1948 NAKBA (CATASTROPHE) & PALESTINIAN GENOCIDE

2023: 75th Nakba Anniversary -Virtual Exhibition commemorating

75th Anniversary of the Nakba

2023 will mark the 75 th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) in which British-armed and British-trained Zionist militias expelled about 800,000 Indigenous Palestinians (over half the Indigenous Palestinian population) from the land that had been continuously inhabited by their forebears for thousands of years. 15,000 Palestinians were killed by the genocidal Zionists. A further 400,000 Arabs were expelled from the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights in the 1967 Naksa (Setback). Today the Exiled Palestinians violently excluded from Palestine number 8 million. About 7 million Palestinian refugees represent about 10% of the world's refugees.

Key numbers about the Nakba: Palestinians expelled (800,000 or 57% of the 1,400,000 total Palestinian population), massacres (over 70), people killed (15,000), villages emptied (over 530), and mosques eventually destroyed (120). A further mass expulsion of 400,000 Arabs occurred in the 1967 Naksa (Setback).

Today’s 14.5 million Indigenous Palestinians: Exiled Palestinians (7 million, about 10% of world refugees); Occupied Palestinians (5.5 million and deprived of all human rights under military occupation and cannot vote for the government ruling them (Apartheid); 3.3 million in ever-dwindling West Bank ghettoes and 2.2 million in the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp ); Israeli Palestinians (about 2 million; able to vote but subject to 60 race-based, discriminatory laws). Indigenous Palestinian Subjects of Israel (7.5 million, 51% of total Israeli Subjects).

Today GDP per capita is a deadly $3,500 (Occupied Palestinians) versus $55,500 (Occupier Israelis). Each year Israel violently kills about 500 Occupied Palestinians (active killing) and kills a further 4,000 Occupied Palestinians through imposed deprivation (passive killing). In the Occupied Palestinian Territories Israel is the world leader for "journalists killed per million of population" and is among world leaders for "children killed per million of population".

This alphabetically-ordered web page documents accounts, expert analyses, comments, commentaries and works (novels, poems, books, photographs, videos, movies, paintings) of the 1948 the Nakba, and notably in the context of the WW1 onwards Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million Indigenous Palestinians killed by violence, 0.1 million, and by imposed deprivation, 2.1 million) since the British invaded the Middle East in 1914 for oil and imperial hegemony.

This detailed, well-documented and evolving website is provided to "bear witness" to the Nakba, and in particular to assist those wishing to publicly commemorate the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba atrocity in 2023.

Article 2 of UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states:

“Article 2 of the In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948: http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html .)

Professor Francis Boyle ( Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, Illinois, USA and very active in the defence of human rights and International law) has expertly described the Nakba and other atrocities of the Palestinian Genocide as “genocide” as defined by Article 2 of the UN Convention of the Prevention and Punishment the Crime of Genocide:

Professor Francis Boyle on Palestinian Genocide (January 2009): “Furthermore, the Nuremberg “crimes against humanity” are the historical and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people was so horrific that it required a special international treaty that would codify and universalize the Nuremberg concept of “crimes against humanity.” And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

Certainly, Israel and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have committed genocide against the Palestinian people that actually started on or about 1948 and has continued apace until today in violation of Genocide Convention Articles II(a), (b), and (c). For at least the past six decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) group constituting the Palestinian people. This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention” (Professor Francis A. Boyle, “The United States promotes Israeli genocide against Palestinians”, Information Clearing House, 12 January 2009: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21722.htm .)

Professor Francis Boyle (University of Illinois) re the Palestinian Genocide (2013): “The Palestinians have been the victims of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, under which a government can be guilty of genocide even if it intends to destroy a mere “part” of the group” (Francis Boyle, “The Palestinian Genocide by Israel”, 21 August 2013: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2339254 .)

For more expert opinions of Professor Francis Boyle in relation to the ongoing Palestinian Genocide see BOYLE below.

For numerous “from the horse’s mouth” examples of genocidally racist Zionist “intent to destroy in whole or in part” see "Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide", Palestinian Genocide : https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes . For example:

Theodor Herzl (genocidally racist psychopath founder of Zionism) (1895): “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly”

Winston Churchill (1937) quoted by Garikai Gengu: “The same man whose image is polished and placed on British mantelpieces as a symbol of all that is Great about Britain was an unapologetic racist and white supremacist. “I hate Indians, they are a beastly people with a beastly religion”, he once bellowed. As Churchill put it, Palestinians were simply “barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung.” In 1937, he told the Palestine Royal Commission: “I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place”.

Chaim Weizmann advocating genocide (1941): “If half a million Arabs could be transferred, two million Jews could be put in their place”

Golda Meir (Israeli Prime Minister 1969 – 1974) (1969): “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist”.

Benjamin Netanyahu (Israeli Prime Minister 1996 – 1999, 2009-2021 and expected new PM 2023) (1989): “Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories”.

Tom Pickering (a former US Ambassador to Apartheid Israel and the UN) 2021): “The Palestinians who clearly suffered a 20 to 1 death rate and who clearly are vastly overwhelmed by the Israelis in terms of military power… I think it is an extremely high mountain to cross… It doesn’t appear there is a 1 state solution to this problem and there is no multiple state outcome to this problem… Israel for a very long period of time under Netanyahu has kind of narrowed down the goal for the Palestinians to something like 20% of what is currently believed to have been the Palestinian state under the 2 state solution [i.e. to 4.4% of Palestine] … And if in fact there is no agreement and the status quo is continued with interruptions for violence as we have seen, it is quite possible that over years – and I am talking about a long time – you will see a removal of Palestinians from the West Bank and quite possibly Gaza to other parts of the world and a no-state solution if I can put it that way.”

PALESTINE GENOCIDE WEBSITE LINKS

Apartheid Israeli state terrorism: (A) individuals exposing Apartheid Israeli state terrorism, and (B) countries subject to Apartheid Israeli state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/apartheid-israeli-state-terrorism .

“Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/.

“Gaza Concentration Camp”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/gaza-concentration .

“Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .

“Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .

“One-state solution, unitary state, bi-national state for a democratic, equal rights, post-apartheid Palestine: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/one-state-solution .

“Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

“Palestinian Genocide essays”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/ .

“Palestinian Genocide quotes”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/palestinian-genocide-quotes .

"Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide": https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes .

END WAR AND GENOCIDE LINKS

“Aboriginal Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ .

“Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ .

“Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ .

“Afghanistan Genocide essays”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/ .

“Art for peace, planet, mother & child”: https://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ .

“Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust .

“Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home .

“Gideon Polya writing”: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ .

“Iraq Genocide essays”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqgenocideessays/ .

“Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ .

“Poetry reviews by Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/poetryreviewsbygideonpolya/ .

“Report genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/reportgenocide/ .

"State crime and non-state terrorism": https://sites.google.com/site/statecrimeandnonstateterrorism/ .

“Stop state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/ .

ALPHABETICALLY-ORDERED COMPENDIUM OF NAKBA-RELATED ACCOUNTS, ANALYSES, WORKS, SCHOLARS, WRITERS, BOOKS, FILMS, IMAGES, PAINTINGS, POEMS, ARTICLES...

ABDI. Ahmed Abdi Abed Abdi, 81, is a Palestinian visual artist who was expelled from Haifa in 1948 and returned three years later. For images of his paintings see Zena Al Tahhan, “Photos: Memories of Nakba inspire Palestinian artist’s work”, Al Jazeera, 29 May 2023: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/5/29/photos-memories-of-nakba-inspire-palestinian-artists-work .

ABULHAWA. Susan Abulhawa (Palestinian American writer, human rights activist, founder of a non-governmental organization, Playgrounds for Palestine, and author of the novels “Mornings in Jenin” (Bloomsbury, 2020; translated into 32 languages, and sold more than a million copies), “The Blue Between Sky And Water”(Bloomsbury, 2015; sold in 19 languages before its release), and “Against the Loveless World” (Bloomsbury, 2020) as well as publishing a poetry anthology and other works. “Mornings in Jenin” is based on the expulsion of a Palestinian family from a Palestinian village in the 1948 Nakba.

ALAMY. ALAMY. Alamy, “Palestine 1948 refugee camp Stock Photos and Images”: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/palestine-1948-refugee-camp.html?sortBy=relevant .

AL-DABAI, AMINA. Amin Al-Dabai on her Nakba experience as quoted in Asharq Al-Awsat, “75 Years After the Nakba, Palestinians Still Long for Return”, 2 May 2023: https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/4306236/75-years-after-nakba-palestinians-still-long-return .

Quote: “From her modest home in the blockaded Gaza Strip, Amina al-Dabai remembers the very different world in which she grew up more than seven decades ago. Born in 1934, Dabai was still only a child when Israel was created on May 14, 1948. Now she is one of 5.9 million Palestinian refugees living in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria according to the United Nations. They are descendants of more than 760,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes 75 years ago. The event is known by Palestinians as the Nakba, or "catastrophe", during which more than 600 communities were destroyed or depopulated by Jewish forces, according to the Israeli organization Zochrot. … Dabai recalled the day "Jewish soldiers in disguise" arrived in her hometown of Lydda, now known as Lod in central Israel. Because the fighters' faces were covered in keffiyehs, a scarf that has come to symbolize the Palestinian struggle, locals thought they were reinforcements sent from Jordan. People were so delighted they "rushed for the fountain" in the town center to celebrate. But realizing the soldiers were Jews, they "fled into the mosque and their homes". "They (soldiers) stormed the mosque and killed everyone inside," she added. "I was young and saw it with my own eyes." ”

AL JAZEERA. Al Jazeera (2017): “Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world, numbering about 12.4 million, mark the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948… On that day, the State of Israel came into being. The creation of Israel was a violent process that entailed the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland to establish a Jewish-majority state, as per the aspirations of the Zionist movement. Between 1947 and 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9 million population were made refugees beyond the borders of the state. Zionist forces had taken more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including more than 70 massacres. Though May 15, 1948, became the official day for UK commemorating the Nakba, armed Zionist groups had launched the process of displacement of Palestinians much earlier. In fact, by May 15, half of the total number of Palestinian refugees had already been forcefully expelled from their country… [Zionist leader Chaim] Weizmann lobbied hard for more than two years with British former Prime Minister David Lloyd-George and former Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour to publicly commit Britain to building a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.By giving their support to Zionist goals in Palestine, the British hoped they could shore up support among the significant Jewish populations in the US and Russia for the Allied effort during WWI. They also believed the Balfour Declaration would secure their control over Palestine after the war. From 1919 onwards, Zionist immigration to Palestine, facilitated by the British, increased dramatically. Weizmann, who later became Israel’s first president, was realising his dream of making Palestine “as Jewish as England is English”… Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinian tenants from their lands as Zionists bought land from absentee landlords. Leading Arab and Palestinian intellectuals openly warned against the motifs of the Zionist movement in the press as early as 1908. With the Nazi seizure of power in Germany between 1933 and 1936, 30,000 to 60,000 European Jews arrived on the shores of Palestine. In 1936, Palestinian Arabs launched a large-scale uprising against the British and their support for Zionist settler-colonialism, known as the Arab Revolt. The British authorities crushed the revolt, which lasted until 1939, violently; they destroyed at least 2,000 Palestinian homes, put 9,000 Palestinians in concentration camps and subjected them to violent interrogation, including torture, and deported 200 Palestinian nationalist leaders. At least ten percent of the Palestinian male population had been killed, wounded, exiled or imprisoned by the end of the revolt… Shortly following the UN Resolution 181, war broke out between the Palestinian Arabs and Zionist armed groups, who, unlike the Palestinians, had gained extensive training and arms from fighting alongside Britain in World War II” (Al Jazeera, “The Nakba did not start or end in 1948. Key facts and figures on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine”, Al Jazeera, 23 May 2017: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/5/23/the-nakba-did-not-start-or-end-in-1948 ).

Al Jazeera, “Palestine’s Abbas calls on UN to ‘suspend’ Israel as Nakba marked”, 16 May 2023: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/16/palestines-abbas-calls-on-un-to-suspend-israel-as-nakba-marked .

Quote: “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas insists that Israel must respect UN resolutions on Palestine or cease as a UN member… Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has urged the United Nations to suspend Israel’s membership in the world body unless it ends its aggression against Palestinians and implements UN resolutions establishing separate Israeli and Palestinian states as well as the return of Palestinian refugees.Abbas spoke on Monday during the first official UN commemoration of the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from what is now Israel amid the violence of the partition of Palestine 75 years ago. In an hourlong emotion-filled speech, Abbas asked the world’s nations why more than 1,000 resolutions adopted by UN bodies regarding the Palestinians had never been implemented.He held up a letter from Israel’s foreign minister, Moshe Sharett, after resolutions were adopted in 1947 and 1948 promising to implement them and said: “Either they do respect these obligations, or they stop becoming a member. “We demand today officially, in accordance with international law and international resolutions, to make sure that Israel respects these resolutions or suspend Israel’s membership of the UN,” Abbas said in his speech.”

AL-NAKBA (film). Wikipedia on Al-Nakba film: ““Al-Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948” is a documentary film of Benny Brunner and Alexandra Jansse. It follows the events that surround the 1948 Palestinian exodus. It was filmed in 1996, is 58 minutes long and is in English. Based on the book “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949” by Benny Morris, it is the first documentary film to examine the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians during the birth of the state of Israel. The film shifts between interviews with Palestinian refugees and the reactions of Irgun and Haganah soldiers who witnessed and participated in the events of 1948” (“Al-Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Nakba:_The_Palestinian_Catastrophe_1948 ).

AMERICAN.AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT & NAKBA HISTORIOGRAPHY. American University of Beirut on its Nakba library guide: “The guide was created in support of The Palestinian Oral History Archives Project at AUB Libraries. The guide focuses on the various aspects of historiography of 1948 Palestinian Nakba and highlights selective library resources, projects and websites” (American University of Beirut, “Al-Nakba: 1948 Palestinian exodus: Home”: https://aub.edu.lb.libguides.com/c.php?g=342715&p=2307983 ).

Library resources: https://aub.edu.lb.libguides.com/c.php?g=342715&p=2317202 .

Historiography: https://aub.edu.lb.libguides.com/c.php?g=342715&p=2609551 .

Demographic changes: https://aub.edu.lb.libguides.com/c.php?g=342715&p=2893418 .

Land transformation: https://aub.edu.lb.libguides.com/c.php?g=342715&p=2477017 .

National Resistance: https://aub.edu.lb.libguides.com/c.php?g=342715&p=2477018 .

Refugees and Right to Return: https://aub.edu.lb.libguides.com/c.php?g=342715&p=2477022 .

Culture: https://aub.edu.lb.libguides.com/c.php?g=342715&p=3438843 .

More Nakba-related Resources: https://aub.edu.lb.libguides.com/c.php?g=342715&p=3454369 .

ANTONIUS. George Antonius (1892-1942; Lebanese author and diplomat who settled in Jerusalem; one of the first historians of Arab nationalism; author of 1938 book “The Arab Awakening): “We all sympathise with the Jews and are shocked at the way Christian nations persecute them. But do you expect the Muslims of Palestine to be more “Christian”, more humanitarian than the followers of Christ? After what happened in Germany, Poland, Romania, etc., have we to suffer in order to make good what you committed?... The treatment meted out to Jews in Germany and other European countries is a disgrace to its authors and to modern civilization. But the cure for the eviction of Jews from Germany is not to be sought in the eviction of Arabs from Palestine” (quoted by Victor Sebestyen, “1946. The Making of the Modern World”, Pantheon, 2014, page 274. )

ASHARQ AL-AWSAT. Asharq Al-Awsat, “75 Years After the Nakba, Palestinians Still Long for Return”, 2 May 2023: https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/4306236/75-years-after-nakba-palestinians-still-long-return .

AUSTRALIAN PALESTINIAN ADVOCACY NETWORK (APAN): https://apan.org.au/factsheet-nakba/ . .

"THE PALESTINIAN 1948 NAKBA

The Palestinian people have a rich history and ancient links to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. A history that stretches back thousands of years. Every year on the 15th of May, Palestinians around the world mark the ‘Nakba’, or ‘Catastrophe’, referring to the ethnic cleansing that occurred in 1948 and resulted in the loss of the Palestinian homeland. It was a traumatic experience as 80% of the Palestinians were made refugees and the remaining 20% became internally displaced people in their own land.

The Nakba events are rooted in political Zionism, a Jewish European settler colonial movement that sought to establish a home in Palestine for Jewish people. The Jewish migration and settlement in Palestine began in 1882.

THE EVENTS OF THE NAKBA 1947-1949: ETHNIC CLEANSING, MASSACRES AND LOOTING

Violent take over of Palestinian land by Jewish Zionist militia such as Irgun and the Stern gang. These paramilitary organisations that later formed the Israeli army, perpetuated crimes against humanity in Palestine, including ethnic cleansing, massacres, rape, looting and bombings, in the lead up to the announcement of the establishment of the Israeli state.
Over 530 Palestinian towns and villages were completely destroyed by Zionist militia. Some of these depopulated towns were taken over by Jewish immigrants and renamed, others lay in ruins as Israel has prevented Palestinians from rebuilding their hometowns and denied them their internationally recognised right to return, including those who are internally displaced.
About 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres, such as the Deir Yassin massacre on the western outskirts of Jerusalem, and the Tantura massacre where over 200 Palestinian women, men and children were killed by Zionist militia. Today this mass burial site is a car park, with no acknowledgement of the heinous crime committed.
Over 800,000 were expelled from their homes in the Galilee. Palestinians were loaded on trucks, boats and pushed out of their hometowns at gunpoint. The overwhelming majority became refugees and settled in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and the West Bank. Those who attempted to return were shot and killed.
On the 15th of May, the state of Israel was officially proclaimed and received International recognition. Having demographically engineered a Jewish majority in a land with a Jewish minority by ethnically cleansing the indigenous population, the following years would see Zionists consolidate control of the land. The State ofIsrael would also develop and implement discriminatory ethnocratic laws and policies that would institutionalise Jewish supremacy in Palestine.

THE ONGOING NATURE OF THE NAKBA

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine would not stop even after the establishment of Israel. Palestinians in the Naqab, as well as those close to the ceasefire lines, would continue to face mass expulsions into the 1950s. In the same year, Israel issued the infamous Absentee’s Property Law. This law was instrumental in systematically seizing the property of all the refugees, including homes, farms, land and even the contents of their bank accounts. This has allowed the state to take control of everything remaining behind, and if not “contested” or “claimed”, they would then become the property of the state, free to be utilised in any way it saw fit.
The Land Acquisitions Law allowed for the mass transfer of the entire Palestinian economy to the Israeli state. Practically overnight, Israel gained control of over 739,750 agricultural acres, the vast majority of which were of excellent quality as well as 73,000 houses, 7800 workshops and 6 million pounds. This action subsidised the cost of settling a Zionist family in Palestine from approximately $8000 to $1500 and gave an immediate kickstart to the Israeli economy.
The state of Israel has no official border, nor does it have a constitution. This is because Zionism, an expansionist settler colonial movement, seeks to seize control of all of Palestine. This was demonstrated in 1967 when Israel invaded and occupied the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, East Palestine (the West Bank), Gaza and Sinai peninsula. Following this invasion Israel continued with its land theft and settlement expansion.

PALESTINIANS TODAY

As a result of the Nakba, the Palestinian people live scattered all over the world, all of whom are directly impacted by the apartheid regime that Israel has established:

6 million refugees reside outside of the historical Palestine and are denied their inalienable right to return home
3.2 million Palestinians live in the West Bank denied the right to vote for the regime that rules over every aspect of their lives
2.2 million Palestinians live under an illegal and inhumane Israeli siege in the Gaza strip, also denied the right to vote for the regime that rules over every aspect of their lives
1.9 million inside the historical Palestine who have the “right to vote” but live as 5th class citizens inside Israel

THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE AND RETURN

Despite the loss and pain of the Nakba, Palestinians have not given up hope. They continue to struggle for justice and their right to return home to Palestine. They will continue to resist the Zionist settler colonial project on a daily basis as they share their truth and fight for liberation.

Updated May 2023"

BARGHOUTI. Mariam Barghouti, “Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing made clear that Israel’s war on Palestinian journalists is part of its war on Palestine”, Mondoweiss, 11 May 2023: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/05/shireen-abu-aklehs-killing-made-clear-that-israels-war-on-palestinian-journalists-is-part-of-its-war-on-palestine/?emci=d0166162-27f4-ed11-907c-00224832eb73&emdi=7a122fef-cbf4-ed11-907c-00224832eb73&ceid=64354 .

Quote: Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by the same Israeli bullets directed against her fellow Palestinians. Those bullets have continued to fly, and the Israeli war machine has taken the lives of nearly 300 Palestinians in the past year. Shireen's was one of them… “Israel was established on the mere principle of ethnically cleansing Palestinians, including journalists,” Eid [Yara Eid, 23, a Palestinian human rights advocate and reporter] explained to Mondoweiss. “They’re really threatened by journalists,” Eid continued. “They always had the intention to attack Palestinian journalists,” she said. “And that’s because they’re threatened by the other narrative, they’re threatened by the narrative Palestinians show.” The fact that Abu Akleh was wearing her PRESS vest is what appalled the international community in Israel’s targeted shooting at non-combatants. The fact that not even those words emblazoned across her chest could save her is what horrified Palestinians. Because, at the end of the day, she was a Palestinian first”.

BARGHOUTI. Mustafa Barghouti, “A just and democratic society that benefits all: that’s what Palestinians are fighting for”, The Guardian, 16 May 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/15/nakba-democratic-society-palestinians-mustafa-barghouti .

Quote: “We can’t change the past. On the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, we strive for a single state where all citizens have equal rights… For us Palestinians, 15 May marks the 75th anniversary of the Nakba (the “catastrophe” of 1948), during which about 70% of the Palestinian population was forcibly displaced and more than 500 communities were wiped out completely, in addition to the massacres committed by Zionist militias. The Nakba of 1948 marked the destruction of the indigenous Palestinian population’s way of life and the establishment of the state of Israel. In the 1967 war, another important turning point, Israel occupied the remaining 22% of historic Palestine. Yet, in successfully gaining control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel inadvertently unified Palestinians who joined a common struggle for freedom, self-determination, and the right of return to the lands that so many had been violently forced to flee. Certain Israeli leaders even warned of the consequences of maintaining the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The illegal Israeli occupation gradually transformed into a system of apartheid. According to Ronnie Kasrils, who was one of the Jewish leaders of the anti-apartheid struggle and a member of Nelson Mandela’s government, Israeli apartheid in Palestine is even worse than the apartheid that used to exist in South Africa.”

BAROUD. Dr Ramzy Baroud (eminent Palestinian journalist and author) (2022): “[Photo] The next Nakba Day will be officially commemorated by the United Nations General Assembly on 15 May, 2023. The decision by the world's largest democratic institution is significant, if not a game changer.For nearly 75 years, the Palestinian Nakba, the 'Catastrophe' wrought by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias in 1947-48, has served as the epicentre of the Palestinian tragedy as well as the collective Palestinian struggle for freedom… When Israeli leaders agreed to the Oslo political paradigm, they understood that removing the Nakba from the political discourse of the Palestinian leadership constituted a major victory for the Israeli narrative. Thanks to ordinary Palestinians, those who have held on to the keys and deeds to their original homes and land in historic Palestine, history is finally being rewritten, back to its original and accurate form. By passing Resolution A/77/L.24, which declared 15 May, 2023, as 'Nakba Day', the UNGA has corrected a historical wrong… 15 May, 2023, UN Nakba Day, represents the triumph of the Palestinian narrative over that of Israeli negationists. This means that the blood spilled during Gaza's March of Return was not in vain, as the Nakba and the Right of Return are now back at the centre of the Palestinian story … Absent from [UN Ambassador] Erdan’s remarks and other responses by the Israeli officials is the mere hint of political or even moral accountability for the ethnic cleansing of over 530 Palestinian towns and villages, and the expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians, whose descendants are now numbered in millions of refugees. Not only did Israel invest decades in canceling and erasing the Nakba, it also criminalized it by passing what is now known as the Nakba Law of 2011*… Leading Palestinian Nakba historian, Salman Abu Sitta, explained in an interview a few years ago the difference between the so-called pragmatic politics of Oslo and the collective struggle of Palestinians as the difference between ‘aims’ and ‘rights’. Palestinians “don’t have ‘aims’ … (but) rights,” he said. These rights are inalienable, they represent the bottom red line beyond which no concession is possible. Because doing so will destroy their life. Indeed, shifting the historical centrality of the narrative away from the Nakba was equivalent to the very destruction of the lives of Palestinian refugees as it has been tragically apparent in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria in recent years” (Dr Ramzy Baroud, “The Nakba Day Triumph: How the UN Is Correcting a Historical Wrong”, Countercurrents, 15 December 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/12/the-nakba-day-triumph-how-the-un-is-correcting-a-historical-wrong/?swcfpc=1 .)

[*Just Vision Glossary: ”The Budget Foundations Law, commonly known as the Nakba Law, passed in March 2011. This law penalizes actions that are seen as "rejecting the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state" or "commemorating Independence Day or the day of the establishment of the state as a day of mourning." In essence, the law (which was introduced by the Yisrael Beiteinu party) seeks to target Palestinian citizens of Israel who commemorate al-Nakba,” : https://justvision.org/glossary/nakba-law .]

