Yossi Schwartz ISL RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 19.05.2023
A couple days ago, May 15 was Nakba day. For the first time in history, the United Nations officially commemorated the Nakba, the annual Palestinian commemoration of their mass displacement during the establishment of Israel.
In spite of the Zionist and its western imperialist friends’ effort to block the UN commemoration they failed. For decades, the Nakba had not garnered universal international recognition, as countering narratives have downplayed the plight of Palestinians because Israel is the front line of imperialism in the Middle East.
Once again, the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland is recognized by most countries and even in the imperialist countries that support the Zionist war crimes and did not participate. A growing number of the people support the Palestinians. The imperialist states that blocked the Nakba day like the USA, Britain, Canada have a record of murder, rape and robbery of the people in Africa, North America, Asia and Latin America.
Israeli officials were urging U.N. member states to boycott the event. “Attending this despicable event means destroying any chance of peace by adopting the Palestinian narrative calling the establishment of the state of Israel a disaster,” Israeli’s U.N. ambassador Gilad Erdan said.
What a cynical hypocrite. Israel that is murdering entire families wants peace? what a grotesque!
Monday’s commemoration included a morning keynote address by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, followed by an evening event that featured an “immersive experience of the Nakba through live music, photos, videos, and personal testimonies.” The events, held at U.N. headquarters in New York in the belly of the beast.
Among the 30 nations that did not participate was the representative of the rotten government of Ukraine. While this government does not deserve any support the people of the Ukraine fighting Russian imperialism deserve full support for their struggle.
“”For Israelis and for most other people who know only the Israeli narrative, 1948 represents the miraculous establishment of a Jewish state in the wake of the Holocaust,” Rashid Khalidi, a Middle East historian and author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, told NPR’s Throughline podcast in 2021 But Palestinians call it the Nakba — “the catastrophe.””For Palestinians, it represents the destruction of their society, the loss of self — the right to self-determination and the expulsion of most of them and the expropriation of the property of most of them,” Khalidi said. [1]
80 years ago, the Jewish Partisans fighting the Nazis sang, “Zog Nit Keynmol”. A great song, but today it belongs to the Palestinian fighters against the Zionist oppression.
Here is the song:
“Never say the final journey is at hand
Never say we will not meet the Promised Land,
The longed-for hour shall come, oh never fear!
Our tread drums forth the tidings – we are here!
From land of palm-tree to the far-off land of snow,
We shall be coming with our torment and our woe.
And everywhere our blood has sunk into the earth,
Shall our bravery, our vigor blossoms forth!
We’ll have the morning sun to set our day aglow,
And all our yesterdays shall vanish with the foe,
And if the time is long before the sun appears,
Then let this song go like a signal through the years.
This song was written with our blood and not with lead;
It’s not a song that birds sing overhead,
It was a people, among toppling barricades,
That sang this song of ours with pistols and grenades.
So never say that there is only death for you.
Leaden skies may be concealing days of blue –
Because the hour we have hungered for is nearby;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!”
Endnotes:
[1] Emma Bowman and Daniel: The U.N. is marking the 75th anniversary of Palestinians’ displacement May 15, 2023 Estrin Middle East