Massad, Nakba, Mankubin, Holoexaleipsis, Heroism

Israel: Keystone of Neo-Imperialist Neo-Colonialism
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

Columbia Professor Joseph Massad writes in Resisting the Nakba :

But in resisting the Nakba, the Palestinians have struck at the heart of the Zionist project that insists that the Nakba be seen as a past event. In resisting Israel, Palestinians have forced the world to witness the Nakba as present action; one that, contrary to Zionist wisdom, is indeed reversible. This is precisely what galls Israel and the Zionist movement. Israel's inability to complete its mission of thoroughly colonising Palestine, of expelling all Palestinians, of "gathering" all Jews in the world in its colony, keeps it uneasy and keeps its project always in the present continuous.

My article Holoexaleipsis, Holocaust, Holosphage and Holodomor also addresses the incompleteness of the Nakba:

We in America really do have to rethink and revise our understanding of the Holocaust, and if we need to identify an archetypal genocide to use as the measure of all other modern genocides, the Holoexaleipsis, which is the Great Erasure that includes the Palestinian Nakba or Catastrophe, provides the best model. It was planned in cold-blood by racist Eastern Europeans during the late 19th century, the first major mass murders and ethnic cleansing took place during 1947-8, and it continues to this day right before our eyes. The Holoexaleipsis includes wholesale demonization of Arabs and Muslims along with the erasure of whole fields of scholarship (including Jewish as well as Arabic and Islamic studies) so that they can be rewritten to justify Zionist and American depredations on the peoples of the Middle East.

While proper definitions are important, carefully reading Massad's article is important because he elucidates the key difference between the Zionist and the Palestinian ontology of the Nakba.

Resisting the Nakba

The viciousness of Israel is testament to its knowing that Palestinians will always remain steadfast and defeat its past and present attempts to erase them, writes Joseph Massad*

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One of the most difficult things to grasp in the modern history of Palestine and the Palestinians is the meaning of the Nakba. Is the Nakba to be seen as a discrete event that took place and ended in 1948, or is it something else? What are the political stakes in reifying the Nakba as a past event, in commemorating it annually, in bowing before its awesome symbolism? What are the effects of making the Nakba a finite historical episode that one bemoans but must ultimately accept as a fact of history?

I will suggest to you that there is much at stake in all of this, in rendering the Nakba an event of the past, a fact on the ground that one cannot but accept, admit, and finally transcend; indeed that in order to move forward, one must leave the Nakba behind. Some have even suggested that if Israel acknowledges and apologises for the Nakba, the Palestinians would forgive and forget, and the effects of the Nakba would be relegated to historical commemorations, not unlike the one we are having this year.

In my view, the Nakba is none of these things, and the attempt to make this year the 60th anniversary of the Nakba's life and death is a grave error. The Nakba is in fact much older than 60 years and it is still with us, pulsating with life and coursing through history by piling up more calamities upon the Palestinian people. I hold that the Nakba is a historical epoch that is 127 years old and is ongoing. The year 1881 is the date when Jewish colonisation of Palestine started and, as everyone knows, it has never ended. Much as the world would like to present Palestinians as living in a post-Nakba period, I insist that we live thoroughly in Nakba times. What we are doing this year is not an act of commemorating but an act of witnessing the ongoing Nakba that continues to destroy Palestine and the Palestinians.

I submit, therefore, that this year is not the 60th anniversary of the Nakba at all, but rather one more year of enduring its brutality; that the history of the Nakba has never been a history of the past but decidedly a history of the present.

(See Resisting the Nakba for the complete article.)

In response to observance of the Nakba, University of Haifa Professor Steven Plaut claims in a misleading article article entitled NAKBA MEANS THERE'S NO PALESTINE:

The term [nakba] was not invented in 1948, but rather in 1920. And it was coined not because of Palestinians suddenly getting nationalistic, but because Arabs living in Palestine regarded themselves as Syrian and were enraged at being cut off from their Syrian homeland.

At the end of World War I, Britain and France divided the spoils of the Ottoman Empire between them. Britain got Palestine, including what is now Jordan, while France got Lebanon and Syria. The problem was that the Palestinian Arabs saw themselves as Syrians and were seen as such by other Syrians. The Palestinian Arabs were enraged that an artificial barrier was being erected within their Syrian homeland by the infidel colonial powers - one that would divide northern Syrian Arabs from southern Syrian Arabs, the latter being those who were later misnamed "Palestinians."

The bulk of the Palestinian Arabs had in fact migrated to Palestine from Syria and Lebanon during the previous two generations, largely to benefit from the improving conditions and job opportunities afforded by Zionist immigration and capital flowing into the area. In 1920, both sets of Syrian Arabs, those in Syria and those in Palestine, rioted violently and murderously.

On page 312 of The Arab Awakening, Antonius writes: "The year 1920 has an evil name in Arab annals: it is referred to as the Year of the Catastrophe (Aam An-Nakba). It saw the first armed risings that occurred in protest against the post-War settlement imposed by the Allies on the Arab countries. In that year, serious outbreaks took place in Syria, Palestine, and Iraq."

In a specious attempt to justify genocidal Zionist racism, Plaut argues that Palestinians are recent immigrants even though this assertion has been refuted by every reputable study of the available census data. In addition, Plaut attacks even the standard Zionist ontology of the Nakba with a ridiculous linguistic argument.

In Yiddish Khurbn (not shoah) refers to the Nazi Holocaust. The word also refers to the destruction of the first temple and second temples.

Does a previous use of a word preclude reminting it to serve in a new context? By Plaut's logic the Nazi Khurbn (Holocaust) never took place.

In point of fact, Plaut's attempt at Nakba-denial supports Massad's ontological understanding of the historical and ongoing conflict over Palestine.

Not only was the League of Nations Palestine Mandate part of the process of Nakba (or Holoexaleipsis) that Zionist fanatics plotted since 1881, but the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire was also almost certainly a key component of the Nakba because payoffs from Zionist members of the Cousinhood of the wealthiest British Jews probably influenced the British government's decision to dismantle the Ottoman Empire

• despite British strategic interests in the ME as well as in the Balkans and
• despite Foreign Office warnings of an angry Muslim reaction.

The process of Nakba or Holoexaleipsis started in 1881, included the Year of the Catastrophe (Aam An-Nakba), and continues to this day.
 
Because Milton Friedman's robber economics has spread throughout the world as the financial analogue, derivative, and generalization of the Nakba, the growing list of victims is no longer restricted only to Palestinians, Arabs, or Middle Eastern populations but includes people throughout Latin America, the Horn of Africa, South Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia.

Because the Bush administration dominated by Jabotinskian Neoconservatives and Friedmanite Neoliberals bet the US economy on successfully looting Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, and Sudan via privatization, Bush has now resorted to an economic policy to squeeze lower and middle class Americans to make sure wealthy Americans can maintain their incomes and life styles. (See Judonia Rising Complete or Judonia Rising Complete (pdf).)

Because the Palestinian Resistance provides concrete and ongoing proof that the weak can resist the wealthy and the powerful (even a United States President, who has sold out the United States to rich Zionist Americans), the Palestinian Resistance gives hope to all of humanity while Zionists and their willing collaborators are the enemies of the entire human race. 
 
[For the record, at the end of his article Plaut discusses Bashar Assad's great-grandfather, who was a blatant collaborator with the French in Syria.  It is not surprising that quislings would find ways to praise the division of the Ottoman Empire. One should only take their comments as seriously as one might take Petain's comments about reaching a settlement with Hitler.]

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