# The Nakba Explained: Why Israel Won't Win

**Author:** Dr. Omar Suleiman
**Series:** Explained
**Published:** 2024-05-20
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/_eI7IDXC8Es
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/explained/the-nakba-explained-why-israel-wont-win
**Topics:** Politics & Practical Theology, Social Justice

## Description
Dr. Omar Suleiman describes the history of modern-day Palestine, starting with the Nakba (Arabic word for “Catastrophe”) that began with the murder of 15,000 and the expulsion of over 750,000 from their homeland on May 15th, 1948. Displaced Palestinians have since kept the keys to those homes they...

## Transcript
**[0:00]** I know that Arabic words have probably been made to seem particularly violent to you. But the word Nakba is the Arabic word for catastrophe. The word Intifada is the Arabic word for uprising. The word jihad is the Arabic word for struggle. In order to make way for the

**[0:16]** Israel that you see today, hundreds of thousands of indigenous Palestinians had to be ethnically cleansed. A mass displacement, a Nakba. The Nakba is widely recognized by everyone, international organizations, the UN, most countries in the world. In fact, Israeli settlers even brag about it sometimes.

**[0:39]** On the anniversary of the first Nakba, we remember the lives destroyed by the ethno-state of Israel, by the dangerous ethno-supremacist ideology of Zionism, and by the continued complicity of the United States government at every single level, despite you not consenting to your tax dollars

**[0:57]** being used to fund this atrocity. This didn't start on October 7th, this started over 70 years ago. The Nakba is ongoing, and the Nakba of 2024 is particularly genocidal. But of course, many Israelis deny that the Nakba ever happened, and Zionists are known to deny atrocity after

**[1:17]** atrocity, so long as it doesn't fit their deceptive narrative. Murdering 40,000 people and counting in Gaza, not their fault. Blockading Gaza by land, air, and sea, and creating an impossible living situation, not their fault. Expanding illegal Israeli settlements under liberal and conservative administrations,

**[1:37]** and basically causing every remnant of Palestinian land to disappear, not their fault. Murdering Americans in open sight like Shireen Abu Akleh, Rachel Corrie. Bombing the USS Liberty, also not their fault. Mass graves of Palestinians being discovered

**[1:57]** under Israeli beaches, and the continuing mass graves in Gaza, also not their fault. The sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners, and the testimonies from Israeli soldiers in the past of raping Palestinian women in the process of the Nakba, not their fault.

**[2:14]** See, all of this apparently had to be done because God has somehow given these people a right to our land and to our lives, and we completely don't factor into the equation. Every Israeli accusation is in fact a confession. And the list of the crimes go on and on and on.

**[2:33]** And who's paying for these crimes? You are. As Americans suffer to put food on the table, and as medical debt, student loan debt, and financial insecurity increase by the day, the U.S. government continues to send billions to fund this apartheid regime, and to ensure that this genocide continues unimpeded.

**[2:52]** The original lie of Israel is that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land. Of course, that's inconvenient to the current narrative, because what they don't want you to know is that there was a historical Palestine. Over a million people, a Palestinian culture, a Palestinian dress, a Palestinian currency, a history, a legacy that our grandparents

**[3:13]** and our ancestors lived, and they did not carry out an atrocity to deserve the one that has been visited upon them. Over 750,000 people expelled from their lands, over 500 villages destroyed, countless massacres over seven decades, death and destruction and displacement.

**[3:32]** Every single Palestinian in the world has a similar story. And not only have the Palestinian people been expelled from their lands, their voices have been suppressed abroad, all because it is so inconvenient to the narrative that Zionism is an innocent connection of the Jewish

**[3:47]** people to their ancient homelands. If you think what you're seeing in Gaza today is new, then look no further than the testimonies of Israeli soldiers who have committed this over and over and over again. This is not new for the Palestinians. The only thing that's new is how quickly the

**[4:05]** Israeli regime is escalating this genocide, because as the world is waking up, the illegal settler colonial project is looking less and less promising. But one of the greatest miscalculations of Zionists has been and continues to be that Palestinians will eventually forget, that

**[4:22]** Palestine will be forgotten, that they will move on to their new homes, and they will forget about the homes that they were expelled from. But instead, those that were expelled continue to hold on to the keys of their homes, they continue to maintain those keys in their hearts, and they continue to insist on their full existence and self-determination as Palestinians, and they

**[4:43]** will not rest, and we will not rest, until Palestine is free.

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