This is a very powerful speech from a Jewish UK MP well worth a watch (just a short video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBprtOxuEtQ&feature=youtu.be
Just read quite a sad article on the subject... One with a somewhat hopeful message though...
.........................................
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27883685
A Palestinian Christian family that preaches non-violence from a farm in the West Bank is battling to hold on to land it has owned for 98 years. Now surrounded by Israeli settlements, the family is a living example of the idea of peaceful resistance.
On 19 May a Palestinian shepherd from the village of Nahalin was out at first light and saw the bulldozer at work in the field, guarded by Israeli soldiers. By the time Nassar arrived the whole orchard - the best part of a decade's work - was gone. His English is far from fluent, but there's no mistaking the pain in his voice: "Why you broke the trees?"
A spokesperson for the Israeli military authorities in the West Bank said the trees were planted illegally on state land.
Nassar's sister, Amal, has a different explanation. The government, together with the Israeli settlers who live around the farm, is "trying to push us to violence or push us to leave," she says. Amal insists that her family will not move from the land, nor will they abandon their commitment to peaceful resistance.
"Nobody can force us to hate," she says. "We refuse to be enemies."
That phrase, which is painted on a stone at the entrance to the farm, was first used by her father, Bishara Nassar. Long before the concept became widely known among Palestinians, he taught his children a theory of non-violence that was rooted in his own Christian beliefs.
"My father always said, 'We will never achieve peace in Palestine and Israel just by shaking hands - we need to work on people, to start with the grassroots'
For more than 20 years they have held workshops here, welcoming Israeli students, rabbis, and peace activists, as well as groups from across Europe and America. They run summer camps for local schools, teaching Palestinian children about non-violence and encouraging them to develop a love for the land by working and playing on the farm. This is especially important, says Amal Nassar, for a generation that has grown up in the refugee camps and urban sprawl behind Israel's separation barrier. She also trains Palestinian women in non-violence, while her mother - Bishara's widow, Milada - cooks traditional food for the day's guests.
At that time the West Bank had been under Israeli military rule for almost a decade, and Jewish settlers were just beginning to move into the area south of the farm. For the most part, though, the hills around Bishara's land were still open countryside, farmed by Palestinian families or used as grazing by shepherds. In the 40 years since, Israeli settlements have been built on every one .
There are five settlements in total, the nearest so close that the settlers' voices carry across the valley to the farm. The most recent, Netiv Ha'avot, is little more than a strip of houses encircled by coils of razor wire and festooned with Israeli flags. The largest, Beitar Illit, is a town of more than 40,000 people, a blaze of lights on the hillside at night. All of them are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
In 1991 their fears were confirmed. The military authorities declared that more than 90% of the farm now belonged to the State of Israel. Gush Etzion, one of the biggest settlement blocks in the West Bank, looked set to expand on to the Nassar farm.
The Nassars, though, refused to leave, or to see the land divided. And virtually alone among Palestinian farmers, they had the documents they needed to launch an appeal in the Israeli courts.
In 1924, realising that the Ottoman Empire was finished and worried by rising tensions between Arabs and Jews, Bishara Nassar's father had registered his property with Palestine's new imperial rulers. The British issued land deeds that specified the size and borders of the farm, and Bishara's father, who was a literate man, held on to the documents. Almost 70 years later, those papers would form the basis of a legal case that has been in front of the Israeli courts for 23 years. It remains unresolved.
When they were informed, after 10 years in the military courts, that their Palestinian lawyer was not eligible to contest the case in Israel's supreme court - because he carried West Bank identity papers - they found an Israeli firm willing to take it on. When they were told to provide a land survey, they hired (at a cost of $70,000) an Israeli surveyor, and sent him to consult maps and documents in the imperial archives of London and Istanbul. When they were asked to bring witnesses in support of their claim to have farmed the land for three generations, they hired a bus to take more than 30 Palestinian villagers to the military court near Ramallah. "We had to wait five hours outside the court under the sun," remembers Amal Nassar. "And then, after five hours, a soldier come out, they say, 'We don't want witnesses, go home.'
