Anti-Israel Jewish Group Accuses Israel of Timing Independence Day to Obscure ‘Nakba Day’

The modern state of Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948. May 14 is when it quite reasonably celebrates its Independence Day. There is nothing unusual about this. But the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace finds the timing of this annual observance sinister. More on their malignant confusion can be found here: “Anti-Israel Group Leading Pro-Hamas Protests Under Fire for False Claim About Israel’s Independence Day,” by Jack Elbaum, Algemeiner, May 15, 2024:

A prominent anti-Israel group that has helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza falsely claimed that Israel’s Independence Day was intentionally placed to “obscure” a Palestinian day of remembrance, sparking outrage and criticism.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which wrote the statement, is a fringe anti-Israel organization that did not condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and has long celebrated terrorism against Israelis.

Yesterday [Monday], the Israeli government ended its yearly cycle of state holidays that sequentially commemorates the Holocaust, Israeli militarism, and the creation of the state of Israel,” the statement read.

Israel does not commemorate “Israeli militarism” on May 13. It commemorates those soldiers who have died defending the country, and the victims of terrorism as well.

“The sequencing of these holidays,” it [JVP] argued, “was intentionally designed to conclude and obscure May 15, the day Palestinians mark the ongoing Nakba.” The tweet has garnered more than 7,700 likes.

However, critics quickly noted that Nakba Day — meant to commemorate the Palestinian “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” of the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948 — was inaugurated about 35 years after Independence Day and the other major Israeli national holidays near it, making it impossible for the latter to be intentionally established to desecrate the former.

Yom Haatzmaut and Yom Hazikaron — Israel’s Independence Day and Memorial Day, respectively — were each established by law in 1963. Meanwhile, Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, was established in 1959

In contrast, Nakba Day was officially established by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1998….

Palestinian Arabs did not all become refugees as a result of the war. Many left starting in late 1947, months before the war began. They were urged to do so by Arab leaders telling them to leave Mandatory Palestine, where hostilities would soon break out, so that they could avoid being caught in the middle. Some Israelis, such as the Mayor of Haifa, implored the Arabs to stay. Most chose not to, having been assured that they would soon be able to return, once the Jews had been destroyed, alongside the triumphant Arab armies. The flow of Arabs fleeing Palestine — and after May 14,1948 what had become the state of Israel — continued right through the war as Arab leaders encouraged them to flee.

At the same time, a similar number of Jews [actually, about 850,000, or 150,000 more than the Arabs who left Palestine/Israel] became refugees as they were expelled from countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

David May, research manager at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, rebuked JVP’s tweet, arguing, “Nakba Day was placed there specifically as a rejection of Jewish independence in their ancestral land. Its timing marks a continued rejection of the Jewish right to independence and self-rule that the Palestinians desire for themselves. So, the Palestinians placed their holiday around the Israeli ones, not the other way around.”…

Nakba Day is observed by the Palestinians on May 15, the day after Israelis celebrate their Independence Day. The date was deliberately chosen as a way to suggest that Israel’s independence, coming the day before, had been responsible for the “Nakba” or “catastrophe.” In fact, the “Nakba” need never have occurred, had the Arabs not attacked Israel. They are the authors of their own catastrophe.

Israelis were not thinking about the “Nakba Day” that the Palestinians would begin observing in 1998, some 35 years later, when they did the most natural thing in the world, and in 1963 fixed their Independence Day observance for May 14. it was the Palestinians who in 1998 chose May 15 as their “Nakba Day,” as one more way to divert attention from Israel, and onto the unspeakable tragedy, without parallel in human history, that had befallen the Palestinian people.