GUEST: Noga Kadman, Israeli human rights researcher and author of “Erased from Space and Consciousness,” talks about how Palestinian villages were depopulated in 1948 and then erased from the memory of the Israeli people.
ALSO: Gideon Levy in Greenburgh, NY
Noga's matter of fact approach contrasted nicely with the starling material she has collected. Of course there was massive ethnic cleansing, and here are the towns and cities. Yes, it included massacres of fleeing Palestinians. It's all documented.
What about the "land without a people" Americans keep hearing about. Noga said that nobody in Israel talks about that anymore. Now the narrative is purely how necessary the ethnic cleansing was to create a Jewish theocracy.
Is it sustainable? Noga doesn't speculate too much. She shows what the history was and presents it as a way to recover Israel's humanity. The Nakba must be admitted before any understanding between Israelis and Palestinians can ever happen. And of course, there never will be any peace for either group until the fall of Israeli apartheid.
Maybe the only the way to change Israel's oppression of the Palestinians is to convince enough American people to take a stand against war crimes and murder being done in their name. Congress is flush with Zionist money. There has to be some other way to make them pay a price for selling out to the Israeli lobby. Eventually, it has to become an issue when they run for office. "Paid for by the Zionists" must become a label that begins to hurt them in their campaigns.
Hey, "The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice." MLK was part of that arc, and we all get our chance to struggle for justice. We all are given that momentous gift, the "privilege" of doing the right thing.
