Monday, May 15, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
The decree states that states that "the Nakba of Palestine is an integral part of the Palestinian national narrative based on historical right and international resolutions, and the denial of the Nakba is a crime punishable by law with imprisonment not exceeding two years, and the competent authorities will prosecute the perpetrators both inside and outside the country."
Among the things forbidden to say or write under the decree:
* Questioning some or all of the implications of the Nakba
* Claiming that the Palestinian people left voluntarily and without coercion
* Denying the classification of the nakba crime as a crime against humanity
* Absolving Zionist groups of their responsibility for the crimes
* Denying the role of the British Mandate authority in facilitating the occurrence of the Palestinian Nakba.
It turns out that Mahmoud Abbas himself is guilty of "Nakba denial." In 2009, he gave an interview about the circumstances of how his family left Safed in 1948, and he admits that they left without any coercion:
Fatah's cofounder reminisced at length about his Safed origins and haphazardly let the truth slip out. "Until the nakba", he recounted, his family "was well-off in Safed." When Abbas was 13, "we left on foot at night to the Jordan River... Eventually we settled in Damascus... My father had money, and he spent his money methodically. After a year, when the money ran out, we began to work."People were motivated to run away... They feared retribution from Zionist terrorist organizations - particularly from the Safed ones. Those of us from Safed especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what happened during the 1929 uprising. This was in the memory of our families and parents... They realized the balance of forces was shifting and therefore the whole town was abandoned on the basis of this rationale - saving our lives and our belongings."
This was the case with most Palestinians who left in 1947-48.
This decree violates international law. It violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, among others.
This law obviously violates the human rights of Palestinians, as it infringes on their freedom of speech and freedom of opinion. Palestinian researchers can no longer publish anything, or make a TikTok video, that contradicts what this law says.
And the chance that "human rights organizations" will denounce this law for explicitly violating the freedom of Palestinians is exactly zero.
We'll see if the media covers this at all.
