By Dr. Zuhair Sabbagh | August 23, 2021
The following research article will deal with the issue of Palestinian property and its relationship with the Zionist settler bourgeoisie. Furthermore, it will tackle both the Palestinian property that was captured by the Zionist military armies in the period 1948-1949 and the Palestinian property that was legally owned by the Palestinians who were allowed to stay and who became Israeli citizens.
Moreover, this research article will tackle the issue of Palestinian property inside the colonized West Bank, including the area of East Jerusalem.
It is necessary, at this stage, to begin my analysis by providing a brief legal introduction to the issue of property, specifically, when it falls under belligerent military occupation.
International Law and Private and Public Property
In cases of belligerent occupations, the Hague Convention of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, are applicable international law tools. In the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, the Zionist authorities have violated numerous articles of these conventions. I will not deal with all these violations, nor will I deal with all the occupied territories, but will confine my research to the articles that are relevant to Palestinian private and public property inside Israel as well as inside the colonized West Bank.
Both the Fourth Geneva and Hague Conventions prohibit the belligerent occupiers from violating the rights to private property of Protected Persons. “Article 46 of the Hague Convention of 1907 provides that an occupying power must respect private property, which cannot be confiscated.”1 While,
Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits any destruction of real or private property whether belonging to private individual(s), the state or another organization, except when rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.2
Israel and Palestinian Property in 1948
After the conclusion of the grand campaign of ethnic cleansing in Palestine3, the Zionist authorities began to debate the policies they should adopt regarding the massive property that was left by the Palestinian refugees.
During the war that began on November 30, 1947 and ended on July 30, 1949, the State of Israel was a poor state in its first steps and had a great deal of war booty: about 77% of the land of Israel was the assets of the Palestinian refugees …4
Two months after the establishment of the State of Israel,
[t]he Provisional State Council, which was the legislative authority of the State of Israel from the end of the British Mandate until the establishment of the Knesset, established emergency regulations regarding the assets of the absentees … and appointed, on 21/07/1948, D. Shafir to be the custodian of the absentee property. Thus, the Palestinians’ connection to their land was erased, with the definition of “absentees” legitimizing the takeover of the assets. …5
In a report written in 1949, the newly appointed “Custodian of Absentee Property” described the situation on the ground as follows:
The frightened escape of the Arab residents and the abandoning of vast property in hundreds of thousands of apartments, shops, warehouses and workshops, the abandoning of grains in the fields, and fruit in gardens, orchards and vineyards, all during the war… put the victorious army in the face of severe material temptation…6
As it will become clearer later, the appointment of the “Custodian of Absentee Property” was not meant to take care of refugee property until the resolution of their problem, then the return of their property to their legitimate owners. But in actuality, it meant the plunder of the refugee property and its transfer to the Zionist state and private ownership. This Zionist conduct was a despicable thievery of the property that rightfully belonged to the Palestinian Arab refugees, the legitimate owners.
In 1950, the Absentee Property Law was enacted, according to which all assets owned by Palestinian refugees were transferred to the state of Israel through the custodian of absentee property. His powers were expanded by regulations that were in place until the law was enacted. In doing so, this institution was given great power. In addition, in close proximity to the Absentee Property Law, the Development Authority (Asset Transfer) Law was enacted in 1950, in order to sell the assets to a third party, i.e., laundering the absentee’s assets and erasing the Palestinians’ affiliation with the land. 7
Consequently,
At the time of the application of the Development Authority Law, the custodian sold most of the absentee property to Development Authority, and the Development Authority sold the land to the public and government institutions. As part of the mechanism for transferring agricultural assets – over 2.5 million dunams of absentee property including Waqf assets – were sold by the custodian to the Development Authority, which in turn sold it to the JNF, which transferred most of these resources to the (Jewish) farmers. 8
The Massive Plunder of the Lands of Palestinian Arab Citizens
The Zionist settler bourgeoisie did not only plunder the property of the Palestinian refugees, but decided to plunder also the property of the Palestinians whom they decided to let them stay and who were granted Israeli citizenship. The Zionist laws that were enacted for the “absentees” did not apply for the citizens, so, the Zionist authorities enacted suitable laws for this grand robbery.
In a matter of few years, the lands of the Palestinian citizens were plundered with the help of Zionist colonial laws. This massive robbery, which was a typical settler colonial conduct, was justified under the false “security” pretense.
Subsequently, in 1953, the State of Israel enacted the Land Acquisition Law, which led to massive expropriations by the Development Authority and the dispossession of 1.2 million dunams of municipal and agricultural land of the “present absentees” (absentee property law of 1950 did not apply to them) …9
In actuality, the concise land area that was expropriated by the Zionist authorities from the Palestinian Arab citizens totaled 1,234,785 dunams. This official number was released, in 1955, by Zionist Minister of Finance, Levi Eshkol, in response to a query by Israeli Communist Party member of Knesset Shmuel Mikonis.10
At the government meeting regarding the sale of land to the JNF, Minister Pinchas Rosen noted that the Development Authority must be rushed and established, because formally only it is entitled to sell these lands. Finance Minister Kaplan demanded that the seller be not the custodian of absentee property, but the Development Authority.11 The reason for this is the desire to make it difficult to locate the original owners of the land and to protect its new owners from future claims by the refugees to reclaim the land.
Moreover, Uzi Lovia added that,
Money laundering was the initial goal of the establishment, while reducing the value of compensation for future Palestinian claims was the secondary goal, as reflected in a secret memo to the Minister of Finance by the Jerusalem District Supervisor, which emphasizes the need to eliminate absentee property – with an emphasis on the problematic value of the assets and/or by free market prices. “In addition to the economic problem of saying prices, the possibility of lowering the prices of real estate assets across the country in general should be checked by flooding the market with absentee property at a reduced price,” he said. 12
Consequently, Uzi Lovia further explained that,
This policy applies more strongly to the development authority’s assets transferred to the JNF. In a memorandum by Finance Minister Kaplan in honor of the Director of the State Assets Department, regarding the consideration for the land transferred to the JNF as part of the million dunams (JNF purchased over 2 million dunams and received the territories in two installments), he writes that “the announcement by the Existing Fund that the prices that will be declared on them in the estate’s offices and which will be recorded in the bank of sale will be two-thirds of the prices set by the Committee – correct.”13 Is the Minister of Finance’s declaration and the action that followed legal?
