Shati Tea and Falafel Shop, Gaza

This was an e-mail to be on the New York Times OpEd page in response to an OPED of Benny Morris. Three days passed and the New York Times did not publish my letter; so here it is:


I take the opportunity of the pot hole made by an amateur rocket that hit the ground in Beersheba New Year’s Day, or New Year’s Eve, to remind readers of the New York Times that Beersheba and Ashkelon on Israel’s southern border were formerly inhabited by the ancestors of the current population of the Gaza Strip. Scholars, like Benny Morris, who writes the only Op-Ed on Gaza so far in the NYT, could cite page paragraph and line of the historical record of the Palestinian Exodus from Ashkelon, which is still vivid in the memories of the sons and daughters of the original refugees living in Gaza today.
A little knowledge of the facts would explain why sending a baking powder powered rocket to thud down in Ashkelon, Sederot, or Beersheba is no more than a symbol of attempting to right the record of history. In fact, it is precisely the expression of what actually happened when Israel was created that is most upsetting to the State of Israel and the reason for its war on Gaza. If Israel would agree to give Palestinian Muslims and Christians equal rights in Israel, rather than refusing to give back the land to those who were forced to leave in 1948, there would be no rockets from Gaza, or Helium balloons floating over from Khan Yunis with pictures of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
It is always Israel’s dis-information campaign that escalates something—in this case the Qassam rockets on Ashkelon—to make it difficult for the Palestinians, or for anyone trying to support decency and justice—to explain that they were expelled from their land and 500 villages bulldozed in the post 1948 era. Who knows--perhaps the linkage that “experts” are making between Hamas and Iran, is to cover up the fact that the fledgeling state of Israel destroyed the archaeological remains of the Shi’a mosque where the Martyr Hussein’s head was venerated in Al-Majdal? Majdal, the industrial area of Ashkelon and the home town of Mary Magdalen, of “DaVinci Code” fame is where many of the residents of Shaj’iyya, and Jabalia are from. Shaj’iyya, which means “the brave”—perhaps because its kids would always protest the killing of a schoolmate by marching 7kms to burn tires in front of the Israeli Farms near Tel Farah, (where Flinders Petrie started the science of Archaeology, by the way) is on the slope descending from the Greek Orthodox church area of Gaza city. Shaj’iyya was bombed today, as was Jabalia in the first day of what will now be a week or so of targeted assassinations of people according to their postal addresses. Some of the new names of people we learn from these targeted assassinations, Nizar Riyan, for example, will help remind the world of the history, the civilization, and the fighting people that Israel is bent on covering up.