Introducing 'Nakba' – a Twitter tale of 7 million distortions - by David Collier

Massacres that never happened, villages that were no more than a couple of tents, Arab civilians who were actually armed militia, a mighty Zionist force that was in reality a tiny and scared Jewish population and a plan of ethnic cleansing that simply did not exist. Mix all these up together and you can present your very own Nakba tale. A fable that has lasted 72 years and has resulted in European governments enticing and actually funding the welfare of Arabs who seek to kill Jews.

David Collier..
Beyond the Great Divide..
15 May '20..

Today on Twitter is Nakba Day. It is commemorated on 15th May, the day following Israel’s independence. As bad as the distortion and ignorance surrounding the conflict may be on any normal day, the nakba anniversary always takes it to a whole new level of insane.

The true story behind the Nakba is a simple one. The UN partitioned the land between a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Arabs refused to accept it. Civil conflict broke out and this turned into a regional war. The Arab side lost and paid a price for their aggression. Rather than accept this, they have spent the last 72 years making it continually worse for themselves.

On social media – we are presented with a completely different tale. An insidious, antisemitic demonisation of Jews and a total distortion of history. As I am battling away today, I thought I would provide a few examples.

Nakba as a Jewish virus

These online campaigns are organised and sometimes state driven. As early as last night #covid48 started trending:

Covid is of course another name of the current Coronavirus. 1948 is the birthdate of Israel. This Twitter trend is in tune with some of the oldest and most deadly antisemitic tropes. Over the past 24 hours, there have been 100,000s of tweets calling Jews a virus. It is difficult to believe Twitter would accommodate a global racist trend such as this against any other minority group. Antisemitism is and has always been more socially accepted than other forms of hate. ‘Jews as virus’ trending in the UK. How sickening.

Nakba number lies

One of the key reasons I know anti-Zionism is just the latest version of antisemitism, is because of the ignorance behind it all. The tale they weave is not a perspective of an historical fact nor a slight bias in favour of their own side. It is a total fictional narrative. A place where the enemy is so demonised, so over-stated and the story so ridiculous – that they are discussion the devil or the bogey man – not actual historical events.

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President Trump’s critics shouldn’t encourage Palestinians to make another mistake (but they will) - by Jonathan S. Tobin

Contrary to the bad advice they’re getting from the Democrats and J Street, Palestinians need to accept that the U.S. plan is their best chance for statehood.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
28 January '20..

As far as those Americans who despise President Donald Trump, as well as many of those Jews and Israelis who feel the same way about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the ceremony unveiling a new U.S. peace plan for the Middle East was a sham.

With the Palestinians refusing to even talk to the administration—let alone negotiate with Israel about implementing the plan’s terms—chances of the “deal of the century” solving the conflict remain exactly zero. Trump’s opponents see his determination to recognize Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, as well as the green light his plan gives to annexation of West Bank settlements, as an outrage. And they dismiss his offer of statehood to the Palestinians—provided that they recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state and cease support for terrorism—as meaningless.

In essence, all those denouncing Trump’s terms are advising the Palestinians to stick to their refusal to talk until a new American president takes office.

Whatever you think about Trump, it is the worst possible advice anyone could give to the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what many Democrats are doing. The same is true of allegedly “pro-peace” Jewish groups like J Street. Rather than encouraging the Palestinians to start negotiating, the “experts” about the Mideast are applauding their decision to reject Trump’s proposal out of hand. Sadly, they are once again serving as enablers for a Palestinian Arab leadership that has, over the course of the last century, failed their people miserably as they pursued a futile war against Zionism.

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Palestinian narrative and the need to rethink the ‘nakba,’ not repeat it - by Jonathan S. Tobin

A rethinking of why the “catastrophe” happened is essential to the sea change in Palestinian political culture that is a necessary precondition for their leaders to be able to accept peace. But as Tlaib’s remarks made clear, the sad truth is that they are still not ready; they are still unprepared to think honestly about their tragic past.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
16 May '19..

The debates about Holocaust references made by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) are starting to die down. Like almost everything that happens these days, partisanship was far more important in determining the outcome than the substance of the controversy. The Palestinian-American congresswoman engaged in some outrageous historical revisionism and an attempt to cast the creation of Israel as a Nazi-like crime in which innocent Palestinian Arabs were made to pay for the sins of others. But Democrats, including some of its most stalwart pro-Israel members, were not prepared to censure someone like Tlaib, one of her party’s young rock stars, even if they would have condemned without reservation any Republican who had used those same words.

