Nakba

Yawm an-Nakba, Day of the Catastrophe according to Wikipedia, May 15 the day after the date for Israel Independence Day, their Yom Ha'atzmaut. Wikipedia provides the present-day interpretation of the meaning of Nakba beginning with Palestinian exodus and Palestinian refugees.

The appeal of the term "nakba" is as counterbalance for the terms "holocust" and "shoah," Hebrew for catastrophe. The nakba commemorations are a fairly recent propaganda exercise. Previously the PLO would not seek pity from the West but would instead present themselves as steady warriors on the way to total victory.

This is taken from Barry Rubin Reports.

Barry Rubin backs into his subject by first pointing out liberal writers are misusing the term as propaganda. He asks, "Where do these writers come from?" Referring to a recent paper published by Harvard that criticizes NYT for being too biased towards Israel, Rubin answers himself, the writer, Neil Lewis, works for the NYT.

Restated, Lewis who writes for the NYT is criticizing the NYT for being too biased towards Israel in a paper published by Harvard.

What makes NYT too biased toward Israel according to Lewis? The NYT failed to use the term "nakba" until recently, showing no sympathy for their "catastrophe" all those years and that proves NYT bias.

Midway through Rubin's piece we learn the term was coined by Syrian writer, Constantine Zurayk, vice-president of American University of Beirut. Barry Rubin cites this key passage in Zurayk's book, The Meaning of the Disaster.

“Seven Arab states declare war on Zionism in Palestine, stop impotent before it and turn on their heels. The representatives of the Arabs deliver fiery speeches in the highest government forums, warning what the Arab states and peoples will do if this or that decision be enacted. Declarations fall like bombs from the mouths of officials at the meetings of the Arab League, but when action becomes necessary, the fire is still and quiet, and steel and iron are rusted and twisted, quick to bend and disintegrate.”

For Zurayk, the "nakba" taught the Arabs needed to modernize and democratize and reform their system but what happened instead was 55 year continuance of blaming opponents and refusing to change. Zurayk plea for modernization and reform became a call for revenge.

Had Arab forces not attacked (led by mufti Amin Al-Husaini, a Hitler collaborator according to Barry Rubin) in 1946 then there would be no nakba.

If Arab states had made some compromise either to prevent the creation of Israel or to accept a two-state solution then there would be no nakba.

If Arab states and Palestinian Arabs accepted the partition plan in 1947 there would be no nakba and instead of mourning the creation of Israel they would be celebrating the creation of Palestine.

The real nakba is the rejection of partition that would have created a Palestinian state in 1948. It would be nearly 70 years old today and there would have been no wars in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, no refugees, no terrorism. According to Barry Rubin, who writes that even today this point is only being discussed by a handful of people.

Rubin concludes the real nakba resulted from attempts to destroy Israel and even today is still used as the rationale for continuing attempts to destroy Israel. But the concept that Zurayk wrote is broader, the Arab world's failure to embrace modernity, science, genuine democracy and so every day is a nakba the Arab Spring is another year for renewing the nakba strategy, a self-inflicted nakba and its victims are the Arabs themselves.

Here's Zurayk on the victory of Zionists.

“The reason for the victory of the Zionists was that the roots of Zionism are grounded in modern Western life while we for the most part are still distant from this life and hostile to it. They live in the present and for the future, while we continue to dream the dreams of the past and to stupefy ourselves with its fading glory.”

Rubin asks, isn't that exactly how the Nakba concept is used today, to dream the dreams of the past and stupefy with fading glory? To say, no compromise is possible, we are victims and we want revenge and dream of total victory.