The Quantum History Of Palestine

The Quantum History of Palestine

The Palestinian struggle for freedom is as old as time itself. Actually, it’s outside of time. I’ll explain.

Look at this poster from 1947.

That’s a Zionist poster.

Fine, but how can you not shed a tear at this plea from 1940?

Dang it! That’s also a Zionist poster!

Okay, but this exhibition from 1925 must be…

Oh crap. Tel Aviv. Totally Jewish. Totally Zionist.

Yeah, fine, okay, whatever. But this poster from 1919…

Damn! Zionist!

Fine! But this iconic poster, used by Free Palestiners everywhere is surely…

…the work of Zionist artist Franz Krausz, created to encourage Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine.

Turns out that until recently “free Palestine” was a Jewish motto.

You see, the word “Palestine” was first used as a political term by Roman Emperor Hadrian in order to punish the rebellious Jews by renaming Judea after its ancient enemies, the Philistines. Sort of like if someone renamed modern Israel “Naziporkistan.”

While the name was used by both the Roman Empire and the Arab Empire, it wasn’t used by the Islamic Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region from 1517 to 1917.

So how was this region called for half a millenia? Well, It wasn’t called anything. Instead of being a single province like in Roman and Arab times, it was split between the Beirut vilayet, the Jerusalem Mutasarrifate, and the Hejaz vilayet, which also included parts of Egypt, Arabia and Lebanon. The people who lived there had no more national identity than the people of Madison county.

They were just Ottoman subjects.

So the British didn't conquer Palestine in 1917. They created it.

If you look at the UN partition map from 1947, you’ll see that Mandatory Palestine is divided between Jews and Arabs. No mention of a Palestinian people.

If you called an Arab living in mandatory Palestine, “Palestinian,” he’d be either confused or offended. For example, in the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations which met in Jerusalem in 1919, the following resolution was adopted:

"We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds."

In 1937, the Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission:

"There is no such country! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."

In 1947, the representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted the following statement to the General Assembly:

"Palestine is part of the Province of Syria… the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity."

A few years later, Ahmad Shukeiri, first chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council:

"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."

Okay, so no Palestinians in British times, just Arabs who wanted to make Syria great again.

Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t Israel who first occupied Gaza and the West Bank. It was Egypt and Jordan.

This means that between 1948 and 1967, Gaza and the West Bank were under Egyptian and Jordanian control. The Arabs had also “liberated” these regions from the Jewish communities who existed there for thousands of years. This was followed by 20 years of Judenfrei Arab rule.

What happened to the Palestinian dream during those years?

In 1950, Jordan upgraded its occupation to an outright annexation. Surprisingly, no one had a problem with it. In the words of American diplomat Stuart W. Rockwell:

"The union of Arab Palestine and Jordan had been brought about as a result of the will of the people."

During these 20 years, the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who fled Israel were never resettled by the countries who accepted them (unlike the nearly million Jews expelled by the same countries or the Arabs who remained in Israel). If these people were indeed Palestinians and Gaza and the West Bank were Palestine, why not resettle the Palestinians in this Palestinian territory? Why deny them and their children and their grandchildren citizenship even as their compatriots who stayed in Israel became citizens?

We’re in the ‘60s now. This is still an imperialist struggle by Arab colonizers to reconquer a small bit of land from the unruly natives… except it’s not the kind of story people like to hear so the Palestine Liberation Organization is formed in Cairo.

Its goals include “Arab Unity” and the “liberation of Palestine”. Interestingly, it makes no territorial claims over the West Bank or Gaza, making us wonder what exactly “liberation of Palestine” means?

Here’s a quote from the first speech by its first leader:

"It is either us or the Israelis. We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants and as for the survivors – if there are any – the boats are ready to deport them."

Only after Israel gained control over Gaza and the West Bank, suddenly they became part of the future Palestinian state. It’s almost as if the borders of Palestine change all the time to correspond exactly with the borders of Israel. If Israel disappeared, Palestine would disappear. I wonder… If Israel moved to Alaska…

But we digress!

In 1995, prominent Arab anti-Zionist activist and politician Azmi Bishra said:

“I don't think there is such a thing as a "Palestinian nation", I think it's a colonial invention, when were there Palestinians? Where is it? I think there is an Arab nation.”

In 2012 Hamas Minister of the Interior and of National Security Fathi Hammad said:

"Half of the Palestinians Are Egyptians and the Other Half Are Saudis."

Seems that in order to understand Palestinian history and geography, you have to be a time traveling 4D chess player. Nevertheless, I’ll try to summarize: the Palestinians were invented in the ‘60s because imperialism went out of fashion and indigenous struggles became fashionable… but only in the West. This required a degree of chameleonism.

When talking to a Muslim audience, they’re part of the great Arab nation fighting to reclaim lost Islamic territory. When speaking to a Western audience, they’re an oppressed indigenous minority that existed since dinosaur times.

In short, Palestine is a masterpiece of doublethink!

URI KURLIANCHIK

Extreme Science: Launching Sounding Rockets from The Arctic

This winter, our scientists and engineers traveled to the world’s northernmost civilian town to launch rockets equipped with cutting-edge scientific instruments.