"Every time they see you are ready to meet their demands, they ask [for something] more and more difficult, [so] that you say 'I am fed up, I cannot.' Yes, this [is] always the process. We know it. It's a game to push us to leave."
The way Amal sees it, the Israeli military and the settlers, having failed to evict the family by legal means, are now trying to force them out. She remembers the settlers who uprooted 250 young olive trees in 2002, and who permanently closed the road to the farm with rubble. The demolition orders posted on the gate, threatening to destroy the Nassars' home and water wells. The soldiers who, in 2009, forced her 72-year-old mother out of bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night and made her wait in the cold while they searched the farm.
Amal Nassar's younger brother, Daoud, is not impressed by the moral code of the men who uprooted his orchard. But neither is he angry: "We are willing to build up a better future in a non-violent way… without hatred," he says. "Our response to this injustice will never be with violence, and we will never give up and leave."
Sign with words 'Fight violence with love'
Palestinians have a word that captures this refusal to be provoked or demoralized: sumud. Sometimes translated as 'steadfastness', sumud describes the stubborn, patient determination to stay on the land and to carry on in spite of all the difficulties of living under military occupation.
It is a quality embodied by Daher Nassar, who, even as he walks across a scarred and empty field, is imagining the orchard he'll harvest 10 years from now.
"I will plant more trees," he says. "Double trees."
.....................................................
This is what Israel does, these people are actually in some ways the lucky ones, they actually had the documents to prove they owned the land and the money to fight back.
The question has to be asked, would anybody accept this happening to their people?
Well done for highlighting that. Remember this isn't a few chancers nickin, this is an elected government !! How can these evil ones have the support of anyone ?
Comment deleted by Site Moderator
That 66 figure is slightly misleading as 64 of these are soliders and not civilians... The 1700 is vastly innocent civilians- literally hundreds of children
When you sign up to be a soldier are you not "fair game" in a conflict. Totally different to being a civilian. So, i deduce that two Israeli civilians have been killed. When you consider the number of Palestinian civilians killed the difference is staggering. No, thats too tame a word, it's obscene.
Agree RR,
Just like Hamas are fair game, so are ISREAL soliders- especially when they are occupying a land and committing one war crime after another relentlessly
American unconditional support for Israel is actually damn scary. They think Europeans who are far more willing to question Israel's policies are just rabid anti-semites. When you have high-profile politicians talking about never second-guessing Israel, that has to be very disturbing.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/american-media-israel-bias-netanyahu
There is no big politician in the US who has the cojones to ever publicly question Israel. It's pretty much political suicide. The Jewish lobby really DOES wield some incredible power.
I don't think it's anyone but Hamas more than pro-Israel these days
** I think it's anyone but Hamas more than pro-Israel these days
Comment deleted by Site Moderator
comment by Afridi14 (U2805)
posted 3 hours, 1 minute ago
That 66 figure is slightly misleading as 64 of these are soliders and not civilians... The 1700 is vastly innocent civilians- literally hundreds of children
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, we are ignoring the over 800 killed by Hamas and its buddy terrorists again on this thread today, in the markets, buses and disco's.......not to mention the rocket launches aimed at towns and cities along the border indiscriminately?
The intent when launching those rockets is to kill innocents, whether those rockets reach the target or not #hypocrites
comment by Sheriff John Brown - bring back David Dein (U7482)
posted 1 hour, 11 minutes ago
American unconditional support for Israel is actually damn scary. They think Europeans who are far more willing to question Israel's policies are just rabid anti-semites.When you have high-profile politicians talking about never second-guessing Israel, that has to be very disturbing.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/american-media-israel-bias-netanyahu
There is no big politician in the US who has the cojones to ever publicly question Israel. It's pretty much political suicide. The Jewish lobby really DOES wield some incredible power.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Obama was on live TV criticizing them on Friday in fact
comment by SAF_The_Legend-FreePalestine (U5768)
posted 9 hours, 38 minutes ago
Just read quite a sad article on the subject... One with a somewhat hopeful message though...
.........................................
