A Palestinian “human rights activist,” one Rabea Eghbariah, currently a student at Harvard Law School, wrote an article on “The Legal Concept of the Nakba” for Columbia Law Review. It was 100 pages of absolute rubbish, and the appalled adults in the room — the law professors and lawyers who serve on Columbia Law Review’s board of directors — demanded that the article be withdrawn. The young editors of the Review, with the self-righteousness and arrogance of youth, refused. Apparently they were proud to stand foursquare with their Palestinian contributor in his Nakba vaporings. So the adults simply took down the website of the Columbia Law Review. That’s where things stand. Here’s a fuller account: “Columbia Law Review removes entire website over Nakba article,” TRT World, June 4, 2024:
The Columbia Law Review suspended its website after publishing an article on the Nakba, marking yet another puerile attempt by a Western institution to clamp down on information related to the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel.
The article, “Toward Nakba As A Legal Concept,” was written by Harvard Law School student and Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah….
In an interview, seven editors involved in the article disclosed that over the weekend, members of the journal’s board of directors urged the leadership of the law review, which consists of students, to delay or potentially retract its publication.
Upon the editors’ rejection of this request, the board opted to shut down the entire website. The editors who opposed the directives of the board of directors have reportedly been asked to step down now.
Elder of Ziyon comments:
The law review article is 100 pages of anti-Israel and antisemitic agitprop dedicated to the idea that the “nakba” is so unique, so utterly evil, that simple terms like “occupation” and “apartheid” and genocide” do not do it justice, and it requires an entirely new legal category in the pantheon of heinous war crimes.
Here’s a bit from Elghabiah’s introduction:
The law does not possess the language that we desperately need to accurately capture the totality of the Palestinian condition. From occupation to apartheid and genocide, the most commonly applied legal concepts rely on abstraction and analogy to reveal particular facets of subordination. This Article introduces Nakba as a legal concept to resolve this tension. … This Article proposes to distinguish apartheid, genocide, and Nakba as different, yet overlapping, modalities of crimes against humanity.
Elder of Ziyon remarks: “The target of the article is really Zionism itself. And the author is not above comparing Palestinians fleeing in 1948 to the Holocaust – and saying that Zionism uses the Holocaust to justify the fictional genocide of Palestinians.”
More from Elghabiah’s article:
Historically and conceptually, the 1948 Nakba has existed at the juncture of the Holocaust and Apartheid South Africa. The concept of Nakba thus provides an opportunity to generate an independent framework that structures the legal questions at play and moves beyond simple analogy. Recognizing Nakba not only bestows a belated recognition upon its primary victims and allows us to imagine liberatory, egalitarian, and just futures but also reinforces, rather than undermines, the universal lessons of the Holocaust by recognizing the grave dangers of situations in which victimhood is used and abused to victimize others.
Zionism must be understood in terms of the Nakba it generated. Destructive ideologies mirror the calamities they produce and often become defined from the perspective of their victims. Just as Nazi ideology produced the Holocaust and Afrikaner nationalism generated apartheid, Zionism similarly birthed the Nakba.
Elder of Ziyon also notes that Elghabiah “brings pages of evidence that Zionism is inherently committed to the ethnic cleansing of all non-Jews from the river to the sea. But footnotes do not prove a point – a single counterexample is enough to disprove this thesis.”
If Zionists are committed to the ethnic cleansing of all non-Jews “from the river to the sea,” how do we explain that the Arab population of Gaza increased from 400,000 in 1967, when Israel took possession of the Strip after the Six-Day War, to 1.2 million in 2005, when Israel relinquished control? How is it that the Arab population of Israel in 1949 was 160,000, and today is two million? And what should we make of the Arab population in the West Bank, that rose from 900,000 in 1967, when Israel took it over, to three million today? What ethnic cleansing is that? What “genocide”? Rabea, please explain. We’re all ears.
Elder of Ziyon has said all that need be said about this 100-page exercise in nonsense and lies. Let us hope that when Rabea Eghbariah graduates from Harvard Law School, still spouting his Big Idea (“Nakba as a Legal Concept”), no reputable firm will hire him. Don’t worry about him, however. He can always go to work for CAIR. And Al Jazeera would happily snap him up.