But there’s more to this story. Tlaib’s comments matter because they are an accurate reflection of the way Palestinians think about history. They fit in perfectly with the rhetoric of this week’s commemoration of “Nakba Day,” in which the “tragedy” or “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation—and the subsequent dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Arabs—is lamented in full force.

“Nakba Day” is the inverse reflection of Israel’s Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day). There’s no denying that what happened 71 years ago, when the Jews regained sovereignty over part of their ancient homeland, was a tragedy for Palestinian Arabs. By the time Israel’s War of Independence ended, several hundred thousand Arabs had fled from or been forced out of their homes. It was a consequence of the bitter fighting that resulted in the deaths of 1 percent of the total Jewish population, in addition to the subsequent expulsion of an equal number of Jewish refugees from their homes in the Arab world.

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“Nakba” and the Infantilizing of Arab Aggression - by Daniel Krygier

The Orwellian “Nakba” narrative is false on numerous levels. It denies 3000 years of uninterrupted Jewish history in Israel while at the same time inventing the Arab Neverland “Palestine.” Secondly, it inverts reality by presenting the Arab aggressors as “victims” while demonizing Jews defending their national freedom as “aggressors.” The Arab refugee issue did not happen in a vacuum but was a direct result of the Arab side’s failed annihilationist policy against the Jewish state.

Daniel Krygier..
MiDA..
14 May "19..

Imagine if Germans today would annually mourn that Nazi Germany lost World War II and call it “disaster” that it failed to wipe out all Jews during the Holocaust. This is exactly what Arab extremists and their global supporters do when they annually equate the failure to wipe out the Jewish state in 1948 with “Nakba” or “disaster”. The Arab nationalist historian George Antonius originally coined the term “Nakba”in the 1920s. Ironically, it debunks the myth of a historical “Palestinian” nation by lamentingly referring to the separation of Arabs in the British Palestine Mandate from their Arab brothers and sisters in French-controlled Syria.

Throughout history, losing wars was always unpleasant. This is particularly true for losing aggressors. Post-1945 Germany and Japan paid a heavy price for their failed aggressive assault on humanity. Nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing countless Japanese civilians. Berlin and many other German cities were in ruins. Several million German soldiers and civilians were killed during World War II. Twelve million Germans became refugees and fled or were expelled from much of Central and Eastern Europe. While these national experiences were traumatic for Berlin and Tokyo, post-1945 Germany and Japan were nevertheless forced to take responsibility for their past aggression.

By contrast, the “Nakba” myth does exactly the opposite. Seven decades after the pan-Arab aggression failed to wipe out reborn Israel, the global “Nakba” cult is the only case in human history where a failed genocidal aggression is equated with “victimhood.”

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Time to Uproot the False “Nakba” Narrative - by Dr. Raphael G. Bouchnik-Chen

The term “Nakba,” originally coined to describe the magnitude of the self-inflicted Palestinian and Arab defeat in the 1948 war, has become in recent decades a synonym for Palestinian victimhood, with failed aggressors transformed into hapless victims and vice versa. Israel should do its utmost to uproot this false image by exposing its patently false historical basis.

Dr. Raphael G. Bouchnik-Chen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,143..
16 April '19..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/nakba-false-narrative/

Nowadays, the failed Palestinian Arab attempt to destroy the state of Israel at birth, and the attendant flight of some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs, has come to be known internationally as the “Nakba,” the catastrophe, with its accompanying false implication of hapless victimhood.

This, ironically, was the opposite of the original meaning of the term, when it was first applied to the Arab-Israeli conflict by the Syrian historian Constantin Zureiq. In his 1948 pamphlet The Meaning of the Disaster (Ma’na al-Nakba), Zureiq attributed the Palestinian/Arab flight to the stillborn pan-Arab assault on the nascent Jewish state rather than to a premeditated Zionist design to disinherit the Palestinian Arabs:

When the battle broke out, our public diplomacy began to speak of our imaginary victories, to put the Arab public to sleep and talk of the ability to overcome and win easily – until the Nakba happened…We must admit our mistakes…and recognize the extent of our responsibility for the disaster that is our lot.

Zureiq subscribed to this critical view for decades. In a later book, The Meaning of the Catastrophe Anew (Ma‘na al-Nakbah Mujaddadan) published after the June 1967 war, he defined that latest defeat as a “Nakba” rather than a “Naksa” (or setback), as it came to be known in Arab discourse, since – just as in 1948 – it was a self-inflicted disaster emanating from the Arab world’s failure to confront Zionism.

