May 15th, 1948. Zionists declare Israel's establishment as a state.
Following decades of colonizing Palestine with British support, Germany's genocide of European Jews, and an ill-conceived partition plan by the United Nations, the Zionists cleared the land of the native Palestinians -- some fled as the direct result of force, others out of fear.
The new state denied their return; and instead, opened its doors to the world's Jewry. They established Israel as a victims' state. The leagues of Jews who suffered around the world finally had a state to call their own.
Yet, in the most tragic of contradictions, it victimized and dispossessed another people -- the Palestinians.
When Palestinians refer to this as "Al Nakba," or "the catastrophe," it does not just relate the sheer destruction of Palestinian society, the creation of refugees, the widespread loss of property and lives, it also refers to the continued tragedy of the circumstances.
Before Zionism, Palestine's three main religious groups lived in relative peace (Jews were a very small percentage of the population). Zionism shattered that, and the effects continue to this day. 
The most important reason to commemorate this is because the conflict today springs directly from these facts. Without the unilateral declaration of statehood, the massive ethnic cleansing, and the taking of land and property, there would be no such conflict in Israel-Palestine today. Yet, too many in the United States consider the conflict religious in nature, over ancient issues, or simply about hate.
Such overly abstract explanations ignore the material crimes Israel's founders committed against the Palestinians. Behind this conflict are actual grievances -- land taken, people killed, power monopolized. Peace will come when justice is brought against the offenders. The problem is Israel continues to exploit the fruits of those crimes and at the same time evade reasonable resolution by holding on to stolen land and illegitimate power.
Too many western pundits, academics, and journalists do not understand this as a modern conflict over land and control; over the terms of statehood and sovereignty.
For the Palestinians, it is ultimately about equality. Their place on that land, their individual and national rights, and their access to normality need to be equal with Israel's. As long as Israel holds the power there and gets away with being an exclusivist "Jewish" state ruling over "non-Jews" as the new Apartheid state, there will be problems, there will be conflict.
If there were no countering claims, no alternative ancestry, if Palestinians did not have a more direct and a richer lineage to that land, there would be no problem with a Jewish state there. However, taking over a diverse land to create a state for one people is a casus belli. Israel is a contested place. It will not be settled or normalized until the problems of its foundation, land takings, creation of refugees and power structure there are answered.
Understanding Al Nakba, knowing the Palestinian narrative of displacement and loss, and the Israeli narrative of in-gathering and statehood, are essential to developing a sense of what is going on there. Without such awareness, one is doomed to miscomprehend. As long as the prevailing views in the United States are rooted in ignorance and uncritical loyalty to Israel, this horrible conflict between the oppressor and the oppressed will continue.
SOME LINKS ABOUT AL-NAKBA
-Institute for Middle East Understanding roundtable discussion -- notable Palestinians share their throught.
-Karma Nabulsi's Guardian (UK) article
-Jonathon Cook reports on one village's commemoration in Electronic Intifada.
-Palestine Remembered's Al Nakba Oral History Project.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Israel's Independence: The Victims' Views
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29 comments:
Israeli victims of terrorism since 2000:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Palestinian+terror+since+2000/Victims+of+Palestinian+Violence+and+Terrorism+sinc.htm
600,000 Jews including all the women, children and old people drove off 750,00 Arabs at the same time these Jews were being attacked by the armies of 4 countries.
Yeah are you building a landing pad for your alien overlords too?
"600,000 Jews including all the women, children and old people drove off 750,00 Arabs at the same time these Jews were being attacked by the armies of 4 countries."
Let the Al Nakba-denial begin.
How can you ignore the entire documented record for such inane speculation?
When backed and armed by the western countries, it is not only possible, but probable.
that's not evidence that's just a silly assertion and borderline paranoid conspiracy theory - standard fare for your crowd.
What's that picture? A before and after for Oxyclean?
70 die in 3 days of rioting in Brazil. I blame Jews.
Those keys only work.... in Jordan. Didn't you have them made during Black September?
Laughable historical revisionism here. Laughable.
"May 15th, 1948. Zionists declare Israel's establishment as a state."
The UN and Britain established Israel as a state under the 1947 UN Partition plan. The Plan was a two state solution giving 55% of the land to Israel and 45% of the land to create an independent Palestine, and Jerusalem was to be administered by the UN. Israel accepted. The Arabs rejected it.
What you wouldn't give to go back and change that idiotic decision? I mean seriously, that ranks right up there with Louis XIV giving away half the US in the Louisiana Purchase. Or Napoleon entering Russia with an army of 500,000 and leaving with 10,000.
