Hmeid: Jews are “passersby amassing property worldwide”
Excerpt of a column by Hassan Hmeid, a Palestinian writer from Damascus
Headline: “They are digging one grave – for themselves!”
“They have been digging their grave since 1948. Sorry, they are excavating in the ground, drilling, searching, falsifying, and lying, but they are not finding anything that makes them happy. They are excavating in all the Palestinian places, especially in Jerusalem, our precious home, and in the Palestinian West Bank… and finding things that make them sad. They are finding coins that our Palestinian ancestors minted… and finding inscriptions talking about our activities engraved on stones (sic., the Palestinians have no history prior to the modern period, while an abundance of archaeological evidence proves Jewish history in Israel)… They are finding beaded necklaces, flasks of blue eye shadow, wares of glass, silver, and gold, tools for spreading blue eye shadow, mirrors, and necklaces, which were created by the hands of the skilled ancestors…
They are returning defeated from the excavations that have been continuing since 1948 to this very day. On their way there and back they are only accompanied by the ringing of the bells of disappointment, which tell them like cuckoo birds: ‘Fraud! Fraud!’ …
Yes, they are avoiding logic and working against it, as it is completely clear historically that they were not residents in this Palestinian land, the small and thriving land of Allah, but rather they were passersby in it because they coveted its treasures. From here, from our land, they filled sacks hanging from their bent necks (due to the weight of their contents) [parentheses in source] again and again and again, but they did not build anything on the land. They did not create anything aspiring to eternity or continuity in the houses they lived in, because their lives were based on the culture of wandering from place to place… They came to it not to live there, to build, and to create, but rather to suck up its resources, the treasures of the land, and the treasures of the people. Therefore, it is not strange that in world culture there is not a single book that is not religious that speaks about them (sic., many non-religious historical documents speak about the Jews)! More than this, all of the oral culture that deals with them is a culture that emphasizes how they are nomads and passersby, and the fact that they do not stay in one place or in a specific place, because they saw an ominous sign in living in the same place twice, and because they are people who suspect everything – places, conversations, people (sic., the Jewish oral tradition speaks clearly about the Jewish kingdoms in Israel, and does not advocate a nomadic lifestyle). Therefore, they are frightened and cautious people, and therefore they are concerned that others will ask them: ‘Who are you?’ …
Here, to this very day, they are bringing geologists (sic., apparently archaeologists) whom they know and they spend money on them in order to make a find that will say something about them, or a find that will indicate them, but not one of these geologists has found something that belongs to them…
The excavations in the layers of the ground and in all the Palestinian places tell them: ‘You are not people of civilization! Agriculture, industry, and books are the symbols of civilization! You were a burden, passersby amassing property worldwide, from India and China to the lands of cold and snow. You did not leave behind an idea, voice, or imprint in any one of these places. Palestine is nothing but one rich land out of these lands that you passed through as passersby, and you have not left behind an idea, voice, or imprint in it!’
Therefore, we tell them openly: ‘Stop, because the digging of the grave has been completed, and the end has come!’”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 20, 2023]