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Remembering the Nakba in Light of the Hamas Surprise Attack of October 2023
Listen to these old Israeli war criminals chuckle about the slaughter of Palestinians during the Tantura Massacre. It's an incredibly rare bit of honesty. Kudos to the groundbreaking creators of this documentary. The story of the Nakba was deliberately buried, so that Israel could promote a fairytale origin story for itself: "A land without a people for a people without a land."
[Video clip found on social media from the 2022 documentary film Tantura (length 1:49). Two more clips from the film are posted below, with old Israelis speaking unabashedly about having committed and/or witnessed rape, flame throwers used on fleeing Palestinians, and the mass slaughter of men, women, and children.]
Remember the Nakba
Israel likes to pretend it is a noble democracy, an oasis in a region of despots, despite the fact that a full third of the population living under the thumb of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have suffered severe repression decade after decade, generation after generation, with no genuine self-determination. Nearly five million Palestinians call the West Bank and Gaza home.
Israel likes to pretend it is wholly innocent, just defending itself, and that Hamas represents a historically unprecedented aberration in violence within its borders.
Whenever you hear such claims, remember the Nakba.
Before the Nakba, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society
If you are not familiar with the Nakba, you are not alone. The Nakba is also known as the "Palestinian Catastrophe," Nakba meaning "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"' in Arabic. The Nakba was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of Palestinian Arabs.
At least 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres. Over 700,000 were permanently displaced.
That is the true story of the founding of Israel.
It was not a "War of Independence" as Israelis claim. It was a war on indigenous Palestinians by colonizing Europeans who wanted their land, and wanted them gone, forever. Tantura Massacres happened throughout Palestine. The exact death toll will likely never be known. The slaughter and terror were deliberate and methodical. It was ethnic cleansing, pure and simple.
As intended, the Nakba resulted in the expulsion and/or flight of 700,000 Palestinians, the related depopulation and destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages by Zionist militias, the denial of the Palestinian right of return, the creation of permanent Palestinian refugees and the overall shattering of Palestinian society. Today, the Nakba has been figuratively buried in the collective consciousness of Israelis and its mass graves literally buried under parking lots.
Burying the Truth of the Catastrophe
Israeli officials have repeatedly stigmatized the term Nakba as embodying an "Arab lie" or as a "justification for terrorism." In 2009, the Israeli Education Ministry banned using "Nakba" in Palestinian textbooks for children. In 2011, the Knesset forbade institutions from commemorating the event, meaning that a school ceremony memorializing the Nakba would have to respond to charges that it incited racism, violence and terrorism, and denied Israel's democratic character. In 2023, after the United Nations finally instituted a commemoration day for the Nakba as May 15, the Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan protested that the event itself was antisemitic.
This should sound familiar to anyone living in a society with fascistic movements banning books and working to erase or whitewash uncomfortable histories. "Slavery was sometimes beneficial for enslaved persons." "America never committed genocide." "Teaching a complete and accurate version of history breeds division."
Palestinians Haven't Forgotten the Nakba, They Don't Have that Luxury
While older Israelis don't want the topic of the Nakba to be broached, and second and third generation Israelis may have no idea what it is, at all, Palestinians haven't forgotten. They have relatives who were slaughtered and are never coming back. Countless families were permanently separated on opposite sides of the Israeli border.
Palestinians under the age of 75 have never known what life is like without Israelis ultimately controlling their lives and destinies, be they living in an section of Israel designated for Palestinians or descended from those forced into the Palestinian diaspora and unable to return. The reason Gaza is so densely populated today is a direct result of the Nakba.
I once personally interviewed a survivor of the Nakba. She was 5-years-old when she and her family were chased away from their home. Her family fled to Jordan, but she was able to return to the West Bank, where she continues to reside. Sadly, her sister was not allowed to return, and now a family that was once close knit has been divided for generations.
Many Palestinians, acutely cognizant of the Nakba, understand the October 7 Hamas action as a historic turning of the tables and are proud to see their fighters setting Israeli society back on its heals for once, shaking its sense of security while they have none. If you indefinitely had the boots of invaders on your people's collective necks, would you not feel similar? If you regularly had rifles regular pointed in your face (West Bank) or extreme poverty inflicted upon you with death raining down from above every few years (Gaza), would you not feel some sense of victory when fighters struck back?
This Time, the Slaughter Was Well-Documented and Rapidly Packaged into Slick Videos
You're not supposed to remember the Nakba. Most of that terror wasn't captured in photos or video, and that's convenient for those who slaughtered thousands, as well as for Israelis writ large. There weren't thousands of interviews with survivors pumped out in the mass media. There was no mass media. Television wasn't really even a thing in 1948. And even with TV today, most of the current repression and murder of Palestinians goes unnoticed by the world.
Contrasting then with now, here's an example of the propaganda the State of Israel is cranking out. In giant all-cap text, the video screams that women and children were killed. That is indeed horrific, but it's not at all unprecedented in the "land of milk and honey." This slick fast-cut slaughter porn produced by Israel could easily be a Hamas video championing the killings, were different text swapped in.
