Nakba60

Holocaust Denial has attracted a lot of international publicity — and rightly so. But Nakba Denial is hardly known about outside the Palestinian diaspora. ‘Nakba’ or ‘catastrophe’ is the word Palestinians use to describe the period 1947-1949, and especially 1948, when many thousands of families were evicted or dispossessed, during the creation of the modern Jewish state of Israel. David Ben Gurion famously said that old men will die, and the young will forget, but his optimism in this case proved wrong. For Palestinians — several million of them now scattered around the Middle East and the wider world — still bear the scars and feel the grief.

This was the background to the launch this evening, in the Brunei Gallery at SOAS, of Nakba60, a 60th anniversary season of events, including films and concerts (notably one by Marcel Khalife and Al Mayadine Ensemble, at the Logan Hall in Bloomsbury on 25 January). The launch was addressed very briefly by the film director Stephen Frears, who visited the West Bank and what he termed its ‘vile wall’ last summer, and Palestinian academic Karma Nabulsi. There was some atmospheric original music on the oud by a visiting Israeli Arab musician from Haifa, melancholy in its tones. But the evening as such was joyful rather than a lament: marking the fact that Palestinian consciousness and culture survive, even in adversity.

Link: www.nakba60.org.uk