Nakba denial

Nakba denial
According to some historians and academics, there exists a form of historical negationism pertaining to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and its accompanying effects, which Palestinians refer to collectively as the "Nakba". The denial of the Nakba is central to Zionist narratives of 1948 and was largely facilitated by Israeli historiography. Beginning in the 1980s, Israel's history began to be reviewed and rewritten by the New Historians and significant volumes of Israeli Jewish literature have emerged intent on "demystifying the past".
Nakba denial has been described as still prevalent in both Israeli and US discourse and linked to various tropes associated with anti-Arab racism. In 2011, Israel enacted the Nakba Law which authorized the withdrawal of state funds from organizations that discuss the Nakba. Israel also hosts grassroots movements, such as Zochrot, that have aimed to combat Nakba denial through direct memorial action. In May 2023, following the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made the denial of the 1948 expulsion a crime punishable by two years in jail.
Allegations of historical negationism
In Zionist and Israeli statehood narratives
According to some historians and academics, there exists a form of historical negationism pertaining to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and its accompanying effects, which Palestinians refer to collectively as the "Nakba". The denial of the Nakba is central to Zionist narratives of 1948 and was largely facilitated by Israeli historiography. Beginning in the 1980s, Israel's history began to be reviewed and rewritten by the New Historians and significant volumes of Israeli Jewish literature have emerged intent on "demystifying the past".
According to Middle East researcher Mariko Mori, Israel, in its official narrative justifying the establishment of the Jewish state, has "rarely mentioned the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem and the destruction of over 400 Palestinian villages in 1948, thus deliberately denying Palestinian memories of the Nakba." She states that the mainstream narratives justifying the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight rest on a number of assumptions, including that Palestine was a "barren, uninhabited land"; that Palestinian Arabs were part of a "greater Arab nation" and were not a nation, disputing Palestinian Arab nationalism; that Palestinian Arabs were "rioters and pogromists"; that Jews were returning home (the negation of the Diaspora); and that population transfers were a "justifiable, universal solution to minority questions".
According to the University of Arizona history professor Maha Nassar in an article criticizing the historicity of the narratives presented in Leon Uris' 1958 novel Exodus, the denial of Zionists' responsibility for the 1948 expulsion and flight of Palestinians, combined with the claim that Arabs themselves were to blame (that rests on anti-Arab racist tropes present in the novel), constitutes a form of historical negationism, that she names "Nakba denialism". Among the anti-Arab racist tropes, according to her, are the notion that Palestinians lack religious attachment to Palestine, that they lack "modern feelings of national identity", and are easily induced to violence by their leaders. Within the paradigm of Zionism as settler colonialism, she states that such narratives blame the victims of settler colonial violence for their expulsion.
Historian Michael R. Fischbach defines Nakba denial as a "Nakba counternarrative" with particular roles in Israeli public life and state policy—especially as an instrument of resisting calls for reparations—consisting of the following themes:
the "war is war" theme in which the expulsion and flight was an unfortunate but inevitable side effect of Israel defending itself from the invading Arab forces, and that the Provisional government of Israel was not culpable insofar it did not have a "master plan" of expulsion, while not incorporating subsequent decisions and policies which have ever since prevented refugees' return in weighing the responsibility of the state.
the "population exchange" theme in which Jews and Arabs, seen as the wider Arab world, made an irrevocable mutual population and property transfer (e.g. Jews leaving Iraq also left their property behind), and that resettling of Jews in Israel also came at a great cost.
the claim that Israel has generally been willing to provide compensation, but that this awaits an international mechanism of some sort, which will apportion the funds, while not incorporating the possibility of individual redress, such as through restitution, in light of Israel passing Absentees' Property Laws and Palestinian negotiators not opposing the international fund idea during the 2000 Camp David Summit (which ended without an agreement); in the case of such "en masse settlement" being implemented, Israel would pay out a sum, and be absolved from any further obligations constituting an "end of claims" clause, closing all legal avenues to individual Palestinians with remaining claims or who do not wish to be a part of the scheme.
the belief that the only thing that Israel owes the refugees is property compensation, and not any kind of moral reparations beyond a statement of regret.
In Israeli historiography
According to historian Saleh Abd al-Jawad, Nakba denial has been facilitated by Israeli historiography, as it has "adopted a denial of the Nakba, a negation of the breadth of the ethnic cleansing perpetrated in Palestine".