It should be pointed out that the material compensation that the Zionist regime was ready to pay, for the legitimate Palestinian land owners, was decided upon in a way to be “of no real value”.
The Land Acquisition Law of 1952 was rife with covert intentions. Weitz writes: “It is not the owners who are guilty that the state did not pay for their land at the time of their seizure … The landowners, those who wish to remain citizens of Israel – will be severely deprived, the money they will receive for their assets will lack real value … From what was previously mentioned, it is understandable that the monetary value of the absentee assets is low, because the calculation of the value of compensation for the expropriation of the assets is determined from January 1, 1950. The range of years has improved the value of the assets, yet the absentees did not receive the proper value … Moreover, at the time of the application of the law, the Israeli Lira lost 80% of its value and the value of the land in 1953 was 15 times its value in 1950. 14
That was Zionist double robbery, of both land and in the price of compensations. All Zionist thievery was carried out under suitable settler colonial laws.
Consequently, and as a result of the massive expropriation of their lands,
… Israeli Arabs, who make up 21% of the population, control less than 3% of the country’s land. 97% of the land was taken out of their hands. Ben-Gurion was not satisfied with transferring ownership of the registered land, he wanted to change the registration in the consciousness as well: He declared in 1949 “We must also remove the Arabic names for political reasons. Just as we do not recognize the political ownership of Arabs in Israel, we do not recognize their spiritual ownership and their names.” 15
In addition to the plunder of the lands of the Palestinian private owners, the Zionist authorities categorized the Palestinian custodians of the “Muslim Waqf” as “absentees” also, therefore their property could be massively expropriated and sold to the Zionist ministries and municipalities. According to Israeli writer Uzi Lovia,
… the Representatives of The Muslims in Jaffa and the other cities involved received 1% of the total endowment assets scattered throughout the country, and were sold and/or transferred by the guardian to the Development Authority, for which it sold them to a third party – the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Religions and Municipalities…16
After the end of the major wave of Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1949, most of the Palestinian Arabs who remained inside Palestine were land owners who made their living from agriculture.
Consequently, the massive expropriations of their lands in the early 1950s led to structural changes in their economy and produced major changes in the class pyramid of the Palestinian society. It converted these farmers into unskilled workers who sought work inside Israeli cities.
Zionist Plunder of Palestinian West Bank Land
According to International Law and specifically to the Hague Convention of 1907, and to article 46 of this Convention, “Private property … must be respected and … cannot be confiscated.”17
In a research work carried out, in 2002, by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, the Zionist settler bourgeoisie adopted five types of methods to plunder Palestinian-owned land.18
-
- Seizure for Military Needs;
- Employment of the Ottoman Law Code of 1858;
- Absentee Property;
- Expropriation for Public Needs;
- Acquisition of Land on the Free Market.
According to an estimation mentioned by Israeli researcher Joseph Algazy,
… from 1967 to 1984 the Israeli government requisitioned an estimated 5,500,000 dunams, or roughly half the total area of the West Bank, setting aside much of the land for military training and camping areas. 19
Apparently, the process of Zionist plunder of Palestinian land inside the colonized West Bank was carried out in various illegal ways. However, one of these ways was done according to a “fake legality” that is based on trickery. One example is to apply the old Ottoman “Land Registration Law of 1858” but only after creating conducive circumstances.
This Ottoman land law classified land under five categories. One of these categories is called the “mahlul” which stipulates that private land will revert to the state if left uncultivated by the owner for three consecutive years or left vacant.20
An example on the application of this law is what happened to the land of Ahmad Qaddoura, a Palestinian from the village of Laqef, the colonized West Bank. To begin with, almost half of his land was expropriated a decade ago for Israeli military facilities, including a watchtower.21 Later on, the rest of the land was expropriated through the misuse of this Ottoman law.
It should be mentioned that this land was cultivated with wheat prior to 1967.22 However, “… it was not possible” for the Qaddoura family members “to enter their land due to its closeness to the adjacent Karnei Shomron settlement.”23 One day the father of the family tried to plow his land, but was attacked by settlers and his plow was confiscated.24
Consequently, the Qaddoura family was forced, by the Zionist settler colonialists of the Karnei Shomron settlement, to abandon their land and not cultivate it for three consecutive years. Then, the Zionist colonial authorities applied the “Land Registration Law of 1858” that stipulates that land will revert to the state if left uncultivated for three years or left vacant.25 So, in 1986 a Zionist court issued a ruling that converted Qaddoura’s land into a state land, because the Qaddoura family “left their land uncultivated for three years”.26 Later on, the Zionist colonial authorities granted this land to the colonial settlers of Karnei Shomron who wanted to establish a factory on it.
Apparently, Zionist colonial courts do not feel legally obligated to take into consideration the circumstances that forced the Qaddoura family to abandon their land and leave it uncultivated for three years. Zionist colonial courts act according to the colonial tricks of “fake legality”. This colonial plunder by the Zionist State will appear, in Israeli eyes, “legal” because it has been carried out in accordance with the law. Collusion between the Zionist colonial courts and the settler colonialists of Karnei Shomron comes afterwards to an established colonial fact on the ground. The last stage of this colonial trickery is carried out discreetly by the Zionist colonial industrial bourgeoisie which invests in establishing a factory on robbed private Palestinian land. The Zionist army acts as enforcer of and protector of settler colonial schemes. In the end, all these colonial tools carry out their colonial roles in a complicit manner.
The Liquidation of Muslim Waqf Property
To begin with, the Islamic Waqf property is an “… Islamic property held in sacred trust for religious purposes…”27 for schools, public kitchens, mosques and libraries.28 According to International Law that is applicable inside occupied territories, specifically, articles 46 and 56 of the Hague Convention of 1907, it is forbidden to demolish and expropriate private property.29
Already in 1948, Israeli Zionist colonialists have never recognized the Palestinian rights bequeathed by Islamic Trust endowment. They regarded Waqf property as public property, or absentee property that can be expropriated by the Zionist state.