The original Nakba wasn't about a “return” to the Neverland “Palestine” but to the current war-torn Syria - by Daniel Krygier

Hamas’ “March of Return” was cynically fueled by the powerful Nakba myth. Ironically, the original meaning of Nakba debunks the myth of a distinct Arab nation in the Land of Israel.

Daniel Krygier..
MiDA..
04 June '18..

The Nakba is the Arabic term for “catastrophe” or “disaster”. Thanks to decades of PLO propaganda, it has entered the international vocabulary as a symbol of Zionist “aggression” and Arab “homelessness” because of the reestablishment of the state of Israel in 1948. To millions of Jew-haters worldwide today, “Nakba” is a convenient excuse to demonize the Jewish state by referring to its reestablishment as a “disaster”. From an Arab point of view, the real “disaster” in 1948 was the failure to wipe out reborn Israel and the painful consequences of losing their war of aggression against the Jews.

The word “Nakba” though, has nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. The prominent Arab historian George Antonius coined the term already in 1920, almost three decades before David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the existence of the first Jewish state in 2000 years.

Antonius who was a passionate Arab nationalist, coined the term “Nakba” as a response to the separation of the British Mandate Palestine from French-controlled Syria. The reason that Antonius considered this territorial division between Britain and France to constitute a “disaster” was that he defined himself and the local Arab population in the British Palestine Mandate as Syrians and an inseparable part of greater Syria.

Like other Arab nationalists of his time, Antonius was by no means sympathetic towards Jews or the Zionist Jewish national liberation movement. However, as far as Antonius and other local Arab nationalists were concerned, places like Jerusalem, Yafo and Haifa were not located in “Palestine” but constituted the southern part of Syria. Antonius was certainly not the only Arab intellectual who rejected the notion of “Palestine”.

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A double helping of BBC ‘Nakba’ backgrounder - by Hadar Sela

...The BBC did not tell its audiences who wrote this backgrounder but whichever BBC journalist did so, it is blatantly obvious that he or she had no intention whatsoever of providing audiences with the full range of historical background and factual information which would enhance their understanding of the issue. Instead, the BBC’s funding public got a double dose of promotion of a one-sided political narrative in which Palestinians are exclusively portrayed as totally passive victims and all mention of the responsibility of the Arab leaders who rejected the 1947 Partition Plan and subsequently started the war that led to their displacement is missing.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
29 May '18..

On May 15th the BBC News website published a backgrounder titled “Why Nakba is the Palestinians’ most sombre day, in 100 and 300 words“.

“Palestinians have been protesting at Gaza’s border with Israel in the lead up to the the [sic] most mournful day in their calendar. The date, which falls on 15 May each year, commemorates events which caused Palestinians to lose their homes and become refugees. They refer to it as al-Nakba, or the Catastrophe.

Here it is briefly explained, in both 100 words and 300 words.”

Why the BBC thought its audiences needed a double helping of explanations was not explained.

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That Arabs in Haifa faced mass expulsion by Israeli forces is categorically untrue, but it's the Guardian - by Adam Levick

...Despite a truce offer by the Hagana, personal reassurances from their chief liaison officer in Haifa that Arabs who stayed in the city “would enjoy equality and peace”, and a personal appeal by the city’s Jewish mayor asking them to remain, the Arab leadership chose to reject these overtures and facilitated, instead, a final evacuation.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
07 March '18..

We recently posted about an Evening Standard review of a play being performed at Finborough Theatre in London called Returning to Haifa. Though the review noted that the play was based on a novel by a Palestinian named Ghassan Kanafani, who they refer to as an “acclaimed Palestinian writer” killed by the Mossad, it failed to mention that Kanafni was a high-ranking member of the PFLP terror group – a fact which would help readers understand why the “writer” was targeted by Israel.

Though we complained to editors about the omission, the piece has not been amended.

A Guardian review of the play published the same day similarly fails acknowledge Kanafni’s terror background, and, more importantly, misleads on the historical context of the play.

Here’s the sentence in question by Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington:

The play shows a Palestinian couple returning to Haifa in 1967 in search of the house and son they were forced to abandon 20 years previously during mass evictions by Israeli forces.

Were their “mass evictions” of Haifa’s Arabs by “Israeli forces”, as the Guardian suggests?

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The Division of “TransJordan”: The Original Nakba - by FirstOneThrough

...The Palestinian Arabs coined the term “Nakba” (catastrophe) for the founding of the Jewish State on just a part of the Palestine Mandate on May 15, 1948. However, the original Nakba happened 26 years earlier, when the British gutted the essence of international law set out in the Palestine Mandate: for all of the land west of the Jordan River to be the Jewish homeland, and the land east of the river to have full legal rights for Jewish worship, land ownership and citizenship. Remarkably, the Jewish Nakba of September 23, 1922 is seeking a second coming.

