SherriMunnerlyn
VIP Member
- Jun 11, 2012
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It is Nakba Day and for the Palestinians it is an annual day of commemoration of the displacement that preceded and followed the*Israeli Declaration of Independence*in 1948. "Today marks the 65th anniversary of the historic*ethnic cleansing*of Palestine by the Zionist movement, and the establishment of the State of Israel on the rubble of hundreds of emptied, destroyed villages.Nakba Day continues to grow in prominence as a time for remembrance*and protest, an alternative history to the narrative of Israeli 'independence', and a reminder that the 'miracle' of a Jewish state was actually realised through the historically familiar methods of expulsion and colonial erasure. But this is more than just an anniversary or commemoration. In three important ways, the Nakba is not simply confined to the history books.First, the Nakba is a defining event. Many potted histories or summaries of the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" cover 1948 with a sentence like this: 'The State of Israel declares independence and is immediately attacked by its Arab neighbours'. The Palestinian refugees emerge in the narrative as if by magic, or as a vague consequence of war.Yet the ethnic cleansing of 1948 is the heart and soul of the Palestinian people's struggle. This is how a landscape was obliterated and communities destroyed; homes, schools and mosques disappearing under rolling explosions, citrus groves and fields of crops separated from their owners. Palestinian lives are shaped by the Nakba, from refugee camps and fragmented families to destroyed livelihoods and murdered loved ones.The Nakba is how a Jewish majority was established in the first place, and thus it is no wonder that many people wish to consign it to 'the past'. For just as its impact is felt deeply in Palestinian society so also the Nakba is a defining event for Zionism and the State of Israel - the inconvenient truth that turns myths to dust, the reminder of - in the words of Meron Benvenisti - 'what lies beneath'. Nakba denial is commonplace, a history covered up by distortions and counterfactuals in the same way Jewish National Fund forests were planted over the rubble of Palestinian villages.Second, the Nakba is also an*ongoing event, and not just in the sense that the Palestinian refugees still await return and restitution. The Nakba is a past and a present, a continuous and developing process of Zionist colonization. You can see it in the discriminatory and colonial logic of the land regime and planning laws inside the pre-1967 lines, designed to maintain Jewish spatial hegemony and guard against the threat of the land being 'lost' to its indigenous people." http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/ar...nd-developing-process-of-zionist-colonization
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