Shoah is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, some 6,000,000 Jews – SIX MILLION HUMAN BEINGS - murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, while the world wrung its hands in inaction, while the Church was essentially silent. Genocide. An indescribable horror.
Nakba is the Arabic word for the Catastrophe, the word Palestinians (both Muslim and Christian) use for the invasion and destruction of Palestinian lands and homes along with the murder of thousands and the displacement of 725,000 Palestinians by Jews setting up the State of Israel.
We visited Yad Vashem today, the Holocaust Memorial and Museum. Children under ten years old are not permitted to enter. It graphically documents the development of hatred toward the Jews in Christendom, and then the rise of Hitler and Nazism in post-World War One Germany. Anti-semitism was part of Hitler’s program, culminating in the horrific concentration camps of the 1940s. A model of one of the Auschwitz ovens with thousands of people in it was emotionally overwhelming. Genocide. Unspeakable horror.
Ali gave us a tour of the Old City of Jerusalem today. He said that the removal of Palestinians from their lands and homes continues to this day. He pointed out where Jewish settlers were taking over Palestinian homes, at times building an additional floor on top of a centuries old Palestinian home. He spoke clearly of the oppression and humiliation the Palestinians suffer daily at the hands of the Israeli occupation apparatus. We noticed that everyone knew Ali, people greeting him at every turn. At the end of the tour, he told us he had been political prisoner, jailed in 1968 until 1985 when Israel released him in a political prisoner exchange. Palestine: an occupied land and people.
The Shoah (the Jewish Holocaust) ended in 1945.
The Nakba (the Palestinian Catastrophe) started in 1948.
From Shoah to Nakba in three years.
Psalm 22: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.
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