1948-1998 Years of dispossession

Special pages commemorating 50 years of Arab dispossession
since the creation of the State of Israel

Israel's 50th anniversary celebrations were in full swing last Thursday, the day when, according to the Jewish calendar, the state of Israel was established. The celebrations, held in major Western capitals, were attended by leading public figures and heads of state. Hollywood joined in the jamboree with a special programme hosted by Michael Douglas and Kevin Costner, featuring luminaries such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kathy Bates, Winona Ryder and President Clinton, all of whom paid tribute to Israel's greatness. Common to all the celebrations, as Edward Said notes, was the attempt to project the old-fashioned image of Israel as a haven of enlightened liberalism in a sea of Arab fanaticism and to obliterate the fact that half a century has gone by without Israeli restitution or acknowledgement of Palestinian human rights and without connecting the abnegation of those rights to Israel's official policies  <

Fifty years of dispossession In the United States, celebrations of Israel's fifty years as a state have tried to project an image of the country that went out of fashion since the Palestinian Intifada (1987-92): a pioneering state, full of hope and promise for the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, a haven of enlightened liberalism in a sea of Arab fanaticism and reaction. --read on--

 

Swimming against the Seine
It was a great 50th birthday party for Israel in France, writes Hosni Abdel-Rahim, where anti-Zionism is now tantamount to anti-Semitism