nakba myth
anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, BDS, The I/P conflict

Applauding the nakba myth

nakba mythI wasn’t going to write about the ‘nakba’ incident at Wanstead High School.  Let down by a society that doesn’t believe in truth, the schoolgirl Leanne Muhammed, aged only 15, has already been weaponised. With the publicity her speech received, I felt sorry for her.

The child will become further affected by the hurricane surrounding the speech. It is unlikely she will draw the correct conclusions. Those that have influenced her before today, will ensure that the reasons behind her ‘inability to speak freely’ are understood the way they want them to be. A reinforcement of another antisemitic myth, that secret Jewish control stops people from telling the truth. Nobody will tell Leanne that her speech  turned history upside down.

The parents, the community, social media, the school, the teachers, these are the ones that remain responsible for the fact that a child of the UK has been brought up to propagate a myth that divides communities, a myth that spreads hate, a myth that seeks conflict. In our society that nakba myth is fostered and nurtured, as if truth and history are no longer relevant elements that need to be considered.

Others have already written on the content of the speech itself. Edgar Davidson wrote on the subject and ‘Brian of London’ also covered the issue. The general consensus seems to be that there is no future for Jews in the UK.

I agree with both of them.

The clapping sound of antisemitism

This isn’t a forewarning of imminent doom, nor is seen as the result of an irreversible trend. It is simply a logical analysis of the river’s current, the shape of the valley, and the input of ancestral memories, stirring a reflexive, Darwinian urge to flee.

Last week I was thrown out of the headquarters of our Teacher’s Union because I am not willing to demonise Israel. I support a negotiated settlement, I am willing to exchange land for real peace and feel sorry for the general Palestinian population. This not enough for those that kicked me out.

I followed this up with three events this week. Three. One by the PSC with Miko Peled, another by a group called ‘One Democratic State in Palestine’ hosting Illan Pappe, and one a meeting of the Momentum group in Haringey, with the suspended and recently reinstated, Jaqueline Walker.

I believe that people misunderstand the issue of antisemitism and Illan Pappe or Miko Peled. These people exist in every community. Oddities that sit on the fringes of society. It isn’t antisemitism that makes them speak, it is the hand of antisemitism that picks them out, rewards their thoughts, gives them a stage and applauds every word they say. Antisemitism is the crowd that worships the rejects of the Jewish community.

Pappe is a conspiratorial myth maker. If Illan Pappe was American and writing about 9/11, using the same methodology as he does for Israel, no university in the west would accommodate him. Because he is Israeli, and focuses on mythmaking about cabals of Zionist Jews, he is a celebrity of academia. His work is a central pillar of the entire nakba myth.

Peled received a standing ovation, so did Pappe, Gideon Levy too, and of course Jacqueline Walker. Everywhere I go, I see crowds standing and applauding. Enthusiastically clapping the troublemaking, mythmaking, Jew-hatred. Every time I hear it, I shiver inside.

Following the PSC meeting with Miko Peled, I wrote a piece that highlighted some of the conspiratorial posts of attendees. I focused on posts that had nothing to with Palestinians or the conflict, but rather issues of global ‘Zionist’ control. With just a simple search, I found over a dozen attendees in just one event that appear to believe that Israel is connected to 7/7, 9/11, Paris, ISIS and Brussels.

The response to my writing was an inbox full of hate and personal threats. A complete inability to understand antisemitism at all. I didn’t even mention the conflict but these people couldn’t see it.  I had dared to protect the issue of ‘Zionism’ from total demonisation. In today’s society these people have nothing to fear, rather the opposite, I place myself in danger by pointing the issue out.

The non-existent momentum meeting

Then I heard Jackie Walker. Because of the Friday night timing, there had been complaints that observant Jews could not attend. The Jewish Chronicle eventually ran a piece saying the event had been ‘cancelled’. I went, so did everyone else. At the event they announced it was not an ‘official Momentum event’. Same crowd, same venue, same time, same speakers. As I continually point out, truth has long ago ceased to have any meaning.

This is Walker’s speech. Apparently she had only just found out about her re-instatement. Make of it what you will:

Walker was applauded throughout. When she finished she received a standing ovation. Once again I shivered inside.

These are not isolated incidents. This is just 7 days in the life of a Jew working to fight and highlight antisemitism in the UK. There are others like me, and then there are 1000’s, all those that visibly identity as Jewish on the street. Those standing on the front line.

For some Jews this world doesn’t exist, those who are visibly secular and look around them before admitting to being a Zionist. The denial of the threat by an experienced diaspora community riddled with a genetic code that wants them to remain unnoticed. Everyone else gets to display pride in their identity, only the Jew has to display that pride in secret.

