We spent the day in the port city of Jaffa and in Tel Aviv with a representative of "Zochorot" an organization that works to inform and educate Israeli's about the plight of the Palestinians and what "really" happened when it comes to the process of the establishment of the State of Israel.

A view of the port city of Jaffa
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Esther tells us that in the Israeli school system as well as the army there is a conscious and deliberate effort to conceal the fact that the Palestinians were run off their land, that massacres took place and that millions of people and their decedents were turned into "refugees" and that they remain so today.

Esther, a representative of "Zochorot"
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"Nakba" is Arabic for "Catastrophe." Ester told us about how the first Zionists came to Tel Aviv and began working to establish a Jewish homeland in the late 1880's and early 1900's. Eventually that effort turned into a campaign of murder and terrorism designed to rid the land of Palestinians so that the dream of an ethnically cleansed Israel would one day be a reality.

A couple of views of old Jaffa, including an Ottoman Seal above a doorway
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A couple of views of old Jaffa, including the Hanging Tree of Jaffa
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I should add here that after Tuesday's Israeli attack against Gaza and Hamas on the eve of so-called "Peace" talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Abu Mazin, I have little belief that Israeli leadership actually wants a peaceful solution to this ongoing conflict.

It seems like they intend to run every Palestinian out of the area and expropriate all the land that they can. Oh, and if a few Arabs remain, that will likely be OK as long as they clearly except their status as second class citizens. But as I sit and watch the Israeli tanks on Al Jazeera with a few Palestinian men I can't help but think that the situation is likely to get lot worse before it gets any better.

It's important to remember that our government is fully supporting the Israelis in this ongoing war of aggression and believe me everyone in the Arab world is fully aware of that!

Of course on the other side of that, is the work of people like Ester and organizations like "Zochorot" working to achieve some kind of a just solution through education and creative action.

She says that Israelis are thought of as "A people without land that came to a land without people" and the struggle is to show that indeed, there were people here and that much of what has been done and continues to be done to them is a crime.

The skyline of Tel Aviv
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Jaffa, which is for all intents and purposes now a suburb of Tel Aviv, has become a tourist town on the beach and it feel and looks like one.

The Arab history of the city has been neglected by the Israeli government and much of the town was allowed to deteriorate, interestingly while the "White City" of Tel Aviv has become a United Nations world heritage site.

Symbol of Irgun, the "National Military Organization in the Land of Israel"
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Signs at the Museum of the Irgun
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The history of the military efforts made by the Zionists to create the State of Israel are too much for me to go into here and they are much better documented in other places anyway.

But as Ester tells us, the battle for Jaffa was largely waged as a terror campaign.

That terror campaign was waged by a Zionist paramilitary group known as the "Irgun." (Hebrew shorthand for Ha'Irgun Ha'Tsvai Ha'Leumi B'Eretz Yisrael, "National Military Organization in the Land of Israel" --Wikipedia) The "Irgun." bombed Arab houses in Jaffa block by block in an effort designed (in conjunction with other terrorist activities) to force the Palestinians to flee, leaving the land for the Zionists.

We hear much about the deplorable nature of "terrorism" today and the Israelis base much of what they do on the so-called terrorist acts of others.

In Jaffa, however, there is a museum erected at a beautiful site overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

The subject of the museum is terrorism.

It's purpose to honor the Irgun.

In Jaffa
for KVMR-FM
I'm Mike Thornton