Address to the Nakba 75 Rally, Downtown Raleigh, May 13, 2023
By J. Mark Davidson
We at Voices for Justice in Palestine believe that the foundation of a just and lasting peace is freedom, dignity, and equal rights for all. In the vision of the prophet Micah, “each person sitting under their own vine, and no one making them afraid.” We support the quest of the Palestinian people to live dignified lives, free of occupation, oppression, and state violence in their historic homeland, and enjoy all the same rights as Israeli Jews. We are proud to co-sponsor this rally with our intersectional partners to commemorate 75 years of Nakba. But friends and comrades, this is a grim anniversary. We are working to shut down the ongoing Nakba, to end the continuing catastrophe in Palestine, to literally make Nakba a thing of the past, to free Palestine!
We know that 75 years ago, in 1948, Zionist militias imposed unspeakable trauma on 800,000 Palestinians, up to the date of the Nakba, living peacefully with their families. Their deliberate plan, well-documented in the Israeli archives, was to depopulate hundreds of Palestinian villages. 85% of the native population was forcibly transferred out of their homeland into neighboring Arab countries, and barred from returning. Why? To make room for waves of Jewish immigrants. To create a Jewish demographic majority in Palestine and possess Palestinian lands for exclusive Jewish use. This is settler-colonialism. An egregious violation of international law. An ugly throwback to the 19th century. And yet the international community condoned it.
But the Nakba is not over; it is ongoing. The catastrophe continues. Ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah. Forcible expulsions in Masafer Yatta. Beating Ramadan worshippers in Al-Aqsa Mosque! Rampaging settler violence in Huwara. Israeli airstrikes this week on residential areas in Gaza, killing more than 20 innocent civilians, including women and children. 144 seriously injured. 30 family residences destroyed. The signs are increasing that another Nakba, a mass expulsion of Palestinians, could happen again. Large numbers of the Israeli public say they prefer a country without Palestinians, and seem ready and willing to expel them. The darkness at the heart of the Nakba is the Zionist ideology of exceptionalism and supremacy, the dangerous notion that Zionists are entitled to take Palestinian lands for themselves, to drive peaceful families from their homes and turn 800,000 of them into stateless refugees, living in an endless limbo – creating the largest, longest-lasting refugee problem in the world, nearly 6 million Palestinians in exile with no end in sight.
What accounts for such an atrocity? Zionism has a dirty secret: it is racist toward Palestinians; it dehumanizes them. We know that when one group dehumanizes another group of people, it opens the door to all kinds of cruelty, because if they are not seen as fully human, anything goes. This is the still unlearned lesson of the Holocaust: don’t mistreat people, any people. Once we convince ourselves these “others” are not like us, or somehow less than us, the Golden Rule is set aside. Brutalities just beneath the surface rise up and take control. So, we see them creating hells: demolishing Palestinian homes, stealing their lands, destroying their livelihoods, jailing and torturing their children, deporting their leaders, bombing them. All of this is Zionism at work. Mind you, it has nothing to do with the core values of Judaism. It is completely at odds with the moral character of the Jewish people. Which is why a growing number of Jews, especially young Jews, are distancing themselves from Zionism, declaring themselves to be anti-Zionists. A shout-out to our partners in Jewish Voice for Peace! Thank you for your courageous witness! Together we march!
We march to remember the Nakba.
We march to free Palestine.
We march to live in solidarity.
We march to oppose the ongoing catastrophe.
We march to resist apartheid.
We march for the Palestinian right to return home.
We march to prevent another Nakba.
We march for a just and lasting peace.
Now that the march is over and we soon go home and back to our daily lives, the work must continue. We all know this is not a short-term struggle; liberation requires a long-haul commitment from each of us. Each of us persistently doing our part. Standing with the Palestinian people in their struggle for dignified lives based on freedom and equal rights. And because justice work is hard and we need solace and revitalization along the way, we need to discover the joy and the love of being together in community. Working together for justice. The deep satisfaction of making a difference. The beauty of helping to bring about a better world. May the One who sustains us strengthen us to stay on this path.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here today! And let us continue this important work! Our Palestinian brothers and sisters are counting on us.
J. Mark Davidson is Executive Director of Voices for Justice in Palestine.