Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Ein Hod: an Israeli national crime becomes an "artists' colonly" in the rendition of the New York Times

"He said he was finally persuaded by his fellow members of Ein Hod, an artists’ colony in northern Israel..."   For the background of the Israeli national crime of Ein Hod, read "There was a village in Palestine called Ein Houd, whose people traced their ancestry back to one of Saladin's generals who was granted the territory as a reward for his prowess in battle. By the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, all the inhabitants of Ein Houd had been dispersed or exiled or had gone into hiding, although their old stone homes were not destroyed.  In 1953 the Israeli government established an artists' cooperative community in the houses of the village, now renamed Ein Hod. In the meantime, the Arab inhabitants of Ein Houd moved two kilometers up a neighboring mountain and illegally built a new village. They could not afford to build in stone, and the mountainous terrain prevented them from using the layout of traditional Palestinian villages. That seemed unimportant at the time, because the Palestinians considered it to be only temporary, a place to live until they could go home.  The Palestinians have not gone home."