Your Editorial, “The Real Catastrophe Of The Nakba” (May 18), is right to state that “the catastrophe of the Palestinian people is that their leaders are grounded in victimhood.” As you argue, they would certainly have a state today had reason and compromise featured in their deliberations.
But that is the point — for Palestinians, the primary goal has always been killing Israel, not birthing a Palestinian state. That is why May 15 — the date Palestinians now commemorate with sackcloth, ashes and violence — is the anniversary of the date in 1948 when Arab armies and Palestinian militias launched full-scale hostilities on the newly declared Jewish state.
So the term Nakba is a falsehood — it implies a tragedy inflicted by others. The tragedy, of course, was self-inflicted.
As Israel’s United Nations Ambassador Abba Eban was to put it, “Once you determine the responsibility for that war, you have determined the responsibility for the refugee problem.”
The Germans today mourn their losses in the World War II, but not by lauding their invasion of Poland and justifying the attempt at European subjugation. They do not glorify Nazi aggression. However, the Palestinians do not mourn today the ill-conceived choice of going to war to abort Israel. They mourn only that they failed.
National President Zionist Organization of America
