[Marxism] Lieberman's party wants to ban Nakba commemorations

[Dennis Brasky <dmozart1756@xxxxxxxxx>]

>
>  Lieberman's party wants to ban Nakba 
> commemorations<http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2009/05/liebermans-party-wants-to-ban-nakba.html>
>
> On May 14, the annual day for commemorating the Nakba, the catastrophe that
> befell the Palestinians with the establishment of the state of Israel,
> Ha'aretz announced the proposal of a new law in Israel banning all
> commemorations of the Nakba. The law was proposed by Yisrael Beiteinu, the
> political party of Israel's Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman. The
> proposed legislation threatens three years imprisonment for anyone who
> commemorates the Nakba. (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1085588.html)
>
>
> Yisrael Beiteinu's party spokesman is quoted as saying that the law intends
> "to strengthen unity in the state of Israel." That statement, and this
> proposed law, should set off anti-fascism alarms. In the name of "unity,"
> here is a proposal to criminalize acts of memory, collective identity, and
> cultural and political expression. In the name of Israel's majority group,
> this proposal seeks to criminalize memory and memory-makers, effectively
> criminalizing the group-identity of Israel's largest minority population.
> The very existence of a culture relies on its memory, which comprises the
> stories a culture tells about itself. This law would threaten the existence
> of Palestinians as a remembering, culture-producing, history-bearing people,
> and would prevent the possibility of Israel becoming a truly pluralistic
> society where every group's history can be told. And by forbidding the
> remembering of the Nakba, the law aims to erase the 1948 dispossession of
> Palestinians - including the
> destruction of more than 400 villages, multiple massacres and the creation
> of more than 700,00 refugees, and the confiscation of thousands of acres of
> land - even as this same political party's platform threatens another form
> of dispossession, that is, removing citizenship from Palestinian citizens (
> http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2009/02/growing-trend-toward-fascism.html).
>
>
> Reports of the proposed law say it will punish anyone who commemorates the
> Nakba, not just Palestinians. In this way, the proposed law signals other
> recent developments in Israel, whereby Israeli Jews are being targeted in
> campaigns aiming to silence their protest, similar to ways in which
> Palestinians - both inside of Israel and in the occupied Territories - are
> also targeted for silencing. (For more on this targeting and the recent
> persecution of the Israeli Jewish group New Profile, see here:
> http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2009/05/rela-mazali-israels-war-against-youth.html).
>
>
> The threat to imprison anyone who commemorates the Nakba is also a reminder
> that everyone engaged with the state of Israel has an obligation to know and
> remember the Nakba. A good source for information and commemoration is the
> Israeli organization "Zochrot," which offers extensive education on the
> Nakba, both on their website (
> http://www.zochrot.org/index.php?lang=english) and in actual tours of
> Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948. Zochrot's "links" page also offers
> many different sources of information, maps, and testimonies on the Nakba (
> http://www.zochrot.org/index.php?id=379). Norma Musih of Zochrot writes,
> "Awareness and recognition of the Nakba by Jewish-Israeli people, and taking
> responsibility for this tragedy, are essential to ending the struggle and
> starting a process of reconciliation between the people of
> Palestine-Israel." (http://www.zochrot.org/index.php?id=642) As an
> American Jew, I think it's just as important for Americans, and for Jews, to
> recognize the tragedy
> of the Nakba, so that we, too, can understand what Palestinians have
> suffered and what is at stake for them in this conflict.
>
> Sarah Anne Minkin
>
>
>
> http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/
>
>
> "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."- *Voltaire*
>
>
>
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