About International Nakba Day

DESCRIPTION:

Al Nakba, or The Catastrophe in English, is the Palestinian parallel to the Trail of Tears (1838-39) in America. The Trail of Tears represented the rounding up and forced ethnic cleansing of Native Americans off their land and homes onto federally designated reservations for containment and control by a federal military. It continues to be, with slavery and the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, one of the most shameful events in American history.

With the advent of the Geneva Conventions, Hague Conventions, Rome Statutes, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other agreements, the Trail of Tears would be prosecuted as Crime Against Humanity, with the United States as the defendant today. It would also be a war crime if it occurred during a war or military occupation.

Fortunately for the US, these international agreements did not exist in 1838. However, in the wake of the Holocaust, they do today, which is Nakba's irony. What the Nazis did to the Jews of Europe, forcing them out of their homes and businesses, relocating and interning them in walled ghettos, and stripping them of their citizenship, rights, and dignity while extracting them through laws and customs from everyday life, is precisely what the Zionists did to the Arabs of Palestine just eighteen months later and continue doing today.

The Nakba, or Al Nakba, is the forced expulsion of 750,000 people from their homes, lands, and businesses. It includes ongoing discrimination, prohibition from returning to their homes, and confiscation of their property without compensation. Al Nakba didn't happen 150 years ago. Al Nakba began on November 30, 1947, and continues today. It is the reason Israel has security issues, not because its people are predominantly of the Jewish faith, as Israeli advocates portend. Isreal has security issues because of how it took over and expanded its statehood and continues to enforce it as an ethnocentric, exclusionary, and violent vision at the expense of those not classified as Jewish. It agreed to be a nation-state of all its people living within defined boards and as a culture informed by Judaism, its customs, and holidays. As a nation-state, it has yet to honor that agreement.

NAKBA HISTORY

Al Nakba is the culmination of events in Europe in the 1860s through a political ethno-supremacist nationalist movement later known as Zionism. The people who support this political ideology are called Zionists and can be of any faith. However, roughly 350 million, most Zionists, are Dispensationalist Christians, sometimes called Evangelicals, with an additional ten million identifying as Jewish. The Zionist ideals received codification in 1897 and came to fruition on November 29, 1947, when the United Nations agreed to partition Palestine into an Israeli and Palestinian state. In Christianity, Zionist ideology was written into the 1908 "Scofield Reference Bible" footnotes and has evolved into the defining belief system for Dispensationalist Christianity's End Times theology, which is not shared by the majority of global Christians.

Unfortunately for the Palestinians, the new nation-state's boundaries didn't match the aspirations of those petitioning. The Zionists wanted it all, and they wanted it all without the people. Over the next year and a half, Jewish terrorists, who later became the Israeli army, expanded the land given to them by the United Nations by 300 percent through terror, death, and destruction, egregiously violating the agreement which granted them statehood.

On November 30, 1947, the massacres and raids by Jewish gangs commenced against the indigenous population (Palestinians). Still in control of Palestine, the British turned a blind eye and let it happen. By the time Israel became a state on May 15, 1948, hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims were forced to flee their homes and businesses ahead of these gangs, the most notorious being the Lehi, Stern, and Irgun gangs. Most of Israel's future leaders would come from these groups.

Thousands of Christian and Muslim men, women, and children were slaughtered in dozens of massacres leading up to and after the creation of Israel, the most notorious being at the village of Deir Yassin in April 1948.

The Palestinians were alone from November 30, 1947, to May 14, 1948. They had no military. In fact, they have never had a military. Instead, the Palestinians expected a peaceful transition of power, similar to the Ottomans, British, and Romans. To Palestinians, the Zionists were just the next group in charge, they thought. This time was different.

THE DEFENSELESS MYTH

What about the other countries in the region? Wasn't defenseless Israel under attack?

No. The Arab armies would not defend the Palestinians between November 20, 1947, and May 14, 1948, because doing so would require attacking Britain and thus declaring war on it. Once Israel was declared a state on May 15, 1948, these armies did engage but would not cross the border of the new state defined by the United Nations. They had agreed with the rest of the world to give the land, within the boundaries defined, to the Jewish people after the Holocaust, provided the Zionists did not discriminate against the indigenous people, created a constitution, and stayed within their borders. The Arab nations would not violate that agreement. The Zionists, however, never honored the conditions of statehood and continue to thwart them to this day.

