NAKBA: FOR PALESTINIANS, MEMORY MATTERS

uruknet.info, Italy
May 15 2007

Despite gains made to make ‘occupation’ the frame of reference in
understanding what is going on in the Occupied Palestine, to a large
extent the occupation continues to remain "invisible".

The occupation’s invisibility is mainly credited to
propaganda-influenced media reports. Repeated studies of the media’s
coverage of Palestine/Israel have highlighted the prevalent pro-Israeli
bias. A bias that flows from the refusal to frame individual events
in the context of the occupation or a colonisation-resistance
dynamic. Thus to average Western readers and listeners, terms like
"Palestine" and "occupation" become almost completely alien.

It is time to show, explain and uncover the reality of occupation
to those in the West who really can make a difference. It is time
to make the occupation the primary lens through which people see the
sad events in Occupied Palestine from sea to river.

May 15 may be the most important – and the most overlooked – date in
Palestinian history. Here are few noteworthy words from a Palestinian
American to commemorate the 59th Anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba
(catastrophe).

For Palestinians, memory matters It provides a blueprint for their
future

by George Bisharat

Sunday, May 13, 2007 – San Francisco Chronicle

Why do some people have the power to remember, while others are asked
to forget? That question is especially poignant at this time of year,
as we move from Holocaust Remembrance day in early spring to Monday’s
anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence on May 14, 1948.

In the months surrounding that date, Jewish forces expelled, or
intimidated into flight, an estimated 750,000 Palestinians. A living,
breathing, society that had existed in Palestine for centuries was
smashed and fragmented, and a new society built on its ruins.

Few Palestinian families lack a personal narrative of loss from that
period – an uncle killed, or a branch of the family that fled north
while the others fled east, never to be reunited, or homes, offices,
orchards and other property seized. Ever since, Palestinians worldwide
have commemorated May 15 as Nakba (Catastrophe) Day.

No ethical person would admonish Jews to "forget the Holocaust."

Indeed, recent decades have witnessed victims of that terrible era
not only remembering, but also regaining paintings and financial
assets seized by the Nazis – and justifiably so.

Other victims of mass wrongs – interned Japanese Americans, enslaved
African Americans, and Armenians subjected to a genocide that may
have later convinced Hitler of the feasibility of mass killings –
receive at least respectful consideration of their cases, even while
responses to their claims have differed.

Yet in dialogues with Israelis, and some Americans, Palestinians are
repeatedly admonished to "forget the past," that looking back is "not
constructive" and "doesn’t get us closer to a solution." Ironically,
Palestinians live the consequences of the past every day – whether as
exiles from their homeland, or as members of an oppressed minority
within Israel, or as subjects of a brutal and violent military
occupation.

In the West we are amply reminded of the suffering of Jewish people
in World War II. Our newspaper featured several stories on local
survivors of the Nazi holocaust around Holocaust Remembrance Day
(an Israeli national holiday that is widely observed in the United
States). My daughter has read at least one book on the Nazi holocaust
every year since middle school. Last year, in ninth grade English
literature alone, she read three. But we seldom confront the impact
of Israel’s policies on Palestinians.

It is the "security of the Jewish people" that has rationalized
Israel’s takeover of Palestinian lands, both in the past in Israel,
and more recently in the occupied West Bank. There, most Palestinian
children negotiate one of the 500 Israeli checkpoints and other
barriers to movement just to reach school each day. Meanwhile, Israel’s
program of colonization of the West Bank grinds ahead relentlessly,
implanting ever more Israeli settlers who must be "protected" from
those Palestinians not reconciled to the theft of their homes and
fields.

The primacy of Jewish security over rights of Palestinians – to
property, education, health care, a chance to make a living, and,
also to security – is seldom challenged.

Unfortunately, remembering the Nazi Holocaust – something morally
incumbent on all of us – has seemingly become entangled with, and
even an instrument of, the amnesia some would force on Palestinians.

Israel is enveloped in an aura of ethical propriety that makes it
unseemly, even "anti-Semitic" to question its denial of Palestinian
rights.

As Israeli journalist Amira Hass recently observed: "Turning the
Holocaust into a political asset serves Israel primarily in its fight
against the Palestinians. When the Holocaust is on one side of the
scale, along with the guilty (and rightly so) conscience of the West,
the dispossession of the Palestinian people from their homeland in
1948 is minimized and blurred."

What this demonstrates is that memory is not just an idle capacity.

Rather, who can remember, and who can be made to forget, is,
fundamentally, an expression of power.

Equally importantly, however, memory can provide a blueprint for the
future – a vision of a solution to seek, or an outcome to avoid. My
Palestinian father grew up in Jerusalem before Israel was founded and
the Palestinians expelled, when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived
in peace and mutual respect. Recalling that past provides a vision
for an alternative future – one involving equal rights and tolerance,
rather than the domination of one ethno-religious group over others.

Thus, what Palestinians are really being commanded is not just to
forget their past, but instead to forget their future, too. That they
will never do.

George Bisharat is professor of law at Hastings College of the Law
in San Francisco. He writes frequently about the Middle East. Contact
us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E – 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
and reprinted with permission from the author.

We shall not forget, and occupation will not conquer our souls.

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