I Don’t Have a #MyNakbaStory, So Here Are Other People’s Nakba Stories (+Resources)
Today is the 70th commemoration of the Nakba, the date where Palestinians all over the world remember the ethnic cleansing of over 700,000 native Palestinians by Zionist settlers. As the media’s attention is (temporarily) on Jerusalem and Gaza, we must try and raise awareness as to what this ‘conflict’ is really about.
Too often we here the ‘neutral’ language describing the ‘conflict’ in the media with such terms as ‘clash’. It’s the usual ‘both sides’ tendency that is so common these days, a tendency designed to erase unequal power dynamics in favor of a sanitised and convenient worldview. That worldview naturally favors ‘status quo politics’ instead of politics based on justice and equality.
I don’t have a #MyNakbaStory because my jeddo (grandfather) refuses to talk about his past. All I know is that he was born in or around Tabariyyah (Tiberias) & grew up in Haifa where he met my Italian grandmother and they both fled to Lebanon. Or something like that.
When they arrived to Lebanon, they were naturalised as back then it was (relatively) easy for Palestinian Christians to get the Lebanese nationality.
I didn’t know any of that up until relatively recently. I grew up thinking we were ‘from Zahle’ (eastern Lebanon). Why Zahle? Some church connections, probably. Many naturalised Palestinians in Lebanon claimed a Lebanese origin for security reasons.
I haven’t given up trying to find out.
In the meantime, here are #MyNakbaStory available online. Please click on the tweets to see the threads.
I was inspired to write this by @joeyayoub’s similar account. What follows is a very fragmented ‘story’ of loss and retrieval. I dedicate this to Aida Cotran. I hope to one day tell her story and speak the words she could not. #Nakba70 #NakbaDay pic.twitter.com/iZDMXHoLiH
— MIDDLE OF THE EAST (@MlDDLEOFTHEEAST) May 15, 2018
Have a look at this picture from Palestine. The young man on the left is my Sido (grandfather). This is from the late 1920s to early 1930s. My great grandmother is seated in the foreground with her three sons behind her. They are from al-Lyd. pic.twitter.com/4E2fBBNsjR
— (((YousefMunayyer))) (@YousefMunayyer) May 14, 2018
#MyNakbaStory is my grandfather had to leave Akka to Lebanon with my grandma and their children, along with his sister and her kids. Then his sister was able to go back and be reunited with her husband while he was forever a refugee in Lebanon https://t.co/UbpSGt1o6r
— Lama Hijazi (@h26434033_h) May 14, 2018
My grandma was 11 years old when she left Yafa. They were told to leave their houses for a few weeks and come back after things settled. Zionist troops who had just immigrated to Yafa through its sea port were shooting everything and everyone. #MyNakbaStory https://t.co/IjR5KHw4Hy
— Maryam Alqassas (@M_alqassas) May 14, 2018
"My great uncle procured a visa years later and returned to find the home exactly as it had been. Tabaria was cleansed of its entire Arab population. His visa ended and he returned to Syria only to fall into a deep grief and die weeks later." https://t.co/67nhheoCti #MyNakbaStory pic.twitter.com/Q6XQBVoKMf
— IMEU (@theIMEU) May 13, 2018
"Khwana, her husband, and eldest daughter were expelled by the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank from Palestine in the early 1970s, for not carrying Palestinian ID cards."
Check out Ghassan Hussein's #MyNakbaStory and share yours with us: https://t.co/4D4uXtAr57 pic.twitter.com/gv2w9amu6C
— IMEU (@theIMEU) May 10, 2018
Check out @DianaButtu's #MyNakbaStory. Share yours with the IMEU today on Instagram and tag us in the post: https://t.co/1NyZKqBIbA pic.twitter.com/94O5kbp4ni
— IMEU (@theIMEU) May 3, 2018
"Like so many Palestinians, they no longer have the right to live in—or even freely visit—their birthplaces, even though both were born before the state of Israel was created." Check out Tanya's #MyNakbaStory and share yours with us! https://t.co/2iWbvHNbAk pic.twitter.com/DxBTng6c09
— IMEU (@theIMEU) May 7, 2018
#MyNakbaStory – my family were natives of the Old City, but in the late 1930's purchased a home in Bak'a/Katamon area of West Jerusalem. Very shortly after, unrest began as zionist militias ratcheted up the violence in anticipation of 1948
— Dana El Kurd (@danaelkurd) May 15, 2018
#MyNakbaStory my mother’s family was forced out of Yaffa Palestine 🇵🇸 under fire – they left on boats in the Mediterranean and later found themselves in a refugee camp in #Gaza. They have never been able to visit their old home and are now scattered all over the world.
