Nakba/Denial

 

"More often, historical denial is less the result of a planned campaign

than a gradual seepage of knowledge down some collective black hole"

- Stanley Cohen 

 

For most in Israel-Palestine, the roots of the conflict trace back to the 1940's, when Jews were being slaughtered across Europe. When many survivors of the Holocaust were forced to become Palestine's reluctant colonizers, they join the then-nascent Zionist movement that sought to create a national home for Jews. After tensions with the indigenous Palestinians erupted into civil strife in 1947, and full-out war in 1948, two-thirds of the natives were driven out, and never allowed to return. The Palestinians call this The Nakba (The Catastrophe), referring to their dispossession and dispersal around the globe to this day. In Israel, discussion about the events that transpired is still a major taboo as Palestinian displacement, their very reason for struggle against Israel, is rarely mentioned. Its striking absence from Israeli textbooks, media, art, and politics stands in contrast to the surviving memory of the victims and perpetrators, many of whom still alive today. This collective denial is the subject of the reports below, and of Lia Tarachansky feature documentary ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD (2013), a Naretiv Productions film.