Video of the talk by Steven Salaita at the University of Washington. Professor Salaita speaks about free speech, his own dismissal by the University of Illinois, and the rights of the Palestinians. For comment and background, READMORE ON TA.
You Tube Video of Steve Salaita’s Talk at UW Kane Hall
Salaita ends his talk with an evocative memory of his grandmother’s attachment to her village, Ein Kerem.
The sad truth is that his story spins what happened to his grandmother.
In 1948 her village was not invaded by Israel or expropriated by Israel, it was invaded by Arab forces. Those forces were responsible for the massacre of Jewish doctors and nurses.
Before Israel’s war 0f 1948, Ein Kerem was a small village of a couple of thousand people near Jerusalem. The 1947 UN Partition Plan placed Ein Kerem in the Jerusalem enclave intended for international control. Ein Kerem was part of the enclave devoted to Haddassah hospital.
In March 1947, the leader of the Arab Forces in Jerusalem, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, threatened to blow up the hospital. He did not do so, but attacks were carried out on traffic to and from the hospital. On April 13, 1948, an armored convoy of doctors, nurses, medical students, and other staff made its way to the hospital. The group was ambushed, and 78 people were killed in what became known as the Hadassah medical convoy massacre.
After the war, Jordan … not Israel … annexed Jerusalem and evicted the Jewish community that had lived there since the Caliph Umar liberated the city from the Byzantine empire in 637. Interestingly Professor Salaita implicitly acknowledges this by noting that he holds Jordanian citizenship.
As for Ein Kerem, its story (abstracted from Wikipedia and other sources) is this. In 1948 Israel, now a state recognized by the UN, was invaded by Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Syrian and Iraqi soldiers occupied the village, followed by some 160 Egyptian soldiers. These forces, including fighters from Ein Kerem attacked a Jewish convoy on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. That convey was going to Jerusalem to protect its Jewish citizens from the invading Arab armies.
Most of the women and children in the village were evacuated by the occupying Arab armies. Israeli forces attacked those armies. After the war, Jordan .. not Israel .. was in control of most of what is Jerusalem, including the entire Jewish quarter, Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall. All the Jews were evicted from the Jewish quarter and synagogues were desecrated. One became a public urinal.
One enclave within the Jordanian rule (which had become free of all Jews) was the Haddassah hospital. The hospital, badly damaged during the war, was rebuilt in Ein Kerem where it still exists today, serving Arab and Jewish patients.