American author, Michael Dumper, calculated West Bank Waqf properties as exceeding 600,000 dunams…30 By the year 2013, Israeli settler colonialists were estimated to have expropriated more than 104,996 dunams of Waqf property mostly around Jerrico. 31
The Demolishment of the Moroccan Quarter
It should be pointed out that the Hague Convention of 1907 is applicable to the Palestinian occupied territories. According to Art. 46 of this Convention, “Private property … must be respected and … cannot be confiscated.”32
Moreover, According to Art. 56 of the Hague Convention of 190733,
The property of municipalities, that of institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, even when State property, shall be treated as private property.
All seizure of, destruction or willful damage done to institutions of this character, historic monuments, works of art and science, is forbidden, and should be made the subject of legal proceedings.
Prior to the Zionist occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, “Harat al-Magharibah” (the Moroccan Quarter) was one of the famous historical neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. It dates back to the end of the Crusaders wars.34
The entire Moroccan Quarter was endowed as Muslim waqf for the Maghribi community in recognition for the contribution of the Maghribis who fought with Salah Edin against the Crusaders.35
In the last day of the 1967 war, the Zionist authorities represented by Teddy Kollek, the “liberal” mayor of West Jerusalem, took two decisions, first to demolish the entire Moroccan Quarter and second to evacuate by force the Palestinian inhabitants of the “Jewish” Quarter.
On Saturday night, June 10, 1967, Israeli authorities informed more than 100 families living in the Moroccan Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City that they had three hours to evacuate their homes, where some had lived for generations.36
In total, the Zionist authorities demolished 135 houses, two mosques,37 schools, Muslim institutions and Sufi orders.38
Around 650 persons who resided in these houses, became refugees in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Jordan, while some of them returned to Morocco.39
Later on, Teddy Kollek turned to the “Jewish” Quarter and decided to
… remove forcibly all the Palestinian Arab inhabitants of the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, many of whom had fled there from parts of the city taken over by the Israelis… Never mind that the vast majority of buildings in the Jewish Quarter were Arab-owned at the time of the 1948 war. …40
That was another crime of despicable theft of Palestinian owned property, coupled with the crime of ethnic cleansing. Both incidents reveal how Zionist settler colonialists have no respect for Palestinian human beings and that they are ready to displace them and rob their property without remorse or human compassion.
It should be pointed out that Zionist insolence dare to claim that Palestinians are not attached to their city nor to their houses and that they are ready to receive money and vacate. According to Zionist logic, the attachment of settler colonialist thieves to the property they robbed, is stronger than the attachment of the indigenous people to their lands, villages and cities. Teddy Kollek claimed, in his biography that, “Jerusalem meant less to the Arabs”41 While former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir claimed that “Jerusalem has a “political, national significance for Jews, as opposed to a religious, almost imaginative significance for Muslims and Christians.”42
Since the beginning of Zionist occupation of the West Bank, expropriation and annexation of Palestinian owned property was an ongoing process. Expropriation was carried out under various pretexts and for different purposes, but Palestinian land kept being robbed and plundered then annexed to Zionist settlements.
In his public speech against annexation, Israeli Advocate Michael Spharad stated the following:
Annexation is an elaborate and new mechanism that will enable the expropriation and dispossession and displacement of Palestinians at a scale and pace that we did not know. When East Jerusalem was annexed, thousands of properties were declared absentee property and thousands of dunams were expropriated for so-called “public purposes.” And who is the public who is in his best interests these properties were expropriated? Of course, settlers. This happened in East Jerusalem, and this will definitely happen in the territories annexed in the West Bank if there will be annexation.43
According to the writer Ali Kadri,
By 1983, the expropriation was calculated to extend over 52% of the territory, most of its prime agricultural land and, just before the 1993 Oslo Accords, these confiscations had encompassed over three quarters of the West Bank.44
Waqf Muslim property in the colonized West Bank was plundered by the Zionist colonial authorities. When Palestinian Muslims protested this plunder and demanded their return, the Zionist colonial authorities were ready to return a very small portion of the Waqf land.
This outright thievery by the Zionist authorities was affirmed by the Israeli researcher Uzi Tovia who reported the following fact.
Needless to say, representatives of Muslims in Jaffa and the other mixed cities received 1% of the total endowment assets scattered throughout the country, and were sold and/or transferred by the guardian to the Development Authority, which on its part sold them to a third party – the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Municipalities…45
Moreover, Uzi Tovia points out that the enactment of a number of land laws in Israel, is a reflection of the continued process of plunder and theft. These laws have led to the deteriorating share of the Palestinian citizens in the total lands under the control of the state of Israel.
As noted, the State of Israel enacted land laws that legitimized the nationalization and laundering of the absentee’s assets. Today, the of Nationality Law, the Kaminitz Law and the application of sovereignty in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley constitute the continuation of the theft and plunder. If the long-awaited peace reaches our country, then the State of Israel will tell the Palestinian refugees, the original landowners, that the possibility of returning the land to the absentee is legally impossible due to the large transfer of ownership of the land. Today, Israeli Arabs, who make up 21% of the population, control less than 3% of the country’s land. 97% of the land was taken out of their hands. Ben-Gurion was not satisfied with transferring ownership of the land registration, he wanted to change the registration in the consciousness as well: “We must also remove the Arabic names for political reasons. Just as we do not recognize the political ownership of Arabs in Israel, we do not recognize their spiritual ownership and their names,” he declared in 1949. 46
The Failed Policy of Demographic Containment
It should be emphasized that the present demographic situation of Palestinian cities, towns and villages is that of overcrowding, suffocation, lack of open spaces, and lack of plots of land for construction. This deplorable situation has been brought about by Zionist colonial policy of plunder of Palestinian owned land. The racist undertone of this policy could be clearly seen when we compare Palestinian residential localities with Jewish residential localities.
The Zionist regime realized that the policy of demographic containment of Palestinian citizens has failed. Palestinian citizens succeeded in infiltrating the all-Jewish cities of Nof Hagalil and Karmiel that were established specifically to contain Palestinian demographic expansion. Moreover, Palestinian citizens began to find solutions to their housing problems also inside neighbouring Jewish cities such as Haifa, Acre, and Afula. The failure of the Zionist racist policy of demographic containment was the direct result of the colonial policies of the massive land expropriations that took place in the fifties and sixties. By depriving the Palestinian Arab villages of their lands, the Zionist state has led to the creation of demographic overcrowding inside every Palestinian city and village. Available lands for housing and development have disappeared and land prices skyrocketed. Lack of available housing solutions drove lots of Palestinian citizens to migrate to the all-Jewish cities that have plenty of residential solutions.
