Combating Israel’s Denial of the 1948 Nakba

The Nakba Memorial Foundation

At the launch meeting of the Book Club on Palestine, Ten Myth About Israel series, our guest speaker Professor Ilan Pappé, the author of our feature book, mentioned a new project called ‘The Nakba Memorial Foundation’. In this post I provide some information, and context, and appeal for support for this pivotal project.

Ilan Pappé is the most honourable, intellectually honest, humble, courageous, and accessible among the ‘new historians’. The ‘new historians’ are a small group of Jewish-Israeli scholars who, during the 1980s, began to challenge the official historical narrative that Israel has been perpetuating since 1948. The official narrative is a collection of omissions, selective facts, distortions, fabrications, and myths, cobbled together in an attempt to create a semi-plausible, coherent narrative about Israel and Zionism. The primary role of this narrative was to help invent, and solidify a national identity¹. The architects of this narrative hoped that it would generate cohesion in a society made almost entirely out of settler-colonial immigrants. These immigrants often had little in common with one another, and no connection to the land, and the landscape they came to occupy.

Those of us who grew up in Israel, and were educated there, were force-fed this narrative, and were heavily indoctrinated on it. Both in our primary and secondary education we had two types of history classes. One was general history, and the other was Zionist history. The ‘general world history’ we were taught was selective in a particular way. We never learned about experiences of colonialism, or settler-colonialism, slavery, or about civil rights movements in the modern era. There was a focus on ancient history. But what we learned about the Roman or Greek Empires’ colonialist exploits was never critiqued (except when it pertained to the occupation of Judea, or the relationship with the Jewish people). Either way, those stories in the very distant past, and they appeared irrelevant to our reality.

The Israeli school system was centralised, and the school curriculum was deliberately, and carefully crafted. Learning about more modern experiences of colonialism and settler-colonialism, along with the injustices, displacement, exploitation, and slavery they relied on, risked providing us with a potentially dangerous context. It could have caused some of us to begin to question the Zionist narrative.

Even as a child, I sensed there were holes and inconsistencies in the story we were told about our history. But the Israeli education system, and Israeli society have always ensured that children like me had no context in order to compare, or question the Zionist story. As Ilan explained last Wednesday, you have to be out of Israel to begin to see things from a different perspective. This was my experience too. While you are on the inside, the perspective is deeply insular, self-absorbed, and self-focused. Everything is perceived from within the group’s perspective. Whatever happens in the world is routinely evaluated almost exclusively from the perspective of whether it is ‘good or bad’ for ‘us’.

The official narrative has also had an important role in indoctrinating Western Jewish communities, thus securing their loyalty, and their financial and political backing for Israel.

Another important role the official narrative fulfils is to secure the financial, military, and political support Israel has required, and maintain Israel’s perceived moral legitimacy on the international stage. Israel has worked diligently to export its fictional narrative to the West, and Western media and politicians continue to spread, and repeat it. Until the ‘new historians’ began their work, the only challenge to the official narrative came from Palestinian survivors, and Palestinian writers, artists, and scholars. But who listens to victims?…

Humanity has an appalling record of throwing victims under the bus. The Palestinians are the latest in a long line of people, individuals, or groups, who have suffered from the denial, belittling and dismissal of their lived experience, and from humanity’s persistent demonisation of victims, aka ‘blame the victim’ attitude.

Israel’s re-classification, and possible destruction of archival documents about the Nakba

The ‘new historians’ were able to do their work thanks to the de-classification of primary documents from 1948 that were sitting in Israel’s military archives. Before the development of digital technology, researchers and scholars, like Ilan, made paper copies of documents they were studying, and referencing in their research. Those copies still exist.

During the Q&A session at the Book Club on Palestine launch meeting, last Wednesday, one of the participants asked Ilan if Israel intends to re-classify these old documents. The short answer was, ‘yes’. This is exactly what Israel is doing right now. Ilan warned that Israel might even go as far as destroying them, which would ensure they would never be seen again by anyone.

Back in the 1980s, when the documents were de-classified, Israel was confident enough that loyalty to the tribe would prevent the ‘misuse’ of these primary sources in a way that could ‘harm’ Israel. As I explain in some of my essays, the deeply entrenched, instinctive, and largely unconscious Jewish-Israeli tribal loyalty is extremely effective. It ensures that people do not air Israel’s ‘dirty laundry in the outside world, thus not compromising Israel’s ‘legitimacy’. The power of loyalty to the cult-like state of Israel has served Israel well. It continues to ensure support for Israel, and prevents attempts to criticise it. We see evidence of this in the UK in the manufactured ‘antisemitism scandals’ in the Labour Party. A couple of days ago, I heard that a complaint about ‘antisemitism’ has just been made to the UK Green Party. The distortion of the meaning of antisemitism is eye-watering, but this is for another essay.

Back in my time and until recently, Israeli civil society voluntarily enforced conformity to the dominant narrative. Jews were not arrested, or formally punished for questioning. But as Ilan told us, Israel is now arresting Israeli Jews who dare to question the narrative about October 7th. People are losing their jobs, and their livelihood, and things are getting worse. I suspect this persecution of dissent, or perceived dissent will expand beyond questioning the interpretation of October 7th events. We know from many historical examples how far authoritarian regimes would go to destroy their opposition.

Israel’s so-called democracy always excluded the Palestinians, but it seems that now Israel is dropping the last pretences of an open democracy, even in relation to its Jewish citizens. As Ilan explained, when settler-colonial societies begin to collapse, they tend to become extremely dangerous to their perceived enemies. Facing the existential threat of collapse, they can also become authoritarian, and dangerous to their own population. The re-classification, or even destruction of key historical documents is consistent with the actions of an authoritarian regime.

Making the documents disappear can help Israel argue that everything the ‘new historians’ have written has no evidential basis. Except, of course, as I said earlier, photocopies of some of the documents do exist, and they need to be preserved as a matter of urgency.

It is crucial that Israel does not succeed in this Orwellian exercise of erasing the parts of history that it wants people to forget. Denying the Nakba inflicts a deep psychological injury on the victims, and their descendants. Everyone knows how ferocious Israel is about any attempt, real or imagined, to deny the holocaust. The same needs to apply to denial of the Nakba. If the evidence of the Nakba disappears, nothing will stop Israel’s genocide, and the fate of the Palestinians in our time will be sealed.

If you can help this project in any way, please visit the Nakba Memorial Foundation website. If you have IT, or curator skills, if you are passionate about history, and historical research, if you have time and energy to offer, you might be able to help. If you are in a position to donate, this will be hugely helpful.
The Foundation is a charity, and it relies on the good will of the public. (I doubt it would ever get any funding from the UK Government, regardless of who happens to be in power after the upcoming elections).

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To join any of the Book Club on Palestine meetings, to study and discuss Ten Myths About Israel, use this link. You will be asked to register. (Book Club on Palestine Facebook link)

1. To read more about this, I recommend Shlomo Sand’s work. Sand is another Jewish-Israeli historian who wrote about the way Israel has worked to create a cohesive national identity out of nothing. The Invention of the Jewish People covers ancient history. It demonstrates how Zionist historians (most historians in Israel) knowingly fabricated facts about history to help Zionist ‘nation building’. I was on the receiving end of this fabricated narrative. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1256505.Shlomo_Sand

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