Jewish Israelis should stop being afraid of the Nakba - Israel News - Haaretz.com
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The surrender in Ramle in 1948.
Credit: David Aldan
We shouldn’t delude ourselves that the historical debate will determine who’s responsible, which is at the basis of the national narratives – the Arabs, who rejected the Partition Plan and attacked the Jewish community in order to destroy it, or the Jews, who conspired to drive out their weak neighbors and forcibly take over the land, and only waited for an opportunity.
Studying the Nakba won’t alone achieve a reconciliation between the peoples, as the peace seekers hope, nor will it overturn the justification for Israel’s existence and make it collapse under pangs of guilt, as the supporters of the concealing and silencing fear. Their position is tainted by a contradiction. If, as they maintain, Zionism is right, the IDF is the most moral army in the world, the Palestinians are bloodthirsty terrorists and so on, why are they fighting to conceal the past?
A country must not run from its past, even when it’s not pleasant to deal with and raises difficult moral questions. It’s a country’s duty to its citizens, who deserve to know what was here first so they can understand the reasons and motives for what’s happening now – the nation-state law, the repeated failure of the “Anyone but Bibi” parties to create a Jewish-Arab governing coalition, Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, and also the Buyer’s Price affordable housing program in the country’s outskirts.
These are all the ongoing results of “the birth of the refugee problem,” the dark part of the War of Independence. We must talk about it.