This post is part of a long series I plan to report about Palestine as a country, culture, and humans across multiple communities in hopes that I spread the world about Palestine and what is happening there.

The fact that I am an Arab obviously comes with perceived bias which is a perception that I accept considering that most of the people on this platform are not Arabs. As much as I believe it is something I am able to refute using my own history, I prefer to keep the focus of this series on Palestine itself and let the series speak for itself.

However, considering the aforementioned fact of my identity, I have challenged myself and limited myself to use mostly sources that are outside of the Arab world when it comes to facts. Therefore, all the events mentioned here come from non-Arab sources which you will be able to verify yourself by reading the sources below. In fact, I implore you to check out those sources regardless of the series.

Everything I shared in the previous part was based on 100% Israeli sources. It is important to lead with that because Arabic sources are widely seen as bad. If the Palestinian Ministry of Health says 100 people died inside Palestine in a certain attack and Israel says it is only 10, casual observers tend to believe the latter. Now, I do have a moral disagreement over that approach, but for now, it is something I submit to. However, I do want to emphasise that Arabic sources show a much uglier reality.

In this part, I try to highlight an issue that comes when you are a casual observer trying to learn the truth about the Palestine/Israel conflict and you don't trust any of the Arabic sources. This part solely exists to voice how any outside voices straying away from the official narrative are treated and forced into silence.

I would also like to highlight that these are the voices I learned about and I would bet that there are thousands of voices that I didn't get the chance to hear.

While it remains that my main reason behind my approach is to reach casual observers, I would like to point out in this part how those sources are so scarce and how they are treated.

The Nakba Law

Before we get to the Nakba law, I would like to take a detour into what happened to the two main sources for my past post, Theodore Katz, the Haifa University student whose Master thesis uncovered what happened in Tantura village and Forensics Architecture, whose work deduced where the mass graves where the Tantura villages were buried. I would like to share their stories and the consequences of digging into something like "Nakba" from "The only democracy in the Middle East".

Theodore Katz

This student simply published his thesis which included statements shared by the soldiers who were there during the Tantura Masacare and who committed it. These aren't statements made by witnesses or someone who was at the office when orders were given, no, it was the soldiers themselves. What happened to him is that he was handed a defamation lawsuit by people who are by definition War Criminals.

During the trial, he wasn't even given the chance to showcase his evidence. The judge, who didn't give him the chance to share his statement, was later interviewed on camera about it and was given some samples of the audio recordings he intended to show years after her ruling, and said "He should have kept going". So, even by the judge's admission, Katz's words held, at the first estimate, a lot of truth to it. The Tantura documentary and another patch of those soldiers admitting to what they did confirm that.

What happened to him is that he was getting constant pressure from the government and the university to withdraw his thesis and it was banned by the university. He did withdraw his statement, but it should be pointed out that he did so after he was taken from his home and did so without the presence of his lawyer. His attempt to withdraw his withdrawal was met with rejection by the aforementioned judge. His academic future was completely destroyed.

Eyal Wiezman

This is the man who founded Forensic Artichture that determined where the mass graves were. He got a lighter punishment as his books were banned in Israel, especially, "Hollow Land". Hollow Land is a book where Wiezman speaks of how Israel's settlement approach was constructed in a way that suffocates and forces Palestinians out of their homes.

Below is the official description of the book as per its publisher Versobooks

From the tunnels of Gaza to the militarized airspace of the Occupied Territories, Eyal Weizman unravels Israel’s mechanisms of control and its transformation of Palestinian towns, villages and roads into an artifice where all natural and built features serve military ends. Weizman traces the development of this strategy, from the influence of archaeology on urban planning, Ariel Sharon’s reconceptualization of military defence during the 1973 war, through the planning and architecture of the settlements, to the contemporary Israeli discourse and practice of urban warfare and airborne targeted assassinations.

These are just two direct examples, but when it comes to digging about something like Nakba, it is basically impossible to get on from inside Israel. The reason I am saying this is because, in 2011, the Israeli Knesset issued a law called "Nakba Law". While most of what is written in it is too general to take seriously like the defacing of the flag. There are two specific parts of the law that are worth mentioning.

Denying the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State

and

Referring to the Israeli Independence Day or the founding day of the country as a day of mourning

The first one sounds like a normal thing, but by combining it with the latter, you start to see the problem. You see, together those two parts mean that you are not allowed to talk about the massacres, murders, rape, and ethnic cleansing prior to Israel's "Independence Day". So, by pointing out those events that would actively delegitimize Israel, you would be breaking that law. To put this in context, imagine a law that prohibits Americans from talking about Native Americans or slavery.

Now, you won't be sent to prison if you talk about it. However, the Ministry of Finance is required by law to cut financing to any research institution that talks about any of the atrocities that were committed by what is now known as Israel. This applies to Universities as well in case they choose to host a public speaking by a professor who chooses to speak on those matters.

Due to this law, many books didn't see the light, articles were banned from publication, films weren't filmed, and many people were simply silenced.

Self-Hating Jews

All of these measures were done in order to protect a narrative that Israel hypes itself with. It's the equivalent of the old Greek silencing anyone who questions the existence of Zeus, everything to protect the Mythology, despite how false it is. This specifically applies to anyone who is Jewish but chooses not to be a Zionist.

These anti-Zionist Jews are simply referred to as "Self-Hating Jews", a humiliating nickname for a Jewish person. One of those "Self-Hating Jews" is Ilan Pappe, a man whose writings got him basically expelled from Haifa University. Pappe's books, "Ten Myths About Israel" and "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" are essential sources to this series that I implore people to read. However, they are also among the many works of Pappe that got him expelled from Haifa University and reviled by many.

So, firing, cutting finances, lawsuits, jail threats, imprisonment, and many forms can be taken as Israel's retaliation against those who speak against the running narrative. But, this prompts the question, what are they trying to protect exactly? Well, they are protecting a myth that I will get into in the next part.

Previous Parts

The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 1: Tantura

Follow-up parts

Sources

The Arabs: A History - Eugene Rogan
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
Ten Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe
Palestine: ...it is something colonial (Decolonizing the mind)
One hundred questions and answers about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - Pedro Brieger
Tantura Documentary
Executions and Mass Graves in Tantura - Forensic Architecture
Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian Territory is apartheid – UN human rights expert
"Nakba Law" - Amendment No. 40 to the Budgets Foundations Law
Eye Witnesses Statments
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 1 | Featured Documentary
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 2 | Featured Documentary
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 3 | Featured Documentary
Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 4 | Featured Documentary
Anatomy of the Israeli mind
Collusion Across The Jordan: King Abdullah, The Zionist Movement, And The Partition Of Palestine - Avi Shlaim

The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 2: Protecting The Israel Mythology