Forest fire near Haifa kills 40 isreali prison guards

[freepalestine]

2 December 2010 Last updated at 18:26
Israeli forest fire near Haifa kills 40 prison guards

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(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11901750#play)




The BBC's Jon Donnison said the area has had little rain in recent months

Continue reading the main story (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11901750#story_continues_1) Related stories


In pictures: Deadly fire in Israel (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11901937)
About 40 prison guards have died after being trapped in a forest fire that is raging out of control in northern Israel, police say.
All the dead were on a bus which was caught in the inferno, in the Carmel Mountains near the city of Haifa, they said.
Hundreds of people, many of them prison inmates, have been evacuated from the area.
Scores more have been injured, the ambulance service said.
The Israeli prison service said the bus was carrying guards to help with the evacuation of nearby Damon Prison because of the blaze.
The men had not worked at the prison but had raced to the area from central Israel to assist in the rescue, prison service spokesman Yaron Zamir said.
A fire brigade spokesman told the Jerusalem Post that the blaze had travelled 1,500m (4,920ft) in less than three minutes.
"The bus had no chance. They tried to escape but were burned alive. It was a horrific scene," the spokesman told the newspaper.
No inmates were reported injured.
'Catastrophe'
"This is a disaster of unprecedented proportions," Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
"We are harnessing all the forces of the state to deal with this disaster and rescue those who are injured and to stop the fire," Mr Netanyahu said.
He called on Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Russia to help Israel tackle the fire.

The fire in the northern Carmel region broke out about midday, and hundreds of firefighters were battling the flames on the ground and from the air amid heavy winds.
Emergency crews from across the country tried to reach the scene, weaving through heavy rush hour traffic as night fell.
"We're on a road that takes you down Carmel Mountain and everything is burning on both sides," a paramedic supervisor from the ambulance service, Erez Geller, told the BBC.
"It's dark now and this makes it very complicated with the fire. It's a catastrophe because we have so many fatalities.
"We have had several fires in the last 10 to 12 years but nothing like this," Mr Geller said.
Israeli media said it was the biggest forest fire in the country's history, with 7,000 acres (2,800 hectares) of land destroyed by Thursday evening.
The cause of the blaze is unknown.
Israel is currently suffering a period of drought with no significant rain since the spring.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11901750

[The Vegan Marxist]

Well, no matter who it was that died, I'm sorry this had to happen to them. No one should die due to such circumstances.

[freepalestine]

saves on bullets

[freepalestine]

Official: Settlers set fire to West Bank land
Published today 22:19
http://www.revleft.com/vb/images/ViewDetails/Eng-1.jpg http://www.revleft.com/vb/images/ViewDetails/Eng+1.jpg






NABLUS (Ma’an) -- Israeli settlers set fire to Palestinian-owned olive groves near the evacuated settlement of Homesh, near the West Bank city of Nablus Thursday, a Palestinian Authority official said.

Ghasan Daghlas, who is charged with monitoring settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an: "The settlers set fire in the area of Khahlet Awana, adjacent to evacuated settlement."

He said Palestinians are banned from entering the area because of the presence of an Israeli military installation.

He said 10 dunums of land had caught fire.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=338377

[FreeFocus]

Too bad it was guards going to assist evacuations and not settlers or Israeli war criminals..

[9]

Too bad it was guards going to assist evacuations and not settlers

What exactly would it accomplish to have settlers burned to death in a forest fire? Do you think there won't just be more settlers to come right in and fill their place? How does it bring Palestinians any closer to liberation?
I have a lot of family who recently moved from St. Petersburg to Israel; I am completely opposed to Zionism, but it doesn't mean I want any of them to burn to death in a fire.

[FreeFocus]

What exactly would it accomplish to have settlers burned to death in a forest fire? Do you think there won't just be more settlers to come right in and fill their place? How does it bring Palestinians any closer to liberation?
I have a lot of family who recently moved from St. Petersburg to Israel; I am completely opposed to Zionism, but it doesn't mean I want any of them to burn to death in a fire.

Did your friend move from St. Petersburg to an Israeli settlement in the West Bank? I wasn't referring to regular Israeli citizens in this instance as "settlers," most of them are the descendants of settlers (to whom this sentiment would still apply, largely) and Israel is still a settler state, but most Israeli citizens today, while perpetuating the original crime of ethnic cleansing through their support of Israel and lack of acknowledgment about the crimes committed, are not responsible in a direct way the the original crime.

