A Jewish View on an Awful Anniversary

In 1948 – just three years after the ethnic cleansing of Europe’s Jews, including my family members, ended – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began.  

Today is the 75^th anniversary of the Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic): the start of a systematic attempt to maximize the size and Jewish purity of the “Jewish State.”

At Israel’s birth, a terror campaign was waged by Zionists to force Palestinians to run for their lives. And it succeeded. An estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. One terrorist was a young Menachem Begin, who’d go on to become Israel’s sixth prime minister.

Palestinian victims of ethnic cleansing were never allowed to return home – a violation of international law – strictly because they weren’t Jewish. More than 400 Palestinian villages and towns were wiped off the map. Like Israeli leaders – including David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, who changed his name from David Grün –Palestine’s geographic locations were renamed to legitimize Zionist settler colonialism.

Up until Israel’s launch, Yiddish (my mother’s first language) was commonly spoken by Jews. But to demonstrate a Jewish connection to what was largely Arab land, Hebrew – a language traditionally used in prayer – became the official language of the “Jewish State.” Palestine’s currency was replaced by biblical currency: the “shekel.”

Via smoke, mirrors, and more, Israel tried to erase Palestine. But it failed.

Today – after three-quarters of a century of ethnic cleansing, occupation, ghettoization, collective punishment, and apartheid – Palestinians are still standing and working to return to their homes. And now, much of the world is standing with them.

In apartheid Israel, no institutions were legally allowed to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the Nakba today. After all these years, Israelis remain in a state of denial. Many Zionist Jews in the diaspora deny the Nakba too. As a Jew who lost family members in the Holocaust, I consider Nakba denial as hideous as Holocaust denial. 

This former Zionist has a request for current Zionists who self-identify as members of my faith: abandon that racist movement that has caused so much harm for so long. Stop claiming to support a “two-state solution” Israel will never allow. Lose the offensive notion that Palestinians should be forced to move to another country to obtain freedom and equality. Get behind the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement called for by Palestinian civil society. I’m quite sure it’s what you’d want the world to support if fellow Jews were the oppressed.

Let’s demand an end to something considered un-Jewish by lots of Jews: Israeli oppression. Not in five or 75 years. NOW. When Zionists ask why you’re standing with Palestinians, tell them it’s a Jewish thing to do.

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