This week Israel will celebrate 75 years since its declaration of independence in 1948 while Palestinians will remember the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) in which over 700,000 Palestinians were driven off their land by Israeli militias in 1947-49.
There are not contradictory anniversaries. They are complementary; one leading directly to the other.
Those who have been paying attention will know Palestinians have suffered the colonisation of their country with the theft of their land and denial of their fundamental human rights just as Māori, Aboriginal, black South Africans and “first nations” people across the world suffered similarly under European colonisation.
Israel’s master plan for the clearing out of Palestinians, Plan D, which had been prepared alongside the high command of the Haganah, the main Jewish military wing, includes a description of the methods to be used by Israeli militias:
“Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously. Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”
Israeli propagandists say Palestinians left of their own accord – yeah right!
Similar orders were given to colonial soldiers as they invaded the Waikato and the Māori settlement of Parihaka in the 19th century and Maungapōhatu in the 20th. The problem here for the colonial forces was there was nowhere to expel Māori “outside the borders of the state”! In Palestine it meant murder and mayhem for the local population and forcibly moving Palestinians, many on “death marches” to Gaza and Jordan.
Meanwhile people who haven’t been paying attention will blame Palestinian “militants” and “terrorists” for the never-ending violence in the Middle East. They will believe this because that’s how Palestinian resistance to colonisation and occupation is portrayed in our media, many instances of which can be found in just the last week.
The reality for Palestinians is that the Nakba has never stopped. Not a day goes by without evictions, house demolitions and forced displacement of Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlers. The Israeli leadership has 19th century European attitudes to the indigenous people of Palestine.
Colonial oppression has resulted in what Israel’s largest and most respected human rights group, B’Tselem, describes as “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid”.
For Israel’s side it says the land of Palestine is the traditional homeland of the Jewish people as declared in holy scriptures and that Jews and only Jews have a right to self-determination there. In 2018 Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan declared: “We are telling the world that it doesn’t matter what the nations of the world say. The time has come to express our biblical right to the land”; or as Israeli Professor Ilan Pappe puts it bluntly “most Jews are atheists but they believe God promised them Palestine”.
The “faith history” declared by Gilad Erdan is deeply rooted in mythology which in recent decades historians have comprehensively debunked.
Israel also says its military occupation of all historic Palestine is “temporary” until a final settlement is negotiated. But recent Israeli leaders have repeatedly said they have no intention of negotiating peace with Palestinians. But for Palestinians in any case, negotiations are a dead end. The power imbalance between Israel and the US on one side of the table and Palestinians on the other is a recipe for some token “concessions” from Israel but many more decades of Israeli oppression and Palestinian resistance.
So how will governments respond to the complementary commemorations next week?
Most Western governments will write polite press releases congratulating Israel on its achievements, but none will write messages congratulating Palestinians for their heroic resistance to military occupation and Israel’s attempts to undermine and delegitimise their struggle for self-determination.
No western governments will demand Israel allow Palestinian refugees to return to their land and homes in Palestine despite annual UN General Assembly resolutions (UNGA 194) demanding this every year, dating back to 1948.
And none will demand Israel abide by international law and United Nations resolutions – a demand which is the key to resolving the situation for a Middle East peace based on justice – the only peace possible.
But Palestinians have the tide of history on their side. Opinion around the world is overwhelmingly on their side and is increasing – the Israeli narrative has run out of steam. People are no longer buying the idea of Israel as a valiant little state facing hostile hordes of Arabs which my generation did growing up the 1960s.
People are seeing that for the myth it always was. Israel has always been a colonial aggressor which uses false smears of anti-Semitism as its main defence against its critics.
As was the case with South Africa, international solidarity with Palestine and demanding accountability from Israel are the way forward. Leaving the issue to western politicians in a recipe for never-ending violence.
The world no longer cares. Not even the Arab nations can be bothered with Palestine anymore. They’re more interested in signing up to the Abraham accords and fostering trading relations with Israel.
sorry but I disagree..possibly the world with internet connections agree because of what Snowden said, all comms are routed through Herzliya by NSO – https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/07/the-pegasus-project/ and 5eyes.
Those that didn’t heed the inflammatory rhetoric from Syrian and Jordanian radio and stayed, have prospered. Today over 1.5 million Arabs in Israel have full citizenship, vote and elect representatives to the Knesset.