FirstOneThrough..
Israel Analysis..
15 August '17..

This year marks 100 years since the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917 which endorsed “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish People.” The declaration became the basis for the League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations) to endorse the Palestine Mandate which clearly articulated the history and rights of Jews to a reconstituted national homeland in the area now commonly thought of as Gaza, Israel, the West Bank and Jordan.

Article 25 of the Mandate allowed the administrator (Britain) to change the contours of the reestablished Jewish homeland.

“In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions, provided that no action shall be taken which is inconsistent with the provisions of Articles 15, 16 and 18.”

On September 23, 1922, the League of Nations adopted the suggestion of the British to divide the territory in two, in a document called the “Transjordan Memorandum.” That memorandum stripped away any mention of Jewish history in the land, facilitating the emigration of Jews to Palestine or the creation of a Jewish homeland in the area east of the Jordan River.

The memorandum also facilitated a complete abrogation of key components of Article 25 of the Palestine Mandate that allowed such separation: that “no action shall be taken which is inconsistent with the provisions of Articles 15, 16 and 18.” Those provisions specifically enumerated non-discrimination clauses that were to be kept in place in the new TransJordan:

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Did Benny Morris Change His Views on Alleged Zionist Ethnic Cleansing Plan? - by Shlomi Ben-Meir

...Perhaps his detractors attack him precisely because he is a renowned historian who doesn’t hesitate to "correct a mistake" even if the correction is in favor of the Israeli side; who doesn’t wholeheartedly adopt the Palestinian narrative; and who dares to express views that deviate from what is customary in the radical left.

Shlomi Ben-Meir..
Camera Media Analysis..
09 August '17..

Benny Morris and Daniel Blatman are at it again. The two Israeli historians engaged in another round of intellectual blows regarding the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem.

The previous round took place in Haaretz last year. In a series of articles, the two professors presented their views on the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Arabs from what became the borders of the state of Israel during its war of independence in 1947 to 1949. The Palestinian "Nakba" (Arabic for catastrophe) is one of the main issues in the conflict until this day. Was it a result of a deliberate and systematic policy of ethnic cleansing, to empty Mandate Palestine of its Arab inhabitants (as per the argument of Prof. Blatman)? Or perhaps the Zionist Yishuv had no premeditated plan nor policy to drive out the Arabs, and most left the country without being forcefully evicted (as Prof. Morris argued)?

The debate resumed last weekend, again in Haaretz, with Blatman's piece ("For the Nakba, There's No Need of an 'Expulsion Policy"') criticizing Morris' review ("Israel Had No 'Expulsion Policy' Against the Palestinians in 1948") of Adel Manna's book Nakba and Survival. Morris wrote that during 1948 there was no policy of ethnic cleansing, and the vast majority of the Arabs who left their homes were not expelled. Blatman countered that Morris' current claims contradict the views he held in the past, and the findings of his earlier historical research.

Blatman's claim that today's Benny Morris contradicts and denies the positions that he himself expressed as a historian years ago is a common, albeit false, argument. In fact, while Morris changed his mind on several issues, he has for decades consistently argued that Israel's pre-state leadership did not advance or follow a policy of ethnic cleansing. Morris' argument from the beginning was that the majority of Arabs left the country as a result of a complex range of factors, and not because they were expelled.

The consistency of Benny Morris' views as a historian is an issue with implications far beyond a narrow academic debate. Many observers consider Morris to be one of the most, if not the most, knowledgeable expert on the 1948 war. His conclusion on the question as to whether or not there was a grand Zionist plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine of Arabs carries great weight. On the other hand, if he indeed changed his view for unclear reasons, and if his present claims contradict the findings of his own earlier work, serious questions regarding his credibility arise.

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A massacre that never happened: The myth of Balad al-Shaykh - by David Collier

...This is how the Nakba myth is developed and propagated by sloppy historian activists who do not seem to care about the truth at all. An overestimate of twenty-one, became a massacre of sixty plus. In reality the death toll was probably nine. And all the while a file containing the truth was waiting to be uncovered in Kew.

David Collier..
Across the Great Divide..
03 August '17..

