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The ‘Nakba’ Is Not Our Problem
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a protest against Israel to mark the 77th anniversary of the “Nakba” or catastrophe, in Berlin, Germany, May 15, 2025. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
JNS.org – A smattering of Arabic words has entered the English language in recent years, the direct result of more than a century of conflict between the Zionist movement and Arab regimes determined to prevent the Jews from exercising self-determination in their historic homeland.
These words include fedayeen, which refers to the armed Palestinian factions; intifada, which denotes successive violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel; and naksa, which pertains to the defeat sustained by the Arab armies in their failed bid to destroy Israel during the June 1967 war.
At the top of this list, however, is nakba, the word in Arabic for “disaster” or “catastrophe.” The emergence of the Palestinian refugee question following Israel’s 1948-49 War of Independence is now widely described as “The Nakba,” and the term has become a stick wielded by anti-Zionists to beat Israel and, increasingly, Jews outside.
Last Thursday, a date which the U.N. General Assembly has named for an annual “Nakba Day,” workers at a cluster of Jewish-owned businesses in the English city of Manchester arrived at the building housing their offices to find that it had been badly vandalized overnight. The front of the building, located in a neighborhood with a significant Jewish community, was splattered with red paint. An external wall displayed the crudely painted words “Happy Nakba Day.”
The culprits were a group called Palestine Action, a pro-Hamas collective of activists whose sole mission is to intimidate the Jewish community in the United Kingdom in much the same way as Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists did back in the 1930s. Its equivalents in the United States are groups like Within Our Lifetime and Students for Justice in Palestine, who have shown themselves equally enthused when it comes to intimidating Jewish communities by conducting loud, sometimes violent, demonstrations outside synagogues and other communal facilities, all too frequently showering Jews with the kind of abuse that was once the preserve of neo-Nazis. These thugs, cosplaying with keffiyehs instead of swastika armbands, can reasonably be described as the neo-neo-Nazis.
The overarching point here is that ideological constructs like nakba play a key role in enabling the intimidation they practice. It allows them to diminish the historic victimhood of the Jews, born of centuries of stateless disempowerment, with dimwitted formulas equating the nakba with the Nazi Holocaust. It also enables them to camouflage hate speech and hate crimes as human-rights advocacy—a key reason why law enforcement, in the United States as well as in Canada, Australia and most of Europe, has been found sorely wanting when it comes to dealing with the surge of antisemitism globally.
Part of the response needs to be legislative. That means clamping down on both sides of the Atlantic on groups that glorify designated terrorist organizations by preventing them from fundraising; policing their access to social media; and restricting their demonstrations to static events in a specific location with a predetermined limit on attendees, rather than a march that anyone can join, along with an outright ban on any such events in the environs of Jewish community buildings.
These are not independent civil society organizations, as they pretend to be, but rather extensions of terrorist organizations like Hamas and—in the case of Samidoun, another group describing itself as a “solidarity” organization—the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. If we cannot ban them outright, we need to contain them much more effectively. We can start by framing the issue as a national security challenge and worry less about their “freedom of speech.”
But this is also a fight that takes us into the realm of ideas and arguments. We need to stop thinking about the nakba as a Palestinian narrative of pain deserving of empathy by exposing it for what it is—another tool in the arsenal of groups whose goal is to bring about the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.
When it was originally introduced in the late 1940s, the word nakba had nothing to do with the plight of the Palestinian refugees or their dubious claim to be the uninterrupted, indigenous inhabitants of a land seized by dispossessing foreign colonists. Popularized by the late Syrian writer Constantine Zureik in a 1948 book titled The Meaning of Disaster, the nakba described therein was, as the Israeli scholar Shany Mor has crisply pointed out, simply “the failure of the Arabs to defeat the Jews.”
Zureik was agonized by this defeat, calling it “one of the harshest of the trials and tribulations with which the Arabs have been inflicted throughout their long history.” His story is fundamentally a story of national humiliation and wounded pride. Yet there is absolutely no reason why Jews should be remotely troubled by the neurosis it projects. Their defeat was our victory and our liberation, and we should unreservedly rejoice in that fact.