BBC. BBC, “Why Nakba is the Palestinians' most sombre day, in 100 and 300 words”, 15 may 2023: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-44114385 .

Quote: “On 14 May 1948, Israel declared independence, and in a war which began the next day, up to 750,000 Palestinians who had lived on that land fled or were expelled from their homes. Neither they nor their descendants have been allowed by Israel to return. The Palestinians' displacement has led to years of upheaval. There are around five million Palestinians currently recognised as refugees by the UN. Most live in Jordan, followed by the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and East Jerusalem. Palestinian territories: Timeline of key events . Returning to their former homes is a key Palestinian demand, but Israel says it would be overwhelmed.”

BLOOMSBURY NAKBA BOOKS. Bloomsbury Nakba-related books:

ABDO & MASALHA. Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha. “An Oral History of the Nakba”, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/oral-history-of-the-palestinian-nakba-9781786993502/ .

ABDO. Nahla Abdo, “Women in Israel, Race, Gender and Citizenship”, Zed Books, Bloomsbury 2013: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/women-in-israel-race-gender-and-citizenship/?clearSearch .

MATTHEWS. Weldon C Matthews (editor), “Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation. Arab Nationalists and Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine”, Bloomsbury, 2006: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/confronting-an-empire-constructing-a-nation-arab-nationalists-and-popular-politics-in-mandate-palestine/?clearSearch .

BEN-NUN. Gilad Ben-Nun, “Seeking Asylum in Israel. Refugees and the History of Migration Law”, I.B. Tauris, Bloomsbury 2016: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/seeking-asylum-in-israel-refugees-and-the-history-of-migration-law/?clearSearch .

BEN-NUN. Gilad Ben-Nun, “The Fourth Geneva Convention for Civilians. The History of International Humanitarian Law”, I.B. Tauris, Bloomsbury 2020: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/the-fourth-geneva-convention-for-civilians-the-history-of-international-humanitarian-law/?clearSearch .

WIELAND. Carsten Wieland, “Syria and the Neutrality Trap. Dilemmas of Delivering Humanitarian Aid through Violent Regimes”, I.B. Tauris, Bloomsbury 2021: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/syria-and-the-neutrality-trap-dilemmas-of-delivering-humanitarian-aid-through-violent-regimes/?clearSearch .

BOGUSLAW. Daniel Boguslaw, “Rep. Rashida Tlaib Asks Congress to Condemn “Israel’s Ongoing Nakba” Against Palestine”, The Intercept, 10 May 2023: https://theintercept.com/2023/05/10/israel-palestine-rashida-tlaib-resolution/ .

Quote: “A Israeli bombs ripped through residential buildings in the Gaza Strip, Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a resolution calling on Congress to recognize “the ongoing Nakba and Palestinian refugees rights.” Tlaib’s resolution comes ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe” that is widely used to describe the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes through violent raids in 1948. The resolution asks Congress to “condemn all manifestations of Israel’s ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people, including Israel’s illegal theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; Israel’s displacement of Palestinians by destroying their homes and forcing them from their land; and the daily brutality and violence inflicted by the Israeli military and Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians.”In addition to memorializing the Nakba, Tlaib’s resolution calls for a prohibition on U.S. weapons being used to destroy Palestinian homes and land, and a ban on diplomatic buildings being constructed on land expropriated from Palestinians by Israel. The resolution will be co-sponsored by Reps. Betty McCollum, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush, all of whom signed onto a version that Tlaib introduced last year. Both versions of the resolution recount the history of the mass expulsion that led to millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring countries like Jordan.”

BOWMAN. Emma Bowman, “The U.N. is marking the 75th anniversary of Palestinians' displacement”, NPR, 15 May 2023: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/15/1176097958/un-nakba-day-explained-anniversary-palestine-israel .

Quote: “For the first time in history, the United Nations is officially commemorating the Nakba, the annual Palestinian commemoration of their mass displacement during the establishment of Israeli. The international body is marking the 75th anniversary of the displacement on Monday to "serve as a reminder of the historic injustice suffered by the Palestinian people" and to spotlight the ongoing refugee crisis, organizers said. For decades, the Nakba had not garnered universal international recognition, as countering narratives have downplayed the plight of Palestinians. Resistance remains: The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom [and Australia] were among 30 countries that voted against the U.N. resolution to adopt this year's commemoration. Israeli officials, meanwhile, are urging U.N. member states to boycott the event.”

BOYLE. Francis Boyle is a Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, Illinois, USA and very active in the defence of human rights and International law. Professor Boyle is the author of “Foundations of World Order”, Duke University Press, “The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence”, and “Palestine, Palestinians and International Law”, by Clarity Press. (see “Francis Boyle”, Wikipedia, : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Boyle ).

Professor Francis Boyle on Palestinian Genocide (December 2000): “I would like to propose publicly here in Gaza, Palestine--where the Intifadah began ten years ago at this time--that the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine and its President institute legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague (the so-called World Court) for violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. I am sure we can all agree that Israel has indeed perpetrated the international crime of genocide against the Palestinian People. The purpose of this lawsuit would be to demonstrate that undeniable fact to the entire world. These World Court legal proceedings will prove to the entire world and to all of history that what the Nazis did to the Jews a generation ago is legally similar to what the Israelis are currently doing to the Palestinian People today: genocide” ( Francis Boyle, “Palestine should sue Israel for genocide before the International Court of Justice”, Media Monitors Network, 2 December 2000: http://www.mediamonitors.net/francis1.html .)

Professor Francis Boyle on Palestinian Genocide (January 2009): “The world has not yet heard even one word uttered by the United States and its NATO allies in favor of “humanitarian intervention” against Israel in order to protect the Palestinian people, let alone a “responsibility to protect” the Palestinians from Zionist/Israeli genocide. The United States, its NATO allies, and the Great Powers on the U.N. Security Council would not even dispatch a U.N. Charter Chapter 6 monitoring force to help protect the Palestinians, let alone even contemplate any type of U.N. Charter Chapter 7 enforcement actions against Israel – shudder the thought!. The doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” so readily espoused elsewhere when U.S. foreign policy goals are allegedly at stake has been clearly proved to be a joke and a fraud when it comes to stopping the ongoing and accelerating Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.

Rather than rein in the Israelis—which would be possible just by turning off the funding pipeline—the United States government, the U.S. Congress, and U.S. taxpayers instead support the “Jewish” state to the tune of about 4 billion dollars per year, without whose munificence this instance of genocide – and indeed conceivably the State of Israel itself – would not be possible. What the world witnesses here is (yet another) case of “dishumanitarian intervention” or “humanitarian extermination” by the United States and Israel against the Palestinians and Palestine. In today’s world genocide pays so long as it is done at the behest of the United States and its de jure or de facto allies such as Israel.

Of course miracles can always happen. But I anticipate no fundamental change in America’s support for the Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinians during the tenure of the Obama/Clinton administration” ( Francis Boyle, “US promotes Israeli genocide”, The Journal of Turkish Weekly, 10 January 2009: http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/63104/us-promotes-israeli-genocide.html .)

Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

Professor Francis Boyle on US promotion of Israel’s Palestinian Genocide (December 2009): “As long ago as October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" upon the Palestinian people, most of whom are Muslims. The reader has a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated "grave breaches" of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, the world has seen those heinous war crimes inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian people living in occupied Palestine: e.g., willful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and by Israel's illegal paramilitary settlers. These Israeli "grave breaches" of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for the perpetrators and their commanders, whether military or civilian, including and especially Israel's political leaders… The paradigmatic example of "crimes against humanity" is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is where the concept of "crimes against humanity" came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people: crimes against humanity. Expressed in legal terms, this is just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. That is the significance of the formal determination by the U.N. Human Rights Commission that Israel has inflicted "crimes against humanity" upon the Palestinian people. The Commission chose this well-known and long-standing legal term of art quite carefully and deliberately based upon the evidence it had compiled… As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Israel's genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even intensifying against the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza. Zionism's "final solution" to Israel's much touted "demographic threat" allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always been genocide… Rather than rein in the Israelis-which would be possible just by turning off the funding pipeline-the United States government, the U.S. Congress, and U.S. taxpayers instead support the "Jewish" state to the tune of about 4 billion dollars per year, without whose munificence this instance of genocide - and indeed conceivably the State of Israel itself - would not be possible. What the world witnesses here is (yet another) case of "dishumanitarian intervention" or "humanitarian extermination" by the United States and Israel against the Palestinians and Palestine. In today's world genocide pays so long as it is done at the behest of the United States and its de jure or de facto allies such as Israel. Of course miracles can always happen. But I anticipate no fundamental change in America's support for the Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinians during the tenure of the Obama/Clinton administration” (Professor Francis A.. Boyle, “The US promotes Israeli Genocide. The United States Promotes Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinians”, Scoop, 29 December 2009: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0912/S00249.htm .)

Professor Francis Boyle in testimony to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, Malaysia (2013): “The Palestinians have been the victims of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. I say that because of my practical experience: On 8 April 1993 and 13 September 1993 I single-handedly won two World Court Orders on the basis of the 1948 Genocide Convention that were overwhelmingly in favor of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Yugoslavia to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide against the Bosnians in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. This was the first time ever that any Government had won two such Orders in one case since the World Court was founded in 1921. On 5August 1993 I also won a so-called Article 74(4) World Court Order for Bosnia against Yugoslavia for genocide. According to I.C.J. Statute Article 74(4), when the full World Court is not in session in The Hague, the President of the Court exercises the full powers of the Court and can issue an Order to the parties in a lawsuit that is legally binding upon them.

Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group such as:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even now intensifying against the 1.75 million Palestinians living in Gaza as this Tribunal convenes here today. As Pappe’s analysis established, Zionism’s “final solution” to Israel’s much-touted and racist “demographic threat” allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always been genocide, whether slow-motion or in blood-thirsty spurts of violence. Indeed, the very essence of Zionism requires ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide against the Palestinians. For example, concerning the 2008-2009 Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza – so-called Operation Cast-lead -- U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua during the Reagan administration’s contra-terror war of aggression against that country which was condemned by the World Court, condemned it as “genocide”” ( Francis Boyle, “The Palestinian Genocide by Israel”, MWC News, 30 August 2013: http://www.mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/30445-palestinian-genocide.html .)

BRITAIN & THE NAKBA. Rayhan Uddin, “Nakba: Britain and the Secret 1948 Palestine Memos”, Global Research, 16 May 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/nakba-britain-secret-1948-palestine-memos/5819405 .

Quote: “Classified cables found by MEE reveal that the UK knew of mass killings and displacement of Palestinians in May 1948, but downplayed them and refused to intervene… It’s late April 1948, in Haifa, northern Palestine.After more than 25 years, British officers are leaving their “mandate” over the territory and have set a withdrawal date: 15 May. The exit is not going smoothly. Ethnic cleansing and violent atrocities are taking place across areas Britain is about to vacate. Zionist armed groups, allowed to flourish in Palestine by the British over three decades and subsequently trained and armed by the colonial power, are sweeping across Palestinian towns and villages, forcibly displacing residents from house to house. Palestinians put up some resistance, helped by nominal forces from neighbouring countries, but are vastly outnumbered and under-equipped. Britain states that it is remaining neutral… But 15 May 1948 would not just be remembered as the day that Britain left Palestine. It was also the day that the State of Israel was declared, and the date generations of Palestinians continue to mark as the Nakba – or Catastrophe – 75 years later.At least 13,000 Palestinians were killed and hundreds of villages were destroyed. In the end, 750,000 people were forcibly displaced from their homes. More than 6,000 Israeli Jews, including 4,000 soldiers and 2,000 civilians, were killed. Previously classified diplomatic cables, seen by Middle East Eye at the National Archives in London, show that Britain was well aware of mass killings and displacement, in Haifa and beyond, during the final days of its Mandate. But London would play down the scale of the events, refuse to intervene or allow others to do so, and would eventually label Palestinians and their allies as masters of their own downfall.”

CHAKRABORTY. Ranjani Chakraborty (Vox journalist), “Why Palestinians protest every May 15. The Palestinian catastrophe, explained”, Vox, 15 May 2023: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/videos/2023/5/15/23723947/palestine-nakba-may-15-protests-israel .

Quote: “Around the time that Israelis celebrate Independence Day, Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or “the Catastrophe.” The Nakba was a series of events, centered around 1948, that expelled hundreds of thousands Palestinians from their homeland and killed thousands. The Nakba isn’t the beginning of the story, but it’s a key part of Palestinian history — and the root of Israel’s creation. Prior to the Nakba, Palestine had a thriving population — largely made up of Arabs — who had lived and worked the land for centuries. But with the founding of Zionism, years of British meddling, and a British pledge to help create a Jewish state in Palestine, things began to change drastically. By 1947, with increasing tensions between Jewish settlers and Palestinian Arabs, the British left Palestine, and the UN stepped in with a plan to partition the land into two states. What followed was known as Plan Dalet: operations by Israeli paramilitary groups that violently uprooted Palestinians. An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, more than 500 villages were decimated, and roughly 750,000 Palestinians displaced. Most who were expelled from their homes couldn’t return to historic Palestine. And today, millions of their descendants live in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, and surrounding countries. The history of the Nakba has been deliberately concealed and often ignored in Western narratives around the creation of Israel.”

CHATGPT. ChatGPT was asked: Nakba ->The Nakba, also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, refers to the displacement and exile of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes during the war between Arabs and Jews in 1948. The Nakba resulted in the creation of the state of Israel and the expulsion of approximately 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. Many Palestinians were forced to flee to neighboring countries such as Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, while others became refugees within their own country. The Nakba is still a significant event for Palestinians, as it continues to shape their political and social identity and is a major obstacle in the efforts towards peace in the region.

CHAVAN. Naomi Chavan, "left-wing" Zionist, joined with right-wing, extremist Zionists, in rejecting the Right of Return to their homeland Palestine of Indigenous Palestinians expelled in the Nakba (and their descendants). Report re Naomi Chavan: “Protesters forced a mayoral reception for visiting Israeli MPs to move to a back room at the Auckland Town Hall yesterday… A spokesman for the 30-strong group of Palestinian Human Rights Campaign protesters, David Wakim, said New Zealand should refuse to host Israeli MPs just as it had banned contact in the past with politicians from Fiji and South Africa who had denied democratic rights to ethnic groups … All five MPs, who span the Israeli political spectrum, said there could be no peace agreement in the Middle East until the Palestinians gave up the right of return to Israel for Arab refugees whose families fled to neighbouring countries when the Israeli state was created in 1948. A member of the left-wing Meretz Party and a founder of the Israeli peace movement, Professor Naomi Chavan, said the key stumbling block was the Palestinian demand for the right of 4 million Palestinian refugees to return to their original family lands in Israel. "Full implementation of the Palestinian right of return eventually means the destruction of the state of Israel, and no Israeli Government can accept it"” ( Simon Collins, “Protest forces backroom meeting with Israeli MPs”, NZ Herald, 27 August 2001: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/protest-forces-backroom-meeting-with-israeli-mps/5HAXOMIVKMJL6C42OWWPSMVCB4/?c_id=601&objectid=211508 ).

CORKILL. Mistahi Corkill, “Long live the Palestinian resistance”, Pearls & Irritations, 21 May 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/long-live-the-palestinian-resistance/ .

Quote: “A song that goes out to the courageous Palestinian people and their supporters around the world:

Balfour proclaimed in 1917 a settler state to be, A proxy base in the “middle east” – a colonial entity,

With use of force they knocked down doors, a killing spree – the rest had to flee, Dispossessed refugees, Occupied – Genocide,

Long Live the Palestinian Resistance, One day you will be free,

1948, Nakba! A day of infamy the state of Israel was declared, A Zionist scheme built on tyranny, Backed by U.S. Imperialists,

A reign of state terror, expansion everywhere, Crimes against humanity, The Palestinians’ right to be, No justice – No peace,

Long Live the Palestinian Resistance, One day you will be free,

Gaza – West Bank – Al Quds, under siege, The whole world sees the atrocities, Stand up demand the right of Palestinians to return and to be free,

This has gone on far too long this struggle must be fought and won, This struggle must be fought and won, Palestine will not be denied,

Long Live the Palestinian Resistance, One day you will be free”.

DAILY SABAH. Daily Sabah, “United Nations commemorates Palestinian Nakba in historic first”. 15 May 2023: https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/united-nations-commemorates-palestinian-nakba-in-historic-first .

Quote:” For the first time Monday, the United Nations officially commemorated the Nakba that marks the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from what is now Israel on the 75th anniversary of their exodus. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is headlining Monday's U.N. commemoration of what Palestinians call the "Nakba" or "catastrophe," an action stemming from the U.N.'s partition of British-ruled Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, called the U.N. observance "historic" and significant because the General Assembly played a key role in the partition of Palestine. "It's acknowledging the responsibility of the U.N. of not being able to resolve this catastrophe for the Palestinian people for 75 years," Mansour told a group of U.N. reporters recently. He said that the catastrophe of the Palestinian people is still ongoing since they still don't have an independent state and don't have the right to return to their homes as called for in a General Assembly resolution adopted in December 1948.”

DALET. Ranjani Chakraborty (Vox) on Plan Dalet, the Zionist plant to ethncially cleanse Palestine in the 1948 Nakba): “Around the time that Israelis celebrate Independence Day, Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or “the Catastrophe.” The Nakba was a series of events, centered around 1948, that expelled hundreds of thousands Palestinians from their homeland and killed thousands. The Nakba isn’t the beginning of the story, but it’s a key part of Palestinian history — and the root of Israel’s creation. Prior to the Nakba, Palestine had a thriving population — largely made up of Arabs — who had lived and worked the land for centuries. But with the founding of Zionism, years of British meddling, and a British pledge to help create a Jewish state in Palestine, things began to change drastically. By 1947, with increasing tensions between Jewish settlers and Palestinian Arabs, the British left Palestine, and the UN stepped in with a plan to partition the land into two states. What followed was known as Plan Dalet: operations by Israeli paramilitary groups that violently uprooted Palestinians. An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, more than 500 villages were decimated, and roughly 750,000 Palestinians displaced. Most who were expelled from their homes couldn’t return to historic Palestine. And today, millions of their descendants live in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, and surrounding countries. The history of the Nakba has been deliberately concealed and often ignored in Western narratives around the creation of Israel” (Ranjani Chakraborty, “Why Palestinians protest every May 15. The Palestinian catastrophe, explained”, Vox, 15 May 2023: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/videos/2023/5/15/23723947/palestine-nakba-may-15-protests-israel ).

DARWISH. Mahmoud Darwish (acclaimed Palestinian poet) (2001): “Today [15 May] is our day of remembrance. We needn't look at what happened yesterday to recall the chronology of crimes perpetrated. The present is a living reminder of the catastrophe, the nakba, the tragic events of which are still unfolding… Our bleeding hands are still capable of saving the parched olive branch from the debris of trees which the occupation has chopped down, if the Israelis are ready to come of age and acknowledge our legitimate national rights, as defined by international law, at the forefront of which are the right of return, and full withdrawal from Palestinian lands occupied in 1967, and the right to self-determination in an independent sovereign state whose capital is Jerusalem. There can be no peace under military occupation. There can be no peace between master and slave. The international community cannot continue to cast a blind eye to what is happening today on the land of Palestine, as it did in the year of the nakba. The Israeli occupation continues to destroy Palestinian society and besiege it. It continues to kill and assassinate, with every ounce of destructive energy it deems appropriate, using its weapons against an isolated people that is defending what remains of its threatened identity and existence, defending what remains of its debris-strewn homes, defending what remains of its orchards. The interest of the world's countries and peoples in the confrontation taking place in Palestine today, and their support of the Palestinian people - a people which has been deprived of an ordinary, normal life - is a test of a moral stance that will reveal to what extent the values of freedom, justice and equality have credibility” (Mahmoud Darwish, “'Our catastrophe was the creation of Israel'”, Guardian, 14 May 2001: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/may/14/comment.israelandthepalestinians ).

DAWN. Dawn, “”The long Nakba”, 15 May 2023: https://www.dawn.com/news/1753266/the-long-nakba .

Quote: “This year, Israel celebrates 75 years as a nation state. But for the Palestinian people, there is little to celebrate as the Nakba — catastrophe in Arabic — which accompanied the establishment of Israel, and entailed the ethnic cleansing of the Arabs from their ancestral homeland, has never really stopped. In fact, the Palestinians have suffered a continuous Nakba at Israeli hands, as the latest massacres occurring in Gaza and the occupied West Bank show. The latest bout of violence began on Tuesday, when Israel launched an assassination campaign against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance group. High-ranking members of the armed group were targeted by Israeli strikes in Gaza, many as they slept, their wives and children also inconveniently slaughtered as ‘collateral damage’. Islamic Jihad reacted by unleashing a barrage of rockets targeting Israel. At the time of writing, over 30 Palestinians had been killed, including six children, as hundreds of homes in the impoverished Gaza Strip were partially or totally destroyed in Israeli attacks. Hospitals in the tiny enclave are reportedly overwhelmed, while Israel has also responded with deadly force in the held West Bank.”

DAYS OF PALESTINE. Days of Palestine, “On Nakba’s 75th Anniversary, EUPAC Condemns European Support of Israeli Occupation”, 4 May 2023: https://daysofpalestine.ps/in-nakbas-75th-anniversary-eupac-condemns-european-support-of-israeli-occupation/ .

Quote: “European Palestinian Council for Political Relations EUPAC condemned Thursday, May 4, 2023, at a conference held in Brussels on the Palestinian Nakba, the speech of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Israeli occupation state, which is the Nakba for Palestinians… On April 26, Leyen delivered a speech congratulating the Israeli occupation state on the 75th anniversary of its founding (the Nakba), describing the Israeli occupation as “the vibrant democracy in the heart of the Middle East” and claiming that “Israel” made “the desert literally bloom”.”

DEIR YASSIN MASSACRE. Wikipedia: “Deir Yassin … was a [strategically important] Palestinian Arab village of around 600 inhabitants about 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) west of Jerusalem. Deir Yassin declared its neutrality during the 1948 Palestine war between Arabs and Jews. The village was razed after a massacre of around 107 [others: 250] of its Arab residents on April 9, 1948, by the Jewish paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi. The village buildings are today part of the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center, an Israeli public psychiatric hospital” (“Deir Yassin”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin ).

WAFA on Deir Yassin Masacre (2023), “WAFA: “Remembering the Deir Yassin Massacre 75 years on”, 9 April 2023: https://imemc.org/article/wafa-remembering-the-deir-yassin-massacre-75-years-on/ . Quote: “On this day in 1948, a couple of hundred armed Zionist militias from the pre-1948 Irgun and Stern gangs stormed the village of Deir Yassin, a few kilometers to the west of Jerusalem, and committed one of the earliest massacres that became standard practice for the newly-founded state of Israel. On April 9, 1948, Zionist gangs raided the village of Deir Yassin, killing at least 254 Palestinian civilians, mainly women, children and the elderly. There were documented cases of rape, mutilation and humiliation. The Deir Yassin massacre was led by [later Israeli PM] Menachem Begin in his capacity as head of the Irgun terrorist militia… Of nearly 70 massacres during the 1948 Nakba, Deir Yassin would become one of those atrocities where almost all the acts of war criminality were unleashed: killing, destruction, pillaging, rape, and displacement.”

DEIR YASSIN MASSACRE MOVIE “BORN IN DEIR YASSIN”. The film “Born in Deir Yassin” with English subtitles was posted on YouTube in 2021. It presents the shocking recollections of unrepentant Zionist perpetrators and witnesses. The shocking Israeli eye witness accounts are interspersed with the story of a mentally ill woman in the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center (incorporating the remains of Deir Yassin), the removal of her son, and official forgetting (underscored by the neo-Nazi Israeli judges refusing to allow access to photographs of the Deir Yassin massacre for Israeli security and reputational reasons) (Boris Yeltsin (!), “Born in Deir Yassin (2017) Complete Film with English Subtitles”, YouTube, 11 April 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiLt5awzmyI .)

EID. Yara Eid (Palestinian journaliss) quoted in Mariam Barghouti, “Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing made clear that Israel’s war on Palestinian journalists is part of its war on Palestine”, Mondoweiss, 11 May 2023: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/05/shireen-abu-aklehs-killing-made-clear-that-israels-war-on-palestinian-journalists-is-part-of-its-war-on-palestine/?emci=d0166162-27f4-ed11-907c-00224832eb73&emdi=7a122fef-cbf4-ed11-907c-00224832eb73&ceid=64354 .

EINSTEIN. Albert Einstein (1879-1955; outstanding German Jewish mathematician, winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics (for discovering the photoelectric effect) and most famous for his special theory of relativity and general theory of relativity. Initially pro-Zionist, Einstein was increasingly critical of the fascist and racist nature of Zionist extremists such as Menachem Begin):

(1). Albert Einstein on racist Zionism, 1938: “Just one more personal word on the question of partition. I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain--especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state." [1].

(2). Albert Einstein in a Letter with other Jewish scholars (notably famed philosopher Hannah Arendt) decrying Nazi-style Irgun Zionists and the Deir Yassin Massacre to the New York Times, 1948: “TO THE EDITORS OF NEW YORK TIMES:

Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.

The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin's political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.

Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin's behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.

The public avowals of Begin's party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.

Attack on Arab Village

A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.

The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party.

Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model.

During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.