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27883685
A Palestinian Christian family that preaches non-violence from a farm in the West Bank is battling to hold on to land it has owned for 98 years. Now surrounded by Israeli settlements, the family is a living example of the idea of peaceful resistance.
On 19 May a Palestinian shepherd from the village of Nahalin was out at first light and saw the bulldozer at work in the field, guarded by Israeli soldiers. By the time Nassar arrived the whole orchard - the best part of a decade's work - was gone. His English is far from fluent, but there's no mistaking the pain in his voice: "Why you broke the trees?"
A spokesperson for the Israeli military authorities in the West Bank said the trees were planted illegally on state land.
Nassar's sister, Amal, has a different explanation. The government, together with the Israeli settlers who live around the farm, is "trying to push us to violence or push us to leave," she says. Amal insists that her family will not move from the land, nor will they abandon their commitment to peaceful resistance.
"Nobody can force us to hate," she says. "We refuse to be enemies."
That phrase, which is painted on a stone at the entrance to the farm, was first used by her father, Bishara Nassar. Long before the concept became widely known among Palestinians, he taught his children a theory of non-violence that was rooted in his own Christian beliefs.
"My father always said, 'We will never achieve peace in Palestine and Israel just by shaking hands - we need to work on people, to start with the grassroots'
For more than 20 years they have held workshops here, welcoming Israeli students, rabbis, and peace activists, as well as groups from across Europe and America. They run summer camps for local schools, teaching Palestinian children about non-violence and encouraging them to develop a love for the land by working and playing on the farm. This is especially important, says Amal Nassar, for a generation that has grown up in the refugee camps and urban sprawl behind Israel's separation barrier. She also trains Palestinian women in non-violence, while her mother - Bishara's widow, Milada - cooks traditional food for the day's guests.
At that time the West Bank had been under Israeli military rule for almost a decade, and Jewish settlers were just beginning to move into the area south of the farm. For the most part, though, the hills around Bishara's land were still open countryside, farmed by Palestinian families or used as grazing by shepherds. In the 40 years since, Israeli settlements have been built on every one .
There are five settlements in total, the nearest so close that the settlers' voices carry across the valley to the farm. The most recent, Netiv Ha'avot, is little more than a strip of houses encircled by coils of razor wire and festooned with Israeli flags. The largest, Beitar Illit, is a town of more than 40,000 people, a blaze of lights on the hillside at night. All of them are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
In 1991 their fears were confirmed. The military authorities declared that more than 90% of the farm now belonged to the State of Israel. Gush Etzion, one of the biggest settlement blocks in the West Bank, looked set to expand on to the Nassar farm.
The Nassars, though, refused to leave, or to see the land divided. And virtually alone among Palestinian farmers, they had the documents they needed to launch an appeal in the Israeli courts.
In 1924, realising that the Ottoman Empire was finished and worried by rising tensions between Arabs and Jews, Bishara Nassar's father had registered his property with Palestine's new imperial rulers. The British issued land deeds that specified the size and borders of the farm, and Bishara's father, who was a literate man, held on to the documents. Almost 70 years later, those papers would form the basis of a legal case that has been in front of the Israeli courts for 23 years. It remains unresolved.
When they were informed, after 10 years in the military courts, that their Palestinian lawyer was not eligible to contest the case in Israel's supreme court - because he carried West Bank identity papers - they found an Israeli firm willing to take it on. When they were told to provide a land survey, they hired (at a cost of $70,000) an Israeli surveyor, and sent him to consult maps and documents in the imperial archives of London and Istanbul. When they were asked to bring witnesses in support of their claim to have farmed the land for three generations, they hired a bus to take more than 30 Palestinian villagers to the military court near Ramallah. "We had to wait five hours outside the court under the sun," remembers Amal Nassar. "And then, after five hours, a soldier come out, they say, 'We don't want witnesses, go home.'
"Every time they see you are ready to meet their demands, they ask [for something] more and more difficult, [so] that you say 'I am fed up, I cannot.' Yes, this [is] always the process. We know it. It's a game to push us to leave."