Settlers burning up might not solve the institutional crimes, but it would be justice nonetheless. Just like slaveowners being killed in slave uprisings - that might not smash the institution, but it is justice nonetheless.

[gorillafuck]

I have a lot of family who recently moved from St. Petersburg to Israel; I am completely opposed to Zionism, but it doesn't mean I want any of them to burn to death in a fire.
There's a difference between being a regular Israeli and someone who moves onto a settlement.

[freepalestine]

these guards are responsible for torturing,mistreating palestinian detainees,they are part of the israeli govt and most are soldiers or ex-soldiers.

[freepalestine]

What exactly would it accomplish to have settlers burned to death in a forest fire? Do you think there won't just be more settlers to come right in and fill their place? How does it bring Palestinians any closer to liberaltion?
.as the settlers are constantly burning palestinian farmlands,and other environmental vandalism,beating up farmworkers,peace activists,murdering palestinians ,.
how will the palestinians stop the violence from the israeli occupation ,ethnic cleansing and the fascist settlers?

[Pavlov's House Party]

as the settlers are constantly burning palestinian farmlands,and other environmental vandalism,beating up farmworkers,peace activists,murdering palestinians ,.
how will the palestinians stop the violence from the israeli occupation ,ethnic cleansing and the fascist settlers?

by burning israelis to death?:rolleyes:

[freepalestine]

by burning israelis to death?:rolleyes:
those soldiers who died,were killed in a forest fire.(????)
please try to answer the question that you gave that reply to.

[9]

as the settlers are constantly burning palestinian farmlands,and other environmental vandalism,beating up farmworkers,peace activists,murdering palestinians ,.
how will the palestinians stop the violence from the israeli occupation ,ethnic cleansing and the fascist settlers?

I don't know. Obviously its a crucial question, but I don't have the answer to it, and I'm not sure anyone does. I don't think some Israelis dying in a wildfire accomplishes any of those things, though. What do you think the answer is?


Did your friend move from St. Petersburg to an Israeli settlement in the West Bank?

no, to tel aviv.

[freepalestine]

I don't know. Obviously its a crucial question, but I don't have the answer to it, and I'm not sure anyone does. I don't think some Israelis dying in a wildfire accomplishes any of those things, though. What do you think the answer is?as for the soldiers/paramilitary police who were killed - ofcourse it won't affect the plight of palestinians,.although i doubt many palestinians will be upset by the news.
as for my answer to the question.i'm for an intifada.

[The Vegan Marxist]

as for the soldiers/paramilitary police who were killed - ofcourse it won't affect the plight of palestinians,.although i doubt many palestinians will be upset by the news.
as for my answer to the question.i'm for an intifada.

Well of course the Palestinians aren't going to be too upset over the incident, as they have every right not to be. Though, when we see a large number of cops killed, say in India or the Philippines by the notorious Maoists, should we celebrate both the deaths of the cops and victories of the Maoists, or should we morn the deaths of the cops and celebrate the victories of the Maoists? I'm for the latter. I'm a proletarian, not a sadist.

[black magick hustla]

Allahu Akbar.

this is really fucking distasteful, i dont care if it is "from muslim supporter". you have no fucking right to use those words in this context whiteboy

[black magick hustla]

also to any dumbass that talks about "saving bullets". what if all the brown people in the US go about "killing some crackas". after all the US is a "settler" state too jesus

[Widerstand]

Are they celebrating it?

[freepalestine]

also to any dumbass that talks about "saving bullets". what if all the brown people in the US go about "killing some crackas". after all the US is a "settler" state too jesuswhat are you talking about?
they were soldiers/police.the same army whove been so nice to us.

[Lord Testicles]

Allahu Akbar.

You've got to be pretty dumb to think that a sky wizard was responsible for this forest fire. It's evidently the work of the great one, Beelzebub.

Hail Satan!

[hatzel]

Victims of the Carmel fire (http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/victims-of-the-carmel-fire-now-we-must-deal-with-this-tragedy-1.328661)

Now, in truth, I could be very fickle and point out that the prison in Damon that they were heading to has predominantly Arab inmates...I don't know why they didn't just stay at home and let the inmates burn to in their cells, had they known that the Arab response would be to rejoice in their deaths. Oh yeah, now I remember, I guess it's because some people still have a semblance of compassion for human life. Yeah. Shame all that stuff's gone out of the window now, though, hatred just seems that little bit more productive...

