About Facing the Nakba

Facing the Nakba offers educational resources to U.S. Jews and a general U.S. audience about the history of the Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic) and its implications in Palestine/Israel today. The Nakba refers to the forced displacement of Palestinians that began with Israel’s establishment, and that continues to this day.

This spring JVP will join with Palestinians and others in commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Nakba (Arabic for “the catastrophe”)—the forced displacement of approximately 750,000 Palestinians that began with Israel’s establishment in 1948. As part of our commitment to grappling with that history and its contemporary reverberations, we are proud to make available our seven-part curriculum, Facing the Nakba. We encourage you to use it, including as you plan your Nakba commemorations.

A guide for group workshops as well as a rich archive of resources accessible to individuals, Facing the Nakba is a flexible, multimedia curriculum that can help fill in the information that is often elided in accounts ofIsrael’s creation, strengthening our understanding of history (especially how the injustices Palestinians face began long before the 1967 occupation) and galvanizing our organizing today.

The Facing the Nakba website offers an in-depth guide for those who wish to facilitate group study as well as recommended tracks—for groups in synagogues or on college campuses, among organizers or high school students. We want the curriculum to work for you. The FTN library contains scores of materials — historical analyses, personal testimonies, NGO and governmental documents, maps, photos, and other materials.

Facing the Nakba, developed by a team of JVP members, draws from the pioneering work of the Israeli organization Zochrot (“Remembering” in Hebrew), which published a study guide in 2008 called “How do you say Nakba in Hebrew?” to promote acknowledgment and accountability within Israel for the ongoing injustices of the Nakba. Facingthe Nakba also maintains close partnerships with Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights and with the Participatory Action Research Center (PARCEO) to further develop our materials and broaden our reach.

The journal Radical Teacher featured Facing the Nakba in its recent issue on public pedagogies. We hope you will be part of the public that uses and expands this essential tool of our activism.

Facing the Nakba draws from the pioneering work of the Israeli organization Zochrot (“Remembering” in Hebrew), which published a study guide in 2008 called “How do you say Nakba in Hebrew?” to promote acknowledgment and accountability within Israel for the ongoing injustices of the Nakba. Facing the Nakba also maintains close partnerships with Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights and the Participatory Action Research Center (PARCEO) to further develop our materials and broaden our reach.

We began creating this curriculum for U.S. audiences in 2010 as an independent project, and became part of JVP in the summer of 2016. In the U.S., while most people learn about Israel as a “safe haven” for Jews, we seldom hear about the Palestinian experience of dispossession and expulsion in and prior to 1948. When U.S. Jews do talk about Palestine, the conversation often focuses on the post-1967 occupation, without acknowledging the occupation that began with the founding of the state of Israel.

As educators and activists, we have seen how acknowledgment of the Nakba can deepen discussions of the history of Palestine, Israel, and the occupation. We have seen how silence about the Nakba in U.S. Jewish communities and institutions has enabled a massive ignoring of history and sidelining of Palestinian voices.

As journalist Gideon Levy wrote in Ha’aretz: “Peace is not going to be prevented because the Palestinians are insisting on the right of return. It will be prevented mainly because Israel is not prepared to internalize the historical starting point: A people without a country came to a country with a people, and that people experienced a terrible tragedy that continues to this day.”

Here are some of the possible ways (and there are more!) that JVP chapters, councils, and members can make use of the Facing the Nakba resources:

1. Host a monthly series to do the entire curriculum
2. Do a one-time event using select exercises
3. Select a few readings from our bibliography and have a discussion as part of your chapter meeting
4. Plan an event around Nakba Day in May using our materials
5. If you are in the Midwest: host Lubnah Shomali from our partner organization BADIL when she tours the Midwest post-NMM!

The curriculum and all supplementary materials are designed to strengthen and deepen our thinking and organizing for justice – we hope you make great use of them!

Coordinating Committee

• Nava Etshalom
• Julia Kessler
• Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark
• Donna Nevel
• Rabbi Alissa Wise

Resources

Partners

• Zochrot
• BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
• PARCEO (Participatory Action Research Center for Education Organizing)

Organizing for Palestine

• BDS Movement (Boycott National Committee)
• Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
• U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
• Palestinian Queers for BDS
• Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association

Learning about the Nakba

• Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Visit their database of discriminatory laws)
• Palestine Remembered
• Visualizing Palestine
• Institute for Middle East Understanding
• The Nakba Files

Educating for Justice

• Rethinking Schools
• Palestine Education Project (PEP) Workshop Archive
• NYCORE (New York Collective of Radical Educators)
• Open University Project Readings on Citizenship and Nationality in Israel/Palestine