Archive for May 22nd, 2012
E for Eating: Mid-age relentless pastime?
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 22, 2012
E for Eating: Mid-age relentless pastime?
A few middle-age men revert to cooking, assuming they are widowers or divorced, the kitchen becoming the focal space to ruminate on the good old days…for good food served on time and served by someone else…and dishes washed by someone else…
Most middle-age people are relentless eaters, and the “subject looms larger in our thoughts and conversations than it used to be…Good seeing you after all these years, but “where are we going to eat?”” Marcus Berkmann
You suggest going to a movie, and you notice lip licking all around you. Okay, restaurant be it. It is not going to be your run of the mill corner restaurant or the fast food franchise: Middle-age people develop, by magic, haute cuisine taste, the more expensive the more passionately enthusiastic, especially if someone is volunteering to pay for the party of old chaps…
Do you think, generally, that middle-age people burn plenty of energy? Why are they constantly hungry? Their stomachs are, more often than not, well insulated, and why you hear their audible rumbling?
It seems nothing can ruin their appetite, and the “between meals rule” of not eating no longer applies.
I know my old dad can finish a bag full of candies (bonbons) of any kinds, and still never miss a meal. My dad needs to suck on something sweet: This task suit grandly the situations when the false teeth implement is not attached. The large stock of jams that mother saved last summer is all gone. Dad loves to meticulously spread the jam to within one millimeter of the borders of the loaf of bread.
Mother is skinny, as is dad now, and she is prohibited to eat almost anything. The danger is that mom loves to “nibble” from every dish. In ceremonies with over 50 dishes to tease the eyes, mother has to taste from every dish. The problem is that the tasting task does not fall within the “nibbling portion” category, by any stretch of the imagination.
Whatever emotions the eyes of middle-age people are showing, they are of second order kinds of passions. They are actively thinking of the next meal.
More sweet stuff, please. Apparently, eating is highest among the daily tasks that let time flow by, quickly, and sweetly fast.
Empires that ruled the Near-East: And a quick 90-second video-map attached
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 22, 2012
Empires that ruled the Near-East: And a quick 90-second video-map attached
I have this theory, backed by historical accounts and substantiated by archeological and ontological finding, that the Near East (Levant) region has been the crossroad for the innumerable waves of immigrations from East to West and to a lesser extent from Eastern Africa via Egypt to the west. This is a valid hypothesis that could be adopted as an alternative direction and guide to studying our people.
I take the first premise that most locations had their own indigenous people for various reasons going far back to thousands of years; this premise is only just, logical and convenient. I also offer the second premise that emigrants prefer moving toward areas with abundance of water and greener pastures. The successive waves of immigration have started in full bloom before the seventh millennia of our calendar.
People from Central Asia tended to march towards Northern Iran and then onward to the Anatolian plateau (Turkey), rich in rivers and water reserves from the melting of snow-covered majestic Taurus mountain chains.
The populations in Iran were inclined to settle the shores of the great Tigris River (Dujlah) in Iraq. From there, they forked either south along the mighty river or northward. Moving south was initially the preferred route because the climate is warmer and because it is almost impossible to navigate upward the Tigris River in its northern section. They settled and built the ancient and mighty Empires around Ur and Basra on the mouth of the Tigris River which empties in the Arab/Persia Gulf and then they expanded along the Arabian Gulf shores.
The Empires of the Antiquity (Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon) constituted the trading centers from the Arabian Gulf to the coasts of the Western Indian Ocean. The Prophet Abraham is said to have moved out with his tribe from the great city of Ur, and most probably progressed south-west along the Red Sea coast. (Actually, the Israelite tribes are initially from Yemen, where most of their idols such as Hud still exist)
Later, the mighty Empire of Babylon based its Capital further north of Ur on the Tigris River.
Aramaic was the main mother language with various dialects for each region: Iraq was the hotbed of civilization for over 4 millennia before Christ, starting by the kingdoms of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Ashur. All the regions from Iran, Kurdistan, the Arabic Peninsula, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and the western part of Turkey were under the hegemony of either one of these empires.
The main religion and Gods, the main language, and the tradition for trading and doing business and administrations were homogeneous.
Moving north the Tigris River the hardy immigrants settled and built mighty Empires like Assyria in Nineveh (Ninawa) around Mosul and in the current Kurdish homeland. Those immigrants who moved north the river overflowed to the Anatolian Plateaus in Turkey and settled along the mighty Euphrates River (Al Furat) and built the Hittite Empire that discovered iron and invaded Egypt, where they were called the Hyksos, and settled there for a long time until they signed a peace treaty with Ramses II.