This propaganda from the Israeli government is intended to spark outrage, to justify doing to Palestinians what it wanted to do anyway.
The three videos accompanying this post featuring interviews with Israeli war criminal are from the film Tantura. It was released in 2022, a full 74 years after the Nakba, and, even then, for those who saw it, it was shocking. Unfortunately, it has not been widely seen. Do take a few minutes to watch the short clips provided here.
"Unprecedented in Israel's history"
All of the major talking heads compare the surprise attack to 9/11. That is often accompanied with comparisons of the US population to the population of Israeli citizens, saying that, for Americans, it would be the same as if tens of thousands were killed in 9/11. (But tens of thousands were not killed on October 7.) Several have reached back to Russian and German anti-Semitic pogroms as an analogy, or the Nazi Holocaust. Yet, no one draws attention to the Nakba. I've seen relatively few mentions of it on social media, and just once, very briefly, in a mass media outlet, despite the non-stop daily wall-to-wall coverage.
Democratic Party politicians in the US, who are either ignorant of historical context or lying, repeatedly claim that the Hamas action was "unprecedented." Democrats also regularly throw out terms such as "barbarism," "savage," and "blood-thirsty" when speaking about Hamas. If you can stomach watching domestic television news, this is what you will largely hear: an over-simplistic black and white understanding that repeats the words "terrorists, terrorists, terrorists," oblivious to any and all context, and most definitely no mention of the Nakba.
Quite often, you'll hear that Hamas came after the kibbutzim in the Gaza Envelope simply because they were Jewish, that it was anti-Semitism which motivated the attack. Sure, Hamas opposes the "Jewish State" imposed on them, but does any honest person truly believe that Hamas wouldn't similarly resist a never-ending occupation and oppression done by colonizing Christians, or Buddhists for that matter?
You'll probably see even worse if you watch right-wing media outlets. I wouldn't know, because I can't hang with that. Democrats are bad enough.
Israeli politicians are calling Palestinians — not just Hamas, mind you — "human animals" and talking about Gaza City as an "evil city." For Western audiences, they generally try to appear focused on Hamas exclusively, feigning like they don't detest Palestinians — those pesky indigenous people who won't just go away — but Israeli officials can't help themselves from slipping about how they really feel about all Palestinians.
"All the places in which Hamas is based, in this city of evil, all the places Hamas is hiding in, acting from — we'll turn them into rubble," said Benjamin Netanyahu in a televised statement on the evening of October 7. “I’m telling the people of Gaza: get out of there now, because we’re about to act everywhere with all our force.”
Get out of Gaza, Netanyahu said to those living in world's largest open-air prison. Most Gazans are not, and will never be, allowed to travel anywhere outside of the walls and massive military that surrounds them. Have the misfortune of being born in Gaza? That's all you'll ever get to see for your entire life. Your electricity, food rations, medicine, and your very life are all dependent on the whims of the Israeli government.
"I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly," said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. "Human animals" can't just refer to Hamas, because he is cutting off food and electricity for everyone, all two million Gazans, and whomever can't survive the shortages be damned.
Such collective punishment is a war crime, by the way, a violation of international humanitarian law, putting aside the round-the-clock bombing which is killing hundreds of civilians, including children, and the devastating destruction of Gazan infrastructure.
US and Israeli politicians and representatives say things like, "There is no moral equivalency," meaning that Israel flattening luges swaths of Gaza pales in comparison to what Hamas did, that such attacking Gaza at such as massive scale is justified or even righteous.
President Joe Biden decries infants that died or were deliberately killed during the Hamas attack, after Netanyahu presented him a horror show of the worst photos he can find of dead Israelis, but Biden will never mention the infants pulled from the rubble in Gaza. Neither will Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who speaks of the "depravity" of Hamas. Not once will they acknowledge slaughtered Palestinian children and infants.
At least 447 children and 248 women are among the estimated 1,417 people who have died thus far in Israel's vicious bombardment of Gaza. The bombing continues around the clock, with Israel alternating between Air Force and Navy attacks every four hours. And the anticipated ground invasion hasn't even begun yet.
Every time Israel pounds Gaza like this over the years, large numbers of children are slaughtered. While zionist politicians from any country refuse to acknowledge this, Palestinians never forget.
Anyone and everything in Gaza is fair game. Aid workers are no more safe than anyone else. At least eleven workers with the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency have been killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip since October 7, and five members of the international Red Cross and Red Crescent have also been killed in the conflict. Some were killed in their homes with their families. Four Palestine Red Crescent paramedics were killed when their ambulances were hit in two different incidents.
With the vociferous backing of the US and its UN Security Council veto, Israel can willfully ignore international criticism and even blatantly defy international law by relentlessly pounding Gaza. If it were truly just about keeping Israelis safe, the IDF could ring Gaza with 100,000 soldiers. But, it's not. It's about vengeance, it's about total domination, and that vengeance must be maximized to the fullest extent Israel can get away with without the US becoming squishy about the carnage.
