THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN MERHAV

2007-09-10T05:09:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER 13 : INVESTIGATING THE TRAP OF PSYCHIATRY WHERE THE ZIONIST GESTAPO STILL HAS MY DAUGHTER AND MY SON CRUSHED BY THE SHRINKS

The June 1996 issue of my newsletter is titled,The Deliberate Crushing of My Family By The Zionist Gestapo and The Failed Attempts By The zionist Gestapo To Stop Me Exposing Zionist Crimes, and it includes brief accounts of the background and the events which led to the crushing of my daughter first, and then of my son. My attempts to get my daughter and my son out of the psychiatric trap have been going on, simultaneously, together with my study and investigation of psychiatric theory and psychiatric practice, and I came up with some very disturbing and very alarming conclusions.

If I am to present my conclusions on my own, by myself, I would have a very scant chance of pursuading anybody or of being believed. Therefore, I need to bring the testimony of qualified and experienced psychiatrists from the USA, and that of a doctor of science from Australia, and to present their conclusions in their own words. Let us begin with the late Dr. Loren R.Mosher(visit his websitewww.moshersoteria.
com/bio.htm), a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine, University of California at San Diego, USA.
In a letter dated 12/4/1998 to the President of the American Psychiatric Association, the professional body to which all USA psychiatrists belong , Dr. Mosher opens with the following words :

"After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture of pleasure and disappointment
that I submit this letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association."

He then proceeds with an attack on the American Psychiatric Association (APA) as follows :

"This is not a group for me. At this point in history, in my view, psychiatry has been almost completely bought out by the drug companies."

Then his conclusion :

"So, do I want to be a drug company patsy who treats molecules with their formulary ? No, thank you very much. It saddens me that after 35 years as a psychiatrist I look forward to being dissociated from such an organisation."

The next American psychiatrist to be quoted here is Dr. Peter Breggin who describes the link between the psychiatric profession, the drug corporations, the government, and even the parents of the patients as follows :

TOXIC PSYCHIATRY, by Peter Breggin,HarperCollins,London,1993
at p. 451 :

"What we have been examining is a giant combine similar to the military-industrial complex and involving the psychiatric profession (APA), government (NIMH and FDA), private industry (drug companies and health insurers), education (medical schools),and organisations representing the parents of patients (NAMI and other family groups)."

Here is what he says about the psychiatric profession there at p. 453 :

"Implicit in all this is the reality that organised psychiatry is big business more than it is a profession. As a big business, managed by APA and NIMH, it developes media relationships, hires PR firms, developes its medical image, holds press conferences to publicise its products, lobbies on behalf of its interests, and issues 'scientific reports that protect its members from malpractice suits by lending legitimacy to brain- damaging technologies."

In his book, Your Drug May Be Your Problem (Perseus Books,Massachusetts, 1999) Dr. Breggin describes the role of the media in promoting and protecting psychiatry as follows :

YOUR DRUG MAY BE YOUR PROBLEM, by Peter Breggin, Perseus Books,Massachusetts,1999
at p. 108 :

"The media have become very protective of psychiatry - especially of psychiatric drugs. Except for occasional exposes...the media tend to publish testimonials to drugs while omitting their hazards. Books critical of psychiatric drugs are rarely reviewed in major newspapers and magazines and rarely discussed on television...In 1998 alone, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent over $ 1.3 billion for direct-to-consumer advertising in television, magazines, and newspapers. We anticipate that the total will continue to increase and that the media will become increasingly protective of their benefactors."

"Doctors fail to inform patients about the dangers of medications in part because they themselves are not fully informed. Many doctors rely too heavily on biased drug company advertising and sales representatives, and even the more skeptical among them are bombarded with information skewed in favour of drugs. Furthermore, medical educational and scientific programs are almost always funded by drug companies and, not surprisingly, tend to promote their drug products."

Dr. Richard Gosden, an Australian scientist, in his book, PUNISHING THE PATIENT How Psychiatrists Misunderstand and Mistreat Schizophrenia (at page 184) mentions the use of psychiatry as a punishing or harassing tool . As an example he brings up the harassment of whistleblowers in Australia as follows :

"An investigation into the harassment of whistleblowers in the Australian Federal Police (AFP) found 'four relevant instances since 1992 where the AFP has arranged for officers to undergo inappropriate psychiatric assessments, either under duress, or without their knowledge and consent.'
The support group Whistleblowers Australia is conducting a continuing survey of its members to discover how many have been treated in this way. It has found that many of them have received psychiatric diagnoses, ranging from non-specific conditions such as cognitive dysfunction to personality disorders and schizophrenia."

As for the psychiatric profession, and especially its links with the drug corporations, here are Dr. Gosden's findings in his above book (Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2001) at pp. 92 - 93 :

"Like the psychiatric profession, the pharmaceutical industry has strong commercial interests in ensuring the continued dominance of the medical model for schizophrenia. The medical model provides the rationale for drug therapy and ,in turn, the pharmaceutical industry provides an extensive range of neuroleptic drugs from which prescribing psychiatrists can choose. In the United States the pharmaceutical industry openly funds the main psychiatric professional organisation, the American Psychiatric Associastion, which receives '30% of its total budget from drug company advertising in its many publications' :
'Pharmaceutical companies pay through the nose to get their message across to psychiatrists across the country. They finance major symposia at the two predominant annual psychiatric conventions, offer yummy treats and music to conventioneers, and pay $ 1000- $2000 per speaker to hock their wares. It is estimated that, in total, drug companies spend an average of $10,000 per physician, per year, on education.'

The pharmaceutical industry also selectively funds scientific research into the side effects of neuroleptic drugs, as well as research and development of new products. Drug company sponsorship of clinical trials is a major source of revenue for many psychiatric researchers. This flow of Money provides strong incentives for further promotion of the medical model, but it also casts doubt on the quality of the findings :

'This spring, the New York Post revealed that Columbia University has been cashing in. Its Office of Clinical Trials generates about $10 million a year testing new medications - much of which is granted to the Columbia Psychiatric Institute for implementing these tests. The director of the institute was being paid $140,000 a year by various drug companies to tour the country promoting their drugs.'

Pharmaceutical companies advertise their products in psychiatric journals, often alongside scientific research reports in the same areas of treatmentfor which their own drugs are being recommended. Because these drug companies are being driven by the normal market concerns for the promotion of product sales, there is often a certain amount of confusion concerning the difference between scientific findings and sales promotion."

In his above book he Dr. Gosden points out the role of the relatives of the patients in the promotion of drug treatment by psychiatrists as follows ( at pp. 94-95 ) :

"The importance of relatives as an interest group lies in their closeness to the problems that rise when a person manifests unusual thoughts and beliefs. It is usually the relaives who are the first to know when a family member begins to experience unusual mental phenomena. They are often alarmed at a sudden change in the person, and frequently become confused and fearful about the situation - fearful both for themselves and for the person displaying the symptoms. The first inclination of relatives is to seek help and advice, and this is readily available from the medical profession. Relatives usually see themselves as managing a crisis situation, and medical treatment can be highly attractive because it quickly pacifies the person and provides a casual explanation of 'disease' which satisfies normal scrutiny.
In the United States, the consumer lobby is well organised, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) operates nationally and has more than 220,000 members. NAMI's enthusiasm for lobbying on behalf of the medical model is encouraged by large donations from drug companies :

'The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, which is pushing to have mental health laws rewritten so that people can be involuntarily hospitalised for refusing to take their medications, received nearly $1 million in 1995 from more than 13 drug companies.'
Since 1995, NAMI's drug company funding has increased dramatically. The magazine Mother Jones recently did an expose' of this development :

'According to internal documents obtained by Mother Jones , 18 drug firms gave NAMI a total of $11.72 million between 1996 and mid-1999. These include Janssen ($2.08 million), Novartis ($1.87 million), Pfizer ($ 1.3 million), Abbot Laboratories ($1.24 million), Wyeth-Ayerst Pharmaceuticals ($658,000), and Bristol-MyersSquib ($613,505).
NAMI's leading donor is Eli Lilly and Company, maker of Prozac, which gave $w.87 million during that period. In 1999 alone, lilly will have delivered $1.1 million in quarterly instalments, with the lion's share going to help fund NAMI's 'Campaign to End Discrimination' against the mentally ill.' (Emphasis added)

Dr. Gosden points out that the situation in Australia is very similar to that in the USA, if not worse than there, because Australia is being used as testing ground for the USA market. Here is what his above book states at p.238 :

"...early-psychosis research and intervention programmes are driven by funding and lobbying from the pharmaceutical companies that have recently launched atypical neuroleptics onto the market (the neuroleptic drugs are dubbed by the shrinks as "anti-psychotic medications", and they carry very heavy health risks for the patients who are forced to take them - B.M.). The objective of these pharmaceutical companies is to expand the market for their new drugs. The size of the existing market for palliative treatment of the psychotic and post-psychotic stages of schizophrenia is limited by diagnostic conventions. But the size of the market for for prophylactic treatment of pre-psychotic schizophrenia is open-ended. Austrlia figures prominently in this strategy because it is being used as a testing ground for the idea of preventive medicine for schizophrenia. This is in preparation for the introduction of full- scale preventive medicine campaigns in the much larger markets of North America and Europe."

2007-09-10T04:44:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER TWELVE : THE DEFEAT OF THE ZIONIST MOVES TO SILENCE ANY OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM IN AUSTRALIA, AND ATTEMPTING TO HELP MY SON AND MY DAUGHTER OUT OF THE TRAP

The Racial Vilification Bill was the original title of the document which the zionist lobby in Australia had the Australian Labor Party push through the federal parliament in an attempt to silence by law opposition to zionism in Australia. Concocted by the zionist lobby in late 1993 the bill was not intended to combat racism. The name of the bill (it would later be changed to The Racial Hatred Bill) - both the original and the later name - is a misnomer, because it could not ,and it was not meant to be ,a bill to combat racism of any kind.

Thus, for example, section 60 (incitement of racial hatred) of the proposed amendment to the Crimes Act (an amendment which is part of the bill) could not be effective against racist offenders. Instead it would have punished people who are opposed to racism for publishing articles which expose zionist crimes, for example. Which is why The Victorian Council for Civil Liberties had presented the government with a submission which opposed the R.H. Bill. Mr. R. Richter, QC, its president, wrote a letter to the editor of The Australian ridiculing the bill. Under the title, This Message to Racists is Strange (see The Australian,29 March,1995), the letter goes to say that "the Racial Hatred Bill would make it harder to secure a conviction (of a racist offender)."

In other words, the proposed zionist bill would encourage racism rather than combat it. The inevitable conclusion must be that the purpose of the zionist bill was to encourage racism and to punish any opposition to zionism !

Eventually the zionist bill was shelved ( in the wake of the protest by the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties) and nothing was heard about it since. However ,the question remains : what opposition to zionism in Australia was the bill supposed to silence ? It is my question because I am the only person in Australia who has publicly opposed and exposed zionist crimes, and my articles have bothered the zionists for many years now. So much so that to silence me the zionist lobby was going to deceive the entire Australian public with a bogus bill which the zionist lobby had pushed hard to make it law by the Australian federal parliament under the pretence of combating racism. So all the fuss, all the zionist propaganda lies, and all the noise which accompanied them - all that for the purpose of silencing one person who dares to speak out and tells the truth about zionism to people.

What does that scandal prove ? It proves that zionism is on the slide into history's rubbish tip, where zionism belongs , and that nobody can stop that slide, which is why the zionist scandal was exposed and disposed of.

I had my share, of course, in defeating that zionist bill. I had produced several newsletters on the subject, and I posted them out to as many orgnisations and individuals as I could,and I was rather happy to see the zionist bill defeated in the Senate. As I said, nothing was heard about the bill since.

During my investigations and search for a way out of the trap for my son I discovered that the problem of cult/sect indoctrination is a worldwide problem, and it is not that much different from the problem of psychiatry. Which explains why it has been so easy for the zionist Gestapo to trap and crush first my dauhghter, then my son. I read books which convinced me that the crushing of my son is very similar to many other cases of victimisation by cults/sects, especially in the USA. I then found out that in Australia there is an organisation called CultAware, and I wrote to them. They replied by sending me some brochures with information about cults methods. There I read the following passage under the title, What Happens to People in Cults :
"Remaining in the strict mental and social confines of a cult for even a short time can have the following disastrous effects on the convert :

- Loss of free will and control over one's life ;
- Reduced capacity to form flexible and intimate relationships ;
- Impaired capacity to form judgements and to think;
- Hallucinations, panic, guilt, identity confusion, paranoia, and dissociation in some groups ;
- Occasional neurotic or suicidal tendencies ;
- Involuntary slavery ;
- Severe psychosomatic disorders and damage to general health ;
- The convert's potential for adjusting back to normal life after leaving the cult deteriorates."