It is recounted that prosperous Troy was vanquished by the Greeks, after ten years of siege, because the Hittite Empire was endeavoring at that junction to reach the sea and thus, aided the Greek invaders to destroy their natural enemy. The more recent power coming from the Anatolian plateau that conquered the Middle East is the Ottoman Empire.
The waves of immigration descended along the Euphrates River and jointed the Orontes River (Al Assy, going counter to topography) and built many City-States along these rivers and many reached the Mediterranean Sea.
It is known that the Orontes and Euphrates shores were studded with numerous large and prosperous City-States like Homs, Hama, Tel Amarna, Van, and Mary because it was the preferred land trade route towards Iraq, Persia and ultimately China.
The alternative more direct route was through the Syrian Desert passing by Palmyra (Tadmor) but it was way too harsh and inconvenient. Actually, almost all invasions coming from further East and North used the coastal and Euphrates River corridors to loot and conquer Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and ultimately Egypt. All these immigrants might have initially fled from persecutions and tribal warfare and also because of changing weather conditions and draughts.
The waves coming from Eastern Africa settled first in Egypt and fled for many reasons to the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea toward the Maghreb regions and also to the eastern shores and settled in the sea cities of Canaan that includes Palestine, and Lebanon.
A large number had to emigrate very often from the cities of Canaan after repeated invasions of the Moguls, Persian, Iraqi, and Egyptian Empires: These Empires made it a routine to invade and loot the rich Canaan City-States for their accumulated treasures and for their skilled workers.
All these immigrants ended up in Syria and the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea of Canaan and some settled in Egypt. The ancient city of Byblos in Lebanon extended its civilization and built the cities of Sidon and Beyrouth and other sea towns and invented a new alphabet of 22 letters. Sidon built Tyr and Akka.
As the Empires in Iraq, Persia, and Egypt invaded these cities the settled inhabitants of these prosperous seashore cities had to immigrate again to the southern and western shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Note 1: I read recently that a newly excavated City-State by the current city of Rukka (Northern Syria) is as old as 5,500 BC; many millenia before the City-States in southern Iraq. The society was very structured and copper was imported from Southern Turkey. A vast temple was excavated in southern Turkey that is 11,000 years BC.
Note 2: https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/the-inhabitants-of-the-mediterranean-sea-shores-part-2/
Memoirs of a Zionist Realtor who sold lands to Jewish Funds: Youssef Nehmani
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 22, 2012
Memoirs of a Zionist Realtor who sold lands to Jewish Funds: Youssef Nehmani
The original Hebrew title is “Youssef Nehmani: The Man of Galilee“. The diary chapter spans the period 1935-1949, and the letters cover the period from 1912 to 1964.
Youssef Nehmani was born in Russia in 1891 and immigrated to Palestine in 1907. He worked in the vignard in Jerusalem, in the colony of Zakhroun Yaacov, and got engaged in the party of Bou Aali Tessyoun (Zion workers).
Many Palestinians, particularly large landlord Lebanese who owned vast properties in north Palestine, sold their lands to Zionists and Jewish organization, decades before the UN decided to partition Palestine. The total private land that the Zionist Funds managed to acquire was 5.7% of Palestine, and yet the UN gave the minority Jews 53% of Palestine in 1947!
What follows is an account that the Palestinian peasants hardly sold their properties: It is the foreign landowners such as the feudal families in Lebanon and Syria who sold the most fertile lands to the Zionist Funds.
A few sources are available, but no serious extensive research studies have been conducted, strong with documents, on the mechanism of selling lands to Jewish settlers…
There are the books published in English such as of Saleh Massoud Abu Basir “The struggle (Jihad) of Palestinian people, 1968”; Hind Amine Badiri “Palestinian Lands, 1998”; Yaacoub Khoury “Arab properties and the tied up money in Palestine”; Sami Hannawi…Zionist sources in Arabic are almost inexistent, save Jacques Cato “The problem of land in the Palestinian/Israeli cause (1917-1990)”; Tamar Goujansky “Development of capitalism in Palestine, 1987”
Sources mention that Zionist Organizations bought till 1948 over two million donom, and barely 70 thousand donom from private Palestinian peasants.
