Time to Acknowledge Palestinian History

This week, Palestinian students and others at Columbia will be mourning al-Nakba—the Arabic word used for the catastrophe suffered by Palestinians in 1948, when more than 700,000 were driven from their homes. Unfortunately, if recent events are any guide, some Columbians will not simply fail to respect this remembrance, but will rule out any discussion of what befell these refugees.

On April 14, Esti Tsal, an Israeli peace activist, and Lubna Hammad, a Palestinian lawyer, spoke at Columbia. The event was cosponsored by a wide range of groups, with two notable absences. Organizers invited both Hillel and one of its subgroups, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, to endorse. Representatives of each said initially that they were interested, and PJA appeared enthusiastic. However, when Hillel leadership learned more about the event, it not only refused a Hillel endorsement, but successfully discouraged PJA from participating.

(Despite pressure, the choice was ultimately PJA’s. Hillel president Emily Steinberger told me that the Hillel e-board “had a conversation” with PJA, but “it was their decision.” Alana Krivo-Kaufman of PJA wrote that the group’s decision was “autonomous,” “made in relation to an already stressed working climate and ... possible alienation from progressive constituencies” within Hillel.)

The reason for Hillel’s disassociation? Although neither Steinberger nor Krivo-Kaufman would discuss specifics, according to sources among various involved groups, the problem was just five letters in an early draft of an announcement for the event: the forbidden term “Nakba.”

What’s wrong with the word? Bizarrely, there is not even really a factual dispute. While the Israeli establishment spent decades denying that Palestinians had been forcibly displaced in 1948, the opening of Israeli state archives in the 1980s made continued denial essentially impossible. Israeli New Historians, such as Benny Morris, counted hundreds of Palestinian villages that had been violently emptied. Even the New Historians’ harshest critics, like Ephraim Karsh, are now reduced to protesting
unconvincingly that this violence was not the product of a premeditated central plan.
Rather, Hillel’s problem with “Nakba” is purely a matter of an ideological framework. Hillel is an affiliate of a national organization which, as official policy, is “steadfastly committed to the support of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State” (their capitalization). In the case of the April 14 event, I’m told this policy was cited against any Hillel association with the claim that Palestinians suffered a historical wrong in 1948. Whatever happened that year, it cannot be labeled a “catastrophe.” Harm done to Palestinians cannot, apparently, be acknowledged in this framework as an ethical offense. Where it cannot plausibly be denied nor justified, absolute silence on the subject must suffice.

This implication may seem a stretch from the formal wording of Hillel policy—and indeed, it is unlikely that, should Hillel or PJA have cosponsored, either would have suffered any direct sanction. But deriving an imperative from the Hillel formula for the exclusion of Palestinians from ethical consideration does not require too strained a reading.

Israel’s existence as a “Jewish and Democratic State” is widely understood to be incompatible with the possession of full Israeli citizenship by Arab residents of Gaza and the West Bank, let alone a right of return for exiled descendants of the 1948 and 1967 refugees. I, like every person with a Jewish grandmother, possess a legal right to become an Israeli citizen, though I am an atheist raised with minimal connection to Jewish tradition. The possibility that every Palestinian might obtain this right is viewed by most defenders of the original Zionist project as tantamount to the destruction of Israel, precisely because it could make the “Jewish and Democratic State” no longer Jewish.

A fundamental illiberality to Zionism’s traditional understanding of the essential nature of Israel is made clear by its inability to encompass al-Nakba. We do not normally grant anyone the right to run a nation-state under the control and in the exclusive interest of one race, ethnicity, or religion—a basic principle not of some utopian internationalism but of liberal democracy. This privilege is incompatible with the egalitarian recognition of an intrinsic human dignity.

Whether or not one draws from this incompatibility what I view as the logical conclusion—that a one-state solution is the only fully just alternative—one should recognize that the discounting of Palestinian humanity has tragic consequences.

First and foremost, of course, ongoing brutality toward the Palestinian people is legitimized. Israel is almost always described in the corporate media as engaged in “defense” or “retaliation,” even as the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed last year reached 40 to 1. Furthermore, American and Israeli inability to recognize Palestinian grievances is a decisive barrier to any genuine reconciliation. Without such recognition, the “peace process” will remain a farce, a series of photo ops good for nothing but favorable press. Finally, routine rhetorical dehumanization corrupts discussion beyond its initial scope, with Israeli experience now cited to justify everything from the torture of “War on Terror” detainees to a fence along the Mexican border.

Unfortunately, while I am not aware of anyone who claims to believe in universal human rights and yet defends Saudi Arabia’s religious repression or Dubai’s second-class treatment of non-Arab residents, Israel’s commitment to a Jewish majority at any cost, which is premised not only on repression but on ethnic cleansing, has innumerable allegedly egalitarian defenders. Hillel’s leadership is merely an example, one of too many. We must hope that the current “Nakba week” begins, at least at Columbia, to break down this sort of chauvinism and forces us all to come to terms with what U.S. and Israeli policy inflicts on Palestinians.

David Judd is a senior in the school of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in computer science.The Point, However runs alternate Mondays.