"A land without a people for a people without a land." This 19th century Christian Zionist refrain perfectly, horribly encapsulates the ideological underpinnings of apartheid Israel, from the state's 1948 founding to today. As we approach the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, the Wire takes a moment to reflect on the racist erasure and historical catastrophe that have marked Palestinian lives for nearly a century.
The years leading up to and immediately following 1948 marked the Israeli military's forced displacement of over 800,000 Palestinians, and the depopulation of over 500 Palestinian towns and villages. This was ethnic cleansing, pure and simple, and it was just the first move toward the very well-documented goal of the Israeli government, which has always been, explicitly, to steal the maximum amount of land with the smallest number of Palestinians. Maintaining a regime aimed at systematic Palestinian dispossession and Jewish supremacy requires constant violence.
The horrors in Gaza last night are the latest in Israel's longstanding attack on Palestinian lives, land, and freedom; it is the unabated, ongoing Nakba.
While the last 75 years of ongoing Nakba have meant constant violence, human rights abuses, and countless apartheid crimes, the election of the most-right-wing-ever government last year has meant that Israeli officials are saying the quiet part out loud. In March, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the village of Huwara to be "wiped out" in the wake of settler pogroms. Itamar Ben-Gvir, convicted of racist incitement against Palestinians, is now National Security Minister.
But as it becomes chillingly commonplace for Israeli officials to tout genocide against Palestinians, so is it becoming more and more commonplace for U.S. Jews to speak out against the Israeli government — many for the first time. When Smotrich visited Washington, D.C., earlier this spring, JVP members stood in protest with 1,000 other demonstrators. Not all of them may be avowed anti-Zionists yet, but we're ready to educate, agitate, and welcome them into the movement.
It's been 75 years, and Palestinians are not yet free. But the 75 years of catastrophe have also been 75 years of resistance. Palestinians on the ground are building every day toward liberation. We are proud to stand in solidarity as part of the ever-growing, unstoppable movement for Palestinian freedom.
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