The Naqba: Caused by Israel or by the Arabs' Own Weaknesses?

I maintain: the "naqba" was a defeat of the Arabs by their own weaknesses as asserted by Constantin Zureiq in his summer of 1948 book.

Now another source: From the U. of Chicago's The Journal of Politics, Volume 18, Number 3 (1956) review of Dynamite in the Middle East by Khalil Totah, 1955:

And another review, from Political Research Quarterly, University of Utah, Volume 9 Issue 2, June 1956:

"...his account is notable for an equal frankness concerning Arab shortcomings, particularly the corruption in Arab governments and the illiteracy and poverty of the Arab masses.

Naively or deliberately he omits the entire Jewish record of transforming unpopulated swamps and desert land into oases of human settlement in Palestine, as well as the historic fact that the Arabs themselves came as conquerors into Palestine during the eighth century and imposed their national habits as well as the Islamic religion on the conquered of the area.

At no time will Totah grant the Jews with their historic and religious connection in Palestine the right of a dignified national and cultural existence.

...This reviewer can only express his utmost bewilderment at how an educated Arab who professes to be a Christian can advocate the most ruthless power politics with complete disregard for the human and ethical problem. In spite or perhaps because of all this, this book should be widely read.

Apart from conveying a solid analysis of Arab nationalism and a vivid picture of the dynastic rivalries and economic problems in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, the book affords a most interesting insight into the mentality of the intellectual leadership of the Arab world and its position in the great East-West struggle of our time.

^

Seidemann Corrupting History

In a recent mailing sent out by Kares Shapiro and Mark Gold of "Partners for Progressive Israel" on the issue of Sheikh Jarrah, they include an appeal by Danny Seidmann 

along with a clip of him speaking, ominously, about a renewal of the "Naqba" and quoting him about the legal aspect of the property dispute so:

They purchased the claims to the East Jerusalem property from the earlier Jewish owners and took the Palestinian residents to court in order to evict them—to make way, it must be noted, not for descendants of the Jewish residents, but for settlers who never lived there, and who ultimately seek to drive out Palestinian presence from the city.

The Arabs living there at present, it should be noted have no connection to that area of Jerusalem or the former resident either. They were resettled from other areas in the city. In fact, the history of Silwan itself, Kfar Shiloah in the Hebrew, is one of ethnic-leansing of its Jewish residents - not during the 1948 war, when the aggressive Arabs lost their intended war of Jewish extinction - but during the 1930s, during yet another round of Arab terror.

In other words, the Jewish expulsion resulted not from mutual hostilities or an attack by Jews on Arabs but by Arab aggression on Jewish civilians seeking to eradicate their existence in the neighborhood a decade prior to the Naqba situation (itself brought upon the Arabs by their lawlessness, their violence, their rejection of diplomacy and compromise).

I am no lawyer but I do know the history of the conflict and Seidemann is corrupting our understanding of what happened, when it happened and for what purpose. When that happens, the law becomes irrelvant.

The Holocaust, The Naqba and Natalie

I have for several years believed that a weak-willed phenomenon in large elements of Israel's populace, especially those who are the 'elite' in business, academia and politics, can, in part, be traced back to the quarter million or so Jews who, having survived the Holocaust, arrived in Israel and instilled what I termed a psychological gene in their children.

Well, now we have the results of this study that has found:

that the trauma experienced by Holocaust survivors caused genetic changes, which can be passed down to their children.  The results are an example of “epigenetic inheritance”—genetic changes caused by environmental factors, such as smoking, diet, or stress. In these cases, the underlying genetic code remains unchanged, but some of the chemical tags that get attached to genes throughout a person’s life get passed down.

My thinking was that the survivor was still in Europe in 1945 mainly due to his/her or the parents of not believing warnings, like those of Jabotinsky and others, to leave and/or had no ability to analyze what was happening on the continent.

And so, things are taken a step further and now, we have an 'official' Holocaust - Naqba comparison book which Dan Margalit calls "Polluting the historical truth" in that "the comparison between the Nakba and the Holocaust harms the memory of the latter and undermines its validity, as these two events could not be more different."

The third link is Natalie Portman's statement:

“I think a really big question the Jewish community needs to ask itself, is how much at the forefront we put Holocaust education. Which is, of course, an important question to remember and to respect, but not over other things... We need to be reminded that hatred exists at all times and reminds us to be empathetic to other people that have experienced hatred also. Not used as a paranoid way of thinking that we are victims.”

She continues:

“Sometimes it can be subverted to fear-mongering and like ‘Another Holocaust is going to happen’. We need to, of course, be aware that hatred exists, anti-Semitism exists against all sorts of people, not in the same way. I don’t mean to make false equivalences, we need it to serve as something that makes us empathetic to people rather than paranoid.”

...I was shocked that that [genocide] was going on while I was in school. We were learning only about the Holocaust and it was never mentioned and it was happening while I was in school. That is exactly the type of problem with the way it’s taught. 

Basically, we Jews are just like all the rest.  No need to grasp any special circumstances.  The killing is all the same.

Well, I see that she displayed an early expression of her type of thinking and maybe it has its roots in her genes?

