The “Nakba law” passed in a first reading last Tuesday. The law forbids mourning the Nakba on Israel’s Independence Day. Breaking the law will result in high fines and withdrawal of gevernmental financing from municipal authorities.
Zochrot ["Remembering"] is a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948.
Lifta, a most picturesque Palestinian village, lies on the slopes of West Jerusalem below the highway linking it to Tel-Aviv. It has been abandoned since the invading Hagana underground forces backed by the Stern Gang drove the last of its Palestinian inhabitants in 1948 during the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The increasingly harsh political climate in Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government has prompted the leadership of the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens to call the first general strike in several years.
Al Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948 (58 min. documentary, Israel-Germany-The Netherlands, 1997). Arguably the first film that seriously tackles the historic events that lead to the creation of 750.000 Palestinian refugees at the end of the first Israeli-Arab war of 1948. Based on historian Benny Morris’ book “The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-49″.
Sons of Eilaboun is a story of one small village in the Galilee, one village amongst many. It is a story of one massacre, one massacre amongst many. It is a story of a small community that is tormented and traumatised for generations. Sons of Eilaboun is in fact the story of Palestine.
The greatest threat to Israel is our existence, and as long as we are steadfast in Palestine, they can’t take Palestine away from us. The destroyed homes will be rebuilt one day, and the empty villages will be refilled one day and all those ethnically cleansed will return one day. This is no wishful thinking, nor an illusion. History teaches us that nothing lasts forever, especially injustice.
As a Palestinian citizen of Israel, Rana deeply understands how feelings of belonging and claims of ownership, irrevocably separate, yet permanently connect Arabs and Jews in their struggle for a land that is called Palestine by one group and Israel by the other.
Some of the films that we have completed, as well as others that are currently in progress, present the memories of a small group of men and women selected from an aging and rapidly dying generation of Palestinians who directly experienced the catastrophic ethnic cleansing of their homeland in 1948.
Even if one puts aside the historical debate about why what happened in 1948 happened, no one seems to question the enormity of the tragedy that befell the indigenous population of Palestine as a result of the success of the Zionist movement.
The 1948 war’s diplomatic maneuvers and military campaigns are well engraved in Israeli Jewish historiography. What is missing is the chapter on the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Jews in 1948: 500 Palestinian villages and 11 urban neighborhoods were destroyed, 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes, and several thousands more were massacred. Why did it happen?
As long as the moral lesson is not learned, the state of Israel will continue to exist as a hostile enclave at the heart of the Arab world. It would remain the last reminder of the colonialist past that complicates not only Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians, but with the Arab world as a whole.
Vanunu has been nominated for the Noble Peace Prize annually since 1986 for his courage and truth telling, by providing the photographic eveidence that warned the world that Israel had already manufactured upwards of 200 nuclear warheads in 1985.
SATURDAY, MAY 17, 2008
18:20 MECCA TIME, 15:20 GMT
Ilan Pappe says Israel needs to acknowledge the crime it committed against the Palestinian people
As part of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the anniversary of the creation of Israel and the Palestinian ‘Nakba’, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe reflects upon the events of 1948 and how they led to [...]
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