In the battles after statehood, the Zionists possessed superior weaponry and numbers. They had been planning for this battle, collecting weapons for over ten years by smuggling them into the region. The end of World War II increased weapons quality and availability and the number of immigrants—drafted soldiers—to the area.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, or Al Nakba, was planned beginning in the 1920s. Zionists vigorously researched and tactically mapped out each village and its demographics starting in 1938 according to the diaries, speeches, and public records of Zionist leaders David Ben-Gurion, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Chaim Weizmann, and others. Dr. Illan Pappe fully maps this out in his book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."

During Nakba, the Zionists systematically razed whole villages to prevent their owners' return. Political leaders then added laws declaring Palestinian villages "military zones" to prevent their owners from returning, a tactic that continues today inside Area C. After three years of military zoning to prevent Palestinians from returning to their homes, businesses, and lands, Zionist politicians added more laws declaring that any land not occupied for three years became the property of the state of Israel.

Laws, terror, and guns are how the people of Palestine became refugees in their own country. Today, as a policy of cultural erasure, many razed villages are covered with pine trees and turned into Jewish-only parks, many of which are accessible on Jewish-only roads from Jewish-only housing developments. In a uniquely devious twist, various pro-Zionist organizations use tree planting on these destroyed villages as fundraisers in the West under cover of environmental causes.

Al NAKBA—A UNIQUE EVENT IN MODERN HISTORY

What makes the Nakba unique is not that it happened. Wars happen, and people get displaced. International law provides for the repatriation of civilians fleeing war or turmoil. International law says people who flee during conflict may return; if that is not possible, they must be compensated. How Israel prevented the Palestinians from doing this is explained above.

What makes Nakba unique is that it continues. Palestinians were and are prevented from returning to their homes and property because they are of the wrong religions under Israeli law. They are Christian or Muslim predominantly, but also Druze, atheist, Buddhist, and other faiths.

Faith. That's it, and that's the primary reason Palestinians are discriminated against.

Over 90 laws on Israel's books explicitly discriminate against non-Jewish persons in all areas of life. If Palestinians were Jewish (and many are. Palestine is a region, not a race), they would be given their property back and, in many cases, large living subsidies. But most are not Jewish, and those that are Mizrahi and Sephardic—Semitic Jews— face racial discrimination in the Israeli system, favoring Askanazi—Caucasian Jews—similar to people of color in the US today.
___________
Note: Semitic is a language group that includes ancient Aramaic, ancient Hebrew, Arabic, and two other extinct languages. In Europe, "Semitic" or "Semite" became a derogatory term for persons of Arab ancestry and color, often Jewish or Muslim, beginning in the 19th century. Zionists adopted the word to elevate racism against Jewish people to a higher level in the 1880s. In reality, being anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim, or anti-Jewish are all equal forms of antisemitism. It is not exclusive to faith, but a language group and culture.
___________
Another difference between Nakba and other historical genocides, holocausts, and ethnic cleansing campaigns is accountability. Unlike Germany, Israel has yet to admit what it has done, pay reparations, or make any overture to replace the personal, business, and community property of those it dispossessed in 1948, in 1967, and continuing through today. Instead, the destruction continues and escalates, and the rest of the world continues to pay for Israel's discriminatory practices and occupation.

Nakba continues through the use of siege, displacement, occupation, and apartheid. This situation is over seventy years old, five times longer than the Nazi party ruled Germany and 11 times longer than the Holocaust.

MARKING THE EVENT

The tradition for Al Nakba is to hold marches in the streets where Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, carry the deeds to the property they still own but are prohibited from returning to because they are of the wrong faith. Each year the international community of support has grown to the point where Nakba events are held in major cities worldwide, including the United States.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Nakba Day is a day to insist upon ending racism directed at people because of their faith in all areas of the world.

It is a time to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, confront racism on this issue and look at hard truths.

It is a day of mourning for the catastrophe which created the strife, violence, and unrest the world lives with today.

The best thing you can do for Nakba is learn. Make sure your friends know about it and why it must end. The only reason it continues is that the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and European Union, continue to provide public relations, diplomatic, financial, and military cover for the state of Israel. These nations all hold civil rights in esteem, and covering this up is contrary to the values of each.

Your religion, or lack of one, shouldn't determine your value. When the people of the enabling nations insist Israel uphold its pledge of November 29, 1947, to the United Nations, the conditions of its statehood, including:
1) Treat everyone equally and respectfully, regardless of faith, origin, or race.
2) Create and ratify a constitution guaranteeing those rights, and
3) Live within its borders.
Policies will change. Al Nakba will end, and Israel will no longer have a security problem of its own making.