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This essay, in commemoration of Nakba Day, was written by Vicki Johnson, a member of the local peace group Justice Now! It is posted with her permission.

Nakba Day, May 15

by Vicki Johnson

In Arabic "al-nakba" means "the catastrophe". Nakba Day is observed throughout the world on May 15 to remember the catastrophic crimes committed against Palestinian Muslims and Palestinian Christians during 1947-1949. Three-fourths of the Palestinian population was ethnically cleansed by Zionists following the founding of Israel. Over 700,000 Palestinians became refugees by 1949, leaving only 150,000 Palestinians in their indigenous land. More than 500 Palestinian villages were depopulated and completely destroyed. Massacres and rapes were committed by the Zionists.

Today, Palestinians are the world's largest refugee group. Millions of Palestinian refugees are scattered throughout the world, living in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

About 10% (60,000) of the Palestinian refugees in 1948 were Palestinian Christians. For centuries Palestinian Christians -- Anglican, Maronite Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Armenians, Baptists, Copts and Assyrians -- lived cooperatively with Muslims, Jews and Druze. The Nakba and subsequent Israel policies have destroyed nearly all of the Palestinian Christian legacy. Before 1948 there were Palestinian Christian majorities in Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Ramallah and Nazareth. The bigger concentration of Christians were not in the West Bank or Gaza, but in Galilee, the coast (Haifa and Jaffa) and Jerusalem. Most of the Palestinian Christians were concentrated in areas that Israel cleansed from its Palestinian native population.

In 1948 the Christian population was 80% of Bethlehem and 50% of Jerusalem; today Palestinian Christians now comprise just 2% of Jerusalem and 20% of Bethlehem. The huge decline in Palestinian Christians since 1948 results from Israel policies. Bethlehem lies inside the West Bank of Palestine, not Israel. Yet Israel has built a 25 foot high concrete wall encircling the Palestinian Christian triangle of Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour (Shepherd’s Field), cutting the Bethlehem community off from its spiritual lifeline to Jerusalem. Bethlehem is surrounded by 27 illegal settlements housing 73,000 Jews. The settlements are connected by Jewish-only bypass roads. The Church of the Nativity is now pockmarked with Israeli bullet holes.

Well-known Palestinian Christians who have written about their faith, Palestinian suffering and exile, and their personal experiences during the Nakba include Naim Ateek, Mitri Raheb and Elias Chacour, and the late Edward Said, who held Columbia University's most prestigious academic position.

Over the centuries Palestinian Christians have thought profoundly about Christian theology. Mitri Raheb explains that contact between the Middle Eastern churches and the Roman Catholic Church in the West did not take place until the middle ages. Unlike in Europe, there never existed in Palestine a monopolistic church claiming the sole path to salvation. Christianity in Palestine from the beginning was pluralistic and for 1400 years Palestinian Christians co-existed with Islam and shared Arab culture. Many lessons can be learned from Palestinian Christians about multicultural and multireligious society.

American and Israeli Zionists cite the Old Testament as a justification for Israeli government policies of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Naim Ateek has explained how the Bible that is supposed to bring justice and mercy is used as a weapon to oppress the Palestinians. The greatest obstacle to peace today, he feels, are the illegal Jewish settlements that were inspired in large part by Jewish religious extremism. Interpreting Ephesians, Ateek says that Palestinians wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Mitri Raheb writes that Palestinians unjustly bear the sins of Europe - Palestinians became the victims of the victims of the Holocaust.

The famous Palestinian (Muslim) poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote: To a Jewish killer: If you had contemplated the victim’s face And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle. And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way to find one’s identity again.

Nakba, the castrophe. But even in the face of grave hardships, Palestinian culture survives and struggles for justice and human rights. Naim Ateek has said "many of us feel that the ideal resolution of the conflict lies not in the formation of two national and sovereign states where nationalism could become negatively competitive, but in one state that combines the two nationalities in one system of equal democracy." Mitri Raheb asks that American money not be spent to subsidize the Israeli occupation, but to create a just peace in the region.

Vicki can be reached at: www.justicefirst.info