This week is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster here in Israel/Palestine.  Sunday evening began Israeli Memorial Day, which on Monday evening turned into Israeli Independence Day.  This coming Sunday, Palest

inians will commemorate Nakba (Catastrophe) Day.  All of these events are referring to the year. 1948. (Not to be confused with the year of Indian Independence, Laurence Olivier’s show-stopping performance in Hamlet, or the year in which James Taylor, Cat Stevens, and Olivia Newton-John were born).  No, the 1948 I mean is the one that forever changed the map of the Middle East and the lives of millions of people claiming the area between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea as home.     So this week, Israelis celebrate the gaining of a homeland and Palestinians mourn the loss of one.

So what do I, who belong to neither nation, do this week?  My activities have been, I like to think, well-rounded:

• On Sunday night I attended an “alternative” Memorial Day ceremony, in which both Israelis and  Palestinians who’d lost family members to violence as well as those who’d been involved in the violence themselves, spoke about their experiences and their hopes for peace.  The event was organized
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  by Combatants for Peace, a fascinating organization.  It was very moving, despite the language barrier.  Unfortunately, the Palestinian keynote speaker was denied entry to the country by the Israeli army, so she spoke by video.

• Monday night back in Haifa I made an appearance at a rooftop Independence Day party.  We watched the ceremony that takes place at Mount Herzl, in which Israelis light torches and speak about Israel.  Really quite an impressive spectacle.  Israeli Independence Day has, as a friend put it: “an amount of flags rivaled only by the most insecure regimes in history.”  My Israeli party-host remarked at one point in a tentative, apologetic tone: “He’s talking about diversity.  See, it’s not that nationalistic!”  Oh but it is.  It’s Independence Day though, what do you expect?
• Tuesday afternoon, my coworkers and I drove north, past a big field of Israeli festivities to the Arab town of Tamra, where we joined in the 14^th annual “March of Return.”  What I’m told is the largest crowd the event has ever seen snaked its way through a field to the nearby site of a Palestinian village that was destroyed in 1948.  Standing under the treest that were planted over the village lands, we heard speeches and musical performances, including a touching a speech from a representative of the Jewish organization Zochrot.
• Tomorrow we will commemorate the Nakba with a tour of the old places in Haifa that existed pre-1948 and some lectures and discussion.

It is especially important this year, when the Knesset has put the pedal to the metal in its attempts to erase history, that Israelis of all creeds and classes as well as members of the international community make an effort to learn about the collective memory of the Palestinians.  Regardless of one’s opinions on the founding of the state of Israel in its current location, human decency requires taking issue with the way in which it was accomplished.

Sunday is Nakba Day.  There are giant protests being organized around the world, and, specifically, around Israel.  Palestinians and those in solidarity with them are marching to the Israel-Egyptian, Lebanese and Jordanian borders as I write this; symbolically  “returning.”  Today, protestors in Tahrir square (remember that place?) waved Palestinian flags and called for an end to the Occupation and freedom from oppression.

Though the original wave of freedom that  swept through Tunisia and Egypt in the early months of this year has bumped into some levees recently, democracy is still coming to the Middle East, and Israel and Palestine will not stay dry.  The Israelis must choose to come out on the right

side of history.  No more denying Palestinian History.

Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion,  warned in 1948: “We must do everything to ensure they (the Palestinians) never do return.” Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes, he added “The old will die and the young will forget.”  Well, as it turns out Mr. Prime Minister, the children of the Nakba catastrophe have not forgotten.  And neither will their

children.  Ignoring this is not going to make it go away; Israel has to address the Right of Return and acknowledge what happened in 1948.  ASAP.

Minute-long video stories from children of Nakba survivors can be seen at: Nakbasurvivor.com and read by following the Twitter feed #Nakbasurvivor