Let's get this straight. You guys chose not to have a state, not the Zionists. Stop blaming everything on the Jews.
I agree with you on giving Palestinians a state of their own. I even think you should get east Jerusalem. And I think all the Israeli settlements should be removed. But this kind of blame Israel for everything rhetoric will get you nowhere and just lead to more impasse, more lack of compromise, and more unilateral action by Israel.
When the UN partitioned Palestine creating a Jewish state, the Arab countries were in opposition. This is not surprising. They no doubt reasoned: why punish Palestians by giving away their land when after all it was the Germans who had massacred the Jews, not Arabs. (I mention the Holocaust since it was guilt about that which was a prime motivator in the UN decision.) However, as time has passed, the Arab League, including the Palestinian Authority, has come around to the realization that the Saudi Peace Plan is better than eternal warfare. Israel, however, refuses to give up land taken in 1967 including Jerusalem. Even Hamas leaders have promised long-term peace if this plan takes effect.
The "Palestinians" of 1948 were anyone living in the Roman named province of Palestine including Jews, Arabs, Christians, and anyone else who called it home.
Since Eleanor can not understand that and since she would believe Hamas despite what is clearly written by them in their own charter calling for the extermination of Jews, I can't believe that anyone but a brainwashed tool or a naive fool could take anything she says seriously.
This is why dumb radical white Westerners need to stay out of the discussion. Then again, since these idiotarian moonbats usually always side with the losers, maybe it is a godsend after all.
Please continue with your historical revisionism and rhetorical nonsense by all means.
The deeper point is that they want to focus on some silly mythological narrative of their perceived victimhood rather than any progress. Like the so called 'refugee camps' aka bad neighborhoods, which consist of Palestinians being managed by other Palestinians while living surrounded by those Palestinians. Better to paint a rhetorical picture no matter how silly than make any progress because at the root of it, at the very foundation of the Palestinians is the unshakeable belief that it is someone's else's problem they can shame them into solving for them, cost free, effort free. It's the belief that all their problems can be fixed for them if only they tell enough mangled puppy stories about how the Jews stole their one scrawny goat. And white liberal guilties love to suck this up because they eager to believe that anyone with a doo rag and a rifle must have some just cause.
So please go on with your retarded Nabka narrative. Maybe in another 5 times 500 years after we've solved every other problem in the solar system we can get around to wiping your asses for you.
"If there were no countering claims, no alternative ancestry, if Palestinians did not have a more direct and a richer lineage to that land, there would be no problem with a Jewish state there."
....and that's to say that there's a problem with there being a Jewish state there now? Why are you all so racist as to deny the Jews ONE lousy state when you all have over two dozen?
beautiful essay, will.
"without such awareness, one is doomed to miscomprehend."
Will,
Didnt know the sad significance of today. Thanks for the post. If the world is allowed to forget this, the solution will be much harder to find.
Eleanor, if the Arab states were trying to protect "Palestinian land," why didn't Egypt give Gaza to the Palestinians and why did Jordan try to annex the West Bank?
Will,
There were no crimes by Israel's founders and you are misstating facts by telling us that the three faiths lived in peace before Zionism. Actually, the three faiths lived in relative peace when Jews and Christians weren't having a hard time under the Ottomans. Once the Ottoman empire was gone, however, after 1917, the Jews did not live in peace because they kept getting attacked by the local Arabs. Heck, they had to invent a whole new way of building communities that addressed the all-but-certain attacks they would encounter if they tried to build anything. Of course, they didn't just build residences, they first bought the land...and still were attacked.
You mention that they were a victims' state, but they were also back in their historical and cultural land going back millenia. I mean, have you ever seen a Dead Sea Scroll? Two thousand year old parchment written by hand IN HEBREW and ARAMAIC.
You try to imply that things were peaceful when Jews were a small minority, when actually they were bitterly harsh for the Jews because of the incessant attacks. For example, in 1920, when the Arabs attacked the Jews of Jerusalem and Jaffa, and killed many, by the way, Jews were a mere 10% of the population.
If there was a unilateral declaration of statehood, it's because the Arabs didn't want a state. You would like to blame the Jews, but the UN divided the land based on population centers. If there was "massive ethnic cleansing" it resulted from the war launched by the Arabs, the ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Arab dominated areas, the fleeing of the Arabs because of encouragement from both other Palestinians and the Arab states and NOT just because of the battles and fighting wherein the Jewish forces did cause Arab villages to flee.
