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In Jerusalem, the Nakba is a fresh memory

Palestinian mansion in Jerusalem seized during Nakba
A Palestinian mansion in Jerusalem seized during the Nakba

My first day in Jerusalem, I discovered that my roommate in the institute where I stay is a Palestinian-American scholar I’d met 5 years ago in New York. He made me tea and we sat outside in the sun, and he described the explosive feelings of finding his great-grandfather’s grave that day and about filming his father’s former house in West Jerusalem so as to share it with his father overseas.

That night I went to dinner at a good friend’s house here in East Jerusalem. His mother told me a story about visiting the house she had grown up in a few miles away in West Jerusalem with an Australian film crew, and being scolded by the house’s present owner—no Palestinians ever lived there. She pressed the address on me, and asked me to visit for her.

Her son had got out cognac, and he wanted to show me a video. He grabbed the remote and put on a youtube of Marlon Brando’s 1973 Oscar for the Godfather—when Sacheen Littlefeather in Apache dress declined the award on Brando’s behalf because of Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans. (You can watch it here.) “Isn’t that cool?” he said.

I always find Nakba consciousness shocking. Though I’ve written about the conflict for several years, I still have little sense of the Nakba in all its emotional and spiritual weight. Then I come here and I’m reminded that it is a living memory and huge historical burden– made more burdensome by the fact that no one in the official west recognizes it. While for Palestinians, it is the event that defines their experience.

Yesterday, reflecting that I know little about Palestinian history, I picked up the late Shafiq Al-Hout’s book My Life in the PLO, published last year, and had only gotten to the second paragraph when the Nakba entered: “There is no precedent in history for what Zionism inflicted on Palestine and the Palestinians… Any group of human beings which experiences a crime on this scale, and lives to tell the tale, is left with marks and scars which are hard to ignore and impossible to forget.”

Or as Ali Abunimah said at the Penn BDS Conference 2 weeks back, he feels urgency about the conflict because his parents’ generation, the generation that experienced the Nakba, is beginning to die out without seeing even a shadow of justice.

I’m not talking about the politics of the conflict, I’m talking about the spiritual truth of it. When I hear these stories, I always think about how I would have responded, or my parents, to being thrown out of our town. And even if the next generation in our family achieved high education in the States–well that experience would still define our lives, we would want to go back. And our community would embrace a policy of resistance to whatever state now existed there.

You can say, well that is the Palestinian narrative, and of course it is. You can say that 1948 has been made more resonant because of the failure of the 1967-based peace process. I guess that is true, too. But until the Nakba is widely acknowledged there will be no way forward in this conflict.

The United States is thoroughly engaged in the business of Nakba denial. When Robert Kaplan writes in The Arabists that the formation of Israel was a great liberal achievement, he demonstrates blindness to non-Jewish suffering. This view– or non-view– is widely shared in the United States establishment, It guaranteed that the United States would do nothing about the refugee issue in the 50s and 60s when the world said they must return. And today the blind insist on describing all forms of violent resistance to occupation as terrorism when god only knows what Americans would do if they were forced out of their homes and into the hills. We saw the same blindness about Israel’s righteous birth when Walt and Mearsheimer wrote that the foundation of the state of Israel involved questionable moral undertakings. The statement was landed on as proof of the authors’ alleged anti-semitism.

Overcoming these attitudes in the States is a Jewish assignment. Before the Penn BDS conference earlier this month, the Jewish Federations held an anti-boycott meeting, at which Alan Dershowitz reportedly told a young Jew who asked, But didn’t we throw them out of their houses, that this was not true. The land was barren, and the displacement of the peasants was only what any other country has done to get itself up on its feet.

Dershowitz is involved in Nakba denial, and the youth is involved in Nakba inquiry.

It took Americans 30 years to begin to come to terms with the Holocaust. It is taking more than 60 to grapple with the Nakba. But things are changing, and before long we will study the Nakba’s connection to the Holocaust and colonialism, and to pogroms and Jewish landlessness. Nakba studies will become a field of Jewish inquiry, in Hebrew schools, in synagogues and in universities. There is no other way. Some memories are ineradicable.

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“Overcoming these attitudes in the States is a Jewish assignment. Before the Penn BDS conference earlier this month, the Jewish Federations held an anti-boycott meeting, at which Alan Dershowitz reportedly told a young Jew who asked, But didn’t we throw them out of their houses, that this was not true. The land was barren, and the displacement of the peasants was only what any other country has done to get itself up on its feet.”

Phil, it’s not simply a Jewish assignment, it’s the assignment of all US citizens. The only special duty of Jewish Americans is to stop being “Jewish” in a political (Zionist) sense, stop practicing identity politics, and join the rest of us. That “young Jew” at the Federation will forever remain isolated within “the community”. The only hope is a public movement against the power of AIPAC, the Federation, the Conf of Presidents et al. Liberal citizenship, not Jewish identity, as I keep saying.

