That Arabs in Haifa faced mass expulsion by Israeli forces is categorically untrue, but it's the Guardian - by Adam Levick

...Despite a truce offer by the Hagana, personal reassurances from their chief liaison officer in Haifa that Arabs who stayed in the city “would enjoy equality and peace”, and a personal appeal by the city’s Jewish mayor asking them to remain, the Arab leadership chose to reject these overtures and facilitated, instead, a final evacuation.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
07 March '18..

We recently posted about an Evening Standard review of a play being performed at Finborough Theatre in London called Returning to Haifa. Though the review noted that the play was based on a novel by a Palestinian named Ghassan Kanafani, who they refer to as an “acclaimed Palestinian writer” killed by the Mossad, it failed to mention that Kanafni was a high-ranking member of the PFLP terror group – a fact which would help readers understand why the “writer” was targeted by Israel.

Though we complained to editors about the omission, the piece has not been amended.

A Guardian review of the play published the same day similarly fails acknowledge Kanafni’s terror background, and, more importantly, misleads on the historical context of the play.

Here’s the sentence in question by Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington:

The play shows a Palestinian couple returning to Haifa in 1967 in search of the house and son they were forced to abandon 20 years previously during mass evictions by Israeli forces.

Were their “mass evictions” of Haifa’s Arabs by “Israeli forces”, as the Guardian suggests?

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The Real Story Begins: One Week After Haifa’s Fires - by Sheri Oz

...There was no rancour in the tone of anyone with whom I spoke. Not a representative random sample, I know. But the feeling in the air was: we will overcome! The blackened hills made me feel sick to my stomach, but you could see the preparations for renewal and rejuvenation and I could almost imagine the budding new branches that will poke their way out when spring comes in a few months....Give us time to lick our wounds, orient ourselves and wake up to a new day. We ARE a stiff-necked people, stubborn as Hell.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
01 December '16..








Haifa’s fire story, like Israel’s story, is one of renewal and rebuilding. The fire totally destroyed over 500 homes, leaving over 1500 residents with no place to return as the city got the all clear. But that is only where this story begins. The blackened patches of earth will not stay black forever and the homes will be rebuilt. This is the first article in a series.

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I live in a neighbourhood in Haifa that was not affected by the fire and I was on a trip to the Negev while parts of the city I love were going up in flames. I returned after calm had been restored and those who could, were returning to their homes, while those who could not, had to start piecing their lives together out of the ashes. On Wednesday morning, November 30th, a week after the fires had started, I decided to drive around the city and see what footprints the fire had left on Haifa.

Driving up to the French Carmel for my Pilates session from Bat Galim, where I live, was no different yesterday than any other time I had ever gone by that route. Just about every road longer than a couple of blocks curves its way around the contours of the hills on which Haifa grew. And around each curve is a new vista, whether that is a view of the Mediterranean Sea or of the valleys between the hills, or of the the coastal plain that reaches from the beach and deeper east and north of Haifa to other towns and cities. It is a city-with-a-view-from-almost-anywhere.

After Pilates class, I drove toward Old Romema, one of the places the fire had struck. As soon as I neared the last roundabout before reaching Pica Street, a major road connecting several neighbourhoods, I thought I smelled the smell of a dead fire. A campfire leaves a very slight dead-fire odour when you extinguish it and this was unmistakable. At the same time, I wondered if I was just imagining it, if my mind was playing tricks on me. The fire had been out for days . . . was it possible for the smell to linger this long?

I was soon to discover that, whereas each curve in Haifa’s roads generally brings a new view, it was now either to bring a new smell that would forewarn me of the blackened hills I was about to see or a clean smell that made it seem there were never any fires at all....

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Haifa's enormous heart

...I will never forget my elderly neighbors (many of whom had moved to Haifa from Germany during the 1930s), who volunteered, without hesitation, for Haganah missions ahead of the establishment of the state. Their generous hearts and their willingness to give to others, even during a time of austerity, will remain forever seared in my memory. That time may have long since faded into oblivion, but it left its mark on Haifa, helping shape its modest nature, as well as its ability to face any challenge and its willingness to pay the necessary price for defending the homeland.

Prof. Abraham Ben-Zvi..
Israel Hayom..
23 July '14..

During his life, Nissim Sean Carmeli was not a familiar figure to the Israeli public. He moved to Israel at the age of 16, completed high school, and enlisted in the IDF, serving in the Golani Brigade. On Sunday, Carmeli fell in battle in the Gaza Strip.

Despite his anonymity in life, Carmeli's death turned him into the focus of a huge wave of love, warmth and
solidarity from the residents of Haifa, who identified with his spirit of volunteerism and self-sacrifice, as well the righteousness of the nation to which he decided to tie his fate. Tens of thousands of people attended Carmeli's funeral, demonstrating that underneath Haifa's quiet and sleepy facade lies a layer of perseverance and moral commitment, which burst out in an impressive and powerful display of unity and cohesion.

Shamah - World’s largest, most advanced underground hospital opens in Haifa

David Shamah..
The Times of Israel..
08 June '12..

The world’s largest and most advanced “fortified hospital” was unveiled this week at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. The 2,000 bed underground hospital is designed to keep patients and staff safe dozens of meters below ground even if missiles and rockets are falling above ground – in case the city ever faces the kind of attack it did during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. It is also designed to keep out chemical or biological weapons.

Missile attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas were the impetus behind the construction of the Sammy Ofer Northern Regional Underground Emergency Hospital at the campus of Rambam. Over the past decade, missile attacks have devastated both the far north and south of Israel. During the war in 2006, and during “hot” periods over the past decade in southern Israel when Hamas terrorists have dispatched dozens of weapons a day against targets in the Negev, both Rambam and Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon (where a similar, but smaller underground facility is under construction) were forced to move essential operations underground.

The new facility ensures that caregivers will have all the equipment and tools they need to continue caring for patients, and to deal with the influx of patients likely to need treatment in the event that the hospital goes “on line.”

The Palestinians lied

Hagai Segal
Israel Opinion/Ynet
08 January '10

“We gave up Haifa, so now you should give up Nablus” – this is how senior Palestinian figure Sufian Abu Zeida’s speech at an academic conference in Jerusalem was summed up on the radio.

Seemingly, this is so logical and so symmetric. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may even make use of the very same idea himself, just like many other Palestinian ideas, when he delivers his speech in Washington in two years on the occasion of signing the final-status agreement with the Palestinians: “You gave up Haifa, and we gave up Nablus.”

However, there is a hidden factual flaw in Abu Zeida’s words: The Palestinians never gave up Haifa. In fact, they lost it.

In 1948, our neighbors rejected the United Nations’ proposal on partitioning the land and instead planned to take Haifa by force. At the last moment, something went wrong with their plans, and they ended up without Haifa.

Moreover, there is yet another factual flaw in Abu Zeida’s words: The State of Israel has already given up Nablus. On December 12, 1995, we lowered our flag in the town and went on to hand it over to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Yasser Arafat.

Deal will prompt more rockets

At the time, he promised us peace and quiet in exchange for Nablus. America also made the same pledge. On paper at least, everything was working out very well. The basic assumption those days was that the Palestinians are shelving their dream to return to the 1948 borders, while we are gradually giving up the land of our forefathers at the back of the Mount Hebron area.

By now, it is already clear that the Palestinians lied. The Haifa challenge continued to preoccupy them. They blew up buses on Haifa’s Carmel Mount and restaurants downtown.

Even our decision to renounce the Gaza Strip did not prompt them to give up anything, as can be attested to by residents of Sderot, Ashkelon, Netivot, and other southern Israel communities.

(Read full article)
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