Led by a rabbi, Jews and Palestinian-Americans mark Nakba in Passover-derived ceremony

On the eve of Nakba remembrance day, a young rabbi led an observance of the catastrophe "that cannot be denied, ignored, or wished away" in Union Square in New York last night before a largely-Jewish group. She said that four rabbis in four other American cities were also marking the event. 

Alissa Wise, who is about to graduate from rabbinical school, told the Jews who had gathered that they had made a "courageous choice," to face the truth that "Israel's founding is inextricably bound up with the dispossession of hundreds of thousands." She seemed charged with an awareness of Jewish history when she said that four other rabbis were leading similar remembrances in the Bay Area, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia.

She then led the group of about 60 people in a ceremony that echoed the Passover seder, or liberation festival of Jewish tradition, including the ritual reading of the names of Arab villages that were removed from the Israeli map in the early days of the Nakba, May 9-16, 1948.

"These are 63 of the 531 villages that were destroyed," Wise said, "the violence that began in 1948 continues to this day,"

As the names were read aloud, to the bang of a drum, you could hear New York Jewish voices struggling with Arabic, and Arab-Americans pronouncing the names with authority.

Several Palestinian-Americans were on hand, including a young woman and her father, who was born in Jerusalem. At 10, in 1967, he said, he had seen American-made napalm containers in the street after the Six Day War. He and his two brothers later made it out to the States, where he has avoided the issue all his adult life, largely out of fear. Then the recent Gaza war broke something in him, he said, leading him to seek out progressive Jews– "my cousins."

That sentiment was echoed by Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian-American poet who performed alongside Wise. "It's an honor to be a Palestinian ethnically because it's one of the great fights against injustice in the world," he said, before chanting a poem that included the names of Steven Biko and Bobby Sands, and lines addressed to Israelis:

"I'm the best solution you have..
One man one vote..
Look at the sea..
I'll never drive you into it…
We may not be brothers, but this neighborhood has made us cousins…"

After that, Wise led a reading of the Jewish litany, Dayeinu, or "Enough," which is chanted at Passover, but these "Enough"s marked signal events of the Nakba, like the massacre at Deir Yassin and the expulsions of Palestinians from the cities of Haifa, Lydda, and Jaffa.

The observance was organized by three groups: Women in Black, who gather at Union Square every Thursday, Jews Say No, and the ad hoc rabbis' group, Rabbis remembering the Nakba.

Related posts:

1. This year at Passover it is Palestinians who are demanding ‘Let my people go!’
2. Zogby Extols Assimilation for Arab-Americans. Why Not for Jews, too?
3. Why Palestinian Oral Histories of ‘Nakba’ Must Be Given Weight by Scholars
4. New book on Nakba just underlines the growing historical understanding: it was ethnic cleansing
5. Israel Fosters Internationalism in Jews but Denies it to Palestinian-Americans