The Nakba

Recently, Israel celebrated its Independence Day. The progress of this small country has been remarkable and it is a story of resolve and determination. It began as a dream and a hope. Herzl, one of the leaders of the Zionist movement coined the phrase, “If you will it, it is no fairy tale”. His dream and so many of the Zionists is no fairy tale and Israel has existed for 60 years in spite of countries like Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq attempts to destroy it. The Jewish state exists and no amount of revisionism will change the facts of who it came into existence. And that is what The Nakba attempts to do.

Palestinians use the word nakba which means catastrophe to describe their plight. And it has been a catastrophe for them. It is not because of the Jewish State of Israel. The catastrophe has long existed. It existed at the time of the Ottoman Empire ruled present day Israel and Gaza and the West Bank. It is a catastrophe from the way the British ruling under a mandate after the fall of the Ottoman Empire reneged on promises of a Jewish homeland and changed their plans in order to appease Arabs, all for oil.

The catastrophe of the Palestinians exists in the roots of Arab leaders’ declarations to eradicate Israel and by sending in armies to defeat the very small nation. They promised Palestinians that all Jews would be thrown into the sea. The Palestinians were urged to leave by Arab leaders. And they did and have sweltering in refugee camps for 60 years now. They are political pawns because host countries such as Syria refuse to grant citizenship to them. Some Palestinians still refuse to leave refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank.

In 1960, King Hussien of Jordan stated:

Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestinian problem in an irresponsible manner….. They have used the Palestinians people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even criminal.

Why are there still Palestinian refugees? And why do the Palestinians have their own UN refugee program? In 1960, Pakistani President Mohammed Ayub Khan stated that his country’s settlement of its 7 million refugees might be an example for Arab countries to resettle the “three-quarters of a million refugees from Palestine”.

After World War II, there were 79,200,000 refugees. It begs the question of why the relatively small group of Palestinian refugees still has their own UN program, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA). Many more Jews (800,000) were expelled from Arab countries after the Jewish State of Israel came into being. Israel absorbed most of them.

UNRWA still does not know the exact number of refugees because many who made claims were actually welfare cases. UNRWA also changed the definition of what constitutes a refugee. It altered the definition to include any one who lived there a minimum of two years before 1948.

The nakba of the Palestinians is not the Jewish State of Israel. They could have had a state in 1948. They could have a state now. The leaders they choose to follow have had one goal in mind: the destruction of Israel. It is a nakba that instead of working to build a viable state, the route chosen has been one of terror. Most of those souls who are in refugee camps are descendents of those who fled at the urging of Arab leaders. Is Israel to continue to pay for the nakba of corrupt and despotic Arab leaders?

Before the first Zionists started buying land from absentee landowners, most of what is now Israel was desolate. It wasn’t until Zionists started building and reclaiming the land that many Arabs sought the prosperity the Jews were creating. The numbers are startling. In 1893, there were 92,300 Arabs in Palestine. After Zionist began reclaiming the land, 213,700 Arabs immigrated to benefit from the good wages and economic opportunities Zionists created.

Today, those in Gaza and the West Bank are still benefiting. Those in Gaza have better living conditions than close-by Egyptian towns. And yes Israel has had to secure its borders. Yes, Israel has had to build a security wall. Yes, Israel attacks terrorists.

The nakba of the Palestinian people is that they continue to hold as heroes those who seek to murder and maim through terrorism. The nakba of the Palestinian people is that so many others around the world support terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. These groups seek to murder and maim babes in arms to the elderly. Their Qassams and Grads are aimed at civilian populations and when they strike home and murder a 70 year old woman, it is not the woman’s face you see plastered all over the news. It is the faces of the so-called “brave” and “heroic” “martyrs” one sees. The nakba of the Palestinian people is that it’s leader, Abbas choose to give the highest Palestinian Award to two who committed suicide bombings. The nakba of the Palestinian is not the so-called “occupied territories”, it is that most consider all of Israel to be “occupied”. The nakba of the Palestinian people is that the United Nations gave reorganization to Arafat, whose path of terror is the one that is followed. The nakba of the Palestinian people is that Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace prize even though he single-handled jeopardized the very real prospect of peace after the Oslo Accords by unleashing the Second Intifada.

The nakba of the Palestinian people is that fools like Jimmy Carter call Israel an “apartheid” state and German Catholic bishops dare to compare the refugee camps in the West Bank to the ghettoes Nazi Germans created.

It is the nakba of the Palestinian people that instead of building up, the path chosen by their leaders has been one of death and destruction.