Palestinians around the World commemorated the Nakba, the tragic mass exodus in the 1948 war. Today the celebration of this event is not only a day of mourning, but has become a symbol of the unity of a population without freedom and without a state; the 15th of May is a day for remembering and also a day for hope.
A lot of states in the world have the same tradition of commemorating important dates in their history: most of these are very sad events in the existence of the state. It is easy to understand how important these commemorations are for a population that, since that day, has not stopped suffering and being humiliated, and that is still waiting for freedom and peace.
Despite this, the Israeli Knesset member Alex Miller (Yisrael Beiteinu) submitted a proposal of legislation that would criminalize commemoration of the Nakba. According to this law Palestinian citizens in Israel will be punished with jail terms of up to three years for commemorating their “catastrophe”.
According to this member of Yisrael Beiteinu Party “the bill will contribute to the coexistence and unity of the state” but which state he refers to has not been clarified (Alex Miller is living in the settlement of Ariel, one of the largest in the West Bank).
Today, on the Political Party’s website it is written: “As leaders of a democracy, we know how serious it is to ban the speech and assembly of our citizens. But, in this case, we know that the security of our country depends on it. Citizens who gather publicly to mourn the creation of the State of Israel undermine its strength to unite in the face of attack. Violence almost always accompanies Nakba rallies, which in most cases include calls for Israel’s demise, more terrorist attacks, and pro-Hamas and PLO speeches and chants”. Obviously none of these terrible things occurred during the last Nakba celebration, and face to their pluralistic and open-mind attitude, it is doubtful that some of Yisrael Beiteinu members went to one of these celebrations.
Yisrael Beiteinu is a nationalist political party that describes itself as “a national movement with the clear vision to follow in the brave path of Zev Jabotinsky” , the founder of Revisionist Zionism. It takes a hard line toward Israeli Arabs and Palestinians characterized in the last election by its slogan “No loyalty, no citizenship”. Most of the affiliates to this political party founded by Avigdor Lieberman are Jewish immigrants that moved from the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s and they may not have a clear democratic and pluralistic tradition in their states of origin… The leader Avigdor Lieberman argues that the Israeli Arabs see themselves not as Israelis but as Palestinians, and should therefore be “encouraged” to join the Palestinian Authority, while, regarding a Palestinian State, he said that he supports the creation of a “Palestinian viable state” (he lives in an illegal settlement inside the West Bank too). The urgency to make the celebration of the Nakba forbidden for Israeli citizens (Arabs and Jewish) may be part of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party incentives for Israeli Arab to give up their Israeli citizenship and move to a “non state citizenship” in the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip.
According to members of the same coalition government, including the Minister for Minority Affairs Prof. Avishai Braverman, the bill would infringe on the right to protest and is a danger to democracy, liable to encourage the extremists. Even if these kinds of violations occur almost everyday in the Occupied Territories, normally the Israelis Authorities are more careful in making these infringements, and this lack of democracy, public. Similar proposals have been introduced into the Knesset in previous sessions but have not been passed: the new bill will be discussed in the coming weeks and the current political climate is not encouraging… Mr. Jafar Farah, director of the Mossawa Arab advocacy organization (Haifa) said that “thoughts and feelings will soon be forbidden in Israel”, recalling McCarthysm in the US.
The efforts of extremists in the Government to complicate the Middle East conflict are alarming: it is not necessary to erase the memory of Palestinian generations. On the contrary, if both populations will agree on the history recognizing their huge suffering and psychological trauma, perhaps this will be the starting point to speak about the future.
Indeed from the other side a lot of research states that on the Palestinian side there is a kind of reluctance in recognizing the tragedy of the Holocaust. A new University of Haifa study affirms that 41% of Israeli Arabs said that the Holocaust did not take place. Even though the study did not specify the composition of the sample from which the survey was made (this is particularly relevant in a sample of 700 individuals from a population of 1 million and half people), it can be pointed out that the same percentage was 13% lower in 2006.
For sure the political environment of the last year has not contributed, as the members of Yisrael Beiteinu Party suggest, to coexistence in the state.
Palestine Monitor
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