We present this special issue of Moving Forward to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, the Arabic word for ‘catastrophe.’ The Nakba refers to the expulsion and dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland during Israel’s creation (1947-1949).
In this issue, we lay out the historical record of those years to show that the Nakba was the result of a deliberate policy of mass expulsion, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing—a strategy designed to ensure that the Palestinians who had lived on the land for generations would be barred from ever returning. We also zero in on the fundamental role played by the 117-year-old international organization, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), in facilitating that dispossession.
Our goal is that there be a serious moral reckoning with this history, and it begins with that icon of innocence, the JNF’s small blue metal box that many of our readers will remember from their childhood, boxes that beckoned us to drop in coins that would help “make the desert bloom” and build the land of Israel. It was a mission that was legitimized by the governing principle of the Zionist cause: “A land without a people for a people without a land.” As seductive as that slogan was, it was willfully false, as amply documented in personal testimonies of Palestinians and Israelis, historical records, and scholarly research. How, after all, could 750,000 Palestinians flee “a land without a people”?
From its founding, the JNF was encouraged by the Zionist movement to acquire land in Palestine for the purpose of settling Jews on that land. After 1948, aided and abetted by Israeli land law, the JNF continued to acquire land and also contributed to Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians from their land. This was accomplished by buying swathes of land from absentee landlords and then leasing it exclusively to Jews, by confiscating refugees’ land, and by forcibly—often violently—removing Palestinians from their land, a practice which persists today. By continuing to plant forests that conceal the ruins of Palestinian villages, the JNF seeks to erase history and memory, while hoping to whitewash its political motives and enhance its recent branding as an environmental organization. Ironically, however, it has earned widespread international condemnation for the degradation it has inflicted on the natural ecosystem.
While this year marks the 70th anniversary of the catastrophic events of 1948, we also know that the policies that informed Israel’s and the JNF’s actions back then continue to the present. With this issue we hope to expose the relationship between the Nakba and the Jewish National Fund; to encourage deeper conversation about the experiences and realities of Palestinians before, during and since Israel’s creation; and to facilitate among US Jewish communities—and more broadly—honest reflection, analysis, and action toward truth-telling and justice.
The Editors
The Nakba in numbers: Displacement of the Palestinians and destruction of their villages
April 7, 2018
In 1948, the State of Israel was created on land that only a year before had been a majority Palestinian population with a majority of Palestinian villages. As the graphs below demonstrate, by 1949, Israel had expelled 750,000 Palestinians and erased more than 500 Palestinian villages.
Israel to demolish a Bedouin village next month, build a Jewish town in its place
March 22, 2018
Over the past week, Israeli police have been patrolling the village, although police say preparations for evacuation have yet to commence. According to Haaretz, head of the Bedouin resettlement authority, Yair Maayan, says all the structures in the village, including one used for prayer, will be demolished.
The JNF is Helping the Israeli Government Steal a Palestinian Family’s House
February 6, 2018
In late 2011, I publicly resigned from the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in order to expose and protest the JNF’s efforts to use Israel’s arcane Absentee Property Law to steal the Sumarin family home in Jerusalem along with many other Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and the occupied territories.
Facing the Nakba
December 22, 2017
The story of the Nakba—the expulsion and dispossession of approximately 750,000 Palestinians, and the destruction of more than 400 villages, by the Zionist movement and then Israel from 1947-1949—has been well-documented by Palestinian as well as Israeli and other international sources.
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