Comparison Among Some Settler-Colonial Projects
When a comparison is conducted among the five settler colonial projects in the USA, Canada, French Algeria, South Africa and Israel – it would show a set of common similarities and another set of common differences.
Common Similarities
All settler colonial projects are based on the ideology of settler colonialism which produce the assumed racial superiority of the colonial settlers and the assumed racial inferiority of the indigenous population. Ultimately, this racial dichotomy leads to the dehumanization of the indigenous population. Its conduct towards the indigenous population cannot but reflect this ideology.
All settler colonialist projects begin their initial step by the destruction of the indigenous economy and the dissolution of indigenous societies. Then they begin the establishment of settler colonies on the plundered land of the indigenous population.
In their conduct, all settler colonial projects are motivated by the practice of segregation, walls, towers, fencing, closed zones, closed racist villages and racist ghettoes inside mixed cities.
Throughout its socio-political development, racist conduct becomes inherent in: law, courts, ministries, government agencies, official media, universities, the educational system, police treatment of indigenous population, land allocation, budget allocation, commerce, transportation and political narrative of its leaders.
These settler colonial regimes pursue an aggressive colonialist policy towards the indigenous population that gives no respect for their old traditions, religious beliefs and shrines.
The pursued colonialist policy does not recognize the previous regulations and laws that guided indigenous population prior to the advance of the aggressive settler colonial project.
Moreover, the pursued colonialist policy does not recognize the title of indigenous ownership for lands, whether private, public, or state. All indigenous lands are bound to be plundered by means of expropriation.
When faced with indigenous resistance, the leaders of the settler colonial project, the settlers, and the military agencies, resort to vicious violence, massacres, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Common Differences
When it comes to the differences, there are a number of differences that stem from: stages of the socio-economic development of the colonial metropolis, the degree of resistance paused by the indigenous population to the settler colonial project, and the end result of the settler indigenous conflict.
We could notice different degrees of “success” in three settler colonial projects such as in the United States of America, Canada and Australia. The settler colonial project “succeeded” in annihilating the Indigenous Population, through the use of ethnic cleansing, massive massacres and general genocide. According to Australian expert researcher on settler colonialism, Patrick Wolfe, the primary motive that stood behind annihilation was the following.
… Whatever settlers may say— and they generally have a lot to say—the primary motive for elimination is not race (or religion, ethnicity, grade of civilization, etc.) but access to territory. Territoriality is settler colonialism’s specific, irreducible element.47
Concluding Remarks
Apparently, Zionist legal-minded political leaders, lawyers, and jurists deeply thought about the proper cover and moral justification for the plundering of the property of Palestinian Arab refugees and citizens. All their efforts could not produce a suitable solution except the provision of a thin veneer of fake legality. But how can you justify outright thievery with laws? Only a racist frame of mind of some colonialists thought that such a fallacy could be convincing.
After seventy-three years of Zionist settler colonialism, one can conclude that the Zionist settler bourgeoisie did not even once plan to achieve genuine peace with its Arab neighbors or with the Palestinian Arab people. The Zionist settler bourgeoisie opted in 1948 for the plunder of refugee property and this option totally negated the establishment of a genuine peace.
All Zionist talk about their desire for peace and about the extended hand for peace of Zionist leaders are nothing but Zionist propaganda. The Zionists have never thought of achieving genuine peace because their hand was extended only to grab Palestinian Arab lands. They thought that being militarily powerful is a state that could last forever and they regarded the support provided by Western imperialism to be guaranteed forever. They also thought that the rising Arab resistance to Zionist settler colonialism can be forever contained and managed.
Finally, the Zionist regime cannot but be a settler colonialist regime. Its conduct regarding the indigenous population and indigenous land remains colonial and aggressive. This regime cannot change by itself, it becomes callous and more inhuman. It will deteriorate and become more vicious, more violent and more racist.
Zuhair Sabbagh is a Palestinian Arab author specialized in Palestinian, Israeli and Third World issues. He lives in Nazareth, Israel. He worked for 21 years as an academic at the Bir Zeit University, at the department of social and behavioral studies. He is a graduate of the University of Manchester and holds a Ph.D. in Political Sociology. He is author of a number of books and research articles.
1 Natalie Sedacca, “Sanctioning land expropriation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory – Israel’s new ‘Land Regularization Law’’, https://lphr.org.uk, 3-3-2017
2 Ibid.
3 Actually, Zionist ethnic cleansing did not start in 1948, but preceded that in many years. In 1907, a Zionist by the name of Yitshaq Epstein reported that Zionist settlers ethnically cleansed the Palestinian Arab residents of two villages, Al-Ja’uny and Al-Mtilli. Then Zionist settlers settled inside the evacuated Palestinian Arab houses. Moreover, Zionist ethnic cleansing did not stop in 1949, but still continues to this very day inside Israel’s June 4th., 1967 borders and also inside the colonized West Bank (ZS).