As if his crushing by the zionist cult is not enough the shrinks (with the support of mother) further crush my son with some potent "anti-psychotic" drugs. The result is that both my son and my daughter do not have the slightest chance to return to normal life and to rebuild their shattered lives, and without the cooperation of their mother I have no way to help them get out of the trap. Yet I remain optimistic because during my life so far I have learnt how remove mountains too...

One of next chapters in this biography will be dedicated to the opposition to the psychiatric drugs ( as well as to electric shocks) "treatment" within the psychiatric profession, and to show how the real issues are not medical, as the shrinks would have us believe, but rather political. Also, we shall see the link between the transnational drug corporations (with their billions of dollars annual profits )and the psychiatric profession, and how one industry is feeding the other. All that at the expense and to the detriment of the world's people, particularly to the detriment of the consumers of those drugs who are, of course ,the main victims.

2007-09-10T01:39:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN : MY RETURN TO MELBOURNE, AND THE CRUSHING OF MY SON BY THE ZIONIST GESTAPO

Before recounting my return to Melbourne I should mention here an episode which had reminded me of the fact that the zionist Gestapo was on my back during my visit to Israel. The episode concerns my stepfather's collaboration with the zionist Gestapo against me.

Briefly, about a week before leaving Israel ,my mother told me she had stashed away some $3,000, which she had secretly saved over the years, and she wanted me to take it with me the next day. Upon my arrival the next day I found my mother sobbing as she apologised for not having the money she promised because it has been taken away from her by her husband after forcing her to give her money to him. What transpired is that the home of my mother was, apparently, bugged by the zionist Gestapo just prior to my arrival in Israel, with daily recording and checks of my conversations there. As a result, when they recorded my mother's intention to give me her money they immediately let her husband know that. Hence his swift robbery of her money. The zionist Gestapo's bugging also explains my stepfather's "generosity" when accepting my stay at his and my mother's home.

Another episode, which proves that the zionist Gestapo had not only been on my back but had been also poisoning others with hatred towards me, was my visit to a childhood friend in Rehovot. That childhood friend had known me for over 20 years, since the age of 10. When visiting him his wife confessed to me that she had heard that I "work for the PLO", which is why they had not answered my letters to them. They also refused to let me meet their son (for fear that I could influence him), and my friendship with them was no more by the time I left for Melbourne.

It was a bright cool morning , Friday morning 4 August, 1989, when I got off the plane at Melbourne airport. I left my luggage at Spencer Street railway station then took the tram to the central post office where I had a pleasant surprise in front of my eyes. There, on the G.P.O. steps, were placards denouncing the Tien-An-Men massacre which occured in China exactly two months earlier. Already in Israel, when I heard about the murderous Deng Xiao-Ping regime assault on its own people, I was shocked. My heart and soul were with the heroic youth of China who rose in rebellion against their own rulers. However, in Israel nobody cared, and I was rather happy to meet people who cared on my return to Melbourne.

My first aim (and duty) was to inform people here about the intifada. After visiting my daughter I contacted newspapers, particularly students' magazines, to offer them the information I had about the heroic intifada and about the failed attempts by the zionist apartheid regime of Israel to suppress it. For 3 months I did my best to publicise the news from occupied Palestine but had very limited success. Only one daily paper, The Herald, published of a summary of an interview with me. And only one radio station, 3 CR , played back parts of an interview with me. Only one students' newspaper, Rabellais of Latrobe University, published an interview with me.

As for my daughter we had a long and serious talk about the future, and about her own self -esteem without which she won't be able to achieve anything for rebuilding her future. However, her mother was the biggest obstacle in her way to a better future for herself. The mother not only supported anything the shrinks said and did to daughter, she actually pushed them to intensify the horrible psychiatric drugs "treatment". This mother has had a way to persuade daughter too. If daughter disagreed ,or even became angry ,by her mother's attitude ,the mother would fake a "suffering mother" kind of reaction, making the sensitive daughter feel guilty, as if it is not herself who is suffering but her beloved mother. Consequently, any attempt by daughter to assert herself, or even just to maintain her self -esteem , and to defend her human rights would be doomed by the mother.

Susequent to my intervention daughter was finally allowed , during the second half of 1990, to be discharged from the looni bin. However, she had to live with other patients under psychiatric control. Nevertheless, it was a step forward for daughter. Her next step forward would be to live in her own home, independently, like any other adult.

The years 1990-91 marked the beginning of what the newsmedia called ,"The Gulf Crisis" or "The gulf War". The term was coined by the USA rulers. In plain language it was the first direct USA rulers' military aggression in the Middle East . The second one occured during 2003, of course. Before those two aggressions Western aggressions in the Middle East had been carried out by the zionist apartheid regime of Israel. Thus, the Suez aggression against Egypt - when the zionist invading army carried out the main part of the aggression by invading the Sinai Peninsula - followed by the zionist invasion of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in 1967, followed by the zionist invasion of Lebanon in 1982, all had been carried out by the rulers of Israel in collusion with the West, mainly the USA rulers. This time the direct target was Iraq's oil, therefore, necessary to prevent the Arabs from uniting to defend themselves against the new aggression, therefore the State of Israel could not be used. Hence "Gulf War One " during 1991, and "Gulf War Two" during 2003. The zionist rulers of Israel had wanted the USA direct invasion of Iraq to take place ,as it had eliminated one of the staunchest allies of the Palestinians.

As for the Kuwait issue - the capture of Kuwait by Iraq being the official cause for the military aggression against Iraq in 1991 - it certainly was no justification for war against Iraq, and this is so for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was an internal Arab dispute, and as such it should have been left to the Arab League to decide upon. Secondly, what Iraq did to Kuwait was a small aberration compared to the horrendous zionist invasions of Arab countries in 1956, 1967, 1982 and the present zionist invasion and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip regions of Palestine. Thirdly, as for the role of the UN Security Council, there is no other country in the world that is as a rogue state as the State of Israel is with its numerous violations of UN resolutions (including 29 Security Council resolutions). The Golan Heights of Syria, for example, have been under zionist occupation since 1967, and in open violation of Security Council resolutions.

This outrageous military aggression against Iraq prompted me to write my first series of articles to explain zionism and to expose zionist crimes. The series, which includes 150 articles/newsletters, had been going on until 1997, for six and a half years. The purpose of the articles/newsletters was to expose zionism and its crimes thereby helping people to get rid of the zionist propganda lies and distotions to which they have been subjected for so many years now, causing confusion and misjudgements.

In the meantime the zionist Gestapo was brewing a new disaster for my family. This time the victim would be my son, Israel. One year younger than his sister he had been a very bright student, an excellent sportsman with many friends around him. Since I brought up my children on humanitarian principles, and away from anything to do with zionism, my son's curiosity regarding his native country increased following the visit of my mother during 1977, and he decided to pay her back a visit ten years later, only ten months before my own visit there. At the time it did not occur to me that his visit would lead him straight into the zionist Gestapo's trap, but I did warn him nonetheless that it is not safe for him to go there. During his visit to his gandmother in late February 1987, and while he was walking and exploring the streets of Tel-Aviv, he "bumped into" missionaries of the Lubavitch Chassidic sect, notorious for its messianic and fanatically zionist politics. It has been also notorious for its work for and with the zionist Gestapo (such as hard drugs trade and money laundering in the USA and elsewhere).

The sect's missionaries won't live him alone even after his return to Sydney, where he had been a student at the University of New South Wales. I was not aware of the absolute indoctrination he was undergoing by this contemptible zionist sect, and when I would find out it would be too late. Around September 1991, accepting an invitation by the sect to visit their headquarters in New York, he travelled to the USA for the only purpose of visiting the sect's headquarters there. Upon his arrival there he was "instructed" to go on a long fasting ( without taking any liquids) which would have killed him as a result of dehydration. However, as soon as he followed their instructions they had him certified and on the spot "diagnosed" as mentally ill. His mother had to travel there to get him back to Australia , but she put him here too in a psychiatric hospital, because that is what she was told to do by the shrinks there.

In actual fact what my son needs is not psychiatric "treatment" but to be deprogrammed - to undo the programme which was implanted in his subconscious to self -destruct . But all my efforts in this direction have been frustrated so far by the shrinks (who still have the full support of the mother).

2007-09-10T01:19:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER TEN : IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE INTIFADA IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE

I had left Melbourne for Tel aviv on the 22nd of October, 1987, for my first visit to my native country in 20 years. My old mother was at the airport and we travelled to her home by taxi. She insisted that I should stay at her place assuring me that she had reached an agreement with her husband to let me stay at her place for the duration of my visit, and I obliged.

Combined with physical exercises on the nearby beach I began a very busy schedule of phone calls, meetings, etc. My first contact was Yael Lotan, who together with my mother was at the airport for the welcome. The literary editor of a zionist daily she would write every now and again articles critical of the government's policies. Only later would I really know her, and until then I had placed unduly hopes on and too many expectations of her. We began our contact by corresponding during the campaign for Vanunu, as she was the chairperson for the Israeli committee for Vanunu. However, as it turned out ,the only bright spot about her was her former marriage to an African-American. But that was her only anti-zionist act. All the rest about her was loyalty to zionism, or even to fanatical zionism.

The one Israeli I was really looking forward to meet was Udi Adiv. I saw him as an Israeli who dared to challenge the zionist apartheid regime of Israel by actually volunteering to fight shoulder to shoulder with the Arab people of Palestine, the main victims of that regime.He was arrested by the zionist Gestapo upon his return from Syria in 1974. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment, but released after 12 years on condition that he will not be involved in politics for the rest of the term. A committed Marxist-Leninist he had believed in a socialist revolution in the Middle East. Now, upon meeting him for the first time, we exchanged views and became friends. He helped me to get in touch with Lea Tzemel, the Israeli lawyer in Jeusalem whose legal practice was based on the defence of Palestinian prisoners.

Since my name was still on the list of members of the Israel Bar, i.e. I was still considered a qualified lawyer in Israel, I had no trouble restarting practice as a lawyer in Israel. However, the Israel Bar Association demanded of me some $2000 as a backlog of dues. I appealed and eventually won and my debt was cancelled. Yet the most formidable hurdle was still in front of me, namely, the need to update and renew my knowledge of the law in Israel after 20 years of legal abstinence and actual absence from the country. There were,of course, many other hurdles in front of me, such as my politics and no financial or social backing, but I remained optimistic.

I had a friendly meeting with Lea Tzemel at her home in Jerusalem. At that early stage of our acquaintance I fully trusted her both as a comrade and as a colleague. I therefore accepted her recommendation to work for a certain lawyer ( who she said was a good friend of hers). However, only after a few months work at that lawyer's office I would discover that he was a fanatical zionist. He was actually a senior member of a fanatically zionist political party. Also , I would discover to my horror that Tzemel actually considered me not as a comrade but as a competitor lawyer, albeit I was only at the early stages of relearning my trade, and was looking forward to her as a teacher as well as a comrade. At the beginnig I was working for her for no pay at all. Thus, for example, during the months of December 1987 and January 1988 - later to be known as the first days of tthe intifada - there had been a sudden increase in mass arrests, which required of me to rather frequently appear before Magistrate's Courts on behalf of Palestinian detainees , and we had also plenty of visits to the zionist military prisons. However, I was rewarded personally because it allowed me direct contact with the heroic sons of Palestine.

After 7- 8 months work for Tzemel and for the fanatically zionist lawyer friend of hers I considered myself ready to practice as an independent lawyer. Also, I had to find my own residence because my stepfather had been pressing my old mother to get rid of me as I won't obey his orders. So I moved out to a rented flat in Ashkelon, some 30km north of Gaza, and I began work for detainees in Gaza prisons and concentration camp (Ansar 2). As the intifada intensified the Ashkelon bus to Gaza would terminate no further than the Erez Checkpoint for fear of attacks, and I would get off there and then look for a lift to the centre of Gaza. At the beginning I would halt an Arab taxi and then pay my share along with the other passengers. Soon I would discover that my share was higher than that of the rest of the passengers, and I would soon figure out the reason too. An Arab passenger would invariably greet the occupants, saying "salam aleicom"(peace be with you ) to which he would get a reply , "aleicom -e-salam" ,from all the occupants. Whhereas myself, like most other Israelis, would not greet anybody at all, and just tender my fares. When I discovered my backwardness and corrected it by greeting all the occupants of the taxi I felt wonderful ,and I was rewarded too, by having my fares cut by half...

