"Conquerors, my son, consider as true history only what they have themselves fabricated."
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| A Palestinian nakba protestor is detained by the IDF |
Today
commemorates an important and tragic date on the Palestinian calendar: the
anniversary of the ‘nakba’ (Arabic
for “catastrophe” or “disaster") of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians were forced from their homes or fled for fear of violence at the
hands of the Israeli army. The 5.3 million Palestinian refugees worldwide are
the modern-day descendants of the victims of the nakba. Like so many sad chapters in the histories of powerful
countries, outside of Arab communities the nakba
is not widely recognized or reported upon. Over 700,000 Palestinians fled in
the nakba of 1948, the forebears of
the huge community of Palestinian refugees scattered throughout the world
today. While in the initial decades after the events of 1948, only a small
number of internally displaced Arab Israelis commemorated the nakba, now it has
become a political symbol of the destruction of the Palestinian community and
is observed throughout the occupied territories, the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip.