— gazawia (@gazawia) May 15, 2018
What was it like to escape Palestine during the Nakba 70 years ago? Listen to Episode #15: The Azzam’s, The Return for more on this heart renching story. #Nakbah70 #MyNakbaStory https://t.co/97lWpHzjXJ pic.twitter.com/pRBbCQlAjO
— Palestinians Podcast (@PalestiniansPod) May 14, 2018
Resources (partial list, obviously)
Sites
- The Nakba Files
- IMEU’s Quick Facts on the Nakba
- IMEU’s FAQ on the Nakba: The Nakba and Palestinian Refugees Today
- Al Jazeera’s Nakba resources on ‘Palestine Remix’
- 70 Years of Nakba – Where Can Palestinians Go From Here?
- Articles on the Nakba on Al Shabaka
- Facing the Nakba – Jewish Voice for Peace
- Zochrot’s Nakba Map
- Visualizing Palestine’s Palestine Open Maps
Books
- The Nakba Through Palestinian Writers’ Eyes, edited by Atef Alshaer
- An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba, Edited by Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha
- The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory by Nur Masalha
- The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
Related
The Nakba by the Numbers, via IMEU
- Between 750,000 and one million : The number of Palestinians expelled and made refugees by Zionist paramilitaries, and subsequently Israeli forces, during Israel’s creation in 1947-49.
- Between 250,000 and 350,000 : The number of Palestinians expelled from their homes by Zionist paramilitaries between the passage of the UN partition plan in November 1947 and Israel’s declaration of independence on May15, 1948 – prior to the start of the war with neighboring Arab states.
- Approximately 7.1 million : The number of Palestinian refugees and displaced persons as of 2009, including Nakba survivors and their descendants. They are located mostly in the occupied West Bank and neighboring Arab countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, denied their internationally-recognized legal right to return to their homeland by Israel, simply because they are not Jewish.
- Approximately 150,000 : The number of Palestinians who remained inside what became Israel’s borders in 1948, many of them internally displaced. These Palestinians (sometimes called “Israeli Arabs”) were granted Israeli citizenship but stripped of most of their land and placed under martial law until 1966. As of 2018, there are nearly two million Palestinian citizens of Israel, who live as second-class citizens in their own homeland, subject to dozens of laws that discriminate against them because they are not Jewish.
- At least two dozen : The number of massacres of Palestinian civilians by Zionist and Israeli forces, which played a crucial role in spurring the mass flight of Palestinians from their homes.
- Approximately 100 : The number of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, massacred in the town of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948, by members of the Irgun and Stern Gang, pre-state Zionist terrorist organizations led by future Israeli prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, respectively.
- More than 400 : The number of Palestinian cities and towns systematically destroyed by Israeli forces or repopulated with Jews between 1948 and 1950. Most Palestinian population centers, including homes, businesses, houses of worship, and vibrant urban centers, were demolished to prevent the return of their Palestinian owners, now refugees outside of Israel’s pre-1967 borders, or internally displaced inside of them. (See here for interactive map of Palestinian population centers destroyed during Israel’s creation.)
- Approximately 4,244,776 : The number of acres of Palestinian land expropriated by Israel during and immediately following its creation in 1948.
- Between 100 and 200 billion : The total estimated monetary loss of Palestinians dispossessed during Israel’s creation, in current US dollars.
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I just read a quote from an Israeli journalist in the Washington Post. He said “they (Palestinian) should just get over it. Millions of people including Jew’s have been displaced throughout history and you don’t hear them complaining”. Well actually, you do. And grieving. The ones that aren’t dead that is. I thought “Huh, a diaspora of persecuted people create a diaspora, create a genocide, because they are Gods chosen people? “My heart breaks, turns cold, breaks, turns cold. I will not stop protesting or demanding that the ancient land of Palestine is recognised. Thanks for your words Janet Robertson