In the early 1920, the Jewish settlers used cavalry to protect their colonies (Hayrden in Galilee)from the bedouin of Houran who descended on the colonies such as Dagania in Tiberias, and these bedouin were called “Arab”, instead of “E3rab”. The Palestinian peasants refrained from attacking the Jewish colonies in north Palestine until much later, as the British mandated power started waves of harassment against the Palestinian people.
The author wrote that the Jewish Yishouf started transforming their German rifles to be compatible with Turkish ammunition, and that “the daily life among the Jews was poisoned because they could not withstand one another, and work was totally disorganized in the colonies”.
In 1911, Youssef joined the Hashomer organization (the Guardian) till 1920 and relied the Hebrew cavalry in Galillee. He was successful in Real Estates and sold many properties to Israel National Fund (Hakirn Hakimet Israel).
Youssef Nehmani was appointed manager of the Israel National Fund for East Galili region (Hula, north of Bissan, up to the environ of Safad). Nehmani could not grasp the reason why Ben Gurion was not hot in buying more lands. Actually, Ben Gurion had decided to conquer these lands by force, and free of charge, after the Bell Paper suggested the partition of Palestine in 1937.
Nehmani had tight connections with Palestinian authority figures such as Khalil Francis, Bishop Akil (right hand of Lebanese Patriarch), Elias Nammour from Beirut, Abed Hussein Bezi (from Bent Jbeil, south Lebanon), abed Ghani Mardini and Na3im Choukeir (from Meiss Jabal, south Lebanon), Nassib Ghabriel (from Hasbaya, south-east Lebanon), Ali Abdallah, Khalil Farhat, and 3adel Badir…who sold their properties to him…
In late April 1997, the Nazareth daily “Fasl Makal” listed the Palestinian landlords who sold their properties to Jews between 1918 to 1945, and based on British archives. You have Muhammad Taher Husseini (father of Amine Husseini), Moussa Kazem Husseini, Moussa Alami, Ragheb Nashashibi, Ibrahim Fahou, Youssef Fahoum, Toufic Fahoum, Yacoob Ghoussein, family of Rock, Awni Abd Hadi (leader of the Independence Party and who sold the lands in Wadi Hawareth (3amik Hawfar), Judge Kanaan…and all these people were the leading Palestinian politicians before the Nakba of 1948.
Nehmani relates how he bought Hrawi Mountain and the lands in the town of 3adaissi (south Lebanon), Jahoula, and Buwaysieh in 1938, and the lands in Meiss Jabal, Muteleh, Manara, malikeyeh and Awlam in 1945…
He bought Kherbet Sobh from Elias Katit where the two colonies of Hanita and Yaalon were settled. The Emir of the “Arab” Faghour (bedouin) sold the lands of the village Khassass in 1939, where the terrorist Zionist Hagana committed genocide in 1947.
Nehmani bought lands from the family of Farhat in 1944, Ahmad Al Assaad, Mahmoud Al Assaad, and Salib Sobh (from Safad), Kamel Hussein, Ahmad Mardini, and Zaki Rokabi in the village of Kyam al Walid. Kamel Hussein, leader of the tribe Ghawarina sold properties in Hula.
The Lebanese feudal lord, Khaled Chehab, had very strong ties with the Zionist movement and sold his properties in the village of Ghabissieh.
The Lebanese landlords of Sursok, Salam, Tayan, Tuweini, Khoury, Biham, Kabbani, Omran, Sabbagh, Keir Dine Ahdab,…sold the Zionist Funds the most fertile lands.
The same goes to famous Syrian families who owned vast fertile lands in Palestine…These feudal landlords sold prior to election campaigns and they ruled Lebanon and Syria for many decades, and still bear heavy influence in the social/political structure.
The Palestinian peasants barely sold his properties, and the few ones who did were executed during the first Palestinian Intifada of 1935-38. The foreign lanlords were living away from Palestine and they could not be reached for exactions.
The total private land that the Zionist Funds managed to acquire was 5.7% of Palestine, and yet the UN gave the Zionist State 53% of Palestine in 1947!
Note 1: Review was published by Sakr abu Fakhr in the Lebanese Daily Al Safir. The book was assembled and published by Youssef Faytz in Hebrew in 1969, and translated in Arabic byElias Shoufani in 2010.
