Video of how the ME's only "democracy" treats Israeli Arabs; View it while you can

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-P4LI1ceGA

On Independence Day, Israeli Arabs Reminded of Their Place

by Jonathan Cook

But in a sign of how far Israel still is from coming to terms with the circumstances of its birth, this year's march was forcibly broken up by the Israeli police. They clubbed unarmed demonstrators with batons and fired tear gas and stun grenades into crowds of families that included young children.

Although most of the refugees from the 1948 war – numbering in their millions – ended up in camps in neighboring Arab states, a few remained inside Israel. Today one in four Palestinian citizens of Israel is either a refugee or descended from one. Not only have they been denied the right ever to return to their homes, like the other refugees, but many live tantalizingly close to their former communities.

The destroyed Palestinian villages have either been reinvented as exclusive Jewish communities or buried under the foliage of national forestation programs overseen by the Jewish National Fund and paid for with charitable donations from American and European Jews....

There have been many Nakba processions held over the past week but the march across fields close by the city of Nazareth was the only one whose destination was a former Palestinian village now occupied by Jews.

The village of Saffuriya was bombed from the air for two hours in July 1948, in one of the first uses of air power by the new Jewish state. Most of Saffuriya's 5,000 inhabitants fled northwards towards Lebanon, where they have spent six decades waiting for justice. But a small number went south towards Nazareth, where they sought sanctuary and eventually became Israeli citizens.

When we left, things were entirely peaceful. Nonetheless, as we drove away, I saw members of a special paramilitary police unit known as the Yassam appearing on their motorbikes. The Yassam are effectively a hit squad, known for striking out first and asking questions later. Trouble invariably follows in their wake.

This year's Nakba procession to Saffuriya was a small act of defiance by Palestinian citizens in returning to the village, even if only symbolically and for a few hours. The threat this posed to Israeli Jews' enduring sense of their own exclusive victimhood was revealed in the unprovoked violence unleashed against the defenceless marchers, many of them children.

Like many others, I was there with a child – my five-month-old daughter. Fortunately, for her and my sake, we left after she grew tired from being in the heat for so long, moments before the trouble started.

The events that unfolded that afternoon have been captured on mostly home-made videos that can be viewed on the internet. The context for understanding these images is provided below in accounts from witnesses to the police attack:

Several thousand Palestinians, waving flags and chanting Palestinian songs, marched towards a forest planted on Saffuriya's lands. Old people, some of whom remembered fleeing their villages in 1948, were joined by young families and several dozen sympathetic Israeli Jews. As the marchers headed towards Saffuriya's spring, sealed off by the authorities with a metal fence a few years ago to stop the villagers collecting water, they were greeted with a small counter-demonstration by right-wing Israeli Jews.

When the event ended in late afternoon, the marchers headed back to the main road and their cars. In the police version, Palestinian youths blocked the road and threw stones at passing cars, forcing the police to use force to restore order.

Dozens of marchers were injured, including women and children, and two Arab Knesset members, Mohammed Barakeh and Wassel Taha, were bloodied by police batons. Mounted police charged into the crowds, while stun grenades and tear gas were liberally fired into fields being crossed by families. Eight youths were arrested.

Shehadeh, who was close to the police when the trouble began, and many other marchers say they saw the Jewish rightwingers throwing stones at them from behind the police. A handful of Palestinian youngsters responded in kind. Others add that the police were provoked by a young woman waving a Palestinian flag.

"None of the police were interested in stopping the Jews throwing stones. And even if a few Palestinian youths were reacting, you chase after them and arrest them, you don't send police on mounted horseback charging into a crowd of families and fire tear gas and stun grenades at them. It was totally indiscriminate and reckless."

The 17-year-old boyfriend of Therese Zbeidat's daughter, Awda, was among those arrested. "It was his first time at any kind of nationalist event," she said. "He was with his mother, and when we started running up the hill away from the police on horseback, she stumbled and fell.

"He went to help her and the next thing a group of about 10 police were firing tear gas cannisters directly at him. Then they grabbed him by the keffiyah [scarf] around his neck and pulled him away. All he was doing was helping his mother!"

Later, Therese and her daughters thought they had made it to safety only to find themselves in the midst of another charge from a different direction, this time by police on foot. Awda was knocked to the ground and kicked in her leg, while Dina was threatened by a policeman who told her: "I will break your head."

"I've been on several demonstrations before when the police have turned nasty," said Therese, "but this was unlike anything I've seen. Those young children, some barely toddlers, amidst all that chaos crying for their parents – what a way to mark Independence Day!"

Full article at Anti-War.com