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 Anyone know the Arabic word Nakba? a great read on Palestinian Israeli history New
- Forum: LiquidLounge
Date: May 14 2008, 18:07 GMT
From: blight
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Itâs time to learn Arabic!
By Alvin Alexsi Currier
a.currier@juno.com
Itâs time to learn Arabic!
Well at least one word.
That word is
âNakbaâ.
Nakba is the key to Palestinian Israeli history.
Nakba means âcatastropheâ and the catastrophe that is the Nakba is the Zionist conquest of Palestine. The Nakba is to Palestinians what the Holocaust is to Jews. The Nakba is the storm that expelled two-thirds of the Palestinians from Palestine. The Nakba is the military tornado that tore through cities and touched down destroying hundreds of villages. The Nakba is the horror of midnight raids, exploding homes, forced expulsions, shootings, deaths, and endless miles of exhausted refugees. The Nakba is terrors seared forever into the memory of over a million victims. The Nakba is sixty years of nightmares and grief. The Nakba is the catastrophe of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist forces in the years of 1947 through 1948.
The dormant seeds of this disaster lay buried in the very nature of the Zionism, for how could an exclusively Jewish State be created across a territory that was home to 1,300,000 non-Jewish Palestinians? The answer is transfer. Transfer is the euphemism for expulsion or ethnic cleansing.
As in late 1947 the United Nations announced its plan to partition Palestine and Great Britain announced its plan to withdraw its troops, Jewish militias began to accelerate actions to strengthen the defenses and secure the supply routes of the scattered Jewish settlements; especially those in areas designated by the partition to become part of an Arab state. These militias originally grew out of various factions and differing approaches to advancing Zionism and protecting Jewish settlers, property, and interests, but through years of fighting the British to increase Jewish emigration and fighting the Palestinians who opposed Jewish settlement they were forged into well armed and organized paramilitary units. Now their action on the ground melded seamlessly with the Zionist need to clear the land of Palestinians.
Surprised and emboldened by the restraint of British troops and the ease of overwhelming the unorganized and poorly armed Palestinians, the Jewish militias morphed swiftly from defensive to offensive units. In Tel Aviv the Zionist leadership marginalized moderate voices and started asserting their control over military actions. The storm of cleansing the Palestinians from the future Jewish state grew rapidly in scope and fury.
By the end of December 1947 the first women and children had been shot, the first homes had been blown up with people in them, and most significantly the first Palestinians had fled. By the end of January 1948 some 400 Jewish settlers and 1500 Palestinians had been killed. Zionist operations escalated. In mid February five villages where emptied in one day. By all means from deception to direct attacks the Palestinians were urged, ordered, forced, or terrorized into leaving. Select victims were publicly executed. Houses were dynamited. Midnight attacks became the rule.
Slowly the Zionist leaders brought the various militias under their command and in March of 1948 they approved and launched a final and full fledged plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It was called, Plan Dalet or Plan D. With it random and sporadic attacks yielded to clear cut operational orders to some 50,000 well trained, armed, and disciplined troops for a mega-operation of ethnic cleansing. With
In early April money flowed in from American Jews and purchased armaments arrived from Eastern Europe. Attacks spread into areas designated for the future Arab state. Systematically, cities, towns, and villages were overrun. Murders mounted up to massacres. On April 9th, the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin was written into history in the blood of a hundred victims, a quarter of them children and babies. Roads were filled with fleeing refugees. Tiberias fell on April 18th. A couple days later 55,000 to 60,000 fled Haifa . In the Haifa harbor overloaded boats were swamped drowning all on board. Some 50,000 fled Jaffa. West Jerusalem was captured and its Palestinian residents were driven out.. Bull dozers and dynamite erased village after village from the map.
All this happened before May 15th 1948 and the end of the British Mandate. Because May 15th fell on a Saturday which is the Jewish Sabbath, on Friday afternoon May 14th the Zionist leader David Ben Gurion proclaimed that at midnight the creation of the State of Israel would take place. Eleven minutes later United States President Truman recognized the new state. Jubilation broke out among Jews around the world, while across Palestine darkness fell with an eerie silence over near 200 deserted and destroyed villages, as well as scores of towns and urban enclaves emptied of their Arab residents. Some 300,000 Palestinians, descendants of ancestors who had lived in, and on this land over many centuries, greeted the night as homeless and destitute refugees.
This history is not unknown in Israel. In fact most of the above is based on documents from Israeli archives and the writings of Israeli authors, including the definitive work published in 2006 by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe entitled: âThe Ethnic Cleansing of Palestineâ.
However in Israel this history is hidden. For the most part the Nakba isnât denied, it isnât even known. Israeli textbooks teach that the 1948 war started after May 15th when the surrounding Arab nations attacked the new Jewish state. Despite some bloody clashes this belated response by the Arab states to the plight of the Palestinians was ultimately rather insignificant. However it was an invasion. It was war. It justified escalating the ethnic cleansing. Tihur, the Hebrew verb meaning âto purifyâ was now used in Israeli orders. In a massive assault during the first days of Israelâs existence, almost all the villages of North-West Galilee suffered purification. Announcing the news to the new parliament a satisfied David Ben Gurion called it liberation. Now only a few Jewish settlers remained in the area that a few days earlier had been 96 per cent Palestinian and home to around 10,000 people. This purification of Palestine continued for nine more months, until in early February of 1949 the last Arabs were driven from their homes, the last village was destroyed, and the final armistice papers were signed.
Already on June 16th 1948 the new Israeli parliament had sealed the fate of 900,000 expelled Arabs by passing a law denying these Palestinian refugees their right to return.
An essay of this size cannot chronicle the horrors of the Nakba. It cannot weigh events like the massacre at Tantura, the death march of Lydda-Ramle, or the blitzkrieg through the Faluja pocket. It cannot commemorate each of 419 destroyed villages. It cannot contain the pain, tears, and lamentations of 900,000 refugees, or more then two thirds of the Palestinian people robbed of their land, livelihood, identity, and culture. It cannot explore the collapse of Israelâs moral underpinnings that the Nakba causes. It cannot explain why Israel should have a right to exist when Israel denies the Palestinians their right to return.
For peace in the Middle East it is time to learn Arabic. Well at least it is time to learn one word, the word that is the key, and that word is Nakba.
1196 words
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