4 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the concept of laundering absentee property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
5 Proposal for absentee property ordinance on behalf of Justice Minister Felix Rosenblit to members of the government, dated 04/09/1948. As quoted by: Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
6 Report on operations until 31/03/1949 on behalf of the Custodian of Absentee Property, Ministry of Finance. As quoted by Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the concept of laundering absentee property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
7 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 As reported by “Kol Ha’am”, Voice of the People (in Hebrew), 3-2-1955. As was quoted by Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
11 A cabinet meeting regarding the sale of land to the JNF by the Development Authority, dated 05/10/1950. As quoted by: Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
12 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
13 Memorandum by Minister of Finance Kaplan regarding the consideration for land that goes to the JNF as part of the million Dunams, dated 22/01/1952. As quoted by: Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
14 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 The Hague Regulations of 1907, “CONVENTION RESPECTING THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND”, https://constitution.com. Retrieved on: 13-8-2021
18 Wikipedia, “Land expropriation in the West Bank”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 27-6-2021
19 Algazy, Joseph (Spring-Summer 1985). “Israeli Settlement Policy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” Arab Studies Quarterly, 7(2-3): 62-73 JSTOR 41857769, p.66. As quoted by: Wikipedia, “Land expropriation in the West Bank”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 18-8-2021
20 LeVine, Mark (2005). Overthrowing geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 184. As quoted by Wikipedia, “Ottoman Land Code of 1858”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 3-7-2021
21 Al-Bazz, Ahmad, “Settlers are seizing ‘empty’ land. The Palestinian owners are fighting back”, https://www.972mag.com, 7-1-2020
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 LeVine, Mark (2005). Overthrowing geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 184. As quoted by Wikipedia, “Ottoman Land Code of 1858”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 3-7-2021
26 Al-Bazz, Ahmad, “Settlers are seizing ‘empty’ land. The Palestinian owners are fighting back”, https://www.972mag.com, 7-1-2020
27 Wikipedia, “Land expropriation in the West Bank”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 27-6-2021
28 Halil Deligöz (2014). “The legacy of vakıf institutions and the management of social policy in Turkey”. Administrative Culture. Retrieved 15 September 2015. As quoted by Wikipedia, “Waqf”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 27-6-2021
29 The Hague Regulations of 1907, “CONVENTION RESPECTING THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND”, https://constitution.com. Retrieved on: 13-8-2021
30 Ehrenreich, Ben (2016). The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine. Granta Books. ISBN 978-1-783-78312-0, p. 292. As quoted by Wikipedia, “Land expropriation in the West Bank”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 27-6-2021
31 Ibid.
32 The Hague Regulations of 1907, “CONVENTION RESPECTING THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND”, https://constitution.com. Retrieved on: 13-8-2021
33 Ibid.
34 Hatem, Bazian, “Israel’s Grand Theft of Muslim Endowments in Jerusalem”, http://www.hatembazian.com, 3-2-2016
35 Ibid.
36 Joost R Hiltermann “Teddy Kollek and the Native Question,” Middle East Report 182 (May/June 1993).
37 The demolishment of the Moroccan Quarter, a copy reserved on Y-Pack Machine, 4-2-2012. As quoted by Wikipedia, “The Moroccan Quarter”, (in Arabic), https://ar.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 1-7-2021
38 Hatem , Bazian, “Israel’s Grand Theft of Muslim Endowments in Jerusalem”, http://www.hatembazian.com, 3-2-2016
39 The Jerusalem City Website, “54 years on the demolishment of the Moroccan Quarter, the Occupation continues to Judaize the place in order to conceal its history”, (in Arabic), https://www.alquds-city.com. Retrieved on: 10-6-2021
40 Ibid.
41 Kollek, Teddy, with Kollek, Amos, For Jerusalem: A Life (New York: Random House, 1978), p. 2. As quoted by Joost R Hiltermann “Teddy Kollek and the Native Question,” Middle East Report 182 (May/June 1993).
42 Jerusalem Post, May 24, 1990. As quoted by Joost R Hiltermann “Teddy Kollek and the Native Question,” Middle East Report 182 (May/June 1993)
43 Spharad, Michael, “Annexation is conquest and dispossession”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 8-6-2020
44 Kadri, Ali (Autumn 1998). “A Survey of Commuting Labor from the West Bank to Israel”. Middle East Journal. 52 (4): 517–530. JSTOR 4329251., pp. 517–518. As quoted by Wikipedia, “Land expropriation in the West Bank”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 27-6-2021
45 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
46 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
47 Wolfe, Patrick, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native”, Journal of Genocide Research, https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjgr20. Retrieved on: 18-8-2021
August 22, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, Zionism |
4 Comments
At the start it was not even a university, but Seneca College. Then it was the University of Ottawa. Then Carleton University, the University of Western Ontario, and the University of Toronto. Now it is almost every university in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The law faculty at McGill is also demanding it, presumably to save the university from expensive litigation (an implied threat, and one that strangely assumes that only one side of a debate can litigate in court). If it happens first in the United States, then almost immediately it is copied and pasted into policy in Canada. It is coming everywhere: mandatory vaccination for all faculty, staff, and students.
As a tenured, full Professor in Canada, it is my duty to encourage all faculty to be united in non-compliance with such measures.
Mandatory vaccination pressures are issued allegedly in accordance with “public health”. However, they are mandated through neither parliaments nor legislation, but are instead issued unilaterally by governments under the umbrella of “emergency measures”.
Typically, such vaccination mandates stipulate the following: faculty, staff, and students must show proof of full vaccination in order to access campus and perform their duties. If they do not do so (and some allow refusal only on grounds of medical or religious exemptions), then they must submit to still undefined special measures, such as frequent testing (perhaps twice each week, using rapid antigen tests), and masking at all times and in all spaces on campus.
This will be, for most Canadian faculty, the first if not the only real test of their integrity and dignity, and their purpose as scholars and intellectuals. It is absolutely essential that they not fail this test from the start.
It must be emphasized that this is not a position that can be taken only by non-vaccinated faculty. Action to prohibit and prevent discrimination, and actual abuses of human rights, is a stance to be taken by all faculty, whether fully vaccinated or not.
Rather than following the alternative science narrative tied to the private interests of pharmaceutical corporations and those of politicians, we should expect Canadian universities to encourage critical thinking that—as is now commonly endorsed and celebrated—“speaks truth to power”. This would be in line with Canadian universities’ many recent statements in support of social justice. To see these same universities immediately fail the first real test of their avowed commitments, is both shocking and disappointing.
In particular, mandatory vaccination pressures plainly and indisputably discriminate against employees who are members of particular religious and ethnic communities, in such a way and to such a degree that any claims to upholding “equity, diversity, and inclusivity” become completely unravelled. Not sustaining this commitment in one area, and expecting it to be sustained in other areas, is obviously neither credible nor tenable. Furthermore, the policy which imposes such discrimination is in direct violation of a number of laws and human rights codes, both here in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.
