Nakba Day: Remembering the Zionist Monster at Sixty. By Ibrahim Usman

Every May 15 is observed as Nakba Day. The day means different things to Palestinian Muslims and Jews. To the Jews, May 15, 1948 war gave them independence, and the day represents the "fulfillment of a historic ideal of the Jewish people" to establish a homeland for the Jewish people. Israel declared its independence on the evening of May 14, 1948. Jews and their allies illegally residing in the usurped land of Muslim Palestinians regard May 15 as the anniversary of the birth of the Zionist state of Israel.

To the Muslim Palestinians, Nakba Day, an Arabic term, means "Day of the Catastrophe", an annual day of commemoration for their displacement, dispossession and consequent usurpation of their land by Israel in 1948. To them, this year therefore is six decades of dispossession and resistance. With the celebration of Israel's 60th year of “independence” comes the mourning of 60 years since when million people were compelled to leave their homes, which resulted in the expulsion or flight of over million Palestinian refugees, and the destruction and abandonment of hundreds of Palestinian villages. The day is marked by protests, lectures, speeches by Muslims worldwide and especially in West Bank and Gaza. Here in Nigeria, the Islamic Movement under the leadership of Sheikh Zakzaky is also organizing a symposium to commemorate this day with lectures by experts on the creation of illegal state of Israel, and the suffering of the Palestinian people. Imam Khomeini, leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran brought to light the spirit of resistance against the oppression being perpetrated by Israel on the innocent Palestinians. He called on Muslims of the world to observe the Quds Day on every last Friday of the Holy month of Ramadan to keep the spirit of the resistance fresh on their memory.

Why must the Muslims commemorate the Nakba Day? And why mustn’t they, when the Jews backed by the United States have instituted the remembrance of the so-called Holocaust? Western media and governments are constantly reminding us of the suffering of Jewish people in World War II. “Survivors” of the myth of Holocaust are annually remembered and the day is widely observed. An Israeli journalist, Amira Hass has rightly observed thus: "Turning the Holocaust into a political asset serves Israel primarily in its fight against the Palestinians. When the Holocaust is on one side of the scale, along with the guilty (and rightly so) conscience of the West, the dispossession of the Palestinian people from their homeland in 1948 is minimized and blurred."

Western governments, accomplice in this great crime, are constantly emphasizing that until the mentality of Nakba day is banished, there can never be peace in the Middle East. By so doing, the Muslim Palestinians are constantly being commanded not only to forget their past, but to also to forget their future, too.

The sad truth is that while Palestinians and their Muslim counterparts all over the world commemorate the Nakba of 1948, the disaster is still going on and the world turn blind eye. According to Julia Pitner an American living in occupied Ramallah, “the forced exodus of the Nakba continues, but at a pace that is too quiet for television cameras to capture, and too slow to provide even a catchy 20-second sound byte. When there are car bombs, mass exodus, and refugee camps being set up by the thousands, no one wants, or seems to know how, to cover a slow suffocation of a people…” Today’s Nakba has taken a different dimension. The oppression is now subtler than the forced marches of the citizens, the forced exodus of hundreds of thousands, or those who fled from violence or from the fear and confusion about what the Jewish militias were threatening or the Arab governments promising. It is a slow, forced exodus that is not exciting enough to warrant any airtime or column space in the western media. What we are witnessing today is a slow but sure strangulation of Palestinian culture and existence in their homeland through Israeli bureaucratic policies and strategies. Palestinians are a people being squeezed to death, not only by Apartheid Wall that cuts off farmers from their ancestral lands and splits families in bits, but also by a system of paper, permits, proof, and permissions and peace plans. All these are policies of siege and starvation intended to break the Palestinian people, and to end their demands and struggle for their rights under international law and, in particular, under the United Nations’ Resolution 194.