The 1980s saw a renewed interest among Israeli academics of Nakba historiography, partially resulting from the declassification of Israeli archives on the 1948 war. In the late 1980s, Nakba denial began to be criticized and Israel's history was rewritten by the New Historians, who changed established beliefs regarding the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and Palestinian exodus. Since the 1980s, a considerable body of literature aimed at "demystifying the past" has emerged from within Israeli Jewish society, alongside works, such as historian Ilan Pappé's that have been "unsettling the picture the founding fathers worked so energetically to paint and to institutionalize the hegemonic account of 1948".
Towards the end of the 20th century, the topic of Nakba denial almost went to trial in the context of the discussion of the Tantura massacre and the 1998 thesis by Theodore Katz on it. Katz, a postgraduate researcher, was sued by the Alexandroni Brigade, and, in the ensuing legal tussle, half of this legal defense urged him to defend his work and bring forward Palestinian witnesses to speak about the massacre. This defense would have turned the trial "into a case about the denial of the Nakba" according to researcher Samera Esmeir, but the case was instead closed out-of-court.
In late 20th- and 21st-century public discourse
Nassar cites Nakba denial as a feature of US discourse on Palestine. Sa'di advances the viewpoint that it is the discourse of Jewish supporters of Israel.
With time, the narratives surrounding 1948 have become harder to sustain, and "the first strategy for Zionists", according to Sa'di, was to return to the "old myth" of "a land without a people for a people without a land". Lawyer Alan Dershowitz's 2003 book The Case for Israel exemplifies this, drawing on the 1984 book From Time Immemorial, a pseudo-historical work by journalist Joan Peters that suggested the majority of Palestinian refugees were not native to Palestine, and that with the 1948 Palestine war they returned to their countries. Through this straightforward "denial of the other's existence, this formulation did away with the colonization-uprooting dialectic".
Within Israeli civic society, there are grassroots movements against Nakba denial. The NGO Zochrot aims to raise awareness of the Nakba by directly challenging its denial through direct memorial action, such as by providing tours to depopulated Palestinian villages, sign-posting sites destroyed in the Nakba, and hosting an annual Nakba film festival. In 2007, when Israel marked its independence day, Zochrot organized a parade in Tel Aviv "to mark the recognition of the right of return", stopping off along the way at neighborhoods built on the sites of former Palestinian villages.
Legislation
In 2009 the Israeli government banned references to the Nakba in school textbooks and required the removal of existing textbooks that mentioned it. Israel enacted the Nakba Law in 2011 which restricted public funding to entities that disputed Israel's foundational story. While the original bill proposed to criminalize individuals who disputed the state's reading of history, the proposed legislation was amended to financially penalize organizations instead. According to transitional justice researcher Yoav Kapshuk and Political scientist Lisa Strömbom, this law was an attempt to "hamper freedom of expression" surrounding the Nakba, but in doing so it inadvertently "increased public knowledge about the meaning of Nakba". In its wake, columnist Odeh Bisharat wrote that some good came out of the legislation, in that "at least, there's no denial of the Nakba. Nobody claims the whole thing is fairy-tale. The Palestinian narrative has won. The narrative that in '48 a people was exiled, by force, from its land, has seared into Israeli and global consciousness."
In 2014 the Israeli government passed the Jewish Nakba law which created a commemoration day for Mizrahi Jews who migrated to Israel following their displacement from Arab countries. Academics Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Abigail B. Bakan, writing in The Political Quarterly, argue that this law was an example of "aggressive [Nakba] denial" which is "aimed at blurring and confusing the memorialising" of the Palestinian Nakba.
In Palestine
In May 2023, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree defining the Nakba as a "crime against humanity", and making its denial a criminal offense punishable by up to two years in jail. The legislation echoed trends in Israel, where lawmakers in the hardline 37th government have proposed outlawing the waving of Palestinian flags. The decree followed a speech by Abbas at a UN event marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, where he called for the suspension of Israel's UN membership, and criticized the US and UK for not holding Israel accountable for its actions.
Notes
Citations
Sources
Books and journals
News media
Further reading
External links
Denying the Nakba, 75 Years Later: A Democracy in Exile Roundtable. DAWN.
Nakba Denial. Arab-American Institute.
Israel denies the Nakba while perpetuating it. Al Jazeera.
Five things the United States knew about the Nakba as it unfolded. Middle East Institute.
Erasing the Nakba, Upholding Apartheid: Atrocity Denial in the U.S. Media. Institute of Palestine Studies.
Historical negationism
Historiography of Israel
Nakba