Liberal Citizenship, not ‘Jewish Identity’

A beautiful essay, with many truths, and maybe I should focus on what I liked, but there was one passage that stuck out like a sore thumb:

I always think about how I would have responded, or my parents, to being thrown out of our town. And even if the next generation in our family achieved high education in the States–well that experience would still define our lives, we would want to go back. And our community would embrace a policy of resistance to whatever state now existed there.

This raises a complex issue. I’m not sure if Phil is imagining how it would have been for his family to be exiled from his actual home town – I think he grew up in the Baltimore (or Philly?) area – or if his parents had been Jews in Europe forced to flee from the Nazis. If the latter, this thought actually intersects with a classic hasbara talking point, to the effect that the Jews who escaped Europe went on to lead new, productive lives elsewhere and never looked back; why couldn’t the Palestinians have done the same? The factual premise about Jewish refugees is mostly right. Almost all of my Dad’s family were refugees, and not a single one ever harbored the slightest thought of returning to Vienna – that part is true. There are of course many differences in the two situations, worthy of a longer essay. but if I had to put it much too briefly: the Holocaust, awful as it was, ended in 1945 with the bad guys being vanquished forever; moreover, anyone who denies it is immediately and almost universally marginalized as a crackpot or worse. The Nakba is ongoing, with the forcible displacement, discrimination, and other consequences still a part of daily life; and denial is mainstream, while those who remember and commemorate the Nakba have a much harder time. This hardly scratches the surface, but I think a Palestinian voice would be more appropriate than my own.

On the other hand, if Phil is talking about his own boyhood home, that too is not the same. In fact, Phil himself left that behind long ago, and I, of the same generation of Jewish Americans, who grew up in the NY area, have no special attachment (even though my parents still live in the same apartment). My wife, Jewish from suburban Boston, is the same (although she retains a lingering affection for the Red Sox and, yes, the Patriots – don’t ask).

I don’t think it’s possible to compare the attachment Palestinians had with their homes and communities in the 1940’s with anything that we feel in the US today. That passage from Phil struck me as inauthentic, although this response doesn’t really do justice to the issues it raises.

Thanks a lot Phil for this very emotional piece. It brought tears to my eyes and sent shivers down my spine.

Not only is the Nakba a fresh memory, not only does it define my existence, it defines my sense of survival. It is the lens through which I see the zionist occupier, the zionist colonialist, the zionist criminal regime. It is through the hard memory scorch of the Nakba etched in my being that I say “Never Again!”. Yes, that’s right, never again.

For peace to be realized, the zionist regime and the western world that supported it and gave it oxygen (regardless to their respective motives) since before 1948, must all recognize the Nakba and what it has inflicted on us. As Nelson Mandela saw before anyone else did, there could be no peace and democracy and prosperity in South Africa before recognizing the wrongs that were done. Not for retribution, but for reconciliation.

This feeling I have about the Nakba, I feel so strongly about not because of any politics, or peace deal that I love to see us reach, or whatever other reason may be but except for one fundamental reason: personal dignity.

How can one accept and celebrate israel without recognizing the Nakba? These are two sides of the same coin. These are two cause-and-effect events, irreversibly tied together for eternity.

So yes, the Nakba is seared into my conscious, my being, my who-I-am. The Nakba is my North Star. The Nakba is both my shame and my pride. The Nakba is my eternal flame that guides my inner Palestinian nationalist. The Nakba is me and I am the Nakba. It breathes, grows, frustrates, infuriates through me every day. I cannot shed the memory of the Nakba until my land is free, and yes, the mansions, houses, buildings, and lands in Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and Yafa (Jaffa) that my grandparents labored extremely hard to save towards and to build with their own blood, sweat, and tears are given back to my family… the rightful and wronged owners of these properties who, incidentally, happen to still have the keys and deeds for these properties.

But most important of all, we Palestinians cannot, would not, and do not want to shed the memory of the Nakba until we are a free people living in our free land with dignity and peace; and after the western world recognizes that they wronged us when they supported and advocated and lobbied for the establishment of israel on our land at our expense just to rinse their guilt and crimes of the Holocaust; and after israel owns up to its own crimes and acts of genocide and deliberate destruction and concerted efforts to eliminate any and all traces of Palestinian life, culture, and population centres and villages; and israel’s explicit recognition that the zionist principle is deeply and foundationally flawed and that “a land with no people for people with no land” was THE BIG LIE. Only then can the reconciliation process start… then peace will follow a few generations after that.

Until then, the Nakba lives on in me and in every Palestinian born in Palestine and in every person with an ounce of Palestinian blood born outside Palestine regardless to where they may be living today.

the nakba is ongoing.

before long we will study the Nakba’s connection to the Holocaust and colonialism, and to pogroms and Jewish landlessness

god speed

thank you for this phil.

Tracing those connections will require some courage and some tact. Every statement made will outrage somebody, probably somebody quite powerful.