The people of the Freedom Party have had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots.

Discrepancies Seen

The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party, and their record of past performance in Palestine bear the imprint of no ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a "Leader State" is the goal.

In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin's efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin.

The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.

Signatories:

New York, Dec. 2, 1948." [2].

(3). Albert Einstein’s letter about the Deir Yassin Massacre (1948): “ April 10.1948

Mr. Shepard Rifkin

Exec. Director

American Friends of the Fighters

for the Freedom of Israel

Dear Sir:

When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations build up from our own ranks.

I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.

Sincerely yours,

Albert Einstein.” [3].

[1]. Albert Einstein, “Our Debt to Zionism”, 1938, quoted by David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann (eds), “Einstein on politics: his private thoughts and public stands on nationalism, Zionism, war, peace, and the bomb”, Princeton University Press, 2007: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8359.html .

[2]. Letter by Albert Einstein and many other signatories to the New York Times, 4 December 1948, “New Palestine Party. Visit of Menachen Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed”,. a letter to The New York Times, published in the "Books" section (Page 12) of the New York Times, Saturday December 4, 1948: http://www.archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948 ; see also “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[3]. Albert Einstein’s letter about the Deir Yassin Massacre (1948) : http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ter-einstein.html .

(4). Albert Einstein: “The (Israeli) state idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with many difficulties and a narrow-mindedness. I believe it is bad” (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ).

(5). Albert Einstein: "The most important aspect of our policy must be our ever-present, manifest desire to institute complete equality for the Arab citizens living in our midst ... The attitude we adopt toward the Arab minority will provide the real test of our moral standards as a people… [Only cooperation with Arabs] can create a dignified and safe life… What saddens me is less the fact that the Jews are not smart enough to understand this, but rather, that they are not smart enough to want it" (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ).

ELASSAR. Alaa Elassar (Palestinian American CNN journalist on Netflix's new film 'Farha'”, 2022: “"Farha" released December 1 on Netflix, is inspired by the story of a young Palestinian girl and the violence she witnessed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, when roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes by armed Jewish groups in what Palestinians have since called al-Nakba or "the catastrophe." As the groups invaded Farha's village, her father locked her in a pantry for safety, where she watched the horrors of al-Nakba unfold through a small hole in the wall and crack in the door. As days passed, she was transformed from a spirited 14-year-old who dreamed of going to school into a shell of her former self… The film, selected as Jordan's 2023 Oscars entry, has been celebrated the world over for portraying al-Nakba so vividly, as well as offering a perspective on the events that led to Israel's founding that is rarely seen or heard on a global mainstream platform… "I'm a product of the Nakba. My parents and grandparents are a product of the Nakba... you cannot deny our existence," Giries [an 82-year-old Palestinian refugee who survived the war] said. "Everyone needs to see 'Farha,' because it is not a fictional story of this girl, it is my story, it is the Palestinian story," she added. "We don't care who tells us it isn't true. We lived it and our stories need to be heard because the injustice against Palestinians did not end with al-Nakba and it is far from over” (Alaa Elassar, “Palestinians relive the raw and painful history of al-Nakba in Netflix's new film 'Farha'”, CNN, 13 December 2022: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/farha-palestinian-film-nakba-darin-sallam-reaj/index.html ).

ELDIN. Ahmed Eldin (a former journalist for Al Jazeera)(2022): “The Israeli regime is in Full Panic Mode over Farha, a powerful, heart-opening film by Darin Sallam that dares to tell the story of a young girls' perspective of the Nakba (ethnic cleansing of +700,000 Palestinians)” (Nadda Osman,”Netflix’s “Farha”: Palestinians bemused by Israeli anger over Nakba film”, Middle East Eye, 1 December 2022: https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/farha-netflix-palestine-nakba-film-israel-anger-defended ).

ESSA. Azad Essa (New York-based journalist on Nakba movie “Farha”, 2022): “Darin Sallam says it feels as if she's waited all her life to make this film. The 35-year-old Jordanian of Palestinian descent says she can't recall when she first heard about Radieh, the young Palestinian girl who was hidden in a room by her father as Zionist militia raided their village during the Nakba in 1948.All she knows is that the story, one of many about The Catastrophe, in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed as the new state of Israel came into being, moved her to one day tell the world about what happened in 1948…. Since it premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in 2021, the film has received ringing endorsements from filmmakers and juries across the globe for its cinematography and direction; it has more importantly received an outpouring of love from Palestinians for its depiction of the Nakba, considered something of a unicorn in international film. Farha has now been screened in around 40 film festivals and won several awards. Sallam says the response has left her and her team overjoyed. The film was an emotional experience because many of the extras were Palestinian refugees from the Gaza camp (Jerash camp) in Jordan, who are the living embodiment of the Nakba. Even the embroidery for the film was made by the women from the camp. She says that there were times they had to stop shooting because the extras were crying” (Azad Essa, “'We told the truth': Darin Sallam on portraying the Nakba in Netflix's 'Farha'”, Middle East Eye, 13 December 2022: https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/farha-netflix-darin-sallam-nakba-palestine-interview .)

Azad Essa (on Nakba movie “Tantura”, 2022): “His [Teddy Katz’s] subsequent dissertation detailed how the Alexandroni Brigade, one of a dozen brigades established by the Zionist paramilitary organisation known as the Haganah, had massacred up to 250 Palestinians after the village had fallen. …That the filmmaker [Alon Schwarz] who painstakingly exposed how Israeli society, with the full backing of the Israeli academy, government and armed forces, systematically erased the history of the native population in creating the powerful myth of Israel, is unable to extricate himself from the narrative, is a testament to the power of the myth itself. I suspect it's not through a lack of trying. Schwarz is against the occupation and considers Israel an apartheid state. But Tantura is as much a saga about the ongoing denial of the Nakba as it is about the refusal to mete out justice. For Palestinians, the revelations in Tantura only reinforce what they have said all along about the Nakba. After all, Tantura was just one among hundreds of villages from which more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled. In the end, the film, though extremely important, is neither liberating nor a validation of their pain. It's just 74 years late” (Azad Essa, “Tantura Massacre: Documentary exposes Israel’s foundational myth”, Middle East Eye, 6 December 2022: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-tantura-massacre-documentary-foundational-myth-exposes-how ).

ESTRIN. Daniel Estrin (NPR journalist), “75 years ago: Israel's triumph became a catastrophe for Palestinians”, 15 May 2023: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/15/1176108887/75-years-ago-israels-triumph-became-a-catastrophe-for-palestinians .

Quote: “This longing is at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1947, the U.N. voted to partition Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state. That sparked fighting between Arab and Jewish militias. Israel declared independence on May 15, 1948. Regional Arab armies invaded. Israel won the war the next year. By then, the vast majority of the Arabs there had fled or were expelled. Their homes were given to Jewish immigrants or were destroyed. Palestinians call it the Nakba, the catastrophe. And many of them call it an ongoing catastrophe. This family's village, Yalo, was destroyed by Israel not in 1948 but in the 1967 war, one of the last Palestinian villages entirely depopulated and destroyed… Israeli historian Shay Hazkani wrote "Dear Palestine," a book about the 1948 war. He took me to an Israeli archive and showed me a recently discovered trove of intelligence documents that Zionist forces compiled in the years leading up to Israel's founding - hundreds of Palestinian villages documented in meticulous detail, villages Israel later destroyed. There's been controversy recently about how to handle these kinds of documents. Israeli media have covered cases of defense officials removing documents from archives and classifying them, reportedly saying they could stir up unrest…Today, millions of Palestinians live stateless with the violence of an entrenched Israeli military occupation. Israel has had its most ultranationalist government in history, with far-right ministers who have called to erase a Palestinian village and campaigned to encourage Palestinians to leave. Some Palestinians say they fear a second Nakba and say their role is simply to stay put and prevent another historic displacement.”

FABER. Dr David Faber (historian, currently an Adjunct Research Scholar at Flinders University), “‘Antisemitism’, mendacity & zionist propaganda in Australia”, Pearls & Irritations, 4 January 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/antisemitism-mendacity-zionist-propaganda-in-australia/ .

Quote: “To speak of Israeli crimes against Palestinians is no abstract hyperbole. In 1948, Zionist militia broke out of their enclaves to attack Palestinian communities who had been disarmed during British repression of the Great Arab Rebellion of 1936-9, that had protested British imperial demographic engineering of the Mandate. Three quarters of a million Palestinians, about half the national population of the country, were displaced at gunpoint by terrorist militias and their threatening propaganda. They had been trained in `irregular warfare’ by British Army specialist Orde Wingate, deliberately shooting up Palestinian villages under `Plan Dalet’ or D, on the basis of long prepared intelligence. This Palestinian `Catastrophe’ or Nakba was inextricably linked with the unilateral foundation of the State of Israel. Given subsequent events, it must be recognised that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine still proceeds apace. In 2020, serried ranks of Israeli Defence Force snipers injured with fragmenting battlefield ammunition over 6106, amputating limbs and killing 183, including a young woman who had been shot in the head tending to the wounded as a Red Crescent nurse. The IDF boasted of its workmanship, claiming every shot had found its mark. It was all bravely done against unarmed protestors from behind the ‘separation fence’, backed up with a ditch and earthen mound rampart that was never breached. These militaristic methods of crowd control mock Israel’s claim to be a democracy. The repeated aerial bombardment of civilians in Gaza is a case in point. Such a mendacious ethnocracy needs to misrepresent the truth and undermine free speech and criticism by lawfare prosecutions and the pseudo-definition mongering necessary to prepare it. The misleadingly named `International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’ has been rolling out its pseudo-definition of ‘Antisemitism’ for some time to criminalise free speech criticism of Israeli human rights abuses and is violations of international law.”

Comment: The all-European IHRA (of which Australia is a member) is anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Arab, Palestinian and Muslim critics of Apartheid Israeli crimes), anti-Jewish anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish critics of Apartheid Israeli crimes), and holocaust denying (by ignoring all WW2 holocausts other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, and indeed some 60 other holocausts and genocides).

FAMOUS WRITERS PROTESTING PALESTINIAN GENOCIDE. 15 famous writers, including 3 Nobel Laureates) protested the “the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.” (2006): “The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.

That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources - most particularly that of water - by the Israeli Defence (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land allotted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.

Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?

Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.

This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and resisted.

(Signed) Tariq Ali, Russell Banks, John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Eduardo Galeano, Charles Glass, Naomi Klein, W.J.T. Mitchell, Harold Pinter, Arundhati Roy. Jose Saramago, Giiuliana Sgrena, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn” (Letter from Howard Zinn with Tariq Ali, Russell Banks, John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk Eduardo Galeano, Charles Glass, Naomi Klein, W.J.T. Mitchell, Arundhati Roy, Harold Pinter, Jose Saramago, Giiuliana Sgrena, and Gore Vidal re Palestine, Peninsular Peace and Justice Centre, Palo Alto, California, USA, 19 July 2006: http://peaceandjustice.org/article.php?story=20060726115326120&query=zinn ; see also “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ and “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .

“FARHA” NAKBA MOVIE. The Nakba movie “Farha” (director Darin Salaam, a Palestinian Jordanian) was released on 1 December 2022 on Netflix. It is about young Palestinian girl who was hidden in a room by her father as Zionist militia raided their village and massacred the inhabitants during the Nakba in 1948. For comments see entries under Elassar, Eldin, Essa, Osman, Salaam and Syed. For the official trailer see Nadda Osman,”Netflix’s “Farha”: Palestinians bemused by Israeli anger over Nakba film”, Middle East Eye, 1 December 2022: https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/farha-netflix-palestine-nakba-film-israel-anger-defended

FASSIHI. Farnaz Fassihi and Hiba Yazbek, “In First, Palestinian Displacement Commemorated at United Nations”, New York Times, 15 May 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/world/middleeast/palestine-displacement-israel-un.html .

Quote: The United Nations for the first time on Monday officially commemorated the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the war surrounding the creation of Israel 75 years ago, drawing a sharp response from the Israeli ambassador to the world body.The event — marking the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” by Palestinians — was attended by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas; many member states from Asia, Africa, Central and South America and the Middle East; and representatives of the African Union and the Arab League, who delivered speeches. The United States and Britain did not attend.“This resolution represents a recognition by your organizations of the ongoing historic injustice that fell on the Palestinian people in 1948 and before that date, and that continues after,” Mr. Abbas said. He added that it was also a rebuttal “for the first time by you of the Israeli Zionist narrative that denies this Nakba.” The event was the latest arena for a decades-long narrative battle between Israelis and Palestinians. To Israelis, the creation of their state was a heroic moment for a long-persecuted people that deserves celebration. But to Palestinians, it was a moment of profound national trauma.The United Nations General Assembly, composed of 193 member states, has often been sympathetic to Palestinians. Its commemoration on Monday came at a tense period in Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where violence has surged this year. While Palestinians celebrated the U.N. action as validation, the Israelis saw it as an attack on their state. Mr. Abbas called for the suspension of Israel’s membership from the United Nations, saying that the Jewish state never “fulfilled nor respected its obligations and commitments” as a prerequisite to its membership, and had violated resolutions.”

FOX. Vashti Fox, “Oppression and resistance in Palestine today”, Red Flag, 12 May 2023: https://redflag.org.au/article/oppression-and-resistance-palestine-today .

Quote: “Palestinians have their backs against the wall. In Gaza, they are subject to a devastating economic blockade and regular Israeli air offensives. In the West Bank, they have every aspect of their lives controlled and regulated by humiliating and often violent restrictions. Within the 1948 borders of Israel, they are routinely harassed, denied basic democratic rights and hounded out of their homes and off their land. In every part of historic Palestine, there are escalating levels of brutality, intimidation and repression. Nevertheless, there are flickers of resistance. Israel and its backers in the West are not the only forces oppressing the Palestinians. In the West Bank, the population is ruled by the Palestinian Authority. The PA has long ceased to be a body for Palestinian resistance and is now the ruling class of the West Bank, albeit one that is limited by Israel. The PA is run by a corrupt and wealthy class of Palestinians renowned for siphoning funds from ministry budgets. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and his family are notorious. Abbas is worth around US$100 million. His family is worth even more…

The PA employs all public servants, organises basic services and runs “security” in the area. In fact, the Israeli state has outsourced much of its policing of the area to the PA, which arrests opponents of Israel and those who speak out against its own rule. There is no story that illustrates this more clearly than that of Nizar Banat. Banat was an outspoken critic of Fatah, the party that dominates the PA. He campaigned against corruption and the mistreatment of Palestinian political prisoners. For his activism he was physically threatened multiple times. In May 2021, his home near Hebron was attacked by masked gunmen on motorbikes. After that, he decided it wasn’t safe to stay home. According to a Guardian article, he told his wife he was leaving because he “didn’t want to be killed in front of his children”. The following month, he was woken early in the morning, dragged from the bed in his “safe house” by fourteen men from the Palestinian security service, who were given permission by Israel to enter the area. He was beaten to death. The PA said his death was from natural causes. But according to an autopsy commissioned by his family, the activist died after suffering 42 injuries inflicted with metal pipes.”

GANDHI. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948, was a Gujarati lawyer, and the pre-eminent political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian Independence movement. He was the pioneer of satyagraha (“truth insistence”, “satya” meaning "truth" and “agraha” meaning "insistence", or "holding firmly to") which was launched on 11 September 1906 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Satyagraha involved resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, a philosophy based upon “ahisma” or total non-violence and led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world) on dispossession of the Palestinians) (1938: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home (Mahatma Gandhi, “The Jews”, Harijan, 26 November 1938; see “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .

HADDAD. Mohammed Haddad (2022): “Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world mark the Nakba, or catastrophe, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.Having secured the support of the British government for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, on May 14, 1948, as soon as the British Mandate expired, Zionist forces declared the establishment of the State of Israel, triggering the first Arab-Israeli war. Zionist military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands and captured 78 percent of historic Palestine. The remaining 22 percent was divided into what are now the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip. The fighting continued until January 1949 when an armistice agreement between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria was forged. The 1949 Armistice Line is also known as the Green Line and is the generally recognised boundary between Israel and the West Bank. The Green Line is also referred to as the (pre-) 1967 borders, before Israel occupied the rest of Palestine during the June 1967 war. Israel’s military occupation of Palestine remains at the core of this decades-long conflict that continues to shape every part of Palestinians’ lives. Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist military forces attacked major Palestinian cities and destroyed some 530 villages. About 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres” (Mohammed Haddad, “Nakba Day: What happened in Palestine in 1948?”, Al Jazeera, 15 May 2022: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/15/nakba-mapping-palestinian-villages-destroyed-by-israel-in-1948 .

HATUQA. Dalia Hatuqa “The Nakba: Five Palestinian towns massacred 75 years ago”, Al Jazeera, 15 May 2023: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/15/the-nakba-five-palestinian-towns-massacred-75-years-ago .

Quote: “Every year on May 15, Palestinians mark a sombre occasion: the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) that befell Palestinians in the lead-up to and during 1948, when they were expelled from their historic and ancestral land by Zionist militias.During the Nakba, a mass expulsion ensued where hundreds of villages [530] were depopulated, homes were destroyed, and thousands were killed. Jewish Irgun, Haganah and Stern Gang militias committed a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres. Here are five of the massacres that took place [deaths in brackets] : Balad al-Sheikh [60-70]… Saasaa [tens]… Deir Yassin [>110]… Saliha [60-94 in a mosque]… Lydda (Lydd/Lod) [200]”.

HAZKANI. Shay Hazkani (Israeli historian, author of "Dear Palestine" a book about the 1948 war, and hundreds of pre-Nakba Zionist intelligence documents about hundreds of Palestinian villages that were documented in meticulous detail, and later destroyed in the Nakba): “I would say that what they're [Israeli censors are] mostly concerned of is the actual remnants and story of Arab Palestine that is contained in these files - right? - you know, that people would read them, that scholars would write histories that resurrect a civilization that once existed here and was, essentially, almost entirely destroyed. The heritage of that place is gone” (Daniel Estrin, “75 years ago: Israel's triumph became a catastrophe for Palestinians”, 15 May 2023: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/15/1176108887/75-years-ago-israels-triumph-became-a-catastrophe-for-palestinians .)

HOLLEIS. Jennifer Holleis, “What is the Palestinian Nakba and why does it matter?” Deutsche Welle, 15 May 2023: https://www.dw.com/en/what-is-the-palestinian-nakba-and-why-does-it-matter/a-65539735 .

Quote: “On May 15, Palestinians around the world commemorate 75 years of having lost their homeland. What is the Nakba, how does it tie into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and why is it still relevant today?... The Arabic word Nakba means catastrophe or disaster. In reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , the term Nakba or al-Nakba refers to the Palestinians having lost their homeland during and after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It's thought that around 700,000 people in what is now Israel either fled or were forced from their homes. Many Palestinian refugees abroad [7 million] remain stateless to this day.”

HOUSE DEMOLITIONS CONTINUING POST-1967. The large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques and other property during and after the Nakba, continued after Zionist seizure of all of Palestine plus parts of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria in the 1967 Naksa. Wikipedia: “House demolition is a method Israel has used in the Israeli-occupied territories since they came under its control in the [1967] Six-Day War to achieve various aims. Broadly speaking, the house demolitions can be classified as either administrative, punitive/dissuasive and as part of military operations. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions estimated that Israel had razed 49,532 Palestinian structures as of 2019. Administrative house demolitions are done to enforce building codes and regulations, which in the occupied Palestinian territories are set by the Israeli military. Critics claim that they are used as a means to Judaize parts of the occupied territory, especially East Jerusalem. Punitive house demolitions involves demolishing houses of Palestinians or neighbors and relatives of Palestinians suspected of violent acts against Israelis” (“Israeli demolition of Palestinian property”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_demolition_of_Palestinian_property .)

ISRAELI COMMITTEE AGAINST HOUSE DEMOLITIONS (ICAHD). The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) estimates that about 52,000 Palestinian homes were demolished in the Naqba (Source: Walid Khalidi, All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2006) and another 56,500 in the Occupied Territory since 1967, based on information gleaned from the Israeli Ministry of Interior, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Civil Administration, OCHA and other UN sources, Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, ICAHD’s own field work and other sources (updated as of March, 2021.) Additional thousands of homes have been demolished inside Israel between the Naqba and today, although the figures we have are fragmentary. It should be noted that neither Israel nor such monitoring agencies as the UN’s OCHA keep figures on home demolitions alone, but lump them into the demolition of “structures.” Thus structures needed for livelihood such as barns, sheep-pens, cisterns or fencing are included in our figures. On the other hand, an apartment block of 30 or more apartments is counted in the statistics as “one” demolition. The figures we have collected then balance (although no one knows to what degree) between “structures demolished” and actual housing units. The figures, then, provide a rough estimate of actual house demolitions, which may be somewhat more or less than the figures given” (The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD),“Statistics on House / Structure Demolitions – November 1947-August 2022 ” : https://icahd.org/2021/04/26/statistics-on-house-structure-demolitions-november-1947-march-2021/ ).

JAMAL. Ben Jamal, “75 Years of Nakba: A Stark Reminder of Israel’s Colonialism”, Global Research, 8 May 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/75-years-nakba-stark-reminder-israel-colonialism/5818534 .

Quote: “Next Saturday, May 13 2023, thousands will gather in London to attend a march organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign and partners, supported by 10 national trade unions. They will march to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, not as an historical moment of collective national trauma but as an ongoing process of colonisation, dispossession, and occupation… The union members, students and citizens of conscience marching with us on May 13 know the truths of Palestinian history and the realities of the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people and refuse to be silent in the face of them. They understand that there is no coherent anti-racist position that does not have at its heart resistance and opposition to Israel’s system of apartheid. They understand the responsibilities owed by British citizens in the context of more than 100 years of British complicity in Palestinian oppression, stretching all the way back to Balfour in 1917.”

KAZAK. Ali Kazak (a former Palestinian ambassador and head of delegation to Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific region), “The Palestinian catastrophe (Al-Nakba) and Australia’s responsibility”, Pearls & Irritations, 16 May 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/the-palestinian-catastrophe-al-nakba-and-australias-responsibility/ .

Quote: “In 1948, the Jewish underground terrorist groups – the Hagannah, Stern Gang and Irgun ethnically cleansed more than 850,000 Palestinians from their homeland (70 percent of the Palestinian population) through terror and tens of massacres. They were dispossessed because they were not Jews in order to turn the non-Jewish majority in Palestine into a minority and the newly arrived European Jewish minority into a majority…There is nothing to justify the Labor Government’s non recognition of the state of Palestine against the wishes of the majority of Labor party members and Australian people, as numerous public opinion surveys have shown in more than fifteen years. Australia and the Labor Government should not be taken hostage by pro-Israeli right-wing extremists who put Israel’s interests above Australia’s national interest.”

KLEIN. Naomi Klein (famed anti-racist Jewish Canadian humanitarian writer) on the Palestinian Genocide and “never again to anyone” (2007): “There is a debate among Jews - I'm a Jew by the way. The debate boils down to the question: "Never again to everyone, or never again to us?... [Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free card...There is another strain in the Jewish tradition that say[s], 'Never again to anyone.”” [1]. Yotam Feldman, “Naomi Klein: oppose the state not the people”, Haaretz, 2 July 2007: http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1097058.html .

KOESTLER. Arthur Koestler (famed Jewish Hungarian writer and author of numerous brilliant books, notably “The Thirteenth Tribe” about the non-Semitic Turkic Khazar convert origin of the Ashkenazi Jews, on the dispossession of the Indigenous Palestinians): “Here was one nation promising another nation the land of a third nation – an impossible notion)” (quoted by Victor Sebestyen, “1946. The Making of the Modern World”, Pantheon, 2014, page 274. )

LONDON CONFERENCE ON PALESTINE, LONDON 1939. “[Photo] London Conference, St. James' Palace, February 1939. Palestinian delegates (foreground), Left to right: Fu'ad Saba, Yaqub Al-Ghussein, Musa Alami, Amin Tamimi, Jamal Al-Husseini, Awni Abdul Hadi, George Antonius, and Alfred Roch. Facing the Palestinians are the British, with Sir Neville Chamberlain presiding” (“Georg Antonius”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Antonius ). [The British 1939 White Paper temporarily suspended Jewish immigration to Palestine for fear of alienating Muslims who were important for the Allied war effort].

MENUHIN. Moshe Menuhin (1893-198); anti-racist Jewish scholar; born in Russia but lived in Palestine, Israel and the US, a prominent anti-Zionist, he was the author of "The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time", "Jewish Critics of Zionism", and of the family history "The Menuhin Saga"; the father of famous violinist , universalist, anti-racist and anti-Zionist Yehudi Menuhin) re Israeli oppression of Palestinians: “Jews should be Jews - not Nazis” (Moshe Menuhin quoted by Grace Halsell in “Like father, like son: a tribute to Moshe and Yehudi Menuhin”, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), July 1996: http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0796/9607018.htm .)

MIDDLE EAST EYE (MME). Middle East Eye, “Nakba: Thousands march in London to mark Palestinian mass displacement”, 14 May 2023: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/nakba-thousands-march-london-mark-palestine-displacement .

