This Nakba Day, Palestinians Remind the World We Will Not Be Erased | Truthout
May 15, 1948, is a date forever etched in the collective memory of every Palestinian. We can’t forget what happened in the leadup to that fateful day. During that time, the world witnessed one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. Palestinians call this day “al-Nakba” — the catastrophe that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of nearly 750,000 natives and the destruction of more than 500 Palestinian villages and towns. Seventy-six years ago today, the Jewish state of Israel was established and the Palestinian state of despair, homelessness, terror and daily suffering began. During the Nakba of 1948, my family was terrorized; they were displaced from their home in West Jerusalem and became refugees in countries that did not want them. I carry their pain with me to this day as I raise my voice in support of Palestinian rights. Israeli historian and scholar Ilan Pappé wrote: “Palestine was not empty and the Jewish people had homelands; Palestine was colonized, not ‘redeemed;’ and its people were dispossessed in 1948, rather than leaving voluntarily. Colonized people, even under the U.N. Charter, have the right to struggle for their liberation … and the successful ending to such a struggle lies in the creation of a democratic state that includes all of its inhabitants.” Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust and had no role whatsoever in the European pogroms. Before the start of large-scale European Jewish immigration of Holocaust victims to Palestine, 94 percent of the inhabitants of the land were Arabs. The number of Palestinian Jews — and, yes, they considered themselves Palestinians — in Palestine at the end of World War I was less than 60,000. The Zionists could not have succeeded in colonizing Palestine if it weren’t for the support of Western imperial powers such as the United Kingdom and United States — two countries that did not want Jews in their midst and put strict restrictions on Jewish immigration. For us Palestinians, despite 76 years of mass displacement, ethnic cleansing and erasure, our connection to the land of Palestine is stronger than ever before. It’s a link to our identity, to our Indigenous traditions and culture. Palestine will be safe in the hands of the younger generation. My children and my children’s children will make sure that no effort or attempt at Palestine’s erasure can succeed or withstand their collective will. I can assure you: We’re not going away. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30347): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30347 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106127200/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
