The world rightly condemns Holocaust denial whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head, and yet denial of the Nakba is still commonplace. Joseph Levine writes, “the Holocaust – as horrible as it was – ended in 1945. The Nakba, in one form or another, continues to this day. This is what the Gazan Great March of Return is all about. We are still here, they are saying, and we will not stand for another day of Nakba denial. Why should they?”
Palestinians in Gaza today began holding funerals for protesters killed by Israeli forces at yesterday’s Great March of Return near the buffer zone between Gaza and Israeli, which coincided with the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Overnight casualties increased to 61, with the youngest killed was identified as 8-month old Laila al-Ghandour who died of tear gas inhalation.
Hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets of Jerusalem in protest as American and Israeli officials celebrated the inauguration of the US Embassy in Jerusalem on Monday, the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba. “In America, they have the statue of liberty and pride themselves on freedom, but then they come to Palestine and support the racism of the Israeli occupation,” local activist Mohammed Abu al-Hummus told Mondoweiss. “This move shows us that they do not understand the true meaning of democracy.”
At least 58 Palestinians were killed and more than 2,700 wounded by Israeli forces on Monday as protest spread across Gaza in the bloodiest day in the strip since 2014. According to the Great March of Return organizers, around 50,000 protesters were gathered along the Gaza border as the new U.S. Embassy opened in Jerusalem. “I am waiting for those youth if they could pull down the fence, then I will cross with them into my father’s land,” said Ahmed Abu Reyaleh, a 65-year-old retired chemistry teacher, whose family was originally from the Bayt Jirja village (15.5 km northeast of Gaza). “We have not been created to be under occupation for our whole life, so it’s time to say enough.”
While senior White House officials were in Jerusalem today to mark the opening of the U.S. embassy, and 55 Palestinian protesters in Gaza were killed by Israeli forces, young Jews with the group If Not Now blocked traffic in Washington DC outside the Trump International Hotel for two hours by erecting an “Embassy of Freedom” to protest the administration’s move.
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of Strategic Affairs and Hasbara, referred to Gazans as “Nazis” twice within five minutes today. “The number of killed doesn’t indicate anything – just as the number of Nazis who died in the world war doesn’t make Nazism something you can explain or understand,” he tweeted.
Phil Weiss reports from Jerusalem on the protests as the U.S. opened its new embassy: “The demonstrations I just left near the new American embassy in Jerusalem were a dismal object lesson in Jewish sovereignty. The police beat up Palestinians merely for holding Palestinian flags and chanting that Palestine would be free. The police crumpled the flags, while women on an apartment balcony four floors up were spraying water on the Palestinian demonstrators.”
Salman Abu Sitta writes an open letter to Uri Avnery to mark the 70th year of the Nakba: “In all these 70 years, Uri, have you thought of those innocent peaceful people who became refugees, the people you thought they were human dust to be dispensed with? Did you ask: What happened to them and their children, now scattered in the world?”
The Israeli military claims its soldiers are “in danger” from the protests across the fence in Gaza, but a simple review of the facts proves this is not the case. Here are the questions any journalist talking to the Israeli military should ask.
It took a visiting New York Times reporter from Cairo to finally tell some truths about Israel’s ongoing massacre of Palestinian demonstrators inside Gaza. Meanwhile, the paper’s Israel correspondents continue to distort and whitewash.