“Of all the stories of the Palestinian Nakba, none surpasses this march through the hills from al-Ramla and Lydda 58 years ago this month. ‘Nobody will ever know how many children died,’ Glubb would recall in his memoir, “A Soldier With the Arabs.” The Death March, as the Palestinians call it, along with the massacre at Deir Yassin, represent two of the central traumas that form the Palestinian catastrophe. Countless thousands fled from their villages, many because of “whispering campaigns” by Israeli military intelligence agents, which, following Deir Yassin, were designed to spark Arab fears of another massacre. Tens of thousands more were driven from their homes by force.” Sandy Tolan
“American media should be ashamed. I am in my 40s, have a college degree, read the newspaper every day, and yet I have never heard about al-Nakba. Salon is to be commended for revealing the history of this atrocity. Shame on the media in this country for their pro-Israeli bias. Keeping the American people in a bubble of ignorance will cause us all to suffer.”
That is my comment to a Salon article back in 2006. I was and am embarrassed that I knew so little about the world until recently. Of course the fault is not entirely my own. Like all Americans I have been fed a steady diet of propaganda my entire life. The lies about Israeli history are among the worst.
I am ashamed that I swallowed wholesale the myth of the courageous Israelis when in fact they forcibly drove out the Palestinians and stole their country. Today is the 65th anniversary of the beginning of the Nakba. Learn about it. Remember it.
Margaret Kimberley
