The United Nations held commemorations yesterday of the Nakba, the now-widespread term used by Palestinians to describe the birth of Israel. As Shany Mor explains, this Arabic word, literally meaning “disaster,” was originally employed to denote the catastrophic defeat of seven Arab armies at the hands of the fledgling Jewish state, but came to refer to the displacement of Palestinian refugees:
The transmutation of the Arabs’ failed effort to wipe out the Jewish state into their own cosmic tragedy, together with the adoption of this counter-narrative by intellectuals and self-styled humanitarians in the West, is noteworthy in itself. But for the UN, and the General Assembly specifically, to play along is particularly ironic for a number of reasons.
The Arab war against Israel was a war against a landmark resolution of the UN General Assembly (181) calling for the peaceful partition of British Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. For the General Assembly itself to be marking this defeat as a “disaster” to be mourned is curious, to say the least. It was also the first major violation of Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, which forbade the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Five of the seven Arab states . . . were UN members at the time.
Accepting partition would have resulted in the first ever Arab state in Palestine 75 years ago. The Arab rejection of partition and subsequent wars against Israel . . . were, for the Palestinians, the real disaster.
Read more on UnHerd: https://unherd.com/thepost/the-un-is-distorting-the-meaning-of-the-nakba/