This week we have been commemorating the Nakba on its 75th anniversary. I’m proud of the many stories we have told.
In Gaza, children dream of Beer al-Sabe’ and other villages a few miles away that they have never seen. Because their grandparents were exiled to Gaza in tents in 1948, and they have never been allowed to return home. Tareq Hajjaj reminds us that 70 percent of Gazans are refugees, to whom the world has made false promises for 75 years.
Nada Elia sees hope in the anniversary — 75 years of uncompromising Palestinian sumud have slowly opened the eyes of the world. “There is every indication that the end of Israeli apartheid is near, and that our liberation is not a dream.”
While in Washington, the House leadership blocked Rep. Rashida Tlaib from holding a Nakba commemoration, yet Tlaib was able to stage it with the help of Sen. Bernie Sanders– and it was a historic and emotional ceremony in the life of the United States. “Let the headlines read ‘[Kevin] McCarthy tries to erase Palestine but fails,’” Tlaib wrote.
The Israel lobby fought that Nakba commemoration tooth and nail. The ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt tried to stop it with a letter denouncing Tlaib for using the “apartheid slander” against Israel (when even Noam Chomsky tells us that apartheid is a charitable word for Israeli persecution).
A Nakba commemoration at the Capitol! That is a sure sign of what Nada Elia tells us; the west is changing before our eyes.
The form you have selected does not exist.
Israel’s reputation is falling. There are whispers of accountability. This week the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a report on the 18 Palestinian journalists Israel has killed since 2001– pointing out that Israel has never put a soldier on trial for any of those killings.
The CPJ report was timed to another anniversary: the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin on May 11, 2022.
Mariam Barghouti knew Shireen Abu Akleh and was inspired by her. She wrote this week about that dark day a year ago. “The entire city of Ramallah seemed to be in paralysis. None of us knew what to do with the news.”
A year later, Shireen Abu Akleh’s memory lives and is an inspiration.