First, faculty should notify senior administrators that at no point, and under no circumstances, can they be compelled to involuntarily release any private information about their personal health status, whether they have been fully vaccinated or not. Such a mandate violates the rights of all, not just some. Such compulsion, that lies outside of the terms and conditions of employment as established by contracts or collective agreements, would be plainly illegal on a number of fronts, including violating existing laws as exist in Quebec and the rest of Canada. At no point when we were interviewed and then hired, were any of us informed of any health requirements to perform our jobs. Established policies for universities to maintain safe working environments place that burden on university administrations—they do not imply any demand for health screening and injection of faculty.
We should be particularly concerned about the apparent effort to pressure people into vaccination. As universities that staunchly uphold ethics in research, following federal requirements, this policy instead negates voluntary informed consent. Consent cannot be mandated, by definition. The policy also violates the principle of do no harm, by not advising members of the community that compliance with this policy could result in experiencing adverse effects, ranging from the mild and trivial, to serious injury requiring hospitalization, and in some cases even death. We have not seen any language warning about adverse reactions and possible death anywhere in the policy announcements.
The compulsion to vaccinate also runs afoul of legal provisions that prohibit discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, religion, and political beliefs.
What universities are also backing is an emergency measure, but they have not furnished any proof of an emergency. Rapidly spreading viruses are common to our university communities, as with each cold and flu that sweeps through a university population every year, even multiple times in a year. The condition of “rapid spread” and “contagiousness” is not, in and of itself, any basis for an “emergency”.
University administrations should rest assured that, as was usual, when employees develop any symptoms of any sickness, they will automatically refrain from coming to campus, as they have done when they had colds or the flu. Non-vaccinated faculty therefore represent no actual nor potential “threat” to the health of the community.
We must also point out that in the early fall of 2009, some Canadian faculty contracted H1N1, and in some cases they had to be absent from class for weeks. At no point did any university administration in Canada manifest any concern about this fact. It is important to recall that in 2009, the World Health Organization declared H1N1 to be a “global pandemic,” under the very same definition it then used for Covid-19. By enacting radically different measures today, Canadian universities are thus directly at odds with their own practice, from the recent past.
Second, if the consequence of non-compliance with such mandates are that faculty must undergo frequent testing—despite having no symptoms—then this would be unfair and discriminatory treatment based on assumed health status, and that too is illegal and lies outside of our terms and conditions of employment. Being a professor at a Canadian university has never been advertised as a position that comes with a health requirement, or a requirement for medical screening in order to perform one’s duties. Moreover, given that it is now solidly established that the fully vaccinated do carry as much viral load as the non-vaccinated, and do transmit the virus, to then subject one group of persons (assumed to be non-vaccinated) to testing, while exempting others, is obviously unfair discrimination.
One can only conclude that such a discriminatory bias is meant to punish a particular group, to hinder them in carrying out their daily work requirements, and to continue singling out healthy people as a problem. It is also obvious psychological harassment, and thus directly violates most Canadian universities’ own published workplace policies.
Before attempting to unilaterally transform the terms and conditions of employment, university administrations must at least sit down and negotiate with faculty unions. Over the past 18 months, we have seen professors suddenly required to work from home, which is work not required under existing terms and conditions of our employment—it is simply not in our job description, and most are not trained for online teaching. Conversely, we have now seen them barred from continuing remote delivery when this is their first choice. Now we see those who are assumed to be non-vaccinated being forced to undergo testing, regardless of symptoms, and regardless of possible natural immunity (which is irrationally and unjustifiably dismissed from this entire discussion).
The discriminatory testing requirement is thus another apparent legal violation, and it has no place at any Canadian university.
The announced policy is a violation of human dignity: it imposes psychological pressure through a regimen of punishment designed to make the performance of one’s ordinary work duties increasingly onerous and unsustainable. It reaches the point where we could argue that it constitutes a breach of contract.
The announced policy also demands that those who are assumed to be non-vaccinated (i.e., they do not furnish proof of full vaccination), must be visibly and publicly set apart from the rest of the community (i.e., masked where others are not masked). Given the prevailing mass psychosis that incites blame, disrespect, and even overt hatred against non-vaccinated persons, to make such non-vaccinated persons openly stand apart is to jeopardize their dignity and integrity.
Third, Canadian universities must not be pressured, and should not comply with any pressures that force their participation in a regime that violates human rights. As we are only now becoming aware of the real extent of atrocities committed at Canadian Residential Schools, which closed only in the late 1990s, Canadian educational institutions ought to be extremely wary of yet another wave of government demands for harsh, segregationist, and punitive measures in the name of “saving” people.
The administration of Canadian universities may reasonably respond that they are merely following government mandates. Any government mandate that is itself an extra-legal measure, imposed without legislative support, is not one that can be used to force a university into also violating either the law or human rights conventions established under international law, to which Canada is a signatory.
Any compliance by an individual with extra-legal extreme measures could also be read as tacit consent, which would then legitimize such measures which are backed neither by established laws, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms nor—it must be noted—are they backed by any scientific support.
The administrations of Canadian universities are best advised to be prudent, and on the right side of both the law and justice. They must immediately rescind any such policy issued under the heading of a vaccine mandate. They should also be aware that failure to do so exposes them to litigation from those at the receiving end of discriminatory treatment, not just from faculty and staff, but from an even larger number of students.
For any Canadian university to try to justify human rights abuses, because they are what the government ordered, is truly Nuremberg-worthy.
Fourth, any mandate must acknowledge that the burden of proof rests with those issuing, following, and enforcing the mandate. In particular, governments and university administrations in Canada must provide fully documented proof of the following—keeping in mind that widely spread fear is not proof of any emergency other than a psychological one:
(1) That there is indeed a current public health emergency, as an objective and verifiable medical fact, and not as an artifact of government decrees. The greatest number of hospitalizations and deaths in Canada occurred during the so-called “first wave” of March-May, 2020. There has been no repetition of those numbers since then. Even then, we are basing this on assumptions: we assume that people were infected with Covid-19, using flawed testing at a time when the virus had not been isolated, and when the amplification cycles were too high—and we did not follow WHO guidelines that advised against relying exclusively on PCR tests in making any clinical diagnosis. We also did not routinely conduct postmortems to establish the cause of death of most elderly victims in the spring of last year. On top of that, it has since come to light that even among those who were already close to the natural end of their lives, they were often subjected to starvation and dehydration—fear kept away many workers from nursing homes, which then resulted in the neglect of residents. We have also learned that, at least in Quebec, such elderly and frail patients were given morphine that suppressed respiration and which, in almost all cases, quickly resulted in death. Thus we do not yet know the exact size and nature of even the “first wave,” the worst and arguably the only real wave we had.