The way Amal sees it, the Israeli military and the settlers, having failed to evict the family by legal means, are now trying to force them out. She remembers the settlers who uprooted 250 young olive trees in 2002, and who permanently closed the road to the farm with rubble. The demolition orders posted on the gate, threatening to destroy the Nassars' home and water wells. The soldiers who, in 2009, forced her 72-year-old mother out of bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night and made her wait in the cold while they searched the farm.
Amal Nassar's younger brother, Daoud, is not impressed by the moral code of the men who uprooted his orchard. But neither is he angry: "We are willing to build up a better future in a non-violent way… without hatred," he says. "Our response to this injustice will never be with violence, and we will never give up and leave."
Sign with words 'Fight violence with love'
Palestinians have a word that captures this refusal to be provoked or demoralized: sumud. Sometimes translated as 'steadfastness', sumud describes the stubborn, patient determination to stay on the land and to carry on in spite of all the difficulties of living under military occupation.
It is a quality embodied by Daher Nassar, who, even as he walks across a scarred and empty field, is imagining the orchard he'll harvest 10 years from now.
"I will plant more trees," he says. "Double trees."
.....................................................
This is what Israel does, these people are actually in some ways the lucky ones, they actually had the documents to prove they owned the land and the money to fight back.
The question has to be asked, would anybody accept this happening to their people?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Haha the irony that from that you pick up hatred and retaliation whilst the piece is trying to get the point across that non violence is as effective as terrorism.
Obama was on live TV criticizing them on Friday in fact
-------------------------------------------
I've never heard anyting beyond having ""great concerns" about Israel's actions. Compare the reaction to the slaughter of almost 2000 people to the reaction to the "barbaric" capture of an Israeli soldier and you get a picture of the situation.
Yeah no reaction at all, except of course Kerry heading straight out to try and negotiate peace deals which Israel have not been happy with as they favoured Palestine not Israel in their eyes.
And by the way, where the hell has anyone said capturing the soldier was barbaric?
It is certainly not a term used on any news here.
Obama was on live TV criticizing them on Friday in fact
--------------------------------
Actually he didn't, in typical White House fashion he condemned the act of the UN school bombing without actually specifying who was to blame.
I think Mr Brown was comparing the outcry over one captured soldier to the acceptance of the slaughter of many innocent civilians
And by the way, where the hell has anyone said capturing the soldier was barbaric?
It is certainly not a term used on any news here.
----------------
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28617909
Quotes have been attributed to Obama himself but think it was a spokesperson who came out with that line
comment by RRthedrum (U7933)
posted 1 minute ago
I think Mr Brown was comparing the outcry over one captured soldier to the acceptance of the slaughter of many innocent civilians
----------------------------------------------------------------------
There is no acceptance.
News channels criticize it, interviewees criticize it, suits criticize it.
But at the same time they understand what provoked it, its a two way street.
Feckin american phone spells criticize with a Z
The brave Israeli soldiers bombed another U.N. school today. Maybe Obama will actually use direct criticism this time. I'm not holding my breath though.
comment by renoog (U4449)
posted 3 minutes ago
And by the way, where the hell has anyone said capturing the soldier was barbaric?
It is certainly not a term used on any news here.
----------------
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28617909
Quotes have been attributed to Obama himself but think it was a spokesperson who came out with that line
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah BS quotes as ever.
Nobody applauds the death of civilians and a kidnapped soldier, whilst incredibly foolish in its timing is not barbaric.
comment by RRthedrum (U7933)
posted 6 seconds ago
The brave Israeli soldiers bombed another U.N. school today. Maybe Obama will actually use direct criticism this time. I'm not holding my breath though.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Out of interest, why do Hamas stockpile missiles at these places?
Benayoun is a Disgrace
Page 109 of 146
110 | 111 | 112 | 113 | 114
posted on 3/8/14
This is a very powerful speech from a Jewish UK MP well worth a watch (just a short video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBprtOxuEtQ&feature=youtu.be
posted on 3/8/14
Just read quite a sad article on the subject... One with a somewhat hopeful message though...
