The following article was written by ECAJ Research Officer Julie Nathan. It was ori­gin­ally published on The Times of Israel (blog).

Nakba Day in Sydney

Julie Nathan
J‑Wire
May 24, 2018
As Israelis, and Jews around the world, celebrate the 70^th anniversary of the re-estab­lish­ment of the Jewish state, Palestini­an Arabs and their sup­port­ers protest the very existence of Israel, in what they call Nakba Day (Arabic for ‘cata­strophe’).

On Nakba Day, in cities across Australia, on the other side of the world from Israel/Palestine, there were protests against Israel’s existence. On the streets of Sydney, the organ­isers, speakers and the 700-odd pro­test­ers refused to accept the existence of Israel. Instead they per­sist­ently called for an end to the “70-year Zionist occu­pa­tion of Palestine”. They demanded that not only the rel­at­ively small number of 1948 Palestini­an refugees who are still living be permitted to move into Israel but also their five million des­cend­ants, and all future des­cend­ants, ad infinitum. The protest in Sydney featured several prominent speakers.
Ramzy Baroud, a US-Arab journ­al­ist and author, gave a short lacklustre speech where he reit­er­ated that the “Right of Return” (not just for refugees but also their des­cend­ants) is a “perpetual fight for justice”. Like Azzam Pasha (the Arab League’s first secretary-general) and Hajj Amin al Husseini (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and friend of Hitler) before him, he considers des­troy­ing Jewish self-determ­in­a­tion as justice, rather than having two states for two peoples.
Sara Saleh, an Arab-Aus­trali­an poet and writer, and on the board of Get-Up, spoke on the theme of “Remem­ber­ing is Resisting” and “the unlawful occu­pa­tion of 70 years” ie asserting that Israel itself has no right to exist. “We must remember” she stated, “We are the sons and daughters of the Nakba. We remember”. However, she mentioned no memory before 1948, as though Palestini­an identity is tied exclus­ively to the re-estab­lish­ment of Israel, and nothing before.

We Jews also remember. We remember over 3,500 years of Jewish life in the Land of Israel, including 1500 years of unbroken Jewish life in ancient Israel and Judea, the Holy Temples of Jerusalem, the Judges, the High Priests, the Hebrew Kings, their royal palaces courts and scribes, the Jewish ritual baths and water courses which still survive from antiquity, the great battles fought by Hebrew armies in the land, their triumphs and defeats, and above all the Jewish civil­isa­tion, thought and culture which poured out of the land for three millennia. We remember the prophets and rabbis, the mystics of the kabbalah in Safed, our tribal lands, and the grains and fruits of the land of Israel. And we remember more recently rising from the ashes of the Holocaust and building the miracle of today’s Israel out of what had been a quiet back-water of the Ottoman Empire.
As is increas­ingly usual at anti-Israel events, an Abori­gin­al speaker was featured. Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts,an Abori­gin­al woman, spoke in solid­ar­ity with what she perceived was another indi­gen­ous people, namely the Palestini­ans. She clearly did not know or realise that Jews are indi­gen­ous to the Land of Israel, not the Palestini­an Arabs, most of whose families arrived only in the last 800 years. The Arabs are indi­gen­ous to the Arabian Peninsula where they developed their language and culture and religion before embarking on their military invasions of the Middle East and North Africa in the 7^th century, one of the longest-standing imper­i­al­ist conquests in history. By her reckoning, the indi­gen­ous Jews there are to be denied their right to self-determ­in­a­tion and deemed to be foreign invaders.
David Shoebridge, NSW Greens MP, a regular speaker at anti-Israel protests, claimed he was “standing for peace, justice and liberty” yet did not acknow­ledge that he was being selective, that he was not standing for peace, justice and liberty for all peoples uni­ver­sally, but only for some people, and certainly not for the Jews.
One huge banner summed up this up very well: “Abolish Israel. No state is the solution”, con­veni­ently ignoring that “abol­ish­ing” Israel would mean either the expulsion and/or murder of the six million Israeli Jews who now live there, most of them native-born.
A homemade placard per­ni­ciously turned Jews into genocidal Nazis and minimised the Holocaust with its words: “They, Israel & USA have no con­science, no honour, no pride. They curse Hitler day & night, but they have surpassed Hitler in brutality!” Another placard had a red Jewish star dripping with blood, and the words “Stop War. Free Palestine”. The flag of the Syrian Social Nation­al­ist Party, with its Nazi-like symbol and colours, was flown. Two Hezbollah banners were attached to a Palestini­an flag, and handed back to academic Tim Anderson at the end of the march.

The regular chanting of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Intifadah, intifadah” drove home the demon­strat­ors’ aim to destroy Israel and to do so violently. Seventy years after the re-estab­lish­ment of Israel, Palestini­an Arabs and their sup­port­ers still pri­or­it­ise des­troy­ing Israel over estab­lish­ing an Arab state in Palestine alongside Israel.
The real tragedy and cata­strophe of Nakba Day is that Palestini­an Arabs and their sup­port­ers are not also cel­eb­rat­ing the 70^th anniversary of the estab­lish­ment of an Arab Palestini­an state alongside Israel. But for the ongoing fool­ish­ness of the Palestini­an elites, all the bloodshed and pain that has been meted out in the Arab-Israel conflict to both Jews and Arabs could have been avoided, and the Arabs of Palestine could have had their own sovereign and free State, just as the Jews of Palestine were able to achieve.
While ever the desire to destroy Jewish sov­er­eignty is the primary goal of the Palestini­an national movement, the Palestini­an Arabs will not have the peace, justice or liberty that both Jews and Arabs seek. Hatred and murderous desires never ends well for anyone. The only just and workable res­ol­u­tion of the Arab-Israel conflict remains two states – one Arab, one Jewish – in the territory west of the Jordan River, each recog­nising and respect­ing the other’s right to exist, as the UN ori­gin­ally envisaged.
In the wise words of Einat Wilf, former Labour Member of the Knesset: “If the war is ever to end with true peace, the Palestini­ans as well as the Arab and Islamic world at large have to come to accept the Jewish people as an indi­gen­ous people who have come home and who have an equal and legit­im­ate right to their ancestral land.”
Julie Nathan is the Research Officer for the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry
All images were taken by Julie Nathan at Sydney’s Nakba Day protest.