Why Did it Take 50 Years for the World to Find out About the Nakba?
The Slow Unveiling of the Palestinian Nakba
It is a damning indictment of the international community that the true scale and lasting impact of the Nakba, the catastrophic dispossession of the Palestinian people, remained obscured and marginalized for so long.
It took decades — nearly half a century — before the term “Nakba” gained widespread recognition and the events of 1948 were understood as an ongoing process of violence and displacement, rather than a singular historical event.
The reasons for this protracted obscuring of the Nakba are manifold, and speak to the power of nationalist mythmaking and the complicity of those who would rather look away from uncomfortable truths.
In the immediate aftermath of 1948, the world was preoccupied with the creation of the state of Israel, hailing it as a just response to the horrors of the Holocaust. The plight of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians violently expelled from their homes was, at best, an afterthought —…