The only aspect of the nakba that we should worry about is the impact it has on us as a community, as well as on the status of Israel as a sovereign member of the international society of states. As Mizrahi Jews know well (my own family among them), the nakba assembled in Zureik’s imagination really was a “catastrophe”— for us. Resoundingly defeated on the battlefield by the superior courage and tactical nous of the nascent Israeli Defense Forces, the Arabs compensated by turning on the defenseless Jews in their midst. From Libya to Iraq, ancient and established Jewish communities were the victims of a cowardly, spiteful policy of expropriation, mob violence and expulsion.
The inheritors of that policy are the various groups that compose the Palestinian solidarity movement today. Apoplectic at the realization that they have been unable to dislodge the “Zionists”—and knowing now that the main consequence of the Oct. 7, 2023 pogrom in Israel has been the destruction of Gaza—they, too, have turned on the Jews in their midst.
They have done so with one major advantage that the original neo-Nazis never had: sympathy and endorsement from academics, celebrities, politicians and even the United Nations. Indeed, the world body hosted a two-day seminar on “Ending the Nakba” at its New York headquarters at the same time that pro-Hamas fanatics were causing havoc just a few blocks downtown. Even so, we should take heart at the knowledge that nakba is not so much a symbol of resistance as it is defeat. Just as the rejectionists and eliminationists have lost previous wars through a combination of political stupidity, diplomatic ineptitude and military flimsiness, so, too, can they lose this one.
The post The ‘Nakba’ Is Not Our Problem first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Palestinian Islamic Jihad Rejects Trump’s Gaza Plan, Pressures Hamas to Follow Suit as Trump Issues Deadline
The secretary-general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group, Ziyad Nakhaleh, attends a news conference in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 7, 2022. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
The terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has denounced US President Donald Trump’s peace plan to end the war in Gaza, intensifying pressure on its ally Hamas to oppose the proposal as divisions over post-war governance deepen.
PIJ Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhalah rejected Trump’s 20-point proposal for Gaza, which the US president unveiled on Monday, accusing it of serving only Israel’s interests.
The terrorist leader described the plan as a “formula for perpetuating the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian nation.”
“Israel aims to enforce, with the support of the United States, what it could not accomplish through military action,” al-Nakhalah said in a statement.
“Consequently, we view the US-Israeli declaration as a catalyst for escalating conflict in the region,” he continued.
Trump gave Hamas “three or four days” on Tuesday to accept the US-backed peace plan for Gaza, warning of “a very sad end” if the Palestinian terrorist group rejected the proposal.
“Hamas is either going to be doing it or not, and if it’s not, it’s going to be a very sad end,” Trump said as he left the White House. Asked whether there was room for further talks on the proposal, he replied, “Not much.”
Alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump unveiled his peace plan at the White House on Monday, calling for the release of all remaining Israeli hostages within 48 hours, the demilitarization of Gaza including the disarmament of Hamas, and the phased withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territory.
The plan, for which Israel announced its support, outlines “a modest withdrawal” of Israeli forces, followed within 72 hours by the release of all remaining Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists from Gaza, including members of PIJ, started the current war with their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, where they murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities and political rule in Gaza, which borders the Jewish state to the south. Currently, 48 hostages remain in captivity, and 20 of them are believed to be alive.
The process proposed by Trump would be overseen by a Board of Peace – which would include leaders from Arab countries, Israel, and the US – with a new international body responsible for disarming Hamas and managing Gaza’s demilitarization.
Although Hamas has yet to formally respond to the proposed deal, the terrorist group denounced Trump’s announcement as “an attempt to stifle international momentum and recognition of the Palestinian state.”
“We will not accept any proposal that does not include the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and protection from massacres,” Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu expressed his support for Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza, saying it “achieves our war aims.”
“If Hamas rejects US President Donald Trump’s plan, or if they supposedly accept it and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself,” the Israeli leader said during a joint press conference at the White House.
“This can be done the easy way, or it can be done the hard way. But it will be done,” he continued.