Andrew I never understand why you and others keep saying that they are all second class citizens, 65 laws discriminate against them.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/7/19/five-ways-israeli-law-discriminates-against-palestinians
You’re confused.
Israeli citizens of all races and creeds have equal status.
What you’re referring to are ‘Palestinian’ citizens in the West Bank and Gaza enclaves.
This is the one of the few humanitarian justice issues, like West Papua, that has not made much progress in all the years I have been politically aware and active since the 70s. The Israeli Apartheid regime’s terror campaign against Palestinians is blatantly obvious and the question as always is what to do about it.
From this remove in Aotearoa, there is only one serious option–BDS, Boycott, Divest, Sanction–strangle the Israeli zionists and military by economic and cultural pressure just as the international solidarity movement did with South Africa. And before anyone starts–SA Apartheid was ended–tick–a major victory, it was always up to the SA people to chart their new course.
BDS will work over time as those who remember the wailing from the Israeli troll farms online when Lorde said she would not perform in Israel would be aware, look at how Roger Waters got treated by Germany recently…in the UK there are moves to outlaw practicing BDS! The right wing poms would not do that if BDS was ineffective.
Basically the filthy Israeli nuclear equipped state will continue until economically hurt, or US Imperialism turns the tap off on finance and arms. But there is indeed some light with the realignment of some of the Mid East and Gulf forces.
Shame on anyone who supports the Israeli State and Military.
Palestinians are not the indigenous people of the region. They are Arabic people who came from Arabia not Palestine.
There were the 3 great Abrahamic religions that came out of the area called Palestine. Muslims, Jews and Christians all living peacefully in that area in 1948. Only 5% of them were Jews. The majority of Jews hit by the appalling events of the second world war moved not to the homeland that the Brits (guilt, guilt, guilt) gave them, Palestine but to Canada, America, Australia, NZ. The holocaust is used constantly as an excuse to say you cannot criticise us. The people being criticised are the Israeli government who are treating the Palestinians appallingly just as the Jews were treated in WWII. Does this help, does this make any sense?
So a people who had a life expectancy just over thirty, an inordinate likelihood of being slaughtered in an attack or if surviving that to be enslaved for whatever the victor ordained, very probably being kept alive in the absence of refrigeration, canning or freezing as fresh meat in the absence of any alternative storage system, to walk almost everywhere unless a waterway of sufficient size to enable a big hollowed out totara log to be an Uber, no roads, no telephones, not even smoke signals or flags, no armour, security by walls of timber that when dried very prone to fire, no bows and arrows such as carried the day over a thousand years earlier at Agincourt, a people who suddenly acquired muskets in rudimentary buy sell and exchange that exponentially increased the mortality in battle, no rudimentary medical knowledge such as had became de jour in China centuries earlier, zero metallurgy only worn down stones for weapon enhancement,no fabrics beyond woven dried flax, no sanitation, no running water no bricks, corrugated iron, planks or nails, no monetary exchange, yet consider all the benefits of civilisation. from Chinese, Persia, and european advancement as merely colonisation; Geez that is one hell of a stretch.
sorry this is a bit late but, well, reasons…
Nakba Day May15
Bbm Ebm F
What is this cruelty coming to????
the sentiment is coming through –
Zion makes the people blue
Oh Palestine!
Money out and money in
shelling out for crates of gin
coke is cheaper here than agua
life is but a colander
Oh Palestine!
75 long years ago, run out of their homes and
made to leave the land they loved, the ancient olive groves.
Poisoned, tortured, terrorised, right before the generals’ eyes!
Justified for what, by who? an answer that we never knew..
What for? a Balfour valve is all..
what for? a way to bleed us all..
what for? the bitter tears all fall
all fall for Palestine…
Oh, boycott Israel…. we are dying…
for they come saying “Yours is Mine!”….
for what? the harvesting of blood…
the children’s cries are hid with lies….
Oh tears for Palestine…
To quote Christopher Hitchens. “There will never be peace in the Middle East– most of world believe that there is a two state solution– but it will never happen. The EU have failed, the UN have failed, the tri-something has failed, Tony Blair failed, Barack Obama failed. There will NEVER be peace because they parties of God have a veto (Christ, Muslim & Jew). There will NEVER be peace as they all see it as their holy land. And while you are willing to kill your neighbour, and your neighbour’s children over a rock, a cave or a tablet or scroll, or a sacred whatever– there will NEVER be peace. Because of religion” RIP The Hitch. gone but not forgotten.
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