One Nation’s Celebration is Another’s Mourning
Guest post by Abby Fuller
Today for Nakba Day I’m re-posting this excellent article from the Women’s Older Wisdom substack.
One Nation’s Celebration is Another’s Mourning
by Abby Fuller
Each year on May 15, Israelis commemorate that day in 1948 when their country declared its independence, For Palestinians, May 15 is Nakba Day—when they grieve their ancestor’s expulsion from present-day Israel.
It is impossible to understand the relationship between Palestine and Israel without understanding the Nakba (Arabic word for catastrophe). Zionist leadershad long championed the only way to establish a Jewish-majority state was to “transfer” the Palestinians elsewhere. Starting in late 1947, Jewish militias, followed by the Israeli military, carried out a coordinated attack on Palestinian villages, killing people, blowing up houses, and, terrorizing 750,000 Palestinians, who fled to the West Bank, Gaza, and surrounding countries. (In the film “Tantura,” elderly IDF veterans recount these atrocities.)
Under international law, Palestinians have the right to return to their homes, but Israel made this virtually impossible by destroying some 500 villages and shooting anyone who tried to return.
The Nakba—Israel’s effort to gain more land with fewer Palestinians—has never stopped. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, internationally recognized Palestinian territory, Israel has maintained a military occupation since 1967, building illegal settlements that now house 700,000 Israelis—10 percent of the country’s population. Palestinians essentially live within bantustans, separated by Israeli-only roads and military checkpoints. While Israel builds freely, Palestinians are denied permits to build on their own land, and when they do, Israel tears down their homes.
Israeli settlers attempt to drive Palestinians off their land with violent attacksthat have increased to the point that even U.S. politicians are taking note. Israeli soldiers stand by and watch while settlers assault people, burn their cars, kill their livestock and uproot their olive trees—or arrest the Palestinians.
Israeli military incursions into West Bank towns have increased as well. Since October 2023, Israelis have killed over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including 238 children.
In Gaza, despite the October ceasefire, Israel continues the Nakba with impunity. Israeli troops now occupy over 60 percent of Gaza, its “yellow line” squeezing people into a smaller and smaller area. In other ceasefire violations, Israel severely restricts aid from entering Gaza, while killing 850 Gazans. Pre-ceasefire 72,000 Gazans were killed along with thousands of “indirect” deaths from malnutrition and disease. (In sharp contrast, Hamas killed four Israeli soldiers during the ceasefire.)
Such blatant disregard for the rights of another people is always justified by dehumanizing them. Edward Said coined the term orientalism to describe the Western view of Eastern peoples: primitive, violent, exotic—always the “other.” This remains the predominant view of Palestinians in Israeli society, where Palestinians are, by default, “terrorists.”
From the start Palestinians resisted dispossession and military occupation, sometimes nonviolently and sometimes with arms, as is their right under international law. Yet the terrorist label is freely applied to nonstate actors (usually Muslims), not to established states that terrorize civilian populations.
The “terrorist” label justifies mistreatment of the worst kind, evident in Israeli prisons, which currently hold some 9,000 Palestinians, about half detained without charge. Last month, two human rights organizations published reports on the systematic physical and psychological abuse of Palestinian prisoners by Israel soldiers, including widespread sexual violence.
The continuing Nakba is a blight on humanity. It should shame not only Israelis, but the US whose support for Israel—financial, military, and diplomatic—enables this violence. As taxpayers whose taxes fund Israel, we have a moral duty to demand justice for Palestine.
What is the solution?
Palestinian self-determination must come first allowing them to participate as equal partners in shaping the future. Perhaps the best outcome would be one democratic state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, with a constitutional democracy, guaranteeing equal rights for Jews and Palestinians alike.
Do we have the will and the moral courage to make it happen?
Abby Fuller organizes with Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights and the Maine Coalition for Palestine. She teaches sociology at the University of Southern Maine. She can be contacted at fullerwollman@gmail.com.