As a member of Not in My Name, I was disappointed the City of Concord removed Nakba (mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war) from its “diversity & inclusion” calendar. This was in response to a request from Allyson Guertin, Jewish Federation of NH executive director who considered the write up on Nakba to be inaccurate and biased. Guertin contests its reference to the involuntary and, at times, deathly expulsion of Palestinians stating, “I think that there’s controversy around whether they were told to leave or chose to leave.”

As a Jewish American who grew up believing that Israel was a miracle created as “a land without people for a people without land,” I’ve experienced a painful process of relearning the truth. There are countless books, films and podcasts recounting the history of 1948 when the State of Israel was created. Rashid Khalidi’s, “The Hundred Years’s War on Palestine” and Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” are examples. I never heard the word “Nakba” until I was in my sixties, and slowly allowed myself to learn a very different narrative, that of the Palestinians’ ongoing “catastrophe.” I believe one reason the Gaza war wages on is the unwillingness to look at painful truths that challenge our long-held beliefs, creating irreconcilable cognitive and emotional dissonance. For many American Jews it is painful to criticize Israel but we need to challenge this unwavering alliance. By erasing the Nakba, we diminish our humanity and capacity to see the suffering.

Anne Romney

Portsmouth