Say what you need to say
Healing Israel’s Birth Scar
israeli activists from zochrot join palestinian nakbah survivors in commemorating a lost village with the 60th anniversary of israel’s birth — and of the palestinian nakbah (catastrophe) — which are, of movement the same actuality, almost upon us, i was reminded this week that april 9 was also the 60th anniversary of an event that has big epitomized the connection between the the cosmos of an ethnic-majority jewish state and the man-made disaster suffered by the palestinian arabs. that would be the massacre at deir yassein, a tight-fisted village penny-pinching jerusalem where fighters of the irgun, led by menahem begin, massacred up to 250 palestinian civilians — in what later emerged as a calculated campaign of “ethnic cleansing,” using passion and the threat of violence to spin palestinians to flee their homes and win, which were then summarily appropriated by the new state of israel, which passed legislation forbidding the palestinian owners from returning to their property. it was the events of 1948 that created the palestinian refugee problem, and setting the terms of a conflict that continues to define the state of israel six decades later. no resolution of the row is possible without understanding the events of 1948 — something that precious few mainstream u.s. politicians do. the irony is that israelis are far more likely to be familiar with the uglier side of their quelling in 1948 than are their most enthusiastic supporters on these shores.
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April 10th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
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