Note 2: Below is the Arabic list of the Lebanese and Syrian landlords who sold their vast properties to the Zionist Funds, along with the size of the lands and when, as published by the daily Al Safir:
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«» ( لقد حصلوا عليها، عدا البائعين الفلسطينيين، من بعض أفراد العائلات التالية
1- آل سرسق اللبنانيون (ميشال ويوسف ونجيب وجورج) وهؤلاء باعوا أراضي الفولة ونورس وجنجار ومعلول في سنة 1910، ثم باعوا مرج ابن عامر بين سنة 1921 وسنة 1925، وبلغ مجموع ما باعه أفراد هذه العائلة 400 ألف دونم. 2- آل سلام اللبنانيون الذي حصلوا في سنة 1914 على امتياز تجفيف مستنقعات الحولة من الدولة العثمانية، واستثمار الأراضي المستصلحة، لكنهم تنازلوا عنها للوكالة اليهودية. وبلغت المساحة المبيعة 165 ألف دونم. 3- آل تيان اللبنانيون (أنطون وميشال) الذين باعوا وادي الحوارث في سنة 1929 ومساحته 308 آلاف دونم. 4- آل تويني اللبنانيون الذين باعوا أملاكاً في مرج ابن عامر وقرى بين عكا وحيفا مثل نهاريا وحيدر وانشراح والدار البيضاء. وقام بالبيع ألفرد تويني. 5- آل الخوري اللبنانيون الذين باعوا أراضي قرية الخريبة على جبل الكرمل والبالغة مساحتها 3850 دونماً. وقام بالبيع يوسف الخوري. 6- آل القباني اللبنانيون الذين باعوا وادي القباني القريب من طولكرم في سنة 1929، وبلغت مساحته 4 آلاف دونم. 7- مدام عمران من لبنان التي باعت أرضاً في غور بيسان في سنة 1931 مساحتها 3500 دونم. 8- آل الصباغ اللبنانيون الذين باعوا أراضيَ في السهل الساحلي. 9- محمد بيهم (من بيروت) الذي باع أرضاً في الحولة. 10- أسوأ من ذلك هو أن خير الدين الأحدب (رئيس وزراء) وصفي الدين قدورة وجوزف خديج وميشال سارجي ومراد دانا (يهودي) والياس الحاج أسسوا في بيروت، وبالتحديد في 19/8/1935 شركة لشراء الأراضي في جنوب لبنان وفلسطين وبيعها. وقد فضحت جريدة «ألفباء» الدمشقية هذه الشركة في عددها الصادر في 7/8/1937. 11- آل اليوسف السوريون الذين باعوا أراضيهم في البطيحة والزويّة والجولان من يهوشواع حانكين ممثل شركة تطوير أراضي فلسطين. 12- آل المارديني السوريون الذين باعوا أملاكهم في صفد. 13- آل القوتلي والجزائرلي والشمعة والعمري السوريون وكانت لهم ملكيات متفرقة باعوها كلها. هؤلاء هم مَن وضع مساحات كبيرة من الأراضي بين أيدي الصهيونيين، علاوة على الأراضي التي كانت بين أيديهم أو التي منحتها لهم سلطات الانتداب الإنكليزي مثل امتياز شركة بوتاس البحر الميت (75 ألف دونم)، وامتياز شركة كهرباء فلسطين أو مشروع روتنبرغ (18 ألف دونم)، وقبل ذلك ما نالوه من الدولة العثمانية (650 ألف دونم)… وهكذا. أما الفلاحون الفلسطينيون، ولا أقول المالكين الفلسطينيين الأثرياء الذين باعوا وقبضوا مثل غيرهم من المالكين العرب الغائبين، فقد جرى التحايل عليهم بطرق شتى، فسلبوهم القليل مما كان بين أيديهم من الأرض، وهو يتراوح بين 68 ألف دونم و150 ألف دونم. في معمان ثورة 1936 جرى الاقتصاص من بعض بائعي الأرض ومن السماسرة العرب، فاغتيل عدد منهم، وامتنع الباقون عن الاستمرار في هذا العار. لكن الاقتصاص من المُلاّك الغائبين كان من المحال، فلم يقتص منهم أحد، بل باعوا أراضيَ ليست لهم في الأصل، بل آلت إليهم من خلال حق الانتفاع لا من ملكية الرقبة في العهد العثماني. ولعل فضح انحطاط أصحاب تلك الأسماء، وكشف اللثام عما فعلوه في فلسطين، هما نوع من القصاص الرمزي، وهو الأمر الوحيد الممكن في هذا الميدان. كاتب وصحافي فلسطيني [ جمع الكتاب وحرره يوسيف فايتس ونشره بالعبرية في سنة 1969. ثم أعده للترجمة العربية وقدّم له الياس شوفاني، وأصدرته دار الحصاد في دمشق سنة 2010. |
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