Interesting to note that all my friends, Israelis and Arabs, have warned me not to venture alone in Gaza. In zionist occupied Gaza Israelis would get lifts from zionist military vehicles, but I detested the use of services of the zionist occupation army. By contrast , I enjoyed the mingling with the Palestinians wherever I happened to be. As a result, because I considered the ordinary Palestinian folk as my friends, every trip of mine to Gaza would turn into a political meeting during which we would debate issues and encourage each other with optimistic statements.

My first appearance before a zionist military court in Gaza was on appeal regarding deportation orders. There were about half a dozen of us, Israeli defence lawyers, sitting opposite the military prosecution desk. My turn to speak was towards the end of the opening of that appeal case. I began by referring to UN Security Council resolution which only a day earlier condemned the zionist state for ordering the deportations which were the subject of the appeal. I reminded the tribunal that both its words and its actions are under close scrutiny of world public opinion. I then went on to describe the deportation orders, and the notorious Emergency Regulations (1945) under which they were issued, as illegal by international law. In conclusion I demanded that the military tribunal declare the deportation orders as null and void. As soon as I finished I was approached by a local Arab lawyer with a happy face to shake hands and to thank me. From then on we would become close friends, and he asked me to take over some of his defence cases in cooperation with him.

A great deal of my work was the tracing of Palestinian detainees, as the zionist military deliberately kept the prisoners' relatives in the dark saying that the missing person(s) whereabouts is unknown to them . So I would spend many hours checking the lists of prisoners in Gaza prison and in Ansar 2 to locate the missing people. After locating the missing person in prison I would talk to the and listen to him( with the help of a translator) and then proceed with legal or administrative action to get him released. For their part, the zionist military authorities did all they could to make life difficult not only for the detainees but also for the lawyers representing them. On every step, at any stage, I would be confronted with obstructions. Obstructions which were illegal not only by international law but also by Israel's own laws. Yet the zionist rulers never hesitated to trample and violate the law in their ruthless pursuit of zionist ambitions. Anyway, it became too difficult for me to continue my work in Gaza, and I was looking for alternatives.

As I was winding up my work in Gaza I got a phone call from WOFPP (Women for Women Political Prisoners), an Israeli peace organisation dedicated to help Palestinian women political prisoners. They asked me to do volunteer work for them, and I agreed.
The first case I would look after for WOFPP was of a 17 year old girl from Gaza by the name Jawaher. By then she had been in prison for a few months, and no date was fixed for her trial. Yael Oren, an Israeli woman fluent in Arabic ,and opposed to the zionist policies of oppression against the Arabs of Palestine, who was the founder of WOFPP, met me outside the Ramleh Prison gate. As time went on ,and I got to know Yael, I came to admire her for her fearless devotion to the political prisoners who were Palestinian women. However, when I met her first then outside Ramleh prison I did not know anything about her except for her belonging to WOFPP. She then introduced me to the case of Jawaher and helped me handle the case. Following that introduction we continued to work on many other cases in Hasharon prison, where most of the Palestinian women prisoners had been incarcerated. Even after my return to Australia I continued to promote WOFPP's work as much as I could.

Sometime in the middle of 1989 I have reached the conclusion that I should return to Australia. My numerous attempts to find anti-zionist allies in Israel's society proved fruitless. Without such allies there wouldn't and there couldn't be any way for me to function effectively, or even to survive in the zionist state.

Udi Adiv and his wife, Lea Leshem, were preparing to leave for England to study there. My daughter, with whom I have been corresponding all the time was still incarcerated in the same looni bin, and her monster mother was happy to keep her there indefinitely.

I was also in contact with Thea in England, and I have posted out to her many press -cuttings-photos about the heroic intifada in occupied Palestine. She thanked me for the many photos and said she organised an exhibition in her hometown about the intifada based on the photos.

2007-09-10T00:37:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER NINE : THE CAMPAIGN TO FREE MORDECHAI VANUNU

From early January 1987 until early June that year I would be working non-stop, around the clock, to moblise worldwide support for Mordechai Vanunu , and drawing the public's attention to the dangerous nuclear bombs arsenal the zionist rulers of Israel had stockpiled in Israel.

On the 28th of December, 1986, the trial of Mordechai Vanunu had began in Israel. The trial would be secret , but the charges were made known : treason and espionage. Also allowed to be known was the fact that the accused had pleaded not guilty. However, he had been in solitary confinement in a small cell which was permanently flooded with light and under video camera surveilance. To make his life even more unbearable he was deprived also of a prisoner's elementary rights ,such as family visits.

Vanunu then decided to go on a hunger strike as his only form of defence. The hunger strike began on the 4th of January, 1987, and from then on I had been making phone calls ,writing letters updating the struggle of Vanunu and for him worldwide , as well as posting out press cuttings to members of parliaments and to other public figures.

Again I tried to get in touch with the Sydney Anglican priest - Mcknight was his name, I think - but he won't cooperate. I then had to forget about him , and to carry on the campaign alone , and I did . On 11 January 1987 ,a local Sunday paper reported from Israel that Vanunu was in grave danger as a result of his hunger strike combined with his absolute isolation. On reading the news I immediately hurried to the local Post Office to cable the following urgent cable to people and organisations around the world : ISRAELI PRESS REPORT MORDECHAI VANUNU ON HUNGER STRIKE DURING SOLITARY CONFINEMENT NOW DYING STOP PLEASE ACT NOW TOGETHER TO SAVE HIS LIFE BENJAMIN MERHAV.

A week later I dispatched a second batch of telegrams. I spent hundreds of dollars on those cables as I was determined not to let the zionist Gestapo destroy the man who had done such an important service to humanity.

On 17 January ,1987, I phoned Judy Zimmet, Vanunu's girlfriend ,who then stayed in Israel. She sounded terrified and told me she was going back home to the USA, and she gave me her Boston Address. I immediately wrote to her a detailed letter in which I reported my activities in a campaign to free Vanunu. In her reply she opened as follows : "Dear Mr. Merhav, it was good speaking to you in Be'er Sheva. I arrived home a few days ago and I've been slowly picking up the pieces of my life here...Thank you for your interest, support, and the work you've done for Moti..." Her subsequent letter ,of 24 of February 1987, opens as follows : "Dear Beny, thank you for your help and support ! You're doing an incredible job ! Larry is right - you need to think of youself - and save your money and try to enlist help ..." Larry was an anti nuclear campaigner in Christchurch, New Zealand, who was one of the few people who took action in cooperation with me.

In mid February I received the first first letter from Vanunu himself. Written in and sent from his prison cell in Israel he was very constricted in what he could write about. Dated 1st February, 1987, it was the 29th day of his hunger strike, and he writes (in Hebrew) as follows : " Today I received your two letters and I thank you so much for them. They are encouragement to me. Also your advice. I will make use of it." My advice to him related to his hunger strike, and it regards relaxation, physical fitness, and the safest way to terminate his hunger strike (whenever he would decide to do so). I really felt a personal affinity with the person in the zionist Gestapo prison.

Then, out of the blue, in his letter of 5 March, 1987, he began to express his annoyance at my criticism of the Anglican priest of Sydney (McKnight). Vanunu wrote : "I could not understand what problems have you got (with McKnight)...", and in his last letter, dated 17 March, 1987, he wrote rather angrily : ..."I trust him (McKnight) and believe that he too is making great efforts... understand ? "

Through correspondence and phone calls that I had made we soon had an international campaign of solidarity with Mordechai Vanunu , a campaign which highlighted the dangers of Israel's nuclear bombs arsenal. The central organising team was made up of Judy in the USA, Thea in the UK , Larry in New Zealand, and myself in Australia. At the height of the solidarity campaign we arranged for Vanunu to be nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize . A member of the Australian Senate had the nomination endorsed by 9 Australian MPs , and it was followed by a British nomination signed by 35 British MPs . Also, Vanunu's case was raised in the European Parliament by some of its members. In the USA too the solidarity campaign had been rapidly gaining momentum. There were petitions too circulating in various countries in support of Mordechai Vanunu. Here in Australia myself alone had collected a few thousand signatures and then dispatched them to the address of the Prime minister of Israel.

Compared to the international campaign of solidarity with Vanunu very little has been happening inside the State of Israel in support of Mordechai Vanunu, or in protest against the zionist nuclear bombs arsenal. The little protest action in support of Mordechai Vanunu there was due to the activities of his brother and to the actions of Mordechai Vanunu himself. Due to their pressure the "Committee for an Open Trial for Mordechai Vanunu" was formed. However, public opinion in Israel remained hostile to Vanunu and to the nuclear disarmament cause.

By the middle of 1987, when my involvement with Vanunu's case reached the end, I had no money left. All my savings, some $2500, had been spent on financing the campaign of solidarity with Mordechai Vanunu. It was about that time that I had got a letter of appreciation from Vanunu's brother who was then living in London. The letter says that if only he could get 10 people like me, to be as committed as I had been to his brother's cause ,then Mordechai Vanunu would have been freed . I then wrote to Thea, the Palestinian woman activist, to explain my position and my plans for the future.

The middle of 1987 marked the 20th year of zionist occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. I wrote to Thea that in my opinion it is the right time to remind the world of the the June 1967 zionist invasions of Arab lands and the of the illegal zionist occupation which followed.

As the Vanunu campaign was winding up for me I had more time to renew the contact with my daughter. Once more her mother had her locked up in the looni bin against daughter's will, and I went visit her there. At about that time I got a letter from my mother in Israel inviting me to visit her at her expense. I discussed the matter with daughter and got her agreement to the proposed visit.

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CHAPTER EIGHT : MORE ATTEMPTS TO HELP DAUGHTER GET OUT OF THE PSYCHIATRIC TRAP, THEN I BEGIN MY ATTEMPTS TO HELP MORDECHAI VANUNU OUT OF THE ZIONIST GESTAPO TRAP

Upon my return to Melbourne I found out that daughter was in danger of incarceration again as a result of her mother's determination to have her locked up again as an involuntary patient in a psychiatric hospital for "treatment". Once more I was outraged by such a repeated attempt at the maltreatment of my daughter. Once more I was looking for an alternative to the new threat of the shrinks' "treatment" and their savage experimentations with my daughter. As I was looking around and making inquiries I heard about a new organisation formed by ex-psychiatric patients in Melbourne. The name of the new organisation was : CAPIC ( Campaign Against Psychiatric Injustice & Coercion). I joined them but soon found out that the infamous Church of Scientology was manipulating the group. Thus, for example, my suggestion that a half way house be established to provide much needed accomodation for ex-psychiatric patients was rejected. Instead, they spent the money they had received from various sources on all kinds of useless projects which served the interests of very few people in the group.

As a last ditch attempt to save daughter from the painful and harmful trauma of incarceration in the looni bin I approached a migrant welfare centre and asked them to intervene on daughter's behalf. That attempt failed because of my spouse's intansigence, and her selfish attitude had a negative effect on daughter. It was then that I promptly applied for divorce from her, and the divorce was granted. I then travelled to New Zealand and sold there some 2000 copies of Bull's Eye which I had printed there. I returned from New Zealand on 23 June ,1985, to find out that my daughter had been incarcerated in a looni bin the very day of my departure for New Zealand. Upon visiting daughter she again repeated to me her wish to be free, yet her dependence on her mother and her fear of her (as well as for her) have increased to the point of almost complete loss of self confidence and of self esteem. I concluded that there was no way I could help her without her own commitment to her own cause, yet the potent psychiatric drugs clouded her mind to the point where she could not make such a commitment. So I packed up and left for Sydney to produce a new edition of Bull's Eye and to sell it there.

I rented a room in Potts Point, Sydney, but a couple of months later I got a cable from the mother inquiring if daughter was with me. As I would discover later, it turned out that daughter was actually kicked out from the mother's flat without even walking her to the railway station. So I began to look for daughter, and after a fortnight of searching I found her in a women's refuge. When we met she told me that she had been to my address in Sydney while I was not at home, which apparently caused her to panick and end up in a women's refuge. So we both headed back for Melbourne. When we reached Melbourne in late January, 1986, daughter went to live with her mother again while I headed north to Mildura for work as a grape picker which would earn me some money. I returned to Melbourne on 20 March, 1986. I had rented a flat for myself and had helped daughter to rent a flat for herself. It happened in late May 1986, and it was daughter's first attempt to live independently in her own home. She lived there for 7 months.

