Nakba Law

Palestine refugees initially displaced to Beach camp in Gaza board boats to Lebanon or Egypt during the first Arab-Israeli war, 1949 (UN Archives Photo/Hrant Nakashian)

Israelis, drop your denial and recognize the Nakba

Israeli recognition of its role in the Palestinian catastrophe is essential for both communities to survive. Other societies in conflict already figured that out.

By Dahlia Scheindlin May 21, 2020

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland. Auschwitz was a network of concentration and extermination camps built and operated in occupied Poland by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. (Isaac Harari/Flash90)

Between Poland’s Holocaust revisionism and Israel’s Nakba denial

Poland’s attempt to scrub clean its role in the murder of European Jewry is, at its core, no different from Israel’s attempt to erase the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in 1948. By Haneen Zoabi The responses coming from Israel to the new Polish law, which forbids discussing war crimes committed by the Polish people…

By +972 Magazine January 28, 2018

A right-wing Israeli activist yells at a left-wing Israeli activist in East Jerusalem. (Photo: Anne Paq/Activestills.org)

Are Israelis too scared to have opinions anymore?

A law barring public broadcasters from expressing opinions is just the latest in a long line of legislative and regulatory attempts to limit speech in Israel. At 3:24 a.m. on September 3rd, Israeli parliamentarians passed a controversial law to revamp the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the body responsible for public radio and television. At the…

By Dahlia Scheindlin September 10, 2015

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Screenshot of an 'Eretz Nehederet' skit on the Nakba.

Shhhh, the Nakba made it to prime time

Israel’s top satire program takes on the Nakba. Sometimes humor can succeed in places where activism or advocacy fall short. The tortured road of the Nakba towards a legitimate place in the Israeli historical memory has some unexpected twists. Eitan Bronstein Aparicio and Dr. Eléonore Merza Bronstein recently explained that at first, it was mainly Palestinians…

By Dahlia Scheindlin May 16, 2015

Sign to Susya, with Arabic blacked out (Yuval Ben Ami)

New law would demote Arabic language in the name of ‘social cohesion’

Members of Knesset say law builds a ‘collective identity’ that will preserve the ‘values of democracy.’ By Orly Noy A group of MKs from Yisrael Beiteinu, Likud and Jewish Home recently submitted a bill that calls to rescind the status of Arabic as an official language in Israel. On its own, the bill is neither out…

By Orly Noy August 26, 2014

Palestinians march with torches through the streets of Bethlehem to commemorate the Nakba, May 14, 2013. (Photo by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

PHOTOS: Palestinians commemorate Nakba Day in rallies and protests

As Noam Sheizaf’s recent headline states, “the Nakba’s memory is more present than ever in Israel.” The Nakba, literally, “the catastrophe,” is the name given to the massive deportation of more then 700,000 Palestinians from what became the State of Israel in 1948. Sheizaf goes on to point out how efforts, such as the “Nakba law,” which…

By Activestills May 16, 2013

A Palestinian photographer standing during a minute of silence commemorating the Nakba, during a ceremony held by Palestinian and Israeli students in the entrance to the Tel Aviv University. Rightwing vigil protesting the ceremony and policemen are seen in the background. May 13, 2013 (photo: Yotam Ronen / Activestills)

Despite efforts to erase it, the Nakba’s memory is more present than ever in Israel

The Israeli Right has been waging a war on history in recent years, using extreme measures to remove evidence of the Nakba from the national discourse. It failed. Yedioth Hakibbutz is the weekly magazine of the United Kibbutz Movement. It is delivered every week to hundreds of Kibbutzim as part of the weekend edition of Yedioth Ahronoth,…

By Noam Sheizaf May 14, 2013

(Photo: Mati Milstein)

When racial profiling is a national policy

Palestinian citizens have many rights in Israel, but they are not equal citizens. Only by removing all discriminatory elements from the legal system will Israel cease to be a democracy of racial profiling. Following one of his visits to Israel, Jewish-American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg praised last year the ease with which he underwent the security procedures at…

By Noam Sheizaf April 25, 2013

Palestinian Nakba village Qula, 2010 (photo: Deborah Bright / Zochrot.org)

Between anger and denial: Israeli collective memory and the Nakba

A new documentary aims to decipher some of the anxiety that accompanies the Israeli debate over the events of 1948. A strange thing regarding the debate on the Nakba: the responses it generates in Israeli society are becoming more and more hostile, while at the same time, the Nakba is mentioned more and more often. Those contradicting…

By Noam Sheizaf October 16, 2012

WATCH: Nakba discourse inflames passions on all sides

Israel has gone to great lengths to remove mention of the Nakba – the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 – from textbooks, public discourse, and the public space. But as state efforts to ban Nakba commemorations increase, so does interest in the issue, with more and more Israelis believing that dealing with the matter is a…

By Social TV June 12, 2012

A Palestinian oldman and girl living in a refguee camp after 48 (photo:flickr/gnuckx)

For Palestinians, the Nakba is not history

The Nakba has a dual meaning today. On one hand, it is about the hundreds of villages that were razed in 1948 and the hundreds of thousands of refugees who lost their homes. On the other hand, Palestinians continue to suffer the Nakba daily – the separation of families, continuous confiscations of land and settlements…

By Aziz Abu Sarah May 14, 2012

Silencing Nakba: efforts to erase the Nakba narrative from Israeli discourse risk backfiring. (image: CJ)

Israel’s n**** word: efforts to teach it, and attempts to erase it

My thoughts about Nakba, Nakba Day, and the so-called Nakba law are simple. Silencing another’s narrative does not make that narrative go away. And in a similar vein, giving a voice to another’s narrative does not invalidate one’s own. I commissioned the image above to convey visually what I fear currently risks haunting Israelis forever.…

By Roee Ruttenberg May 14, 2012

Nakba Law in action: Students must pay expenses for ceremony

A new law forbidding the commemoration of the Palestinian catastrophe prompted Tel Aviv University to charge students organizing a joint Israeli-Palestinian ceremony on May 14th in order to pay the security expenses. A little over a year ago, the Israeli Knesset passed the Nakba Law, stating that institutions who receive state funding are not to…

By Noam Sheizaf May 13, 2012