I have been thinking and thinking about the fact that Nakba witness testimony so closely mirrors the stories of so many Jewish families displaced/dispossessed in the mid-twentieth century in Europe…and wondering now that I have heard some of the Nakba eyewitness stories, and have started to piece together the systematization and enormity of the razing of over 500 villages…why are some narratives of dispossession so widely broadcast, and others so silenced? Our own stories of dispossession and loss (that is the Jewish mid-twentieth century tragedies) have an iconic status worldwide…as they should --- they are enshrined in history books, vast well-funded organizations promote the retaining of every scrap of memory -- our tragedy is taught in elementary and middle schools throughout the West. But there are many genocides of course…ours is unique in some ways (scale, technology) but also NOT unique in others (masses of people dispossessed, exterminated, made refugees for political/hate reasons)…how did we get the only real Holocaust status? And relatedly -- how is the mass dispossession of the Palestinian Arabs such a hard story to get out there? (I see this in my own life already as professional doors have started to close on me as I start documenting these stories. I hope and trust to the universe that others will open/are opening). And then I thought…if indeed the Great Powers USED the Jewish tragedy as a covering ideology for their own desire to create a client state in the region….and SOLD that ideology to us -- then of COURSE these vast machines and factories enshrining certain kinds of narratives of loss and memory will be supported/funded around the world…and others that challenge this story, suppressed and the witnesses punished/silenced. And I also kept thinking -- who really has ever cared about the suffering/extermination of a bunch of Jews? Just as I wrote before, who gives a group of refugees a state of their own just because they are traumatized victimized homeless and desperate? I think we could not believe our good fortune so never asked, why is this anomalous thing taking place? But also -- who has ever cared that much about our suffering/extermination in the past, or anyones for that matter? The enshrining of our tragedy, though appropriate to ANY groups tragedy -- is anomalous in its power reach and sacred status culturally. It is an anomalous way to treat the story of a group of miserable victims of hate of which there remain millions around the world….who are forgotten, ignored, unenshrined…no museums no books no archives no resolutions no reparations...so I think we have to consider that our tragedy continues to be hijacked/coopted not just because we suffered and the world is sorry but because some major powers in the world have use for our tragedy…this is shocking to me as the descendant of a family half wiped out in the Holocaust but as a student of Jewish and world history I must face this dawning set of insights…that absolutely no one ever f--ing cared about making it right to a group of desperate homeless refugees in that way before in the history of the planet…let alone us the worlds most disposable and hated group, until recently...
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 13:32:47 +0000
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