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'''Nakba denial''' or '''Nakba denialism''' is the denial of what is held to be [[Zionist]] culpability for the [[1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight]],{{sfn|Nassar|2023}} the displacement event that [[Palestinians]] refer to, along with its accompanying impacts, as the "[[Nakba]]" or "catastrophe".{{sfn|''The Times of Israel''|2023}} The denial of the Nakba is central to Zionist narratives of 1948,{{sfn|Masalha|2009|pp=39, 43}}{{who|date=October 2023}} and was largely facilitated by Israeli historiography up until the late 1980s,{{sfn|Slyomovics|2007|p=28}} after which Israel's history began to be reviewed and rewritten by the [[New Historians]].{{sfn|Mariko|2009|p=89}} Subsequently, significant volumes of [[Israeli Jewish]] literature have emerged intent on "demystifying the past".{{sfn|Sa'di|2007|p=303}}{{who|date=October 2023}}
'''Nakba denial''' or '''Nakba denialism''' is the denial of what is held to be [[Zionist]] culpability for the [[1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight]],{{sfn|Nassar|2023}} the displacement event that [[Palestinians]] refer to, along with its accompanying impacts, as the "[[Nakba]]" or "catastrophe".{{sfn|''The Times of Israel''|2023}} The denial of the Nakba is central to Zionist narratives of 1948,{{sfn|Masalha|2009|pp=39, 43}}{{who|date=October 2023}} and was largely facilitated by Israeli historiography up until the late 1980s,{{sfn|Slyomovics|2007|p=28}} after which Israel's history began to be reviewed and rewritten by the [[New Historians]].{{sfn|Mariko|2009|p=89}} Subsequently, significant volumes of [[Israeli Jewish]] literature have emerged intent on "demystifying the past".{{sfn|Sa'di|2007|p=303}}{{who|date=October 2023}}


Revision as of 17:00, 21 October 2023

Nakba denial or Nakba denialism is the denial of what is held to be Zionist culpability for the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight,[1] the displacement event that Palestinians refer to, along with its accompanying impacts, as the "Nakba" or "catastrophe".[2] The denial of the Nakba is central to Zionist narratives of 1948,[3][who?] and was largely facilitated by Israeli historiography up until the late 1980s,[4] after which Israel's history began to be reviewed and rewritten by the New Historians.[5] Subsequently, significant volumes of Israeli Jewish literature have emerged intent on "demystifying the past".[6][who?]

Nakba denial has been described as still prevalent in both Israeli and US discourse and linked to various tropes associated with anti-Arab racism.[1] In 2011, Israel enacted the Nakba Law which authorized the withdrawal of state funds from organizations that discuss the Nakba.[7] Israel also hosts grassroots movements, such as Zochrot, that have aimed to combat Nakba denial through direct memorial action.[7] In May 2023, following the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas made the denial of the 1948 expulsion a crime punishable by two years in jail.[2]

Israel, in its official narrative justifying the establishment of the Jewish state, has "rarely mentioned the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem and the destruction of over 400 Palestinian villages in 1948, thus deliberately denying Palestinian memories of the Nakba."[5][who?]

Discourse

According to some views, in Israel there is a politics of denial around the Nakba, embodied by statements be the likes of Golda Meir, such as the famous line "There was no such thing as Palestinians".[8] According to scholar Nur Masalha, "denial is central to the Zionist narrative about what happened in 1948".[3] The mainstream narratives justifying the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight rest on a number of assumptions, including that Palestine was a "barren, uninhabited land";[who?] that Palestinian Arabs were part of a "greater Arab nation"[who?] and were not a nation, disputing Palestinian Arab nationalism; that Palestinian Arabs were "rioters and pogromists"[who?]; that Jews were returning home, (the negation of the Diaspora); and that population transfers were a "justifiable, universal solution to minority questions".[9][who?]

The politics of denial around the Nakba is one of the ways in which the Palestinian "catastrophe" is considered to be ongoing.[10] This has been facilitated by Israeli historiography, which has, as noted by Saleh Abd al-Jawad, "adopted a denial of the Nakba, a negation of the breadth of the ethnic cleansing perpetrated in Palestine".[4] Nakba denial is also a feature of US discourse on Palestine,[1] as well as the discourse of Jewish supporters of Israel.[11] Ahmad H. Sa'di identifies "three modes of denial of moral responsibility for the Nakba: denying or hiding the historically documented violence; neutralizing the moral entailments of the Nakba by shifting the focus to less than relevant issues; and hard-heartedly affirming the facts of the Nakba but denying them any moral import."

