Lyn Julius
What is the Nakba?
Summary
This year for the first time, the UN marked ‘Nakba Day’. What is the Palestinian Nakba? Why is the greater Jewish Nakba consistently ignored? And how can we use the Nakbas to advance the cause of peace?
Lyn Julius
Lyn Julius was born in the UK and educated at the French Lycée in London and the University of Sussex. The daughter of Jewish refugees from Iraq, she is a journalist and founder of Harif, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (www.harif.org). Lyn blogs daily at Point of No Return (www.jewishrefugees.org.uk). Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Huffington Post, Jewish News, and Jerusalem Post. She has a regular column in the Times of Israel and JNS News. Her book Uprooted: How 3,000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight has been translated in to Norwegian, Portuguese and Arabic, and a Hebrew version is in progress.
Good question. Indeed, I agree.
I don’t actually have the figures, but there were still quite a few who remained, and some who fled were actually allowed to return. I’m thinking of the present Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan, who is actually a Christian Arab called George Deek. And his story is that his father fled in 1948, but was actually allowed to return to Jaffa where he was from. And George Deek made a career in the Israeli Foreign Office, and he is now an ambassador.