My contribution to the webinar conference convened by Insaniyyat (Humanities) attended by academics from several European universities and others under the title: Censored: Palestine in European Academia. In the meeting, European scholars described the censorship, harassment and even threats of possible expulsion if they write  truthfully on Palestine or expose the Israeli actions that violate International law and its war crimes, as described by the UN, ICJ and ICC.
 

Thank you for inviting me.

Zionism is a peculiar kind of colonialism.

Colonial projects have a singular capital and a country to return to. Coloniall countries have their own language, geography, history and culture. Zionism had none of these. They had to invent a virtual parallel to the Western projects, none of it is genuine. To do so, they have to erase Palestine’s land and people from history, geography and memory.

To start with, the Zionist project has no home country. European Jews, or Ashkenazis, were constantly moving in Europe, since they converted to Judaism in Al Khazar Kingdom in the eighth century. Many immigrated to America in the early decades of the twentieth century.  You find them now in AIPAC.

In Europe, they lived in ghettoes, either by force or by choice. During the Emancipation, when Napoleon tried to destroy ghetto walls, they refused to identify themselves as nationals of the country of their domicile.

Thus, it became a survival principle of Zionism to invent their own history, geography and culture. This needed a great deal of imagination and power, hanging by a thin thread of credibility.

The first Zionist conference at Basle in 1897 was attended by wealthy European Jews, who wanted to create a colony for themselves, in parallel with European colonies which they financed. Their project needed simple people to serve the cause. Hence, reincarnation of the Biblical Israel by the atheist Zionists. It was a sure way to collect recruits among poor European Jews.

Geographical Israel of the Bible was created virtually on the land of Palestine.

With that, the Zionist colonial project has a people, the Ashkenazis, and a land in Palestine they called Israel.

What remained is to conquer this land. But this land is the home of Palestinians; it is charted on all maps for centuries. How could they conquer it?
Zionists solved the problem by claiming it was empty. Hence the slogan: Palestine is a land without people and Jews are a people without land. A perfect match.

The geography of the colony is now settled. Next history. The story is told that the citizens of this country decided to abandon it for more than 2000 years, then they decided to return to repossess their patrimony. Big story. A long shot of disbelief.

How about the language. All European Jews spoke the languages of their domicile. They searched for a language. Roman churches pray in Latin, although Europeans do not speak it.  Old Hebrew, the language of Jewish prayers, was adopted as the new language of the new country. Since it lacked modern technology, these were devised and inserted.

How about the recruits of the new country? They are Russians, Polish and Ukrainian Jews. They posed as the original Palestinians.

For credibility, they had to adopt Palestinian food like Maqlouba. They had to wear Palestinian clothes. They found the rich Palestinian embroidery to select from.

On the ground in Palestine, they attacked the Palestinians by a formidable army, depopulated 530 cities and villages and made its people refugees today. That is not enough. Constant wars are waged against them, to the level of Genocide, to the level of erasing their existence all together.

On the world scene, this huge deception, of invented people and country, needed a big, powerful machine to prop it up.

Two-pronged plan was devised in two complementary ways:

attack and defence.

The attack is to unleash an army of movies, courses, curricula, institutes, newspaper articles, books and sharp-tongued spokesmen, to sell this narrative.

The defence is to prohibit, punish and banish all those who tell the truth.
 
The way to do this is to create an army of watchers, to monitor the deniers, hound them and silence them. 
 
Zionism waged 12 kinds of wars against the Palestinians.

The first war is military, which you are familiar with.
 
As you know, the army of settlers, which attacked Palestine in 1948, consisted of 120,000 soldiers in 9 brigades, carried out 38 military operations. They attacked and depopulated 530 Palestinian towns and villages, made its people refugees till today. They committed 356 war crimes. This war did not stop for 76 years.
 
The Genocide in Gaza is enacted before our eyes daily. The blood of 120,000 Palestinians, killed and injured, will never be forgotten.
 
For people naïve to think otherwise, the intent of Genocide is old. In the 19^th century, Zionists spread the myth that Palestine is a land without people.

Today their plan is to make it empty, by GENOCIDE.
 
The second war is silencing the voice of the victims. In 1948, about six dozen major massacres took place. None was reported by the five Western news agencies at the time, except perhaps the massacre of Deir Yassin.
 
UN reported the most horrendous massacre at Ed Dawayma in October 1948, where 600 people were savagely killed. In a formal letter to the UN, Abba Eban asserted that Dawayima does not exist.
 