Quote: “Thousands of people marched in London on Saturday commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, which refers to the mass forced expulsion of Palestinians by Zionist militias to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948. The demonstration, titled "Nakba 75 – End Apartheid, End the Occupation", gathered in the heart of London outside the BBC headquarters before participants made their way to Downing Street, where the office of the British prime minister is located. "The Nakba was not just a singular event, today we are still living the effect of the Nakba," Leanne Mohammed, a British Palestinian activist attending the rally, told Middle East Eye. "Seventy-five years ago my family was expelled from their home in Haifa, Palestine, by Zionist militias. They ended up as refugees in Lebanon. Three-quarters of a century later they are still living in that same refugee camp," she said.”

MIDDLE EAST MONITOR. Middle East Monitor, “Israel seeks boycott of Nakba anniversary event at UN”, 27 April 2023: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230427-israel-seeks-boycott-of-nakba-anniversary-event-at-un/ .

Quote: “Israel is trying to persuade country representatives not to attend the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba at the UN headquarters in New York, Israeli TV Channel 13 has reported. The event is scheduled to be held on 15 May. The channel quoted a senior Israeli official as saying that, "If necessary, [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu will personally participate in these efforts and will not hesitate”… The Nakba ("Catastrophe") is the name given to the ethnic cleansing of more than three-quarters of a million Palestinians driven from their homes and land by Jewish terror gangs such as the Irgun, Lehi and Haganah, and the creation of the Zionist state of Israel in Palestine in 1948."

MOHYELDIN. Ayman Mohyeldin (MSNBC journalist interviewing Palestinian American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib , “Rashida Tlaib on the GOP’s efforts to rewrite Palestinian history”, YouTube 14 May 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eT4AsHcHJI .

Quote: “Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was planning to host an event at the Capitol to mark the 75th anniversary of the “Nakba”, otherwise known as the Palestinian Catastrophe. That is until House Speaker Kevin McCarthy canceled it. MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin speaks to Congresswoman Tlaib on the GOP’s efforts to silence her and rewrite Palestinian history.”

MOORE. MOORE. Lindsay Moore (2021): “Despite the devastating effects of the 1948 ‘Nakba' (catastrophe) on Palestinian cultural life, Palestinian writers insist on the significance of libraries and wider book culture and contribute to ongoing efforts to retrieve a continually besieged Palestinian heritage. Beginning with an emblematic library scene in Isabella Hammad's The Parisian (2019) before tracking ways in which modernity and colonialism have been negotiated in the Khalidi Library in Jerusalem; Ibrahim Nasrallah’s novel Time of White Horses (2007/2016); and memoirs by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (The First Well, 1987/2012), Fadwa Tuqan (A Mountainous Journey, 1985/1990), and Ghada Karmi (In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story, 2002), this article argues that creative literature sheds light on who has (and had) access to libraries in Palestine/Israel and the worldly axes on which Palestinian book culture has been conceived… The most significant constraint upon Palestinian library culture has been a colonial continuum that started with the British occupation of Palestine, and the issuing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the latter ‘view[ing] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ (Thompson 72). A neo-colonial situation was inaugurated in 1948 with the unilateral declaration of an independent state of Israel and exile of some 800,000 Arabs (in the Nakba, or catastrophe). It persists in Israel’s continued occupation and settlement of Palestinian land, control of its borders, and frequent wars on Gaza. Palestinian libraries and wider book culture also need to be understood as a form of resistance to European colonialism, then Israeli occupation. Despite the devastating effects of 1948 on Palestinian cultural life, Palestinian memoirs and fiction insist on the significance of book culture and contribute to ongoing efforts to retrieve a continually besieged Palestinian heritage (see De Cesari).2 I explore reflections on Palestinian book culture in what follows, beginning with an emblematic library scene from Isabella Hammad’s The Parisian (2019) in which Palestinian Arab subjective crisis is spurred by exposure to European epistemology at the height of its imperial domination. I then explore, in counterpoint (see Said, Culture 61–62), a parallel reality in Palestine where libraries were simultaneously moulding modernity, as we see with reference to the Khalidi Library (al-Khalidiyya) in Jerusalem. Diverse perspectives on Palestinian libraries, literacy, and literature in the pre-1948 period are revealed by Ibrahim Nasrallah’s novel Time of White Horses (Zaman al-khuyul al-bayda’, 2007) and three memoirs, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s The First Well (al-Bi’r al-ula, 1987), Fadwa Tuqan’s A Mountainous Journey (Rihla jabaliyya, rihla sa'ba, 1985), and Ghada Karmi’s In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story (2002). I end by revisiting attempts to retrieve and sustain private libraries following 1948. Creative literature sheds light on who has (had) access to libraries in Palestine/Israel and the worldly axes on which Palestinian book culture has been conceived. Attention to book infrastructure, as well as representational content, consolidates a ‘rhetorics of belonging’ (Bernard), contextualising why and how ‘Palestine writes’.3 ” (Lindsay Moore, “‘Keys to Paradise’: Libraries, Literature, and Literacy in Palestine”, Wasafiri, Volume 36, pages 16-24, 17 November 2021: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02690055.2021.1957219 ).

"MORNINGS IN JENIN” NAKBA NOVEL. “Mornings in Jenin” by Susan Abulhawa is a powerful novel about the Nakba and its consequences.

MOSQUES DESTROYED & VIOLATED. Of 160 mosques in villages seized by the genocidally racist Zionists in the Nakba only 40 survived by 2007. The violation of places of worship in Israel/Palestine: “Of 160 mosques in villages seized by the Zionist invaders in 1948 only 40 survived by 2007 [19-21]. The racist Zionist victors ensured that Hebrew names replaced the Arabic names of more than 9,000 natural features, villages, and ruins in territory seized by the Zionists in 1948 (one notes that the 2018 passage of the racist Israeli nation-state law makes “Israel”, that has ruled all of Palestine since 1967, a “Jewish state” without reference to Indigenous Palestinians , and with Arabic relegated from an official language to merely a special language. Following defence of Al Quds (East Jerusalem, the Old City of Jerusalem) by the Jordanian Arab Legion in 1948, all but one of the thirty-five synagogues of the Jewish Quarter were destroyed. In the 2014 Gaza Massacre the Israelis destroyed 73 mosques and partially destroyed another 205. In the 1994 Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre (Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre, Hebron Massacre) in Israeli-occupied Hebron, 29 Muslims at prayer were killed and 125 wounded by a Jewish Israeli fanatic. In 2014 two Palestinians killed 5 Israelis in a synagogue. Presently racist Zionist settlers on the Occupied West Bank are demanding the destruction of even more mosques. Importantly, the racist Zionists have now ethnically cleansed 90% of Palestine and Apartheid Israel severely restricts Indigenous Palestinian access to mosques and churches – there are 8 million Palestinian refugees in camps, 7 million Exiled Palestinians (forbidden to enter Palestine) , 5 million Occupied Palestinians with zero human rights and highly abusively confined to the Gaza Concentration Camp (2 million) or to West Bank ghettoes (3 million), and 1.9 million Israeli Palestinians living as Third Class citizens under over 60 Nazi-style race-based laws. All of these 14 million Palestinians are variously excluded by the racist Zionists from all or part of Palestine” (Gideon Polya, “Notre Dame, Christchurch & Sri Lanka Tragedies Spotlight Historical Destructions & Violations Of Places Of Worship”, Countercurrents, 22 April 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2019/04/notre-dame-christchurch-sri-lanka-tragedies-spotlight-historical-destructions-violations-of-places-of-worship/ .)

NABULSI. Jamal Nabulsi (2021): “For Palestinians, history is a nightmare from which we are fighting to awaken. Israeli settler colonialism has worked to erase the Palestinian from history. This erasure takes many forms, from outright ethnic cleansing, to erasing the traces of Palestinian villages, to the Zionist revision of written histories. Even by righting this history publicly here, I am likely to be banned by Israel from returning to Palestine. But exile is just the price we pay to resist.It is exactly such an erasure of Palestinians that mainstream media outlets commit in their distorted portrayals of the recent outpour of Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonisation… The 1948 Nakba. In what came to be known to Palestinians as the Nakba, the tactics used to carry out this ethnic cleansing included widespread massacres, systematic rape and other terror-inducing tactics… Zionist soldiers who took part in such massacres described horrifying scenes: babies with their skulls cracked open, the raping of women, and people being burned alive in their homes. These were not isolated ‘excesses of war’ or the work of an extremist minority in the Zionist forces. They were clear patterns of action encouraged at every link in the chain of command. The primary goal of these operations was to expel Palestinians from the land of Palestine, or at least from as large a part of Palestine as could be controlled. Zionist forces deliberately spread news of the massacres, rapes and other atrocities to Palestinian towns and villages, to coerce them to flee their homes in fear of suffering a similar fate. The result was that, in 1948, over 420 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed, with at least 780,000 Palestinians being expelled from their homes. The Zionist forces controlled 78 per cent of the land of Palestine, on which they would establish the State of Israel… For Palestinians, the 1948 Nakba was a total shattering of worlds. It was foundational in fragmenting the Palestinian community across the diaspora, ’48 Palestine and ’67 Palestine.These terms are spatiotemporal markers of the two major stages of Israeli colonisation in Palestine. ’48 Palestine refers to the land that Zionist forces colonised in 1948, while ’67 Palestine refers to the land that Israel occupied in 1967 (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip). Both areas of ‘48 and ‘67 are recognised as Palestine, but as distinct zones of colonisation with distinct present realities for Palestinian people living there. The ethnic cleansing of the Nakba directly created the first major Palestinian refugee population, which has since expanded due to further Israeli forced displacement, with two-thirds (8.7 million) of the thirteen million Palestinians worldwide currently being forcibly displaced persons.Whether they are in Gaza, the West Bank, neighbouring countries like Jordan, Lebanon, or Syria, or further abroad, all Palestinian refugees are denied their fundamental right to return home. Those Palestinians who attempted to return to their homes in the years following 1948 were deemed ‘infiltrators’ by Israel, and were either expelled once again or simply shot on site. Meanwhile, their villages were destroyed, their homes were plundered, and they were replaced on the land by Zionist settlers. Despite extensive ethnic cleansing in 1948, some 156,000 Palestinians managed to remain in ’48 Palestine, the territory that became the State of Israel. Although they had survived the massacres and expulsions, they now came under an Israeli military rule that would last for almost two decades. During this time, they were forcibly displaced, incarcerated in prison camps, saw their land and property seized and their homes raided, and were harassed and abused throughout. These tactics were accompanied by legal and bureaucratic means of dispossession. For example, the seizure of Palestinian property was ‘legalised’ through a variety of seemingly benign property laws. Palestinian population centres were spatially cut-off from one another. Furthermore, Palestinian history was erased through, for example, the physical concealment of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages or, more recently in 2011, making the commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba illegal… This [1967 Naksa] war constituted the second major catastrophe for the Palestinian people, with another 400,000 Palestinians being expelled from their homes by Israeli forces. Cumulatively then, between 1948 and 1967, three-quarters of all Palestinians had been forcibly expelled from their homes” (Jamal Nabulsi, “Righting the history of Palestine”, Overland, 2 June 2021: https://overland.org.au/2021/06/righting-the-history-of-palestine/ ).

NAKBA IMAGES . For thousands of images of the 1948 Nakba and related images see Getty Images: https://www.gettyimages.co.nz/photos/nakba-1948 .

NAKBA MOVIES

“BORN IN DEIR YASSIN”, DEIR YASSIN MASSACRE MOVIE The film “Born in Deir Yassin” with English subtitles was posted on YouTube in 2021. It presents the shocking recollections of unrepentant Zionist perpetrators and witnesses. The shocking Israeli eye witness accounts are interspersed with the story of a mentally ill woman in the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center (incorporating the remains of Deir Yassin), the removal of her son, and official forgetting (underscored by the neo-Nazi Israeli judges refusing to allow access to photographs of the Deir Yassin massacre for Israeli security and reputational reasons) (Boris Yeltsin (!), “Born in Deir Yassin (2017) Complete Film with English Subtitles”, YouTube, 11 April 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiLt5awzmyI .)

“FARHA” NAKBA MOVIE. As the murderous violence of the Nakba breaks out in 1948 Palestine, a father hides his 14-year-old daughter inside a locked pantry. She thus survives the massacre of the people of her village by Zionist terrorists.

Initial release: 14 September 2021

Director: Darin J. Sallam

Cinematography: Rachel Aoun

Languages: Arabic, English, Hebrew, Palestinian Arabic

Music composed by: Nadim Mishlawi

Producers: Deema Azar, Ayah Jardaneh. For review see ELASSAR, ELDIN and ESSA.

“TANTURA” NAKBA MOVIE. The “Tantura” Nakba movie (director Alon Schwartz, released in 2022) addresses the 1948 Tantura Massacre in which Zionist militia murdered about 200 Indigenous Palestinians in the seaside village of Tantura near Haifa. For a critical review see ESSA.

NAKBA ORAL HISTORY. Dr Nahla Abdo and Dr Nur Masalha. “An Oral History of the Nakba”, Bloomsbury and Zed Books: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/oral-history-of-the-palestinian-nakba-9781786993502/ .

Table of Contents

Introduction - Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha

Part I: Theorizing the Nakba and Oral History

1. Decolonising Methodology, Reclaiming Memory: Palestinian Oral Histories and Memories of the Nakba - Nur Masalha

2. Feminism, Indigenousness and Settler Colonialism: Oral History, Memory and the Nakba - Nahla Abdo

Part II: Between Epistemology and Ontology: Nakba Embodiment

3. What Bodies Remember: Sensory Experience as Historical Counterpoint in the Nakba Archive - Diana Allan

4. The Time of Small Returns: Affect and Resistance During the Nakba - Lena Jayyusi

Part III: Archiving the Nakba through Palestinian Refugee Women's Voices

5. Nakbah Silencing and the Challenge of Palestinian Oral History - Rosemary Sayigh

6. Shu'fat Refugee Camp Women Authenticate an Old 'Nakba' and Frame Something 'New' while Narrating It - Laura Khoury

7. Gender Representation of Oral History: Palestinian Women Narrating the Stories of their Displacement - Faiha Abdel-Hadi

Part IV: The Nakba and 48 Palestinians

8. The Ongoing Nakba: Urban Palestinian Survival in Haifa - Himmat Zubi

9. Suffourieh: A Continuous Tragedy - Amina Qablawi Nasrallah

10. The Sons and Daughters of Eilaboun - Hisham Zreiq

11. 'This Is Your Father's Land': Palestinian Bedouin Women Encounter the Nakba in the Naqab - Safa Abu-Rabi'a

Part V: Documenting Nakba Narratives from the Gaza Strip and the Shatat

12. The Young Do Not Forget - Mona Al-Farra

13. Gaza Remembers: Narratives of Displacement in Gaza's Oral History - Malaka Mohammad Shwaikh

14. 'Besieging the Cultural Siege': Mapping Narratives of Nakba through Orality and Repertoires of Resistance - Chandni Desai

NAKBA PAINTINGS. Nakba painting images: https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALiCzsb2H7f8g0HcUV8_DVaYXYNw_XurCg:1672615608738&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=nakba+painting&client=firefox-b-d&fir=p-uwhgKvXvpKOM%252CsdB3XYkIYPUucM%252C_%253BrwVhwCsgMxDX9M%252CsdB3XYkIYPUucM%252C_%253BT_UF2e86rmoKfM%252C_nuiEfLx9-BYeM%252C_%253Bng9YbNICxkbTJM%252CljFY-z8ixQ415M%252C_%253BxfhlobrY4ND7UM%252C060k8a8y8iWrSM%252C_%253BcMHg5PRR2Jq97M%252C_nuiEfLx9-BYeM%252C_%253BWOZqZhlU6b3DaM%252CGFAn4LSWThDENM%252C_%253BRpVH4Hy2s07PjM%252CRkWdTVKaFOqceM%252C_%253B1O7xcH8Mg8bYVM%252CsdB3XYkIYPUucM%252C_%253BZyc9RdeBAVqNuM%252CGkVYvm4J25b2ZM%252C_%253B1xWceFBJzfvX3M%252CbeMXkYFN7rAUjM%252C_%253Bf3Qw8NFW9JVrRM%252CsdB3XYkIYPUucM%252C_%253BCIXPZs_2amxjeM%252CLLWMx4aKeJ5fZM%252C_&usg=AI4_-kTL47PuwokT7Mwu66JF204PdTGE6A&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjdl9HZwqf8AhW3zXMBHag7CocQjJkEegQIBhAC&biw=1680&bih=897&dpr=1 .

NAKBA POEMS. The Jerusalem Fund linked to a set of Nakba poems on the occasion of the 67th anniversary of the Nakba in 2015 (Lucien Dieterman, “The Nakba – 67 Years On – in Poetry”, The Jerusalem Fund, 18 May 2015: https://thejerusalemfund.org/2015/05/nakba-67-years-poetry/ ):

“On This Land” by Mahmoud Darwish (read live, with Trio Joubran in the background)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luZ6cXv6RXU

Author bio: http://www.mahmouddarwish.com/english/biography.htm

“On the Trunk of an Olive Tree” by Tawfiq Zayyad

http://www.adab.com/en/modules.php?name=Sh3er&doWhat=shqas&qid=186

Author bio: http://www.palestine-family.net/index.php?nav=3-83&cid=90&did=5637

“The Deluge and the Tree” by Fadwa Tuqan

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Fadwa%20Tuqan%20Palestinian%20Poet%20Poetry%20Picture%20Bio.htm

Author bio: (same page)

“Exodus” by Taha Muhammad Ali

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241016

Author bio: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/taha-muhammad-ali

“How Palestinians Keep Warm” by Naomi Shihab Nye

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/how-palestinians-keep-warm

Author bio: http://imeu.org/article/naomi-shihab-nye-poet-and-author

“A Picture of the House at Beit Jala” by Ghassan Zaqtan

http://www.bpj.org/poems/zaqtan_houseatbeitjala.html

Author bio: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ghassan-zaqtan

“Even” by Nathalie Handal

http://www.stationmuseum.com/Made_in_Palestine-Nathalie_Handal/handal.html

Author bio: http://www.nathaliehandal.com/biography.htm

“Nakba Day” by Remi Kanazi

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora/watch-remi-kanazis-new-poem-nakba-about-his-grandmothers-expulsion-1948

Author bio: http://www.poeticinjustice.net/aboutremi.aspx#.VVUoevlViko

“Mimesis” by Fadi Joudah

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/246180

Author bio: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/fady-joudah

OSMAN. Nadda Osman (2022): “Pro-Palestinian activists have come out in defence of a Netflix film set during the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948 after it was attacked by Israeli officials. The Israelis say that the movie Farha, by Jordanian filmmaker Darin Sallam, is “creating a false narrative” about the Nakba, in which more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from what was to become Israel. In the film, a teenage girl witnesses the killing of her entire family, including a baby, as Zionist forces descend on her village in 1948.The film, which bills itself as having been "inspired by true events", has been shown at a number of film festivals around the world and is released on Netflix on 1 December… [link to official trailer of “Farha”… The events of the Nakba, while heavily documented, are not widely publicised in Israel. A number of Israeli historians, including the University of Exeter academic Ilan Pappé, have written extensively about Israeli atrocities in the lead-up to the state's establishment” (Nadda Osman,”Netflix’s “Farha”: Palestinians bemused by Israeli anger over Nakba film”, Middle East Eye, 1 December 2022: https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/farha-netflix-palestine-nakba-film-israel-anger-defended ).

PALESTINE BDS NATIONAL COMMITTEE. Palestine BDS National Committee, “#Nakba75: Ben-Gurion to Ben-Gvir: Ongoing Nakba, Ongoing Resistance ”, 12 May 2023: https://bdsmovement.net/news/nakba75-ben-gurion-ben-gvir-ongoing-nakba-ongoing-resistance .

Quote: “The anti-racist BDS movement, led by the largest Palestinian coalition ever, provides the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. After 75 years of settler-colonialism and apartheid, and facing an Israeli government that has shed all masks, we demand international recognition of the fact that Israel’s regime of oppression constitutes apartheid, as well as an end to state, corporate and institutional complicity in it as a fulfillment of legal duties and a moral obligation to do no harm… We call on our partners worldwide to use this unprecedented opportunity to build people’s power. This demands two parallel tracks: (1) Broadening our principled, intersectional coalitions to grow our cultural, academic, sports and economic boycott and divestment campaigns, and to push in the mainstream, including the UN, the obligation to impose targeted, lawful sanctions to dismantle Israeli apartheid, just as South African apartheid was abolished; and (2) Forming new tactical alliances with many new critics of the far-right Israeli regime with whom we may not agree on many things except the necessity of meaningful pressure on the Israeli government. This entails at the very least cutting military-security trade and military funding, as the case may be; banning settlement goods; and divestment from Israel Bonds and from corporations and banks that bankroll this regime. ”

PALESTINE REMEMBERED. PalestineRemembered.com records images of what is left of Palestinian towns, villages and landscapes since the Nakba and the subsequent destruction by the colonizing Zionists. Thus, for example, PalestineRemembered.com: “PalestineRemembered.com: is pleased to announce our new and very exciting project: Tracing All That Remains Since Nakba, a project that aims to document the destroyed and ethnically cleansed Palestinian cities and villages in video format. In cooperation with few energetic Israelis (Palestinian Arabs and Jews) who are deeply involved in Nakba awareness world wide, we have visited several towns and filmed the following [85] movies:

PALESTINE MAPS & THE NAKBA. For links to numerous Palestine maps before and after the 1948 Nakba, where the expelled Palestinians went to in the world, and other maps, lists and related maps (e.g. the Khazarian Jewish Empire of non-Semitic Turkic Khazars converted to Judaism in Southern Russia , and from which the now politically dominant Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews derived after the Kievan Rus destroyed their capital Itil in the Volga delta to the Caspian Sea) see “Palestine Maps Before & After Nakba 1948”, Palestine Remembered: https://www.palestineremembered.com/Maps/index.html .

PALESTINIAN CHRONICLE. Palestinian Chronicle, “For First Time in History, UN Commemorates Palestinian Nakba”, 15 May 2023: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/for-first-time-in-history-un-commemorates-palestinian-nakba/ .

Quote: “For the first time in its history, the United Nations General Assembly is commemorating the Palestine Nakba on Monday. “This year marks the 75th anniversary of the mass displacement of Palestinians known as ‘the Nakba’ or ‘the Catastrophe,'” the UN said in a statement posted on its official website. “The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba at UN Headquarters in New York,” the statement stated, noting this is the first in the history of the international body… A Special Commemorative Event will be held in the General Assembly Hall in the evening from 6 pm to 8 pm New York time.”

PALESTINIAN VILLAGES AND TOWNS DEPOPULATED IN THE 1948 NAKBA. For expandable maps showing the villages and towns depopulated by the Zionists in the 1948 Nakba see “Palestine 1948. Commemoration of Al Nakba. The towns and villages depopulated by the Zionist invasion of 1948”: https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story1261.html (in English) and https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story1262.html (in Arabic).

PALESTINIAN REFUGEES & EXILED PALESTINIANS – WHERE ARE THEY NOW? It is estimated that of about 15.5 million mostly impoverished Palestinians , there are 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians in the West Bank (5.3 million) and the Gaza Concentration Camp (2.2 million), 2.0 million Israeli Palestinians, and about 8 million Exiled Palestinians forbidden to return to their homeland by the genocidally racist Zionists. The circa 7 million Palestinian refugees outside Palestine (Exiled Palestinians) constitute about 10% of the world’s 80 million refugees and displaced people.

Wikipedia provides the following lower (variously out of date) estimates of Palestinian populations (see “Palestinians”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinians ):

State of Palestine (5,350,000) including the Occupied West Bank (3,190,000 of whom 809,738 are registered refugees) and the Gaza Concentration Camp (2,170,000 of whom 1,386,455 are registered refugees).

Jordan (3,240,000 of whom 2,175,491 are registered refugees).

Apartheid Israel (2,037,000).

Syria (568,530 registered refugees only).

Chile (500,000).

Saudi Arabia (400,000).

Qatar (295,000).

United States of America (255,000).

United Arab Emirates (200,000).

Lebanon (458,369 registered refugees).

Honduras (27,000 – 200,000).

Germany (100,000).

Kuwait (80,000).

Egypt (70,000).

El Salvador (70,000).

Brazil (59,000).

Libya (59,000).

Iraq (57,000).

Canada (50,975).

Yemen (29,000).

United Kingdom (29,000).

Peru (15,000).

Mexico (13,000).

Colombia (12,000).

Netherlands (9,000-15,000).

Australia (7,000).

Sweden (7,000).

Algeria (4,030).

PALESTINIAN POPULATIONS TODAY (2022):

Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) (2022): “Number of the Palestinian Population by Country of Residence, Mid- 2020: 5.4 million (State of Palestine), 1.7 million (1948 Territory), 6.4 million (Arab Countries), 0.8 million (Other Countries) ” Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), “Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) Presents the Conditions of Palestinian Populations on the Occasion of the International Population Day, 11/07/2022”, PCBS, 11 July 2022: https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/Press_En_InterPopDay2022E.pdf .)

