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This article was written under the heading “The Guardian needs to print an urgent retraction and apology” regarding the libelous article by Israeli Neve Gordon. His out right lies about the truth in the Negev and the land grab by local Bedouins is criminal. But what makes the story interesting to me are the facts revealed in the process.

Readers will surely remember Neve Gordon’s libellous article of July 29^th in which he claimed that Israel had carried out ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Bedouins in the Negev region.  Last weekend (August 13^th 2010) an interesting article by Kalman Livskind appeared in the supplement of the Ma’ariv newspaper which I think is worth translating in full.

“I find myself once more having to address the subject of the destruction of the illegal Bedouin gathering at Arakib and I will continue to do so for as long as the lying propaganda of the Left wing organizations and the ‘Ha’aretz’ newspaper on the subject continues.

‘Around 300 residents and among them many children were left not only homeless for the most part, but also degraded, frustrated and shocked’ was written this week in an editorial in the newspaper. ‘The State did not offer any alternative, compensation or aid, material or psychological, to residents whose village was destroyed and their world fell in upon them’. And now to the facts. Firstly, in Arakib there were never 300 people or even 100. Secondly, no worlds fell in. A few tens of residents of (the town of) Rahat took over that land only eight years ago and constructed several buildings without asking for permits from anyone, and now the State has come and enforced the law. Compensation? Aid? For what?

In addition the time has come to dismantle the fabrication invented by ‘Ha’aretz’ about Bedouins ‘remaining homeless’ once and for all. Write this down: 12 heads of households received eviction papers. All of them own villas of at least 200 square meters on a dunam of land in Neighbourhood 25 in Rahat. The villa of Abdallah Abu Madiram is house number 108 in the neighbourhood. One of his sons, Nidal, is at house number 27 and the other, Eyad, at house number 102. Siyah Abu Madiram lives at house number 25 with his children Aziz and Ali. Mohamed Said Abu Madiram lives at house number 26, like his brother Suliman. Salim Abu Madiram lives at house number 112, Ismail Abu Madiram at house number 8, Mohamed Salame Abu Madiram at house number 23 and Suliman Abu Jabar at house number 139. They are not unfortunate, not miserable and not homeless. Enough of this bluff.”