Do you want to know what they told the Palestinian?

First, they told him he did not exist. Then they told him he wasn't Palestinian, just Arab. In the mean time they were spending a lot of effort on brainwashing the remaining Arabs that they weren't Arabs, but Jordanians, Iraqis, Saudis, Egyptians, Libyans and Yemenis.

Then they told the Palestinian his land was a complete desert until they turned it into a green garden. They ignored the fact that the vast majority of Palestinians are farmers from generation upon generation, and that you can't farm a desert.

They chased the Palestinian from his farm, and told him he was not a farmer but an Arab bedouin, and could therefore just as well live in a refugee tent.

They told the Palestinian they killed his father because he was 'standing in the way of progress' - he refused to leave his home and farmland, after all. They told him they killed his mother so that she would not bear more children. They told him they killed his brother because he threw a stone at them, and that they killed his sister because she violated a curfew when she was walking home from school.

There are various degrees of what we call 'normalization'. As indicated in a recent article at the Musical Intifada, in some exceptional cases it can even be described as 'understandable', or to a certain degree 'acceptable' if not entirely 'inevitable'. However, at the opposite end of that spectrum there are displays of normalization that are completely uncalled for, and nauseatingly reprehensible.

One such upcoming feat of normalization is the participation of Palestinian artists at the 'Israeli International Oud Festival' which is being organized by Confederation house, under the patronage of the Israeli Minister of Culture and the Israeli Municipality of (Occupied!) Jerusalem.

It is quite shocking to find Palestinian artists Amal Murkus, Hosam Hayek, Violet Salameh, Taiseer Elias and soloists of the Tarshiha Orchestra participating in that festival as if that is a 'normal' thing to do.