Today, Saturday 16 May, islanders in Orkney will gather between 1 and 2pm on the Kirk Green, outside St Magnus Cathedral, in a Peace Vigil for the people of Gaza. They will also be joining with the millions around the world remembering The Nakba .
What was (and is) The Nakba?
The Nakba, or catastrophe, took place in the aftermath of World War 2, in 1948. Palestine was once a multi ethnic and multi cultural society. It had been a British Protectorate. In the 1930s European Jews migrated to Palestine under the Zionist ideology of establishing a separate Jewish state, and fleeing increasing persecution in Europe. This period is covered in the recent film Palestine 1936. The film was shown earlier on this year at Kirkwall’s Phoenix Cinema.
Jewish terrorist groups were responsible for repeated terrorist incidents and attacks on the Palestine Police, British Army and British Dependants as well as massacres of Palestinian villagers to free up land for settlement. The major Jewish terrorist groups were Haganah and Irgun, both of whom formed prior to the Second World War, and Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang which formed in 1940.
In total 784 British men, women, soldiers and civilians were killed between the years 1945 and 1948 in an attempt to bring peace and stability to Palestine. – Soldiers of Oxford Museum.
As part of the violence that unfolded in that period The 2nd Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (52nd) arrived in Palestine in late October 1945.
On 31st October, just after the Battalion had arrived in Palestine, the Jewish terrorist offensive against British rule began with a wave of bomb attacks on police vehicles, railway sites and Haifa oil refinery.
The southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was used as the British administrative HQ in Palestine. On 21st July 1946 the terrorist group Irgun blew up the southern wing. Ninety-one people of various nationalities were killed, including Arabs, Britons and Jews, and 46 were injured.
On July 27th Corporal Cranwell from C Company was shot and died five days later.
In November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under a UN administration. The Arab world rejected the plan, arguing that it was unfair and violated the UN Charter. Jewish militias launched attacks against Palestinian villages, forcing thousands to flee. The situation escalated into a full-blown war in 1948, with the end of the British Mandate and the departure of British forces, the declaration of independence of the State of Israel and the entry of neighbouring Arab armies. The newly established Israeli forces launched a major offensive. The result of the war was the permanent displacement of more than half of the Palestinian population. – The United Nations, The Question of Palestine.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine resulted in 750,000 Palestinian’s being displaced from their land and forced to flee. 15,000 Palestinians were killed and 530 towns and villages obliterated.
Today Israel, an Apartheid State, continues this process started with its foundation to realise a ‘greater Israel’, and drive Palestinians from their lands. The Gaza Genocide, the settler violence in The West Bank, and the bombing of Lebanon, are part of this longer term strategy.
The New York Times this week published a shocking report where it listed the violence and torture meted out in Israeli prisons on Palestinians – including rape – The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.
” in wrenching interviews, Palestinians have recounted to me a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children — by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.”
The Israeli Government says it will sue The New York Times over the story. The paper is standing by its story which Israel says is false. There is, however, a growing catalogue of evidence of the torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners rounded up and incarcerated in Israeli prisons.
Missile and drone attacks by Israel continue in Gaza, and Lebanon. In The West Bank just days ago, illegal Israeli armed settlers strode into a Palestinian village, Jiljilyya, to the north of Rammun accompanied by the Israeli Military (IDF) and stole hundreds of sheep from a farmer. Several Palestinians were wounded and the farmer’s teenage son was shot dead.
The everyday violence, killings, imprisonments, and theft of Palestinian property, is part of the Zionist ideology to make it unsustainable for Palestinians to remain in their villages. To isolate them, and force them out, to the refugee camps, where generations have been since The Nakba began.
The islanders in Orkney welcome anyone who wishes to join with them to see an end to the killing in Gaza, and the restoration of Peace and Justice for the Palestinian People: Saturday 16 May, 1 – 2pm, Kirk Green, Broad Street, Kirkwall.
The Orkney News has filmed and documented the Peace Vigils in Orkney since they began at the end of October 2023. Here is the latest one:
Click on this link to download an information sheet about The Nakba from the Jewish Voice for Peace:
Fiona Grahame
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