Stanley Heller

The activists aboard the Madleen are being taken to the Ashdod Port now. Here are some things no one will tell you about the port: The Ashdod Port was built on the lands of the uprooted Palestinian village of Arab Suqrir, occupied and destroyed by Zionist forces in 1948. In the first official Haganah attack on the village, in January 1948, the orders were to "Destroy the well... destroy the village completely, kill all the adult males". Thankfully, the residents fled before the ethnic cleansing soldiers arrived. Like almost all Palestinians, they were never allowed to return to their homes and lands, and were displaced into what became the "Gaza Strip". The port was extended north in the early 2000s. The man in charge of the port expansion was genocidal maniac Rafael Eitan ("Raful"), the former military man turned politician who once said "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." On 23 November 2004, Eitan arrived at the port, like every morning. He was on the breakwater, inspecting the damage from the previous night's storm, when a large wave swept him into the sea and he drowned. Eitan was lost in the water for over an hour before the navy recovered his body. Eitan was buried the next day in the cemetery of Moshav Tel Adashim, where he was born and lived all his life. Moshav Tel Adashim, in Jezreel Valley (Marj Ibn Amir), was established in the 1920s by uprooting the Palestinian village of Tel al-Adas, after "buying" the lands from the illegitimate owners - the Sursuq Family from Beirut. In the photo: a 40s map of the village of Arab Suqrir, with a modern overlay, including the port and the Israeli city of Ashdod