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Greg Thomas: I have long been interested in the resonances between the Nakba and the Maafa – this is the Swahili word chosen for what is otherwise dubbed the “Middle Passage” in the history of African enslavement in the Americas, in North America specifically in this case. Both terms translate to the same thing: disaster or catastrophe. Both are used for enormous dislocating experiences that go on to define ongoing lives of struggle. Whenever I hear “Nakba,” I think immediately Maafa.
Susan Slyomovics: Can we imagine reparations for the Nakba outside the framework of settler colonialism?
Nimer Sultany: Notwithstanding its “activist,” rights-vindicating image, Israel’s Supreme Court has developed many techniques that ultimately reinforce judicial deference.
The Nakba Files spoke to Mireille Fanon Mendès-France, member and former chair of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, president of the Frantz Fanon Foundation, and a long-time France-based Palestine solidarity activist, about connections and comparisons between racism in Palestine/Israel and the USA.
Katherine Franke: In August, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) – a collective of more than 50 organizations – issued a comprehensive policy platform, A Vision for Black Lives, in which they explicitly connected the struggle for racial justice in the U.S. to that waged by Palestinians. The blowback from both liberal and conservative Zionist organizations was swift and searing.
The Nakba Files spoke with Greg Thomas, Associate Professor of English at Tufts University (USA) and curator of the traveling exhibit “George Jackson in the Sun of Palestine,” which will run at Haifa’s Khashabi Theater from 28 October 2016 to 14 January 2017. Thomas is writing a book about George Jackson (1941-1971), a prominent member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and a political prisoner who was assassinated by state authorities. The exhibit highlights connections between Palestinian and Black American experiences of captivity.
An interview with Professor Michael Karayanni of Hebrew University’s Law Faculty about his recent book, Conflicts in a Conflict: A Conflict of Laws Case Study of Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
The Nakba Files presents an original English translation of Military Order 58: Order on Abandoned Properties (Private Property), which was promulgated by the Israeli military command in the West Bank on 23 July 1967, at the dawn of the occupation of that territory.
Amahl Bishara: In many hours logged on the road, I’ve learned that driving is a site of embodied, everyday politics — a kind that is too often overlooked in favor of official or formal political statements and stances. The different experiences of ’48 Palestinians and ’67 Palestinians shows how the Nakba is at the root of Palestinian fragmentation, and the road network is a prime instrument of their separation from each other.
Amjad Alqasis: As Palestinian human rights activists and organizations, we must be more careful in the way we articulate reality through the terminology we use. We have to control our own discourse, to challenge the Israeli narrative’s local and international dominance.