Firrbudi aka Lensahijau

Photographs by Firrbudi aka Lensahijau @ United Kingdom, Amsterdam & Paris : 2012

The state of  Israel  came into existence 60 years ago on 14 May 1948.  In the months before and after this declaration, around 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes.  Over 500 villages were emptied of their Palestinian population and most of them were destroyed so that those expelled had no homes to return to. Anybody who doubts that ethnic cleansing took place on this scale should read  The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine  by Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe.  In it, he describes Plan Dalet (D in Hebrew), which set out the areas to be cleansed and the methods to be employed by Zionist forces in carrying out the cleansing.  Here is a sample of the latter: “ These operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their debris) and especially of those population centres which are difficult to control continuously; or by mounting combing and control operations accord