Comments on: Book review: Touring the Nakba

By: Eugene

Eugene — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 03:57:18 +0000

Here are some specifics – if more people in Israeli society accept that Israel bears some responsibility for the plight of the Arabs who used to live on its territory but now are refugees, maybe more Israeli politicians will be nicer to the Palestinians. So the settlements may be stopped. So the woman from Lod/Lydda may stand a better chance of dying in a viable Palestinian state that isn’t governed so much by armed men. Maybe the woman from Lod/Lydda could even receive some compensation, giving her a better chance of dying in higher living standards, with less anger and more of a feeling of reconciliation.

By: JKNoReally

JKNoReally — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 00:28:12 +0000

Vicky: What would it take to “set the bones properly” as you put it? What does “justice” require? Give me SPECIFICS. You say that Nakba remembrance isn’t about replacing Jews – but you simply cannot explain what it IS about without retreating into metaphors and buzzwords – hence the accusations of BAD FAITH against the Nakba obsessors. Please tell me: how does giving tours of ruined villages going to help the refugee woman? Why don’t you focus on helping her achieve a decent set of rights where she lives, and improving her standard of living? Don’t you think that would be more in line with Human Rights work than breaking taboos that don’t even exist anymore? The Nakba doesn’t need you to talk about it – its on the record, its just that people don’t care. That’s really your problem – not that there are diabolical obscurantists at work thwarting “justice.”

By: Ethan Schwartz

Ethan Schwartz — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:39:50 +0000

The side that won the war that was imposed on them. If the other side had won there would be no problem today because there would be no Jews left n the region.

By: Ethan Schwartz

Ethan Schwartz — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:36:08 +0000

The Jewish State was attacked by the Arab Armies. Before the war no one was expelled. I am aware of Rabin’s book about the expulsions from Ramla and Lod but this was during war time. Jews were never invited back to Jerusalem or the Etzion block.

By: Vicky

Vicky — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:04:37 +0000

Early last year I met a lady who was expelled from Lydda. She saw people who were so disorientated from hunger and thirst that they were clutching cushions and thinking they were their babies. She herself drank her own urine on the road to keep herself going. Her sister went missing and she never found out what happened to her – maybe she was one of those who collapsed and died on the way, maybe she made it to safety in some other community. Efforts to find out what happened to her were fruitless. For sixty-four years this lady has lived with that gap in her family, and she will probably die without knowing.

Saying that all this is just a smokescreen and a talking point won’t become true no matter how often you repeat it, even if you repeat it in capitals. Wounds like that don’t just seal up if you ignore them, no matter how much time passes. It’s like broken bones – if you don’t set them properly, they can’t heal properly and there will always be damage. There are so many families carrying weight like this,. Hence the need for justice. My doctoral research is on accessing taboo history (with a specific focus on the Nakba in Israeli society and the Holocaust in Palestinian communities) and to my own surprise I have found a wary but quite robust interest in hearing and exploring stories that have been placed off-limits – and not just from people who fit the politically liberal mould either. The interest is there not because people think they can get political mileage out of a topic, but because on an individual level they recognise that these histories have collided in their living space and affected them personally, and they want to unpick how. This has nothing to do with some irredentist desire to replace Jews with Palestinians, and making that claim first of all requires you to dismiss people’s grief and memory as somehow not real. Who is erasing what here?

By: rsgengland

rsgengland — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 11:32:52 +0000

It is time to also start making a tour book of the “JEWISH NAKBA”.
Not sure how many remember the million plus Jews from the Arab/Muslim lands that were “ETHNICALLY CLEANSED” from the Middle East/North Africa since 1948.
There are a few thousand Jews left , from Jewish communities that pre-dated Islam by a thousand plus years.
Not much is left of all the property
and possesions that these Jews were forced to abandon when they were expelled/forced to flee by the wave of Antisemitism that swept these areas before and after 1948.

By: JKNoReally

JKNoReally — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 01:52:16 +0000

Vicky: abstracting and obfuscating the ultimate goal of Palestinian irredentism – replacing Israeli Jews with Arabs – by repeating the word “justice” over and over again will get you NOWHERE. Again – it will get you NOWHERE, because its transparent nonsense. Your smokescreen has already FAILED so please just give up the talking points.
Y-Man: Many people have used Holocaust Remembrance to caution the public about Darfur – you’re basically dumping on real Human Rights activists at this point (not Abe including Foxman), which is shameful and stupid. The big question none of you haters can answer is this: if the mass displacement of Palestinians is really, truly a Human Rights issue today, WHY aren’t the dozens of mass displacements that occurred in the last 60 years ALSO obsessed over and commemorated year-round? Huh? Any answers? WHY is the Nakba the only mass displacement that anyone in the “human rights” (Palestinian nationalist) community cares about? You have no answer, which is why this whole pity party is a pathetic joke – not about history, not about real human rights, just about fighting Israel.

By: Y-Man

Y-Man — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 23:33:38 +0000

How is going on a walking tour “aimed at displacing and subjugating.” And no analogy is required to make your ridiculous statement look, well, ridiculous. Let me remind you what you said. “Human rights are for the living, where they live, and nothing else.”
Has Abe Foxman even been to Rwanda or Darfur? Plus, it is pretty rich that someone trolling a leftist Israeli website is calling other people “haters.”

By: Y-Man

Y-Man — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 23:29:41 +0000

Genocidal jihad? Remind me again which side expelled three-quarters of a million people?

By: XYZ

XYZ — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 13:15:40 +0000

The people who bear responsibility for the Nakba are the leaders of the time of the Palestinian people who convinced to embark on a genocidal jihad to crush the Jewish yishuv in 1948. Thus, it might be profitable for Palestinians to visit these sites as living reminders of the disastrous leadership they had then and the equally disastrous leadership they have today which is also leading them to further defeats.