[freepalestine]

Victims of the Carmel fire (http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/victims-of-the-carmel-fire-now-we-must-deal-with-this-tragedy-1.328661)

Now, in truth, I could be very fickle and point out that the prison in Damon that they were heading to has predominantly Arab inmates...I don't know why they didn't just stay at home and let the inmates burn to in their cells, had they known that the Arab response would be to rejoice in their deaths. Oh yeah, now I remember, I guess it's because some people still have a semblance of compassion for human life. Yeah. Shame all that stuff's gone out of the window now, though, hatred just seems that little bit more productive...i guess they didnt want those arabs to escape.
as for celebrating -palestinian firecrews are there.maybe they shouldve stayed at home too.

[9]

Victims of the Carmel fire (http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/victims-of-the-carmel-fire-now-we-must-deal-with-this-tragedy-1.328661)

Now, in truth, I could be very fickle and point out that the prison in Damon that they were heading to has predominantly Arab inmates...I don't know why they didn't just stay at home and let the inmates burn to in their cells, had they known that the Arab response would be to rejoice in their deaths. Oh yeah, now I remember, I guess it's because some people still have a semblance of compassion for human life. Yeah. Shame all that stuff's gone out of the window now, though, hatred just seems that little bit more productive...

so you're condemning Arabs rotting in an Israeli prison for not weeping over the deaths of their prison guards? :rolleyes:

[Rafiq]

Victims of the Carmel fire (http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/victims-of-the-carmel-fire-now-we-must-deal-with-this-tragedy-1.328661)

Now, in truth, I could be very fickle and point out that the prison in Damon that they were heading to has predominantly Arab inmates...I don't know why they didn't just stay at home and let the inmates burn to in their cells, had they known that the Arab response would be to rejoice in their deaths. Oh yeah, now I remember, I guess it's because some people still have a semblance of compassion for human life. Yeah. Shame all that stuff's gone out of the window now, though, hatred just seems that little bit more productive...

Although I am no fan of the Israeli regime, and overall almost all policies of the Israelis, yes, Human beings are Human beings, I don't care where he's from, if someone sees another person in need of help, they are going to help them.

It is a misconception to think that an Israeli can have no empathy, that they are all "socio-paths".

however, helping them may have to do, with, saving their reputation. They have been condemned a lot in the past few months, I don't think they want the news to be saying "Israeli's refuse help of burning Arab inmates". The Israeli regime would not mind them burning, but probably helped because they wanted to keep their reputation on the bright side.

[Red Commissar]

Weather has been harsh across the Middle-East. Watersheds are drying up, rivers are becoming trickles, and excessive damning up stream is causing problems (especially with nations like Syria and Iraq). With the lack of rain fall to compensate the droughts have been fierce and the land dry, so like the article says the fire was just waiting to happen.

[hatzel]

so you're condemning Arabs rotting in an Israeli prison for not weeping over the deaths of their prison guards? :rolleyes:

Hold up, hold up, hold up...I'm not talking about anybody in prisons, I'm talking about people on this very thread, who seem rather pleased at this development. I won't go through quoting individual posts, as we all know which they are. Why should anybody risk their life to do anything if their deaths will then be celebrated as saving bullets, or the result of some divine act on some internet forum somewhere? Hell, since when could any death be considered a good thing? I mean, one might be able to argue that the death of some famous world leader who has committed atrocities could be celebrated, if, for instance, one of the many Yugoslavians who find themselves in front of the Hague for war crimes, acts of genocide, all that stuff...I mean, one knows who they are, and knows exactly what they may have done. If one then thinks that they deserve to die for it, maybe one would be happy if they were hit by a car or suffered a heart attack, as this saves on bullets or rope or just the time and money a war crimes trial eats up. But working on the assumption that nobody on this thread had even heard of Oshrat Pinto before yesterday, and probably nobody still remembers her name, I hardly see how there can be any justification for considering her death a positive thing, a sentiment which has been expressed a good few times on this thread. I have no idea what the response is from the prisoners themselves (though I know that at least 4 have escaped, so I guess they're quite chuffed...), or Palestinians in general, and I don't claim to know that. I only know the response in Ha'aretz, the JC, and this very thread. Two of these have expressed absolutely no celebratory sentiment. I'll let you guess what the other one is...