This is the story of how a small engagement at Balad al-Shaykh, at the start of the 1947/1948 civil war in the British Mandate of Palestine, became the story of a full blown massacre with its own wiki page. I have uncovered documents that reveal the Balad al-Shaykh massacre is little more than part of the bubble of anti-Israel distortion. Here is the report:

It was new years eve, 1947. Both Jews and Arabs in the British Mandate of Palestine had been suffering from widespread violence since the passing of UN resolution 181 on 29th November. The Jews had accepted the partition plan, the Arabs had responded with violence, and civil war between the two sides had erupted.

With the British due to leave in only a few months, and with the neighbouring Arab states threatening to destroy any Jewish attempts to declare independence, the situation was becoming increasingly bloody and desperate.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Nakbacide in a nutshell - by Daniel Greenfield

...There is an anecdote about an Israeli driver who accidentally hits a sheep belonging to an Muslim. The driver gets out and offers to pay for the sheep. The Muslim refuses. The driver offers to pay for five sheep, for ten sheep. The Muslim still refuses. "What do you want?" the frustrated driver asks. "I want that sheep," the Muslim says, pointing to the dead sheep. That is the Nakba in a nutshell. 

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
16 May '17..

Imagine if every year on the 7th of May, Germans held an annual commemoration of the defeat of the Nazi state, complete with Swastikas, anti-Jewish chants and slogans, and a historical narrative claiming that the Volksdeutsche expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were the real victims of WW2. That disgusting spectacle is what takes place on May 15th as Muslims in Israel chant and riot to protest their unsuccessful genocide of the minority indigenous Jewish population.

It's hard to think of a more repulsive spectacle of historical obliviousness, than a regional majority responsible for multiple genocides dressing up as the victims because their invasion of Israel ended in a stalemate, rather than a genocidal purge of its residents.

The revisionist Muslim history of Israel ethnically cleanses the thousands of years of history of the original Jewish inhabitants and a thousand years of persecution under Muslim rule.

It leaves out the massacres and atrocities carried out by the Muslim invaders against the Jewish inhabitants in the 20th century, including the Hebron Massacre, and the Nazi collaboration of their leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem. Instead it begins and ends with Deir Yassin and angry old women holding up oversized housekeys and reminiscing about the good times they had massacring Jews.

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The ‘Nakba’ and the ongoing catastrophe of bad Palestinian decisions - by David Collier

...How many mistakes. How many bad choices. Event after event, year after year. Choosing to focus on fighting Israel. Over a century of mistakes and still they seem unable to stop fighting and to start focusing on building something positive for themselves. Still choosing to drown in a swamp of hate. This is the true catastrophe.

David Collier..
Across the Great Divide..
15 May '17..

Today (Monday) is the 15th May, one day after the Gregorian calendar date for Israel’s Independence Day. Today, Palestinians and anti-Israel activists will commemorate the ‘Nakba’, or Catastrophe.

Why the 15th May? Let me take a brief journey through history to find out if there are more suitable dates that should have been chosen. For example, just 11 days after the handshake between Arafat and Rabin in September 1993, Yigal Vaknin was murdered by a Hamas terrorist. Imagine, if during the Oslo peace process, violence had not exploded on the Israeli streets. For this reason perhaps September 21st would provide a good alternative date to commemorate.

Here are some others:

September 16th. The day in 2008 the peace initiative of Israeli PM Olmert began to unravel as the Palestinian leadership didn’t think the offer generous enough.

Or maybe, by this point, the Palestinian Authority was already incapable of representing the entire Palestinian population. If this is true then the day for commemoration should be 25 January. For on that date in 2006, the Palestinian population gave power to Hamas. Civil strife began and tore the Palestinians apart. Within weeks rockets had flown from Gaza. Perhaps the date that Palestinians voted for a radical Islamic terrorist group is the best date to commemorate the catastrophe?

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But they are 100 percent responsible for their disaster - by Uri Heitner

...When the Palestinians speak about the "Nakba" and present themselves as victims and the Jewish Independence War as "ethnic cleansing," it's important to remember these facts. There is no doubt that they experienced a disaster. Losing a war is a disaster. When it is an all-out war, the disaster of losing is experienced in kind. But they are 100 percent responsible for their disaster, and they have only themselves to blame, just as the Germans cannot go and complain to the countries that defeated them in World War II.

Uri Heitner..
Israel Hayom..
18 May '16..

