The Naksa of 1967

The 1967 Naksa, or “setback,” was an attempt by the settler colony of “Israel” to brutally finish the job of the 1948 Nakba. We call it “setback” as it was instrumental in “Israel’s” violent land grab of what was left of historical Palestine including the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the additional territory of the Golan Heights in Syria and Sinai in Egypt, resulting in “Israel” tripling in size (27,000 sq km).

The Tantura Massacre

The fishing village of Tantura, with a population of approximately 1,500, was one of 64 coastal villages between Haifa and Jaffa that were ethnically cleansed against the backdrop of the Nakba in 1948. On May 22 to 23, 1948, a week after the Zionist state claimed its ‘independence,’ soldiers of the Alexandroni Brigade (currently part of the IOF) carried out a premeditated massacre of over 200 unarmed Palestinians. This attack, typical of many during the beginning of the Nakba, resulted in the depopulation and destruction of Tantura, as well as the theft of its lands by ‘Israel.’

The Nakba Never Ended

The colonization of Palestine is a result of Zionism, a settler colonial project intent on the displacement, dispossession and destruction of native Palestinian life and land to establish a Zionist colony through ethnic cleansing and genocide. Through political and academic maneuvering, Zionism works to enact nearly a century of genocidal violence against Palestinians by claiming exclusive Jewish ‘rights’ to the land and making Native Palestinians out to be interlopers through their slogan “A land without a people for a people without a land.” As such, it’s important for us to recenter the Palestinian experience and narratives to counter Zionist propaganda that has resulted in a century of trauma and violence.