In truth, what I'm saying is that if we are to believe that the Palestinians (and pro-Palestinians) and the Israelis (and pro-Israelis) are sworn enemies, wouldn't these prison guards have been well within their rights to intentionally let the prison burn down, without trying to do anything, and then just go around on internet forums proclaiming the greatness of this divine act, and how it now saves on bullets? That, of course, would be the exact same idea as has been expressed in some of the posts on this thread. I'm merely suggesting that it's not okay just because it's coming from the other side. I had hoped that would be something we might be able to agree on. Or maybe I was wrong, and actually it is okay for people on internet forums to rejoice in the deaths of absolute strangers. But maybe we should change that. Maybe we should set up a dedicated forum where we all post links to articles about fires, earthquakes, eruptions, mining accidents, anything, and then we can all explain why it's good and how it saves on bullets, and then proclaim 'Allahu akhbar'. Sounds like a good idea for a forum, why haven't the admin got onto it yet?

By the way, that last bit was sarcastic, so don't go quoting me on it...

[Rafiq]

I mean, would you rejoice if these guards were, say, American? British? The regimes of those countries have oppressed far more people.

[Morgenstern]

People who are pro-Israel talk about how the Palestinians want all Jews dead no matter who they are. Comments in this thread along the lines of, "it saves bullets" only help this image. Forest fires are tragic and the loss of property and life are tragic.

[freepalestine]

As Fires Continue To Consume More Areas in Haifa, Extremists Torch Islamic Graveyard

http://www.revleft.com/vb/../graphics/date.gif Saturday December 04, 2010 08:54http://www.revleft.com/vb/../graphics/person.gif by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies http://www.revleft.com/vb/../graphics/report.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../report_posts?subject=Report post: Story 60086 with title: As Fires Continue To Consume More Areas in Haifa, Extremists Torch Islamic Graveyard&message=Report post: Story 60086 with title: As Fires Continue To Consume More Areas in Haifa, Extremists Torch Islamic Graveyard%0Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.imemc.org%2Findex.php %3Fobj_id%3D53%26story_id%3D60086%26%0A%0AEnter+yo ur+reason+here+-+please+do+not+remove+the+above+link+as+it+will+al low+an+editor+to+easily+remove+the+offending+conte nt)


The Al Aqsa Foundation told the Maan News Agency that a group of Jewish extremists torched the Al Qassam Graveyard in Haifa under the guise of the ongoing fires that started Thursday in the area and continues to spread.http://www.revleft.com/vb/../cache/imagecache/local/attachments/dec2010/460_0___10000000_0_0_0_0_0_fire_bus.jpg (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../attachments/dec2010/fire_bus.jpeg)
Image Arabs48

The Foundation said that there were two attempts to burn the graveyard that includes the grave of Iz Ed Deen Al Qassam, a Syrian nationalist who came to Palestine in 1922 and resided in Al Yajour village in Haifa. He was killed by the British Forces in Palestine in the 1930’s. He is regarded as a symbol of resistance against the occupation in Palestine and the Arab world.

He came for Palestine in February 1922 and resided in Al Yajour village in Haifa. He was known as an Islamic preacher and spiritual leaders. He was also the head of the Young Men Muslim Association In Haifa.

The Al Aqsa Foundation confirmed that two attempts to torch the Al Qassam Graveyard were carried out by extremists, and that Israeli firefighters managed to extinguish them.

There have been several attempts to ruin and burn the graveyard since Palestine fell under Israeli occupation, but Arabs and Muslims reconstructed and fenced it.

An Israeli police spokeswoman denied the report, and told the Maan News Agency that no fires took place at the graveyard.

She said that the fires in the area consumed 34000 Dunams, and that initial reports indicate arson.

So far, 42 persons were killed in the fires and 17 were injured, three of them, including Haifa police chief, are in serious conditions.

Israeli daily, Haaretz, reported that nearly a dozen of fires broke out across the Galilee, north of the country, while wild fires continued to consume more areas in the Carmel. Haaretz said that the police suspect that the new fires were deliberate.

Haaretz added that Police Commissioner, David Cohen, instructed local police chiefs to prepare to counter fires that had been deliberately started.

The suspicion rose after the police and investigators found two bicycles and a bag that contained a wig.