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Near East (UNRWA) (2023): “Palestine refugees are defined as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” UNRWA services are available to all those living in its area of operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the Agency and who need assistance. The descendants of Palestine refugee males, including adopted children, are also eligible for registration. When the Agency began operations in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, some 5.9 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services. Nearly one-third of the registered Palestine refugees, more than 1.5 million individuals, live in 58 recognized Palestine refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. A Palestine refugee camp is defined as a plot of land placed at the disposal of UNRWA by the host government to accommodate Palestine refugees and set up facilities to cater to their needs. Areas not designated as such and are not recognized as camps. However, UNRWA also maintains schools, health centres and distribution centres in areas outside the recognized camps where Palestine refugees are concentrated, such as Yarmouk, near Damascus. The plots of land on which the recognized camps were set up are either state land or, in most cases, land leased by the host government from local landowners. This means that the refugees in camps do not 'own' the land on which their shelters were built, but have the right to 'use' the land for a residence. Socioeconomic conditions in the camps are generally poor, with high population density, cramped living conditions and inadequate basic infrastructure such as roads and sewers” (“Palestine refugees”, UNRWA, 2023: https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees ).

United Nations (UN) (2023): “Most Palestine refugees now live below the poverty-line and many depend on humanitarian assistance, including cash and food, from UNRWA… The desperate situation of Syria’s Palestine refugees is mirrored in Gaza and Lebanon - where more than nine in 10 live below the poverty-line - and in Gaza… UNRWA’s 2023 appeal for $1.6 billion includes $848 million for core services including health, education, relief, social services and protection. Another $781.6 million is required for emergency operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon” (UN, “Palestinian refugees face hitting ‘rock bottom’, warns UNRWA in $1.6 billion appeal”, UN News, 24 January 2023: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/01/1132777 .

Wikipedia on Palestinian demographics (2022): “Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the territory of former British Palestine, now encompassing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (the Palestinian territories) as well as Israel. In this combined area, as of 2022, Palestinians constitute a demographic majority, with an estimated population of 7.503 million or 51.16% (as compared to Jews at 46-47%) of all inhabitants, taking in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and almost 21 percent of the population of Israel proper as part of its Arab citizens. Many are Palestinian refugees or internally displaced Palestinians, including more than a million in the Gaza Strip, around 750,000 in the West Bank, and around 250,000 in Israel proper. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, known as the Palestinian diaspora, more than half are stateless, lacking legal citizenship in any country. Between 2.1 and 3.24 million of the diaspora population live as refugees in neighboring Jordan, over 1 million live between Syria and Lebanon, and about 750,000 live in Saudi Arabia, with Chile holding the largest Palestinian diaspora concentration (around half a million) outside of the Arab world). [Population in millions]: State of Palestine (5.350; 2.000 refugees), West Bank (3.190; 0.750 refugees), Gaza (2.170; 1.000 refugees); Israel (2.137; 0.250 refugees); Syria (0.569 refugees); Chile (0.500); Saudi Arabia (0.400); Qatar (0.295); US (0.255), UAE (0.200); Lebanon (0.458 refugees plus 0.174 others); Honduras (0.200); Germany (0.100); Kuwait (0.080); Egypt (0.070); El Salvador (0.070); Brazil (0.059); Libya (0.059); Iraq (0.057); Yemen (0.029); UK (0.020); Peru (0.015); Mexico (0.013); Colombia (0.012); Netherlands (0.015); Australia (0.007); Sweden (0.007); Algeria (0.004)” (Palestinians”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinians ).

PAPPE. Professor Ilan Pappe ( professor of history, and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies and co-director for the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies at the University of Exeter, author of "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" (2006) on the Tantura Massacre, 2022): “The [Masters] thesis of [Teddy Katz] received an exceptionally high grade, and its fourth chapter revealed through documents and interviews with soldiers and Palestinians that in May 1948, the Israeli army perpetrated a massacre in the village of Tantura, south of Haifa - a war crime that escaped most, but not all, of the known histories of the Nakba up to that time. There were 60 hours of interviews about Tantura and documents showing that around 200 villagers were either shot in cold blood or killed by angry soldiers who rampaged through the village in response to the deaths of around eight of their fellow soldiers. The executions were graphically described by Jewish and Palestinian eyewitnesses and alluded to in the documents, which also described mass graves dug near a graveyard where today there is a parking lot for the kibbutz built on the ruins of Tantura… The university demanded a new thesis, which he wrote, adding even more solid proof about the massacre - and although he passed, he received a lower grade, and his thesis was removed from the library. Not surprisingly, amid all the stress, he suffered two strokes, and today this once-energetic person is in a wheelchair. … Now, film director Alon Schwarz was finally able to catch up to the Jewish protagonists in this Greek tragedy. Some of them confessed on camera that Katz told the truth and recorded faithfully their version of events in 1948. With the help of cutting-edge technology, Schwarz was able to uncover the mass graves, and prodded the judge who was sitting in the original trial to admit she had never listened to the tapes. After listening to one in the film [“Tantura”], she acknowledged the verdict could have been very different” (Ilan Pappe, “Israel can no longer bury the Tantura Massacre”, Middle East Eye, 28 January 2022: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-no-longer-bury-tantura-massacre ).

Publisher summary on Amazon of “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe: “Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking book revisits the formation of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing". Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East” “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe, Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553 ).

PLAN DALET. Ranjani Chakraborty (Vox) on Plan Dalet, the Zionist plant to ethncially cleanse Palestine in the 1948 Nakba): “Around the time that Israelis celebrate Independence Day, Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or “the Catastrophe.” The Nakba was a series of events, centered around 1948, that expelled hundreds of thousands Palestinians from their homeland and killed thousands. The Nakba isn’t the beginning of the story, but it’s a key part of Palestinian history — and the root of Israel’s creation. Prior to the Nakba, Palestine had a thriving population — largely made up of Arabs — who had lived and worked the land for centuries. But with the founding of Zionism, years of British meddling, and a British pledge to help create a Jewish state in Palestine, things began to change drastically. By 1947, with increasing tensions between Jewish settlers and Palestinian Arabs, the British left Palestine, and the UN stepped in with a plan to partition the land into two states. What followed was known as Plan Dalet: operations by Israeli paramilitary groups that violently uprooted Palestinians. An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, more than 500 villages were decimated, and roughly 750,000 Palestinians displaced. Most who were expelled from their homes couldn’t return to historic Palestine. And today, millions of their descendants live in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, and surrounding countries. The history of the Nakba has been deliberately concealed and often ignored in Western narratives around the creation of Israel” (Ranjani Chakraborty, “Why Palestinians protest every May 15. The Palestinian catastrophe, explained”, Vox, 15 May 2023: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/videos/2023/5/15/23723947/palestine-nakba-may-15-protests-israel ).

PLUTO PRESS NAKBA BOOKS. Pluto Press (in its own words: “Pluto Press is a radical political publishing house. Founded in 1969, we are one of the world’s oldest radical publishers, and our focus remains making timely interventions in contemporary struggles” ), on remembering the 1948 Nakba (2021): “This week, the international community will be commemorating the Nakba, which was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948 by Israeli forces. To this day, the majority of the Palestinian Arabs remain displaced. Solidarity to all Palestinians, and to the family and friends of Shirine Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist who was recently murdered by Israeli snipers in cold blood.

Pluto have long published on Palestine and Israel. Here is a reading list of some of these books, both new and from our backlist, which condemn Israel’s settler colonial project” (“Remembering the Nakba. A reading list”, Pluto Press: https://www.plutobooks.com/nakba-day/ ).

Pluto Press “Remembering the Nakba” Reading List:

ALLAN & SAYIGH. Diana Allan, and Rosemary Sayigh, “Voices of the Nakba. A living history of Palestine”, Pluto Press, 2021.

ROY. Sara Roy, “Unsilencing Gaza. Reflections on Resistance”, Pluto Press, 2021.

HALPER. Jeff Halper, “Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine. Zionism, Settler Colonialism , and the Case for One Democratic State”, Pluto Press, 2021.

WHITE. Ben White, “Cracks in the Wall. Beyond Apartheid in Palestine/ Israel”, Pluto Press, 2018.

BAROUD. Ramzy Baroud, “The Last Earth. A Palestinian Story”, Pluto Press, 2018.

HEVER. Shir Hever, “The Privatization of Israeli Security”, Pluto Press, 2017.

HARMS & FERRY. Gregory Harms, and Todd M. Ferry, “The Palestine-Israel Conflict. A Basic Introduction”, Pluto Press, 2017.

CRONIN. David Cronin, “Balfour’s Shadow. A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel”, Pluto Press, 2017.

SHOHAT. Ella Shohat, “On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and other Displacements. Selected Writings of Ella Shohat”, Pluto Press, 2017.

FALK. Richard Falk, “Palestine’s Horizon. Toward a Just Peace”, Pluto Press, 2017.

JARADAT. Mya Guarnieri Jaradat, “The Unchosen. The Lives of Israel’s New Others”, Pluto Press, 2017.

HALPER. Jeff Halper, “War Against the People. Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification”, Pluto Press, 2015.

DARWEISH & RIGBY. Marwan Darweish, and Andrew Rigby, “Popular Protest in Palestine. The Uncertain Future of Unarmed Resistance”, Pluto Press, 2015.

ROTBARD. Sharon Rotbard, “White City, Black City. Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa”, Pluto Press, 2015.

ABDO. Nahla Abdo, “Captive Revolution. Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System”, Pluto Press, 2014.

WHITE. Ben White, “Israeli Apartheid. A Beginner’s Guide”, Pluto Press, 2009.

KHALIDI & WARNER. Anbara Salam Khalidi, and Marina Warner, “Memoirs of an Early Arab Feminist. The Life and Activism of Anbara Salam Khalidi”, Pluto Press, 2013.

ABU-ZAHRA & KAY. Nadia Abu-Zahra, and Adah Kay, “Unfree in Palestine. Registration, Documentation and Movement Restriction”, Pluto Press, 2012.

TILLEY. Virginia Tilley (editor), “Beyond Occupation. Apartheid, Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”, Pluto Press, 2012.

IRVING. Sarah Irving, “Leila Khaled. Icon of Palestinian Liberation”, Pluto Press, 2012.

QUMSIYEH. Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, “Popular Resistance in Palestine. A History of Hope and Empowerment”, Pluto Press, 2014.

AL-HOUT, MAKDISI, AL-HOUT & OTHMAN. Shafiq Al-Hout, Jean Said Makdisi, Hader Al-Hout, and Laila Othman, “My Life in the PLO. The Inside Story of the Palestinian Struggle”, Pluto Press, 2010.

HEVER. Shir Hever, “The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation. Repression Beyond Exploitation”, Pluto Press, 2010.

HROUB. Khaled Hroub, “Hamas. A Beginner’s Guide”, Pluto Press, 2010.

RA’AD. Basem L. Ra'ad, “Hidden Histories. Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean”, Pluto Press, 2010.

ROTHCHILD. Alice Rothchild, “Broken Promises, Broken Dreams. Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience”, Pluto Press, 2010.

KARMI. Ghada Karmi, “Married to Another Man. Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine”, Pluto Press, 2007.

POLYA. Dr Gideon Polya ((author of “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds”, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (2007, 2022), “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (1998, 2008, 2023), “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2020), “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” (2020) and a co-author of Soren Korsgaard, “Deadly Deception Exposed” (2020)) summary of the Palestinian Genocide, the Nakba, the Naksa, and the consequent continuing dire circumstances of the 15 million Indigenous Palestinians (Gideon Polya, "Australia must stop Zionist subversion and join the World in comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters", Subversion of Australia, 15 April 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/2021-04-15 ; a Submission finally accepted by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Inquiry into Trade with Israel): “In 1880 the 0.5 million population of Palestine was about 90 % Muslim and 10% Christian, with about 25,000 Jews, half of them immigrants. Britain invaded Iraq in 1914 for oil and hegemony, and in 1916 the Sykes-Picot Agreement divided up the Arab world between the UK and France. The British war on the Ottoman Empire was associated with a Palestinian Famine and a demographic deficit of 100,000 people. In 1917 the charge of the Australian Light Horse gave victory over the Turks at Beersheba, and was followed 2 days later by the UK Balfour Declaration to British Zionist Lord Rothschild offering Palestine, the land of the Palestinians for millennia, as a Jewish Homeland (according to leading British historian and Jewish Zionist, Professor Sir Martin Gilbert, the Balfour Declaration was actually designed to get Jewish Zionist Russian Communists to try to keep Russia in the war against Germany). The 1918 Surafend Massacre of Palestinians by Australian and New Zealand Anzacs (about 100 men and boys massacred) was the start of violent killing in the century-long Palestinian Genocide… By 1947 the population of Palestine was 1,970,000 comprising 630,000 Jews (32.0%), 143,000 Christians (7.3%) and 1,181,000 Muslims (59.9%) i.e. two thirds were Indigenous Palestinians. In 1948 the non-Semitic European Zionist colonizers rejected calls by Palestinians, anti-racist Jews, the UN, the Arab World and civilized humanity for a secular, democratic and multicultural state, and seized nearly 80% of Palestine, emptied 500 villages, forcibly expelled 800,000 Palestinians (about 60% of the Indigenous Palestinian population) in the Nakba (or Catastrophe), and proclaimed the race-based settler state and democracy-by-genocide pariah state of “Israel” (but better described as “Apartheid Israel”)… In 1967 a now nuclear-armed Apartheid Israel attacked all its neighbours and seized all of Palestine plus a huge slab of Egypt (the Sinai), a huge slab of Syria (the Golan Heights) and part of Lebanon (the Shebaa Farms), with another 400,000 Arabs being expelled in the process of the Naksa (Setback)… A Zionist-subverted West ignores the present reality that Apartheid Israel rules all of a 90% ethnically cleansed Palestine (plus ethnically cleansed parts of Syria and Lebanon) and of its 14.4 million Subjects 6.8 million (47.0%) are Jewish Israelis, 0.4 million (2.8%) are non-Jews and non-Arabs, 2.0 million (13.9%) are Palestinian Israelis, and 5.2 million (36.1%) are Occupied Palestinians with zero human rights. Despite a century of a Palestinian Genocide involving killing, deprivation and repeated mass expulsions, Indigenous Palestinians still represent 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel in Palestine but over 72% of the Indigenous Palestinian Subjects of Apartheid Israel are excluded from voting for the government ruling them i.e. egregious Apartheid. Significantly, Dr Henrik Verwoerd, the neo-Nazi pro-Apartheid Israel architect of Apartheid in South Africa stated: “Israel is an apartheid state”… A problem with ignoring the truth (as the West does so egregiously over Apartheid Israel) is that the suppressed truth often turns out to be even worse than imagined. Thus in 1880 there were 0.5 million Palestinians and 25,000 Jews but today there are over 14 million Palestinians in the world including over 7 million Exiled Palestinians (most of them impoverished and ”state-less” refugees, comprising about 10% of the world’s 70 million refugees, and forbidden on pain of death to enter the Homeland continuously inhabited by their forebears for millennia), 5.2 million Occupied Palestinians (with zero human rights and highly abusively confined under Israeli guns to the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp, 2 million, or to territorially ever-dwindling West Bank ghettoes or Bantustans under military rule, 3.2 million), and 2.0 million “lucky” Palestinian Israelis (permitted to vote for the government ruling them but as Third Class citizens of Apartheid Israel under over 60 Nazi-style, race-based laws imposed by genocidally racist invaders)… The per capita GDP (nominal) is a deadly $3,400 for Occupied Palestinians as compared to $46,400 for Israel (UN, 2019) [32], and the utterly deprived and impoverished Occupied Palestinians are particularly vulnerable. This is deliberate, intentional mass murder by Apartheid Israel… the Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million dead from violence, 0.1 million, or imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since the British invaded the Middle East for oil and hegemony in 1914)”.

Gideon Polya, “Charles III Coronation Ignored Imperialism, Colonialism, Genocide, Trauma, Deadly Colonial Legacy & Palestine”, Countercurrents, 9 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/charles-iii-coronation-ignored-imperialism-colonialism-genocide-trauma-deadly-colonial-legacy-palestine/ .

Quote: “The colourful military uniforms and the final parade of thousands of British and Commonwealth military forces testified to past imperial glory. However the lavish circa $200 million coronation ignored the ongoing deadly British imperial legacy in the Americas, Africa, Palestine, Asia, Australia and the Pacific… Whereas Apartheid South Africa wanted both the land and the cheap African labour, the British colonizers of Australia and the UK-supported Zionist colonizers of Palestine wanted the land but not the Indigenous inhabitants. Indeed Indigenous deaths in the 235 year Australian Aboriginal Genocide and the century long (WW1 onwards) Palestinian Genocide in both cases have totalled about 100,000 from violence and about 2 million from imposed deprivation and disease. Indeed all Zionist leaders from genocidal mass murderer Benjamin Disraeli and racist psychopath Theodor Herzl to Apartheid Israeli PM Netanyahu today have explicitly espoused expulsion of the Indigenous Palestinian people.”

Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel Among World’s Leading Countries For Militarization, Violence, Abuse And Genocide”, Countercurrents, 16 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/apartheid-israel-among-worlds-leading-countries-for-militarization-violence-abuse-and-genocide/ .

Quote: “Nuclear armed, serial war criminal and international law-violating Apartheid Israel is a genocidally racist settler-colonialist obscenity, and ranks on a per capita basis among the world’s top militarized countries in 30 key areas of military capacity and ghastly application of military power. On a per capita basis it ranks number 1 in terms of military expenditure, tanks, warplanes, US military aid, killing journalists, population expulsions, and genocide. How Apartheid Israel ranks among the worst in military assets, militarism, invading, abusing, and killing people in 30 areas is set out below… This [8,000 words, 55 references] account has merely sketched how Apartheid Israel is either #1 in the world or among world leaders in 30 areas of militarization, killing, gross human rights abuse and genocide. Citizens of other top military states will no doubt be interested in how their country ranks. A detailed and comprehensive account awaits a latter-day equivalent of the post-WW2 Nuremberg War Crimes Trials… The core ethos of Humanity is Kindness and Truth but genocidally racist Zionism has perverted this to Racism and Mendacity. Decent folk must act by (a) informing everyone they can (the journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes of the Zionist-subverted Western Mainstream certainly won’t), and by (b) urging and applying rigorous Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel and all its evilly pro-Apartheid supporters.”

Gideon Polya poem: "And then they stole the falafel" (2020).

And then they stole the falafel

The violent, lying Zionists stole

All of the ancient land of Palestine,

Three cities, hundreds of villages and towns,

An ancient land ethnically cleansed.

They stole the human rights of Palestinians,

Of Exiled Palestinians, Occupied Palestinians,

And of Israeli Palestinians living as oppressed

Third Class Citizens under race-based laws.

They stole the lives of two million Palestinians,

A hundred thousand dying violently, and

Over two million dying from imposed deprivation

In a Palestinian Holocaust and Palestinian Genocide.

They stole the futures of millions of children

Abusively imprisoned without charge or trial

In refugee camps, West Bank ghettoes,

And the blockaded Gaza Concentration Camp.

They stole the future of all the World’s children

Under threat from Israeli and other nuclear terrorism,

And stole free speech in Zionist-subverted

America, Britain, Canada and Australia.

They stole an ancient religion, Judaism,

Subverting humanism for evil state terrorism,

And the actual history of the non-Semitic Ashkenazim

And of other Jewish peoples around the world.

They stole the very name of Israel,

The ancient name of Torah-observant Jews,

And the religious language of Hebrew,

In the interests of Anglo-American imperialism.

They stole the ancient city of Al Quds,

The third holiest city for Muslims,

And backed America in the US-imposed, post-9-11

Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide.

They stole the Jewish Israeli heritage

Of Berber, Arabic and Yiddish language,

And with evil America helped destroy

Aramaic-speaking societies from Palestine to Iraq.

They stole the flag of Apartheid Israel

From the innocent Greeks, with the Star of David

Stolen from anti-Zionist Orthodox Judaism;

Their national anthem they stole from Smetana.

They stole the reputations of anti-racist Jews,

And of all those opposed to genocide and Apartheid.

They stole the name of a hill facing the Mount of Olives,

Renaming it for genocidal psychopath Herzl.

And then they stole the falafel.

Gideon Polya, 31 May 2020

(see Gideon Polya, “Palestinian Genocide Poem: “And Then They Stole The Falafel””, Countercurrents, 31 May 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/05/palestinian-genocide-poem-and-then-they-stole-the-falafel/ .)

2010-07-25 Plight of the Palestinians

This review of The Plight of the Palestinians. A Long History of Destruction", edited by Professor William A. Cook (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010) was published in MWC News (Media With Conscience News) , July 25, 2010

Gideon Polya, Ph. D.

The Plight of the Palestinians. A Long History of Destruction", edited by Professor William A. Cook (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010) is a collection of articles about the ongoing Palestinian Genocide by about 3 dozen variously eminent humanitarian writers from around the world.

I have been resolutely writing about the Palestinian Genocide and the immense injustice to the Palestinian people for many years. The essence of this atrocity is that in 1880 there were about 500,000 Indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine and about 25,000 Jews in Palestine, of whom about half were Jewish immigrants. In 1917 the British betrayed the Arab people by promising Palestine as a Homeland for Jews in the hope (not to be realized) that the Russian Zionists would succeed in keeping Russia in the First World War. However the 1917 Balfour Declaration had a condition that there was to be no detriment to either Jews or Indigenous Palestinians - a condition to be grossly violated by racist British, racist American and racist Zionist perfidy. In 1948 0.8 million Palestinians were driven from their homes by racist Zionist terrorists (the 1948 Nakba) to be followed by a further 1967 Nakba in which a now nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel seized all of the Holy land plus parts of Lebanon and Syria and Egypt, imprisoning several million more Palestinians.

The last 43 years has seen a worsening Palestinian Genocide by Apartheid Israel: post-invasion non-violent and violent excess deaths total 0.3 million; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million; refugees total 7 million; 85% of West Bank Christian Palestinians have fled; 1.5 million Occupied Palestinians (50% children, 75 % women and children) are abusively imprisoned in what the Catholic Church has described as Israel's Gaza Concentration Camp; 2 million Occupied Palestinian (50% children, 75 % women and children) are abusively imprisoned in dwindling West Bank Bantustans in what heroes in the fight against South African Apartheid have called Apartheid conditions; 1.5 million Palestinian Israelis suffer under highly discriminatory, race-based Apartheid laws; Apartheid Israel deliberately murders over 6,000 Occupied Palestinians each year (mostly children), with about 90% dying from racist Zionist-imposed deprivation and 10% being violently killed (for details see "Palestinian Genocide":[...]

"The Plight of the Palestinians. A Long History of Destruction", edited by Professor William A. Cook, is a timely anthology in which outstanding, anti-racist, humanitarian scholars (many of them Jewish) describe the horrible reality of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide that is a blot on Jewry and a blot on Humanity.

The book begins with an Acknowledgment of collaborators, writers, journals and of writers whose works were offered but could not be included in this collection. The editor then provides a series of succinct Biographies of the various authors (that are provided in an even more succinct form below). The scholarly accounts of what is described throughout the book as the ongoing Palestinian Genocide are prefaced by an Introduction, "The Untold Story of the Zionist Intent to Turn Palestine into a Jewish State" by William A. Cook (Professor of English at the University of La Verne, Southern California, USA). The remainder of the book is composed of separate chapters with similarly self-explanatory titles by particular authors, each chapter deriving from an article previously published in various media.

I will not review the book as such (notably because I am one of the authors) except to say that the authors are all defenders of human rights throughout the world; that I feel greatly honoured to be in the company of such eminent anti-racist, humanitarian scholars and writers; and that Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity - we must follow the example of that noble Palestinian of 2,000 years ago, the Good Samaritan, who saved the savagely beaten Jew, and resolve that, like the Good Samaritan, we cannot walk by on the other side. It must be noted that many of the book's contributors are Jewish and following the example of the Good Samaritan in standing up for the brutally maltreated Palestinians.

The book cover summarizes the contents thus: "The Plight of the Palestinians: A Long History of Destruction is a collection of voices from around the world that establishes in both theoretical and graphic terms the slow, methodical genocide taking place in Palestine beginning in the1940s, as revealed in the Introduction. From Dr Francis A. Boyle's detailed legal case against the state of Israel to Uri Avnery's "Slow motion ethnic cleansing", Richard Falk's "Slouching towards a Palestinian Holocaust", and Ilan Pappe's "Genocide in Gaza", these voices decry in startling, vivid and forceful language the calculated atrocities taking place, the inhumane conditions inflicted on the people, and the silence that exists despite the crimes - nothing short of state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians."

I have simply set out below the various chapters of the book below, with the chapter number, author, key author biographical details, article, title and date of original publication..

I- The Human Tragedy

1. Steve Lendman (BA Harvard, MA, University of Pennsylvania; former marketing research analyst with large US corporations; progressive US economist, writer and broadcaster; coordinator with Professor Michel Chossudovsky, University of Ottawa, Canada, of the Center for Global Research, Canada), "Israel's Slow Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine", (11-26-2008).

2. Dr Gideon Polya (BSc, University of Tasmania, PhD, Flinders University; Australian biochemist and academic, La Trobe University; progressive writer on war , genocide, human rights and the climate emergency; author of "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds", "Body Count,. Global avoidable mortality since 1950" and "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History"), "Ongoing Palestinian Genocide", (3-6-2008).

3. Chris Hedges (Pulitzer Prize-winning US journalist, author, war correspondent and foreign correspondent for major US newspapers; currently senior fellow at The Nation Institute; 2002 Amnesty International Award for Human Rights journalism; taught at Columbia, New York and Princeton Universities; author of "American Fascists" and other books) , "The Lessons of Violence", (1-28-2008).