The cover story is that Israel is going to "root out" Hamas once and for all, but no one, even the most hawkish and extreme Israelis believes that's true. Palestinian resistance to the occupation, violent and non-violent, will never be completely eliminated as long as the occupation continues. Every honest person well-informed about the issues at hand knows that.
Is a Second, Even Larger Nakba Underway?
Almost Out of Water, Food, and Fuel, What Israel Is Doing to the Gaza Strip Is Genocide
Diminishing water supplies doesn't just mean increasing dehydration, it means basic sanitation becomes impossible. Without running water, there can be no cleaning oneself, no working toilets. And water is important for providing proper health care, especially with the the Gaza medical system on the brink of collapse.
A quarter of a million Gaza residents have been displaced in a matter of just a few days. There is nowhere to replenish supplies. Nowhere to run. Egypt has closed the Rafah border crossing. If and when Egypt does re-open the checkpoint, there could be a huge deluge of Palestinians trying to escape Israeli terror, in effect a second great depopulation of Palestinians, with Israeli unlikely to honor any right of return, ever.
Israel has long floated the idea of permanently expelling Palestinians to the the Sinai peninsula, which is apparently still a goal of Israeli occupations, according to Egyptian high-profile security sources, force Gazans to make a choice between dying or being displaced. That was the same ugly choice imposed upon indigenous Palestinians during the original Nakba, run or die, and many didn't even get they choice, they were just killed to get them out of the way and to install fear in survivors.
Think about Netanyahu's statement the very first night of the Hamas action: "get out of there now." That did not come out of the blue. It's been the ambition of zionists since before Israel's founding. It dates back to the first zionist Aliyahs. And it was made violently clear with the Nakba. Even with massive force, Israelis know that they cannot break the will of Palestinians, Palestinians will never give up their ambition to return to a condition of full autonomy as a people.
The expulsion strategy will become more obvious if a massive ground invasion occurs and the IDF attacks Gaza in a manner which forces Gazans to flee southward toward Egypt. However, due to the inter-generational trauma of the Nakba, many Gazans will be reluctant to abandon their homes and their land, knowing full well that zionists would most likely never allowed them back, meaning that they will be more likely to die for refusing to move.
But, but, but the Nakba is ancient history and making excuses for modern terrorism
Not sure how you could make it this far in this piece and still think that, but here's some current news on life under Israeli control.
This year has been the deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Its statistics show that 199 Palestinians, including 40 children, were killed in the West Bank between January and September. Almost no one is ever held to account for those deaths. It's a virtual killing free-for-all with no value placed on Palestinians lives.
The vast majority of deaths recorded this year came at the hands of Israeli forces, though seven were committed by Israeli settlers and two by other armed Israelis. There were 832 “settler-related incidents” that led to Palestinian casualties and property damage between January and September, according to the United Nations. That represents a monthly rate of attacks 30 percent higher than in 2022, which until now had seen the most settler incidents since the United Nations began tracking them in 2006.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/07/israel-gaza-rocket-attack-hamas/#link-WIVH2XZTU5BULPSMSRDTHDLV4A
https://web.archive.org/web/20231008000139/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/07/israel-gaza-rocket-attack-hamas/
Abducting Palestinians in the West Bank in the middle of the night is business as usual for the IDF.
It's what they do to keep Palestinians off-kilter as much as possible, never able to relax, even in their homes, even at night. IDF watchtowers loom over the entrances or other strategic locations in Palestinian villages, to let locals know that they are always being watched 24/7. https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/12/22/18667361.php#18667375
It's not unusual for arrests to happen without what most of the world would consider normal court proceedings, or charges ever being filed. Palestinians face military courts, as if they are all enemy combatants. If charges are filed, evidence is often quite flimsy and sentences can be severe for minor supposed infractions. Every Palestinian who ever stands up for their people is considered a terrorist to some degree, a threat to the Jewish state. Political persecution is the driving motivator of the Israeli police state. Palestinian political prisoners fill Israeli jails.
