You may think you know what Nakba means. But do you? Do you know the meaning it was really originally intended to convey?
Did those who gathered at Tel Aviv University’s Entin Square last week, when several dozen Arab and left-wing Israeli students held a Nakba memorial ceremony, know?
The term “nakba” was first used politically by the Syrian, Constantin Zureiq. A Greek Orthodox Christian, he saw Arab society as stagnant and lacking the fundamental tool of rational thought.
His view was that Arab civilization was in a crisis and that the “Arab personality” had changed, leading to a weakened people suffering from cultural backwardness. Interestingly enough, another pillar of Arab nationalism, George Antonius, author of The Arab Awakening, was an Eastern Orthodox Christian.
In August 1948, Zureiq’s Meaning of the Disaster appeared, in which he employed the term “nakba.” It criticized the Arab states that declared war on Zionism.
He himself was a counselor to the Syrian Legation of the United States in 1945 and acted as a Syrian delegate to the United Nations in 1946, and so, not only was he an engaged intellectual but also an on-the-spot witness to Arab anti-Zionist maneuvers and statements.
Even though the tide of the war was only just altering in Israel’s favor over the summer, and its publication date was still very early in Israel’s eventual victory, the realization that the Arabs had made, yet again, another bad choice was apparent to Zureiq.
He viewed the aggressive Arab states as being “impotent” and that they had “turn[ed] on their heels” before Zionism. Moreover, he was perturbed that “dispersion has become the lot of the Arabs rather than of the Jews.”
The making of the Nakba
Nakba, thus, was an internal failure factor of the Arabs, a disaster of their own making, an implosion. Zureiq was not as critical of the situation that had evolved as of the built-in weakness of the Arabs and their inability to properly deal with the diplomatic and military situations they got themselves involved in.
But, in line with their cultural tendency of claiming victimization and of having a lack of self-agency, by never taking responsibility for their actions, the idea of Nakba became rather what the Jews and Zionists did to them and not what they did to themselves.
In 1947, the leaders of the local Arabs residing in the region designated by the League of Nations for the reconstituted Jewish homeland – following the 1922 partition that created Transjordan – rejected a third partition plan proposed by the United Nations. The second partition plan had previously been offered in 1937 by the Peel Commission.
By November 30, 1947, Arabs were shooting at Jewish vehicles on the roads. They then ignored several UN Security Council calls for a cessation of hostilities.
By war’s end, the full magnitude of the Arabs’ error was such a political, diplomatic, military, and social debacle that – as Jonathan Sacerdoti has put it – they had to make their Nakba a sacred humiliation out of a theological reading of history.
Alternative perspective on the Nakba
History itself can be read as theological. Jews do it. However, we Jews usually blame ourselves, foremost, anyway, for our failures, usually through our sinning. The Nakba, however, is read not as an Arab failure but is assigned to the Jews and/or Zionists, as well as to conspiracy theories.
What results from such a paradigm is that losers never feel they need to correct themselves, as the blame is not on them but on someone else. When the 1967 war erupted, triggered by PLO cross-border terror attacks on Israeli civilians following the 1940-1956 period of the Fedayeen attacks, once again, Nakba memories were revived.
This time, though, with the voting power leverage at the United Nations of Arab-Muslim states, it became enshrined as an intersectional instrument of the ultimate ‘it’s-not-our-fault’ apology. From there, it moved into university classrooms.
Essentially, those marking Nakba Day do so as if all the conflict, suffering, displacements, injuries, and deaths have nothing to do with the actions and decisions of the Arabs, but rather that the responsibility rests solely with the Zionists.
This is a corruption of the historical record, perverted mainly by an ideological framework based on the spurious claim of Zionism being a “settler-colonialism.”
The peoples who came out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, charged up with a new religion, conquered, occupied, and suppressed the lands and peoples of the Near East, North Africa, Southern Europe, and beyond.
They also colonized the land of Judea, and while foreign occupiers came and went, among them the Romans, Muslims, Crusaders, and Ottomans, the Jewish people, along with their Jewish character and identity, remained. The idea of a historic Jewish homeland persisted.
In the 20th century, the unwillingness of local Arabs to accept this reality led them to make irrational and self-defeating decisions. This led to the first Nakba.
Since 1993 and the Oslo Accords, they have not learned to alter their faults. They are aware of a possible repeat of history but seem determined to re-trigger it.
“Can Palestinians Escape the ‘Diplomatic Bermuda Triangle’ Trapping Them in Helplessness?” was the headline of a column by Jack Khoury in Haaretz on May 18. They are not helpless.
The chosen policy of the Arabs of the Palestine Mandate and of contemporary times has been wrong, self-defeating, and – in adopting anti-Jewish terror – immoral. Yet, they continue to persist in their error. Nakba I was one result. The destruction of much of Gaza is another.
The Palestinians of the West Bank still can alter course and prevent Nakba II. They can accept and recognize the reality of a Jewish national identity, halt incitement, and desist from terror.
It is possible no matter how improbable. Their future will be better, so very better. And so will the future of the Jews.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.
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