In the meantime, while daughter was still living in her flat, a very surprising and important political event occured. Particularly so as I had been cut off political events in the Middle East for a number of years now (apart from the political satire which I promoted in my Bull's Eye booklet). Thus, for example, I was in London during 1982 ,when the zionist apartheid regime of Israel invaded Lebanon and then forced to withdraw by the heroic struggle of the Arab people of Lebanon, but I had no time to even read the newspapers or listen to the TV and the radio news editions. However, this time I was struck by the new event as if by a lightening out of the blue. During the weekend of 18-19 October, 1986, the local Weekend Australian carried a full front page sensational story about a nuclear bombs factory, 6 story underground, next to the secretive Dimona nuclear pile in Israel. The story was the edited version of the Sunday Times of London report which was published a fortnight earlier, on 5 October ,1986. The source of the story was Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli who had worked in Dimona as nuclear technician, and secretly took photoes inside the zionist nuclear bombs factory.

Upon reading the story I immediately knew it was true. When in Israel I wrote about the subject some 20 years earlier ( which could be the main reason why the zionist Gestapo was on my back already then). It was an article I had written to warn the public in Israel about the dangers of nuclear and ballistic missiles arms race in the Middle East ,as a result of Israel's production of nuclear bombs. That secret plan was revealed to me by prof. Martin Buber during my meeting with him at his home in Jerusalem in the early '60s. Buber was associasted with a group of Israeli scientists who had formed the first Nuclear Energy Commission of Israel. They then resigned in protest against the implementation of the secret nuclear bombs plan. So I knew Vanunu's report to be correct, and that now his life would be put in great danger by the vengeful zionist Gestapo unless his service to humanity would be publicised worldwide, and without delay.

However, my first duty remained to help my daughter. I had to be on guard for her daily essentials, washing her cloths and cleaning her flat, and all that without being too intrusive and certainly with respect to her wishes. Therefore, my immediate reaction to the news was to alert other people to Vanunu's case without getting personally involved. Another shortcoming I had was my financial position, as I was in fact living on the poverty line and could not afford the expenses incurred by a public campaign.

Anyway, at that early stage nobody in Australia knew the whereabout of Mordechai Vanunu. The daily press was full of rumours spread by the zionist Gestapo to further confuse people while allowing the zionist Gestapo do its nasty and illegal kidnapping of Vanunu behind the screen of lies. However, I had no doubt that Vanunu's life was in danger, and the fact that nobody was doing anything for him further increased the danger.

I then tried to get in touch with the Sydney Anglican priest who converted Vanunu to Chritianity during Vanunu's visit to Australia. It took the Anglican Office in Melbourne some 2 weeks before letting me know the priest's phone number, and by then the priest had left for London to look for Vanunu there. I had tried other people on the Left too but got nowhere. However, on the 9th of November, 1986, during a reception to the Israel President ,who then visited Melbourne , I participated in a demonstration in support of Vanunu and carried my own sign : STOP ZIONIST TERROR ! RELEASE MORDECHAI VANUNU NOW !

Until November 9, 1986, the zionist government of Israel brazenly denied any knowledge of Vanunu's whereabout while in reality he was secretly under its interrogation in a zionist Gestapo prison in Israel. Inside Israel heavy censorship was imposed on any news item relating to Vanunu or to the nuclear pile in Dimona and the zionist nuclear bombs arsenal. On the 9th of November Vanunu was taken to court for an arrest warrant, and the zionist Gestapo unleashed a lynch campaign against him worldwide. When taken to court again, on the 22 December, 1986, Vanunu managed to outsmart his tormentors, and to break through his complete isolation by showing to journalists the palm of his hand on which he wrote that he was abducted from Italy ( following his arrival there from London).

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CHAPTER SEVEN : THE HORRIBLE XMAS OF 1977 AND ITS AFTERMATH

The 1977 Xmas turned out to be the first in a row of Xmases during which my beloved daughter would be again and again locked up in a looni bin against her will, and despite her protests and mine too. The first shrink to see my daughter and her mother decided - after hearing the mother's complaints against her daughter - that daughter should be sent to the psycchiatric ward of hospital for "observation", namely, to see if she needs any treatment for mental illness. The shrink then asked for the parents' consent in writing. The mother readily signed away her daughter, but I refused to sign. I knew nothing about psychiatry then, but I had enough respect for my daughter's human rights so as to support her refusal to go to that hospital, but for the shrink the signature of the mother was sufficient to incarcerate daughter against her will.

Soon I would find out to my horror that the term "observation" the shrinks had used as a pretext to have my daughter incarcerated, was observation by name only. In reality they considered her as mentally ill from the moment of her arrival, and began to "treat" her with psychiatric drugs against her will and despite her protests. As she protested ( "why me?"she would painfully protest) the higher went the dosage of the potent drugs injected into her by force, both to crush her resistance as well as to comply with the psychiatric practice of considering the patient's resistance in itself as a sign of illness which requires more intense drug treatment. Finally, the psychiatrist in charge (a zionist, as I would find out later) managed to turn my daughter into a living vegetable and a docile patient.

Early in 1978 I had sold my 5 acre block and returned home. Soon after we put the house on the market and went for a tour of the countryside to look for a more comfortable house on a block of land which would become our self sufficient farm. By that time daughter was allowed back home, and I was hopeful that the new home would help her overcome the trauma of the looni bin incarceration. What I did not know then, and I know now from books written by the USA psychiatrist Prof. Peter Breggin ( see his website, www.breggin.com/contact.html) and others, was that the, so called ,anti-psychotic drugs are addictive, therefore great care should be taken to very gradually reduce them, and not abruptly in which case it is likely to lead to a severe crisis. On top of that daughter needed friends and empathy, and plenty of it from society, but could not find any. All of which would land her again in the looni bin.

During 1979 - 80 , as I was looking around for ways to help my daughter, I hit the idea of writing , producing and selling a satirical collection of working-class humour. Initially I intended the collection - titled, BULL'S EYE JOKES - WORKING-CLASS HUMOUR - to be prepared in partnership with my daughter, especially with her cartoons elucidating and supplementing the written jokes, but it didn't work out that way. To cut the story short, I went ahead with my own work on the booklet. In the five years that followed I have prepared ,produced and sold 10- 12 editions totalling 17,000 booklets. I sold them in Victoria, NSW, South Australia, New zealand, and in London. They were selling like hot cakes with mostly very faourable feedback ( the nast remarks came from the different enemies of the people who felt offended by the booklet).

During 1981 I agreed with my spouse on separation, but we went to try and live together again in early 1982 for the sake of daughter. In early 1981 daughter was locked up in the Royal Park looni bin, then escaped on 29th of May. To help her avoid being locked up again all three of us drove off to Sydney, and rented a flat there. However, the addictive psychiatric drugs now abruptly cut off, the traumas of incarcerations, as well as the damage caused by the psychiatric drugs, all played havoc with her entire being, and there was no solution to be found in Syney. So I began corresponding with two organisations in Britain. One was founded by Dr. R.D. Laing, a dissident psychiatrist opposed to incarceration of patients, and the other one was a USA psychiatrist who purported too to oppose the psychiatric methods of compulsory drug treatment. Both organisations have actually invited me to come over with daughter to London, promising to help daughter.

My spouse objected to us going to get help for daughter in London. She has been persistent in her support for the local shrinks, and consequently she considered a trip to London with daughter as a waste of money. For me at stake was daughter's chance to live as a human being, therefore the separation between me and my spouse would become an official divorce by 21 February 1985. In the meantime, on daughter's 20th birthday, myself and daughter left for London.

After a long and tiresome flight our Jumbo landed at Heathrow Airport. Upon arrival we immediately took the bus to Oxford, then changed to a local bus which would drop us at our destination : a village at outskirts of the town. There the Philadelphia Association, founded by Dr. R.D. Laing, owned an old, spacious farmhouse which the association transformed into a communal house for ex-psychiatric patients. At the time of our arrival there it was home for 3 people : one man in his early 60s, one woman in her early 30s, and one man in his mid 20s. I was very happy to have arrived there with daughter, hopeful that it would be our final destination in Britain. However, my hopes for the place would not last long.

The woman who had actually invited daughter to the place ( in reply to my letters to the Philadelphia Association) was initially very friendly to her. However, daughter was virtually in a state of shock after the long flight and the sudden landing in a strange country, then expected to settle down in a totally unfamiliar environment. It was just beyond the endurance of the fragile, injured and damaged ego of daughter. She needed plenty of time and patience, and plenty of love and empathy, to let her adjust herself to the new reality. The local woman, herself an ex-psychiatric patient with her own bag of problems, was disappointed to find daughter not responding to the friendly welcome. Eventually, someone complained to the headoffice in London, and daughter was told to move out. We did so.

We then tried the other organisation, Arbours, in London. Having found a cheap accomodation in a London suburb I immediately phoned Dr. Schtzman of Arbours. It was him who invited daughter to come to London in reply to my letters to him. Following our visit to his private clinic he recommended that daughter be admitted to one of Arbours halfway houses. However, the other chief of Arbours, a smart Dr. Bourke , had objected to daughter's admittance because we did not have enough money to pay him. As a result daughter, now being rejected for the second time, fell into despair and eventually into panic. As I was looking for a new alternative for her in London she went missing, wandering aimlessly and with no sleep in the streets of London.

I had made two more attempts to find in London alternatives for daughter but failed. As our money was running out we decided to return to Australia. We arrived back in Melbourne in early 1983. Daughter went to live with her mother in a rented 3 bedroom house in Preston. I rented a room in Moonee Ponds, and my son lived in a rented flat in another part of Melbourne. Ostensibly, my son was doing well - he graduated from RMIT as an electronic officer, and later would move out to NSW to study philosophy and psychology in NSW - but the family was torn apart and there was little cooperation between us. In the case of my son, he would become the next target of the zionist Gestapo, as we shall see later in this autobiography.
As for myself ,obviously, my health had been negatively affected by the crushing process of my family. So I went to seek help from nature by travelling to southern NSW and pitching a tent in the heart of the biggest and most beautiful national park in the southern coast of NSW. For three and a half months I lived there alone by the basalt rocks along the ocean beach, making friends with leeches, ticks, mosquitos and snakes, as well as with an incredible array of birds. I was rewarded with clean fresh air, pure spring water, the music of the forest, and with harmonious and relaxing sights. The result of that overall healing force of nature plus my own relaxing walks and exercises rejuvinated my body's defences and I came out of the forest healthy and vigorous. During February, 1984, I was on my way back to Melbourne.

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CHAPTER SIX : THE DELIBERATE CRUSHING OF MY FAMILY BY THE ZIONIST GESTAPO IS UNDERWAY

Being class conscious I considered my unskilled labouring jobs as an opportunity for our family
to be inseparable in our daily life from the most exploited section of the working-class. I did not mind tough, boring, dirty jobs, but I was rather frustrated by isolation. The bosses, on the other hand , could not stand my attempts to "stir-up trouble" which was their interpretation of my communication with my fellow labourers on the subjects of working conditions, class politics etc. and I had to face this challenge on almost any job I did to earn our living. There was also another problem which haunted us ever since our arrival in Australia. Unlike other migrants we did not belong to any ethnic or social group. There had been a growing number of Israeli migrants in Melbourne but they were all zionists or under zionist control. Within the zionist ghetto ( the so called "Jewish Community") too there had never been opposition, not even a single voice of opposition, to zionism or even criticism of the zionist apartheid regime of Israel.

To top it up the local zionist leaders had spread all kinds of false rumours against me. Thus, for example, the local zionist rag published , shortly after our arrival in Melbourne, a full page article against me. Using disinformation, the venomous article, published in the Yiddish section of the paper, declared me the enemy of jewish people. As a result we did not seem to belong to any part of society, unlike other migrants. All of which made it very easy for the zionist Gestapo to completely isolate us, thereby not only neutralize us politically but make our personal life here much harder and under constant stress ,and at times unbearable. We lived in pressure-cooker conditions at the time when our children needed most a relaxed environment and plenty of love.

The years 1973 - 74 had opened a new arena of struggle for me as a builders' labourer. I would soon be involved in the union's struggles, and I became a keen participant in the union's meetings. Simultaneously with the union activities I became increasingly attracted to to the momentous events which then were sweeping the People's Republic of China. My heart was with the brave young people who carried the banner of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in open defiance of the leaders - all of them, apart from Mao Tse-Tung , of course - of the Communist Party of China. It was obvious to me that their's is the way to a just society on a world scale. Rebecca, my daughter, who was showing promising artististic talents, wanted to go to China to study the new revolutionary arts which the young revolutionaries have developed. I then applied for her to go there for study to the Australia-China Society, but my application was rejected by the local heads of that society, and without giving me any reason.

