Middle East peace will come through recognizing injustice
By Eitan Bronstein and Muhammad Jaradat
For The Register-Guard
Published: May 25, 2008 12:00AM
As Israel celebrates 60 years of statehood this May, Palestinians worldwide mourn the loss of their homes and homeland. Because while one people - Jews fleeing persecution in Christian Europe - gained a country, another people - the land’s indigenous Palestinians - lost nearly everything they had. Rabbi Maurice Harris presented one perspective on this story (“A place to call home,” Commentary, May 4), and we would like to offer another.
In 1948 hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were exiled and replaced by new Jewish immigrants. This tragedy still shapes the conflict between our two peoples. Palestinians live without freedom and equal rights in the land of their ancestors, or as refugees scattered throughout the world. Israelis live as occupiers of another people - plagued with a sense of insecurity, though they possess one of the world’s strongest militaries. This side of Israel’s establishment and its inescapable connection to our current strife has been overlooked in the anniversary celebrations.
Some Israelis believe reconciliation with Palestinians is possible by forgetting this past. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni recently asked that upon the establishment of a Palestinian state, “the word ‘Nakba’ (which refers to the expulsion of the Palestinians by Jewish militias in 1948) be deleted from the Arabic lexicon.” Imagine asking Americans to excise Sept. 11, 2001, from their collective memory, or Jewish people to forget the Holocaust. It is precisely “not forgetting” that allows us to build a just future.
That is why we - an Israeli Jew who as a child unwittingly played among the ruins of Qaqun, a destroyed Palestinian village in what is now Israel, and a Palestinian whose family in Hebron welcomed destitute Jewish refugees who had fled their homes in fear - choose to work together to raise awareness of the Nakba. We know that our two peoples are destined to live together, that our fates are intertwined. And we know that only by acknowledging injustice can we overcome it.
The Nakba - Arabic for “catastrophe” - is the defining Palestinian experience.
--MORE--
For The Register-Guard
Published: May 25, 2008 12:00AM
As Israel celebrates 60 years of statehood this May, Palestinians worldwide mourn the loss of their homes and homeland. Because while one people - Jews fleeing persecution in Christian Europe - gained a country, another people - the land’s indigenous Palestinians - lost nearly everything they had. Rabbi Maurice Harris presented one perspective on this story (“A place to call home,” Commentary, May 4), and we would like to offer another.
In 1948 hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were exiled and replaced by new Jewish immigrants. This tragedy still shapes the conflict between our two peoples. Palestinians live without freedom and equal rights in the land of their ancestors, or as refugees scattered throughout the world. Israelis live as occupiers of another people - plagued with a sense of insecurity, though they possess one of the world’s strongest militaries. This side of Israel’s establishment and its inescapable connection to our current strife has been overlooked in the anniversary celebrations.
Some Israelis believe reconciliation with Palestinians is possible by forgetting this past. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni recently asked that upon the establishment of a Palestinian state, “the word ‘Nakba’ (which refers to the expulsion of the Palestinians by Jewish militias in 1948) be deleted from the Arabic lexicon.” Imagine asking Americans to excise Sept. 11, 2001, from their collective memory, or Jewish people to forget the Holocaust. It is precisely “not forgetting” that allows us to build a just future.
That is why we - an Israeli Jew who as a child unwittingly played among the ruins of Qaqun, a destroyed Palestinian village in what is now Israel, and a Palestinian whose family in Hebron welcomed destitute Jewish refugees who had fled their homes in fear - choose to work together to raise awareness of the Nakba. We know that our two peoples are destined to live together, that our fates are intertwined. And we know that only by acknowledging injustice can we overcome it.
The Nakba - Arabic for “catastrophe” - is the defining Palestinian experience.
--MORE--