The Great Nakba Debate

My

 My professor posted an article on my class forum: Weaker Nakba bill approved as government legislation. The article talks about legislation fining Arab-Israel groups who commemorate Nakba. He then posed the question: Does the State of Israel have the right to deny its Arab citizen's desire to commemorate the establishment of the State as a catastrophe?


 

In the article, one of the Arab-Israeli groups stated, "Acknowledging the fact that the establishment of the State of Israel was accompanied by a human tragedy does not challenge Israel's fundamental right to exist," the NGO argued. However, I think that's just plain wrong. At its very core, Nakba commemorates the day of catastrophe. For them, it's really analogous to tisha b'av. The Orthodox Jews mourn the destruction of the Temple and pray for the building of a new Temple just as Arabs mourn the creation of the state of Israel and pray for its eventual destruction.  Nakba isn't simply acknowledging human tragedy; it is a statement of contempt and anger at the establishment of the State. How can a government allow funds to go to organizations that commemorate Nakba? Israeli Arabs have chosen citizens. It's one thing to commemorate Nakba if you remain a Palestinian, but to be an Israeli, even an Arab Israeli and even call it Nakba seems rather counterproductive. How can their real concerns about Arab Israeli's be taken seriously, if they start with the premise that the establishment of the State was a catastrophe? As I always want to say to the socialists I grew up with in ultra-liberal Madison, Wisconsin, if you hate America so much, move!

There is something fundamentally unpatriotic to think your country shouldn't exist at all. While as a citizen you can think what you want and commemorate privately, the government shouldn't have to condone such behavior.


 

Am I being too harsh?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Resurrecting Levine

Image
This story was part of a writing challenge proposed by my American Jewish Lit professor in grad school. After reading Bernard Malamud's short story  from 1955, "The Angel Levine," about a Jewish black angel who saves an old Jewish tailor in order to get his wings.  The story looks deeply at Jewish identity, posing the question: what makes a Jew?  In turn, my professor asked, "where did this angel come from? What was his life when he was alive? Was he born Jewish?" Resurrecting Levine I grew up during the Harlem Renaissance, the son of an entrepreneur who made his money opening speakeasies in Jungle alley. Jazz musicians, homosexuals, bohemians, and upper class whites flocked to his establishments.  In 1926, when I was four-years-old, we moved to a Hamilton Heights brownstone. At the time (although much has changed) Hamilton heights was a desirable neighborhood for affluent whites, and my father’s success with his speakeasies sprinkled through...
Read more

Jealousy's Funeral

Image
I'm staring at the coffin, plain, wood, filled, when she walks into the sanctuary. I can feel her as her heels pad softly against the flat brown carpet. The weight of the air shifts. Particles gather around me, closing my throat. All I can smell is my wife on her clothes. It's as if their pheromones mixed together just to taunt me. My body heaves forward. I try in vain to blow out stale fearful air, but her presence suffocates me. The word lover whispers in my ear from some unknown voice as I tightly close my eyes. I'm sure the congregation thinks I'm holding back tears for her. I am. I'm not. I don't know. I've never felt jealous in my whole life. I've never understood the nights my wife would cry in our bed or on the floor because she felt I was keeping some dark secret. For her, jealousy lived just under the surface, a constant threat to our marriage. Her crying pissed me off so much; I fantasized about hitting her, just to shut her up. Every time I ...
Read more

Hanging

Image
For years, I taught Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir, Night , in my community college classroom. Night  is the story of Elie and his father's life inside the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps during the Holocaust. It is spare, heart-wrenching, and honest. He tells the tale of a people moved from humanity to degradation and the unraveling of relationships caused by such inhumanity. Many times, broken relationships were that of fathers and sons, but they were also broken relationships with G-d. Elie struggles to hold onto his relationship with his own father while, at the same time, despairs over the violent breakdown of his relationship with G-d. While teaching, my students and I found ourselves stopping at the same passage: A young boy is arrested and hanged by the Nazis for not giving up his superior who was planning a revolt. The entire camp stood helplessly by as they watched this young boy die slowly. While death surrounds them everyday, the boy's ...
Read more