This year marks the 76th anniversary of al-Nakba, “the Catastrophe.” On May 15, 1948 Israel carried out the ethnic cleansing that displaced 750,000 Palestinians. 

The devastation at the hands of Israel is most understood to have begun in 1948, however since October 7, 2023 the violence has intensified. As of May 14, 2024, Israel has killed at least 35,173 people including more than 14,500 children in Gaza and killed at least 498 people including 124 children in the West Bank. As of May 12, 2024 Israel has damaged or destroyed more than half of Gaza’s homes, 73% of school buildings, 267 places of worship, and only 12 out of 35 hospitals are partially functioning. 

All of this brutality against Palestinians has been fueled by the political Zionist ideology which was popularized at the end of the 1800’s. Zionism is a nationalist, political ideology that called for the creation of a Jewish state and now supports the continued existence of Israel as such state. Theodor Herzl is considered the “father” of political Zionism. As Zionism gained popularity, in 1917, the British government showed its support for the creation of a national home for jewish people in Palestine via the Balfour Declaration. This led to an influx of Zionists in Palestine. The Palestinian people rightfully resisted. Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam, a Syrian leader living in Haifa, began to call for a militant revolt against the British and Zionists. 

Although Al-Qassam was killed by British forces in 1935, his resistance inspired many. By 1936 the Arab rebellion erupted against British imperialism and Zionist settler-colonialism and by 1939 the British had extinguished the rebellion and began to limit Jewish immigration into Palestine. In response, Zionists launched a series of terrorist attacks against the British to drive them out of Palestine. 

According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Zionist leaders met regularly from March 1947 to March 1948 to devise plans to ethnically cleanse Palestine. As Zionist attacks on the British and Arabs escalated, the British decided to hand over their responsibility for Palestine to the United Nations. In November 1947, the UN General Assembly proposed a plan to divide Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab one. Despite Jewish people in Palestine only making up one-third of the population, they were allocated 55 percent of the land. By early 1948, the Zionist forces moved to disregard the proposed borders and moved to take over more cities, in many cases carrying out organized massacres. 

The Palestine Mandate was set to expire on May 14, 1948 and the  Zionist forces took this opportunity to seize more Palestinian land. In April 1948, they captured Haifa, one of the biggest Palestinian cities and later Jaffa. On the same day that British forces formally withdrew, the Zionist head of the agency at the time, David Ben-Gurion, proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel. 

By 1949 over 700,000 Palestinians had been made refugees and more than 13,00 had been killed by the Israeli military. In May 1949, Israel was admitted to the UN and its grip over 78 percent of historic Palestine was consolidated, the remaining 22 percent became known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. To this day Palestine is not recognized as a full member of the UN. 

As we organize and mobilize in support of a free Palestine, it is crucial to understand that the cruelty against Palestinian people did not begin on October 7, 2023. The genocide we are witnessing today is a result of decades of deliberate attacks on Palestinian people. Wherever we are in the world, we must know that our struggles are connected to the plight of Palestinians. In the Bay Area we can see the connection between the violent displacement of the Palestinian people and the long-time residents of the Bay. We know that displacement leads to more poverty, criminalization of poor people and people of color, and to the painful loss of community ties. 

On this 76th anniversary of the Nakba we must use all of our resources in support of the Palestinian resistance– our time, money, and attention to name a few. We ask that you join us in this fight for our collective liberation and take the time to support our ally, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center here in the Bay Area. Their mission highlights the importance of fighting for the liberation and self-determination of Arab and Muslim communities here and in their homelands. Their mission states, “We see our struggles here as a domestic manifestation of global militarism and racial capitalism, and as the root causes of the political, social and economic instability of our homelands. In that spirit, we see the liberation of our people as inextricably tied to the liberation of all oppressed people.”

May we continue to see our fight here in the Bay Area as tied to the struggle of oppressed people all across the world. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.