On Aug. 26, 1947, three months before the partition resolution and nine months before the founding of the State of Israel, David Ben-Gurion said in a speech to the Zionist General Council: "We now face not simply acts of robbery and terrorism and attempts to disturb our work, but an attempt to uproot the yishuv and to destroy in one fell swoop the Zionist 'threat' by destroying the Jews of the Land of Israel. And this is within the realm of possibility if we do not recognize the danger in its entirety and do not prepare for it. The stated policy of the Arabs is: Israel as an Arab state where the Jews are nothing more than an eternal minority. They speak about this policy openly ... but the unannounced plan that they are preparing is completely different. It is the plan of the now silent 'leader.' ... He is plotting to put Arab armies into action for this purpose."

He was, of course, referring to Jerusalem Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini. Ben-Gurion quoted Arab Liberation Army commander Fawzi al-Qawuqji, who said in an interview: "The conflict between the Jews and the Arabs is a total conflict. This is not a conflict between the Arabs and the Zionists, rather between the Arabs and the Jews, and the only solution is the complete annihilation of all the Jews, both in Palestine and in Arab countries."

Ben-Gurion said that "what Qawuqji said openly, the leader of the Arabs in Israel [Husseini] says privately." Based on this insight, Ben-Gurion presented the problematic power relationship between the Arab armies -- whose invasion of Israel on the day of its establishment he accurately predicted -- and the Jewish yishuv.

One could attribute Ben-Gurion's statements to simple propaganda aimed at recruiting the public to the struggle. But the opposite is true. His remarks were made before the Zionist General Council specifically because it was a closed forum. Ben-Gurion did not say such things in public, in an effort to keep the nation's spirit intact and to prevent demoralization.

Putting their "nakba" in perspective - by Arnold Roth

...As news coverage focuses today on the Palestinian day of catastrophe, spend a moment pondering how large that catastrophe truly is, how little chance there is of it being reversed by the Arabs (among the resource-richest states on earth), how small is the incentive for them to stop this endless cash-fest, how often all of this is used to justify acts of savagery and bigotry, and - finally - who, in reality, brought them into the morass in which they find themselves today.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
15 May '16..

Israelis joyously and thankfully marked 68 years of renewed independence, massive economic advancement and attainment on all fronts this past Thursday. The Palestinian Arabs call the same process "catastrophe".

Much of the economic fuel for both of the two Palestinian Arab statelets - the one ruled by the PLO and Mahmoud Abbas from Ramallah; the other by Hamas in Gaza - comes not from industrial growth, not from economic progress, not from anything self-generated by them in the past 68 years. It comes, tragically, from a two-edged sword: massive gifts via foreign aid and cradle-to-grave support from a UN-created refugee agency, UNRWA.

Many billions of dollars/euros are represented by that last sentence - more money is spent on this particular cluster of self-proclaimed, humiliation-averse refugees per capita than on any other refugee group in history - by far.

Among the numerous aspects of UNRWA's odd and highly problematic existence that make it exceptional and peculiar is that it serves only the people called the Palestinian Arabs.

Many otherwise well-informed people fail to notice that every other refugee on earth has to turn to a different UN agency, UNHCR, operating according to a completely different set of rules and principles. Only the people who say they are the Palestinian Arabs are served by UNRWA. (Why this is so, and what it means in practice, is part of an astonishing narrative that needs a separate post.)

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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An observation on observing the nakba - by Vic Rosenthal

We can’t stop them from believing fairy tales. But we don’t have to embrace a narrative that contradicts our own national existence. Who would?

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
15 May '16..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2016/05/on-observing-the-nakba/

Many of you have seen the traffic coming to a stop on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance day and Memorial Day, with drivers getting out of their cars and pedestrians standing stock still, at attention while a siren sounds for two minutes. It never ceases to move me to tears, no matter how many times I’ve experienced it. Ordinary Israelis understand quite well why their independence is important and what it still costs them.

If you’ve seen videos of the event, you may have noticed a few vehicles that don’t stop. These are primarily Arabs. After all, it’s not their grandparents who were murdered by the Nazis (the father of Palestinian nationalism, al-Husseini, was a Nazi himself), and the last people they would want to honor are the soldiers who died to keep the Arabs from finishing al-Husseini and Hitler’s program. Indeed, today the Arabs of Judea and Samaria will sound a siren of their own to commemorate “nakba day,” the day they failed to prevent Jewish sovereignty from returning to the Land of Israel.

The experience of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day, which all come within the space of a week, always affects me profoundly, creating feelings of love for the Jewish people and pride at what we have accomplished. I don’t have the slightest twinge of regret for what my people had to do to get their independence, and what we continue to do to keep it. And I don’t think there is a place in the state of Israel for the observance of the nakba, the catastrophic failure of our enemies to kill or re-disperse us.