4. Karen Koning AbuZayd (BSc, De Pauw University, Indiana, MA , McGill University, Montreal; lectured at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda and Juba University, Sudan; worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for 19 years; commissioner-general for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) since 2005), "This Brutal Siege of Gaza Can Only Breed Violence", (1-23-2008).

5. Sonja Karkar (founder and president of the Melbourne-based Women for Palestine; cofounder of Australians for Palestine (AFP); editor of AFP News; publishes extensively about the plight of the Palestinians and maintains websites dedicated to telling the world about Palestine and the Nakba), "The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Weep", (9-4-2007).

6. Professor Richard Falk (BS, University of Pennsylvania, LLB, Yale University; JSD, Harvard University; Emeritus Professor in International Law, Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara; served on UN Human Rights Inquiry Commission for the Palestine Territories and many other important bodies; famed author of 37 books) , "Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust", (6-29-2007).

7. Patrick Cockburn (Middle East correspondent of The Independent; formerly wrote for the Financial Times; author of several books, notably "The Occupation: War, Resistance and Daily Life in Iraq" and co-author of "Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession"; awarded the 2004 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Reporting and the 2009 Orwell Prize for Journalism; writes extensively for various media) , "Gaza Is a Jail; Gaza Is Dying", (9-7-2006).

8. Dr Paul Craig Roberts (graduate, Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD, University of Virginia; assistant secretary of the Treasury under Reagan and famed as the Father of Reaganomics; economist and nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate; former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service; a top US journalist in mainstream and alternative media) , "The Shame of Being an American", (7-22-2006).

9. Andrea Howard (a psychiatric case manager in the central US; she has organized for local and national organizations focussing on social justice issues), "Israeli Immunity for Genocide", (7-3-2006).

10. Paul de Rooij (Dutch mathematicians, economist and writer based in London, UK; a committed activist for the Palestinians since the First Intifada, he has written extensively for "alternative" media `including Z magazine, Agenda, Counterpunch, Arab Media Internet Network , Miftah and various media research journals) , "Palestinian Misery in Perspective", (6-3-2004).

11. The late Professor Tanya Reinhart (1943-2007; MA, Hebrew University Jerusalem, PhD Massachusetts Institute of Technology (under Professor Noam Chomsky); professor of linguistics and literary theory, Tel Aviv University, Israel; Israeli linguist, author and peace activist; wrote many articles for Israeli and US journals ) and Jon Elmer (honors graduate in political science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia; Canadian freelance writer and photojourmalist specializing in the Middle East; worked as a photojournalist in numerous countries , including Palestine; a former editor and columnist for the Dalhousie Gazette) , "A Slow, Steady Genocide", (9-11-2003).

II- Propaganda, Perception and Reality

12. Dr. Elias Akleh (Palestinian-born US writer; expelled from Haifa in the 1948 Nakba ; expelled from Beit Jala in the 1967 Nakba; writes extensively for "alternative media" such as Global Research, Media With Conscience News, Dissident Voice, Information Clearing House, Palestine Think Tank and The Palestine Chronicle), "Gaza's Holocaust", (3-20-2008).

13. Dr Ramzy Baroud (Palestinian-American journalist; former Al Jazeera producer; taught at Curtin University, Perth, Australia; editor-in-chief of The Palestine Chronicle; his work has been published in or broadcast by numerous mainstream and alternative media world-wide; author of "Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion" and "The Second Palestinian Intifada"), "Big Bang or Chaos: What's Israel Up To?", (3-20-2008).

14. Jonathan Cook (UK writer based in Nazareth, Israel; writes for major UK and European newspapers as well as for "alternative" media; author of "Blood and Religion: Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State", "Israel and the Clash of Civilizations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East", and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments on Human Despair" ), "Israel Plots Another Palestinian Exodus", (3-8-2008).

15. Jon Basil Utley (graduate of Georgetown University; co-founder of the Committee to Avert a Mid-East Holocaust and chairman of Americans Against World Empire; served on boards or councils of many organizations; research fellow at several institutes; has written widely on Developing World economics and foreign policy in scholarly journals and mainstream media; associate publisher, The American Conservative), "America's Armageddonites," (10-11-2007).

16. Kathleen and Bill Christison (former US CIA political analysts; travel regularly to Palestine; co-authored "Palestine in Pieces: Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation"; Kathleen Christison authored "Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on US Middle East Policy" and "The Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story") "Dies It Matter What You Call It? Genocide or Erasure of Palestinians?", (11-28-2006).

17. Professor Jeff Halper (born in the US; professor of anthropology at Ben Gurion University, Israel; author, lecturer, activist and co-founder of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD); author of "Obstacles to Peace', Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem and the Nineteenth Century", and "An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel"), "The Problem with Israel", (11-23-2006).

18. Adi Ophir (associate professor, Cohn Institute, Tel Aviv University; fellow, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute; author of "Order of Evils", "Terrible Days: Between Disaster and Utopia", and "Working for the Present"; founded and edited the journal for critical theory "Theory and Criticism" ), "Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion", (1-16-2004).

19. Professor James Petras (emeritus professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York; adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia; author of 67 books published in 31 languages, 600 articles in professional journals and over 2,000 articles in non-professional journals and mainstream media; extensive Internet commentary; latest book "World Depression Regional Wars" ) , "The Final Solution and Jose Saramago", (4-2-2002).

20. Robert Fisk (famed Middle East correspondent for The Independent; holds more UK and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent; one of few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden (3 times); author of numerous books, notably "The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East"), "The British in Palestine, 1945-48: A Conveniently Forgotten Foreign Holocaust", (9-3-2002).

III- Rule by Law or Defiance

21. Steve Lendman (see details for Chapter 1 above), "The Russell Tribunal on Palestine", (5-16-2009).

22. Professor Ilan Pappe (Professor of History, University of Exeter, UK; formerly head of the Institute for Peace Studies, Haifa and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies, Israel; author of numerous books, notably "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" and "A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples"), "The Necessity of Cultural Boycott", (6-24-2009).

23. Omar Barghouti (born in Qatar, moved to Ramallah, Palestine; bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University, New York; founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI);hw writes extensively about the Palestinian cause and human rights ), "European Collusion in Israel's Slow Genocide", (1-21-2008).

24. Professor James Petras (see details for Chapter 19 above), "The Israeli Agenda and the Scorecard of the Zionist Power Configuration for 2008", (2-24-2008).

25. Professor Ilan Pappe (see details for Chapter 22 above), "Genocide in Gaza", (2-20-2007).

26. Curtis F. J. Doebbler (a famed international human rights lawyer who has represented individuals around the world and also represented the Palestinian National Authority and the Hamas Government; he is the author of numerous articles, notably for Al-Ahram, Egypt; author of numerous books including "An Introduction to International Human Rights Law" and "International Criminal Law"), "Genocide Among Us", (1-28-2007).

27. Kim Petersen (co-editor of Dissident Voice, lives in the traditional Mi'kmaq homeland colonially designated Nova Scotia, Canada; writes extensively about the human rights of Indigenous Peoples, including the Indigenous Arab Palestinians, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine), "Bleaching the Atrocities of Genocide", (6-7-2007).

28. John Pilger (famed UK-based, Australian expatriate writer, award-winning investigative journalist and film-maker; Vietnam War correspondent for the Daily Mirror; he has written about 2 dozen books and made over 50 documentaries; twice winner of the top UK journalism award; author of "The New Rulers of the World"), "Looking from the Side, from Belsen to Gaza", (1-18-2007).

29. William A. Cook (Professor of English at the University of La Verne, Southern California, USA; senior editor at MWC News, Prout World Assembly and the Palestine Chronicle; he writes extensively for major "alternative" media; author of "Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy", "The Rape of Palestine", "The Chronicles of Nefaria", and "Psalms for the 21st Century" ), "Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine", (1-7/8-2006).

30. Omar Barghouti (see details for Chapter 23 above), "Relative Humanity: the Essential Obstacle to a One-State Solution" (12-13/14-2003).

31. Uri Avnery (Jewish Israeli member of the Israeli Knesset, 1965-1974 and 1979-1981; founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement; he writes extensively about Palestinian human rights; author of "1948: A Soldier's Tale, the Bloody Road to Jerusalem", "Israel's Vicious Circle"" and "My Friend, the Enemy"), "Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing", (10-9-2003).

32. Professor Francis A. Boyle (professor of international law, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; .J.D., A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University; a leading US expert on international law; he has written extensively about international law; involved in Biological Weapons legislation; served on the board of Amnesty International; author of "The Tamil Genocide" and other books), "Israel's Crimes Against Palestinians: War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide", (12-13-1997).

Final comments

"The Plight of the Palestinians" authoritatively exposes the ongoing Palestinian Genocide and forces comparisons with other genocidal atrocities (for historical details of such atrocities see Gideon Polya, "Body Count. Global Avoidable Mortality since 1950", Polya, Melbourne, 2007, and F. Chalk and K. Jonassohn, "The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses and Case Studies", Yale University Press, New Haven, 1990).

After the WW2 Holocaust (30 million, Slavs, Jews and Gypsies killed), the defeated Germans adopted a CAAAA (C4A) post-Holocaust protocol involving Cessation of the killing, Acknowledgment of the crimes, Apology for the crimes, Amends for the crimes and Assertion "never again to anyone". While in 1945 many Germans said that "they didn't know" about what had been happening in Nazi-occupied Europe, Westerners can no longer say "we didn't know" - the Awful Truth is only a few mouse-clicks away and "The Plight of the Palestinians" is only a few feet away in your local bookstore or library. .

What can decent, antiracist, humanitarian people do? Decent folk must (a) inform everyone they can about the ongoing Palestinian Genocide and (b) impose Sanctions and Boycotts against nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel and against all people, politicians, corporations and countries complicit in this ongoing genocidal atrocity.

Some well-documented Gideon Polya essays on the Nakba, Palestinian human rights and the Palestinian Genocide by Apartheid Israel:

Gideon Polya, "Australia must stop Zionist subversion and join the World in comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters", Subversion of Australia, 15 April 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/2021-04-15 .

Gideon Polya, “Refutation Of Mainstream-Accepted Racist Zionist Lies Behind Israel ‘s Gaza Massacres And Palestinian Genocide”, Countercurrents, 26 July, 2014: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya260714.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Israeli-Palestinian & Middle East conflict – from oil to climate genocide”, Countercurrents, 21 August 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/08/21/israeli-palestinian-middle-east-conflict-from-oil-to-climate-genocide/ .

Gideon Polya, “End 50 Years Of Genocidal Occupation & Human Rights Abuse By US-Backed Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 9 June 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/06/09/end-50-years-of-genocidal-occupation-human-rights-abuse-by-us-backed-apartheid-israel/ .

Gideon Polya, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights & Palestinians. Apartheid Israel violates ALL Palestinian Human Rights”, Palestine Genocide Essays, 24 January 2009: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/universal-declaration-of-human-rights-palestinians .

Gideon Polya, “70th anniversary of Apartheid Israel & commencement of large-scale Palestinian Genocide”, Countercurrents, 11 May 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/05/11/70th-anniversary-of-apartheid-israel-commencement-of-large-scale-palestinian-genocide/ .

Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian Genocide & Australia’s Aboriginal Genocide compared”, Countercurrents, 20 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/20/apartheid-israels-palestinian-genocide-australias-aboriginal-genocide-compared/ .

Gideon Polya, “Israelis kill 10 times more Israelis in Apartheid Israel than do terrorists”, Countercurrents, 1 March 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/03/01/israelis-kill-ten-times-more-israelis-in-apartheid-israel-than-do-terrorists/ .

Gideon Polya, “Israeli Jewish Nation-State Law enshrines Apartheid and genocidal racism”, Countercurrents, 24 July 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/24/israeli-jewish-nation-state-law-enshrines-apartheid-and-genocidal-racism/ .

Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel & pro-Apartheid US & Canada face world sanctions over Occupied Jerusalem”, Countercurrents, 20 December 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/12/20/apartheid-israel-pro-apartheid-us-australia-canada-face-world-sanctions-over-occupied-east-jerusalem/ .

Gideon Polya, “Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Foreign interference in Australia 1. Hugely disproportionate Jewish Zionist representation in Australia’s Richest 200”, Countercurrents, 11 June 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/11/foreign-interference-in-australia-1-hugely-disproportionate-jewish-zionist-representation-in-australias-richest-200/ .

Gideon Polya, “Zionist subversion, Mainstream media censorship”, Countercurrents, 9 March 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/09/zionist-subversion-mainstream-media-censorship-disproportionate-jewish-board-membership-of-us-media-companies/ .

Gideon Polya, “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide”, Chapter 2 in William Cooke, editor, “The Plight of the Palestinians”, pages 39-42, Macmillan Palgrave, 2008.

Gideon Polya, “Pro-women’s rights Supreme Court Judge Ruth Ginsburg utterly ignored Palestinian Genocide”, Countercurrents, 20 September 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/09/pro-womens-rights-supreme-court-judge-ruth-ginsburg-utterly-ignored-palestinian-genocide/ .

Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel Excludes Occupied Palestinians From All Provisions Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights”, Countercurrents, 20 May 2012: https://countercurrents.org/polya200512.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Letter to the Australian taxpayer-funded ABC & SBS media re anti-Arab & anti-Jewish anti-Semitism and false reportage about Occupied Palestine:, Dissident Voice, 10 February 2021: https://dissidentvoice.org/2021/02/letter-to-the-australian-taxpayer-funded-abc-and-sbs-media-re-anti-arab-anti-jewish-anti-semitism-and-false-reportage-about-occupied-palestine/ .

Gideon Polya, “Israeli Jewish Nation-State Law enshrines Apartheid and genocide “, Countercurrents, 24 July 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/israeli-jewish-nation-state-law-enshrines-apartheid-and-genocidal-racism/ .

Gideon Polya, “COVID-19: Occupiers US, Australia & Apartheid Israel grossly violate Geneva Convention re conquered Subjects”, Countercurrents, 7 May 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/05/covid-19-occupiers-us-australia-apartheid-israel-grossly-violate-geneva-convention-re-conquered-subjects/ .

Gideon Polya, “Australian Universities Complicit With Pro-Zionist Censorship And Genocidal Israeli Militarism”, Countercurrents, 24 May, 2012: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya240512.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Indian Defence Ministry Bans Israeli Military Industries For 10 Years For Corruption”, Countercurrents, 7 March, 2012: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya070312.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Palestinian Genocide–imposing Apartheid Israel Complicit In Rohingya Genocide, Other Genocides & US, UK & Australian State Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 30 November 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/11/palestinian-genocide-imposing-apartheid-israel-complicit-in-rohingya-genocide-other-genocides-us-uk-australian-state-terrorism/ .

Gideon Polya, “Pro-Zionist-led Coup ousts Australian PM Rudd”, MWC News, 29 June 2010.

Gideon Polya , “US- , Zionist- And Corporate-Perverted Australian Labor Vilifies And Rejects Australia-First Ex-PM Kevin Rudd”, Countercurrents, 28 February 2012: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya280212.htm (1).

Gideon Polya,“Apartheid Australia Backs Racist Zionist Run Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 29 June 2009: https://countercurrents.org/polya290609.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Anti-racist Jewish writer Antony Loewenstein awarded Jerusulem (Al Quds) Peace Prize”, 5 December 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/12/anti-racist-jewish-writer-antony-loewenstein-awarded-jerusalem-al-quds-peace-prize/ .

Gideon Polya, “Zionist subversion, Mainstream media censorship”, Countercurrents, 9 March 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/zionist-subversion-mainstream-media-censorship/ .

Gideon Polya, “Foreign interference in Australia 1. Hugely disproportionate Jewish Zionist representation in Australia’s richest 200”, Countercurrents, 11 June 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/foreign-interference-in-australia-1-hugely-disproportionate-jewish-zionist-representation-in-australias-richest-200/

Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “The Crisis of Zionism” - Racist Zionists Ponder Substantial Or Total Palestinian Genocide”, Countercurrents, 14 July, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya140712.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Refutation Of Mainstream –Accepted Racist Zionist Lies Behind Israel 's Gaza Massacres And Palestinian Genocide”, Countercurrents, 26 July, 2014: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya260714.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Forged Australia Passports, Zionist Lies and Israeli State Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 26 February, 2010: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya260210.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Australian xenophobia targets China but ignores huge Israeli subversion of Australia”, Countercurrents, 7 July 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/07/australian-xenophobia-targets-china-but-ignores-huge-israeli-subversion-of-australia/ .

Gideon Polya, “Racist Zionism and Israeli State Terrorism threats to Australia and Humanity”, Palestinian Genocide, 2010: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/racist-zionism-and-israeli .

Gideon Polya, “50 Ways Australian Intelligence Spies On Australia And The World For UK , Israeli And US State Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 11 December, 2013: https://countercurrents.org/polya111213.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Yassmin Abdel-Magied censored on Anzac Day – jingoists trash Australian free speech”, Countercurrents, 28 April 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/04/28/yassmin-abdel-magied-censored-on-anzac-day-jingoists-trash-australian-free-speech/ .

Gideon Polya, “Pro-Apartheid Israel Australian Labor Party scraps outstanding anti-Israel Apartheid candidate, Melissa Parke”, Global Research, 18 April 2019: https://www.globalresearch.ca/pro-apartheid-israel-australian-labor-party-anti-apartheid-candidate-melissa-parke/5674801 .

Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel buries serial war criminal, genocidal racist & serial nuclear terrorist Shimon Peres”, Countercurrents, 1 October 2016: https://countercurrents.org/2016/10/apartheid-israel-buries-serial-war-criminal-genocidal-racist-and-nuclear-terrorist-shimon-peres/ .

Gideon Polya, “American Holocaust, Millions Of Untimely American Deaths And $40 Trillion Cost Of Israel To Americans”, Countercurrents, 27 August, 2013: https://countercurrents.org/polya270813.htm .

Gideon Polya , “Zionist-Perverted Western Mainstream Media Ignore Horrendous US Alliance And Apartheid Israeli Child Abuse”, Countercurrents, 29 April, 2014: https://countercurrents.org/polya290414.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel, Genocidally Racist Zionism & Key Existential Nuclear, Poverty & Climate Threats”, Countercurrents, 7 December 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/12/apartheid-israel-genocidally-racist-zionism-key-existential-nuclear-poverty-climate-threats/?swcfpc=1 .

Gideon Polya, “Cowardly US Lackey Australian Labor Government Betrays Promises, Australia, Palestine and Humanity”, Countercurrents, 20 November 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/11/cowardly-us-lackey-australian-labor-government-betrays-promises-australia-palestine-and-humanity/?swcfpc=1 .

Gideon Polya, “Is UN Security Council Resolution 2334 The Beginning Of The End For Apartheid Israel?”, Countercurrents, 28 December 2016: https://countercurrents.org/2016/12/is-un-security-council-resolution-2334-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-apartheid-israel/ .

Gideon Polya, “Nuclear Terrorism: US & Israeli Lackey Australia To Violate Treaty On Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”, Countercurrents, 30 October 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/10/nuclear-terrorism-us-israeli-lackey-australia-to-violate-treaty-on-prohibition-of-nuclear-weapons/ .

Gideon Polya, “Zionist-Subverted, US Lackey Australia Rejects TPNW, Backs US, UK & Israeli Nuclear Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 8 November 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/11/zionist-subverted-us-lackey-australia-rejects-tpnw-backs-us-uk-israeli-nuclear-terrorism/ .

Gideon Polya, “Zionist IHRA & US Alliance rejected UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution”, Countercurrents, 28 October 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/10/zionist-ihra-us-alliance-rejected-unga-anti-nazi-resolution/ .

Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality by since 1950”, 2nd edition, Publishing, Germany, 2020.

Gideon Polya, “Open Letter to Australian Labor MPs re IHRA & Labor “Progressive Except Palestine” (PEP)”, Dissident Voice, 7 October 2021: https://dissidentvoice.org/2021/10/open-letter-to-australian-labor-mps-re-ihra-labor-progressive-except-palestine-pep/ .

Gideon Polya, “UK racist Zionists falsely defame UK Labour Party in support of democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 10 August 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/08/uk-racist-zionists-falsely-defame-uk-labour-party-in-support-of-democracy-by-genocide-apartheid-israel/ .

Gideon Polya, “Australia must stop Zionist subversion and join the World in comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters”, Subversion of Australia, 15 April 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/2021-04-15 .

Gideon Polya, “Israelis Kill Ten Times More Israelis In Apartheid Israel Than Do Terrorists”, Countercurrents, 1 March 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/03/israelis-kill-ten-times-more-israelis-in-apartheid-israel-than-do-terrorists/ .

Gideon Polya, “A Shocking List of 52 Zionist- & Apartheid Israeli-Nazi Germany Comparisons”, Countercurrents, 7 August 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/08/a-shocking-list-of-52-zionist-apartheid-israeli-nazi-germany-comparisons/ .

Gideon Polya, “Australian Universities Complicit With Pro-Zionist Censorship And Genocidal Israeli Militarism”, Countercurrents, 24 May, 2012: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya240512.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Media-Ignored US, Corporate And Zionist Subversion Of Australian Democracy In Ex-PM Rudd-PM Gillard Battle”, Countercurrents, 27 February, 2012: https://countercurrents.org/polya270212.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Pro-Zionist-led Coup ousts Australian PM Rudd”, MWC News, 29 June 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/3488-pro-zionist-led-coup.html .

Gideon Polya, “Forged Australia Passports, Zionist Lies and Israeli State Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 26 February, 2010: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya260210.htm .

Gideon Polya,“Pro-Apartheid Israel Australian Labor Party Scraps Outstanding Anti-Apartheid Candidate, Melissa Parke”, Countercurrents, 17 April 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/04/pro-apartheid-israel-australian-labor-party-scraps-outstanding-anti-apartheid-candidate-melissa-parke/ .

Gideon Polya, “Letter To Australian Labor MPs Exposes Australian Crimes & IHRA Anti-Semitism”, Countercurrents, 9 October 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/10/letter-to-australian-labor-mps-exposes-australian-crimes-ihra-anti-semitism/ .

Gideon Polya, “Horrendous Pro-Zionist, Zionist And Apartheid Israeli Child Abuse Exposed ”, Countercurrents, 21 April 2014: https://countercurrents.org/polya210414.htm .

Gideon Polya, “ Apartheid Israel excludes Occupied Palestinians from all provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ”, Countercurrents, 20 May 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya200512.htm .

Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel Among World Leaders For Killing Children”, Countercurrents, 15 June 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/apartheid-israel-among-world-leaders-for-killing-children/ .

Gideon Polya, “Political lynching of Lidia Thorpe & huge failure to report in Zionist-subverted Australia”, Countercurrents, 23 October 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/10/political-lynching-of-lidia-thorpe-huge-failure-to-report-in-zionist-subverted-australia/?swcfpc=1 .

POST-NAKBA WESTERN-IGNORED ISRAELI APARTHEID & ONGOING PALESTINIAN GENOCIDE. Gideon Polya on the present appalling circumstances of the largely impoverished Palestinians (2021): “Successive Australian Governments, including the present Labor Government, fervently supported a US-, UK- and EU-backed and massively conventionally- and 100 war-head nuclear-armed Apartheid Israel that has violently occupied all of Palestine for 55 years and has ethnically cleansed 90% of Palestine. Apartheid Israel has a huge, high-technology army, navy and air force, that are regularly used to kill and maim Occupied Palestinians. This century Apartheid Israel has violently killed an average of about 500 Occupied Palestinians each year with about 4,000 also dying annually from imposed deprivation. Since 2000 about 10,000 Occupied Palestinians have been violently killed and about 80,000 passively murdered by imposed deprivation in the West Bank or in the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp. In contrast 4,000 Zionazis have been killed since 1920. Indeed in the last 20 years about 3,000 Israelis have been killed in Israel, 1,600 by fellow Israelis and 1,400 by Palestinians. Occupied Palestinian homemade rockets have killed 40 Israelis in the last 20 years. The GDP per capita is a deadly $3,400 [now $3,500] for utterly impoverished Occupied Palestinians and $46,400 [now $55,400] for Apartheid Israel. A Zionist-subverted West ignores the present reality that Apartheid Israel rules all of a 90% ethnically cleansed Palestine (plus ethnically cleansed parts of Syria and Lebanon) and of its 14.4 million Subjects 6.8 million (47.0%) are Jewish Israelis, 0.4 million (2.8%) are non-Jews and non-Arabs, 2.0 million (13.9%) are Palestinian Israelis [subject to 60 race-based discriminatory laws] , and 5.2 million (36.1%) are Occupied Palestinians with zero human rights [under highly abusive military subjugation] since 1967 . A further 8 million Exiled Palestinians are excluded from the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for millennia. Despite a century of a Palestinian Genocide involving killing, deprivation and repeated mass expulsions (800,000 expelled in the 1948 Nakba and 400,000 Arabs expelled in the 1967 Naksa; 2.2 million Indigenous Palestinians killed by violence, 0.1 million, or imposed deprivation, 2.1 million), Indigenous Palestinians still represent 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel in Palestine, but over 72% of the Indigenous Palestinian Subjects of Apartheid Israel are excluded from voting for the government ruling them i.e. they are subject to egregious Apartheid. Significantly, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, the neo-Nazi pro-Apartheid Israel architect of Apartheid in South Africa stated: “Israel is an apartheid state” [as found by International and Israeli human rights groups]” (Gideon Polya, “Cowardly US Lackey Australian Labor Government Betrays Promises, Australia, Palestine, and Humanity”. Countercurrents, 20 November 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/11/cowardly-us-lackey-australian-labor-government-betrays-promises-australia-palestine-and-humanity/ ).

