Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
14-05-2023
JERUSALEM: On the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, it seems apt to think about how the events of 1948 have shaped not only the history of the Palestinian people, but also their present colonial reality.
For Palestinians, the Nakba is a “ghostly matter” to use a phrase first introduced by sociology professor Avery Gordon. It has become a psychic force that ceaselessly haunts the present.
Haunting, as Gordon explains, is one of the ways in which oppressive forms of power continue to make themselves known in everyday life.
The Nakba, the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homes in Palestine and the destruction of 500 villages and towns is not simply an event that occurred some 75 years ago.
As many Palestinians insist, it is also an ongoing process characterized by lasting forms of state-sanctioned violence. It is something that Zionist forces continue to practice. Indeed, every time a Palestinian is executed by Israeli soldiers or a home that took years to build is demolished, this specific act of violence not only shocks, but also summons the memory of the Nakba.
The permanence of the Nakba was made quite apparent when in February, Jewish vigilantes carried out a pogrom in the Palestinian town of Huwara, and instead of condemning the crime, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich complained that state forces rather than private citizens should be erasing Palestinian villages but the Israeli state’s strategy to create new memories of violence among Palestinians and thus ensure that the Nakba remains a constant 
presence seems to contradict its official policy of denying it ever occurred.
Israeli officials and pro-Israel activists have repeatedly rejected the term, calling it an “Arab lie” and a “justification for terrorism”. The Israeli authorities have also sought to eradicate any public references to the Nakba.
In 2009, the Israeli Education Ministry banned the use of this word in textbooks for Palestinian children.
In 2011, the Knesset adopted a law prohibiting institutions from holding any events commemorating the Nakba. This law is actually an amendment to the Budget Foundation Law, and conflates any ceremony marking the Nakba, in say, a public high school in Nazareth with incitement to racism, violence and terrorism and the rejection of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. (Int’l News Desk)