Some Jewish Israelis, like the one that wrote this, disagree.

God, I love this country – and I am not ashamed to be a Jewish citizen of Israel… and yet… and yet… I think about others… the nearly 23% citizens of Israel who did not look toward Zion, who were already here when we returned home, the people who cut their teeth on stories of banishment, of exile so like ours, only done by us to them during one of the most tumultuous periods in modern history… a time when we, too, uprooted were building a home. A time when they, firmly rooted, had to flee. …

Yes, we need a homeland. And yes, I’m glad we have returned home. And I’m not going anywhere, nor are my kids — but until both people [sic] who share this land can celebrate and mourn their narratives together, I find no reason to celebrate wholly. For truly, being strong means allowing space for others. For truly, if we are to be worthy of our ancient hope, we must respect the yearnings of others, too. For truly, we are not free until both peoples celebrate and mourn side by side, and hold both truths as one.

The author of the above, Sarah Tuttle-Singer, has an overdeveloped ability to empathize with others (many of these others would as soon kill her and her children as look at them), but she is also making a fundamental mistake about the nature of the Jewish state. She is ignoring the fact that it is a Jewish state.

Concerning that "Nakba" claim. Who wanted to destroy whom?

...When was Palestine the homeland of the Palestinians? And what about rejecting the United Nations partition plan? Or not accepting the decision by the U.N. to establish the State of Israel? And the ensuing wars of annihilation against us? What about the unceasing delegitimization? I have been called a racist, someone who adamantly refuses to "understand" the Nakba. But this is preferable to being a bleeding heart who seeks to "understand" those ceremonies of theirs in which they call for our annihilation.

Smadar Bat Adam..
Israel Hayom..
10 May '16..

On the eve of the 68th anniversary of Israel's independence, the Nakba is again knocking at the gate, a mark of Cain on behalf of itself. Its role is to embody eternal anguish, its singular purpose is to point an accusatory finger at the burgeoning state of Israel, as if to say: You have committed a crime, you have distorted, robbed, oppressed. The land, which you have dressed in concrete and cement, gardens and forests, does not belong to you, it is ours; your existence is a catastrophe, and we will keep the key to the home from which we fled/were expelled, a testimony of our intention to return to that home and remove you from it.

This is the Nakba, an objection to the State of Israel, an eternal rejection of its right to exist as the national home of the Jewish people.

In Arabic literature the word "Nakba" -- which was chosen to grant the "disaster that befell the Palestinian people" equal weight to the Jewish Holocaust -- means a natural disaster, something akin to a strong earthquake or violent volcano outburst.

Until, that is, Constantin Zureiq, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the American University of Beirut, linked the Nakba to the existence of the State of Israel in his 1948 book, "The Meaning of Disaster." The military defeat suffered by Arab states, Zureiq wrote, is nothing short of "a disaster in all that it entails. ... Seven Arab states declare war on Zionism in the land of Israel ... seek to negate the partition and defeat Zionism, but abandon the battle after losing a considerable portion of the land, even the portion that was 'given' to the Arabs."

Without question, our roots are stronger than the lie

...Our ancient roots in this land are inconceivably deeper than any of these groups' mendacious propaganda. We need to work wisely, with patience and determination, and just as we succeeded on the battlefield, we can win the battle for hearts and minds.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
02 June '15..

For years now the U.N. has been used as a platform to question the Jews right to their state. The Palestinian Return Centre is one of a string of terrorism abettors whose goal is to annihilate Israel, which is what is meant by "return," flooding Israel with millions of Arabs.

The hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948 had not been here from time immemorial. Most of them arrived in the 19th century with Egyptian ruler Ibrahim Pasha, and later with the waves of Jewish aliyah and the launch of the British Mandate. Just look at how the U.N. defines Palestinian refugees (which, incidentally, is different than refugees anywhere else in the world): Anyone who was in Palestine two years before the State of Israel was established.

The PRC has strong ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Europeans and the U.N. know it. Beside the old and new anti-Semitism ("just" anti-Israelism), the false premise has existed for years that if the West sacrifices the Jewish state, it will be spared the sword of Islam. And now the PRC has been selected to advise the U.N. birds of a feather.

A Delegitimization Called Nakba by Sarah Honig

...The Arabs (who before Israeli independence fanatically spurned the Palestinian moniker as a British imperialist import – which it indeed was) were victims of their own belligerence. They murdered their own brethren and sabotaged their own economy. In 1936 Husseini, bankrolled by Hitler, instigated a self-inflicted disaster – harbinger of the 1948 Nakba which would follow the onslaught by seven Arab armies on day-old Israel merely three years post-Holocaust. The ultra-vulnerable Jewish state would be blamed for surviving and would fill its thwarted would-be annihilators with yet more frustration and festering rage. Instead of abating, genocidal hate would only intensify and magnify.