.........................................
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27883685
A Palestinian Christian family that preaches non-violence from a farm in the West Bank is battling to hold on to land it has owned for 98 years. Now surrounded by Israeli settlements, the family is a living example of the idea of peaceful resistance.
On 19 May a Palestinian shepherd from the village of Nahalin was out at first light and saw the bulldozer at work in the field, guarded by Israeli soldiers. By the time Nassar arrived the whole orchard - the best part of a decade's work - was gone. His English is far from fluent, but there's no mistaking the pain in his voice: "Why you broke the trees?"
A spokesperson for the Israeli military authorities in the West Bank said the trees were planted illegally on state land.
Nassar's sister, Amal, has a different explanation. The government, together with the Israeli settlers who live around the farm, is "trying to push us to violence or push us to leave," she says. Amal insists that her family will not move from the land, nor will they abandon their commitment to peaceful resistance.
"Nobody can force us to hate," she says. "We refuse to be enemies."
That phrase, which is painted on a stone at the entrance to the farm, was first used by her father, Bishara Nassar. Long before the concept became widely known among Palestinians, he taught his children a theory of non-violence that was rooted in his own Christian beliefs.
"My father always said, 'We will never achieve peace in Palestine and Israel just by shaking hands - we need to work on people, to start with the grassroots'
For more than 20 years they have held workshops here, welcoming Israeli students, rabbis, and peace activists, as well as groups from across Europe and America. They run summer camps for local schools, teaching Palestinian children about non-violence and encouraging them to develop a love for the land by working and playing on the farm. This is especially important, says Amal Nassar, for a generation that has grown up in the refugee camps and urban sprawl behind Israel's separation barrier. She also trains Palestinian women in non-violence, while her mother - Bishara's widow, Milada - cooks traditional food for the day's guests.
At that time the West Bank had been under Israeli military rule for almost a decade, and Jewish settlers were just beginning to move into the area south of the farm. For the most part, though, the hills around Bishara's land were still open countryside, farmed by Palestinian families or used as grazing by shepherds. In the 40 years since, Israeli settlements have been built on every one .
There are five settlements in total, the nearest so close that the settlers' voices carry across the valley to the farm. The most recent, Netiv Ha'avot, is little more than a strip of houses encircled by coils of razor wire and festooned with Israeli flags. The largest, Beitar Illit, is a town of more than 40,000 people, a blaze of lights on the hillside at night. All of them are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
In 1991 their fears were confirmed. The military authorities declared that more than 90% of the farm now belonged to the State of Israel. Gush Etzion, one of the biggest settlement blocks in the West Bank, looked set to expand on to the Nassar farm.
The Nassars, though, refused to leave, or to see the land divided. And virtually alone among Palestinian farmers, they had the documents they needed to launch an appeal in the Israeli courts.
In 1924, realising that the Ottoman Empire was finished and worried by rising tensions between Arabs and Jews, Bishara Nassar's father had registered his property with Palestine's new imperial rulers. The British issued land deeds that specified the size and borders of the farm, and Bishara's father, who was a literate man, held on to the documents. Almost 70 years later, those papers would form the basis of a legal case that has been in front of the Israeli courts for 23 years. It remains unresolved.
When they were informed, after 10 years in the military courts, that their Palestinian lawyer was not eligible to contest the case in Israel's supreme court - because he carried West Bank identity papers - they found an Israeli firm willing to take it on. When they were told to provide a land survey, they hired (at a cost of $70,000) an Israeli surveyor, and sent him to consult maps and documents in the imperial archives of London and Istanbul. When they were asked to bring witnesses in support of their claim to have farmed the land for three generations, they hired a bus to take more than 30 Palestinian villagers to the military court near Ramallah. "We had to wait five hours outside the court under the sun," remembers Amal Nassar. "And then, after five hours, a soldier come out, they say, 'We don't want witnesses, go home.'
"Every time they see you are ready to meet their demands, they ask [for something] more and more difficult, [so] that you say 'I am fed up, I cannot.' Yes, this [is] always the process. We know it. It's a game to push us to leave."