Several Arab and European leaders have also backed Trump’s plan. The president told reporters on Tuesday that “we’re just waiting for Hamas” to make its decision.
At Monday’s press conference, Trump also warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting the proposed deal, saying he would endorse the continuation of the war.
“If Hamas rejects the deal, Bibi, you will have our full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas,” Trump said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
The peace plan also includes amnesty for Hamas members who renounce violence, allowing them to leave the territory, and promises a major boost in humanitarian aid along with a US-backed economic development initiative to rebuild the war-torn enclave.
For its part, the Palestinian Authority (PA) welcomed Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza as the group seeks to secure a role in post-war governance.
Western powers have been negotiating with the PA on conditions for Gaza governance after Hamas is removed from power, while the PA continues to pledge reforms — a strategy experts say is unlikely to succeed given its lack of credibility and ongoing support for terrorism against Israel.
Jewish leaders have argued that these Western governments appear to be accepting the PA’s promises of reform at face value, rather than waiting to see if its behavior truly changes.
The PA, which has long been riddled with accusations of corruption, has maintained for years a so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis.
During Monday’s press conference, Netanyahu reiterated that the PA would have no role in Gaza after the war unless the group undergoes significant reforms.
“The Palestinian Authority can have no role whatsoever in Gaza without undergoing a radical and genuine transformation,” the Israeli leader said.
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US Rep. Ro Khanna Blasts AIPAC at Anti-Israel Conference Where Speakers Defend Hamas, Oct. 7 Attack
US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) speaks as House members hold a press conference in Washington, DC, on Sept. 3, 2025. Photo: Josh Morgan-USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat widely reported to be considering a 2028 presidential bid, accused pro-Israel advocates of distorting Democratic Party priorities at a major Arab-American gathering known as ArabCon 2025 in Dearborn, Michigan late last week.
The remarks came amid a string of fiery statements from conference panelists opposing Israel and defending the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas which drew cheers from the crowd and criticism from outside observers.
Speaking on Saturday alongside “The Young Turks” host Cenk Uygur, Khanna was asked why many Democrats in the US Congress “hate their own voters” and shy away from allegedly popular policies.
“It’s money,” Khanna responded, before targeting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a prominent lobbying group that seeks to foster bipartisan support for a strong US-Israel alliance.
“You know, every other week, I get AIPAC attacking me, it’s like someone hasn’t cued them in that every time they attack me, my popularity goes up,” the lawmaker said. He also suggested that Democrats fear headlines labeling them as standing with “pro-terror radicals” for attending events like ArabCon.
“You can be true and consistent in either standing with people and standing with human rights and convictions, or you can do the bidding of interest groups and people in power,” Khanna said.
Though Khanna identifies as an ally of Israel, he has become increasingly critical of the Jewish state amid the war in Gaza in recent months, accusing the Israeli military of recklessly killing Palestinians while pushing for US recognition of a Palestinian state.
ArabCon only grew more heated as other panelists spoke over the course of the weekend. For example, Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), praised the shuttered Holy Land Foundation, once the largest Muslim charity in the United States and later convicted of funneling money to Hamas.
“One of the most seminal cases of that era that I think we should all know about is the Holy Land Foundation, and what happened to the five co-founders of that incredible charity,” Billoo said. She described its founders as “incredible, generous, kind, beautiful men.”
The Algemeiner reported earlier this year that Billoo used the news of former US President Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis as an opportunity to warn the former commander-in-chief of the eternal punishment tied to his administration’s support for the Jewish state during the conflict in Gaza. Months earlier, she shared a post on social media that read in part, “Hamas deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.”
Billoo accused Israel of “genocide” on social media in 2021 and, last year, seemingly issued public support for Hamas, wishing for “the resistance be victorious.” That same year, she also condemned those who fundraise for the Israel Defense Force, writing on X, “Could you make the same fundraising effort for Palestinian resistance fighters without being ostracized, suspended, or fired?”
CAIR has long been a controversial organization. In the 2000s, it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.
