[Imagine the US banning talk of America’s roots in the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of indigenous; or Turkey, banning talk of the genocide of Armenians, or the oppression of Kurds; or India, criminalizing consideration of Kashmiri oppression. These are equivalent to the Israeli Knesset’s action banning Palestinian commemorations of the Nakba (the disaster) which Israel’s founding has continued to mean for Palestinian people. — Frontlines ed.]
Nakba: A Forbidden Past
A bill was passed by the Israeli Knesset which calls on the government to deny funding to any organization, institution or municipality that commemorates the founding of the Israeli state as a day of mourning. The bill has become known as the “Nakba bill,” referring to the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine during and before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1947-48.
“Law will not influence the way we commemorate the Nakba,” Haneen Zoabi, Palestinian member of the Knesset, told The Electronic Intifada. “On the contrary, we must prove to our people and to the state that we will not be afraid from this law and that this will not succeed in oppressing our feeling or our identity. We will commemorate the Nakba in a much more impressive way this year than we ever did.”
“This is a kind of law to control our memory, to control our collective memory. It’s a very stupid law which punishes our feelings. It seems that the history of the victim is threatening the Zionist state,” Zoabi said. Continue reading
Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle 