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Abstract
2012 marks the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba - the most traumatic catastrophe that ever befell Palestinians. This book explores new ways of remembering and commemorating the Nakba. In the context of Palestinian oral history, it explores 'social history from below', subaltern narratives of memory and the formation of collective identity. Masalha argues that to write more truthfully about the Nakba is not just to practise a professional historiography but an ethical imperative. The struggles of ordinary refugees to recover and publicly assert the truth about the Nakba is a vital way of protecting their rights and keeping the hope for peace with justice alive.
This book is essential for understanding the place of the Palestine Nakba at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the vital role of memory in narratives of truth and reconciliation.
'As a meticulous scholar, historian and above all Palestinian, Nur Masalha is eminently suited to write this excellent book. He has produced a marvellous history of the Nakba which should be essential reading for all those concerned with the origins of the conflict over Palestine.'
Ghada Karmi, author of Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine
'Nur Masalha has a distiguished and deserved reputation for scholarship on the Nakba and Palestinian refugees. Now, with his latest book, his searching analysis of past and present makes for a powerful combination of remembrance and resistance.'
Ben White, journalist and author of Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide
'Nur Masalha's 'The Palestinian Nakba' is a tour de force examining the process of transformation of Palestine over the last century. One outstanding feature of this study is the systematic manner in which it investigates the accumulated scholarship on the erasure of Palestinian society and culture, including a critical assessment of the work of the new historians. In what he calls 'reclaiming the memory' he goes on to survey and build on a an emergent narrative. Masalha's work is essential and crucial for any scholar seeking this alternate narrative.'
Salim Tamari, Visiting Professor of History, Georgetown University
'This book is the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis available of the catastophe that befell Arab Palestine and its people in 1948, known as the Nakba. It shows how the expulsion and physical obliteration of the material traces of a people was followed by what Masalha calls 'memoricide': the effacement of their history, their archives, and their place-names, and a denial that they had ever existed.'
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies Department of History, Columbia University
Nur Masalha is Professor of Religion and Politics and Director of the Centre for Religion and History at St. Mary's University College, UK.
Table of Contents
Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
---|---|---|---|
About the Author | ii | ||
Acknowledgements | vii | ||
Introduction | 1 | ||
Structure and Themes | 15 | ||
1 Zionism and European Settler-Colonialism | 19 | ||
Blood, Soil, Race and Land Conquest | 19 | ||
Creating a Zionist Language | 23 | ||
European Zionist Narratives and Colonial Reality | 33 | ||
Framing the Conflict: Settler-colonialism, Herrenvolk Democracy, Ashkenazi Ethnocracy | 43 | ||
Colonialism, Anti-colonialism and Post-colonialism | 47 | ||
How Unique is the Zionist Settler-Colonial Project? | 53 | ||
Settler-colonialism and the Yishuv’s ‘Transfer Committees’ and Schemes, 1937–48 | 61 | ||
1948: A Pattern of Repeated Atrocities | 75 | ||
Dayr Yasin, 9 April 1948 | 79 | ||
Rape and Sexual Assault by Jewish Forces in 1948 | 82 | ||
The Galilee Atrocities | 84 | ||
2 The Memoricide of the Nakba: Zionist-Hebrew Toponymy and the De-Arabisation of Palestine | 88 | ||
Silencing the Palestinian Past | 88 | ||
The Importance of Toponymy and the Politics of Renaming | 91 | ||
Renaming as Self-reinvention: The Hebrewisation of Names after 1948 | 93 | ||
The Zionist Superimposing of Hebrew Toponymy | 95 | ||
Biblical Myths, Old and New: The Complicity of the Israeli Academy | 104 | ||
European Artists’ Colonies as Places of Amnesia and Erasure | 111 | ||
The Reconsecration of Muslim Shrines as Jewish Shrines | 112 | ||
From Al-Majdal to Biblical Ashkelon, 1948–56 | 115 | ||
Appropriating Palestinian Place Names | 117 | ||
3 Fashioning a European Landscape, Erasure and Amnesia: The Jewish National Fund, Afforestation and Green-washing the Nakba | 120 | ||
Forests as a Space of Amnesia and Erasure | 120 | ||
Fashioning a European-biblical Landscape? | 131 | ||
The Liberal Coloniser Facing the European Forests | 132 | ||
The Destruction of al-Araqib, July 2010 | 133 | ||
4 Appropriating History: Looting of Palestinian Records, Archives and Library Collections, 1948–2011 | 135 | ||
The Beirut Archives of the Palestinian Research Centre, 1965–82 | 140 | ||
The Jerusalem Archives of the Arab Studies Society/Orient House, 1979–2001 | 145 | ||
5 Post-Zionism, the Liberal Coloniser and Hegemonic Narratives: A Critiqueof the Israeli ‘New Historians’ | 148 | ||
The Myths of Zionism | 148 | ||
A New Regime of Knowledge? | 149 | ||
A Historiographic Revolution? | 153 | ||
‘New History’ and the Liberal Coloniser: Khirbet Khiz'ah and Zionist Narratives | 158 | ||
The New Myths of Liberal Zionism: 1967 | 168 | ||
Shared Responsibility for the Catastrophe? | 170 | ||
A Post-colonial History? | 175 | ||
The Impact of the ‘New Historians’/Post-Zionists | 179 | ||
The Historian’s Methodology and Bridging the Narrative Gap | 183 | ||
Racism, Justification of Ethnic Cleansing and the Resurgence of Neo-colonial Epistemology | 191 | ||
The Israeli Academy and the Political–Military–Security Establishment | 200 | ||
6 Decolonising History and Narrating the Subaltern: Palestinian Oral History, Indigenous and Gendered Memories | 205 | ||
The Nakba as Site of Palestinian Collective Memory | 205 | ||
Archiving Popular Memory and People’s Voices: Palestinian Oral History and Subaltern Studies | 211 | ||
Palestinian Oral History, Gendered Memories and Liberating Experiences | 215 | ||
Oral History of the Holocaust, Yad va-Shem and Dayr Yasin | 220 | ||
The Limits of Israeli and Colonial Records, Documents and Archives | 224 | ||
Silencing Palestinian Women’s Voices within the Subaltern Story | 226 | ||
7 Resisting Memoricide, Reclaiming Memory: Nakba Commemoration among Palestinians in Israel | 229 | ||
History Textbooks in Jewish and Arab Schools | 233 | ||
Nakba Day and the Struggle for Collective Rights inside Israel | 241 | ||
Grassroots Activism and Palestinian Civil Society inside Israel | 245 | ||
Epilogue: The Continuity of Trauma | 251 | ||
References | 258 | ||
Index | 279 |