50 Years - 50 Martyrs

They were 50 who died in the Kufur Qasem massacre as a product of the nine waves of killing. 48 of them were from the town of Kufur Qasem, including a 9 months fetus, one was from Kufur Barra and the other from Taibeh. They were all caught up in the sudden curfew announced by the Israeli police, while they were working outside their towns. They all got the massage to hurry up to their homes. Some where followed by their children and wifes to their working places to warn them about the curfew. However, and on their way, they were met with some border police who opened fire at the terrified Palestinians. There were men, woman and children amongst them. It was the Tuesday, 29th Oct 1956.
A number of witnesses emerged from the incident. Some of them were amongst the injured and others were closely related to those who were killed. According to some of the witnesses on one of the waves, the Israeli border police asked them to stand in a line opposite to a wall. Some of the workers stated very clearly and more that once that they had permits and that they were just going home. They were hushed and ordered to stand with the others. The commander shouted to his men...

"Harvest Them!"

Paintings by Abdel Tammam - About the artist

Remembering a Christian Militant and Martyr

Talking recently to a close friend of Daniel, I realised it has been a bit over six months since he was killed. Later that week, I found an announcement to his memorial service in a two-weeks old newspaper.


Taken from AlQuds Newspaper, this was an announcement for Daniel's sixth month memorial that took place on the 15th of December 2006 at the Nativity Church (Christ's birth place), Bethlehem.

Abu Hamameh was killed by Israeli special forces on Easter, 23 April 2006. He was with his family celebrating Easter before he joined some of his mates for a wonder in one of his friends cars. A couple of hours later, the special forces attached the car and shot dead Daniel and Ahmed Musleh, then arrested the third, who apparently was "wanted" by the IOF. The killing of Daniel Abu Hamameh was broadcasted on the local channels in Bethlehem. The horrible images did for sure send some shivers down some people's spines and for sure past on the message from the IOF for the people of Bethlehem to some messing around. The last means, Stop Resisting the Occupation. However, the spokesperson of the IOF pronounced an apology and "sorrow" for the killing of "the Christian". Was that to create a further breach the unity of the Moslem and Christian brotherly hood of the 'Little Town of Bethlehem', or was it not? Abu Hamameh was a militant. He was a Christian Palestinian, too. He always believed in fighting the occupation. He is dead now, leaving behind a traumatised neighbourhood, family and friends, who also carry him in their hearts wherever they go. Actually, that friend I spoke to a couple of days ago is still dealing with the bits left of the shock he received following the killing of Daniel. Yet, he's doing a lot better, much better than most Palestinians that I know and who went through similar grievs.

Daniel Abu Hamama, Funeral at the Church of Nativity, Bethlehem, 24 April 2006

A Palestinian Injured Badly by Settlers in Bethlehem While In an Attempt to Pick Olives

Shouting was heard in one corner of the field, prompting the whole group, including the soldiers, to hurry over to the area where a loud argument was in full swing between an aggressive settler and an indignant farmer. The situation was quickly mollified, thanks to a mixture of the sudden presence of several dozen cameras wielded by internationals, and the soldiers forming a barrier to prevent the settler from becoming too violent. It later emerged that during the shouting, a young Palestinian man who was part of the group, had been attacked by two female settlers. The young man had been hit by a large rock and was cut very badly over the eye.

To read more, visit this article by JAI

Baby Monkey Born in the Only Zoo in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

From Ma'an;

In Qalqiliya in the northwest of the occupied West Bank, there is an unexpected sight: a zoo, complete with a baby monkey born on Saturday.

This is no ordinary zoo as this is a zoo under occupation. In 2002, the Israeli army invaded the city and many of the animals died from tear gas. The resourceful owners decided to stuff their animals and many are now displayed.

The Qalqiliya zoo is the only zoo in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Some animals, however, survived. A female monkey in the zoo gives birth every year but, maybe as a result of the stress inflicted during the military siege, she ate her newborn every year soon after delivery. This year, the baby monkey was taken away from its mother shortly after birth for its own survival. The vets at the zoo are now caring for the baby monkey and feeding the monkey artificial milk.

The vet, Sami Abu Khader, reported that the newborn monkey was given the name Rambo and he is in good health. Rambo is receiving special medical care inside the zoo. He added that the phenomenon of a mother eating her newborn is a rare phenomenon amongst apes.

Another Bethlehemite Kidnapped by IOF

This very morning, Nu'man Salahaat (36), a Palestinian citizen of Abu Njeim in Southern Bethlehem, was kidnapped by the Israeli Occupation Forces. Palestinian police stated that Israeli army vehicals raided the town in the morning. Soldiers surrounded Salahaat's neibourhood, then burst into his house and ransacked it before leading him to an unknown location.