Tzipi Hotovely, the past Israel’s UK ambassador, called Al Nakba an “Arab lie”. Mention of al Nakba is outlawed in Israel. This truth is still denied in many US universities at the pain of cutting off its funds.

The third war is geographical. Our Atlas of Palestine 1917- 1966 lists 50,000 names, carved by the people about their life and places from olden times. An Israeli Naming Committee deleted all these Palestinian names and replaced them with 6,800 created names. The settlers themselves shed their European names and adopted Hebrew names.
 
The fourth war is historical. The historical record of Palestine in the last 2,000 years is obliterated and made blank in Israeli textbooks.  It is replaced by the history of settler Jews who arrived in Palestine after WWI. Two thousand years of Palestine history, for which historical edifices are still abound, are totally deleted from record.
 
The fifth war is archaeological. The destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages after 1948 was carried out by bulldozers of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and Public Works.  Strangely, an Israeli archaeological team supervised the demolition and ordered the destruction of any historical buildings, Byzantine, Arab and Islamic monuments, and any other unless they find in them something proving Jewish history.
 
How did the Palestinian landscape look like after the destruction of hundreds of villages? A pile of stones where a house once stood. A lone standing wall of a mosque. A cracked bell tower of a church.  A marble piece of a grave epitaph.
 
This evil scene must be hidden. JNF covered the crime by planting trees over them, called parks. These parks are named after leaders of Western countries who supported Zionism.
  
The sixth war is political. Next to military war, this is the most effective. The US and many Western countries vote against UN resolutions condemning Israel’s crimes and violation of international law. They thwart any legal action against Israel. You have already seen USA voting against ceasefire SEVERAL TIMES, allowing Genocide to continue.

The seventh war is religious. God is recruited to win this war. Zionists claim that they have the ‘right’ to return, after a 2,000year absence, to the God-given land, to recover their property and to expel the “Natives”. The problem was that Ben Gurion was atheist but it was good for the cause.The Evangelists, Trump’s main supporters --and the former Restorationists of the 19^th century-- are recruited to support Zionism, with great effect in the United States.

The eighth war is defamation. Palestinian fighters and supporters are called “terrorists”. Edward Said was called ‘a professor of terror’. Anyone who explains the facts about Palestine, even among respected scholars or UN officials, is called an anti-Semite, The Zionist- drafted IHRA document is pushed for adoption by UK universities. Your meeting today  will discuss the defamation, harassment and even expulsion of those academics who dare to tell the truth.
 
The ninth war is educational. Israel set up many well-funded outfits to monitor any courses of education which affirm the identity of school children. Some these are: UN Watch, Campus Watch, CAMERA, Honest Reporting, Impact SE and MEMRI.  Israel wants to wipe out Palestine from the curriculum. I have a long battle with UNRWA education dpt. Under threat of cutting funds, UNRWA is forced to monitor schoolbooks and fire any teacher who tell children who they are, where they come from, why they are refugees and why they have the right to return home.

The tenth war is lawfare. Domestic law in some Western countries criminalizes support for the grassroots campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and hence any attempt to criticize Israeli war crimes and Apartheid. There is a witch hunt, in USA and Germany particularly, against any mention of Israeli crimes against Palestinians. 
 
The eleventh war is economic. Jewish financial power in the United States, supporting AIPAC, is a potent force. This power influences US government, the Congress and the media in ways never known in any country in history. 

The twelfth war is Genocide. It is the most sinister of all. It aims at erasing the whole presence of the Palestinian people. The world watches the daily slaughter of women and children. The world watches this on TV and in the halls of ICJ. Every line of the Genocide Convention is violated. This is the blackist spot in the history of Zionism and all Western leaders who support it.
 
Will this evil continue? This depends on you. Yes on you.
 
You have the power in multiple ways. Your conscience. Your voice. Your weapon, that little devise you call your mobile or laptop.
 
You can reach the world. Your word of truth can reach the four corners of the world. Reach out to every forum.
 
In al Nakba which I witnessed, we had none of the that. If we did, I assure you only five percent of us, or less, became refugees.
 
The power of truth is unlimited. That is why Zionism is the enemy of truth.
 
Remember:  who is afraid of truth? Only the guilty, the criminal.
 
Keep marching on. Do not give up, ever, until this becomes true:
 
Palestine is Free from the River to the Sea.
 
Thank you.