Packaging nakba

The earliest reference I can find to the term “Nakba” (or “Naqba”) in the New York Times is this article, from Israel’s 50th birthday, a decade ago.

So for 50 years, the NYT didn’t see fit to use the term to describe the Arab reaction to Israel’s independence. It’s only recently that the terms has come into widespread use.

My problem though is why is “Nakba” commemorated at the same time as Israel’s Independence Day? Palestinians are largely Muslim, so why doesn’t Nakba follow the Islamic calendar. By my estimation, the 60th anniversary of Nakba would have occurred in 2006 and this year’s celebration would be about a month and a half away. (A strictly lunar calendar loses eleven days a year with respect to a solar calendar.)

So the recent introduction of naqba as a significant Palestinian day, is a PR move. It’s a way of casting a shadow on Israel’s celebration. If it were a true Palestinian observance it would be observed in another 40 days. Of course if the nakba was observed all around the year, as a regular Muslim observance would, it wouldn’t have the same propaganda value than if it was always observed at the same time of the year for the rest of the world.

(Similarly, Abbas – and Arafat before him – would celebrate the first Fatah terror attack January 1, in honor of the event that occurred January 1, 1965. It’s much better propaganda for those outside the Middle East if the observances are in familiar times.)

In the end, the absurdity of the situation shows the degree to which the Palestinians identify themselves with Israel, instead of aspiring to their own nationalism.

Stephen Plaut recently discovered that the term naqba, was originally used to denote the Palestinians loss of dependence, not their loss of (nonexistant) independence. (h/t Elder of Ziyon)

The authoritative source on the origin of “nakba” is none other than George Antonius, supposedly the first “official historian of Palestinian nationalism.” Like so many “Palestinians,” he actually wasn’t – Palestinian, that is. He was a Christian Lebanese-Egyptian who lived for a while in Jerusalem, where he composed his official advocacy/history of Arab nationalism. The Arab Awakening, a highly biased book, was published in 1938 and for years afterward was the official text used at British universities….

On page 312 of The Arab Awakening, Antonius writes, “The year 1920 has an evil name in Arab annals: it is referred to as the Year of the Catastrophe (Am al-Nakba). It saw the first armed risings that occurred in protest against the post-War settlement imposed by the Allies on the Arab countries. In that year, serious outbreaks took place in Syria, Palestine, and Iraq.”

Yes, the answer to our little quiz is 1920, not 1948. That’s 1920 – when there was no Zionist state, no Jewish sovereignty, no “settlements” in “occupied territories,” no Israel Defense Forces, no Israeli missiles and choppers targeting terror leaders, and no Jewish control over Jerusalem (which had a Jewish demographic majority going back at least to 1850).

The original “nakba” had nothing to do with Jews, and nothing to do with demands by Palestinian Arabs for self-determination, independence and statehood. To the contrary, it had everything to do with the fact that the Palestinian Arabs saw themselves as Syrians. They rioted at this nakba – at this catastrophe– because they found deeply offensive the very idea that they should be independent from Syria and Syrians.

Naqba then is less a commemoration of a vanished past than a ploy for sympathy. No doubt the Arabs of Palestine suffered as a result of Israel’s War of Independence. But had their Arab brothers not sought to maintain a grievance against Israel, the Palestinian refugee problem would have been solved long ago.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.