This arbitrary and arrogant rejection was a very hard blow for me, and even more so for my 12 year old daughter. It reminded me of the zionist hostility to me. Could it be that they too were doing the bidding for the zionist apartheid regime of Israel ?

The year 1973 marked the attempt by Arab countries, Egypt and Syria, to liberate their lands which had been invaded and occupied by Israel in 1967, and the zionist Gestapo used the opportunity to poison more wells in Australia, and with the aim to dicredit me in the eyes of my Arab friends. Here is what happened.

One Sunday in October 1973, a friend approached me in Melbourne with a Sydney newspaper in his hand and with an incredulous expression on his face. The paper was The Sunday Telegraph of the same day. In it was a fabricated "interview" with me, an inter view which never occured. The article/"interview" purported to quote me as saying that I do not support the Arab struggle to liberate the 1967 invaded Arab lands, a vicious lie, of course. I immediately wrote a reply in the form of an open letter. The next day I posted out my letter to editor of that newspaper, and made copies to send to all organisations and people I had been in contact with. My letter included a detailed denial of all the lies attributed to me by the fabricated "interview". However, my letter was not published by that newspaper, nor did its editor send any reply to me.

At that period of time both myself and my spouse had jobs, and we managed to save enough money to put as a deposit for a house, and to pay off the mortgage over the years. We needed a house because we lived in a small one bedroom flat in Brunswick, an inner suburb of Melbourne.The children were in their early adolescence and they needed their own rooms. We then bought a low priced house some 45 km south of Melbourne, near the town of Frankston. It was low priced because it was part of the local Housing Commision Estate. We have heard warnings about Housing Estate's problems and troubles, but I decided that even if the rumours are true they shouldn't deter us, as we are part of the working class. However ,the prevailing view, even among the people of the Left, was that Housing Commision neighbourhoods are inhabited by the "lumpen proletariat", hence the bad name. Nevertheless, we went
ahead with the purchase and moved into the house determined to make the best of our stay there for ouselves as well as for our neighbours.

Having been imbued with the spirit of the Great Proletarian Revolution I also encouraged my children to consider all their school mates as comrades and to unite with them against the oppressive school system. Alas, all of us have failed in our highly aimed ideals at that new place where we settled, and my daughter suffered most as a result. She got bashed by the girls whose friendship she was seeking and with whom she had been told by her father she should unite. As if to make things worse for her she could not find the emotional support she needed at home too. No wonder she would come back home from school, drop on her bed, and lie there in what seemed to be a state of daydreaming for hours on end. Her mother would be furious at her and call her "lazy"for not doing the domestic chores.

My spouse got an office job in the city, and would spend 2-3 hours a day travelling to work and back. She would come back home very tense and easily irritable, and consequently she would make her daughter her punching bag. I would be an easy target too because I happened to be unemployed. To appease my spouse I proposed that she stay on the dole too so as to save our family from disintegration, but she refused. So I decided to do something about our situation, something which would solve our problems in the long run,or so I hoped. For a price of 1000$ I purchased a 5 acre block of land in the country, some 450 km from home, then bought an old ute for 400$, packed in my personal belongings and hit the road. My plan was to build a house for our family, and use the rest of the land for a self sufficient farm on which our family could live a modest but healthy life, away from all the problems in the city. However, my spouse did not agree with my plan, and I left home without her approval.

Then the zionist Gestapo stepped into our lives again, and this time with the evil intention of completely wrecking my family. Using my stepfather's brutal control over my mother, the zionist Gestapo made my mother go with her husband to Australia for the ostensible purpose of "visiting friends"in the Melbourne zionist ghetto. Upon hearing the news I wrote back to my mother, asking her to come her alone, and to actually stay with us, but not with her husband, because I knew of his hostility towards me, and I knew that if he arrives with her there would be trouble for my children. Yet my mother, under the pressure of her husband, arrived with him ,and with the avowed purpose of forcing my family to toe the zionist line. My mother's angry criticism of myself and my children for not speaking Hebrew at home and for other non zionist features of our family life had a devastating impact on my daughter, because she had been taught by me to revere and to love her grandmother.

Prior to my mother's visit I had spent some 5-6 months of very hard work on my 5 acre block, including the disnmantling and transporting of a 3 bedroom timber house that I bought of Victoia Railways for 300$. I managed to dismantle the entire house and cart it on my ute 35 km to my block, and with no help from anyone. Also I constructed a water storage, planted fruit trees, and grown strawberries, vegetables, as well as some chickens and goats.

On Xmas eve 1977, not long after my mother's visit, I decided to visit my family . My visit followed continuous complaints by my spouse over the phone calls that I had made to her. All her complaints centred around daughter whom she described as behaving "like a princess" in that she had been refusing to do the home chores, and she accused me for spoiling daughter thereby causing her to behave like a spoiled child. I arrived home only to discover that my daughter was not friendly to me. Hers was a normal reaction of a 15 year old hard pressed and stressful adolescent, particularly in the aftermath of her grandmother's visit. However, I was ignorant of what was really going on at home in my absence, and having been incited against daughter by the mother during my phone calls to her, I expressed a loud protest against daughter's behavior. In reaction to my protest daughter simply left home without saying where she was going. Hers was a normal reaction for a person of her age, but I was then wrongly angry at her, and it was me who should have apologised.

After a few hours, as it was getting late at night, I became worried when daughter did not turn up. Her mother went to look for her and returned home with daughter. Wrong as I was I took my anger at my innocent daughter and used violence to punish her. She then became even more defiant, which made me hit her even harder. The following morning we - myself and my spouse and daughter, but without daughter's consent - went to the local medical practitioner who referred us to a psychiatrist. That visit to the psychiatrist would open the gates of hell for my daughter ,as we shall see later in this autobiography, and it would start the process of crushing my family, as the zionist Gestapo planned it, apparently.

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CHAPTER FIVE : WE ARE NEWCOMERS TO AUSTRALIA

The Masdaam, our boat, reached the West Australia port of Fremantle on the 9th of February, 1968, and six days later it entered the Port of Melbourne where we disembarked alive and well, albeit with a great deal of apprehension.

As we went through the Customs and all the paperwork involved an elderly woman approached us and told me that my mother had written to her asking her to help us. So she invited us to her house to be her guests. I did not know then that her house was in the heart of the zionist ghetto of Melbourne, and that she herself was a zionist. As soon as we arrived at her home and exchanged view with her, and with other people who arrived to meet us too, we soon discovered a hostile reaction by all of them to any criticism which I would voice against the government of Israel.

I then resolved to quit the zionist trap before it would be too late. So, I immediately began looking for alternative accommodation, away from the zionist ghetto. My spouse, however, refused to move out, and once more she became hysterical and threatened to commit suicide if I would insist on moving out. My argument was that we had not made it all the way to Australia to unite with people who support the criminal policies of Israel's government. She calmed down and agreed eventually that we move out and live away from the zionist ghetto.

Our first home would be in the Melbourne outer suburb of Noble Park. It was mid March ,1968,
and daughter was admitted to grade one of the local primary school. Her 5 year old brother stayed at home with his mother, and I got a job in nearby Dandenong, at the General Motors car plant. My weekly wage as an unskilled factory worker was around 50$ a week, which was hardly enough for all four of us to survive on. So I began looking for a better paid job and eventually found one as a traveler-salesman for a cash registers company. I then bought a secondhand station wagon on board of which I would carry the damn machines to show them and to sell them to shop keepers. It did earn me more money than what I got as a factory worker , but it earned me the growling of my spouse too. She complained about staying all day alone at home, and she said she would rather look for a job for herself.

It did not take much effort on her part to convince me, and soon as I quit the job I began to spend my time at home and in public libraries researching the subject of zionism with the intention to write a book about it. She began to practice typing in English at home, and a great deal of her time was spent typing my notes about zionism. However , as soon as she got a typist job I had to do the typing myself, and I did.

Since 1969 I became increasingly active in the anti imperialist and anti zionist struggles in Melbourne. Also I established contact with a group of Israelis in London who claimed to be anti-zionist, believing as I did that they would be as committed to the cause as I was. At the time it seemed to me a great thing to maintain contact with them by letters and by phone, as I had considered them as revolutionaries and as comrades in arms. In reality most of them would become class collaborators, and it is very likely that the zionist Gestapo infiltrated their ranks, because now most of them in Israel as docile zionists (one of them, a mathematics professor, is a docile zionist in London).

The USA invasion of Vietnam, with all its crimes against the civilian population there, accelerated the radicalisation of youth all over the world, including the USA itself. Another important factor in the global protest was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, which had began in 1966 and engulfed the entire population of the Peoples Republic of China by 1969 , and had its revolutionary impact over the entire world. The continents of America, Asia, Europe and Australia became the scene of mass demonstrations growing in frequency and in militancy by the day . Both the rulers of capitalist countries, as well as the bosses of communist parties, felt their establishments shaken to the foundation, as if hit by a huge earthquake.
One of the slogans , then popular all over the world ,was this : "power to the people."

Already when in Paris I participated in the demonstrations against USA imperialism, and I saw in my involvement with the anti imperialist movement in Australia the continuation of the struggle. The struggle against USA imperialism is also the struggle for a genuine democracy, which is why the slogan "power to the people" gained such popularity all over the world. Also shortly after our arrival here we joined the ranks of Australians who had been protesting against Australia's military involvement in Vietnam, and the protests against military conscription here.

During 1971 some good news, very hopeful news, had reached us from Israel. Two new movements, both anti zionist by implication if not explicitly, sprung up in Israel. One was the Black Panthers movement, and the other was the anti-conscription movement. Both had asked for our support, and I sure committed myself to promote their causes in Australia. For the Black Panthers, the youth of slum dwellers of oriental origin, I regularly disseminated in Melbourne their leaflets and reports about their uprising . On one occasion, when Bob Hawke, the then ACTU president, promoted Zionist propaganda inside the Dallas Brooks Hall we were assaulted by Zionist thugs and I was knocked down unconscious. As for our support for the newly created anti-conscription movement in Israel I shall mention more details soon , but suffice to say now that our participation in the anti-conscription movement in Australia had helped our solidarity activities in support of the movement against the military conscription in Israel too.

Early in January 1972 I went to Canberra to start a hunger strike outside Israel's embassy in protest against the imprisonment of an Israeli draft resister in Israel. The next day I was arrested, beaten by the local police, charged in court ,then acquitted, then returned to my protest outside the zionist embassy. My protest action was rather effective, and gained favourable media coverage not only in Australia but also in Israel. My involvement in the local struggles as well as in the Israeli struggles had become so intense in the early '70s that we run out of money. However, since I considered it my duty as a human being to continue our political activities in a selfless manner , and without expecting any rewards, I decided to sell the house (which was under a mortgage we hadn't fully paid off) and with the money received finance my spouse's trip abroad to renew our contacts and cooperation with like-minded Israelis in Israel and in London.

Towards Xmas 1972 my spouse returned home with bad news. She said that her mission was a failure. Not only did she spend the precious little money on "duty free" junk , contrary to our agreed policy and personal commitments, but she seemed to be more confused and more depressed than prior to her departure. Anyway, I had tried very hard to avoid any tension between us thereby allowing here to regain control over herself, but at a rather high price for my political activities because I was so dependent on her report about her trip and contacts she had made. To this day I have only small scraps of information that I managed to squeeze out of her, and I do not know if it was her personal weakness or it may be that she had been brainwashed by the zionist Gestapo in some way (and it seems certain now that the zionist Gestapo had used her family in Israel and her own weakness of character to turn her into their obedient stooge). The fact that ever since her return she became almost hostile to me, and her collaboration with the shrinks against her own daughter and son points to the latter possibility.

To earn our living I began to work as a builder's labourer. There was no way for me to practice as a lawyer because I was denied Australian citizenship. Also, as part of blacklisting me in Australia by the zionist Gestapo ( with the active collaboration of ASIO, the Australian secret police ) I could get no other job either, not even unskilled factory jobs. Only on building sites would I be offered a job, for as long as I could do the job ,and for as long as the job lasted.

