Protecting the Zionist Narrative, At Last

I did the research for O Jerusalem, by Larry Collins and Dominque Lapierre in which I interviewed many of those veterans of Israel’s War of Independence. At least that record exists. Daniel Gordis’s piece is important in reminding us all how quickly we forget. Lilly Rivlin

In Perspective: Protecting the Zionist narrative at last

Jun. 4, 2009
Daniel Gordis , THE JERUSALEM POST

Imagine that Germany, embittered by incessant reminders of what happened during the Holocaust, passed a law forbidding German Jews from publicly marking the destruction of European Jewry. Or that the US Congress, tired of hearing Native Americans recite their tales of woe, made it illegal for them to mention their losses on July 4. If Turkey passed legislation like that, directed at Armenian memories of 1915, we would hardly blink an eye. But if a genuine democracy followed suit? We would scarcely believe our ears.

So why are we not more distressed by legislation before the Knesset that would criminalize marking the “Nakba” on Independence Day? What kind of a democracy makes it illegal for a group of its citizens to mark the losses they have suffered? And in what kind of democracy can such legislation be proposed without massive waves of protest?

So why no protests here? Surely, few of us pretend that Israeli Arabs didn’t lose very much in 1948. We know they did. Is it that we’re still at war with the Arab world (unlike America and its native population, for example), or that marking the Nakba is tantamount to asserting that Israel is illegitimate, which we cannot and will not abide?

Perhaps. But we’re also witness to something new. It’s a belief in the ability of hastily written laws to correct problems created by decades of failed Zionist education.

Read the rest of Daniel Gordis’ article here.