You have your grievances, and the Jews, who lost 1% of their population and saw another 1.5% maimed and injured, in that war of 1948, have theirs. Lots of grievances. After 1948, entire communities of Jews across the Arab world found themselves having to leave, without anything of theirs, homes they and their families had lived in for centuries.
So stop using the words "crimes" and "justice" and "stolen" and take some responsibility for an entire sequence of events launched by the Arab side and which concluded with their losses. Just look at what happened in 2000 with Camp David and afterward to get a clear indication of how unreasonable it is to be using the language you are using about 1948. It seems every time the Jews want to find a solution and compromise, the Palestinians reject it, start a war and then when it backfires, they like to blame the Jews for all kinds of crimes.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were written in Hebrew and Aramaic. What is your point.
In case youd did not know this, the people who call themselves Palestinians descend from many different peoples. Some families -- including some of those of posters on this blog -- can trace their heritage to Jewish or other ancestry only a few hundred years ago. That they identify as Arabs and speak Arabic does not mean their lineage on that land starts in the 600's.
And no matter how much inequality the Ottoman empire enforced -- through taxation largely -- interfaith relations between the groups were much better then than now.
Most richly, you claim "So stop using the words 'crimes' and 'justice' and 'stolen' and take some responsibility for an entire sequence of events launched by the Arab side." I can call the widescale-theft of land "washing the windows" and that won't change anything. The bottom line is Israel took from the Palestinians. The words I use are irrelevent. The refugees are still living away from their homes, and calling them "visitors" or "Jordanian," or "nice people" doesn't change that.
And I know you are in denial when you want to pin Israel's designs on "the Arab side." The Arab armies did not attack in 1948 until the Zionists declared a state, and had already expelled 250,000 Palestinians. The weak Arab response began AFTER Israel crimes, oh I mean "acts of self-defense" began.
If you left on vacation and you came back to find me living there with an army to support me, it would be a crime... even after 60 years passed of me keeping it, it would still be a crime. Just because the taking was on the national level, it does not make theivery into an accident.
Well, it seems only you'll think so. That doesn't make it fact, that makes it your narrative. But whatever.
You said this:
"And no matter how much inequality the Ottoman empire enforced -- through taxation largely -- interfaith relations between the groups were much better then than now."
I'll take what we have now over the Dhimmi status your faith followers granted my people back then. Go back to that? No thanks.
Stupid analogy by people who mouth stupid things as a matter of course. "IF" you left? Then you shouldn't have fucking left. Even in the US my taking up residence there is protected as a squatter. So go eat shit.
To tmjewlicious, etc. Jordan grabbed the West Bank because its corrupt leader had made a deal with Israel; both Egypt and Jordan have peace deals with Israel paid for with our (US) tax dollars which bribes them to pretend they like Israel when their own people
and indeed the whole world hates occupiers. This is why those countries dare not risk democratic elections. According to the authoritative "9/11 Commission Report" (p. 147) Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, attacked us because of our foreign policy which is biased towards Israel. Then the US Israeli Lobby pushed us into invading Iraq on behalf of Israel to trash Israel's enemy. (Civil wars in Muslim lands are fine with Israel.) The entire Muslim and Arab worlds hate us because it is our tax dollars which support the Israeli occupation and because we morphed into Israel and are now occupiers ourselves. These wars are bankrupting our nation. You people seem to be stuck in the past. Why don't you, instead of arguing about the past, concern yourselves with the present and come up with a just solution?
Just solution is you should bargain for something instead of pissing and moaning and whining about how little we appreciate your murderous exploding mayhem.
Man, this Eleanor woman is either 12, completely ignorant, and who must have just heard her first Noam Chimpsky lecture. Or she is just crazier than a shit house rat.
"and indeed the whole world hates occupiers." - Who talks this dumb?
"Then the US Israeli Lobby pushed us into invading Iraq on behalf of Israel to trash Israel's enemy." - Yes, yes, 100 Jews are smarter than every American Military commander and member of Congress that authorized war. Ok, believe what you want, it only makes you look more rabidly insane.
This one wins the crazy, I'm a 12 year old screetching nonsense cake:
"The entire Muslim and Arab worlds hate us because it is our tax dollars which support the Israeli occupation and because we morphed into Israel and are now occupiers ourselves."
Please calm down before your head explodes. You're only this mad because you have no power and will be controlled by evil Jews the rest of your life. I just hope you don't need medical care, or I will have one of our Zionist doctors kill you in your sleep. Beware bitch!