Only some ten years after our arrival in Australia did I get my citizenship, and following a long and hard public campaign with the support of unions and other organisations. During those ten years I had a few meetings with several Australian Immigration Ministers, and none of them ever promised to accept our applications for citizenship, presumably because of the negative notes by ASIO in my file ( notes which originated at the headquarters of the zionist Gestapo). The consequence was that not only was I deprived of my right to work in my profession, but also had to live under the constant threat of deportation. Apart from my ASIO file I had also another dossier against me, which came to my knowledge only after the Freedom of Information Act became effective. It was the dossier of the Special Branch of Melbourne Police. Under the title "comments" it makes the following statement about me :

"Deft is apparently a professional demonstrator : a member of the Prisoners Action Committee ; has come under notice in Canberra for similar demonstrations."

2007-09-09T22:15:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER FOUR : LOOKING FOR A REFUGE

The only acceptable regime that was in existence in a country where its society is advancing on the road to justice and equality was, I had believed, the Soviet Union. To my knowledge then the Soviet Union had been running on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and therefore on the road to full equality, comprehensive justice, and genuine freedom which should be eventually achieved in a classless and stateless society, namely, in a communist society. I knew, of course, that the Soviet Union had a totalitarian regime, but I saw it then as the necessary socialist stage - the stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat - before entering the communist society. The orientation of the Soviet Union in the Middle East seemed to be just and correct, namely, support for the oppressed Arabs and opposition to the imperialist policies of the rulers of Israel and their sponsors : the USA rulers.

In Israel the zionist propaganda machine presented the pro-Soviet Union Communist Party of Israel as a non patriotic political party which takes its orders from the Kremlin in Moscow. The truth, however, was that the Communist Party of Israel was loyal to zionism, first and foremost, so much so that it always urged its Arab sympathisers to accept the zionist regime. Meir Vilner, the then Secretary General of that party had been among the zionist signatories of the zionist "Declaration of Independence" , thereby making himself one of the "founding fathers" of the zionist apartheid regime of Israel. The zionist propaganda machine attacked the CPI only to keep the pressure on it and on its sypathisers so that they won't "go too far" with their opposition to the zionist state's policies.

Like many other Israelis I had a distorted picture in my mind of the world, particularly of the Soviet Union, a distortion which was the result of zionist propaganda lies and zionist censored information. On one hand I had in my mind admiration for the Soviet Union precisely because of its support for the Arab causes in the Middle East. On the other hand ,I could not see clearly what was really going on inside of the Soviet Union, nor was I able to understand the true relationship between the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of Israel. That distorted vision of mine would lead me to make a wrong conclusion when thinking about a refuge for our family. I reached the conclusion that we should apply for tourist visas to the Soviet Union, and that we should decide there whether or not we should stay there. My personal view was that we should stay there if welcomed.

My reunion with my family occured upon my arrival in Nice, the French city on the Mediteranean Sea. Happy to be together again we then had to decide where should we head for. We agreed on a plan to rent a car and drive it to Yugoslavia via Italy, and upon reaching Belgrade to apply for tourist visas to the Soviet Union at the Belgrade USSR embassy. Off we drove the next day along the French coast, then crossed into Italy. I was detemined not to let any worries spoil our trip ,and we agreed to consider our trip as that of tourists on holiday. It was summer time, the car was a small but a comfortable French car, and as far as I was concerned there was no reason in the world not to relax or not to enjoy our trip. However, my spouse became more worried and more tense with every passing day. By the time we reached Bologna, in northern central Italy, she became totally hysterical, and we had to stop there overnight and pay for a doctor who prescribed sedatives for her.

Upon reaching Trieste, on the border with Yugoslavia, I returned my rented car and bought tickets for the next morning train to Belgrade. I was really thrilled to think that for the first time in our lives we are going to travel in a real socialist train to Belgrade, the capital of a real socialist country. However, there were a few shocks awaiting for us in Belgrade,and the first one at the terminal. There were beggars in rags there, as well as miserable children wandering around with their families. There were desperate taxi drivers pestering us and other passengers into each taxi. Is this the way socialism has been implemented here ? Such questions kept buzzing in my head like mad hornets, and more shocks would follow like, for example, the Tito personality cult, with his photos evident everywhere.

We booked a room in a modest Belgrade hotel , and first thing next morning I went to the USSR embassy to apply for a visa, only to have my application promptly rejected. For my spouse the rejection was the "last straw", and she really sounded serious when she threatened to kill herself. I had to summon all the patience and love within myself to peruade her that we will get out of that hole in Belgrade as soon as possible. We then agreed that our next destination would be Paris. The reasons why we chose Paris were, firstly, because my spouse had a French passport ; secondly, because I intended to apply there again for a tourist visa to the USSR ; and thirdly, being the international city that it is, it should be a good place to find out - in case we had failed to settle in Francee - what other alternatives were available to us.

The journey from Belgrade to Paris took three days and three nights, and being Economy tickets passengers, and the train being an old rattler which was stopping at all stations, it became a supreme endurance test for all three of us. We really felt relieved when we finally reached Paris. Somehow we managed to find a cheap room in a cheap hotel, and all four of us crammed into it to catch the sleep we had missed for the previous 100 hours.

It was still summer, so we could have our meals at the nearby park, under the gazing eyes of the locals. However, we had to shift several times to different hotels, because no hotelier was happy to have a family of four in one hotel room for long. While surviving the various cheap hotels I kept waiting for a reply from the Soviet embassy where I reapplied for a tourist visa to the USSR. I was looking for a job too but managed to find only a temporary one ,as a low paid public bath attendant. I tried to make friends among French people of jewish background who considered themselves "left wing", but they were all zionists and supporters of the June 1967 zionist aggression against the Arabs. However, as I was moving around in Paris I found out that the Australian embassy was willing to help potential migrants to settle in Australia. I then took the necessary steps to get the necessary visas for us to Australia. It would take a couple of months to complete the medical tests, paperwork and interviews.

Meanwhile we managed to survive on a low budget in Paris, and one day, as we were eating our customary meal in the park, a true miracle occured to us. A Frenchwoman, about my age, approached my spouse and offered her friendship. Soon we would found out that both herself and her husband were active members of the French Communist Party. She expressed her admiration for our anti-war stand and offered us her effective help. Soon we shifted to a normal one bedroom flat on low rent, and our children were welcomed and made to feel secure and loved. Alas, our chances to stay in France were nil , and when departure day arrived we all felt very sad , because we had all become bosom friends by then .

When we got our Assisted Passage visas to Australia we were given tickets to a passenger ship which would depart from the Dutch port city of Rotterdam on the 7th of January, 1968. On our way to Rotterdam we spent the xmas holiday in Amsterdam, but could not have much fun there because daughter became ill. However, our French friends came along to say goodbye and see us embark on the boat which would take us to Australia.

2007-09-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER THREE : THE ZIONIST APARTHEID REGIME OF ISRAEL PREPARES A NEW WAR : THE JUNE 1967 MILITARY AGGRESSION AND INVASION OF ARAB LANDS

Before describing the general politics of the zionist apartheid regime of Israel during the '60s I should inform the reader about the way the zionist Gestapo, the secret arm of the regime, harassed me during that time as follows.

Based on the hostile actions against me by the zionist authorities I had the growing suspicion during the early '60s that the Shin-Bet, the internal branch of the zionist Gestapo, had a hostile dossier against me, and I would soon find the vindication, indeed ,the proof of it. Those hostile actions against me began during 1955-56 when my application to join an army officers' course was rejected with no reason given. However , the actual harassment, and the most blatant one, took place during 1963. Here is what happened.

Following my annual call-up for 30 days army reserves duties I expected - as most lawyers in Israel would - to be assigned some office work in some place not far from Tel-Aviv. At that particular time, when my wife was heavily pregnant with my son, I did not want to be too far from her for the entire month. Yet ,as if to punish me, I was dispatched to the heart of the Negev desert to spend the month guarding an army explosives depository.

Moreover, I had soon discovered that I was treated there more like a prisoner rather than an army reservist. Thus, for example, I had been ordered to do two consecutive guarding shifts of 4 hours each, every 24 hours, which was in itself a breach of military rules.

So I decided, shortly after my arrival in that army camp, to take matters in my own hands by escaping. The next day I climbed the fence and jumped over to freedom. I then made my way back home by hitchhiking as well as long distance walking, and after many hours I managed to return home safely. Usually, such action as mine would bring swift and cruel punishment by the military police, but I was not afraid. I knew that what was done to me was not only morally wrong and unjust, it was illegal too. So I did not waste time, and immediately upon my arrival home I sent a letter to the Ministerial Committee for Defence and Security demanding immediate investigation of the scandal.

No government investigation followed as a result of my letter, but I was happy to carry on with my civilian life without any further harassment by the military.

Early in 1967 there had been a sudden build-up of military tension along the borders. Was it - I asked myself then - the familiar "warming-up" of the borders as a prelude to a new military aggression by the rulers of Israel ? That was the way they had started the 1956 war and invasion of Egypt. Now, Syrian fighter planes were attacked and shot down over Syrian territory by Israel's war planes, and before I knew it I got a military call-up in early May, which made me feel very angry and frustrated. The fact that the rulers of Israel were playing with the lives of people, and very cynically, was becoming increasingly obvious to me. The zionist propaganda machine - never idle at the best of times - was by then churning out full scale war hysteria, and not merely in Israel but all over the Western world. That war hysteria engulfed the entire Israeli settler society, and I could not detect any voice of dissent, not before the war, and not in its aftermath.

Thus, for example, Uri Avnery, the self proclaimed Israeli "peace leader" - then as he is now - revealed himself as a most enthusiastic supporter of the zionist war hysteria. He must have made a lot of money out of that war because his weekly magazine (Haolam Hazeh) was selling like hot cakes in its drive to supplement the zionist propaganda of lies and war hysteria, cashing in on the arosed chauvinistic mood of the entire zionist settlers society. In fact, Avneri added fuel to the fire of war hysteria, contributing to the total support for the war by the zionist dominated society.

I could not detect a single voice of dissent there at that time.

The military call-ups brought my infantry regiment together and we had plenty of time for discussions( with my active participation, of course) as we camped close to the Egyptian border, at the northern tip of the Gaza Strip. All of us had seemed at the time to agree that Israel's military provocations are leading us to a war to which we are opposed. We were all dancing with joy, therefore, when told that we would be discharged and go back home after all. That was the middle of May, 1967.

Alas, my joy did not last long. As soon as I heard the news that General Dayan, the old zionist war criminal, would become the new Minister for Security I knew that the war could break out any day then. We now know that the victory of the zionist apartheid regime had been engineered secretly by the rulers the USA and Israel months before the war began, and that the secret conspiracy was based on three main factors. Firstly, the USA secretly supplied the zionist rulers with detailed information regarding all the military airfields in Egypt. Secondly, the USA planted false "intelligence"inside the then Soviet Union, Egypt's ally, to lull the Egyptian government into compalcency based on that false "intelligence". Thirdly, the zionist invasion of Egypt was a copy of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union during June, 1941, including the bombardment of the Egyptian air force while it was still on the ground.

At the time I did not know, of course, about the machinations between the rulers of Israel and those of the USA, and feared for the lives of my young family members. Therefore I agreed with my wife that she should leave the country immediately for France, and stay there with the children until the war would be over. As for myself, I could not leave the country because of my military age. Consequently, on the morning of the 4th of June, 1967, I was on my way to the Egyptian front to participate in an imperialist war, which I vehemently opposed, while my wife and children travelled to the airport to catch the last flight to Europe before the beginning of the war.

The reserve infantry unit to which I belonged followed the zionist mechanised paratroopers' invasion of the Gaza Strip pushing southward towards the Suez Canal. What I saw there was a totally surprised army, destroyed and slaughtered while complacetly asleep in its tents. The strewn bodies of Egyptian soldiers were in their underpants. They were the victims of zionist aggression and USA connivance. The USA rulers' purpose was to defeat the Soviet Union, which supplied the Egyptian government with arms , while the zionist rulers' purpose was to expand the zionist empire.

It is reasonable to assume that my commitment to peace must have been made known to the regiment's commander, because I was ordered to give back my personal weapon. The order was issued with the knowledge, of course, that disarming me while making me go to the battlefield is tantamount to an attempt on my life. However, a colleague came to my aid by providing me with a loaded submachingun which he stripped off a dead Egyptian soldier. I had never made use of my weapon during that war. So, on the Egyptian front the war was over for me in less than a week, and the next week I was discharged and returned home.