Another panel drew headlines when Detroit activist Amer Zahr jokingly asked San Francisco State University professor Rabab Abdulhadi whether she condemned Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and rampage across southern Israel. Palestinian terrorists from Gaza murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during the onslaught, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Despite the atrocities, the ArabCon audience erupted in laughter as Abdulhadi replied, “I condemn Israel and the United States, and all oppression and imperial wars. And I never ever condemn Palestinian resistance.” She argued that Palestinians were “returning to their villages” on Oct. 7, denied that kibbutzim had been targeted, and insisted the operation was aimed at liberating prisoners. Abdulhadi added that Palestinian society has long debated whether tactics such as plane hijackings are legitimate.
Said Arikat, a journalist for Al-Quds newspaper who shared the stage, praised Abdulhadi’s response, calling it “an easy answer.”
Zahr, a board member of Dearborn Public Schools, posted a photo on social media honoring Hassan Nasrallah, the deceased leader of the Hezbollah terrorist group. In a 2021 blog post Zahr condemned “normalization” of Zionism and drew parallels between Zionism and Jim Crow laws targeting Black Americans in the US South.
The comments highlighted the tension surrounding ArabCon, which drew thousands to Dearborn from Sept. 26–28. Organizers billed the convention as a gathering to amplify Arab-American voices in politics.
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Denmark’s National Broadcaster: We Will Not Vote to Ban Israel From 2026 Eurovision Song Contest
Israel’s representative to the Eurovision Song Contest, Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the deadly Oct. 7 2023, attack by Hamas on the Nova festival in Israel’s south, holds an Israeli flag in this handout photo obtained by Reuters on Jan. 23, 2025. Photo: “The Rising Star,” Channel Keshet 12/Handout via REUTERS
Denmark’s national broadcaster DR said on Tuesday it will not vote against Israel when the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) holds a special vote in November to decide if the Jewish state should be excluded from the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) because of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
“DR supports the ESC as a cultural European event that has brought nations together through music since 1956. As such, we will not vote for any EBU member to be expelled from the competition, as long as they comply with the rules and regulations,” Gustav Lützhøft – head of culture, debate, and music at DR – said in a released statement. He added that DR’s participation in the Eurovision next year “remains conditional on there being a strong international community, control over security, and an apolitical framework around the competition.”
The EBU, which organizes the Eurovision, announced last week that the EBU’s General Assembly will hold an “extraordinary meeting” online in early November during which its members will vote on whether the Israeli public broadcaster KAN will be allowed to participate in the 2026 Eurovision held in Vienna, Austria. Kan released a statement in response to the EBU’s announcement, saying that it hopes the Eurovision “will continue to maintain its cultural and political character.”
“The removal of Israel’s public broadcasting body – one of the veteran, popular, and successful competitors throughout the decades of the competition – and especially on the eve of the 70th anniversary of Eurovision, which stood as a symbol of cooperation, kindness, and brotherhood, could be a step with significant consequences,” KAN added. “We are convinced that the European Broadcasting Union will continue to maintain the apolitical, professional, and cultural nature of the competition, especially on the eve of the 70th anniversary of Eurovision.”
Lützhøft previously stated that Denmark does not plan on withdrawing from the 2026 Eurovision if Israel participates. Meanwhile, several other countries have threatened to pull out of the competition if Israel is not banned, including Spain, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Iceland, and Ireland.
Austria, the host country of the 2026 competition, has not publicly commented on demands to ban Israel from the Eurovision, but Austrian singer JJ, who won this year’s Eurovision, has also called for Israel’s exclusion from next year’s contest.
The 2026 Eurovision will take place in Vienna on May 16, with the semifinals airing on May 12 and 14. KAN announced on Monday that the singer who will represent Israel in the 2026 Eurovision will be selected again this year through the reality show “The Next Star,” which is set to air in Israel in the coming weeks.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said in an interview with KAN Reshet Bet radio on Monday that it is important for Israel to participate in the 2026 Eurovision competition. “I have seen dangerous processes that begin with Eurovision and end in other places,” Herzog said. “The delegitimization of Israel and the attempt to exclude us from every possible arena are moves designed to weaken us. It starts with Eurovision but reaches matters that are vital to us. Every arena is important.”