Often, children are snatched from their families and imprisoned. Each year approximately 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years old, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. The most common charge is stone throwing. https://www.dci-palestine.org/children_in_israeli_detention
And it's not just the IDF abusing Palestinians. Settlers are allowed to physically push Palestinian families out of their own homes in East Jerusalem. Settlers regularly plow over Palestinian olive groves, destroy Palestinian infrastructure, take possession of village mosques or other buildings, physically attack and even kill Palestinians. The IDF protects these rampaging settlers and the courts do little to hold anyone to account. https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/12/24/18667473.php https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/12/22/18667306.php
Life in the West Bank and Gaza is miserable in so many ways, especially compared with the life of Israelis, as well as many if not most of those in other wealthy developed countries. Just check out the daily coverage at IMEMC News. Seriously. Check it out today, browse through some stories, read the details. Check it out tomorrow. And check back regularly throughout the coming weeks and months. The constant onslaught of IDF and settler terror is incredibly depressing and mind-numbing. It never stops, day in and day out. Yet, most people, besides Palestinians themselves, have no idea what's happening and how it continues to get worse on the ground. https://imemc.org/
Hamas Has Been Part of Israel's Plan All Along
Hamas is largely a creation of the Israeli government
Btw, for the record, Israel pumped up Hamas by covertly funding it in the 1970s, because they wanted a counterweight to the secular PLO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Origins
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces
The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
https://www.vox.com/2023/7/24/23805532/israel-judicial-overhaul-reasonableness
"Crime Minister"
The most plausible explanation [for the security failures on Israel's part] I have heard so far is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government took its eye off the ball, moving thousands of troops from the Gaza Command to protect Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, and focusing far too much energy on suppressing pro-democracy protests rather than thwarting actual threats. https://forward.com/opinion/563822/israel-gaza-war-what-we-thought-was-wrong/
Benjamin Netanyahu Failed Israel
We can now be sure: His policy of repressing Palestinians doesn’t make Israelis safe.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” https://www.vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history
The Biden administration has been intently focused on normalizing relations between Israel and the autocratic regimes in the region, specifically helping to broker a deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel with the backing of US support. https://www.vox.com/2023/10/7/23907912/israel-palestine-conflict-history-explained-gaza-hamas
Netanyahu and his extremist right-wing allies thought they could keep a lid on Palestinians in Gaza, continue to disempower the Palestinian Authority and expand settlements in the West Bank, that the world would just forget. The world largely had. But everyone is thinking about Palestinians now. Sadly, many of those thinking about Israel today are locked into reactionary perspectives, basically on par with the rightest of the right-wing in Israel, who want to smash all Palestinians, more so out of blatant racism than practical concerns for future security. However, if the long-term safety of Israelis matters, the path Netanyahu continues to lead Israel down is not the way. And it's definitely not the path to a long-deserved brighter future for the Palestinian people.
Netanyahu always campaigns as the tough guy who knows best how to keep Israelis safe. That's been shown to be painfully untrue.
It should be noted that a split has grown among Israelis as to what the government's current priority should be, saving hostages or smashing Gaza. It's clear what the extremist right-wing government wants, but the chorus of those wanting their family members back is not insubstantial.
It Must Be Said, Nearly 70% of Israelis Are of European Descent
Imagine if the old Israeli men in the three video clips posted here weren't from Europe, and if the people they massacred were of European descent. Imagine if these men were Hamas militants laughing while recounting the slaughter of frightened Israeli children who were holding their hands up in the air. Would that bother you more? If so, you really should ask yourself why. Why are you unable to acknowledge the horrific actions of Europeans as terrorism? Either be open about your racism and white supremacy or really start to work on getting it in check.
What happened during the surprise attack by Hamas on October 7 is no more horrible than what happened to those who suffered and died during the Nakba. In many ways, it's less so. The October 7 attack was conducted at a much smaller scale on a much more limited territory, apart from rockets attacks that did reach beyond the primary killing fields in the Gaza Envelope. Another difference is that the war criminals of the Nakba didn't take prisoners or hostages — because their goal wasn't to hold onto humans as potential shields, leverage, or bargaining chips, their goal was to clear the land of Palestinians. On October 7, half of all Israelis were not permanently driven from the land in a panic. Five hundred Israeli towns and villages were not depopulated of Jewish residents.
Empathy Can't Be Had Where Truth Is Denied
Essentially, this piece is a plea for empathy, fully owning up to Israel's original sin and its ongoing crimes against humanity. Without empathy for Palestinians and a bold new, and dare I say unprecedented, dedication to the betterment of their lives — by Americans, Israelis, and the rest of the world — the same suffering and cycles of violence will continue on forevermore.
It's high time to stop making excuses, to leave behind the counterproductive trappings of colonial racism, and to truly listen to Palestinians about their hopes and dreams, to work together to help them be realized. Palestinians have suffered far too much, for far too long.
Distance yourselves from the heartless, racist, mass murderers in these videos. Admit that they were monsters, that contemporary Israel society was built on and continues to derive benefits from terror and ethic cleansing. The horrors of 1948 reverberate to this day in a multitude of ways. It's perverse that it's gone on this long. It's counterproductive, even for Israelis. It's inhumane and cruel. And it needs to end.
You've got to give people hope. A people without hope are bound to lash out. You can't simultaneously deny people a bearable present and any path toward a positive future, then complain and cry victim when they resist your authority, sometimes violently. Well, you can, but that makes no sense and does not show the least bit of good faith.
Do watch the film Tantura
UPDATE 10/13, 9pm: I had been working on this post for several days and then woke up to learn that Israel was ordering 1.1 millions Gazans to move south, as I had suspected they might try to do in some manner, although I didn't foresee that they'd do it officially and so publicly by ordering it happen with just 24 hours notice, so I rushed the unfinished post out. It will be filled in more over the next couple of days, as well as further updates added here. The original post comparing the Nakba with the Hamas surprise attack almost seems quaint at this point. The real comparison with the original Nakba is the new Nabka on steroids, pushing refugees from greater Palestine who were crammed into the Gaza Strip over a period of months and years during the first Nakba into an even smaller piece of territory, a prison of half the size, in a single day. Many are unable or unwilling to move. Gaza is already on the verge of dehydration and starvation, and southern Gaza is not equipped to take on another million people. It's crazy and cruel beyond belief. Israel tries to pretend it is a "normal" Western democracy, but it is showing its true self once again.