(2) That infection is spread only by the non-vaccinated. We now know definitively that the advertised “vaccines”—those in use in Canada—do not protect the injected from infection, nor do they stop them from spreading the virus, or even falling sick and dying from the virus. If the fully vaccinated can—and do—spread the virus, then any requirement for frequent and rapid testing must equally apply to them. Failure to do so is proof of discrimination on the basis of health characteristics.
(3) That by advertising the need for vaccination, that the university population is not being misled about the real protection such injectable products afford. Countries such as Israel, which vaccinated more fully and more quickly than Canada, are now witnessing a situation where the overwhelming majority of the infected are the fully vaccinated. In both Israel and the UK in recent weeks, the fully vaccinated account for the majority of Covid deaths. Without even speaking of death, which is extremely rare for anyone exposed to Covid—vaccinated or not—in both Europe and the US there are now several hundred thousand cases of serious adverse reactions. Universally it is acknowledged—even by the manufacturers themselves—that the effectiveness of these injectable products is declining to the point where any protection they might have offered increasingly drops to insignificant levels.
(4) That “cases” are a measure of anything significant. The term “cases” has been abused and distorted: anyone deemed to test positive for Covid-19, has been categorized as a “case”. This is despite the fact that they may have had no symptoms, or if they had symptoms they were mild and required no treatment. Typically a real case involves someone needing treatment as a patient, usually in a clinic or hospital. Therefore it needs to be proven that a rising number of so-called “cases” is any reason for extraordinary measures, especially when hospitalizations and deaths are but a tiny fraction of what they were during the first wave.
(5) That natural immunity is not real and does not matter. Nowhere in these mandates is there any language concerning natural immunity—natural immunity is assumed to not exist, or is assumed to be irrelevant. If those issuing, complying with, or enforcing such mandatory vaccination cannot address this scientific point, then the credibility of their entire argument collapses. On that basis alone, non-compliance would be fully justified and warranted.
(6) That healthy people can be assumed to be bearers of sickness. These workplace vaccine mandates all assume that healthy, even young and healthy people, who are not vaccinated are a “problem”. The healthy are assumed immediately and in advance to not only being actual or potential bearers of infection, but also being the sole bearers of infection, and of being solely infectious. Show the scientific support for this argument, and show it overcoming contrary scientific research.
(7) That the so-called “Delta variant” is in fact “more dangerous”. Being more contagious does not equal more danger of sickness and death, as attested to by published government data. Show the scientific proof for the fact that the Delta variant is a significant variation, not just one that varies by 0.3% of characteristics compared to the original Covid-19. Show the data that proves beyond a doubt that it causes more hospitalizations and deaths than the original Covid-19 ever did. Without this proof, the rationale for such mandates is null and void.
(8) That “herd immunity” can only be achieved with vaccination of 100% of a population. In particular, show the scientific support for achieving such immunity by using injectable products that confer no immunity at all. In addition, show the scientific support for the idea that herd immunity discounts natural immunity—see point #5 above.
If there is little or no scientific support for these positions, then there is no rational justification that warrants a mandate issued on medical grounds, in the name of safeguarding public health. In that case, the policy demands non-compliance and it must be rescinded.
If what remains is merely fear of danger, then in certain instances such fear of danger may in itself be a call for urgent psychological therapy or even psychiatric treatment. This is especially the case where fear is sustained in the absence of evidence or in denial of reality, and where it clearly does harm to the persons holding this fear, who then harm others (by issuing discriminatory mandates, for example).
It must also be recalled that during the height of the lockdowns, well before “vaccines” became available, and even before masking became mandatory, millions of Canadian workers operated in close quarters for long hours every day, and yet deadly outbreaks were few and far between. It remains to be shown why now, with vaccination and masking and numbers only a microscopic fraction of what they were, it is now necessary to go to extreme lengths to ensure 100% vaccination, using products that clearly cannot confer immunity. Such products are not only obviously and indisputably ineffective as tools of immunization, they can also be dangerous.
The announced measures, we already know, will do absolutely nothing to curb the spread of the virus. Knowing that means the policy is being followed for reasons not having to do with public health. We should thus reaffirm our commitment to non-compliance with this policy.
Lastly, if what universities really fear is exposure to litigation, then there is a very simple answer to this concern: ask all those who wish to access campus to sign a waiver that the university bears no responsibility for anyone who may become ill on campus (assuming it can even be proved they became ill on campus). If there is widespread fear of infection, a university could also allow for continued working and learning from home for those who prefer that option. Whatever the option may be, every possible option should be investigated without resorting to extreme and discriminatory measures that violate human rights and the rights of citizenship.
[Canadian faculty are encouraged to adopt and or adapt this statement, in whole or in part, for use in their individual institutional settings, and they can do so without formally crediting this statement, even though it is published under a Creative Commons license. French translation follows.]
DÉCLARATION DE NON-CONFORMITÉ À LA VACCINATION OBLIGATOIRE DANS LES UNIVERSITÉS CANADIENNES
August 22, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
1 Comment
Once upon a time in a prosperous land, a rumor swept across the kingdom that there was an invisible vapor floating through the air. Many vapors had come before, but this one was so extraordinary, it called for an extraordinary response.
This vapor, the town criers cried, could kill you at any time, anywhere. You could get it by talking, breathing, or singing. You could get it by standing or walking too closely to someone. You could even get it by playing. And the scariest thing of all—you could get it and not even know you had it.
The only way to escape was to hide indoors, keep away from people, and rub your hands with a clear jelly every time you touched something. Merchants stopped trading, apprentices stopped learning, and people stopped seeing people.
Every day, the town criers yelled out the number of people who had caught the vapor, although most didn’t know it since they felt the same as usual—just a lot more scared. They only learned they had it because of a certain spell a sorcerer had written down before the vapor came. The sorcerer had said it wasn’t supposed to be cast for vapors and couldn’t tell people if they had caught a vapor or not. But the sorcerer had died, and the king’s counselors decided to cast the spell, anyway, and that is how people found out they had the vapor.