While pointing accusing finger at the illegal state of Israel, we must also take into consideration the obvious role being played by the so called super powers in perpetrating the injustices. It is no secret that Israel depends on the economic and military assistance from both government and private sources in the United States. Israel cannot therefore survive without the West. Inspite of the criminal rape, destruction and oppression of the Palestinians and Zionists, world leaders and United Nations continue to cover and condone the atrocities describing it as a just cause.  With the current Islamic resurgence and its confrontation with the New World Order, Israel becomes a capitalist military out post to check the anger of Muslims against global capitalist predatory tendencies. It is an imperialist camp in the Middle East. This points to the glaring fact that, the United States and other capitalist and imperialist nations are in the firm grip of the Zionist.

This atrocity is achieved today under the bogy of Zionism, a brain child of the Jews. Zionism is an international doctrine which aims to make Israel a “Super Nation” of the Jews dominating all human races. It is established on erroneous belief that Jews are the “chosen people” by God, created to be served by other creatures. This is why today it is mobilizing economic, social, political and geographical resources available in the world for its idea of global domination. For this obvious reason, Zionism is not regional, it is rather a world-wide human phenomenon whose dimension and depth are enormous and call for thorough study by Muslims.  To achieve this insidious intent, the Zionist do not consider any sacrifice too great, be it financial, intellectual or human.

It should however be noted that, not all Jews are Zionists, and Jews can co-exist with Muslims and Christians in Palestine, but not a Zionist State. It is on record that Muslims and Jews lived peacefully in Palestine without any persecution, but with the establishment of Zionism this relationship was destabilized. The Jews twisted and misinterpreted biblical phrases to awaken deep emotional undertones to appeal to the Christians to back and support the fulfillment of the Zionist state of Israel. Church leaders, some with frivolous intentions, others out of genuine ignorance, have fallen prey to the Zionist propaganda, preaching that by supporting support to Zionist political ambition in Palestine, they would be fulfilling the will of God. They also mischievously believe that y this they would bring closer the second coming of Jesus Christ.

As earlier stated, Zionism is not regional but a wide propagandist machinery that spread it tentacles in all human endeavors. Zionism controls governments, financial, social and cultural institutions as well as the world media. When in the 90s the propagandist machineries of Zionism focused its attention to Africa in support of diplomatic relationship with Israel when the world deserted it, the Zionist lobby in Nigeria in the media headed by the Guardian Group of newspapers and Newswatch magazine constantly dedicated some of their pages to propaganda in favour of relations with the Zionist state. Ray Ekpu, one of the editors of Newswatch became the Deputy President-General of the Nigeria-Israeli Association.

The Zionist state of Israel has nothing to do with God’s promise. Zionism is but a mischievous political creed, untenable any standard. Being a Jew is not synonymous with physical descent from Abraham, as many Jews in history have been converts from other stock. To Zionist logic a convert to Judaism, stranger in language, colour, culture and race, can acquire a right to go to Palestine and live a descent life, while Muslims and Christians who are inhabitants of the holy land for centuries are denied the right to live there or are expelled out of it. The State of Israel determines the "area" considered Jerusalem. For example, many families who have been Jerusalemites for generations awoke one day and discovered that their town, which had "officially" been part of Jerusalem, was suddenly part of the West Bank because the "Separation Wall" now ran through the middle of it.

Israel's policy of aggression and permanent pressure against the Palestinian refugees in their camps, which are living witnesses of the historical injustice and the deprivation of fundamental human rights, is intended to push our Palestinian people into political projects which do not meet the basic standards of international law and resolutions, and into accepting a parallel state without borders, without sovereignty and without Jerusalem, while illegal Jewish colonies are debated as a possible trade off for the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

As the world commemorate the six decades of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their land, all peace loving people of the world should cry out in unison against this unholy crime being perpetrated by Israel backed by the United States. The Palestinians on their part should not lose sight of the scope of the dangers which confront their most important cause in the homeland and in the exile. There should be absolute rejection of, and solid determination to combat, all "initiatives", whether Palestinian, Arab or international, which do not clearly guarantee the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and their right to restitution of their property in accordance with UN Resolution 194.

The recent engagements, initiatives and deals advanced and promoted by the United States as represented by the US Defense Secretary Condoleza Rice negate the rights of the Palestinian people under international law, in particular the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. There is no substitute for the return of Palestinians to their homes; they can never accept any plan or road map that does not lead to their ancestral land and full freedom.