The Police arrested and released two Arab Druze residents of Daliat Al Carmel and released them later on after the investigation revealed they had nothing to do with the fire. A number of Israeli investigators stated that they believe the fire was likely caused by negligence.

Furthermore, Haaretz said that the largest fire that broke out on Friday around noon was in Tsur Shalom industrial area on the outskirts of Haifa. The massive density of smoke led the police to temporarily seal a section of Route 4 which links between Acre and the center of the country.

Later on, bushfires broke out in “Ma’alot Tarshiha” and “Kiryat Tivon”, while another small fire broke out east of Shfa Amr Arab city and Neve Yosef neighborhood in Haifa.

On Friday, approximately at 5 in the evening, another bushfire started near a Moshav on the side of the Mount Carmel. Around 6 in the evening, two bushfires broke out in the Nazareth area. Arson is suspected.

Approximately at 8 P.M. on Friday, a fire was reported close to Tel-Al area in the Western Galilee, and another fire broke out in the industrial area of Nesher town, near Haifa.

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, stated that the parties responsible for the fire did not expect an outcome this large, and called for an immediate investigation.

Israeli Interior Minister, Elie Yishai, also called for an investigation into the incident, and stated that he repeatedly warned in the past that Israel’s Firefighting capabilities are the worst in the world, and that Israel is not equipped to deal with urgent situations.

[freepalestine]

Hold up, hold up, hold up...I'm not talking about anybody in prisons, I'm talking about people on this very thread, who seem rather pleased at this development. I won't go through quoting individual posts, as we all know which they are. Why should anybody risk their life to do anything if their deaths will then be celebrated as saving bullets, or the result of some divine act on some internet forum somewhere? Hell, since when could any death be considered a good thing? I mean, one might be able to argue that the death of some famous world leader who has committed atrocities could be celebrated, if, for instance, one of the many Yugoslavians who find themselves in front of the Hague for war crimes, acts of genocide, all that stuff...I mean, one knows who they are, and knows exactly what they may have done. If one then thinks that they deserve to die for it, maybe one would be happy if they were hit by a car or suffered a heart attack, as this saves on bullets or rope or just the time and money a war crimes trial eats up. But working on the assumption that nobody on this thread had even heard of Oshrat Pinto before yesterday, and probably nobody still remembers her name, I hardly see how there can be any justification for considering her death a positive thing, a sentiment which has been expressed a good few times on this thread. I have no idea what the response is from the prisoners themselves (though I know that at least 4 have escaped, so I guess they're quite chuffed...), or Palestinians in general, and I don't claim to know that. I only know the response in Ha'aretz, ....every post you write is a contradiction.why dont you be more honest.tell us what is the best way to bring about peace in palestine/isreal.a one state a two state solution or should we just leave?obviously zionists would prefer that.

[Spawn of Stalin]

Defenceless animals are dying in these fires, and all you guys care about is the Zionists? God you disgust me.

[Wanted Man]

Victims of the Carmel fire (http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/victims-of-the-carmel-fire-now-we-must-deal-with-this-tragedy-1.328661)

Now, in truth, I could be very fickle and point out that the prison in Damon that they were heading to has predominantly Arab inmates...I don't know why they didn't just stay at home and let the inmates burn to in their cells, had they known that the Arab response would be to rejoice in their deaths.

What Arab response?

[empiredestoryer]

great news:)

[Red Commissar]

Looking at it after the fact, I think it demonstrates, along with the climate changes occurring in the region, how unprepared the state of Israel was for this fire. It highlights in a way how much of its state mechanisms has geared itself towards an event of a war on one end, and the oppression of Palestinians- but apparently little thought has gone into its other plans of disasters that might occur naturally.

[Magdalen]

Just re-posting a few links I put up in OI, in case anyone missed them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...sraeli-forests (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/20/why-jnf-plants-israeli-forests)

Here's a rather interesting letter which was published in The Guardian last month regarding the Jewish National Fund's forest-planting project in Israel. Much of what is now forest in Israel was planted over the remains of Palestinian villages in the period following 1948, ensuring that the return of Palestinian refugees was rendered impossible.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/d...el-fire-ga.php (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.salem-news.com/articles/december042010/israel-fire-ga.php)

This article gives particular attention to Ein Hod, an Israeli artists' commune which has been badly affected by the recent fires. Ein Hod was surrounded by forest plantings in part to conceal the existence of the nearby 'unrecognised' Palestinian village of Ayn Hawd, which had been founded by those expelled from Ein Hod, and surrounded by fences to ensure no expansion took place.