Remember the Nakba
Israel likes to pretend it is a noble democracy, an oasis in a region of despots, despite the fact that a full third of the population living under the thumb of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have suffered severe repression decade after decade, generation after generation, with no genuine self-determination. Nearly five million Palestinians call the West Bank and Gaza home.
Israel likes to pretend it is wholly innocent, just defending itself, and that Hamas represents a historically unprecedented aberration in violence within its borders.
Whenever you hear such claims, remember the Nakba.
Before the Nakba, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society
If you are not familiar with the Nakba, you are not alone. The Nakba is also known as the "Palestinian Catastrophe," Nakba meaning "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm"' in Arabic. The Nakba was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of Palestinian Arabs.
At least 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres. Over 700,000 were permanently displaced.
That is the true story of the founding of Israel.
It was not a "War of Independence" as Israelis claim. It was a war on indigenous Palestinians by colonizing Europeans who wanted their land, and wanted them gone, forever. Tantura Massacres happened throughout Palestine. The exact death toll will likely never be known. The slaughter and terror were deliberate and methodical. It was ethnic cleansing, pure and simple.
As intended, the Nakba resulted in the expulsion and/or flight of 700,000 Palestinians, the related depopulation and destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages by Zionist militias, the denial of the Palestinian right of return, the creation of permanent Palestinian refugees and the overall shattering of Palestinian society. Today, the Nakba has been figuratively buried in the collective consciousness of Israelis and its mass graves literally buried under parking lots.
Burying the Truth of the Catastrophe
Israeli officials have repeatedly stigmatized the term Nakba as embodying an "Arab lie" or as a "justification for terrorism." In 2009, the Israeli Education Ministry banned using "Nakba" in Palestinian textbooks for children. In 2011, the Knesset forbade institutions from commemorating the event, meaning that a school ceremony memorializing the Nakba would have to respond to charges that it incited racism, violence and terrorism, and denied Israel's democratic character. In 2023, after the United Nations finally instituted a commemoration day for the Nakba as May 15, the Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan protested that the event itself was antisemitic.
This should sound familiar to anyone living in a society with fascistic movements banning books and working to erase or whitewash uncomfortable histories. "Slavery was sometimes beneficial for enslaved persons." "America never committed genocide." "Teaching a complete and accurate version of history breeds division."
Palestinians Haven't Forgotten the Nakba, They Don't Have that Luxury
While older Israelis don't want the topic of the Nakba to be broached, and second and third generation Israelis may have no idea what it is, at all, Palestinians haven't forgotten. They have relatives who were slaughtered and are never coming back. Countless families were permanently separated on opposite sides of the Israeli border.
Palestinians under the age of 75 have never known what life is like without Israelis ultimately controlling their lives and destinies, be they living in an section of Israel designated for Palestinians or descended from those forced into the Palestinian diaspora and unable to return. The reason Gaza is so densely populated today is a direct result of the Nakba.
I once personally interviewed a survivor of the Nakba. She was 5-years-old when she and her family were chased away from their home. Her family fled to Jordan, but she was able to return to the West Bank, where she continues to reside. Sadly, her sister was not allowed to return, and now a family that was once close knit has been divided for generations.
Many Palestinians, acutely cognizant of the Nakba, understand the October 7 Hamas action as a historic turning of the tables and are proud to see their fighters setting Israeli society back on its heals for once, shaking its sense of security while they have none. If you indefinitely had the boots of invaders on your people's collective necks, would you not feel similar? If you regularly had rifles regular pointed in your face (West Bank) or extreme poverty inflicted upon you with death raining down from above every few years (Gaza), would you not feel some sense of victory when fighters struck back?
This Time, the Slaughter Was Well-Documented and Rapidly Packaged into Slick Videos
You're not supposed to remember the Nakba. Most of that terror wasn't captured in photos or video, and that's convenient for those who slaughtered thousands, as well as for Israelis writ large. There weren't thousands of interviews with survivors pumped out in the mass media. There was no mass media. Television wasn't really even a thing in 1948. And even with TV today, most of the current repression and murder of Palestinians goes unnoticed by the world.
Contrasting then with now, here's an example of the propaganda the State of Israel is cranking out. In giant all-cap text, the video screams that women and children were killed. That is indeed horrific, but it's not at all unprecedented in the "land of milk and honey." This slick fast-cut slaughter porn produced by Israel could easily be a Hamas video championing the killings, were different text swapped in.
This propaganda from the Israeli government is intended to spark outrage, to justify doing to Palestinians what it wanted to do anyway.
The three videos accompanying this post featuring interviews with Israeli war criminal are from the film Tantura. It was released in 2022, a full 74 years after the Nakba, and, even then, for those who saw it, it was shocking. Unfortunately, it has not been widely seen. Do take a few minutes to watch the short clips provided here.
