The True Origin of Palestinian Suffering Was Not 1948

“However, there was one man who positioned himself very early on as an opponent to this growing Jewish presence in his homeland. This man was Haj Amin al-Husseini, who, in 1921, became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.”

“The Palestine Holocaust is the result of a plot by foreign colonialism and World Jewry.”

—Haj Amin al-Husseini

It is frequently said that the troubles plaguing the Palestinian people go back to 1948, the year of the Nakba, or “disaster.” To a Palestinian nationalist, the Nakba refers to the ethnic cleansing by Jewish soldiers who uprooted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and forced them, at gunpoint, into the desert. These soldiers, and their families, would soon be living in these Palestinians’ old homes, with zero intention of ever giving them back.

Given this context, it is perhaps understandable that the term “Holocaust” was frequently invoked by Palestinian and other Arab notables in their writings on the subject (though it is perhaps unsurprising given that the Arabic word “nakba” means the same thing as the Hebrew word “shoah”). However, there is a broader geopolitical context in which we can see additional moral complexity at work in 1948. The Holocaust being only three years old, the material imperative was compelling for a Zionist project that argued that the Jews would never be safe without a land of their own. The Jews could point to the near destruction of their people and culture in Europe as their Exhibit A. And, shortly thereafter, the Arabs would have the displacement of their people and culture in Palestine as their own Exhibit A.

This inherent conflict between moral failure and moral imperative has long since been the fuel for many of the emotions underlying the long-running Israel-Palestinian conflict. It clearly has no “correct” answer, or at least not an obvious one if one sees the need for Jewish statehood and abhors imperialistic conquest. Taking that difficult position—as many are attempting to do—inevitably requires us to understand the suffering felt by the Palestinian people over the years. This is why a deeper examination of the relevant history—and the figures driving it—is in order if we are to understand this suffering.