The above comments explain the great popularity of Jews in the world throughtout history with particular reference to the Holocaust.
Care to eloborate on your point a little further Eleanor please?
Still waiting for Eleanor to explain the "great popularity of Jews in the world throughtout history with particular reference to the Holocaust." and what exactly she means by that comment. Don't forget we rule the world and can have you killed at any time. So I would suggest you speak up quickly now.
Eleanor, I am giving you until this time tomorrow to answer the question or I'm calling the Cabal on my Jewphone and getting you eliminated. What's a matter, Jew's got your tongue?
Haha, for a minute there I thought you were insinuating that Jews can't win popularity contests and they deserved the Holocaust. Is that what you were saying as it's not entirely impossible given the nasty posts and assertations here every day.
You see ladies and yentlemen, this is the modern face of the anti-Israel movement.
Eleanor, sadly, you do represent what has become of the Left.
Will, let me help you out.
"May 15th, 1948. Zionists declare Israel's establishment as a state."
In accordance with a resolution by the United Nations, whose resolutions you people keep quoting.
"Following decades of colonizing Palestine with British support, Germany's genocide of European Jews, and an ill-conceived partition plan by the United Nations, the Zionists cleared the land of the native Palestinians -- some fled as the direct result of force, others out of fear."
No, Will, this is not exactly what happened. Numerically-superior and better-armed armies from four or five Arab countries invaded Israel at the moment of its creation, with the intention of driving all the Jews into the sea. Of course, since physical cowardice is an Arab cultural characteristic, the Arabs ran from exploding bottles of seltzer water dropped from a Piper Cub. (Watch the historical movie Cast a Giant Shadow to see this.) These were the same kinds of people that had no problem with murdering unarmed doctors and nurses at Mount Scopus:
(http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhistory/Crash_Course_in_Jewish_History_Part_65_-_The_State_of_Israel.asp) "One of the worst incidents occurred on April 13, 1948. A convoy of 70 doctors and nurses making their way to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus was ambushed by Arabs. This happened 200 yards of a British police station. After a seven-hour shoot-out, during which the British did nothing, all the doctors and nurses were killed. Afterwards, the Arabs mutilated their bodies."
The militant Arab is good at killing unarmed noncombatants and mutilating their bodies but he does far less well when he confronts an armed male or, in the case of the IDF, an armed female. (According to Spanish legend, they ran from a DEAD GUY at the siege of Valencia, and it is a historical fact that the Crimean Horde ran away without striking a single blow at Vienna.) Then the militant Arab tends to make himself scarce, and that is exactly what happened in 1948. The Arabs, having told the Palestinians to evacuate so they could kill all the Jews, LOST the war they started and the Palestinians were sort of left out in the cold afterward.
Now before you call me a racist (I know, Fadi is eager to do this), I am talking about cultures and not genetics. The Euro-Americanized Arab is just as decent, honorable, and courageous as the Euro-Americanized African, Asian, Native American, or European. I suspect, though, that the nomadic Arab culture (thousands of years ago) promoted a culture in which raiding and running away was the best way to win a war, as opposed to standing one's ground and fighting. The same went for the Mongol hordes; Genghis Khan was physically timid but his followers did not see this as a character defect. The land-owning Greeks, on the other hand, could not run away to fight another day because running meant loss of their farms. Hence the development of phalanx warfare, shock battle, and the injunction to return with one's shield or on it.
"The new state denied their return; and instead, opened its doors to the world's Jewry. They established Israel as a victims' state. The leagues of Jews who suffered around the world finally had a state to call their own."
And if the Arabs hadn't started not one but four wars in the space of 25 years, the Palestinians would probably be living side by side with the Israelis in peace.
I heard, by the way, that the Palestinians are now having a nice little civil war with Hamas militias killing Fatah militias and vice versa. Just militant Arabs being militant Arabs, I suppose-- when there are no Jews or Christians to murder, they go to work on each other. No Israelis are involved in that, by the way, so I think the Palestinians have no one to blame but themselves. But I'm on record as saying long ago that an independent Palestinian state would be "Lord of the Flies," starring adults instead of kids.
Furthermore, since Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel, I would say that Israel is being very generous in even allowing Hamas to continue to aggravate the greenhouse gas problem by turning oxygen into carbon dioxide.
I think Eleanor is really dumb enough to believe in my Jewspiracy. Well, good. Don't come back here, or I'll have your home repossessed! What? You know that all Jews own all American land right?
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