Soon after arriving back home I would discover that I had been in a state of shock ever since the war began, unable to return to my normal life of work in my office, much less appear in court on behalf of my clients. I then cabled my wife, who was with the children in Nice, to wait for me there as I was going to join them soon. I immediately began my preparation for the trip. At night, as I was wandering the streets of Tel-Aviv, pondering over my decision to leave the country, I was horrified to see many people dancing in the streets to celebrate the zionist "victory". Also the sight of tables with petitions demanding the government refuse to withdraw from the newly occupied Arab lands made me deeply sick in my stomach. I then became determind not to be ever again in a zionist war situation, and certainly not to expose my children to the dangers of such war in the future.

I had left everything behind, my office and my home included, and in an unsettled state of affairs. I would need to consult my spouse, as to what direction to take for our family. In the meantime, while I was at the airport, and then inside the airliner, I continued to be immersed in mind boggling thoughts. Is there a just society anywhere on Earth where we can live permanently ? If so, is this the opportunity to go there and participate in the creation of a better future for humanity ?

2007-09-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER TWO : HELPING MY MOTHER , THEN MILITARY CONSCRIPTION, THEN BECOMING A LAWYER IN TEL-AVIV AND MARRIAGE

With big money flowing into her husband's coffers my mother again demanded that he give her the money she needed to build a house-home for us. This time he gave her enough money to pay for the design of the house and for the first down payment to the building contractor so that he would start work on the site. However, when the next payment was due her husband, Moshe Apelstein, refused to give her any money unless she would agree that he would become the registered owner of the building. So the fight between the two was on again.

My mother decided then to be self- reliant and get the necessary money by increasing her workload at her shop, and I had to spend more time nursing her baby son. It meant that I could not find sufficient time for my school work, much less time for any other personal needs.

Those intensive experiences and traumas that I went through during my childhood, and now during my adolescence, have sharpened my sense of justice and my determined opposition to any injustice of any kind, anywhere. It would lead me eventually to become an anti-zionist, but not before the zionist military aggression in 1967.

The first poem I have ever written ( in Hebrew) was a political one, concerning social injustice, and I wrote it when I was 16. By then, and much to dismay of my mother, I joined what was considered by my peers the most radical youth movement in Rehovot : a "left wing" zionist group by the name Hashomer Hatzair ( it took me some 20 years later to find out about the zionist, therefore , the fascist, essence of that organisation). At that stage of my life I had numerous questions, a desire to be part of the "good guys", and much hope for the future...

My mother's much desired home-house was at a stage of half completion . The concrete skeleton of the house was ready as my second year at high school was drawing to an end. She managed to pay for the building of the walls and the roof before she run out of money again, and the building contractor withdrew from the building site altogether. Yet she remained determined to complete the building even by herself, if necessary, and she made me her labourer on the building site. With the money she saved she paid the various sub-contractors who performed the skilled jobs under her supervision. All unskilled jobs were done by the two of us : my mother and myself. The work had to be done after school in my case, and in the case of my mother she took time off her shop and chores. We worked 7 days a week, late into the night.

The new house ,now in the process of completion, was situated in the town's market street, a stone throw from the market. Up to 1948 the market had been dominated by Palestinian peasants who had their stalls there for selling their farm produce. Many of Palestinian stall owners were women in the traditional embroided Arab peasant dresses. Some of them would serve the customers while breastfeeding their babies or while weaving. Alas, they were all gone after the zionist "war of liberation", and by 1950 it became an all zionist produce market, and Tnuva, the huge zionist rural monopoly, moved into the street and began building huge stores for its farm produce, as well as a big office block. Tnuva was next door to my mother's new house, and would bring our new home the horrible noise of loading and unloading trucks, day and night.

So my mother had a new battle on her hands. This time she had to take court action to stop the noise of the trucks during night time at least.

At the age of 17 I was entering my last year at high school, and I had to spend more time on my studies if I was to pass , at the end of the year, the matriculation exams. Another event at end of that year to worry about was my military conscription for two and half years duration. However, unlike the usual military service I have made up my mind to settle in a Kibbutz, as part of the military service, together with my mates in the zionist youth movement. When my mother heard about my decision she became very unhappy. She knew zionism better than me, and she knew that settling in a Kibbuts would be a waste of time because the zionist regime would reward those who take up a personal career with the aim of climbing the zionist hierarchical ladder, or with a business career.

However , my decision was motivated by my deep desire to fight against injustice and build a better future for all humanity, and I mistakenly believed that the road to the Kibbutz would lead me in that direction. As for the possibility of refusing military conscription altogether it never occured to me to even think about it . It was not an option to be considered then.

As soon as I became a part of the collective which was designated to be a military company and do military training before settling in a particular Kibbutz , nothing else mattered to me - not the matriculation exams results, not the objections of my mother, or the opinion of anybody else. However, the period of military training that we had to undergo was very humiliating, as we were subjected to fascist suppression of each one of us as a human being. The purpose of this humiliation was to substitute our human values and our human empathy with blind fascist discipline and with obedience coupled with a ruthless desire to carry out the orders of our superiors. As for our training in Kibbutz life it became clear to us, as time went by, that we have been used as cheap labour by the host Kibbutz. In spite of that ,we had performed our work with great enthusiasm, while dreaming about a would be Kibbutz of our own.

Personally, I aimed at being a most hard working person within our collective, and soon I did become the most sought after labourer by the various branches of the Kibbutz economy. Particularly so when there happened to be a job nobody else wanted to take, while I would be happy to take on.

At the end of one year Kibbutz training we were transferred to our permanent destination, namely, to a 10 years old Kibbutz in Western Galilee. Unlike my mates the romantic side of our collective commitment was never essential to me and I was prepared to live in that Kibbutz as long as we would be able to maintain our political and ideological commitments to the working class ( believe it or not it was the declared aim of that zionist youth movement which sponsored our collective, but it was a brazen lie, of course).

Due to my political involvement I was elected by the Kibbutz to chair the Political Committee of the Kibbutz, and I was rather proud of that. The appointment gave me the opportunity to find out the degree of sincerity of Kibbutz members. Would they be ready to commit themselves as I was ? After all, no one individual can make society change. If changing society is just one person's hobby then what point is there in pretending ? I actually brought the matter before the General Meeting of the Kibbutz, and I demanded a clear decision on the matter. I was then less than 20 years old, but I thought that my age should not be a consideration in the context of voting one way or another.

Shortly after being elected I presented to the General Meeting a detailed plan of political action with the participation all members in the implementation of the plan. The plan embraced a range of activities in the neighbouring settlements, Arab and zionist settlements alike. There was no vote taken by the General Meeting because the plan I submitted was considered as my annual report. However, it did not take long for me to realise the extent of political apathy - as I perceived it at that time - and it would lead me to conclude that I should quit the Kibbutz.

In retrospect my expectations were misplaced because the Kibbutz, any Kibbutz , is a zionist enterprise, and zionist Kibbutz settlements have been the spearhead of zionist colonisation of Palestine, and anything beyond the zionist interests have no place in a Kibbutz. Therefore, all the talk about justice and equality associated with the Kibbutz are merely zionist propaganda lies. The zionist authorities would not finance Kibbutz settlements otherwise. As I see it now, I was then beginning to find out the truth about zionism, and eventually it would help lead me to become anti-zionist.

In early 1955, on the day of my official discharge from the zionist army, I walked out of the Kibbutz heading back to Rehovot. I had no money, no plans, and no real home to go to... and I felt dejected and desolate, but I was physically fit and healthy.

I did not stay for long at my mother's home. I had to earn money as soon as possible so as to stand on my own feet. My search for a well paid job took me to the Dead Sea. During the summer of 1955 I began to work in Sdom, at the south end of the Dead Sea. The work conditions were very harsh, which is why the wages paid there were the highest in the country. When I reached the place the tempratures would reach 40 - 50 degrees Celcius, and by mid summer it would go up as hot as 60. My job involved the construction of new salt and potash ponds, and it would require me to be exposed to the scorching sun all day, for some 10- 12 hours.

By the end of that summer I managed to save enough money to keep me for a whole year in Jerusalem, where I was heading to study law at the Hebrew University. The reason I chose to study law was political. I believed that by being a lawyer I would be best equipped to fight injustice and help the victims of injustice. Also my hope was that as a lawyer I could perform better in the political arena, which in turn would allow me to help bring about the necessary political changes in the country. I did not have the money making motivation nor did I want to climb the social ladder as a lawyer.

Upon my arrival in Jerusalem I began looking for a job, and I soon found one. The job was that of a school secretary at an elementary school, a full time job. Then a strange thing happened to me. Strange because it concerned a distant relative of my father who lived and died in the USA. She had left behind a small fortune of which I was one of the heirs. Not a big deal ,really, yet enough money to buy for myself a motor scooter, and still have a few hundred dollars left to put in my bank account. From then on , it seemed , things began moving in a chain of positive events.

With my shiny new scooter, newly increased self confidence, and in a more easy going mood, I had girlfriends who made me feel carefree for the first time in my life. It led me to neglect my studies, and I lost my well paid job too. Somehow I managed to complete my studies, and got my formal certificate during 1959 ,which allowed me to start my training as an article clerk in a Tel-Aviv law office.

My first year of legal training was done in the office of the lawyer Shmuel Tamir, who some years later would be Israel's Minister for Justice. The reason I chose to train at his Tel-Aviv's office was that it was famous as the legal centre for struggle against all kinds of corruption and injustices. Tamir was known to the Israeli public as an anti-establishment lawyer, which is why I felt rather proud to be accepted as a trainee after an interview by him. However, despite Tamir's popularity and fame as an anti-establishment lawyer I would soon discover that he himself was part of the zionist ruling class, and that his work as a lawyer was designed to manoeuvre himself into a top political position within the establishment.

Tamir's most celebrated case was his successful role as counsel for the defence in Criminal Case no. 124 of 1953 in the Distric Court of Jerusalem, a trial which became known as the Kastner trial. The trial began in the mid '50s when the Ben Gurion government (zionist labor) instituted a criminal action of libel against a journalist who wrote in his newsletter that Dr. Rudolf Kastner, a senior government official, and former head of the zionist organisation in Hungary, collaborated with the Hitler murder machine during the 2nd WW. Tamir's line of defence was to expose the zionist labor party as treacherous, but without hurting zionism as a whole. Tamir himself was a fanatical zionist.

The judge found the allegations against Kastner to be true, and he went even further to state - as one of his major findings - that the so called "Rescue Committee"of the Jewish Agency ( which is a top zionist organisation) was knowingly and willingly part of the Nazi murder machine. The judge's findings infuriated Kastner who at the time was the head of that "Rescue Committee". Kastner claimed all along that he just obeyed the orders of the top zionist hierarchy in all his dealings with Nazi hierarchy. Kastner threatened to reveal all, and in doing so made himself the target of the zionist Gestapo (Israel's secret service) and they gunned him down outside his Tel-Aviv home.

Upon completion of nearly a year of training at Tamir's office I moved out to do the rest of my training term at a government office where I got a higher pay, as I needed money to survive. After receiving my lawyer's licence I workd for a few months with another lawyer, and then opened my own law office in one of Tel-Aviv's centres. Shortly before that, on 18 February, 1962, I married my young girlfriend and we began living together in small rented flat near Tel-Aviv. On the 19th of November that year our daughter Rebecca was born, and she brought us a lot of joy.

There were mountains of difficulties and many a battle on my road to an independent legal practice, a law office of my own. I began with very little money, and with no contacts with capitalists or zionists up on the echelons, but I was full of hope for a better future and had the confidence in my human values. The most formidable challenge was, of course, making a living out of my work without abandoning any of my ethics or my proletarian orientation. After two years of exhausting work I was on the way to consolidating my legal practice in every way. In fact, I was doing well enough to afford a holiday with my spouse. On 11 November, 1963, she gave birth to my son whom I named after my father : Israel.

While my law practice had reached a stage of consolidation I became increasinly involved in all kinds of struggles, the most important of which was the struggles for peace based on justice with the Arab people of Palestine. I must have been doing a very good political job because I would soon find out that the zionist Gestapo was on my back.

2007-09-09T19:52:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER ONE : TOWARDS ZIONIST MADE DISASTERS

My father, then mother ,immigrated to Palestine, and I was born there ,within the zionist colony of Tel-Aviv, on the 3rd of July, 1934.

Both parents were Polish people of jewish background. The birth certificate of my father - hand written in Polish - states that he, Srul Marchewka, was born on the 26th of October, 1904. His father, Yankiel Marchewka, who was a poor and illiterate miller's labourer, was then 24 years old. They lived in Eastern Poland. That's all I know about my grandfather. I know nothing about my grandmother, or any other member of my father's family. All of them, as well as all of my mother's family ,would be murdered by Hitler's fascists during the 2nd World War. Four years younger than my father my mother, Chaya , came from eastern Poland too.

