Catch The Jew!: Eye-opening education - You will never look at Israel the same way again

by Tuvia Tenenbom

We stop at an old house, where no one lives, and we look at its architecture. Lubna explains to us that “no one lives here because the owners were forced out by the Occupiers.” Lubna points at the ceiling, where we see burned beams of wood, and explains that “this is what people did centuries ago.” When was this house built? “This house is from the first century and it belonged to the original Palestinian residents who lived in this city under the Ottoman rulers.” The same Ottomans, I guess, who founded Alsra in the Negev, Halil’s village so well protected by Adalah. The Turks were here in the first century? “Yes. They were the first occupiers of Palestine. Then the British occupied Palestine, and now it is Israel.” This is a very enlightening narrative. No Romans or Crusaders have ever been here, according to this narrative. The Turks, who in reality first showed up here in 1517, have their presence moved back by a millennium and a half according to this narrative. I tell Lubna that no Ottoman even dreamt of being here in the first millennium, not to say century, since the Ottoman Empire started over twelve centuries later. Members of our group, educated Westerners who have come to the Holy Land to show their sympathies with the “poor Palestinians,” as one of them had told me before, wish that this strange German would stop talking. They ask no question of Lubna, and everything they hear they accept. They buy it all, wholesale, and they don’t need me to disturb their peac...