Nakba-deniers; Eyes Wide Shut

Nakba is not a difficult word to educate people about,so let us be wise and make people talk about it,before Israel gets a chance to complete it.

By Tariq Shadid
PalestineChronicle.com

In the West, when advocating the Palestinian cause, weare often told that public perception of the conflicthas ‘come a long way’ in the direction of thePalestinians. This usually refers to the shift peoplemade from believing in the Zionist myth of ‘a landwithout people for a people without land’, toaccepting the Oslo-doctrine of the two-state solution.

It is difficult to disagree with this, but what hasreally been achieved? Basically it only means thatWesterners seem to have discovered that Palestine was,after all, not a land without a people. What now seemslike a painfully overdue observation, must have been areal eye-opener for them somewhere in the recent past.

I can imagine that recovering any bit of eyesightafter having been completely blind, must feel like anabsolute revelation. But does it also mean the personwho has partially recovered his eyesight is now fit toengage in the busy traffic of rush hour? Even if thisperson is convinced he can?

As a Palestinian living in the West, I can assure youthat there are many here who believe their eyes arealready open, while in reality they have deviated muchless away from the ‘land without people’ formula thanthey think. They believe they are sufficientlyinformed in order to have an opinion. And there wehave it: the invisible deadlock that permeates thesocieties of the West, when it comes to Palestine.

This deadlock is caused for the most part by the factthat people in the West have been conditioned on alarge scale to feel deeply guilty about any criticismof Israel. And therein lies the main reason for theattractiveness to Westerners to take the position ofblaming both sides equally. The fact that the Zionistsare the actual invaders, land confiscators, oppressorsand occupiers, is brushed aside, basically because itcauses these conflicting loyalties. The media aidsthis by the skilful dosing of information, and by theuse of language, branding all Palestinian violence asterrorism, and all Israeli violence as retaliation.

It is not so difficult anymore these days to convincepeople that Palestinians are suffering heavily, andunjustly. What seems to be the biggest problem,however, is for these same people to see Israel as thecause of this suffering, despite the overwhelminghistorical facts that prove this. This, of course,includes those facts provided by the Israeli NewHistorians in the nineties. They deny none of the 1948crimes against the Palestinians, but simply assertthat they should have been carried out more thoroughly(Benny Morris).

A mistake often made by those who advocate thePalestinian cause in the West, is to fail to exertpressure on these highly essential issues.Nakba-denial is one of the biggest problems that causethe failure of people to perceive the Zionist crimefor what it really was, namely a vicious andwell-planned act of ethnic cleansing, that displacedaround 800,000 Palestinians from their homes and theircountry in 1948. Also, the over 400 villages they wereexpelled from, were destroyed, and wiped off the map.The majority of people in the West still don’t knowthese hard and brutal facts.

What’s the use of having a discussion, for instanceabout the Israeli Apartheid wall, with a Nakba-denier?The axiom of cause and effect is reversed in hisbrain. A Nakba-denier sees Israel as the beginning,and the Palestinians as the attackers, and no matterhow historically ludicrous this formula is, in themind of the Nakba-denier it is a reality. The onlyuseful thing to talk to him about, is the Nakba -Arabic for ‘catastrophe’- in order to try and open hiseyes, that obviously are ‘wide shut’.

Since the Oslo-period, we also have a new, but quitestrong presence of so-called Palestinian rightsdefenders in the West, who nevertheless hit the brakeswhen one mentions Zionism. They often have similarideas to those of many who were active in the Israeli‘Peace Now’ movement, that rapidly diminished inadherence over the last years – which also sayssomething in itself. As European or Americanself-proclaimed promoters of the Palestinian cause,these people are of no use to the Palestinians, infact they even constitute a significant problem, ifnot one of the main problems faced in creatingawareness in the West, since they act as barriers andgatekeepers against progress.

How can a supporter of the Palestinian cause regardanyone who defends Zionist ideology, which isnational-socialist in origin (this should ring abell), and infested with concepts of racialsuperiority, without suspicion? The presently veryactive Christian form of Zionism is at least asdestructive - and I mean this in the most literalsense - and uncompromising to the Palestinian peopleas its Jewish counterpart.

It is of great importance, to keep Zionism at thecenter of the political discourse about Israel, and tomention it in any discussion about the subject.Oslo-style thinking has indeed weakened this practiceon a large scale, but there is a simple way to reversethis very rapidly: talk about it. Always talk aboutthe Nakba, and always talk about Zionism, when talkingabout Palestine in the West. Without these two issueson the table, what are we really talking about? Andwhose purposes are we serving, by being caught inthose fruitless dialogues about the issues that areonly symptoms of these other two?

One thing is certain: awareness of the Nakba is at avery low level in the West. Yet I firmly believe thatas long as this does not change, the apathy ofWesterners will remain exactly as it is, and they willlook on while Israel continues to encroach uponPalestine acre by acre, and continues to turn lifeinto a living hell for each and every Palestinianinhabitant, person by person. And all they will do, isshake their heads, and repeat the eternal ‘why onearth can’t these people stop fighting each other?’ Astatement of despair, as much as it is one ofignorance.

If only these people knew about the Nakba of 1948, andthat it never stopped but is still going on today …Nakba is not a difficult word to educate people about,so let us be wise and make people talk about it,before Israel gets a chance to complete it.

-The writer is a Dutch-Palestinian activist.