Right: the 830-year-old Moroccan neighborhood in Jerusalem.
Left: Same area today cleansed of its Arab inhabitants, where even Palestinian Jerusalemites aren't allowed to walk without a special permit!
On June 10 1967, #Israel bulldozed the entire area, inc. mosques & school🧵
2\ David Ben-Gurion visited occupied East Jerusalem as soon as it fell & went to the Western wall.
He got "upset" to see a sign Arabic, asked for a hammer & ordered it destroyed, then he said:
"This is the greatest moment of my life since I came to #Israel".
3\ The next day, the #Israeli army brought sledgehammers & bulldozers to the Moroccan quarter in occupied Jerusalem to destroy 135 homes, 2 ancient mosques, an old school & local shops.
They gave the 650 residents about 15 minutes to leave without discussion & become refugees!
4\ The residents of Jerusalem's Moroccan quarter refused the IDF orders to leave their homes.
So, a military bulldozer razed the 1st home with its people inside, killing an elderly woman al-Hajjah Rasmiyyah Ali Taba'ki & 2 others.
The rest were then put on trucks & bussed away!
5\ The people whom the IDF buried alive under their home were then called "Garbage" by Eitan Ben-Moshe, the #Israeli engineer attached to the IDF who oversaw the operation.
"I had thrown out all the garbage. We threw out the wreckage of houses together with the Arab corpses."
6\ They were "drunk on wine & joy" said IDF Col. Shlomo Lahat on the #Israeli soldiers who destroyed & ethnically cleansed Jerusalem's Moroccan Quarter.
The residents were NOT allowed to even collect their belongings after. Most became refugees in Shu'afat & Jordan...
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Meet the #Israeli right's new hero:
Orian Ben Khalifa was convicted of unjustifiably beating up a young Palestinian woman, knocking her to the ground, dragging her to a police station, grabbing her by the neck & shaking her..
Israel's Security Minister reinstated her immediately
2\ #Israel's Security Minister reinstated Orian Ben Khalifa back at Israel's border police right after an Israeli court convicted her of unjustifiably assaulting a Palestinian.
Israel's Minister for Advancing Women's Status is calling her a Heroin for being up an unarmed Arab!
3\ Right wing #Israelis are in love with the Magav officer Orian ben Khalifa precisely b/c she mercilessly assaulted a Palestinian who did nothing to her.
Orian is known for violently assaulting Palestinians on a regular basis in East Jerusalem.
2 weeks ago, I was asked to explain to the UN the Nakba's impact on Palestinians today, so I told my family's experience of the Nakba's dispossession & displacement 3 times.
The last being the siege that's forcing young Palestinians to choose between displacement or slow death!
2\ The 1st Nakba my grandfather lived through was when he had just bought a farm with all his savings in Hamama.
He refused to leave when #Israel was founded, so 167 days later, the IDF depopulated & looted his village, then razed it to the ground. He became a refugee in Gaza!
3\ 19 years after the IDF forced my grandfather out of his ancestral village, he experienced a 2nd Nakba in 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza & he was kicked out again, to Egypt. A penniless refugee for the 2nd time.
He returned to Gaza in 1994 with the Oslo accords.
EVERYTHING #Israel accuses Palestinians of doing (often falsely), it had openly done way worse to establish & maintain the Israeli state:
e.g. blowing up cafes & buses; human shields; celebrating civilians' death; glorifying terrorists; hiding weapons in civilian areas...Quick🧵
2\ Terrorism was a tactic Zionist militias openly used to establish #Israel
Blowing up cafes, buses & crowded markets was 1 of their favorite strategies. This list only shows Irgun terrorist bombings in 1937-39👇
Irgun became part of the IDF & their leader Shamir became PM!
3\ Even 3 decades after #Israel was founded, the Israeli Defense Ministry continued to use terrorism for combat
Defense Minister Ariel Sharon (later Prime Minister) used to blow up cars, bikes & booby-trapped donkeys in crowded civilian areas in Lebanon ONLY to sow chaos & fear!
#Israel (NOT Egypt) militarily closes our air, water & land spaces; FULLY controls our financial system with extreme restrictions, the entry/exit of goods & foreigners, & access to the West Bank; regularly bombs us; & is the occupying power! 🧵
2\ The Egyptian borders are actually open to passenger movement, but subject to restrictions imposed by ISRAEL in the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access.
The agreement gives Israel oversight & ability to blacklist people from leaving/entering!
3\ Foreigners (e.g. tourists, investors...) can only cross into Gaza through Israel, & the IDF does NOT allow any of those in except some few Int. NGO workers & diplomats; hence the siege!
Egypt is allowed, per the 2005 AMA agreement, to let in extremely limited exceptions.
Quick🧵Debunking #Israel's "Human Shields" lie used as a blanket excuse to justify killing ANY Palestinian civilians:
e.g. IDF officials admit they 100% knew children & women would die in their strikes. They went for it anyways & called them "collateral damage" & "human shields"
2\ Amnesty found ZERO evidence of Palestinian combatants forcefully taking civilians as human shields or preventing them from evacuating targeted areas
The #Israeli org Breaking the Silence interviewed 100s of IDF soldiers, but never encountered evidence of those "human shields"
3\ #Israel's own courts, however, found evidence of Israeli soldiers taking Palestinians as human shields at gun point
IDF calls it the "neighbor procedure"
Amnesty, HRW, BTselem... all found evidence of Israel taking Palestinian human shields since the occupation began in 1967