And the myth of a small David against a big Goliath maybe even is correct.
But inside about 70 to 75% of Palestine there was not one Arab regular military man.
This was a civilian space invaded by the Jewish army and the Jewish army did just one thing.
It systematically dispossessed the people from their land, businesses, books, bank accounts, everything they had.
Hello.
Hello.
I sent an email this morning to discuss with the Petropos and discuss the progress of the Petropos.
What's your name?
My name is Talia, Talia Salamon.
Do you have a job?
No.
What's your name?
My name is Talia, Talia Salamon.
My name is Talia Salamon.
My name is Talia Salamon.
My name is Talia Salamon.
My name is Talia.
My name is Talia.
My name is Talia.
My name is Talia.
My name is Talia Salamon.
I saw all the Palestinian tragedy through these books.
People loved their books, their books, their books, their books.
My name is Mohamed Nimer.
My name is Mohamed Nimer.
My name is Mohamed Nimer.
My name is Mohamed Nimer.
My name is Mohamed Nimer.
My name is Mohamed Nimer.
My name is Mohamed Nimer.
My name is Mohamed Nimer.
My name is Mohamed Nimer.
My name is Mohamed Nimer.
I think this is important, what can still be done with books.
What can still be done with many cultural assets that belong to the Palestinians and were not destroyed.
I think first of all we need something which the Israeli government will never allow.
I know it at first hand because I suggested it to the mayor of Haifa who threw me out of his office,
is to have a museum of the Nakba in Israel.
I think in such a museum we should have the books, we should have the assets.
I think only then you can start using again the books also for other purposes.
Symbolism, especially in this part of the world, will be a very important part of reconciliation.
Symbolism will include something which will not be practical, let's say bringing the books back to the Palestinians,
bringing the books from the Palestinians back to the library, it doesn't matter.
You will need the rituals that show confidence and reconciliation because it will show the Palestinians
that the Jewish people who live in this part of the world understand what they did.
The vast majority of them have no idea what they did and don't think that what they did when they know was wrong.
Why not we simple people come together and say this is our country,
not our with the meaning of national, meaning people living on this ground.
Let's make our future, I'm sure, if we will work together, we'll do something different.
We'll close our program tonight with two short testimonials by former Israeli soldiers about their tours of duty in the occupied Palestinian territories.
They were videotaped by the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence.
These moments are very important to me because one side is a vast majority of these heroes,
on the other side I have a lot of stories about them still alive and well,
maybe because in the Middle East it feels like something is not normal.
For three years I was a different person.
There was one time when I came to Ben-Adam-Kafoot-Bagal. It was in Ma'atsar, the first big Ma'atsar that I took part in,
in a meeting that we spent a lot of time in.
Fat Chinadzhar was there, he was with his friends, with his friends, and friends, and he was with us,
and at the end of the day we had to take him there. Now he was there, and he came by himself to visit Fat Chinadzhar,
and one of my friends came to visit him and asked him if he had already visited Fat Chinadzhar.
He said no. I came to visit him when my friends were standing on the side, and they were watching.
Let's say if I felt angry, or if I felt stupid at the same time, I would look a little different.
The first time maybe it will help you, and the 100th time you see it, you already know it's part of the story.
I think the point of view for me was to be honest, and to tell my story in the first time, not from a place of life.
The first time I took part in it, because it was only a matter of the culture, of the country, of the army, of the individual,
it was the first time I took part in it, as a member of the community.
The first time I took part in it was when I said, wow, I did crazy things on my own, and I wasn't stupid,
and I was always angry and sadistic, simply like that.
The reality is that in the end it leads to our community.
Someone who thinks we can bring back the anger in Bakum, and in that, that is it.
We have stopped being soldiers, and we have stopped being citizens, and you don't know what kind of reality it is.
That is to say, we are talking about it from Jenin and from Hebron, back to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. That's how it works.
My name is Yehuda Shaul, I'm from Jerusalem, I was born in 1929.
I grew up in 2001, about 50 years old.
I was born in 2004.
I was a soldier and a soldier in the army.
In fact, since then I have been a soldier for a week and a half.
It wasn't clear to me that I was a soldier in the army, it wasn't a question of choice.
I had a few doubts about what was going on in the army, what was the army, what were they doing in the army.
But I didn't really understand what was going on there, it was very abstract.
It was a big idea for us to reach the border, for them to reach the border,
but I didn't really understand what was going on in the army, until I got to the army.
In fact, when I got to Hebron, suddenly everything hit me in the face,
that is, the most important thing was that I found myself standing in the army,
you see Palestinians fighting in the streets, and our attacks didn't hit them.
There's no way, the moment you get there, it's already happened.
There's no way back and there's no...
On the first day they told me to go see the army, I went to the army.
I mean, they were laughing at me, I could have done it on my own, but it worked.
When the attack came in the middle of the war, I was shocked.
And that's all my question.
If all the questions, if all the doubts, and if it was the person who was behind me
who always asks the question, but, but, but, but,
at the end of the day, when the attack came, and the massacre came,
it wasn't good.
I did everything I could to survive.
At the end of the day, when you were in the army,
it didn't hurt you very much.
There was a massacre, and you did it.
And with the massacre at the moment,
that children couldn't go to the hospital,
then children couldn't go to the hospital.
If the massacre at the moment was,
when this wave had to go back,
because it had to go back,
then this family wouldn't surrender,
wouldn't surrender to the great,
the great family that died,
they would put the body here,
and go.
And if there wasn't a massacre, how would you die?
And you go back home,
and you can sacrifice yourself,
the Israeli family, in the face of the crisis,
the government will return you.
Is that what you see here?
Of course, I saw it.
Now I'm talking about these stories,
and it's like, it's some kind of story in our lives,
but it's the most natural thing there is,
every day.
You wake up in the morning,
and it's like a sandwich,
you go back home, you go to bed,
you go to the toilet,
you look at the mirror,
that's your life,
that's your life as a living being.
I think the moment you realize
that if we don't talk,
if we don't talk,
is the one who didn't open the door,
one of us doesn't know what's going on there.
I sent a message to my community.
I think that as someone who was there,
I have a certain responsibility
to tell what I did, and what I saw,
and what is happening in the West.
Somewhere, we are also accepted
by the Jewish community.
Somewhere, I don't think that
the Israeli community will be free
until it doesn't have to send freedom
from the other community.
I don't think that the Jewish people will be free
until it doesn't have to send freedom from the other community.
The Jewish Community
The Jewish Community
The Jewish Community
The Jewish Community