In its utterly vile, genocidally racist, and ongoing gross maltreatment of Exiled, Occupied and Israeli Palestinians Apartheid Israel variously violates the following International Laws and Conventions: (a). the UN Charter, (b). the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UN Genocide Convention), (c). the Rights of the Child Convention (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ),(d). the UN Refugee Convention ( UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees), (e). the Geneva Conventions,(f) the International Criminal Court , (g) the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, (h). the “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”, (i). the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), (j). International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, (k). UNGA and UNSC Resolutions, (l) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (m). the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (n). the 1926 Slavery Convention or the Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, (o). 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, and finally (p). “Love thy neighbour as thyself” and “Kindness and Truth”, the core humane “memes” of Humanity as asserted by the wonderful Palestinian humanitarian Jesus (but comprehensively rejected by nuclear terrorist, grossly human rights-violating and genocidally racist Apartheid Israel) (see Gideon Polya, "Australia must stop Zionist subversion and join the World in comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters", Subversion of Australia, 15 April 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/2021-04-15 ) .

PROGRESSIVE INTERNATIONAL. Progressive International, “End the Nakba”, 3 May 2023: https://progressive.international/movement/campaign/end-the-nakba-fca8bb31-3454-48d5-b574-fea96ae61e9d/en .

Quote: “In May 2023, the world commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Nakba — a campaign of ethnic cleansing that saw at least 750,000 Palestinian people forcibly exiled from their homes and their land by Zionist militias. Over 450 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed during the Nakba. In the process, Zionist forces committed mass atrocities, including the massacres in Deir Yassin and Tantura. Mass graves continue to be unearthed in Palestine to this day. Over the course of 1948, about three-quarters of all Palestinians were deprived of their homes, their land, their livelihoods and, in some cases, their lives. Those that survived were condemned to live in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, and countries neighboring Palestine. The events that took place that year are referred to as the Nakba — the Arabic word for “catastrophe”. But the Nakba never ended. Since 1948, the people of Palestine have lost more than 85% of their land to the Israeli state in an ongoing process of settler-colonialism and expansion”.

QUMSIYEH. Professor Mazin Butros Qumsiyeh (eminent Palestinian scientist and author, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University ) on his “Honor List” of people around the world supporting Palestinian human rights: “Congressman Paul Findley published a book in the 1970s called "They Dare to Speak Out". He listed many examples of courageous individuals who speak truth to power with regard to US policy in the Middle East. Speaking out against Israeli occupation, oppression, and apartheid is not cost free but the reward of being able to live with one's conscience is priceless. This list is just a sampling of names of people we consider with honor for their honest and truthful stand for peace with justice: Examples of Individuals with good work for peace with justice (please send names of/info on others you think should be listed to mazin at qumsiyeh dot org): Avigail Abarbanel… Susan Abulhawa… John Pilger, Gideon Polya… Philip Weiss, Eyal Weizman…Darrell & Sue Yeaney” (Mazin Qumsiyeh, “Honor List”: http://qumsiyeh.org/honorlist/ .)

RABBANI. Mouin Rabbani, “75 years”, Jadaliya, 15 May 2023: https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45040?utm_source=Arab%2BStudies%2BInstitute%2BMailing%2BList&utm_campaign=1865419ab6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_05_27_08_02_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa9122f438-1865419ab6-158617745&mc_cid=1865419ab6&mc_eid=37b66f39d4 .

Quote: “The 15th of May 1948 marks the seventy-fifth commemoration of the Nakba, or Catastrophe, denoting the elimination of Palestine from the map, the ethnic cleansing of its indigenous inhabitants, and the dispossession of an entire people that persists to this day. The Nakba commenced almost immediately after the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), on 29 November 1947, adopted Resolution 181(II) recommending the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. But the groundwork for it had been laid during the previous half-century. First, by the Zionist movement which during the late nineteenth century initiated the colonization of Palestine with the ambition to transform it into a Jewish state. Second, and more importantly, by Great Britain, which seized control of Palestine at the conclusion of the First World War and for the next several decades ruled it with the objective of developing a European Jewish protectorate that would safeguard the eastern approach to the Suez Canal. Without the benefit of what the pre-eminent Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi termed this “British Shield”, the Zionist movement, which possessed neither the military, economic, geopolitical, nor demographic resources to achieve its objectives, would have entered the history books, if at all, as a failure born of delusion.”

RAMINI. Jafar M. Ramini, “The on-going Palestinian Nakba”, Countercurrents, 9 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/the-on-going-palestinian-nakba/?swcfpc=1 .

Quote: “May 15th, is the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe). And counting. I say ‘and counting’ because the theft of our land, the occupation, the siege on Gaza, the disposition of our people, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and replacement of the Palestinian nation, with Jews, often of dual nationality, from around the world, continues more aggressively than ever. So does the building of illegal settlements to house those interlopers. They too are still going on apace with no end in sight. Add to that toxic mix, the total indifference of western leaders and the conniving and betrayal of some Arab leaders, not to mention the shameful capitulation and collaboration of the Palestinian Authority and the picture is complete… And I haven’t even got around to mentioning the Israeli prisons which are full of Palestinian men, women and children, tortured and held in disgusting conditions without charge or legal recourse. As if all of this was not enough to emphasise the cruelty and inhumanity of the occupation of our land, the longest in history, the Israeli Occupation Forces continue to raid, unhindered, cities, towns and villages all over Palestine.”

REES. Stuart Rees (OAM, Professor Emeritus, University of Sydney, recipient of the Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize, founder of the Sydney Peace Prize, and author of the recent Policy Press book ‘Cruelty or Humanity’)(2019): “The [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, IHRA] definition says it is anti-Semitic to deny the Jewish people their rights to self-determination, even if that right depended on the ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population. The Nakba tragedy of 1948 saw the removal of 700,000 people from their homes and lands, the sacking of over 500 villages and the erasing of almost all of urban Palestine [in Israel]. It is not anti-Semitic to say this. To avoid any repeat of the familiar charge that Israel is being singled out, the narrative about the founding of Australia merits mention. The settlement of Australia also demanded the stealing of lands, murder and the virtual genocide of indigenous Australians. It is not anti-Australian to say so” (Stuart Rees, “Redefining anti-Semitism erodes freedom speech”, Pearls & Irritations, 16 January 2019: https://johnmenadue.com/stuart-rees-redefining-anti-semitism-erodes-freedom-of-speech/ ).

RELIEF WEB. Relief Web, “Israeli Apartheid - The Legacy of the Ongoing Nakba at 75 [EN/AR]”, 16 May 2023: https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/israeli-apartheid-legacy-ongoing-nakba-75-enar .

Quote: “Seventy-five years have passed since the Palestinian people were ethnically cleansed and forcibly expelled from their homes, lands, and property in their ancestral land during the 1948 Nakba (meaning ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic). Palestinian society was decimated during the Nakba, 531 Palestinian villages were destroyed, and more than 70 massacres were carried out against innocent civilians, killing more than 15 thousand Palestinians between 1947 and 1949. The legacy of the Nakba events is that about two-thirds of the Palestinian people became refugees in and around 1948 and a quarter of those who remained within historic Palestine geography were internally displaced and denied their right to return to their villages, towns, and cities of origin ever since. Since 1948, Israel established a regime of racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people primarily in the domains of nationality and land. In the immediate aftermath of the Nakba, Israel adopted a series of laws, policies, and practices, which sealed the dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian people, systematically denying the return of Palestinian refugees and other Palestinians who were abroad at the time of the war. At the same time, Israel imposed a system of institutionalized racial discrimination over Palestinians who remained on the land, many of whom had been internally displaced. Such Israeli laws have constituted the legal architecture of the Israeli apartheid that continue to be imposed on the Palestinian people today.”

RICE. Australian Greens Senator Janet Rice, “Australia musty speak out against Israeli apartheid… In a statement to the parliament earlier this month, senator Janet Rice expresses the Australian Greens’ solidarity with Palestinian people, and condemns both Israel’s Actions and Australia’s silence. … This week Palestinians commemorate Al Nakba day – Arabic for ‘the catastrophe’ – when in 1948 thousands of Palestinians were killed and an estimated 700,000 lost their homes and became refugees. Many of their descendants have remained in refugee camps since. This week, some Palestinians are facing the threat of a second expulsion, this time from Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem… Last week the EU said “The Israeli authorities should cease these activities and provide adequate permits for legal construction and development of Palestinian communities,” with similar sentiments expressed by UK officials and the US State Department. Australia must speak out and add our voice to stop the ongoing Nakba for Palestinians. I have spoken before about ongoing human rights abuses and I will keep speaking out in this parliament” (Janet Rice, “Australia musty speak out against Israeli apartheid”, The Greens, 21 May 2021: https://greens.org.au/magazine/australia-must-speak-out-against-israeli-apartheid ).

RIGHT OF RETURN. Zionists from "left-wing" Zionist Professor Naomi Chavan to explicitly genocidal right-wing extremist Zionists reject the Right of Return to their homeland Palestine of Indigenous Palestinians expelled in the 1948 Nakba (and their mostly state-less descendants). Report re Naomi Chavan: “Protesters forced a mayoral reception for visiting Israeli MPs to move to a back room at the Auckland Town Hall yesterday… A spokesman for the 30-strong group of Palestinian Human Rights Campaign protesters, David Wakim, said New Zealand should refuse to host Israeli MPs just as it had banned contact in the past with politicians from Fiji and South Africa who had denied democratic rights to ethnic groups … All five MPs, who span the Israeli political spectrum, said there could be no peace agreement in the Middle East until the Palestinians gave up the right of return to Israel for Arab refugees whose families fled to neighbouring countries when the Israeli state was created in 1948. A member of the left-wing Meretz Party and a founder of the Israeli peace movement, Professor Naomi Chavan, said the key stumbling block was the Palestinian demand for the right of 4 million Palestinian refugees to return to their original family lands in Israel. "Full implementation of the Palestinian right of return eventually means the destruction of the state of Israel, and no Israeli Government can accept it"” ( Simon Collins, “Protest forces backroom meeting with Israeli MPs”, NZ Herald, 27 August 2001: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/protest-forces-backroom-meeting-with-israeli-mps/5HAXOMIVKMJL6C42OWWPSMVCB4/?c_id=601&objectid=211508 ).

SALAAM. Darin Salaam (Jordanian director of the Nakba movie Farha ) (2022): “I always say the story found me. There was a girl named Radieh who lived in Palestine in 1948, and she was locked in a room by her father to protect her from Israel’s invasion at that time. Radieh survived and walked to Syria where she shared her story with another girl. That other girl grew up, had a daughter of her own, and shared Radieh’s story with her own daughter—who happened to be me. Because I’m claustrophobic, I kept thinking about what happened to Radieh. I felt for her. I related to her. Like every Jordanian of Palestinian descent, or any Arab, we grow up listening to stories about Palestine, of the Nakba. All these stories that I heard from my grandparents, families of friends, patched together to create the character of Farha, a name that means joy in Arabic. I chose the name because of how they talked about their life before the Nakba—to me it was life before their joy was stolen” (Armani Syed , “Why the Director of Netflix’s Farha Depicted the Murder of a Palestinian Family”, Time, 7 December 2022: https://time.com/6238964/darin-sallam-farha-netflix-interview/ .)

SAMIDOUN. Samidoun (Palestinian prisoner solidarity network), “Berlin bans Nakba demonstrations once again in 2023”, 12 May 2023: https://samidoun.net/2023/05/berlin-bans-nakba-demonstrations-once-again-in-2023/ .

Quote: “The German state intensifies its attack and bans demonstrations on Nakba Day 2023. A statement from the Revolutionary Solidarity Coalition: “The German state authorities are escalating their attack on all Palestinians, Arabs and supporters of the Palestinian cause in Germany, with the Berlin police’s banning of this year’s demonstration in Berlin to mark the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, scheduled for Sunday, 14 May 2023. This repressive attack is taking place as Israeli fighter jets bomb the besieged Gaza Strip, killing 33 Palestinians to date, including 6 children and 3 women. More than 100 people have been injured in the aerial bombing and hundreds of people were denied emergency medical care due to siege and enforced border closures. The number of martyrs in Palestine has risen to 147 since the beginning of the year.Around 80,000 Palestinians live in Berlin. Despite having lived in Germany for many years, many of them do not have a secure residence status and are often precariously employed and exposed to discrimination and harassment by the state””.

SEBESTYEN, Victor Sebestyan (UK-based Hungarian reporter, historian, editor, and author of “Revolution: 1989”, “Budapest: between East and West”, and “1946”): “The Arabs could not imagine that world opinion, led by the Americans but supported by the Soviets, would guarantee the establishment of a Jewish homeland. Palestinians could powerfully argue their objections. The historian George Antonius [1892-1942] made a passionate case [incorrect event and date given ]…We all sympathise with the Jews and are shocked at the way Christian nations persecute them. But do you expect the Muslims of Palestine to be more “Christian”, more humanitarian than the followers of Christ? After what happened in Germany, Poland, Romania, etc., have we to suffer in order to make good what you committed?... The treatment meted out to Jews in Germany and other European countries is a disgrace to its authors and to modern civilization. But the cure for the eviction of Jews from Germany is not to be sought in the eviction of Arabs from Palestine.” But the rest of the world was not listening” (Victor Sebestyen, “1946. The making of the modern world”, Pantheon, 2014, pages 273-274).

SHABANEH. Dr. Luay Shabaneh (President of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and National Director of the Population, Housing, and Establishment Census 2007): “Nakba: Ethnic cleansing and population replacement. Nakba in literary terms is expressive of natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes. However, the Nakba of Palestine is an ethnic cleansing process as well as destruction and banishment of an unarmed nation to be replaced by another nation. Contrary to natural catastrophes, the Palestinian Nakba was the result of man-made military plans and conspiracy of states. unfolded a major tragedy for the Palestinian people. More than 800,000 out of 1.4 million Palestinians (the Palestinian population in 1948 living in 1,300 Palestinian towns and villages) were driven out of their homeland to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, neighboring Arab countries and the remaining countries of the world. According to the data documentation of www.palestineremembered.com, Israelis controlled 774 towns and villages during the Nakba. They destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages. Israeli forces atrocities also include more than 70 massacres against Palestinians killing 15,000 Palestinians during Nakba time” ( Dr. Luay Shabaneh, PCBS Press Release, 2008: https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/Portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/nakba%2060.pdf . )

SHARIF. Lila Sharif (dual PhD in sociology and ethnic studies from the University of California, San Diego, in 2014. She is currently a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her book manuscript analyzes the cultural politics, production, circulation, and consumption of olive oil from Palestine. She is the first Palestinian American to earn a PhD in ethnic studies) (2014): “As Palestinians continue to experience the violent decimation of their olive groves, the consumption of Palestinian olive oil grows increasingly popular through transnational fair trade circuits. A feminized commodity from the “land of milk and honey,” olive oil has emerged as a signifier of Palestinian femininity and indigeneity pitched to the conscientious palate. I use the Palestinian olive as an optic to explore the convergence of settler colonialism, environmental destruction, neoliberal multiculturalism, consumption, and desire through multisited and multisensory ethnography in a transnational feminist cultural studies framework. Tracing the production, circulation, consumption, and representation of Palestinian olives, I argue that settler colonialism relies on gendered logics of disappearing native peoples, lands, and cultures. I analyze the neoliberal consumption of Palestinian olive oil and visual representations in contemporary television shows, like Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, against the ongoing disappearing of Palestinian landscapes. While Palestinian olives are often represented as part of Palestinian dispossession, my ethnographic findings indicate that tasting, eating, and cooking animate alternative ways of narrating history and reanchoring Palestinians to their land. In particular, I show how Palestinian women use food to connect back to villages depopulated during and following the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe). This dissertation project asks new theoretical questions about settler colonialism as a process of vanishing native peoples and their subjectivities, one that coresides with neoliberal, multicultural tropes of consumption and desire. I introduce a framework I call transnational feminist food studies: an epistemology and methodological practice that explores how food mediates power but also challenges hegemonic [End Page 256] narratives of colonialism and other structures of power. Transnational feminist food studies serves as an innovative intervention in cultural studies, food studies, post-colonial theory, and environmental justice. [End Page 257]” (Lila Sharif, “Savory Colonialism. Land, Memory, and the Eco-occupation of Palestine”, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, Duke University Press, Volume 11, Number 2, July 2015, pp. 256-257: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/585503/pdf ).

SITTA. Salman Abu Sitta (distinguished Palestinian intellectual, Nakba victim at 10, author of “Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir”, and the Keeper of the Keys of Return for 7 million Palestinian refugees) (2022): “They took my home by brute force and made me a refugee and I want my home back, and I want to live in it in freedom and dignity… Palestinians lived in their homes under Memlukes, Ottomans, the British and some under Israelis. You see Palestinians do not have ‘aims’; they have rights. Because these rights are Inalienable, they represent the bottom red line beyond which no concession is possible. Because doing so will destroy their life. That they will not permit… No other settler movement has depended on a vast array of myths, lies and misinformation, fuelled regularly by willing media and paid politicians. Palestinians did not need such tactics. Zionism did. Its policy and practice flies in the face of every principle of international law and basic facts of history and geography… In all the research I made, I did not find a moral, legal, demographic, historical or geographical reason why I should be and remain a refugee. Nakba is an aberration of history and I have no doubt that its many murderous consequences will not last. It will remain, however, an indelible black mark in the history of Zionist Jews and those who support them for centuries to come. The reverse of the coin is the resilience and steadfastness of Palestinians, which will remain a shining light for those who seek freedom and dignity… Our plan is to reconstruct the destroyed Palestinian villages. The plans are derived from a massive database. We are creating a file for every village, its house plans before 1948, its features and characteristics, its economies and its status of education …Young architects are now working on the reconstruction of these destroyed villages to be built in the same locations with the same beautiful old features, but with modern amenities.” (Vacy Vlazna, “Nakba: the man reconstructing Palestine’s lost villages”, Al Jazeera, 19 May 2016: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/5/19/nakba-the-man-reconstructing-palestines-lost-villages ).

Salman Abu Sitta documented detailed records of what happened to the 530 ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages in his book – The Atlas of Palestine.

SYED. Armani Syed (American journalist for Time magazine) (interviewing Darin Salaam, the Director of Netflix’s Nakba movie Farha in 2022): “[you may see a video preview] The movie’s namesake character, Farha, is a boisterous girl who wants to enrol in school despite traditional gender norms. But when nascent Israeli forces overrun her village, Farha’s father locks her in a pantry to keep her safe. There, she witnesses the murder of a Palestinian family and their newborn baby through a small opening in the wall. This rare onscreen depiction of Israeli violence against Palestinians has been condemned by Israeli officials” (Armani Syed , “Why the Director of Netflix’s Farha Depicted the Murder of a Palestinian Family”, Time, 7 December 2022: https://time.com/6238964/darin-sallam-farha-netflix-interview/ .)

Armani Syed, “Why the U.N. Is Commemorating Palestinian Displacement This Year”, Time Magazine, 15 May 2023: https://time.com/6279800/united-nations-nakba-palestinians/ .

Quote: “For the first time ever, the U.N. will commemorate the Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, in which at least 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forcibly expelled from their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948. On May 15, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will deliver a keynote speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, as part of a high-level special meeting to mark Nakba Day. In a statement outlining the event, the U.N. said the occasion aims to “highlight that the noble goals of justice and peace require recognizing the reality and history of the Palestinian people’s plight and ensuring the fulfillment of their inalienable rights.”As the 75th anniversary of the Nakba approached, the 193-member General Assembly voted in November on whether to host a commemoration event; the plan was approved by a vote of 90-30 with 47 abstentions. The U.S., a longtime military and financial supporter of Israel, voted against the event and confirmed that no American diplomats would be present.”

TEHERAN TIMES. Teheran Times, 15 May 2023: https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/484696/UN-to-mark-75th-anniversary-of-Nakba .

Quote: “On May 15, 2023, the United Nations will stage a high-level special meeting to observe the 75th anniversary of the Nakba – the mass displacement of around 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948.It is the first time that the international body is marking the date, which organizers said serves “as a reminder of the historic injustice suffered by the Palestinian people.” Certain countries, including Britain that helped create Israel and the U.S. that has been blindly supporting this artificial regime, have opposed the move.”

THE NEW PRESS NAKBA BOOKS. The New Press Books (15 May 2021): “Today marks the 73rd anniversary of the Nakba, the 1948 destruction of the Palestinian homeland and the displacement of its people. Now, as violence escalates in the region and the Israeli occupation continues, forcing even more Palestinians from their homes, the United States must reckon with its role in the conflict, namely its continued financial and military support for the Israeli occupation.

Here, the New Press presents five essential texts exploring the experience of Palestinians under occupation as well as US policy, bringing together leading writers, journalists, and scholars” (Emily, “Remembering the Nakba: Essential Reading”, 15 May 2021: https://thenewpress.com/blog/reading-lists/remembering-nakba-essential-reading ).

SHEHADEH. Raja Shehadeh, “Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation”, The New Press, 2019.

HILL & PLITNIK. Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick, “Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics”, The New Press, 2021

SHEHADEH. Raja Shehadeh, “Where the Line Is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine”, The New Press, 2017.

HAYOUNH. Massoud Hayoun, “When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History”, The New Press, 2019.

HAZAN. Eric Hazan (with an introduction by Rashid Khalidi), “Notes on the Occupation: Palestinian Lives”, The New Press, 2007.

THE WIRE. The Wire “Nakba: nationwide rallies to mark 75 years of Palestinian resistance”, 11 May 2023: https://www.thewire.org.au/day/thursday-11-may-2023/ .

Quote: “This coming Monday, 15 May, sees the 75th anniversary of Palestine’s Nakba – the start of Palestinians’ continued violent dispossession”.

TLAIB. Rep. Rashida Tlaib motion in the US Congress. Daniel Boguslaw, “Rep. Rashida Tlaib Asks Congress to Condemn “Israel’s Ongoing Nakba” Against Palestine”, The Intercept, 10 May 2023: https://theintercept.com/2023/05/10/israel-palestine-rashida-tlaib-resolution/ .

Quote: “As Israeli bombs ripped through residential buildings in the Gaza Strip, Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a resolution calling on Congress to recognize “the ongoing Nakba and Palestinian refugees rights.” Tlaib’s resolution comes ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe” that is widely used to describe the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes through violent raids in 1948. The resolution asks Congress to “condemn all manifestations of Israel’s ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people, including Israel’s illegal theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; Israel’s displacement of Palestinians by destroying their homes and forcing them from their land; and the daily brutality and violence inflicted by the Israeli military and Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians.”In addition to memorializing the Nakba, Tlaib’s resolution calls for a prohibition on U.S. weapons being used to destroy Palestinian homes and land, and a ban on diplomatic buildings being constructed on land expropriated from Palestinians by Israel. The resolution will be co-sponsored by Reps. Betty McCollum, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush, all of whom signed onto a version that Tlaib introduced last year. Both versions of the resolution recount the history of the mass expulsion that led to millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring countries like Jordan.”

Palestinian American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib interviewed by Ayman Mohyeldin on MSNBC, “Rashida Tlaib on the GOP’s efforts to rewrite Palestinian history”, YouTube 14 May 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eT4AsHcHJI .

UDDIN. Rayhan Uddin, “Nakba: Britain and the Secret 1948 Palestine Memos”, Global Research, 16 May 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/nakba-britain-secret-1948-palestine-memos/5819405 .

UDHR. Zionists from the “asserted Left” Zionists to the explicitly genocidal Far Right Zionists reject the Right of Return of Indigenous Palestinians expelled in the 1948 Nakba (and their descendants, most of whom are state-less). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): “Article 13: 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State. 2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country” (see UDHR: https://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights/universal-declaration/translations/english ). Report re Naomi Chavan: “Protesters forced a mayoral reception for visiting Israeli MPs to move to a back room at the Auckland Town Hall yesterday… A spokesman for the 30-strong group of Palestinian Human Rights Campaign protesters, David Wakim, said New Zealand should refuse to host Israeli MPs just as it had banned contact in the past with politicians from Fiji and South Africa who had denied democratic rights to ethnic groups … All five MPs, who span the Israeli political spectrum, said there could be no peace agreement in the Middle East until the Palestinians gave up the right of return to Israel for Arab refugees whose families fled to neighbouring countries when the Israeli state was created in 1948. A member of the left-wing Meretz Party and a founder of the Israeli peace movement, Professor Naomi Chavan, said the key stumbling block was the Palestinian demand for the right of 4 million Palestinian refugees to return to their original family lands in Israel. "Full implementation of the Palestinian right of return eventually means the destruction of the state of Israel, and no Israeli Government can accept it" ” ( Simon Collins, “Protest forces backroom meeting with Israeli MPs”, NZ Herald, 27 August 2001: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/protest-forces-backroom-meeting-with-israeli-mps/5HAXOMIVKMJL6C42OWWPSMVCB4/?c_id=601&objectid=211508 ; see also see under UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, UDHR, CHAVAN and RIGHT OF RETURN in the June 2023 updated “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/home ; “2023, 75th Nakba Anniversary: Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide , and "Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide", Palestinian Genocide : https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes ).