These seem to illustrate that the disaster which is facing Israel is at least in part one of its own making, a direct consequence of the Zionist attempt to obliterate any sign of the land's former, and remaining Palestinian inhabitants.

[freepalestine]

The Carmel wildfire is burning all illusions in Israel
Max Blumenthal writing from New York City, US, Live from Palestine, 6 December 2010

http://electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/3/101206-forest-fire.jpg
The forests burning in northern Israel were planted over destroyed Palestinian villages. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.activestills.org))

"When I look out my window today and see a tree standing there, that tree gives me a greater sense of beauty and personal delight than all the vast forests I have seen in Switzerland or Scandinavia. Because every tree here was planted by us."

-- David Ben Gurion, Memoirs

"Why are there so many Arabs here? Why didn't you chase them away?"

-- David Ben Gurion during a visit to Nazareth, July 1948

Four days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to place thousands of migrant workers in a prison camp deep in the Negev Desert because, as he claimed, they pose a "threat to the character of [the] country," a burning tree trunk fell into a bus full of Israeli Prison Service cadets, killing forty passengers. The tree was among hundreds of thousands turned to ash by the forest fire pouring across northern Israel, and which now threatens to engulf outskirts of Haifa, Israel's third-largest city. Over the last four days, more than 12,300 acres have burned in the Mount Carmel area, a devastating swath of destruction in a country the size of New Jersey. While the cause of the fire has not been established, it has laid bare the myths of Israel's foundation.

Israelis are treating the fire as one of their greatest tragedies in recent years. A friend who grew up in the Haifa area told me over the weekend that he was devastated by the images of destruction he saw on TV. His friend's brother was among those who perished in the bus accident. Though he is a dedicated Zionist who supported Netanyahu's election bid in 2008, like so many Israelis, he was furious at the response -- or lack of one -- by the government. "Our leaders are complete idiots, but you already know that," he told me. "They invested so much to prepare for all kinds of crazy war scenarios but didn't do anything to protect civilians from the basic things you are supposed to take for granted."

On 3 December, Netanyahu informed the country, "We do not have what it takes to put out the fire, but help is on the way." To beat back the blaze, Bibi has had to beg for assistance from his counterpart in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Western-backed Palestinian Authority and Israel's American and British patrons. Israel is a wealthy country which boasts to the world about its innovative spirit -- its US-based lobbyists market it as a "Start-Up Nation" -- but its performance during the forest fire revealed the sad truth: its government has prioritized offensive military capacity and occupation maintenance so extensively that it has completely neglected the country's infrastructure, emergency preparedness and most of all, the general welfare of its citizens.

Beyond the embarrassing spectacle of Turkish supply planes landing in Tel Aviv just six months after Israeli commandoes massacred Turkish aid volunteers on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, or the confessions of impotence by the hard-men Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, the fire exposed a terrible history that had been concealed by layers of official mythology and piles of fallen pine needles.

"There are no facts"

Among the towns that have been evacuated is Ein Hod, a bohemian artists' colony nestled in the hills to the north and east of Haifa. This is not the first time Ein Hod was evacuated, however. The first time was in 1948, when the town's original Palestinian inhabitants were driven from their homes by a manmade disaster known as the Nakba.

Most of the original inhabitants of Ein Hod, which was called Ayn Hawd prior to the expulsions of '48, and was continuously populated since the 12th century, were expelled to refugee camps in Jordan and Jenin in the West Bank. But a small and exceptionally resilient band of residents fled to the hills, set up a makeshift camp and watched as Jewish foreigners moved into their homes.

In 1953, a Romanian Dadaist sculptor named Marcel Janco convinced the army not to bulldoze Ein Hod as it did the scores of nearby Palestinian towns it had ethnically cleansed five years prior. He proposed establishing an art commune to generate tourism and contribute to the culture of Zionism. Today, the rustic stone homes that once belonged to Palestinians are quaint artist studios, while the village mosque has been converted into an airy bar called Bonanza. Visitors to the town are greeted at the entrance by Benjamin Levy's "The Modest Couple in a Sardine Can," a sculpture depicting a nude woman and a suited gentleman in a sardine can, which was unveiled by Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2001.