"Unprecedented in Israel's history"
All of the major talking heads compare the surprise attack to 9/11. That is often accompanied with comparisons of the US population to the population of Israeli citizens, saying that, for Americans, it would be the same as if tens of thousands were killed in 9/11. (But tens of thousands were not killed on October 7.) Several have reached back to Russian and German anti-Semitic pogroms as an analogy, or the Nazi Holocaust. Yet, no one draws attention to the Nakba. I've seen relatively few mentions of it on social media, and just once, very briefly, in a mass media outlet, despite the non-stop daily wall-to-wall coverage.
Democratic Party politicians in the US, who are either ignorant of historical context or lying, repeatedly claim that the Hamas action was "unprecedented." Democrats also regularly throw out terms such as "barbarism," "savage," and "blood-thirsty" when speaking about Hamas. If you can stomach watching domestic television news, this is what you will largely hear: an over-simplistic black and white understanding that repeats the words "terrorists, terrorists, terrorists," oblivious to any and all context, and most definitely no mention of the Nakba.
Quite often, you'll hear that Hamas came after the kibbutzim in the Gaza Envelope simply because they were Jewish, that it was anti-Semitism which motivated the attack. Sure, Hamas opposes the "Jewish State" imposed on them, but does any honest person truly believe that Hamas wouldn't similarly resist a never-ending occupation and oppression done by colonizing Christians, or Buddhists for that matter?
You'll probably see even worse if you watch right-wing media outlets. I wouldn't know, because I can't hang with that. Democrats are bad enough.
Israeli politicians are calling Palestinians — not just Hamas, mind you — "human animals" and talking about Gaza City as an "evil city." For Western audiences, they generally try to appear focused on Hamas exclusively, feigning like they don't detest Palestinians — those pesky indigenous people who won't just go away — but Israeli officials can't help themselves from slipping about how they really feel about all Palestinians.
"All the places in which Hamas is based, in this city of evil, all the places Hamas is hiding in, acting from — we'll turn them into rubble," said Benjamin Netanyahu in a televised statement on the evening of October 7. “I’m telling the people of Gaza: get out of there now, because we’re about to act everywhere with all our force.”
Get out of Gaza, Netanyahu said to those living in world's largest open-air prison. Most Gazans are not, and will never be, allowed to travel anywhere outside of the walls and massive military that surrounds them. Have the misfortune of being born in Gaza? That's all you'll ever get to see for your entire life. Your electricity, food rations, medicine, and your very life are all dependent on the whims of the Israeli government.
"I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly," said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. "Human animals" can't just refer to Hamas, because he is cutting off food and electricity for everyone, all two million Gazans, and whomever can't survive the shortages be damned.
Such collective punishment is a war crime, by the way, a violation of international humanitarian law, putting aside the round-the-clock bombing which is killing hundreds of civilians, including children, and the devastating destruction of Gazan infrastructure.
US and Israeli politicians and representatives say things like, "There is no moral equivalency," meaning that Israel flattening luges swaths of Gaza pales in comparison to what Hamas did, that such attacking Gaza at such as massive scale is justified or even righteous.
President Joe Biden decries infants that died or were deliberately killed during the Hamas attack, after Netanyahu presented him a horror show of the worst photos he can find of dead Israelis, but Biden will never mention the infants pulled from the rubble in Gaza. Neither will Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who speaks of the "depravity" of Hamas. Not once will they acknowledge slaughtered Palestinian children and infants.
At least 447 children and 248 women are among the estimated 1,417 people who have died thus far in Israel's vicious bombardment of Gaza. The bombing continues around the clock, with Israel alternating between Air Force and Navy attacks every four hours. And the anticipated ground invasion hasn't even begun yet.
Every time Israel pounds Gaza like this over the years, large numbers of children are slaughtered. While zionist politicians from any country refuse to acknowledge this, Palestinians never forget.
Anyone and everything in Gaza is fair game. Aid workers are no more safe than anyone else. At least eleven workers with the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency have been killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip since October 7, and five members of the international Red Cross and Red Crescent have also been killed in the conflict. Some were killed in their homes with their families. Four Palestine Red Crescent paramedics were killed when their ambulances were hit in two different incidents.
With the vociferous backing of the US and its UN Security Council veto, Israel can willfully ignore international criticism and even blatantly defy international law by relentlessly pounding Gaza. If it were truly just about keeping Israelis safe, the IDF could ring Gaza with 100,000 soldiers. But, it's not. It's about vengeance, it's about total domination, and that vengeance must be maximized to the fullest extent Israel can get away with without the US becoming squishy about the carnage.
The cover story is that Israel is going to "root out" Hamas once and for all, but no one, even the most hawkish and extreme Israelis believes that's true. Palestinian resistance to the occupation, violent and non-violent, will never be completely eliminated as long as the occupation continues. Every honest person well-informed about the issues at hand knows that.
Is a Second, Even Larger Nakba Underway?
