More on the People Who Weren't There

When we hear the word "bedouin", it conjures up the fierce nomads of the Middle East, the kind of warriors organized by Lawrence of Arabia. Living in tents where the mood and wind and water took them, mounted on camels in battle, they lived separate from the world, independent and proud.

This, of course, has changed in the modern world, particularly, according to Al Jazeera, to those 180,000 Bedouin who find themselves since 1947 living in Israel. These are more of the people (besides the Palestinians) living in the "land without people" which was to be occupied by the "people without a land", the Jews.

The Bedouins, like the Palestinians living west of the "Green Line", are nominally citizens of Israel. They have not, in any report we are aware of, been charged by Israel with the kinds of crimes routinely alleged against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. No suicide bombs, homicide bombs, roadside bombs, sniper attacks, rocket attacks, nothing. So there treatment by the Israelis is entirely different, right ?

Wrong, says Al Jazeera, in a detailed report. The Bedouins complain that the Israelis are systematically stealing their land (12,000 square kilometers since 1948, 98% of Bedouin lands according to Bedouin authorities), destroying their homes (many gone, 35,000 more said to be scheduled for destruction), destroying their crops (first by pesticides, later by bulldozer) and denying them water, power, etc.

Read the piece for further details and Israel's lame response. Remember, like everything else in Israel, these activities enjoy the full support of our government and lots of our tax dollars and

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