Nakba nonsense
Nakba nonsense

As we gear up for the annual Nakba Day “celebration” – that is, mass riots and malicious anti-Israel protests ostensibly commemorating the Palestinian Arab exodus from the Land of Israel – it’s important to understand what this day really represents.

The Nakba, meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic, is the oldest tool in the well-oiled Palestinian Arab propaganda machine used to delegitimize Israel and to undermine its right to exist.

Despite claims to the contrary, the Nakba doesn’t aim to express a personal tragedy of displacement. Rather, it seeks to establish a false political myth that is an unprecedented and unabashed misrepresentation of history. The Nakba is an attempt, and a chutzpadik one at that, both to shirk the responsibility of the Arabs for the results of their own aggression and to whitewash the crimes of the Palestinian national movement.

There was, and remains, only one party to blame for the so-called Nakba: the Arabs. It was the Arabs who rejected the UN Partition Plan and launched a war on the Jewish Yishuv (what  used to be referred to as Palestine), and it was the Arabs who invaded Israel with intent of wiping it off the map. If that wasn’t enough, following Israel’s independence some 850,000 Jews living in Arab lands were persecuted, stripped of their property, and expelled from their homes – the Jewish Nakba.

Above all, Nakba Day also serves as an important reminder of the ultimate issue that permeates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the very establishment and continued existence of the Jewish state. Regardless of naïve attempts to explain otherwise, Israel’s creation is in essence the catastrophe that is being mourned on the Nakba.

It is no coincidence that Nakba Day is commemorated on May 15, the Gregorian calendar date on which the British terminated their Mandate in Palestine and made way for the new era of Jewish statehood.

Conveniently, Nakba Day wasn’t chosen to mark the anniversary of a significant Palestinian Arab exodus, such as in Jaffa, Haifa, or Safed, all of which occurred prior to May 15 and were momentous events in the decades long (at best) Palestinian Arab history. Such a date would be incongruous with the objective of the Nakba and would elicit questions surrounding the circumstances of these “expulsions.”

As is widely documented, the exodus occurred when a large portion of the Palestinian Arabs voluntarily left their homes following orders from the Arab Higher Committee. In some places, Haifa for example, the Jews even begged the Arabs to stay put -- but why let facts get in the way of a good story?

And herein lies the problem: the facts do get in the way of the Nakba narrative. On the other hand, the fabricated myth spun by the Palestinian national movement enables them to continue justifying their denial of Israel’s right to exist. It enables them to continue using false pretenses to solicit sympathy from the international community, and it also enables them to continue propagating incitement and violence based on a national fairytale.

Nevertheless, despite the lies and deceit, Nakba Day should not be forgotten. It serves as an important reminder of the murderous attempt of the Arabs to eradicate the Jewish people in Israel a mere three years after the Holocaust; something that we cannot afford to forget. 

The writer is the International Relations Coordinator for Im Tirtzu