AZERBAIJANI STATE COMMITTEE NOT EXCLUDE IMPORT OF FOOD STUFFS FROM ARMENIA
Journal of Turkish Weekly
June 3 2009
The current controversy over a bill in the Knesset designed to make
it illegal to commemorate Nakba Day should raise awareness of what
exactly Nakba day has come to entail, and why some elected officials
find it such a provocation.
Last Independence Day, as millions celebrated with barbecues and
family trips to national parks, another group of Jewish Israelis
were making a different sort of pilgrimage – to Kafrayn, a former
Arab village southeast of Haifa. Once there, they were joined by
Palestinians from east Jerusalem and Israeli Arab activists from
all over the country. Speeches were given and Palestinian flags were
waved. Keffiyehs were a dress code requirement.
Among the groups present was Zochrot, an organization whose
publications are sometimes funded by the Mennonite church, and
which hosts tours to ruined Arab villages which existed before
1948. Zochrot’s Jewish leaders, such as Noga Kadmon, have dedicated
their lives to preserving the memory of these villages, arranging
for elderly descendants to visit them, erecting signs to memorialize
them and bringing Jews to them to teach about the Nakba. They produce
small booklets about the villages in Hebrew, English and Arabic.
Another organization present at the Nakba day tour of Kafrayn was
the Defending the Displaced Palestinians’ Rights Society. Its booklet
has "Nakba 61st anniversary: We shall return" emblazoned across its
front. It is only in Arabic. Where it is produced and who supports
it are not clear. What is clear is that while the message of Zochrot
appears to be about memorializing history and understanding the
narrative of the "other," the message of DDPRS is about eliminating
Israel as a state. However the Israeli Jews present at the Nakba-day
events did not openly oppose the distribution of this anti-Israel
material.
THE TRAGEDY here is that by commemorating the Nakba on their own
Independence Day, these Israeli Jews have negated their own state’s
existence. The cynical manipulation of Nakba day to coincide with Yom
Ha’atzmaut is deliberate. Palestinians actually commemorate Nakba
day twice, once on the Independence Day which is celebrated by the
Hebrew calendar, and again on May 15, the Gregorian calendar’s date of
Israeli independence. Thus those Israeli Jews who wish to commemorate
the Nakba can actually do so on May 15 and still reserve Independence
Day to celebrate the existence of a Jewish state. That would be an
act of genuine coexistence. By choosing not to do so, these Israelis
are not preaching coexistence but merely the existence of one group
and its narrative: the Palestinians.
This profound disconnect from the story of Israel and the Jewish people
points to the tragedy of many coexistence groups. Further evidence
of the tragedy of the coexistence project is clear from examining the
village of Neveh Shalom-Wahat al-Salaam, a "binational community" of
"Jewish and Palestinian Israelis" located near Latrun, built on land
leased from the Trappist monastery and supported partly by donations
from abroad. Over the years the voting patterns at the village show
that while it was once a Meretz stronghold, in 2009, 35% supported
Hadash and 29% voted Balad (22% supported Meretz). During the Gaza
war, Shulamit Aloni addressed a "gathering to mourn and protest"
and called the IDF a "brutal and hedonistic army of conquest." The
village’s "humanitarian aid" project only gives to Palestinians.
In 2004 Howard Shippin, a resident, wrote about a "Tale of two buses"
in which he compares the hardship of waiting at checkpoints and the
security barrier with the suicide bombing of Bus 14 in Jerusalem,
in which eight people were murdered. He said the murder "can be
understood."
Coexistence is an important value. But coexisting at the expense
of erasing one’s own identity and "understanding" why someone would
murder people from your own community is not coexistence, it is simply
becoming the other, in this case a Palestinian. Those Israeli Jews who
can’t take one day a year to celebrate their state are not coexisting;
they are simply part of the nationalist cause of others.
The same is true of Neveh Shalom: It is not an "oasis of peace"
– it is an oasis of extreme anti-Israel hatred; its dialogues are
entirely composed of people speaking to those who agree with them;
and its humanitarian aid only helps one side of the conflict. Its
voting record is proof enough of the fact that coexistence has resulted
simply in Arab nationalism. That is not a model, it is a perversion
of the entire concept.
The writer is a PhD student in geography at the Hebrew University
and runs the Terra Incognita Journal blog. [email protected]