- Based on WAFA - Palestine News Agency

Mozilla Firefox 2 - Midnight Release

I just read on the news that FireFox 2 will be released on the 25th at 00:00 GMT.

A third version/candidate for the new Firefox - RC 3 - is available for download from Mozilla.org

According to the developers at the Mozilla.org, RC 3 includes;

* A new theme that updates Firefox’s familiar interface
* Built in Phishing Protection
* Enhanced search engine management and search suggestions for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
* Improvements to tabbed browsing, including the ability to re-open recently closed tabs
* Firefox will resume from where you left off after a system crash or browser restart
* Better support for previewing and subscribing to Web feeds
* Inline spell checking in Web forms
* The ability to create bookmarks with “Live Titles” for Web sites that offer microsummaries
* New Add-ons manager that simplifies management of extensions and themes.
* Support for JavaScript 1.7
* Extended search plugin format
* Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
* Support for client-side session and persistent storage
* Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
* New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System

For more information about Firefox 2 and its features, visit Release Notes on Firefox 2.0
or visit the Developers Blog for more information about RC 3, and more.

Thank You DesertPeace

Apologies to visitors to this blog, who use Mozilla Firefox to surf the web, and therefore have been encountering some problems while viewing the posts. Thanks to our beloved DesertPeace, the problem has been identified and dealt with.
If you are still facing the same complications with this blog, I would appreciate it if you leave me a comment.

Salaam

CBS 2: A Meeting Out of the Twilight Zone

I found this clip on the YouTube today. The meeting is from the 21st of September, however.



If you cannot view the clip, click here.

The event is also documented on Neturei Karta International (Gardians of the City) - Jews United Against Zionism

Six Palestinians from Bethlehem were Kidnapped By IOF Saturday Morning

From IMEMC

"In Obadyeah village, East of Bethlehem, in the central West Bank, 10 army vehicles invaded the village. Troops stormed residents' houses, searched and ransacked them and took six prisoners to unknown locations.

Local sources identified the six as; Ali Shanaitah, 32, his brother Khalaf, 18, Salah Shanaitah, 17, Maher Shanaitah, 20, Naji Shanaitah, 19, and his brother Anouwar, 18."

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Why 'kidnapped', but not 'arrested'?

Arrests are supposed to be done by army or police within the country's borders. When a person is arrested, he/she are given some explanation about the reason for which they are under arrest.
Non of those two apply to the Israeli Occupation Forces as for they snatch Palestinians from the Palestinian Territories while defying the kidnapped their rights according to international laws.
In addition, the kidnaping happened during the Jewish Sabbath. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Jews are supposed to "rest" on the day.

This is an open invitation for you to join the debate.

Salaam

What an Odd Coincidence?

My plan for this post was nothing like it appears now. I intended to write about Ben-Gurion and how he is remembered differently by Jews and Arabs. However, and while I was reviewing certain pages, a realisation struck me causing shivers down my spine.
What is also weird is that I wrote about a coincidence in my last post. Maybe, I should rename my blog into “Coincidences Buster”, not that I believe in coincidences. I believe more in that things happen for a reason and they usually lead to certain actions and reactions, which might lead to what people define today as being a coincidence.
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On this day, four separate, yet related incidents occurred in the recent history of man, actually, the history of Israel. Taking them in chronological order;

- David Ben-Gurion - originally David Grün - was born in Poland in 1886. He was a leading Zionist, a co-founder of the Zionist State of Israel, a Mapai (Labour Party) leader, the first Defence Minister of Israel, the first Prime Minister of Israel, and the ideological father of Israel‘s nuclear weapons’ programme. He moved to Palestine in 1906, but was forced out in 1915 by the Ottomans. However, he came back to Palestine - with a family this time - after the WWI after he joined a Jewish Battalion of the British Army in 1918.
He eventually died in Israel in December 1973.



Some of Ben-Gurion’s Quotes:

"The present map of Palestine was drawn by the British mandate. The Jewish people have another map which our youth and adults should strive to fulfil -- From the Nile to the Euphrates."

“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.”

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

"The Achilles heel of the Arab coalition is the Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in this country is artificial and can be easily overthrown. A Christian state ought to be set up there, with its southern frontier on the river Litani. We would sign a treaty of alliance with the state. Thus, when we have broken the strength of the Arab legion and bombed Amman, we could wipe out Trans-Jordan; after that Syria could fall. And if Egypt still dared to make war on us, we would bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. We should thus end the war and would have paid to Egypt, Assyria and Chaldea on behalf of our ancestors."


- The largest Jewish Ghetto, Warsaw, was built in Poland in 1940.



DO YOU SPOT ANY SIMILARITIES?