The town criers shouted the latest death tolls so often their voices grew hoarse. Almost every one who died was very, very old or very, very sick or very, very fat. Hardly anyone else died, and at the end of the year, it would turn out about the same number had died as had in other years.
Still, it was a very scary vapor, and the entire kingdom had to change for the good of the public. The land was no longer prosperous, but the king just minted more coins and tossed them out to his subjects so they wouldn’t notice right away.
Eventually, people were told they could come out of hiding and the marketplace could open back up if everyone followed a few rules. They had to wear a hot, scratchy hat that covered their ears and eyes so the vapor couldn’t get into their earholes or eyeholes. They had to hop five times forward and five times backward if they accidentally got too close to another person. And, of course, they had to rub their hands with jelly after touching anything.
Some people thought the hats looked silly and were even a little dangerous since they made it hard for them to hear and see and made them sweat in the summer. The hopping took so much time, people weren’t able to get much done. When those people didn’t wear the hats or hop around, the rest of the people got very, very angry and said it was their fault people were dying and getting sick and couldn’t live the way they used to live. Some even took to wearing two or more hats for extra protection against the anti-hatters and anti-hoppers.
Every so often, the king would tell people to hide back inside again because too many people were catching the vapor. They couldn’t work or shop or visit people they loved. There wasn’t much to do besides lie around listening to the town criers, who always let people know how scared and angry and resentful they should all feel, especially toward the anti-hatters and anti-hoppers.
Suddenly, people started feeling more hopeful. A few witches who were richer than all the world’s kingdoms and queendoms combined offered to make a potion people would need to swallow every so often to keep them safe from the vapor—but it would only work if everyone drank it together.
It took a few months, but eventually the witches each had their own flavor—grape and orange and tropical punch—and they were ready to pour them into people’s mouths. Whenever potions had been made in the past, the witches had had to spend years and years making sure it was safe before giving it to people. This time, though, the vapor was so scary, they skipped all those steps so people could be saved sooner. They even got the king to issue a special decree so no one could hurt the witches if anything bad happened to them after drinking the potion. The king gathered three-quarters of the coins he had collected from the people that year and presented them to the witches.
Almost everybody couldn’t wait to drink the grape or orange or tropical punch potion. They bragged about going to get it and told everyone after they got their first and second drinks. When they came across someone who didn’t want to drink it, they got very, very cross. The town criers told everyone to yell at the anti-drinkers because it was their fault they couldn’t go back to life like it was before the vapor.
Something strange happened after people started drinking the potion. Some of them caught the vapor, anyway, but that was because it was a version of the vapor the witches hadn’t planned for—still, it was important to drink both doses of the potion because it was better than not drinking them. To be safe, though, the town criers said they should go back to wearing hot hats and hopping—although most hadn’t stopped to begin with because they were afraid of what would happen if they did (or worse, they might be mistaken for an anti-hatter, anti-hopper, or anti-drinker).
Even stranger, some of the people who had drunk the potion died either right after or not long after drinking it. Unlike the people who died from the vapor, these people were often very, very young or very, very healthy or very, very fit. The town criers never shouted about these deaths. If anyone brought it up, they called them an anti-hatter, anti-hopper, and anti-drinker.
Being an anti-drinker was the worst of all because everyone knows you need to drink to survive. If you’re against drinking the potion, you must surely be against drinking water, too, and we all know you can’t live without drinking water.
Not everyone who drank the potion died. Some just had peculiar things happen to their bodies. They shook all the time or got rare diseases or noticed parts of their bodies stopped working. They were bedridden or lame or hurt in different ways and couldn’t live the way they did before or even after the vapor. The town criers didn’t tell anyone about these people, either.
And then there were the drinkers who felt perfectly fine … for now. The potion had never been tried for longer than a few months, so no one was really sure what would happen in the next year or two or longer. It was also a different kind of potion than anyone had ever drunk before. This potion changed something inside you that could never be undone. People would also need to drink new versions of the potion every few months, and the king would need to continue giving three-quarters of the kingdom’s coins to the witches forever, or at least as long as the kingdom existed.
All the surviving drinkers were grateful to the witches and thanked them for saving their lives. They proudly displayed a mark on their chin that meant they’d drunk the potion. The ones who’d drunk it twice had two marks.
Those who didn’t have any marks were to blame for the kingdom’s problems. They weren’t permitted to shop in the marketplace or work or apprentice or take part in any public activities. They were shamed and shunned for being a threat to the people of the land. These people started to feel like they should leave the kingdom, but they weren’t allowed to travel without the double marks, and besides, all the other kingdoms and queendoms were the same as theirs, anyway. There wasn’t anyplace left where people weren’t afraid of the vapor and where they didn’t demand that everyone drink the potion.
Soon, the king decided the anti-drinkers were so dangerous, they would need to be locked in a dungeon until they agreed to drink the potion. They were free to choose whichever flavor they liked. If they decided not to drink, they would simply remain in the dungeon. It was entirely up to them.
One year passed, and then another. There were fewer and fewer people left in the kingdom. Eventually, so few people were left, the king could no longer collect enough coins to pay the witches. The rest of the kingdoms and queendoms around the world were in the same fix. They decided to join together into one king-queendom so they could collect enough coins to buy the potion.
After eight more years passed, there weren’t enough people left in all the world to cover the witches’ dues. The rulers decided everything that belonged to the people now belonged to the king-queendom. The people could still live in their hovels, but they wouldn’t own anything. They could earn their keep through labor—indeed, they might be put to work making the potion!
People no longer needed to decide what they wanted to do or be in life because the king-queendom would decide for them. People didn’t need to pay for anything because all the subjects got equally small amounts of the necessities. Everyone looked the same, acted the same, and thought the same.
Most people didn’t remember what it was like before the vapor. Some didn’t even know there was such a time.
The rulers, on the other hand, never wanted for anything. Nor did their friends, the town criers. The witches were the wealthiest of all—and deservedly so, as they had saved the world from the deadly vapor.
It wasn’t long before there were no more subjects. The rulers, the counselors, the town criers, and the witches had all the earth’s riches to themselves, and they lived happily ever after.
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August 22, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine |
2 Comments
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