Gaza’s Nakba
Imagine calling one of the worst genocides in memory “history” while its survivors are being slaughtered today. For Palestinians, that is the everyday reality, the 1948 Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe” – is not over. Instead it plays out right now in Gaza. The rubble of Jabalia and Khan Younis is the modern face of 1948’s Jaffa and Lydda. This is not ancient history, but a structure of settler-colonial expulsion and ethnic cleansing that continues to threaten Palestinian life every day.
The Nakba formally refers to 1948’s mass expulsion of Palestinians – roughly 750,000 people were driven from their homes. But it was never a one-time event. Zionist forces destroyed some 530 villages and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of attacks and massacres that year. Today the same pattern endures under new names. Israeli courts now approve the removal of villages like Masafer Yatta, targeting over 1,200 Palestinians (half of them children) for eviction so the army can use the land. In the occupied West Bank, troops raided Jenin’s refugee camp in late 2024, leaving homes wrecked and civilians dead (washingtonpost.com).
In Gaza, 2.1 million Palestinians (over 90% of the Strip’s population) – most of them descendants of 1948 refugees (badil.org) – endure an almost total siege. Nothing has entered Gaza for weeks and its few remaining hospitals are overwhelmed. Farms and orchards are being bombed or bulldozed, leaving 75% of cropland wrecked and nearly all livestock dead (press.un.org). Sewage overflows, clean water is gone, and doctors warn that famine is on the horizon. These tactics – destruction of land and basic services, forced displacement, and child amputations – show that Nakba is not a closed chapter but an ongoing structure of colonial violence.
The same brutal tactics of 1948 are visible today. Zionist militias in 1947–48 drove Palestinians out of cities like Jaffa, Haifa, Lydda (Ramle) and razed their villages. They looted homes and massacred civilians – for example, 110 men, women and children were slaughtered at Deir Yassin in April 1948 (aljazeera.com) – terrorizing survivors into flight. Those destroyed towns were never “resettled” by the original inhabitants; most were wiped from maps. Yet the memory survives in Gaza’s refugee camps: families now shelter where their grandparents once fled.
In Gaza today, the names have changed but the victims have not. The Jabalia refugee camp – whose population are almost entirely the grandchildren of 1948’s uprooted – was hit by a deadly airstrike in December 2024. At least 10 civilians (seven of them children) were killed there, and another 8 people were killed in nearby Nuseirat camp during the same wave of attacks (reuters.com). It is the same violent playbook 76 years later, dense civilian neighborhoods with roots in the 1948 Nakba are flattened. Almost everyone in Gaza is a refugee or descendant of one – fully 80% of Gaza’s people today are 1948 refugees or their children – and their lives are being crushed on top of the old wounds of dispossession. What happened to Jaffa then is happening to Jabalia now.
Meanwhile, governments that loudly proclaim “never again” have in practice enabled the ongoing Nakba. The United States remains Israel’s main supporter and since 1948 America has poured roughly $310 billion (inflation-adjusted) in military and economic aid into Israel. In the last year of war alone, Congress fast-tracked another $12.5 billion in direct military assistance (cfr.org). European powers and other allies similarly supply arms, fund intelligence, and purchase occupation-built products, even as they claim to “call for peace.” At UN meetings, the EU’s biggest states offer only “shallow condemnations” of Israel’s forced transfers – hardly a check on the assault. In practice, Western states have consistently given Israel “unconditional support and sweeping impunity” for settler-colonial expansion. Many tech and defense corporations and universities profit from Israel’s occupation (co-developing weapons, training soldiers, etc.). All the while, slogans like “Never Again” echo hollowly – Holocaust memorials stand side by side with Western governments funding the ongoing Nakba.
The weapons that kill Palestinians are often branded “Made in USA”, “Made in EU”. It is a stark hypocrisy when Western leaders evoke human rights even as their aid keeps flowing. Some scholars point out that modern Israeli institutions (even its universities) were built on the dispossession of Palestinians – something still true today, as campuses across the world grapple with academic and corporate complicity. In short, as one Palestinian rights group summed it up, Western governments have long “upheld” the Nakba by propping up Israel’s colonial regime instead of honoring genuine human rights for Palestinians.
And yet, the Nakba is far from unopposed. Palestinians have kept alive their identity and their struggle across generations and borders. In refugee camps from Gaza to Lebanon to Jordan, communities run schools and clinics and remember their origins, insisting that return is their right. In the occupied West Bank, people hold protests, strikes and stone-throwing resistance despite checkpoints and tear gas. Inside Israel’s 1948 borders, Arab citizens protest discrimination. Abroad, Palestinian and international activists march on campuses and capitals with songs, slogans and boycotts.
Despite overwhelming odds, “the Palestinian people remain steadfast in their resistance…in all of its forms, in Mandatory Palestine and abroad”. Grassroots organizers are digging wells, planting olive trees, teaching children and telling their own story. Poets write underground, artists draw murals on rubble, and social media carries the voices of Gaza’s survivors. Each act of cultural survival – a song learned in a refugee camp, a family recipe cooked over campfire, a classroom lesson about history – is a quiet defiance. In the ashes of their destroyed homes, Palestinians nurture hope and mobilize solidarity worldwide. The global movement of conscience that has rallied behind them shows their resilience is not forgotten.
Palestine’s continued Nakba demands not just witness but action. We cannot allow “never again” to become a lie. Readers can answer the call in multiple ways:
Educate and speak out. Share accurate histories and current facts about the Nakba and Gaza. Challenge falsehoods when you hear them, and amplify Palestinian voices, journalists and scholars.
Pressure institutions and leaders. Write to your representatives and urge them to suspend arms sales, call for a ceasefire, and back accountability (including an end to the siege). Encourage your university or workplace to cut ties with companies complicit in the occupation and to support academic freedom.
Boycott, Divest, Sanction. Support the BDS movement by refusing to buy products and services from Israeli settler enterprises, and by pressuring pension funds and investors to pull money from companies profiting from Israel’s military and settlements. Join or form local campaigns for Palestinian rights.
Support Palestinian-led initiatives. Donate to humanitarian and community organizations (like UNRWA, health and education NGOs, legal rights groups) that Palestinians trust. Volunteer with or share petitions of diaspora networks and solidarity groups organizing for justice in Palestine.
Above all, remember that Palestinians are calling for justice and return, not pity. Their fight for life and land is ongoing – from Jaffa to Jabalia, the Nakba’s struggle continues. By moving from learning to action, each of us can help break the cycle of violence and stand on the right side of history.
Sources: Historical and current facts are drawn from international media and UN reports (see citations) to ensure this narrative rests on documented evidence.