- Ten politicians and officials, who where convicted during the Nuremberg Trials for their involvement in the making of the Holocaust, were executed, in 1946.
Those men were; Hans Frank - German, Alfred Jodl - German, Julius Streicher - German, Ernst Kaltenbrunner - Austrian, Fritz Sauckel - German, Wilhelm Keitel - German, Joachim von Ribbentrop - German, Wilhelm Frick - German, Arthur Seyss-Inquart - Austrian, and Alfred Rosenberg - Estonia.

- John Paul II - originally Karol Józef Wojtyla - was the first Polish cardinal to be appointed Pope, in 1978. He seemed to be in favour of Israel in his statements and leading actions of the Catholic Church. On one hand, His statements lacked condemnations of the atrocities made by the State of Israel against the Palestinians. While, on the other hand, Pope John Paul II condemned anti-Semitism - quoting him; “Once again, through myself, the Church, in the words of the well-known declaration Nostra Aetate, "deplores the hatred, persecutions and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone." I repeat, "By anyone.".



Sometimes, history goes in circles, trying to bite its own tail. Some other times, it passes the baton from one runner to the next.

Back on October, Friday, the 13th

I lit up a candle, looked up to the sky to see the half moon over the Shepherds’ Field. There was also Venus twinkling over Mount Herod. Tonight, I remember the Knights Templar.

Today is actually the first Friday Oct 13th of the 21st century. The same combination will occur again in the years 2017, 2023 and 2028. It has been 699 years since the Knights Templar were accused of heresy, pursued, tortured, butchered and put on trials. This lasted until the last known Grand Master Jacques de Molay was burnt at the stake on the 19th March 1314.

Philip IV the fair (le Bel) of France (1268 - 1314) and Clement V (1264 - 1314) were immediately responsible for October, Friday the 13th.
Philip IV was king of France at that time. He had loads of enemies in the Catholic Church. When he placed high taxes on the clergy, mounting to half of their annual income, he scored himself even more enmity from the Roman Catholic Church and caused the issuing of the Papal Bulls “Clericis Laicos” and “Unam Sanctam” by the Pope Boniface VIII. The Bulls forbade transactions of any property of the church to the crown and put the salvation of sins and supreme spiritual rule in the hands of a united church, headed by the pope, and therefore, gave powers to the church over the monarchy. However, in 1305, Bertrand de Goth became Pope Clement V. This pope seemed to have worked in the favour of the king, as he disregarded the two offensive-to-the-king Bulls by the previous pope.

Around the time of the appointment of the new pope, there was a plan of uniting all orders under one to be called the Knights of Jerusalem. The Grand Master of the order of Knights Templar was involved in the creation of the plan, but he disapproved of the product. The order of the Knights of Jerusalem in the final product was to be headed by the king of France who is to be called the Supreme Ruler Rex Bellator (or war king). In addition, the Supreme Ruler was always to be the king of France at any point. Philip IV proposed the plan for the order of the Knights of Jerusalem in Rome. However, the order never became to life.

The 200-old order of the Knights Templar had influential and financial powers over the church and kingdom. All what king Philip IV needed to totally and exclusively rule the kingdom were a collaborator pope and the Knights of Templar's wealth and influence.

When Philip IV was done with oppressing the Jews and the Flemish, he turned to the Knights Templar. Pope Clement V issued secret orders for the arrest and killing of the members of the order, to be active on the Friday, 13th of October 1307. Indeed, the Knights were arrested by Philip’s men on that day. King Philip IV only cared about the gains from oppressing and pursuing the Jews, Flemish, priests, and the Templar.

When the Grand Master was burnt on stake in 1314, he, from behind the flames, invited both the king and the pope to join him in death within the year. The Pope died on the 20th April and the King on the 29th of November, of the same year. This might enhance the myth that told a connection of the order to magic.
Indeed, the Templar had different believes to the Catholic Church. Yet, that does not make their believes evil.

It is worth mentioning here that some stories state that a number of Knights Templar escaped the capture and sailed to Scotland where they fought with Robert the Bruce in the battle to gain independence from England. The stories say that those Knights carried with them the most valuable of treasures - the Holy Grail.

I personally think that the pope Clement V had some bad sense of humour. I am convinced that he chose the date for the arrest of the Templar deliberately. This might explain;
- Friday comes from Frigg or Freya, the female goddess in some pagan believes and mythologies, or Venus for the Roman pagans. On the Friday, some pagans worshiped the goddess Venus, the goddess of love and light. The Templar had a great respect for Venus, who symbolises the female, the feminine side of man, the chalice, and the universal balance of energy.
- Number 13 was always associated with witches and witch-craft. A coven of witches is always of thirteen - some say it is of 12 witches joined by a Frigg, which is turned in Christianity into the devil to denounce witches and paganism. The number also corresponded to the number of lunar (menstrual) cycles in a year.

The strange thing about tonight was the moon. It was the witches’ moon! HALF FULL, HALF EMPTY, symbolising balance. What a coincidence, don’t you think?