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View Full Version : Remembering the nakba with a sense of pain and anguish



Khalid Saifullah
05-18-2016, 11:32 AM
By Maulana Khalid Dhorat

People with consciousness for humanity and a sense of justice don’t celebrate the “anniversary” of the Nakba. Rather, they remember it with pain and anguish.

So what is the Nakba, which people say it started 68 years ago in this month, and it’s still continuing?

The Nakba, translated as “the Catastrophe” is a grotesque event which took place on 14th May 1948 in Palestine. For the Palestinians in particular, it can be described as “a collective and ongoing tragedy whose wounds have yet to heal 68 years later.” It’s called the ‘Catastrophe’ (Nakbah) because it’s not just the destruction of at least 436 villages or the forced displacement of 92 percent of Palestinians to date, but of an ethnic cleansing at the hands of an evil Zionist colonialist strategy. All this was done in the midst of predominately Arab countries and in a Muslim dominated Middle-East!

It’s sad to say, but there is absolutely no remorse to date by the Zionists for the Nakba, and this is why reconciliation seems impossible. For reconciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians to take place, Israel must recognize what it has done to the Palestinian people, return the land, pay reparations and account for every life they unlawfully took. If they do not do it now, it will be done sometime in thee future as predicted in the ahadith quoted at the end of this article.

When the Zionists came to Palestine, there was another nation living there i.e the Arabs. Over 100 years ago, a Zionist mission was sent to Palestine and soon thereafter, plans to displace Palestine’s population were unveiled. Millions of Palestinians today still pay for the colonialist British promise referred to as the Balfour Declaration of the UK. No people on earth would have accepted such a clandestine deal, sealing their fate to a foreign power intent on wiping its presence and identity from the land they originated from.

Unfortunately, you still those hateful Zionist Nakba-deniers in Israeli society who continue to use neocolonialist nationalism to reject the existence of the Palestinian people. Using their “superior race” ideology, they justify the systematic Israeli theft of Palestinian land and deprivation of Palestinian human rights on a daily basis.

It’s a historic fact that Palestinians are Arabs who immigrated to present day illegal Israel, and the Zionists fended off the attacks by seven Arab armies in 1967, but this does not justify the occupation. Zionism blatantly denies the very existence of the Palestinian people, continues to justify the atrocities committed against Palestine, and deny Palestinian refugees’ legitimate right of return.

If Israel aspires to live in peace in the region, it must face the fact that even 68 years after the Nakba, Jews are still the minority in historic Palestine while Palestinian Christians aren’t even recognized by Israel as Palestinian. Israel cannot continue to deny what it has done to the Palestinian people, and it’s time it understood that coexistence means acknowledgment.

Israeli historian, Tom Segev, described in eloquent, yet raw detail the pillaging of Palestinian homes at the hands of the so-called first Israelis in his well-regarded book “1949: The First Israelis”. He asks in this book:

“When Israelis walk in Jerusalem’s Talbiya or Qatamon, can’t they distinguish the Arab architecture from the imported Western architecture transplanted with their arrival to Palestine?

What of the Palestinian family names still etched onto the stone doorways underneath the year in which their homes were built in Mosrara?

In Jaffa, where only 4,000 out of 70,000 Palestinians remained and are subsequently confined today in the Ajami neighborhood – did these images not provoke the consciousness of 1930’s ghettos in Eastern Europe?

Did the librarians of Hebrew University not think twice when they saw the names of the original owners inscribed in beautiful, curved Arabic script on the inside cover of the thousands of books appropriated so as to swell the university’s world-renowned library collection?”

The Nakba is comprised of two phases: the destruction of Palestine and the construction of Israel on illegally occupied land. It encompasses around 380,000 internally displaced Palestinian citizens of Israel. Despite the courageous work of organizations such as Zochrot and local Palestinian-Israeli committees to preserve the memory of pre-1948 Palestine, the Israeli government is determined to erase any indication of Palestinian identity. But, we as an ummah, will never allow this to happen.

Occasionally, the Palestinians can not take the pain any longer and they arise, called “Intifada”. During the first Palestinian Intifada, Israel outlawed raising the Palestinian flag, singing historic and patriotic Palestinian songs, and even outlawed education. Today, they are pushing legislation to outlaw the mourning and commemoration of the most tragic day in Palestinian history.

The ummah will never erase from its memory the actions of Zionist terrorists who terrorized Palestinian communities during the Nakba. The perpetrators of massacres such as Deir Yassin and Tantoura, the assassination of UN mediator Folke Bernadotte, or of those honored for their hand in killing Palestinians by renaming Arab streets and squares in Haifa and Jerusalem with the names of these terrorists – all these will never be forgotten.

The Nakba is revolting and disgusting. This is why:

• It means that while the right of return of Palestinians is utterly rejected only because they are not Jews, any Jew of the world can become Israeli citizens on arrival.
• Nakba means a racist Israeli citizenship law that prevents Palestinian families from being united.
• Nakba means that millions of Palestinians cannot even visit their homeland.
• Nakba means that a settler continues to build on occupied land while Palestinians under Israeli military control have their homes demolished.
• According to many Israeli politicians, the Nakba and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was necessary for the creation of the State of Israel.

According to Dr. Saeb Erekat, Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): “Nakba was not merely a day in history 68 years ago, but an entire system of daily forced subjugation and dispossession culminating in today’s Apartheid regime. Israel and Palestine could live in peace and security, but in order to achieve that goal, we need a process of reconciliation. Israel must recognize the Nakba in order to end this era of loss and injustice.”

In conclusion, I refer the Zionists to the a saying of our Noble Prophet Muhammad (Sallallahu ‘Alaihi wa Sallam). Sayyadina Abu Hurayrah (Radiallahu Anhu) reports that the Prophet said, 'The Last Hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.'"

Another hadith speaks more openly as to who would avenge the ummah. It will not be the surrounding Arab countries, Turkey, Iran or even Egypt – all of whom are nothing but lapdogs o the west and traitors of the ummah, but an army which will be raised for this purpose. Sayyadina Abu Hurairah (Radiallahu Anhu) again narrated that the Prophet (Sallallahu ‘Alaihi wa Sallam) said: “(Armies carrying) black flag will come from Khurasan. No power will be able to stop them and they will finally reach Eela (Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem) where they will erect their flags.” (This hadith is narrated by Ahmad bin Hanbal, Al-Tirmizi, Al-Tabarani and Al-Baihaqi from Rusydain bin Sa`ad, Yunus bin Yazid, Ibn Syihab, Qubaishoh bin Zuaib, to Abu Hurairah)

May Allah Ta’ala grant us to recognize the ability to recognize our enemy, the friends of our enemies in disguise, and the true warriors of Islam – Ameen.
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