Visualizing the Changing Nakba Narrative

We often hear about the changing narrative over Israel/Palestine and specifically the events of 1948. For decades, the generic story about 1948 accepted by most Americans was the fictitious tale of the "immaculate conception" of the State of Israel: a vacant land promised by God to a people without a land. In this version there were no native Arabs or Palestinians, and if there were any, people like Joan Peters were there to fabricate claims about them only recently having arrived. Then there were people like Alan Derschowitz who merely repeated Joan Peters' fabricated claims.

In reality, hundreds of thousands of native Palestinian-Arabs lived on that land for millennia. Still, the effort to distort the history continues today. Jeffery Goldberg commented on the Tony Kushner episode and Kushner's comments about ethnic cleansing recently. He wrote:

There were instances in which Arab villages in what is now Israel were forcibly cleared of their inhabitants by Israeli forces. On the other hand, these episodes occurred during a war initiated by Arabs, after they rejected the United Nations partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

So, according to this, ethnic cleansing is justifiable so long as it occurs during war. And, basically Goldberg is saying "Heck, war is messy, and just because the outcome of the war conveniently resulted in favor of a minority movement that hoped to establish an ethno-centric majoritarian state in this territory doesn't mean it was planned and calculated. Just a lucky break, I guess." (Image Right: Palestinians refugees 'pushed into the sea' fleeing Yaffa in 1948)

Well, you don't have to spend time in the Haganah Archives pouring over village files to realize that argument doesn't make any sense, but I spent a good amount of time doing that anyway. Village files were an extensive series of documents collected by the Zionists a decade prior to 1948 detailing everything about every village in Palestine. The level of detail is consistent with a first-world military intelligence operation. They knew everything from the names of the villagers, how much land they owned, their salaries, the status of relations they had with each other, other villages and Jews, the names of their leaders, the number and types of weapons they had, if any, the principle sources of livelihood for the village, their political affiliations and the names and addresses of those in the village that were active in the Arab revolt from 1936-39.

I doubt the Zionists were keeping this information to send annual holiday greeting cards to Palestinian villagers. In reality, this military intelligence informed depopulation operations that started well before May 15th, 1948. Goldberg also repeats the myth that Arab states started the war in 1948 after Israel declared statehood on May 15th. This is part of the "David and Goliath" myth that comes along with the "immaculate conception" story. We are supposed to believe that newly born Israel was attacked by 5 Arab armies, and it is only by the grace of God that little Israel miraculously survived.

What most people don't know, even though Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion noted this in his diary, is that the combined forces of the five Arab armies were significantly fewer in number at every stage of the war than the Israeli forces. Further, the Zionist narrative incessantly repeats the notion that the barbaric Arabs attacked as soon as Israel was declared. This is important because it insinuates that newly formed Israel did not yet have the chance to err before it was condemned by its Arab neighbors. But the truth is that from Dec. 9th 1947 - May14th 1948 there were 76 massacres or atrocities committed by the Haganah or Palmach (pre-state Israeli armies) which led to the depopulation of 200 villages and 400,000 refugees -- over 50% of total refugees created -- BEFORE a single Arab army soldier crossed the border. Yet, as Goldberg notes above in comments which typify the pro-Zionist discourse on this issue, it was the Arabs that initiated the war.

The idea that the ethnic cleansing which took place once the war started is somehow excusable, or that the refugees who were created during that period forfeit their rights because it occurred during war, is abhorrent.

Still, we hear that the discourse is changing, and it is. Jeremiah Haber has an interesting discussion of this here. Joan Peters, Alan Dershowitz and Jeffery Goldberg and their ilk can not dominate the discussion about Israel/Palestine in the United States any more. While Americans have long relied on traditional publications, which always came with a heavy dose of Zionist narrative and a dearth of Palestinian voices, today we have the internet, the blogsphere, Twitter and diverse sources of information at our fingertips.

But while the Tony Kushner episode discussed by Goldberg and Haber both indicate the discourse is in fact changing, its hard to truly grasp the depth and scope of this change by referencing anecdotes alone. Could there be another way?

Well, this isn't a certainly scientific approach but it does lend evidence to suggest a change in the narrative. The graph below depicts use of the word Nakba over time on the internet. Nakba is the specific Arabic language word used to describe the Palestinian experience during the depopulation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It is important to note that this isn't a search for نكبة (the word Nakba in Arabic) which reveals different results. Rather, this is an indication of the increased prevalence of the word Nakba used in English. This means a steady and consistent increase in the number of conscience choices made by English speakers to include the the most significant word of the Palestinian narrative in their English language writing on the matter.

By simply Googling the word during annual search periods, the trend is revealed.

You may note that the prevalence of the word through just over 4 months of 2011 is already higher than the preceding year.

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