Nakba...

Submitted by Suzanne Pomeranz (Israel), May 4, 2010 at 04:32

To start discussing the "nakba" with the Israeli War of Independence or even to associate the word, beginning in the 1920s, with Arab hatred of the Jews is simply wrong, as, at that time, it had nothing whatsoever to do with Jews.

As George Antonius, supposedly the first "official historian of Palestinian nationalism." wrote in his official advocacy/history of Arab nationalism "The Arab Awakening" (a highly biased book, published in 1938 and for years afterward, the official text used at British universities) :

"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. In the 1920s, the very suggestion that Palestinian Arabs constituted a separate ethnic nationality was enough to send those same Arabs out into the streets to murder and plunder violently in outrage."

See http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7964 for this information and more.

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