{"id":296205,"date":"2025-06-02T12:01:23","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T11:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=296205"},"modified":"2025-05-27T05:22:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T04:22:50","slug":"remembering-the-nakba-while-witnessing-a-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/06\/remembering-the-nakba-while-witnessing-a-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the Nakba while Witnessing a Genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photos of Palestinian refugees displayed at the entrance to the Joint Nakba Remembrance Ceremony in Beit Jala, the West Bank, 14 May 2025.\u00a0 (Combatants for Peace)<\/p><\/div>\n

As Israel destroys Gaza, Israelis and Palestinians gathered in Beit Jala not only to mark the catastrophe of 1948, but to elevate living Palestinian testimonies.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

19 May 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0On May 14, around 300 Israelis and Palestinians gathered in the West Bank town of Beit Jala, along with thousands who joined online, for the sixth annual<\/a> Joint Israeli-Palestinian Nakba Remembrance Ceremony, organized by Combatants for Peace.<\/p>\n

Featuring personal testimonies and musical performances, the ceremony commemorated the 1948 Nakba, when Zionist militias and the nascent Israeli army expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, destroyed or depopulated<\/a> over 500 Palestinian villages and urban communities, and killed at least 15,000 people, including women and children.<\/p>\n

Forbidden from ever returning to their ancestral villages, Palestinians around the world began marking Nakba Day on May 15 as early as 1949<\/a>. Yet in Israel, authorities suppressed any acknowledgment of the Palestinian catastrophe since the earliest days of the state \u2014 banning<\/a> the term in schools, passing laws<\/a> to defund institutions that commemorate it, and erasing<\/a> historical records from state archives.<\/p>\n

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Over the past few years, initiatives like this ceremony have challenged that silence, in an attempt to force Jewish Israelis to confront the foundational trauma of Palestinian displacement in 1948 as the root of the ongoing injustice.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s commemoration of the Nakba carries particular weight. In Gaza, Israel\u2019s ongoing genocidal war has killed over 53,000 Palestinians<\/a> and displaced 1.9 million since October 2023. In the West Bank, Palestinians are experiencing record levels of state-backed settler violence<\/a> as official annexation efforts accelerate. And inside Israel, authorities have intensified the suppression of Palestinian dissent \u2014 arresting hundreds<\/a> for voicing anti-war views and restricting virtually any expression of Palestinian national identity.<\/p>\n