Nakba instigator Husseini giving the Heil Hitler salute
to Bosnian Muslim volunteers to the notorious Waffen SS
 (the Hanzar SS Division) in November, 1943
[Jerusalem Post Archives]

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
14 May '15..

Delegitimization provides the sociopsychological rationale, the moral and discursive basis to harm the delegitimized group, even in the most inhumane ways… Delegitimized groups are rhetorically constructed as worthy targets of violence.
The Oxford Handbook of Intergroup Conflict, 2012

The above is what we Israelis, as this volatile region’s most relentlessly delegitimized group, must keep uppermost in mind every mid-May.

Whereas we celebrate our state’s Independence Day according to the Hebrew calendar, the Gregorian anniversary, May 15, is annually commemorated by Arabs as a day of lamentation for the Nakba. It’s the catastrophe according to their loaded terminology, which renascent Jewish sovereignty supposedly inflicted on the supposedly indigenous people of this land – the Palestinians.

The notion that Israel was born in sin is delegitimization in the most extreme sense.

Israel is painted as a wrong and righting the wrong means eradicating Israel. There’s no getting away from the conclusion to which this representation unavoidably leads. Israel is illegitimate both in its inception and subsequent survival. Peace can be restored only when the illegitimacy is removed.

It’s essential to remember this as we see our Arab neighbors – fellow holders of Israeli citizenship who enjoy all the perks and privileges thereof – bewail the fact that an Israel at all exists. Nakba Day is in fact Delegitimization Day. It lays the ideological groundwork for marking us as “worthy targets of violence.”

The delegitimization rests on two interconnected cornerstones – portraying Israel as the occupier-aggressor and portraying local Arabs as the hapless aboriginals overrun and oppressed by the occupier-aggressor.

Both these premises have become axiomatic among Israel’s own Arabs and are expediently espoused by Israel’s Left, which with shallow self-serving sanctimony owns up to a sad collective guilt.

Turning Back the Clock to Pre-1948 is the Real Endgame

...UN rules state that cultural activities seeking a UN platform must "promote dialogue among civilizations" and "be compatible with the values, purposes and principles of the United Nations." Apparently, a direct attack on the legitimacy of the UN member state of Israel is now interpreted in UN circles as consistent with the principles of the United Nations. Maybe, so long as those principles have nothing to do with truth, equality, and justice. The silence of UN members on this abomination is deafening.

Anne Bayefsky..
Human Rights Voices..
17 December '14..

Incitement against the Jewish state is directly related to the stabbings, raping and killing of Jews inside and outside of Israel. But doing something to stop it requires confronting a very troubling fact: the global epicenter for incitement is the "human rights" leviathan, the United Nations.

From November 24, 2014 until December 5, 2014, UN human rights headquarters in Geneva mounted a public exhibit that was pure incitement. UN-driven antisemitism that takes the form of seeking to demonize, disable and ultimately destroy the Jewish state.

The exhibit was entitled: "La Nakba: Exode et Expulsion des Palestiniens en 1948" — or "The Nakba: Exodus and Expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948." The occasion was the annual UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Solidarity Day marks the adoption by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947 of the resolution that approved the partitioning of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state.

Introductory Poster, UN Nakba Exhibit, Palais des Nations, Geneva, 2014

The partition resolution was rejected by Arab states and celebrated by the Jewish people. Thus the Arab war to deny Israel's right to exist began.

But in 2014, the UN overtly jettisoned the usual diplomatic lie that the 1967 occupation is the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The exhibit focused on the alleged crime of creating a Jewish state in 1948 and openly justified the rejection of the partition resolution.

The display was located in the UN's Palais des Nations just outside the home room of the UN Human Rights Council. It consisted of 13 panels in French and an accompanying catalogue with English reproductions of each item. The catalogue was distributed by UN conference services.

Reception beside the UN Nakba Exhibit, Palais des Nations, Geneva, Nov. 26, 2014

UN Nakba Exhibit, Exhibition Gallery, Palais des Nations, Geneva, Nov.-Dec. 2014

It turns out that the highly controversial exhibit has been circulating in churches and community centers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since April 2008. Sought-after hosts like the City of Dusseldorf and the city library in Freiburg have refused the exhibit, which has also been formally criticized by the Mayor of Cologne.