In the late 1980s, Nakba denial began to be criticized and Israel's history was rewritten by the New Historians, who "dramatically shattered longstanding myths of the 1948 War and Palestinian exodus".[5][who?] Since the 1980s, a considerable body literature aimed at "demystifying the past"[who?] has emerged from within Israeli Jewish society, alongside works, such as Ilan Pappé's that have been "unsettling the picture the founding fathers worked so energetically to paint and to institutionalize the hegemonic account of 1948".[6][who?]

With time, the narratives surrounding 1948 have become harder to sustain, and "the first strategy for Zionists", according to Sa'di, was to return to the "old myth" of "a land without a people for a people without a land". Alan Dershowitz's 2003 book The Case for Israel exemplifies this,[12] drawing on the 1984 book From Time Immemorial, a pseudo-historical work by Joan Peters that suggested the majority of Palestinian refugees were not native to Palestine, and that with the 1948 Palestine war they returned to their countries.[12] Through this straightforward "denial of the other's existence, this formulation did away with the colonization-uprooting dialectic".[12]

Towards the end of the 20th century, the topic of Nakba denial almost went to trial in the context of the discussion of the Tantura massacre and the 1998 thesis by Theodore Katz on it.[13] Katz was sued by the Alexandroni Brigade, and, in the ensuing legal tussle, half of this legal defense urged him to defend his work and bring forward Palestinian witnesses to speak about the massacre.[13] This defense would have turned the trial "into a case about the denial of the Nakba",[13][who?] but the case was instead closed out-of-court.[13]

In 2011, Israel enacting of the Nakba Law in an attempt to "hamper freedom of expression" surrounding the Nakba, but it inadvertently "increased public knowledge about the meaning of Nakba".[7][who?] In its wake, columnist Odeh Bisharat wrote that some good came out of the legislation, in that "at least, there's no denial of the Nakba. Nobody claims the whole thing is fairy-tale. The Palestinian narrative has won. The narrative that in '48 a people was exiled, by force, from its land, has seared into Israeli and global consciousness."[7][who?]

There are also grassroots movements within Israeli civic society against denial, including the work of the Israeli NGO Zochrot which aims to raise awareness about the Nakba by directly challenge its denial through direct memorial action.[7] Its related activities have including providing tours to depopulated Palestinian villages, sign-posting sites destroyed in the Nakba, hosting an annual Nakba film festival and other activities.[7] In 2007, when Israel marked its independence day, Zochrot organized a parade in Tel Aviv "to mark the recognition of the right of return", stopping off along the way at neighborhoods built on the sites of former Palestinian villages.[7]

In May 2023, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree defining the Nakba as a "crime against humanity",[14] and making its denial a criminal offense punishable by up to two years in jail.[14][2] The legislation echoed trends in Israel, where lawmakers in the hardline 37th government have proposed outlawing the waving of Palestinian flags.[2] The decree followed a speech by Abbas at a UN event marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, where he called for the suspension of Israel's UN membership, and criticized the US and UK for not holding Israel accountable for its actions.[14]

Reliance on anti-Arab tropes

Main article: Anti-Arab racism

Nakba denialism has been associated with various anti-Arab racist tropes, including the notion that Palestinians lack religious attachment to Palestine, lack "modern feelings of national identity", and are easily induced to violence by their leaders.[1] Middle East historian Maha Nassar has stated that such narratives blame the victims of settler colonial violence for their expulsion.[1]

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e Nassar 2023.
  2. ^ a b c d The Times of Israel 2023.
  3. ^ a b Masalha 2009, pp. 39, 43.
  4. ^ a b Slyomovics 2007, p. 28.
  5. ^ a b c Mariko 2009, p. 89.
  6. ^ a b Sa'di 2007, p. 303.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Kapshuk & Strömbom 2021.
  8. ^ Masalha 2009, pp. 39, 78.
  9. ^ Mariko 2009, pp. 95–97.
  10. ^ Masalha 2009, p. 78.
  11. ^ Sa'di 2007, p. 387.
  12. ^ a b c Sa'di 2007, pp. 304–305.
  13. ^ a b c d Esmeir 2007, pp. 231–232.
  14. ^ a b c MEMO 2023.

Sources

Further reading

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