The Anti-Semitic Myth behind the Palestinian Catastrophe
Originally, the Nakba had little to do with Palestinian refugees.
February 16, 2023
The Anti-Semitic Myth behind the Palestinian Catastrophe
Originally, the Nakba had little to do with Palestinian refugees.
In 1998, Yasir Arafat, then the president of the Palestinian Authority, declared May 15 a day of commemoration of the Nakba, or catastrophe—that is, the creation of Israel. The term Nakba has long been part of Arab discourse, and has now become commonplace in pro-Palestinian circles in the West. But the “catastrophe” it refers to is not the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from their homes or deaths that occurred during the first Arab-Israeli war, but the fact that Arabs would have to live alongside a Jewish state in the Middle East. Sol Stern traces the origins of the notion of a Nakba to a 1948 book by a distinguished, Western-educated Syrian Christian historian named Constantine K. Zurayk:
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