Almost Out of Water, Food, and Fuel, What Israel Is Doing to the Gaza Strip Is Genocide
Diminishing water supplies doesn't just mean increasing dehydration, it means basic sanitation becomes impossible. Without running water, there can be no cleaning oneself, no working toilets. And water is important for providing proper health care, especially with the the Gaza medical system on the brink of collapse.
A quarter of a million Gaza residents have been displaced in a matter of just a few days. There is nowhere to replenish supplies. Nowhere to run. Egypt has closed the Rafah border crossing. If and when Egypt does re-open the checkpoint, there could be a huge deluge of Palestinians trying to escape Israeli terror, in effect a second great depopulation of Palestinians, with Israeli unlikely to honor any right of return, ever.
Israel has long floated the idea of permanently expelling Palestinians to the the Sinai peninsula, which is apparently still a goal of Israeli occupations, according to Egyptian high-profile security sources, force Gazans to make a choice between dying or being displaced. That was the same ugly choice imposed upon indigenous Palestinians during the original Nakba, run or die, and many didn't even get they choice, they were just killed to get them out of the way and to install fear in survivors.
Think about Netanyahu's statement the very first night of the Hamas action: "get out of there now." That did not come out of the blue. It's been the ambition of zionists since before Israel's founding. It dates back to the first zionist Aliyahs. And it was made violently clear with the Nakba. Even with massive force, Israelis know that they cannot break the will of Palestinians, Palestinians will never give up their ambition to return to a condition of full autonomy as a people.
The expulsion strategy will become more obvious if a massive ground invasion occurs and the IDF attacks Gaza in a manner which forces Gazans to flee southward toward Egypt. However, due to the inter-generational trauma of the Nakba, many Gazans will be reluctant to abandon their homes and their land, knowing full well that zionists would most likely never allowed them back, meaning that they will be more likely to die for refusing to move.
But, but, but the Nakba is ancient history and making excuses for modern terrorism
Not sure how you could make it this far in this piece and still think that, but here's some current news on life under Israeli control.
This year has been the deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Its statistics show that 199 Palestinians, including 40 children, were killed in the West Bank between January and September. Almost no one is ever held to account for those deaths. It's a virtual killing free-for-all with no value placed on Palestinians lives.
The vast majority of deaths recorded this year came at the hands of Israeli forces, though seven were committed by Israeli settlers and two by other armed Israelis. There were 832 “settler-related incidents” that led to Palestinian casualties and property damage between January and September, according to the United Nations. That represents a monthly rate of attacks 30 percent higher than in 2022, which until now had seen the most settler incidents since the United Nations began tracking them in 2006.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/07/israel-gaza-rocket-attack-hamas/#link-WIVH2XZTU5BULPSMSRDTHDLV4A
https://web.archive.org/web/20231008000139/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/07/israel-gaza-rocket-attack-hamas/
Abducting Palestinians in the West Bank in the middle of the night is business as usual for the IDF.
It's what they do to keep Palestinians off-kilter as much as possible, never able to relax, even in their homes, even at night. IDF watchtowers loom over the entrances or other strategic locations in Palestinian villages, to let locals know that they are always being watched 24/7. https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/12/22/18667361.php#18667375
It's not unusual for arrests to happen without what most of the world would consider normal court proceedings, or charges ever being filed. Palestinians face military courts, as if they are all enemy combatants. If charges are filed, evidence is often quite flimsy and sentences can be severe for minor supposed infractions. Every Palestinian who ever stands up for their people is considered a terrorist to some degree, a threat to the Jewish state. Political persecution is the driving motivator of the Israeli police state. Palestinian political prisoners fill Israeli jails.
