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<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"
dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/15/israel-repurposes-old-nakba-myths-to-justify-todays-massacre-in-gaza/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/15/israel-repurposes-old-nakba-myths-to-justify-todays-massacre-in-gaza/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Israel Repurposes Old Nakba Myths to
Justify the Massacre in Gaza</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/jonathan-cook/"
rel="nofollow">Jonathan Cook</a> - May 15, 2018</span></div>
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<p><em><br>
Nazareth</em></p>
<p>On Monday and Tuesday, Palestinians commemorate the
anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, their mass
expulsion and dispossession 70 years ago as the new
state of Israel was built on the ruins of their
homeland. As a result, most Palestinians were turned
into refugees, denied by Israel the right to return to
their homes.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands turned out on Monday in the occupied
territories to protest against seven decades of Israel’s
refusal to make amends or end its oppressive rule.</p>
<p>The move on Monday of the US embassy to Jerusalem, a
city under belligerent occupation, has only inflamed
Palestinian grievances – and a sense that the West is
still conspiring in their dispossession.</p>
<p>The focus of the protests is Gaza, where unarmed
Palestinians have been massing every Friday since late
March at the perimeter fence that encages two million of
them. For their troubles, they have faced a hail of live
ammunition, rubber bullets and clouds of tear gas.
Dozens had been killed and many hundreds more maimed,
including children.</p>
<p>Early reports on Monday suggested that Gaza’s
demonstrators were being massacred by the Israeli army.
Amnesty International called the events a “horror show”.</p>
<p>But for more than a month, Israel has been working to
manage western perceptions of the protests – and its
response – in ways designed to discredit the outpouring
of anger from Palestinians. In a message all too readily
accepted by some western audiences, Israel has presented
the protests as a “security threat”.</p>
<p>Israeli officials have even argued before the country’s
high court that the protesters lack any rights – that
army snipers are entitled to shoot them, even if facing
no danger – because Israel is supposedly in a “state of
war” with Gaza, defending itself.</p>
<p>On Sunday night the Israeli air force dropped leaflets
across Gaza warning Palestinians not to go near fence.
“The Israel Defense Forces is determined to defend
Israel’s citizens and sovereignty against Hamas’
attempts at terrorism under cover of violent riots,” the
leaflets said. “Don’t get near the fence and don’t take
part in Hamas’ show, which endangers you.”</p>
<p>Many Americans and Europeans, worried about an influx
of “economic migrants” flooding into their own
countries, readily sympathise with Israel’s concerns –
and its actions.</p>
<p>Until now, the vast majority of Gaza’s protesters have
been peaceful and made no attempt to break through the
fence.</p>
<p>But Israel claims that Hamas has exploited this week’s
protests in Gaza to encourage Palestinians to storm the
fence. The implication is that the protesters have been
trying to cross a “border” and “enter” Israel illegally.</p>
<p>The truth is rather different. There is no border
because there is no Palestinian state. Israel has made
sure of that. Palestinians live under occupation, with
Israel controlling every aspect of their lives. In Gaza,
even the air and sea are Israel’s domain.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the right of Palestinian refugees to return
to their former lands – now in Israel – is recognised in
United Nations Resolutions.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Israel has been crafting a dishonest
counter-narrative ever since the Nakba, myths that
historians scouring the archives have slowly exploded.</p>
<p>One claim – that Arab leaders told the 750,000
Palestinian refugees to flee in 1948 – was in fact
invented by Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion.
He hoped it would deflect US pressure on Israel to
honour its obligations to allow the refugees back.</p>
<p>Even had the refugees chosen to leave during the heat
of battle, rather than wait to be expelled, it would not
have justified denying them a right to return when the
fighting finished. It was that refusal that transformed
flight into ethnic cleansing.</p>
<p>In another myth unsupported by the records, Ben Gurion
is said to have appealed to the refugees to come back.</p>
<p>In truth, Israel defined Palestinians who tried to
return to their lands as “infiltrators”. That entitled
Israeli security officials to shoot them on sight – in
what was effectively execution as a deterrence policy.</p>
<p>Nothing much has changed seven decades on. A majority
of Gaza’s population today are descended from refugees
driven into the enclave in 1948. They have been penned
up like cattle ever since. That is why the Palestinians’
current protests take place under the banner of the
March of Return.</p>
<p>For decades, Israel has not only denied Palestinians
the prospect of a minimal state. It has carved the
Palestinian territories into a series of ghettos – and
in the case of Gaza, blockaded it for 12 years, choking
it into a humanitarian catastrophe.</p>
<p>Despite this, Israel wants the world to view Gaza as an
embryonic Palestinian state, supposedly liberated from
occupation in 2005 when it pulled out several thousand
Jewish settlers.</p>
<p>Again, this narrative has been crafted only to deceive.
Hamas has never been allowed to rule Gaza, any more than
Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority governs the West
Bank.</p>
<p>But echoing the events of the Nakba, Israel has cast
the protesters as “infiltrators”, a narrative that has
left most observers strangely indifferent to the fate of
Palestinian youth demonstrating for their freedom.</p>
<p>Once again, the executions of recent weeks, supposedly
carried out by the Israeli army in self-defence, are
intended to dissuade Palestinians from demanding their
rights.</p>
<p>Israel is not defending its borders but the walls of
cages it has built to safeguard the continuing theft of
Palestinian land and preserve Jewish privilege.</p>
<p>In the West Bank, the prison contracts by the day as
Jewish settlers and the Israeli army steal more land. In
Gaza’s case, the prison cannot be shrunk any smaller.</p>
<p>For many years, world heads of state have castigated
Palestinians for using violence and lambasted Hamas for
firing rockets out of Gaza.</p>
<p>But now that young Palestinians prefer to take up mass
civil disobedience, their plight is barely attracting
attention, let alone sympathy. Instead, they are
criticised for “breaching the border” and threatening
Israel’s security.</p>
<p>The only legitimate struggle for Palestinians, it
seems, is keeping quiet, allowing their lands to be
plundered and their children to be starved.</p>
<p>Western leaders and the public betrayed the
Palestinians in 1948. There is no sign, 70 years on,
that the West is about to change its ways.</p>
<p><em>A version of this article first appeared in the
National, Abu Dhabi.</em></p>
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