Buraq says
If you tell a lie — for example – that there is a Palestinian people who occupied a land called Palestine, then you cannot substantiate the lie by bringing the truth to the statement. The truth will expose the lie. So, what is a liar forced to do? Bring more lies to the table. Eventually, there are layers and layers of lies piling up on top of each other.
And that’s why this article in the Columbia Law Review was so ridiculous. It’s more proof, if any were needed, that the initial premise that there are Palestinians is complete nonsense!
Paul Burns says
Over 800,000 Jews were dispossessed and kicked out of their homes all over the Middle East and North Africa. They moved to Israel and made the best of it, and didn’t p*ss and moan about a right of return or a so called “catastrophe” and don’t still claim to be refugees or call their suburbs “refugee camps.” So sick of the Arabs playing the victim when in reality they were the aggressors.
Wellington says
I agree and would add that malevolent and fallacious ideologies like Islam, Marxism, Nazism, modern Western Leftism, etc. will invariably play the victim card—it’s part of their overall game plan and strategy. Let us not forget, as an example, that Poland invaded Germany on September 1st, 1939 and Germany had no recourse but to respond to this flagrant Polish aggression.
Mike says
Please read the article, “We are victims, and everything we do is justified,” by Daniel Greenfield. He sums it up nicely.
Wellington says
I did read the article. What did I miss? Spell it out if you will.
brenrod says
The Jewish refugees were driven out never to return and were assimilated in Israel and other lands whereas the Muslim nations sought to use the Arab refugees as pawns and kept them in camps. Their Nakba arises from Islam in that the Muslim nations never assimilated them and never completed the swap of populations of Jews and Muslims. It is the refugee Jews from arab Muslim nations who still remain deprived of their homes, lands and assets. No fakestinians should be getting aid until those nakba jews from arab lands are compensated.
bagsgroove says
Muslims will always be Professional victims,for they know nothing else to do.
brenrod says
They are professional liars by choice, it’s called taqiyya.
Wellington says
My chief concern here is that this Rabea Eghbariah at Harvard Law is not an outlier in law schools, especially the elite ones, across this nation. Loads of Alvin Bragg wannabes (the DA of Manhattan who indicted Trump with 34 felonies and got Trump convicted on these utterly bogus 34 felonies) and Eghbariah types are future lawyers in huge amounts and they will weaponize the law, distort the law, abase the law, in order to advance their warped agendas. Yes, this is my chief concern and I fear as well that the current editors of the Columbia Law Review who nixed this article (to their credit) on line are nothing more than an ever decreasing element of sensible and fair people still in charge.
BTW, Alvin Bragg himself, no surprise here, is a Harvard Law graduate. Much trouble ahead I fear. Much.
carpediadem says
The editors did not nix the article. The board of directors did.
The editors wanted to keep it.
Wellington says
Sorry. I mixed up editors with directors but my overall point still remains the same, i.e., young fools are the leaders of tomorrow and this does not bode well for freedom and other good things.
deze MN bee says
Graduate as lawyer,
post-graduate as liar.
Chennai says
If you click the link to the Columbia Law Review the article is still there, in its entirety.
So, what happened? The board of directors caved in to the mob?
Memi says
Hitler said: Kemal AtaTurk was my greatest teacher”.
Victims of Rabea’s Islamofascist ideology are also the 6.5 million Greeks and Armenians and other Christians slaughtered 1913–1923 by genocidal Turkey, today’s supporter, funder and passport-provider of Hamas, ISIS, Alameda.together with Qatar, Iran and Pakistan.
“Palestinians” (from Greek word ‘phillistine” are an artificial entity concocted by British colonialism dividing the spoils of WWII. (Jews inhabited Palestine 4000 years)! Historically ignorant activists unfortunately are breathing life to a barbaric genocidal psedo-religious political Islamofascist uprising that has poisoned Academia.
Is Sharia law with its misogynist, homophobic Christianophobic and anti-Semitic what Rabea and young “academics” what they want to enforce upon us? Rabea’s faux-“scholarly article” belongs in a garbage can marked “BARBARISM RECYCLED””!
John P says
Is Rabea Eghbariah a us citizen? If not under what voisa category is she here in the US? Why has she not been deported? These are questions that need to be answered. We should not allow trouble makers to remain in the USA. They are only stirring up more discord!