The nakba fairy story

I am already resigned to returning to Israel eventually. My activism makes it difficult for me to find work,  I need to look over my shoulder when I go out, and I worry constantly about my kids. Why not simply drop activism then? Because the monster is coming for us all anyway. My role, like the role of others, is to try to get this message across and to slow down and perhaps even change the direction of the tide.

‘The Nakba’ is a fairy-story. There are historically recorded events that categorically prove the ‘Nakba’ narrative is mythical revisionist propaganda.  Here are just some:

  • The Jewish leadership did accept partition. The Arabs did not.
  • The Arab leadership, supported by several neighbouring Arab states did declare they would fight to stop partition coming about.
  • There were violent attacks against Jews within hours of the partition vote
  • Arab irregular forces began entering the British mandate area within weeks of the partition vote intending to kill Jews and destroy their towns.
  • Jewish forces suffered heavy losses in the opening weeks of the civil conflict
  • Arabs began to voluntarily flee the areas of fighting in the first weeks after partition.

These facts are not in dispute. The story of a passive Arab community that was brutally expelled by a rampaging Jewish force that had sought conflict is historically and ethically obscene.

The way these Arabs were weaponised after the conflict was unforgivably brutal. But this is not the fault of a state that between 1949 and 1967 did not hold one inch of the West Bank or Gaza.

There is only one thing you need to remember when you hear the adoration of the nakba crowd. The alternative to ‘nakba’ was a second holocaust. The only way the Arabs would not be commemorating their ‘nakba’ today, would be if they could celebrate the annihilation of the Jewish presence. Either/ Or, take your pick. It really is that simple.

The applauding has to stop.

 

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22 thoughts on “Applauding the nakba myth”

  1. Do not be misled into thinking that a small, but vocal anti-semitic minority represent the views of the majority of people in the UK. They dont. Most people in this country either don’t care or hold the regressive-Left in the deepest contempt.
    Furthermore, as a community, Britain’s Jews are waking up to the reality of the growing anti-semitism around them (whether it is imported Islamic inspired antisemitism, or to the home grown European variety of antisemitism).
    They are now realising how anti-Zionism is simply the politically correct way to say ‘I hate Jews’, nowadays.
    No matter how much THEY cry that they love the Jews and ‘only want to wipe Zionists off the face of the earth’ – we are not fooled, even for one minute! They hate all Jews. Keep up the good work.
    To quote Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

    1. Ray. I would like to believe what you say is true – at least for the older generation in this country. But for the younger generation who have been born into a country where the standard narrative in society is now that Palestinian’s have suffered a great injustice and it is Israel’s fault and who see Israel presented in a totally unfavourable light in much of the media, I fear for the future.

      The older generation is a little wiser, but when you hear the younger generation loudly applauding Leanne Mohamad’s speech, it does send chills down your spine thinking about who the leaders of the UK will be in 20 hears time plus. That’s the time we’re concerned about. It’s not even as if Wanstead High School is a school full of immigrants from parts of Asia and the Middle East who may be expected to have sympathy Leanne’s views. Photos on their website give the impression that the school is at least 70% white British.

      Generally accepted views in society are what prepare the background for events such as the Holocaust. Whilst that example may be far-fetched, the premise remains.

  2. Rob, you are spot on, it’s not about now but ten, twenty or thirty years from now.

    1. We must carry on. We must never give in. Twenty years is a long time and a lot can change.
      We must concentrate on challenging anti-semitism and anti-Zionism every single day as best as we can. Let the future look after itself.

      1. That I can agree on. My fears do not equal an inevitable reality and we can do something to counteract the misinformation

  3. You leave out the Isrseli atrocities during Nakba. A sizeable shareof the 800,000 Pal refugees was forced or coerced to flee. A refusal to return for people voluntarily fleeing war and fighting is a crime. Their homes were stolen or destroyed. No compensation until today. 800 Pal. civilians were massacred, 12 girls rapedby Israeli soldiers (many, many more unreported).

    80% of Israel’s Arab population was expelled or refused to return to their homes. If that’s not ethnic cleansing, what is?

    1. Anton. How many Jews died in the civil conflict? When did they die? Where did they die? Where there any places the Jews lived in 1947, that they did not live in 1949? What happened in those places? Where their irregular soldiers from Syria and Egypt in any of the Arab towns? Do your sources explain any of this? My wifes family was expelled penniless from Egypt in 1956. Does she deserve compensation? Do you want to have a serious discussion over the events or is yours merely a propaganda exercise?

    2. Anton, Agree for compensation for the 800,000 Jews of Arab countries (Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Afghanistan, Persia), who were forced to flee for their lives with only the clothes on the back.