This is the beginning of a 14-month-long campaign to study a particular region of Earth’s magnetic field — which means launching near the poles. What’s it like to launch a science rocket in these extreme conditions?

Our planet is protected by a natural magnetic field that deflects most of the particles that flow out from the Sun — the solar wind — away from our atmosphere. But near the north and south poles, two oddities in Earth’s magnetic field funnel these solar particles directly into our atmosphere. These regions are the polar cusps, and it turns out they’re the ideal spot for studying how our atmosphere interacts with space.

The scientists of the Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp are using sounding rockets to do their research. Sounding rockets are suborbital rockets that launch to a few hundred miles in altitude, spending a few minutes in space before falling back to Earth. That means sounding rockets can carry sensitive instruments above our atmosphere to study the Sun, other stars and even distant galaxies.

They also fly directly through some of the most interesting regions of Earth’s atmosphere, and that’s what scientists are taking advantage of for their Grand Challenge experiments.

One of the ideal rocket ranges for cusp science is in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, off the coast of Norway and within the Arctic circle. Because of its far northward position, each morning Svalbard passes directly under Earth’s magnetic cusp.

But launching in this extreme, remote environment puts another set of challenges on the mission teams. These launches need to happen during the winter, when Svalbard experiences 24/7 darkness because of Earth’s axial tilt. The launch teams can go months without seeing the Sun.

Like for all rocket launches, the science teams have to wait for the right weather conditions to launch. Because they’re studying upper atmospheric processes, some of these teams also have to wait for other science conditions, like active auroras. Auroras are created when charged particles collide with Earth’s atmosphere — often triggered by solar storms or changes in the solar wind — and they’re related to many of the upper-atmospheric processes that scientists want to study near the magnetic cusp.

But even before launch, the extreme conditions make launching rockets a tricky business — it’s so cold that the rockets must be encased in styrofoam before launch to protect them from the low temperatures and potential precipitation.

When all is finally ready, an alarm sounds throughout the town of Ny-Ålesund to alert residents to the impending launch. And then it’s up, up and away! This photo shows the launch of the twin VISIONS-2 sounding rockets on Dec. 7, 2018 from Ny-Ålesund.

These rockets are designed to break up during flight — so after launch comes clean-up. The launch teams track where debris lands so that they can retrieve the pieces later.

The next launch of the Grand Challenge Initiative is AZURE, launching from Andøya Space Center in Norway in March 2019.

For even more about what it’s like to launch science rockets in extreme conditions, check out one scientist’s notes from the field: https://go.nasa.gov/2QzyjR4

For updates on the Grand Challenge Initiative and other sounding rocket flights, visit nasa.gov/soundingrockets or follow along with NASA Wallops and NASA heliophysics on Twitter and Facebook.

@NASA_Wallops | NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility | @NASASun | NASA Sun Science

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Blink! The Link between Aerobic Fitness and Cognition

Although exercise is known to enhance cognitive function and improve mental health, the neurological mechanisms of this link are unknown. Now, researchers from Japan have found evidence of the missing link between aerobic fitness and cognitive function. In a study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers from the University of Tsukuba revealed that spontaneous eye blink rate (sEBR), which reflects activity of the dopamine system, could be used to understand the connection between cognitive function and aerobic fitness.

The dopaminergic system is known to be involved in physical activity and exercise, and previous researchers have proposed that exercise-induced changes in cognitive function might be mediated by activity in the dopaminergic system. However, a marker of activity in this system was needed to test this hypothesis, something the researchers at the University of Tsukuba aimed to address.

"The dopaminergic system is associated with both executive function and motivated behavior, including physical activity," says first author of the study Ryuta Kuwamizu. "We used sEBR as a non-invasive measure of dopaminergic system function to test whether it could be the missing link between aerobic fitness and cognitive function."

To do this, the researchers asked healthy participants to undergo a measure of sEBR, a test of cognitive function, and an aerobic fitness test. They also measured brain activity during the cognitive task using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

"As expected, we found significant correlations between aerobic fitness, cognitive function, and sEBR," explains Professor Hideaki Soya, senior author. "When we examined these relationships further, we found that the connection between higher aerobic fitness and enhanced cognitive function was mediated in part by dopaminergic regulation."

Furthermore, activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (l-DLPFC) during the cognitive task was the same or lower in participants with higher sEBR compared with lower sEBR, even though those with higher sEBR appeared to have greater executive function, and thus higher neural efficiency.

"Although previous studies have indicated that aerobic fitness and cognitive function are correlated, this is the first to provide a neuromodulatory basis for this connection in humans. Our data indicate that dopamine has an essential role in linking aerobic fitness and cognition," says first author Kuwamizu.

Given that neural efficiency in the l-DLPFC is a known characteristic of the dopaminergic system that has been observed in individuals with higher fitness and executive function, it is possible that neural efficiency in this region partially mediates the association between aerobic fitness and executive function. Furthermore, physical inactivity may be related to dopaminergic dysfunction. This information provides new directions for research regarding how fitness affects the brain, which may lead to improved exercise regimens. For instance, exercise that specifically focuses on improving dopaminergic function may particularly boost motivation, mood, and mental function.

(Image by Balkonsky/Shutterstock)

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