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There was no Nakba in 1948. It's Israeli independence.
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In brief: What Israelis celebrate as independence was the establishment of a settler-colonial state in 1948 through the ethnic cleansing of over 800,000 Palestinians, the destruction of 531 villages and towns, more than 70 massacres in which over 15,000 Palestinians were killed, and the ta
What Israelis celebrate as independence was the establishment of a settler-colonial state in 1948 through the ethnic cleansing of over 800,000 Palestinians, the destruction of 531 villages and towns, more than 70 massacres in which over 15,000 Palestinians were killed, and the takeover of 77% of Palestinian land. Nakba, the Arabic word for "catastrophe," is the term that best captures this atrocity inflicted on an entire people.
Nakba, meaning "catastrophe," was coined to describe the immense destruction inflicted on the Palestinian people through the Zionist colonization of Palestine in 1948. Eight decades later, Palestinians continue to use the term ongoing Nakba because it captures the ongoing reality of ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid, siege, and genocide. Palestinian scholar Rabea Eghbariah has argued that the ongoing Nakba should also be recognized as a legal framework capturing this continuous structure of colonial domination.
For Palestinians, the Nakba is not simply a catastrophe to remember but an ongoing reality to resist. Survivors of 1948 passed down stories of massacres and ethnic cleansing to future generations. Today, fifth-generation Palestinian refugees, still denied their right of return, continue to preserve this memory and resist the ongoing Nakba through oral history, archives, arts, scholarship, organizing, and annual commemorations on 15 May. In 2018, the Great March of Return embodied this intergenerational resistance, as tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, including entire families across generations, protested for nearly two years demanding return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled in 1948, just a few kilometers away beyond the blockade.
The Nakba is not a matter of opinion. It is internationally recognized and extensively documented, including by UN bodies. Even Israelis have acknowledged the atrocities of the Nakba. Israeli "New Historians" uncovered official archival evidence of massacres and forced expulsions, while veterans have testified to atrocities committed during 1948.
Israel's systematic erasure of the Nakba is itself evidence of an attempt to conceal the crimes of 1948. Israel has erased, classified, and restricted access to archives containing evidence of Nakba atrocities. To conceal the evidence of ethnic cleansing, hundreds of destroyed Palestinian villages were renamed in Hebrew and covered with forests, parks, and Israeli towns. Israeli laws and policies, including the "Nakba Law," which penalizes publicly funded institutions that commemorate the Nakba, and the erasure of the Nakba from school curricula, are ongoing attempts to suppress Palestinian collective memory.