Shortly after their wedding in Poland during 1931 my mother succeeded in persuading my father to follow the zionist propaganda call to go to Palestine. She wanted to explore the prospects of settling there. My father arrived in Palestine on a tourist visa during 1932, and my mother joined him a year later. Both of them had been victims of the zionist propaganda motto of lies which attracted them to immigrate to Palestine, namely, that Palestine was a "land without people for a people without land".

Palestine, the homeland of the Arab people of Palestine, was then at the early stages of a popular armed rebellion against the encroaching zionist settlers, as well as against the British authorities, the rulers of Palestine. The Palestinians fought for an independent Arab Palestine, but my newly arrived parents were not aware of this reality. The zionist propaganda machine presented the Arab insurrection as "criminal attacks by armed gangs", and the fanatical zionists (Jabotinsky's followers) escalated their terror attacks against the civilian population of Arab Palestine simultaneous with the maligning of them.

As for my parents, they could have, perhaps, found another alternative as they would have been regarded as ideal settlers by any standards of any immigration country. Young , healthy and skilled (father was a qualified electrician, and mother was a qualified dressmaker) they would have done well in the USA, Canada, Australia etc. At the very least they would have had the minimum security and peace which eluded them in the zionist colony of Palestine. Newcommers to Palestine they could not even imagine the terrible disaster which would befall them soon in Palestine. It would overwhelm the lives of the three of us.

Following my birth my parents' rented bedsitter in Tel-Aviv became crowded, and my father would make extra efforts to earn more money so as to pay the rent for a bigger flat for us. He had a job as an auto-electrician in a Jaffa workshop, alongside Arab workmates, and he could not afford to loose even a single day's work. So , he continued to work even during the Arab general strike in Palestine, when the streets of Jaffa were full of angry Palestinian protesters who denounced both the zionist settlers-invaders and the British authorities.

My father had a second job, as a cinema operator at night in a Tel-Aviv movie theatre, but his main job was in that automobil workshop in the neighboring Arab city of Jaffa. During the couple of years that he worked there he developed good relations with his Arab workmates, and I still have the photoes which testify to that. All of which led him to conclude that nothing wrong would happen to him, despite the pleas of my mother that he should stay at home on that fateful day in April, 1936.

On that day he was stabbed at his back on his way home. He was severely wounded, and from then on would spend years in various hospitals until his death.
Left with a baby in her arms, and with no one to turn to for help, my mother was in absolute panic. The Histadrut, the zionist organisation that has a "Department for Trade-Union Affairs", to which my father was affiliated as a paid member, was indifferent to her plight and ignored all her pleas for help. So shocking was that indifference that it is still embeded vividly in my memory, although I was then no more than two years old. I remember her holding me in one arm while banging the doors with her free hand. Those were the doors of the then Histadrut headquarters at Brenner Street, Tel-Aviv. I remember her screaming and crying when none of the doors would open for her.

When all her attempts to get help from the zionist authorities failed my mother turned to her own self reliant skills as a dressmaker for rich housewives, and with me, her toddler in tow. I remember myself on the floor next to her while her feet on the sewing machine's pedal moving endlessly up and down. I did not like it but I had to put up with it and with the impatient mother she had become. By the time she would finish her long working day my mother had very little energy left in herself, and much less love for anybody.

I began going to school as a 6 year old ,just as the 2nd World War began. By then we moved out to a rented room closer to the centre of Tel-Aviv, so that I could walk by myself to school each morning, allowing mother to go to work and return home according to the requirements of her dressmaking jobs.

It was a zionist school, of course, that I went to, but at that early stage of my life I was completely and blissfully unaware and ignorant of what was happening to me. So ,I enjoyed going to school as it provided me with plenty of opportunities to make friends and have fun at the school yard. Friday was the day I liked most at school as it consisted of school ceremonies ( the real meaning of which I began to grasp only some 30 years later). Thus, for example, at the centre of the school ceremonies was the "Blue-and-White"(the colours of the zionist flag) tin box - a money collection box - on which the map of Palestine (as well as the Kingdom of Jordan, then Transjordan) was printed in blue and white. Presiding over all the school ceremonies was the decorated large photo of T. Herzl, the founder of political zionism.

For my mother friday, every friday, was bad news. The last day of an exhausting working week it also marked the beginning of a hectic Saturday when the washing, cleaning,preparation of meals etc. had to be done by herself, and with primitive tools. There was hardly any time left for herself , or even for having some rest before the start of another punishing week, beginning Sunday morning. Which is why friday nights were the nights I feared most. No matter what I did there was no escape from her fury. So I became her regular punching bag. So much did her violence against me become a regular feature that both she and myself regarded it as her expressions of her motherly love.

Of course, being the permanent victim of mother's aggression resulted in the deterioration of my performance at school. The teachers complained to my mother about my bad handwriting, for example, for which they punished me too , which in turn brought on me more punishment from my mother. I vividly remember the tense and sombre expression on my mother's face when she bent over one day, as I was scribbling my way in my school's notebook. I heard her scream then felt an acute pain in my trembling fingers. She had hit the tiny right hand palm of her 7 year old son so hard that even the pencil I was holding between my fingers was broken in two and my fingers were bleeding.

The year 1941 was the time when the 2nd World War was getting closer to Palestine. Bombers of the fascist Italian air force appeared on Tel-Aviv's sky and they dropped some bombs on the city. It was more than enough to strike panic in my mother's mind. Terrified, as the warning siren would begin to yell, she would grab me in her arms and rush to the nearest air shelter.

As if this was not enough the horrible news began to reach us from Nazi occupied Europe. The news from Nazi occupied Poland were very bad : mass murder, deportations, concentration camps etc. The news trickled very slowly, because of the zionist censorship, but every day brought more worrying news for my mother. By 1942 my mother turned into a very shorttempered and distressed person.She needed love, and she was looking for a man to share her problems as well as her dreams with.

Being 34 years old and a rather beautiful woman mother was looking for a new partner to share her life with. The lover she eventually found would be my stepfather. His name was Moshe Apelstein, and he was a big man who looked to me rather ominously as the wrong father figure for me. However ,I wanted my mother to be happy, and I did not object to his relationship with my mother, yet I was worried that he might rob me of the little affection I have managed to snatch from my mother every now and again. He did turn out to be much worse than just a robber of love, as he would soon become my mother's tormentor too , on top of his hostility to me

By the end of 1942 we moved out to the country town of Rehovot, some 30km south of Tel-Aviv. One the earliest zionist settlements in Palestine it was a sleepy little town, at the heart of the zionist colony's citrus growing region. I would live there until my conscription to the Israeli army in 1952.

Upon our arrival in Rehovot I began the 3rd year at the local elementary school. My mother did not waste time setting up herself as an independent dressmaker. She rented a small shop close to the town's centre,and she devided it by curtain into two halves : the back half would be our home, the front would be a ladies' dressing shop. The "residential " part was further devided by her into three : one third for the sewing machine, one third for the beds, and one third for the kitchen. The toilet was outside, at the backyard of the building. There were no shower or bath facilities, and we would go to have a shower at the home of my mother's friends.

My mother was very proud of her new "independent" status. She even gave a name to her shop with a front big sign proclaiming it : "The Fashion Salon".

If my mother needed any help to completely abandon her working-class origin then her lover was just the right man for the job. Born into a family of jewish-Polish merchants he was trained to carry on with the merchant-traders tradition, and he never stopped boasting about it. Worse still, he never stopped reminding my mother of his "superiority" over her poor family background. It was he who was behind the idea of the shop, luring her into it by "assuring" her of financial success.

Mother was now working 7 day a week, and she would stop only for preparing meals, cleaning, and going to sleep. There was only one moment of consolation for her, and it occured once a week, when she counted, late into the night, the money earned. At such moments I could notice the glee in her eyes as she stretched the wrinkled paper money, then counted it, then spit into it (for good luck) before burying it deep into her handbag. Her ambition, so she confided to me, was to save enough money to buy a home for us.

As for myself, I adopted rather quickly to my new social environment. The only thing that really worried me was mother's refusal to let me join the local children's street gang. But I did anyway despite her threats and the punishments that followed. She even tried to put me under some kind of "house arrest", but I would sneak out all the same. Her fear was that her only child would turn into a "street child" instead of growing into a well behaved "respectable person".

As for my mother's lover he increasingly became a regular visitor, and he made himself her business adviser too. Only when she fell pregnant to him did we move out of the shop to live - all three of us - in a rented room in a nearby street. The room was part of a two bedroom flat which we shared with another family.It was early 1947 and I was in my last year of elementary school.

In the town of Rehovot the end of World War 2, like the war itself, was hardly noticed. Dominated as it was then by citrus groves owner "aristocrats", Rehovot preserved its conservative, pre-zionist way of life. The grove owners were the sons of the founders of the town, namely, of jewish- Russian background whose settlemets in Palestine were financed by the Rothschilds of France following the model of French colonies elsewhere. They were not political zionists, and they had no plans for the establishment of a "Jewish State" in Palestine. One of their leaders, Moshe Smilansky, the old citrus groves owner, who was also a writer, openly opposed the heirarchy of political zionism in Palestine.

Big storm clouds were gathering swiftly all over Palestine during 1947, and Rehovot would become a civilian and military center for the zionist drive to invade and occupy southern Palestine. The zionist hierarchy ordered a political and terror campaign against the British authorities in Palestine so as to force them to hand over to the zionists the entire state apparatus of Palestine. Simultaneously with terror campaign against the British the zionists carried out a systemtic terror campaign against the Arab people of Palestine so as to ethnic cleanse them by forcing them to flee in panic, abandoning their homes and belongings to the zionist terror gangs.

The zionist propaganda machine dubbed that war then : the War of Liberation.

Ignoring the war dangers, and while attending her women clients and their dresses, my mother, who was by then heavily pregnant with her lover's son, managed to find the time to look for a block of land in Rehovot where her dreamed home would be built. So determined was she to implement her home plan that she totally ignored the ominous signs of the approaching war. When she eventually bought a small block of land it became almost impossible to register the land transaction in Tel-Aviv's titles office. Yet she somehow managed to overcome all the difficulties and returned back home safely with a certificate proving her title to the land.

My stepfather was very busy too. He was preparing himself to make big money out of the war situation. He would buy and sell anything illegal : contraband goods, black market foodstuff, stolen property, an assortment of firearms etc. The cupboard at our home was full pistols of all kinds, ammunition of all sizes, and all kinds of blackmarket goods. He was arrested and imprisoned after criminal convictions several times, and I was sent by my mother to travel to prison and bring him his homemade food.

As if this was not enough for my early adolescence, I would be requested by my mother to perform the role of nanny soon after she gave birth to my half brother. She actually threatened to stop my highschool studies in case I refuse her request. So I did obey her and would feed and nurse daily her baby while she went to work. It was at the expense of my own personal needs,of course, but I kept doing the job for a couple of years without complaining.

The two, my mother and Moshe Apelstein , were an unmarried couple even after the birth of my half-brother. Only towards the end of 1948 did they marry and register as a married couple. However , my mother's real troubles with her 2nd husband were yet to come. Their first big dispute concerned the building of a home on the block of land she had bought. She wanted the building to start without delay, but he refused to give her any money, unless she would agree that he would become the registered owner of the property. His greatest worry was that I might inherit the property after his death. This dispute between them got worse by the day.

Whenever the subject would come up he would yell at her : " I shall build you a tomb, not a home."He also used violence against her to intimidate her, and he hit her very hard too.

By the end of 1948 the zionist war was literally on our doorstep. One day, during an Egyptian air raid on Rehovot, a 50kg bomb was dropped on the house next door while we were hiding in the stairway entrance of our house. It prompted my mother to urge her husband to move temporarily to a smaller town nearby where we lived in a rented house until the war was over.

The zionist war of ethnic cleansing ,which actually began in 1947 and ended with the truce agreements of 1949, dispossessed more than half the Arab popultaion of Palestine. They have become refugees , and they and their families still live in refugee camps because the zionist apartheid regime of Israel won't let go back to their homeland and homes. When they fled their homes they left behind not only their homes and orchards but even their personal belongings. All was looted by the zionist settlers. The most valuable chattle were stolen by the high ranking zionist officers and members of the zionist hierarchy ; then came the lower ranks to loot, and to clean up the leftovers came the zionist civilians , particularly zionist traders like Moshe Apelstein, my stepfather.