The way Amal sees it, the Israeli military and the settlers, having failed to evict the family by legal means, are now trying to force them out. She remembers the settlers who uprooted 250 young olive trees in 2002, and who permanently closed the road to the farm with rubble. The demolition orders posted on the gate, threatening to destroy the Nassars' home and water wells. The soldiers who, in 2009, forced her 72-year-old mother out of bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night and made her wait in the cold while they searched the farm.
Amal Nassar's younger brother, Daoud, is not impressed by the moral code of the men who uprooted his orchard. But neither is he angry: "We are willing to build up a better future in a non-violent way… without hatred," he says. "Our response to this injustice will never be with violence, and we will never give up and leave."
Sign with words 'Fight violence with love'
Palestinians have a word that captures this refusal to be provoked or demoralized: sumud. Sometimes translated as 'steadfastness', sumud describes the stubborn, patient determination to stay on the land and to carry on in spite of all the difficulties of living under military occupation.
It is a quality embodied by Daher Nassar, who, even as he walks across a scarred and empty field, is imagining the orchard he'll harvest 10 years from now.
"I will plant more trees," he says. "Double trees."
.....................................................
This is what Israel does, these people are actually in some ways the lucky ones, they actually had the documents to prove they owned the land and the money to fight back.
The question has to be asked, would anybody accept this happening to their people?
posted on 3/8/14
Well done for highlighting that. Remember this isn't a few chancers nickin, this is an elected government !! How can these evil ones have the support of anyone ?
posted on 3/8/14
Comment deleted by Site Moderator
posted on 3/8/14
That 66 figure is slightly misleading as 64 of these are soliders and not civilians... The 1700 is vastly innocent civilians- literally hundreds of children
posted on 3/8/14
When you sign up to be a soldier are you not "fair game" in a conflict. Totally different to being a civilian. So, i deduce that two Israeli civilians have been killed. When you consider the number of Palestinian civilians killed the difference is staggering. No, thats too tame a word, it's obscene.
posted on 3/8/14
Agree RR,
Just like Hamas are fair game, so are ISREAL soliders- especially when they are occupying a land and committing one war crime after another relentlessly
posted on 3/8/14
American unconditional support for Israel is actually damn scary. They think Europeans who are far more willing to question Israel's policies are just rabid anti-semites. When you have high-profile politicians talking about never second-guessing Israel, that has to be very disturbing.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/american-media-israel-bias-netanyahu
There is no big politician in the US who has the cojones to ever publicly question Israel. It's pretty much political suicide. The Jewish lobby really DOES wield some incredible power.
posted on 3/8/14
I don't think it's anyone but Hamas more than pro-Israel these days
posted on 3/8/14
** I think it's anyone but Hamas more than pro-Israel these days
posted on 3/8/14
Comment deleted by Site Moderator
posted on 3/8/14
comment by Afridi14 (U2805)
posted 3 hours, 1 minute ago
That 66 figure is slightly misleading as 64 of these are soliders and not civilians... The 1700 is vastly innocent civilians- literally hundreds of children
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, we are ignoring the over 800 killed by Hamas and its buddy terrorists again on this thread today, in the markets, buses and disco's.......not to mention the rocket launches aimed at towns and cities along the border indiscriminately?
The intent when launching those rockets is to kill innocents, whether those rockets reach the target or not #hypocrites
posted on 3/8/14
comment by Sheriff John Brown - bring back David Dein (U7482)
posted 1 hour, 11 minutes ago
American unconditional support for Israel is actually damn scary. They think Europeans who are far more willing to question Israel's policies are just rabid anti-semites.When you have high-profile politicians talking about never second-guessing Israel, that has to be very disturbing.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/american-media-israel-bias-netanyahu
There is no big politician in the US who has the cojones to ever publicly question Israel. It's pretty much political suicide. The Jewish lobby really DOES wield some incredible power.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Obama was on live TV criticizing them on Friday in fact
posted on 3/8/14
comment by SAF_The_Legend-FreePalestine (U5768)
posted 9 hours, 38 minutes ago
Just read quite a sad article on the subject... One with a somewhat hopeful message though...