Often, children are snatched from their families and imprisoned. Each year approximately 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years old, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. The most common charge is stone throwing. https://www.dci-palestine.org/children_in_israeli_detention
And it's not just the IDF abusing Palestinians. Settlers are allowed to physically push Palestinian families out of their own homes in East Jerusalem. Settlers regularly plow over Palestinian olive groves, destroy Palestinian infrastructure, take possession of village mosques or other buildings, physically attack and even kill Palestinians. The IDF protects these rampaging settlers and the courts do little to hold anyone to account. https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/12/24/18667473.php https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/12/22/18667306.php
Life in the West Bank and Gaza is miserable in so many ways, especially compared with the life of Israelis, as well as many if not most of those in other wealthy developed countries. Just check out the daily coverage at IMEMC News. Seriously. Check it out today, browse through some stories, read the details. Check it out tomorrow. And check back regularly throughout the coming weeks and months. The constant onslaught of IDF and settler terror is incredibly depressing and mind-numbing. It never stops, day in and day out. Yet, most people, besides Palestinians themselves, have no idea what's happening and how it continues to get worse on the ground. https://imemc.org/
Hamas Has Been Part of Israel's Plan All Along
Hamas is largely a creation of the Israeli government
Btw, for the record, Israel pumped up Hamas by covertly funding it in the 1970s, because they wanted a counterweight to the secular PLO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Origins
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces
The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
https://www.vox.com/2023/7/24/23805532/israel-judicial-overhaul-reasonableness
"Crime Minister"
The most plausible explanation [for the security failures on Israel's part] I have heard so far is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government took its eye off the ball, moving thousands of troops from the Gaza Command to protect Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, and focusing far too much energy on suppressing pro-democracy protests rather than thwarting actual threats. https://forward.com/opinion/563822/israel-gaza-war-what-we-thought-was-wrong/
Benjamin Netanyahu Failed Israel
We can now be sure: His policy of repressing Palestinians doesn’t make Israelis safe.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” https://www.vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history
The Biden administration has been intently focused on normalizing relations between Israel and the autocratic regimes in the region, specifically helping to broker a deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel with the backing of US support. https://www.vox.com/2023/10/7/23907912/israel-palestine-conflict-history-explained-gaza-hamas
Netanyahu and his extremist right-wing allies thought they could keep a lid on Palestinians in Gaza, continue to disempower the Palestinian Authority and expand settlements in the West Bank, that the world would just forget. The world largely had. But everyone is thinking about Palestinians now. Sadly, many of those thinking about Israel today are locked into reactionary perspectives, basically on par with the rightest of the right-wing in Israel, who want to smash all Palestinians, more so out of blatant racism than practical concerns for future security. However, if the long-term safety of Israelis matters, the path Netanyahu continues to lead Israel down is not the way. And it's definitely not the path to a long-deserved brighter future for the Palestinian people.
Netanyahu always campaigns as the tough guy who knows best how to keep Israelis safe. That's been shown to be painfully untrue.
It should be noted that a split has grown among Israelis as to what the government's current priority should be, saving hostages or smashing Gaza. It's clear what the extremist right-wing government wants, but the chorus of those wanting their family members back is not insubstantial.
It Must Be Said, Nearly 70% of Israelis Are of European Descent
Imagine if the old Israeli men in the three video clips posted here weren't from Europe, and if the people they massacred were of European descent. Imagine if these men were Hamas militants laughing while recounting the slaughter of frightened Israeli children who were holding their hands up in the air. Would that bother you more? If so, you really should ask yourself why. Why are you unable to acknowledge the horrific actions of Europeans as terrorism? Either be open about your racism and white supremacy or really start to work on getting it in check.
What happened during the surprise attack by Hamas on October 7 is no more horrible than what happened to those who suffered and died during the Nakba. In many ways, it's less so. The October 7 attack was conducted at a much smaller scale on a much more limited territory, apart from rockets attacks that did reach beyond the primary killing fields in the Gaza Envelope. Another difference is that the war criminals of the Nakba didn't take prisoners or hostages — because their goal wasn't to hold onto humans as potential shields, leverage, or bargaining chips, their goal was to clear the land of Palestinians. On October 7, half of all Israelis were not permanently driven from the land in a panic. Five hundred Israeli towns and villages were not depopulated of Jewish residents.
Empathy Can't Be Had Where Truth Is Denied
Essentially, this piece is a plea for empathy, fully owning up to Israel's original sin and its ongoing crimes against humanity. Without empathy for Palestinians and a bold new, and dare I say unprecedented, dedication to the betterment of their lives — by Americans, Israelis, and the rest of the world — the same suffering and cycles of violence will continue on forevermore.
It's high time to stop making excuses, to leave behind the counterproductive trappings of colonial racism, and to truly listen to Palestinians about their hopes and dreams, to work together to help them be realized. Palestinians have suffered far too much, for far too long.
Distance yourselves from the heartless, racist, mass murderers in these videos. Admit that they were monsters, that contemporary Israel society was built on and continues to derive benefits from terror and ethic cleansing. The horrors of 1948 reverberate to this day in a multitude of ways. It's perverse that it's gone on this long. It's counterproductive, even for Israelis. It's inhumane and cruel. And it needs to end.
You've got to give people hope. A people without hope are bound to lash out. You can't simultaneously deny people a bearable present and any path toward a positive future, then complain and cry victim when they resist your authority, sometimes violently. Well, you can, but that makes no sense and does not show the least bit of good faith.
Do watch the film Tantura
UPDATE 10/13, 9pm: I had been working on this post for several days and then woke up to learn that Israel was ordering 1.1 millions Gazans to move south, as I had suspected they might try to do in some manner, although I didn't foresee that they'd do it officially and so publicly by ordering it happen with just 24 hours notice, so I rushed the unfinished post out. It will be filled in more over the next couple of days, as well as further updates added here. The original post comparing the Nakba with the Hamas surprise attack almost seems quaint at this point. The real comparison with the original Nakba is the new Nabka on steroids, pushing refugees from greater Palestine who were crammed into the Gaza Strip over a period of months and years during the first Nakba into an even smaller piece of territory, a prison of half the size, in a single day. Many are unable or unwilling to move. Gaza is already on the verge of dehydration and starvation, and southern Gaza is not equipped to take on another million people. It's crazy and cruel beyond belief. Israel tries to pretend it is a "normal" Western democracy, but it is showing its true self once again.
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