In advocating for one state in Israel and Palestine, Peter Beinart has been dry or vague about the right of return for Palestinian refugees forced out of their homeland. But he has also conceded the moral validity of that right, and opened up a discussion liberal Zionists don’t want to have, as they enjoy the fruits of that ethnic cleansing.
What if Palestinians suddenly disappeared from Israel and Palestine? That is the premise of Ibtisam Azem’s mystical story in “The Book of Disappearance.” And yes, at first Jewish Israelis see it as a great miracle.
From April 1st to May 14, 1948 — before Israel was declared, before the British left, and before any Arab soldier entered Palestine to save it — Zionist militias essentially conquered Palestine. Salman Abu Sitta says this critical period leading to Al Nakba has rarely been looked upon in this light, and shows how massacres that took place during this period were pivotal in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
May 15 marked the 72nd anniversary of the Nakba, or the mass displacement of Palestinians from their homelands in 1948. This year demonstrations were smaller due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, with Palestinians opting for smaller scale and online commemorations of the occasion.
As we mark Nakba Day amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Nada Elia implores us to make radical demands that secure a life of dignity for all.
Palestinian memory of the Nakba is even more crucial in the time of the coronavirus when usual forms of resistance have been made impossible. Palestinian literature has been one way memory of the Nakba has been shared.
Benny Morris, the Israeli historian who has documented Israeli-Palestinian history so meticulously, is again bemoaning that a full ethnic cleansing was not completed in 1948. In a new interview with Haaretz, the schism between Morris the historian and Morris the political pundit is on full display.
Palestinian author Reja-e Busailah says he loves the United States although he has witnessed Islamophobia here for 60 years, going back to an ad on a NY radio station, “Give a dollar and kill an Arab.” At 89, retired in Indiana, he reflects on the Nakba that deprived him of his home, and on what terms he would return to the land of his birth. Spoiler alert: Equality.
“Today I carry a not real coffin for one who was killed by the Israelis. Maybe these scouts will carry my real coffin or I will carry a real coffin one day,” 13-year-old Marah Al-Abadseh says during a children’s memorial to slain Gaza children at the Gaza border, July 27, 2019.
Ilan Pappe writes: “American peacemakers, whether cynical or genuine in their efforts, have consistently failed to understand the essence of the conflict in Palestine. If they ever want to solve it, they need to revisit the dispossession of Palestinians that occurred in 1948 and understand its significance and the fact that 70 years later, Israel continues to systematically displace Palestinians from their homes.”