"Israel and Palestine Peace". Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
This website is under construction as a response to the website Palestine Remembered. It does not seek to refute the claims made in that website; merely it seeks to place them in the context of Jewish history in Eretz Yisrael - the land of Israel - over several millennia.
The history of Jews living in this contested land is not going away - it is historic fact in the same way that the history of Palestinians living in this contested land is fact. Jews and Arabs, Jews and Palestinians, can only live together in peace when each accepts the narrative of the other, including some core facts that should be indisputable, that each group has lived here over periods of time which give each claims of residency. We can agree to disagree about the extent, or how we were/are displaced, but this much must be common ground for peace and coexistence to stand a chance.
We are aware that the terms Palestine and Palestinians are awkward to some people. Equally, to those who consider themselves Palestinians, there is no other term by which they wish to call themselves. But there are others who call themselves by different terms, including Israeli Arab, Palestinian Arab, and just Arab, among many. However, both in recognizing the reality that the majority of non-Jewish people in the region who consider Israel/Palestine their homeland/nation use the term Palestinian, and for the sake of simplicity, this website also uses that term , whilst reserving the right to argue the facts about the history of the use of those terms (for instance Jews also were called, and called themselves, Palestinians before 1948).
Our rival (friendly we hope), Palestine Remembered, is a website with detailed stated purposes which, in summary, are to provide a comprehensive source of information about the villages and cities that it is claimed were "ethnically cleansed, looted, and destroyed by the Israeli army," and to "preserve the memories and the experiences of the Palestinian people around the world, especially the 726,000 Palestinians refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their homes, farms, and businesses as a result of the 1948 war." Though we might disagree the extent to which "Palestine is occupied" or its people "ethnically cleansed," we accept at face value Palestine Remembered's basic purpose of memorializing the past and mourning the loss felt.
The history of Jews living in this contested land is not going away - it is historic fact in the same way that the history of Palestinians living in this contested land is fact. Jews and Arabs, Jews and Palestinians, can only live together in peace when each accepts the narrative of the other, including some core facts that should be indisputable, that each group has lived here over periods of time which give each claims of residency. We can agree to disagree about the extent, or how we were/are displaced, but this much must be common ground for peace and coexistence to stand a chance.
We are aware that the terms Palestine and Palestinians are awkward to some people. Equally, to those who consider themselves Palestinians, there is no other term by which they wish to call themselves. But there are others who call themselves by different terms, including Israeli Arab, Palestinian Arab, and just Arab, among many. However, both in recognizing the reality that the majority of non-Jewish people in the region who consider Israel/Palestine their homeland/nation use the term Palestinian, and for the sake of simplicity, this website also uses that term , whilst reserving the right to argue the facts about the history of the use of those terms (for instance Jews also were called, and called themselves, Palestinians before 1948).
Our rival (friendly we hope), Palestine Remembered, is a website with detailed stated purposes which, in summary, are to provide a comprehensive source of information about the villages and cities that it is claimed were "ethnically cleansed, looted, and destroyed by the Israeli army," and to "preserve the memories and the experiences of the Palestinian people around the world, especially the 726,000 Palestinians refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their homes, farms, and businesses as a result of the 1948 war." Though we might disagree the extent to which "Palestine is occupied" or its people "ethnically cleansed," we accept at face value Palestine Remembered's basic purpose of memorializing the past and mourning the loss felt.
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At the same time we ask that people remember a Jewish past in this land challenged (several times) through exile, ethnic cleansing, looting and destruction by armies too numerous to mention.
Thus when we list a town which Palestine Remembered claims was originally Palestinian as having been Jewish before that, we do not enter into some sort of competition over longevity of residence in the land. We merely aim to point out that both Jews and Palestinians have rights of longtime residence here. That is all. It is a first step to peace, mutual respect and coexistence. Click on the button below to start exploring Eretz Yisrael, or access the menu on the left. |
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