After the catastrophe of 1948, the original Palestinians of Ayn Hawd set up their own village three kilometers away from what is today known as Eid Hod. For decades the villagers resisted attempts to dispossess them and were surrounded by a fence during the 1970s to prevent them from expanding according to natural growth. But they finally won official recognition in 2005. This meant that for the first time since the establishment of Israel they could receive electricity and trash service. Meanwhile, more than forty other Palestinian villages inside Israel remain "unrecognized." The 80,000 or so residents of the villages, which lay mostly in the Negev desert, are tax-paying citizens of Israel. However, they have few rights; their homes are routinely demolished to make way for Jewish settlements and they are deprived of basic services.

I visited both Ein Hod and Ayn Hawd in June. When the residents of the Jewish village Ein Hod saw me filming, they reacted with a mixture of suspicion and hostility. "I know what you're doing!" an elderly woman sneered at me, insisting that I not film her. Inside the bar, I asked patrons if the place was in fact a converted mosque. "Yeah, but that's how all of Israel is," a woman from a nearby kibbutz told me as she sipped on a beer. "This whole country is built on top of Arab villages. So maybe it's best to let bygones be bygones."

I provoked another annoyed reaction when I began filming a tour guide leading a group of elderly Israelis around the village. Speaking in Hebrew, the guide told the tourists as she took them through the art studios that they were inside "third generation houses" -- forget the Arabs who lived in them for hundreds of years. In the studios I noticed that much of the art being produced was Judaica kitsch for sale to foreign tourists -- generic shtetl scenes from the long lost, distant world immortalized in films like Fiddler on the Roof.

Later, before taking her group to the town's Hurdy Gurdy museum, the guide mentioned a "welcoming committee" that vetted potential residents. Presumably this was how Ein Hod kept the pesky Arabs down the road from returning home. That and the Absentee Property Law of 1950 which placed all "abandoned" Arab property in the hands of the Jewish National Fund and the Israeli Land Administration, a provision that consolidated what the exiled Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament Azmi Bishara called "the largest armed robbery in history."

During a break, the tour guide pulled me aside and demanded to know who I was. It was clear the villagers had grown wary of curious outsiders. Introducing herself as Shuli Linda Yarkon, a PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University, the tour guide told me she the leading authority on Ein Hod. She said I had to allow her to review all the footage I shot. She claimed that this would ensure that I not mistranslate words she used like kibbush, a Hebrew term that means "conquest" but is commonly used to refer to the occupation of Palestine.

"So what about the conquest you mentioned?" I asked her. "Why didn't you tell the tourists who lived in the houses before 1948?" Visibly irritated, Yarkon remarked, "I've concluded after years of research that there are really no facts when you discuss this issue. There are only narratives." She assured me that Ein Hod's Jewish population maintained excellent relations with the expelled residents: "Go ask them. They will tell you how they feel."

So I did. After following a winding dirt road around a hillside for several kilometers, I was inside Ayn Hawd, the Palestinian village. There was no installation art here, just ramshackle houses, dirt roads, a mosque with a tall minaret and lots of kids playing in the streets. Almost immediately some of the town's residents appeared from their homes to greet me. Abu al-Hisa Moein, a village council member and schoolteacher, invited me to spend the rest of the afternoon with his family on a patio beside his home, which appeared newer and more stately than those of his neighbors. He told me his ancestors arrived in the village more than 700 years ago from what is now Iraq. His relatives who were expelled to Jenin in 1948 told him they would be too angry to even lay eyes their former homes with the new occupants inside. When I mentioned the bar built into the old mosque, Moein shook his head in disgust. "It's very bad. It's an insult," he said.

Moein took me inside his home for a tour, showing me the spacious, immaculately clean parlor and the picture window with a sweeping view of the valley below. He had built the whole place, he said with pride. Down a hall, his 13-year-old daughter, Ansam, was reclining on the floor of her room reading John Knowles' classic bildungsroman, A Separate Peace. She leapt to attention when I entered and spent the next ten minutes showing me her library of literature. With night setting in, Moein and his family took me back on the patio. There, he unfurled a map of Mandate-era Palestine and ran his fingers over the names of scores of villages destroyed on the coast between Jaffa and Haifa by Zionist forces in 1948. He pointed to towns like Kafr Saba, Qaqun, al-Tira and Tantura, the site of a horrific massacre of unarmed Palestinian prisoners on the beach just one month after the Deir Yassin massacre. Moein was a history teacher, but Israel had forbidden him from discussing these events in his classroom, and is in the process of criminalizing any public observance of them.