.........................................
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27883685
A Palestinian Christian family that preaches non-violence from a farm in the West Bank is battling to hold on to land it has owned for 98 years. Now surrounded by Israeli settlements, the family is a living example of the idea of peaceful resistance.
On 19 May a Palestinian shepherd from the village of Nahalin was out at first light and saw the bulldozer at work in the field, guarded by Israeli soldiers. By the time Nassar arrived the whole orchard - the best part of a decade's work - was gone. His English is far from fluent, but there's no mistaking the pain in his voice: "Why you broke the trees?"
A spokesperson for the Israeli military authorities in the West Bank said the trees were planted illegally on state land.
Nassar's sister, Amal, has a different explanation. The government, together with the Israeli settlers who live around the farm, is "trying to push us to violence or push us to leave," she says. Amal insists that her family will not move from the land, nor will they abandon their commitment to peaceful resistance.
"Nobody can force us to hate," she says. "We refuse to be enemies."
That phrase, which is painted on a stone at the entrance to the farm, was first used by her father, Bishara Nassar. Long before the concept became widely known among Palestinians, he taught his children a theory of non-violence that was rooted in his own Christian beliefs.
"My father always said, 'We will never achieve peace in Palestine and Israel just by shaking hands - we need to work on people, to start with the grassroots'
For more than 20 years they have held workshops here, welcoming Israeli students, rabbis, and peace activists, as well as groups from across Europe and America. They run summer camps for local schools, teaching Palestinian children about non-violence and encouraging them to develop a love for the land by working and playing on the farm. This is especially important, says Amal Nassar, for a generation that has grown up in the refugee camps and urban sprawl behind Israel's separation barrier. She also trains Palestinian women in non-violence, while her mother - Bishara's widow, Milada - cooks traditional food for the day's guests.
At that time the West Bank had been under Israeli military rule for almost a decade, and Jewish settlers were just beginning to move into the area south of the farm. For the most part, though, the hills around Bishara's land were still open countryside, farmed by Palestinian families or used as grazing by shepherds. In the 40 years since, Israeli settlements have been built on every one .
There are five settlements in total, the nearest so close that the settlers' voices carry across the valley to the farm. The most recent, Netiv Ha'avot, is little more than a strip of houses encircled by coils of razor wire and festooned with Israeli flags. The largest, Beitar Illit, is a town of more than 40,000 people, a blaze of lights on the hillside at night. All of them are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
In 1991 their fears were confirmed. The military authorities declared that more than 90% of the farm now belonged to the State of Israel. Gush Etzion, one of the biggest settlement blocks in the West Bank, looked set to expand on to the Nassar farm.
The Nassars, though, refused to leave, or to see the land divided. And virtually alone among Palestinian farmers, they had the documents they needed to launch an appeal in the Israeli courts.
In 1924, realising that the Ottoman Empire was finished and worried by rising tensions between Arabs and Jews, Bishara Nassar's father had registered his property with Palestine's new imperial rulers. The British issued land deeds that specified the size and borders of the farm, and Bishara's father, who was a literate man, held on to the documents. Almost 70 years later, those papers would form the basis of a legal case that has been in front of the Israeli courts for 23 years. It remains unresolved.
When they were informed, after 10 years in the military courts, that their Palestinian lawyer was not eligible to contest the case in Israel's supreme court - because he carried West Bank identity papers - they found an Israeli firm willing to take it on. When they were told to provide a land survey, they hired (at a cost of $70,000) an Israeli surveyor, and sent him to consult maps and documents in the imperial archives of London and Istanbul. When they were asked to bring witnesses in support of their claim to have farmed the land for three generations, they hired a bus to take more than 30 Palestinian villagers to the military court near Ramallah. "We had to wait five hours outside the court under the sun," remembers Amal Nassar. "And then, after five hours, a soldier come out, they say, 'We don't want witnesses, go home.'