      BTW, if Israel/Zionists were the problem, the Muslims would be living in peace and tolerance with NON-Israelis/NON-Zionists like Bahaais, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Zoroastrianas and other Muslims sects.

      But Muslims aren’t.

  4. Thank you for your eloquent and exact analysis of the situation. This is what I have, rather clumsily, been trying to explain for a few days now and on a general level for the last 10 years. The parallels with the 1930s are rather frightening and I am preparing to sell up and leave this country in the next five years. I don’t fear living here as a Jew, but I don’t think I can live here as an openly Zionist Jew for much longer. I worry about my daughter going to university in September, what my son will find when he leaves the bubble of JFS in another two years. After 15 years of pro-Israel activism, and a lifetime of Zionism, I have accepted for the last year or so that I am conducting a fighting retreat. It is not the wave of irrational hatred that has worn me down, it is the lack of support from fellow Jews and democrats.

  5. I am not in any way complacent about the threat of left-wing antisemitism. But I agree with Ray above.

    I applaud the strong stomach that people like David have in attending events like this, and the work they do exposing this sort of hate speech when it rears its ugly head.

    But when you go our of your way to look for it, you can’t be surprised if you find it. My point is not to deny its existence, or even that it has become more commonplace, merely that it is still a small minority who are the ones standing and applauding this revisionist rubbish.

    Yes, those school kids rapturously cheered the girl’s speech. It was their mate, representing their school, speaking passionately and eloquently. Of course they cheered. I suspect that most of them hardly listened to the actual words she was saying!

    As for the PSC type meetings, of course they are a problem, but they are no doubt attended by the same small group if hard core activists who love nothing better than to hear how righteous they are. These sideshows have absolutely no effect on mainstream public opinion in Britain. You give them way too much credit.

    Anyway, just my view.

    1. “I suspect that most of them hardly listened to the actual words she was saying!”

      i suggest watching the vids of the other competitors. the kids in the audience were listening

      i watched a number of the vids. many are funny, most are educational. none, other than this one was pure propaganda meant to inflame. alan dershowitz calls what she did the “dead baby syndrome”.

      there was nothing uplifting about her speech. nothing hopeful. it was hate with a smile. and the time has long past when we should keep silent about these things. nor should it be coddled in the classroom

  11. Gideon Levy is a radical anti-Zionist leftist agitator represents something like 5% of the citizens of Israel. 99% of them Arabs. His lecture is full of lies and partial truth. Israel attacks Hamas not civilians. Gideon doesn’t tell you that Hamas & co, fire Qassam rockets at Israel early to the attack. Gazans are to be blamed for shooting from populated neighborhoods in Gaza onto populated neighborhoods in Israel and think that Israel won’t stop that by attacking the launchers and their operators. You should ask the Gazans, why do they shoot from populated areas? They just want their civilian to be hurt so gaining more popularity abroad by that. The main thing is that Gideon Levy is invited to gourmet lectures in Europe and America, is hosted in a 5 star hotels and gets good money for that, so why shouldn’t he lie and defame Israel for his living?

  12. These are, of course, worrying times.

    However, as you can see from the typical response from “Anton”, the arguements advanced by those who oppose us are weak and lack intellectual rigour. Their arguements are based on half truths, fantasy and selective, deliberate misinterpretations of history and politics. They lack substance and amount to simplistic nonsense – “Anton” cries because of what happened when the JEWS FOUGHT BACK! He couldn’t care less that they were attacked in the first place!

    We are more than capable of reclaiming the narrative and more and more of us are getting involved this process all the time. The tide IS turning Tony Jacobs.

  13. The video has been reinstated in all its glory here (http://www.speakoutchallenge.com/leanne-mohamad-winner-jack-petcheys-speak-challenge-redbridge-regional-final-2015-16-2/), with no mention of any disqualification. In a fairly well hidden statement (at http://www.speakerstrust.org/joint-statement-on-leanne-mohamad-and-competition/?platform=hootsuite), the organizers turn the whole thing around: without mentioning the content of the speech, the statement bemoans the comments people made against the video, justifying having taken it down on those grounds and proudly stating that it has now reinstated it.

    1. The situation with the speech is difficult and I am loathe to discuss a speech by a 15 year old in school. The problem is not the girl, it is those that weaponised her. By allowing this to go ahead, they placed the child in front of an angry Jewish crowd and then got to come in to ‘protect her’. In some ways our reflexive actions work against us. This was a no win situation and now the police get to investigage ‘hate comments’ received by a child from the Jewish community. It doesn’t play well. The target was those that enabled the speech, and the atmosphere that considers it an acceptable thing for a child to talk about. The girl was weaponised, and in those situation the baddies get to hide behind a human shield. Difficult thing to know what is the right action to take.

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