UK PARLIAMENT MOTION. UK Parliament, “75th anniversary of the Nakba”, 11 May 2023: https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/60885/75th-anniversary-of-the-nakba .

Quote: “Motion text [9 signatures] That this House notes that Monday 15 May 2023 marks 75 years since 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from Palestine in what is now known as the Nakba; notes that there are now over five and a half million Palestinian refugees worldwide and supports these refugees' rights in line with international law; affirms the need for the Government to continue to fund UNRWA' which carries out important work with and for Palestinian refugees; further recalls the 800,000 Jews who fled or were expelled from Arab states from 1948 onwards; further notes the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza by the Israeli authorities; calls on the Government to immediately recognise an independent Palestinian state which will help breathe new life into the peace process; and urges the Government to continue to pursue a two-state solution and a lasting peace in the region””.

UN. UN, “Commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Nakba at UN Headquarters in New York”, 15 May 2023: https://www.un.org/unispal/nakba75/ .

Quote: “2023 marks the 75 th anniversary of the mass displacement of Palestinians known as “the Nakba” or “the Catastrophe”. The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Nakba at UN Headquarters in New York. For the first time in the history of the UN, this anniversary was commemorated pursuant to the mandate by the General Assembly (A/RES/77/23 of 30 November 2022).”

Comment: The indescribably dirty, cowardly, traitorous, morally degenerate, mendacious, Orwellian, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, Zionist-subverted, Zionist perverted, US lackey, pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid, neo-Nazi Australian Labor Government voted against the UN commemoration. There is bestiality, paedophilia and incest – and then there is voting 1 Labor or voting 1 Coalition (this is a rationally sustainable position: abused animals can be humanely euthanased, abused humans can get compensation and expert psychiatric help – but there is no help for an egregiously Zionazi-perverted and Zionazi-subverted Australia dominated by anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi Mainstream journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes.

UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY (UNGA). On 30 November 2022 the UNGA approved a resolution to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba in the General Assembly Hall in May 2023 (Nakba Day is 15 May). According to the Australian Jewish News “The initiative was sponsored by Egypt, Jordan, Senegal, Tunisia, Yemen and the Palestinians and passed by a vote of 90 in favour, 30 against and 47 abstentions. Israel, Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK and the US were among the countries that voted against” (see: https://www.australianjewishnews.com/un-votes-in-favour-of-commemorating-nakba/ ).

UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS. Zionists from the “asserted Left” Zionists to the explicitly genocidal Far Right Zionists reject the Right of Return of Indigenous Palestinians expelled in the 1948 Nakba (and their descendants, most of whom are state-less). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): “Article 13: 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State. 2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country” (see UDHR: https://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights/universal-declaration/translations/english ). Report re Naomi Chavan: “Protesters forced a mayoral reception for visiting Israeli MPs to move to a back room at the Auckland Town Hall yesterday… A spokesman for the 30-strong group of Palestinian Human Rights Campaign protesters, David Wakim, said New Zealand should refuse to host Israeli MPs just as it had banned contact in the past with politicians from Fiji and South Africa who had denied democratic rights to ethnic groups … All five MPs, who span the Israeli political spectrum, said there could be no peace agreement in the Middle East until the Palestinians gave up the right of return to Israel for Arab refugees whose families fled to neighbouring countries when the Israeli state was created in 1948. A member of the left-wing Meretz Party and a founder of the Israeli peace movement, Professor Naomi Chavan, said the key stumbling block was the Palestinian demand for the right of 4 million Palestinian refugees to return to their original family lands in Israel. "Full implementation of the Palestinian right of return eventually means the destruction of the state of Israel, and no Israeli Government can accept it" ” ( Simon Collins, “Protest forces backroom meeting with Israeli MPs”, NZ Herald, 27 August 2001: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/protest-forces-backroom-meeting-with-israeli-mps/5HAXOMIVKMJL6C42OWWPSMVCB4/?c_id=601&objectid=211508 ; see also see under UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, UDHR, CHAVAN and RIGHT OF RETURN in the June 2023 updated “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/home ; “2023, 75th Nakba Anniversary: Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide , and "Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide", Palestinian Genocide : https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes ).

UNRWA. “UNRWA photo and film archive for Palestine refugees”, UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA): https://www.unrwa.org/photo-and-film-archive .

VERSO. Verso (in its own words: “Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world, publishing one hundred books a year” ) on the occasion of Nakba Day , 15 May 2020: “Nakba Day Reading List. To commemorate Nakba Day, a reading list on the history of the region and the Palestinian struggle for liberation. Nakba Day, an annual day of commemoration of the displacement that preceded and followed the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, falls on the 15th of May each year. In an attempt to understand the catastrophe, we bring you a reading list of key books on the struggle for justice in Palestine, from Ghada Karmi, Bernard Regan, Mahmoud Darwish, Naji al-Ali, Ilan Pappe, Edward Said, Shlomo Sand, and more” (Verso, “Nakba Day Reading List”, 15 May 2020: https://www.versobooks.com/lists/3210-nakba-day-reading-list ).

Verso’s Nakba Day Reading List:

ROSS. Andrew Ross, “Stone Men. The Palestinians who built Israel”, Verso, 2019.

REGAN. Bernard Regan, “The Balfour Declaration. Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine”, Verso, 2018.

SAND. Shlomo Sand, “Twilight of History”, Verso, 2017.

PAPPE. Ilan Pappe, “Ten Myths About Israel”, Verso, 2017.

KARMI. Ghada Karmi, “Return. A Palestinian Memoir”, Verso, 2015.

PRASHAD. Vijay Prashad (editor), “Letters to Palestine. Writers responding to war and occupation”, Verso 2015.

AL-ALI. Nazi al-Ali, “A Child in Palestine”, Verso, 2009.

DARWISH. Mahmoud Darwish, “Mural” (poems), Verso, 2017.

CHAYUT. Noam Chayut, “The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust. A Memoir”, Verso, 2013.

PAPPE. Ilan Pappe, “The Idea Of Israel. A history of power and knowledge” , Verso, 2015.

SAND. Shlomo Sand, “How I Stopped Being a Jew”, Verso, 2014.

SAND. Shlomo Sand, “The Invention of the Jewish People”, Verso, 2010.

SAND, “The Invention of the Land of Israel. From Holy Land to Homeland”, Verso, 2014.

HITCHENS & SAID. Christopher Hitchens and Edward W. Said (editors). “Blaming the Victims. Spurious scholarship and the Palestinian question”, Verso, 2001.

LEVY. Gideon Levy, “The Punishment of Gaza”., Verso 2010.

WEIZMAN. Eyal Weizman, “Hollow Land. Israel’s architecture of occupation”, Verso 2017.

WEIZMAN. Eyal Weizman, “The Least of all Possible Evils. A short history of humanitarian violence”, Verso, 2017.

KARMI. Ghada Karmi, “In Search of Fatima. A Palestinian Story”, Verso, 2009.

HOKE & MALEK. Mateo Hoke and Cate Malek (editors), “Palestine Speaks. Narratives of life under occupation”, Verso, 2015.

FINKELSTEIN. Norman Finkelstein, “The Holocaust Industry. Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering”, Verso, 2014.

FINKELSTEIN. Norman Finkelstein, “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict”, Verso, 2003.

LIM. Audrea Lim (editor), “The Case for Sanctions Against Israel”, Verso, 2012.

RUEBNER. Josh Ruebner, “Shattered Hopes. Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace”, Verso, 2014.

BLUMENTHAL. Max Blumenthal, “The 51 Day War. Ruin and resistance in Gaza”, Verso, 2015.

VLAZNA. Dr Vacy Vlazna (outstanding Australian human rights advocate) (2016): “The 1948 Nakba was the systematic and violent ethnic cleansing of 530 Palestinian villages by the Jewish Irgun, Haganah and Stern Gang militias executed in collusion with the British Mandate. The 750,000 villagers, like little Salman [Sitta] and his family, who survived the massacres, were forcibly torn from their ancestral roots that were bountifully nourished over centuries by a symbiotic partnership of sweat, toil, earth and sun belying the inane Zionist fiction that the belligerent Jewish colonisers arrived in an empty land and made the desert bloom” (Vacy Vlazna, “Nakba: the man reconstructing Palestine’s lost villages”, Al Jazeera, 19 May 2016: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/5/19/nakba-the-man-reconstructing-palestines-lost-villages ).

WAFA. WAFA NEWS AGENCY. WAFA News Agency (2021): “Documents newly uncovered by Israeli daily Haaretz and the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research have shed light on the massacres of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) of Palestine that led to the creation of the occupying state of Israel. Haaretz said the documents, based on the letters of soldiers, unpublished contemporary memoirs, minutes of political party meetings and other historical records, reveal the details of three massacres committed by Zionist militias in the villages of Reineh, Meron and al-Burj. The documents also show that prominent Israeli leaders "knew in real time about the blood-drenched events that accompanied the conquest of Arab villages".In October 1948, pre-Israel Zionist militias like the Haganah, Lehi and Irgun launched two offensives targeting the south and north of then Mandatory Palestine.The first, Operation Hiram, swept through the Galilee in three days, reaching villages in Lebanon. The second, Operation Yoav, occupied the south of the country… Residents of Reineh looted and killed. The occupation of Galilee led to half its Palestinian population being expelled and fleeing to Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Only 120,000 of them remained in the area… The massacre of Al-Burj. Hajj Ibrahim was a Palestinian who worked in a military kitchen belonging to the Israeli forces in Al-Burj, a Palestinian town occupied by Israel in July 1948 some 15km to the east of Ramle. Today the Modiin settlement stands in its place… Mount Meron. Further atrocities against Palestinians are revealed in a document written by Shmuel Mikunis, a communist member of the Provisional State Council, which became the Knesset, asking for clarification from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion about acts committed by Irgun militias. These included the killing of 35 Palestinians after they raised a white flag; the arrest of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, who were made to dig a pit, pushed into it, then shot to death; the rape of a girl by Irgun members; and the killing of 13 or 14 Palestinian children who were playing with grenades” (WAFA News Agency, “Newly uncovered documents shed light on massacres of Palestinians during the Nakba of 1948”, WAFA News Agency, 12 December 2021: https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/127176 .)

WAFA: “Remembering the Deir Yassin Massacre 75 years on”, 9 April 2023: https://imemc.org/article/wafa-remembering-the-deir-yassin-massacre-75-years-on/ . Quote: “On this day in 1948, a couple of hundred armed Zionist militias from the pre-1948 Irgun and Stern gangs stormed the village of Deir Yassin, a few kilometers to the west of Jerusalem, and committed one of the earliest massacres that became standard practice for the newly-founded state of Israel. On April 9, 1948, Zionist gangs raided the village of Deir Yassin, killing at least 254 Palestinian civilians, mainly women, children and the elderly. There were documented cases of rape, mutilation and humiliation. The Deir Yassin massacre was led by [later Israeli PM] Menachem Begin in his capacity as head of the Irgun terrorist militia… Of nearly 70 massacres during the 1948 Nakba, Deir Yassin would become one of those atrocities where almost all the acts of war criminality were unleashed: killing, destruction, pillaging, rape, and displacement.”

WEISS. Philip Weiss, “‘Ethnic cleansing’ on MSNBC– Nakba at 75 gains remarkable coverage by U.S. broadcasters”, Mondoweiss, 15 May 2023: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/05/ethnic-cleansing-on-msnbc-nakba-at-75-gains-remarkable-coverage-by-u-s-broadcasters/ .

Quote: “The 75th anniversary of the Nakba has brought unprecedented coverage in American media of the Palestinian experience. No, it doesn’t yet rival commemorations of other historical events from that period. But in a new high-water mark, MSNBC and NPR both did very good Nakba pieces, with Ayman Mohyeldin speaking of the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestine; and Vox did a long explainer laying out the history of the Nakba… ”

WIKIPEDIA. Wikipedia: “The Nakba… ( 'the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'), also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs… The foundational events of the Nakba took place during and shortly after the 1948 Palestine war, including 78% of Mandatory Palestine being declared as Israel, the exodus of 700,000 Palestinians, the related depopulation and destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages and subsequent geographical erasure, the denial of the Palestinian right of return, the creation of permanent Palestinian refugees and the "shattering of Palestinian society… In 1998, Yasser Arafat proposed that Palestinians should mark the 50th anniversary of the Nakba declaring 15 May, the day after Israeli independence in 1948, as Nakba Day, formalizing a date that had been unofficially used as early as 1949 (“Nakba”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba ).

XINHUA (CHINA). Xinhua [China], “Palestinians mark 75th anniversary of Nakba”, 16 May 2023: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202305/1290777.shtml .

Quote: “Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip marked the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba day, or the day of "catastrophe," on Monday with large-scale rallies and demonstrations. The Nakba Day is observed annually on May 15 by Palestinians to remember the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes after the establishment of Israel in 1948. In Gaza, dozens of Palestinians took to the streets, marching through the main thoroughfares, hoisting Palestinian flags, and displaying banners emphasizing the right of return.The demonstration culminated at the headquarters of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process in the western part of the city.”

YAZBEK. Farnaz Fassihi and Hiba Yazbek, “In First, Palestinian Displacement Commemorated at United Nations”, New York Times, 15 May 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/world/middleeast/palestine-displacement-israel-un.html .

ZINN. Professor Howard Zinn (1922-2010; an outstanding anti-racist Jewish American activist, civil libertarian, anti-war activist, historian, playwright, political activist, social critic, and socialist. The author of some 20 books, Zinn was Professor Emeritus in the Political Science Department at Boston University, Boston Massachusetts, USA and the author of the best-seller “A People’s History of the United States”) in a Letter co-signed by 15 famed anti-racist writers, including 3 Nobel Laureates)(2006): “The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.

SUMMARY OF VIRTUAL 1948 NAKBA 75TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION - the panels below are suitable for a powerpoint presentation about the genocidal Nakba atrocity and its dire consequences - please feel free to use in the interests of Palestinian human rights.

Dome of the Rock

The Dome of the Rock is located in the Al Aksa Compound in Jerusalem (Al Quds), the third holiest site in Islam.

The Dome of the Rock (built in 691–692 CE) in the ancient land of Palestine is the world's oldest surviving work of Islamic architecture.

The Dome of the Rock shows the first use of the brilliantly-coloured geometric patterns used world-wide in fabulous Muslim architecture e.g. the Alhambra (Spain), and in Isfahan (Iran) that are glories of Muslim and human civilization.

As part of the Fertile Crescent Palestine contributed to the Agrarian Revolution that transformed humanity.

Geometric patterns in Muslim architecture

Inspired by the Dome of the Rock, Palestine, Muslim architects subsequently discovered 17 basic types of repetitive wall patterns a thousand years ago, and have used them brilliantly in mosques and other buildings ever since.

In 1924 Hungarian-American mathematician George Polya (ETH, Stanford) proved that there were only 17 types of “plane symmetry groups” (wall paper patterns) and inspired famed Dutch lithographer M.C. Escher’s brilliant designs so beloved of university students world-wide for a century.

Images of Islamic tile art at the Dome of the Rock

(images from Wikipedia).

For images of 1,300 years of inspired art Google the following and click on images: Islamic tile art, Isfahan tile art, Alhambra tile art, Muslim tile art, Samarkand tile art, Bokhara tile art, MC Escher symmetry.

The wonderful Palestinian humanitarian Jesus aside, Palestine has thus made a major contribution to human civilization.

History of Palestine

Palestine and variants thereof derive from the coastal Philistines.

Palestine was variously ruled by the Egyptian, Phoenician, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Persian Empires, and thence from 634CE by a succession of Muslim Caliphates culminating in the 400-year 1517-1926 Ottoman Caliphate.

1914: Britain invaded Iraq for oil and imperial hegemony.

1916: Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement re Arab world & WW1-related Palestinian Famine (0.1 million deaths).

1917: Australian victory over Turks at Beersheba on 31 October followed on 2 November by Balfour Declaration to Rothschild giving Palestine to the Zionists (to help Russian Zionists keep Russia in the war against Germany).

1918: Surafend Massacre of Palestinians by ANZACs.

1920-1930s: Zionist immigration, Arab dispossession, and Arab revolt (10% of adult male Palestinians killed by the British and British armed and trained terrorists).

1939: UK White Paper stopped Jewish immigration.

1944: UK War Cabinet secretly decided to Partition Palestine.

1947: UN Partition Plan.

1948: Zionists declared State of Israel on 14 May 1948 and British trained and armed Zionist defeated Palestinian defenders and forces from neighbouring Arab countries. The Zionists seized 78% of Palestine and in the process expelled about 800,000 Palestinians (57% of the Palestinian population of 1.4 million) in the Nakba (Catastrophe).

1956: Invasion of Egypt by UK, France and Apartheid Israel.

1967: Apartheid Israel attacked all its neighbours, seizing all of Palestine plus parts of all its neighbours, and expelling a further 400,000 Arabs in the Naksa (Setback).

1973: further Egypt-Israel war.

1976: 6 Palestinians killed, 100 wounded on 30 March, subsequently remembered on 30 March Land Day.

1979. US brokered peace between Egypt and Israel.

1982: Israel occupied much of Lebanon and was complicit in the Sabra and Shatila Massacre of 3,500 Palestinians by Falangists. Israel withdrew in 2000.

1987. First Intifada (revolt).

1993: futile Oslo Agreement.

2000: Second Intifada.

2004: PLO leader Yasser Arafat poisoned with polonium.

2005: Israelis left a hermetically sealed Gaza.

2006: Hamas victory in elections rejected by US and Israel.

2006-2023: Repeated deadly Gaza Massacres in 2006, 2008-2009, 2014, 2018-2019, 2021, and 2022. 2022-2023, increased killing of Palestinians in the West Bank.

2022: Leading Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh publicly murdered by Israelis.

2023: Fascist and genocidally racist new Israeli Government claims all of Palestine.

Dire circumstances of Indigenous Palestinians today.

Of 15.5 million mostly impoverished Indigenous Palestinians:

8 million Exiled Palestinians are excluded from their homeland inhabited by their forebears for over 3,000 years.

5.5 million Occupied Palestinians exist without human rights in the West Bank (3.3 million) and Gaza (2.2 million).

2.0 million Israeli Palestinians can vote but exist as Third Class citizens under 60 Nazi-style, race-based laws.

About 50% of Occupied Palestinians are children and about 75% women and children.

1948 Nakba by the numbers.

Palestinians expelled: 800,000 out of 1,400,000 (57% of the population) i.e. Genocide as defined by UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Massacres: over 70.

Palestinians killed: 15,000.

Villages emptied: over 530.

Mosques eventually destroyed: 120.

Immense ongoing imposed trauma to presently 8 million Exiled Palestinians, 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians, and 2 million Israeli Palestinians.

WW1 onwards Palestinian Genocide

2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence (0.1 million) and imposed deprivation (2.1 million).

Each year Israel violently kills about 500 Palestinians and a further 4,000 die from imposed deprivation.

Since 2000 about 10,000 Palestinians have been killed violently and about 90,000 have died from deprivation.

4,000 Zionists killed since 1920, 40 by Gaza rockets.

Apartheid Israel is committing Genocide, defined by Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

The “GDP (nominal) per capita” is a deadly $3,500 for Occupied Palestinians and $54,400 for Occupier Israelis.

Apartheid Israel is grossly violating Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that demand that an Occupier is obliged to provide life-sustaining food and medical requisites to its Occupied Subjects “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”.

Israel is an Apartheid state according to scholars and major human rights groups.

50% of Occupied Palestinians are children, 75% women and children.

Most Palestinian children are traumatized by war, violence and occupation.

50% of Israeli children suffer psychological, physiological and sexual abuse (17% suffer the latter).

Apartheid Israel violates the Rights of the Child Convention.

Apartheid Israel violates numerous UNGA Resolutions, UNSC Resolutions and numerous International Laws and Conventions.

Apartheid Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is among world leaders for “killing of children per million of population”.

Apartheid Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is the world leader for “killing of journalists per million of population”.

Apartheid Israel rejects ICC, ICJ, UNGA, UNSC, and UN.

A secular, democratic One State for Palestine.

A clear, humane solution to the continuing human rights catastrophe in Palestine is a unitary state (one-state solution, bi-national state) as in post-Apartheid South Africa that would involve return of all refugees, zero tolerance for racism, equal rights for all, all human rights for all, economic decency for all, one-person-one-vote democracy, justice, goodwill, reconciliation, airport-level security, nuclear weapons removal, internationally-guaranteed national security initially based on the present armed forces, and untrammelled access for all citizens to all of Palestine. It can and should happen tomorrow.

Ukrainians have suffered 1 year of illegal and war criminal occupation of 20% of their territory by Russia – Occupied Palestinians have endured 56 years of such occupation.

Palestinian human rights

Indigenous Palestinians should be IMMEDIATELY accorded all the human rights set out in the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with an end to all discriminatory impositions.

In the absence of requisite action, Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) must be globally applied against genocidally racist Apartheid Israel and all its racist supporters, noting that global sanctions brought down the obscene Apartheid regime in South Africa.

“Lucky” Israeli Palestinians can vote for restricted candidates but are Third Class citizens subject to 60 Nazi-style discriminatory laws that would not be tolerated in democracies like Australia, the US and the UK.

Israeli Apartheid

Despite a century-long Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million Palestinians killed by violence, 0.1 million, and imposed deprivation, 2.1 million) and successive mass population expulsions ( 800,000 in the 1948 Nakba or Catastrophe, and 400,000 in the 1967 Naksa or Setback), today 7.5 million Indigenous Palestinians represent 50% of the 15.0 million Subjects of Apartheid Israel (while 7.0 million Jewish Israelis represent only 47%) but 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians (73% of the Indigenous Palestinian Subjects of Apartheid Israel) cannot vote for the government ruling them i.e. they are subject to egregious Apartheid.

Leading scholars, global human rights groups Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Israeli B’Tselem and Israeli Yeshdin condemn Israeli abuses as Apartheid.

Lack of Western empathy for Palestinians

Australians (26.0 million) are roughly twice as numerous as Indigenous Palestinians (15.5 million), and Australia was 1 of 20 places envisaged for a Jewish State. If Zionists had similarly colonized Australia, today there would be about:

4.4 million Australians genocidally killed, 16 million Exiled Australians, 15 million Australian Subjects of 14 million genocidally racist Zionists, 11 million Australian Subjects without human rights or the vote, 4 million Australian Subjects able to vote but subject to 60 Nazi-style, race-based, and discriminatory Zionist laws.

Australia and the West rightly condemn the war criminal Russian invasion of Ukraine but will not condemn the 56 year illegal Occupation of Palestine by Apartheid Israel.

Palestine is an ancient civilization

Dates back to Agrarian Revolution (8,000 BCE) in the Fertile Crescent (Jared Diamond, “Guns, Germs & Steel”).

Holy Bible (KJV), re Bible-asserted ca 1,000BCE “exodus from Egypt”, Exodus 15-14: “Palestina”.

Herodotus (ca 484-425 BCE): “Palestina”.

Under Romans at time of Jesus (30CE): “Palestina”.

Ca 50% of Occupied Palestinians are children, 75% women and children

Ca 400,000 Palestinian children expelled in 1948 Nakba, 200,000 in 1967 Naksa

Ca 50% of 2 million Palestinian Genocide deaths were of children.

Ca 50,000 Occupied Palestinian child deaths from violence and deprivation (2000 onwards).

Palestinian & Israeli child trauma under post-Nakba Zionist Apartheid

Occupied Palestinian children traumatized by violent and deadly Zionist Apartheid.

Apartheid Israel in Occupied Palestine among world leaders for killing children per capita of population.

50% of Israeli children are subject to physical, psychological and sexual (17%) abuse.

Why the Nakba happened: greed and lies

UK and US desire for oil, Middle East & global hegemony.

Mendacious Zionist mythology debunked:

(1). The politically dominant Ashkenazi Jews descend from non-Semitic Khazar converts to Judaism (ca 800 CE)

(2). Most Jewish Israelis descend from Berber, Yemeni and Khazar converts to Judaism.

(3). No non-Biblical evidence for Exodus, King David, Exile..

Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism

(1). Zionism is settler-colonialism and genocidal racism antithetical to the great humane Jewish tradition.

(2). Most Jews are ethnically non-Semitic Ashkenazim but the Indigenous Palestinians are Semitic.

(3). Anti-racist Jewish American Professor Bertell Ollman (NYU): “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis” (Google “Jews against racist Zionism”).

(4). Today’s descendants in Palestine of the Jewish and non-Jewish Palestinians at the time of Jesus are the Indigenous Palestinians – the Jewish Israelis largely descend from Yemeni, Berber and Khazar converts to Judaism in the first millennium CE.

(5). Zionism was totally rejected by Orthodox Judaism which holds that Jews were punished by Exile and can only return to Zion (Jerusalem) after the Messiah arrives to declare the glory of the Lord to the whole world.

The alternative to genocidally racist Zionism:

A single secular democratic state as in post-Apartheid South Africa involving return of refugees, zero tolerance for racism, equal rights, human rights, economic decency, one-person-one-vote democracy, justice, goodwill, reconciliation, airport-level security, nuclear weapons removal, internationally-guaranteed national security initially based on the present armed forces, and untrammelled access for all citizens to all of Palestine. It can and should happen tomorrow.