"Every time they see you are ready to meet their demands, they ask [for something] more and more difficult, [so] that you say 'I am fed up, I cannot.' Yes, this [is] always the process. We know it. It's a game to push us to leave."
The way Amal sees it, the Israeli military and the settlers, having failed to evict the family by legal means, are now trying to force them out. She remembers the settlers who uprooted 250 young olive trees in 2002, and who permanently closed the road to the farm with rubble. The demolition orders posted on the gate, threatening to destroy the Nassars' home and water wells. The soldiers who, in 2009, forced her 72-year-old mother out of bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night and made her wait in the cold while they searched the farm.
Amal Nassar's younger brother, Daoud, is not impressed by the moral code of the men who uprooted his orchard. But neither is he angry: "We are willing to build up a better future in a non-violent way… without hatred," he says. "Our response to this injustice will never be with violence, and we will never give up and leave."
Sign with words 'Fight violence with love'
Palestinians have a word that captures this refusal to be provoked or demoralized: sumud. Sometimes translated as 'steadfastness', sumud describes the stubborn, patient determination to stay on the land and to carry on in spite of all the difficulties of living under military occupation.
It is a quality embodied by Daher Nassar, who, even as he walks across a scarred and empty field, is imagining the orchard he'll harvest 10 years from now.
"I will plant more trees," he says. "Double trees."
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This is what Israel does, these people are actually in some ways the lucky ones, they actually had the documents to prove they owned the land and the money to fight back.
The question has to be asked, would anybody accept this happening to their people?
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Haha the irony that from that you pick up hatred and retaliation whilst the piece is trying to get the point across that non violence is as effective as terrorism.
posted on 3/8/14
Obama was on live TV criticizing them on Friday in fact
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I've never heard anyting beyond having ""great concerns" about Israel's actions. Compare the reaction to the slaughter of almost 2000 people to the reaction to the "barbaric" capture of an Israeli soldier and you get a picture of the situation.
posted on 3/8/14
Yeah no reaction at all, except of course Kerry heading straight out to try and negotiate peace deals which Israel have not been happy with as they favoured Palestine not Israel in their eyes.
posted on 3/8/14
And by the way, where the hell has anyone said capturing the soldier was barbaric?
It is certainly not a term used on any news here.
posted on 3/8/14
Obama was on live TV criticizing them on Friday in fact
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Actually he didn't, in typical White House fashion he condemned the act of the UN school bombing without actually specifying who was to blame.
posted on 3/8/14
I think Mr Brown was comparing the outcry over one captured soldier to the acceptance of the slaughter of many innocent civilians
posted on 3/8/14
And by the way, where the hell has anyone said capturing the soldier was barbaric?
It is certainly not a term used on any news here.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28617909
Quotes have been attributed to Obama himself but think it was a spokesperson who came out with that line
posted on 3/8/14
comment by RRthedrum (U7933)
posted 1 minute ago
I think Mr Brown was comparing the outcry over one captured soldier to the acceptance of the slaughter of many innocent civilians
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There is no acceptance.
News channels criticize it, interviewees criticize it, suits criticize it.
But at the same time they understand what provoked it, its a two way street.
posted on 3/8/14
Feckin american phone spells criticize with a Z
posted on 3/8/14
The brave Israeli soldiers bombed another U.N. school today. Maybe Obama will actually use direct criticism this time. I'm not holding my breath though.
posted on 3/8/14
comment by renoog (U4449)
posted 3 minutes ago
And by the way, where the hell has anyone said capturing the soldier was barbaric?
It is certainly not a term used on any news here.
----------------
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28617909
Quotes have been attributed to Obama himself but think it was a spokesperson who came out with that line
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Yeah BS quotes as ever.
Nobody applauds the death of civilians and a kidnapped soldier, whilst incredibly foolish in its timing is not barbaric.
posted on 3/8/14
comment by RRthedrum (U7933)
posted 6 seconds ago
The brave Israeli soldiers bombed another U.N. school today. Maybe Obama will actually use direct criticism this time. I'm not holding my breath though.
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Out of interest, why do Hamas stockpile missiles at these places?
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