Love of the Land: Naqba Is As Naqba Does

Naqba Is As Naqba Does

Posted by Rachel Abrams
The Weekly Standard
1 September 09

Israel’s education minister, Gideon Sa’ar, yesterday announced that when third-graders file into their classrooms for the first day of school tomorrow and open their Arabic-language textbooks, they will no longer find “al-naqba” in their pages. The phrase, which roughly translates as “devastation on a par with the Holocaust,” and is invoked by Arabs throughout the Middle East to describe the establishment in 1948 of the “Zionist entity,” was inexplicably approved for use in the textbooks a couple of years ago (another Israeli government, another education minister) but has now been un-approved. “The creation of the State of Israel cannot be taught about as a catastrophe inside the country's schools,” said a ministry spokeswoman.

Israeli Arabs are “dismayed and outraged.” Atef Moaddi, head of the Follow-up Committee on Arab Education in Israel, told the Jerusalem Post: “For Israeli Arabs, who consider themselves a part of the Palestinian people, the Nakba is not up for debate, it is a historical fact.” Added Sawsan Zaher, of the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel,

Prohibiting Arab students from studying about the Nakba is illegal and violates international law, which obliges states to enable national minorities to learn and study about their own history, culture and tradition.

Of course, no one -- not even the “naqba”-averse Netanyahu government -- is advocating excising the story of what happened at the founding of the State of Israel, which was disastrous indeed for the Arabs expelled from their homes and forced into exile in the aftermath of a war launched by their leaders against the Jews. On the contrary, “What Israeli Arabs experienced during the [1948 War of Independence] was certainly a tragedy,” Sa’ar said. “But the word ‘Nakba,’ whose meaning is similar to ‘Holocaust’ in this context, will no longer be used.”

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Love of the Land: Naqba Is As Naqba Does