As darkness blanketed the hills, I realized that I had lost track of time. I told Moein that I needed to get back to Tel Aviv. With that, his wife rushed into the house and gathered a bundle of grapes she had picked from a tree in the family's yard, packing it for me in some tupperware from their kitchen. Then Moein walked me to my car and hugged me goodbye.

Redeeming the land

By now, both Ein Hod and Ayd Hawd are nearly empty. Most of their residents have fled for safer ground while the thousands of pine trees planted to provide Ein Hod's artists with a sense of solitude are reduced to ash. As the trees burn, the fire exposes another dimension of Israel's foundation that it has attempted to bury.

The pine trees themselves were instruments of concealment, strategically planted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) on the sites of the hundreds of Palestinian villages the Zionist militias evacuated and destroyed in 1948. With forests sprouting up where towns once stood, those who had been expelled would have nothing to come back to. Meanwhile, to outsiders beholding the strangely Alpine landscape of northern Israel for the first time, it seemed as though the Palestinians had never existed. And that was exactly the impression the JNF intended to create. The practice that David Ben Gurion and other prominent Zionists referred to as "redeeming the land" was in fact the ultimate form of greenwashing.

Described by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe as "the quintessential Zionist colonialist," the first director of the JNF, Yossef Weitz, was a ruthless ideologue who helped orchestrate the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948. Weitz notoriously declared "It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples ... If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us ... The only solution is a Land of Israel ... without Arabs ... There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer all of them, save perhaps for [the Palestinian Arabs of] Bethlehem, Nazareth and the old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one tribe."

After Weitz's wishes were fulfilled, the JNF planted hundreds of thousands of trees over freshly destroyed Palestinian villages like al-Tira, helping to establish the Carmel National Park. An area on the south slope of Mount Carmel so closely resembled the landscape of the Swiss Alps that it was nicknamed "Little Switzerland." Of course, the nonindigenous trees of the JNF were poorly suited to the environment in Palestine. Most of the saplings the JNF plants at a site near Jerusalem simply do not survive, and require frequent replanting. Elsewhere, needles from the pine trees have killed native plant species and wreaked havoc on the ecosystem. And as we have seen with the Carmel wildfire, the JNF's trees go up like tinder in the dry heat.

But it seems that nothing can stop the JNF's drive to "green" the land. Even in the parched Negev desert, the JNF is advancing plans to plant one million trees in a plot called "GOD TV Forest." To accomplish the highly unusual feat of foresting a desert, the Israel Land Administration has ordered the expulsion of the Bedouin unrecognized village of al-Araqib, home to hundreds of Israeli citizens who have lived in the area for more than 100 years and who have served in the army's frontline tracker units.

The Israeli government has tried time and again to force the people of al-Araqib into an American Indian reservation-style "development town," but they have refused. The village has been razed to the ground by bulldozers on eight occasions, but each time the residents have rebuilt their homes, hoping to outlast a ruthless campaign to destroy their way of life.

What about the strange name for the proposed forest? It is a reference to GOD TV, a radical right-wing evangelical Christian broadcasting network that hosts faith-based fraudsters like Creflo Dollar and rapture-ready fanatics like Rory and Wendy Alec.

And why is GOD TV bankrolling the JNF's ethnic cleansing campaign in the Negev desert? According to its website, "GOD TV is planting over ONE MILLION TREES across the Holy Land as a miraculous sign to Israel and to the world that Jesus is coming soon."

In his 1970 short fiction story "Facing the Forest," the famed Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua portrayed a mute Palestinian forest watchman who burns down a JNF forest to reveal the hidden ruins of his former village. Forty years later, as the JNF forests around Mount Carmel burn, right-wing Israeli lawmakers have demanded a search for the Arab who must have sparked the blaze, even though there is no firm evidence about the cause of the fire. Michael Ben Ari, a extremist Member of Knesset from the National Union Party, called for "the whole Shin Bet" -- Israel's domestic intelligence agency -- to be mobilized to investigate what the right-wing media outlet Arutz Sheva said "may turn out to be the worst terror attack in Israel's history."

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author. His articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al-Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a writing fellow for the Nation Institute. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller.

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