Monday, May 21, 2012

THE DAY OF CATASTROPHE: "Nakba" memories live by the day

Had the Jewish conquest of Palestine taken a peaceful more humane path; it might have been true that the old Palestinians will eventually die and the young will grow to be happy and contented and rightly forget but no; the Zionist’s brutal and continuing oppressive conquest will make every elderly Palestinian that passes away a hero whose name will be engraved in the hearts of the young whose unwavering desire to be free will never wane and the rest of the world will likewise never forget. LONG LIVE PALESTINE!





Dire Nakba memories live by the day

Many Palestinians remember and reference al-Nakba, also known as the Catastrophe, on May 15 every year. The event marks the expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians, while their villages were destroyed.



The destruction of Palestine in 1947-48 ushered in the birth of Israel. Older generations relay the harsh and oppressive memory of their collective experience to younger Palestinians, many of whom live their own Nakbas today. 



In covering al-Nakba, sympathetic Arab and other media play sad music and show black and white footage of displaced, frightened refugees. They rightly emphasize the concept of Sumud, steadfastness, as they show Palestinian of all ages holding unto the rusty keys of their homes and insisting on their right of return. Other, less sympathetic media discuss al-Nakba, if at all, as a side note - a nuisance in the Israeli narrative of a nation's supposedly miraculous birth and its progression to an idyllic oasis of democracy. What such reductionist representations often fail to show is that while al-Nakba started, it never truly finished. 


Full article:


Every region in Palestine that was meant to be taken was captured, its people were expelled or massacred in their homes and villages. [Israel’s first Prime Minister] Ben Guiron ‘cleansed’ the land, but he failed to cleanse Israel’s past. Memory persists."



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