__________

UPDATE

Abbas presents Holocaust as something Jews "say":

a 

"They say they made sacrifices in World War II -

we respect what they say"

Abbas adds libel: Israel doing to Palestinians what Nazis did to Jews:

"We must not be a victim of the victim"

^

Naqba Crap

It's this

versus

this

which is the anti-Naqba poster of Im Tirzu which advertises a booklet revealing the truth about the claim of Naqba: "Naqba Crap" - they attacked; they left; they expelled; they lost.

Here:

As Palestinians in the West Bank and Arab Israelis inside the Green Line plan to commemorate “Nakba Day” on Sunday May 15, the right-wing student group Im Tirtzu has launched a campaign to discredit what it says is a narrative of myths and lies dealing with the teaching of the founding of the State of Israel.


At the center of the campaign is a 70-page booklet entitled Nakba Harta – or Nakba BS – which is meant to reveal “a lie that threatens to drown us like a tsunami.”

Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe” – is the day when Palestinians commemorate the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Several Palestinian groups have called for major demonstrations in several Israeli Arab and mixed Israeli cities in honor of Nakba Day.

The booklet, written by film director Erez Tadmor, one of Im Tirzu’s leaders, and Arel Segal, a columnist for Ma’ariv, presents what it describes as a growing campaign to delegitimize Israel through the framing of the foundation of the State of Israel as being linked to a wholesale ethnic cleansing or deportation of the native Arab population.

And read this by Eli Hertz.

^

Indutably So

the French writer Pascal Bruckner has called the Western intelligentsia’s new “tyranny of guilt” — a self-effacement that forbids critical inquiry into the historical narratives of those national movements granted the sanctified status of “oppressed” — the Nakba narrative [which] cannot even be challenged.

Source



I left a comment there.

- - -

N, Na, Nak, Naqba!

N, Na, Nak, Nakba!

(If you don't get the satire, go here)

Knocking Out the Naqba

Steve Plaut is always worth mining for quotable sections of text.

Here:-

The Origins of the Term "Nakba" Proves there is no Palestinian Nation

What is the real origin of the term "nakba" and what is its original meaning?

...The authoritative source on the origin of "nakba" is none other than George Antonius, supposedly the first "official historian of Palestinian nationalism." Like so many "Palestinians," he actually wasn't 'Palestinian', that is. He was a Christian Lebanese-Egyptian who lived for a while in Jerusalem, where he composed his official advocacy/history of Arab nationalism. The Arab Awakening, a highly biased book, was published in 1938 and for years afterward was the official text used at British universities.

...So how does Antonius provide us with the answer to the current-events quiz concerning the origin of "nakba"? The term was not invented in 1948 but rather in 1920. And it was coined not because of Palestinians suddenly getting nationalistic but because Arabs living in Palestine regarded themselves as Syrian and were enraged at being cut off from their Syrian homeland.

...Palestinian Arabs saw themselves as Syrians and were seen as such by other Syrians. The Palestinian Arabs were enraged that an artificial barrier was being erected within their Syrian homeland by the infidel colonial powers, one that would divide northern Syrian Arabs from southern Syrian Arabs, the latter being those who were later misnamed "Palestinians." The bulk of the Palestinian Arabs had in fact migrated to Palestine from Syria and Lebanon during the previous two generations, largely to benefit from the improving conditions and job opportunities afforded by
Zionist immigration and capital flowing into the area. In 1920, both sets of
Syrian Arabs, those in Syria and those in Palestine, rioted violently and
murderously.

On page 312 of The Arab Awakening, Antonius writes, "The year 1920 has an evil name in Arab annals: it is referred to as the Year of the Catastrophe (Am al-Nakba). It saw the first armed risings that occurred in protest against the post-War settlement imposed by the Allies on the Arab countries...That's 1920 - when there was no Zionist state, no Jewish sovereignty, no "settlements" in "occupied territories," no Israel Defense Forces, no Israeli missiles and choppers targeting terror leaders, and no Jewish control over Jerusalem (which had a Jewish demographic majority going back at least to 1850). The original "nakba" had nothing to do with Jews, and nothing to do with demands by Palestinian Arabs for self-determination, independence and statehood. To the contrary, it had everything to do with the fact that the
Palestinian Arabs saw themselves as Syrians. They rioted at this nakba, at this catastrophe, because they found deeply offensive the very idea that they should be independent from Syria and Syrians.

..the very suggestion that Palestinian Arabs constituted a separate ethnic nationality was enough to send those same Arabs out into the streets to murder and plunder violently in outrage.

...Speaking of Palestinians as Syrians, it is worth noting what one of the early Syrian nationalists had to say. The following quote comes from the great-grandfather of the current Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad:

"Those good Jews brought civilization and peace to the Arab Muslims, and they dispersed gold and prosperity over Palestine without damage to anyone or taking anything by force. Despite this, the Muslims declared holy war against them and did not hesitate to massacre their children and women. Thus a black fate awaits the Jews and other minorities in case the Mandates are cancelled and Muslim Syria is united with Muslim Palestine."

That statement is from a letter sent to the French prime minister in June 1936 by six Syrian Alawi notables (the Alawis are the ruling class in Syria today) in support of Zionism. Bashar's great-grandfather was one of them.