Celebrating Nakba Day

'Palestinians' Commemorate Nakba Day (Image credit: Avi Ohayon/Government Press Office of Israel)

In a few days, Israel's Arab citizens will be in deep mourning.

The anniversary of the darkest day on their calendar — a calendar and history that was created only in the last few generations — is rapidly approaching.

May 14th is their "Nakba Day” commemoration of the “catastrophe.”

It is the day in 1948 that the handful of Jews in our land declared the third Jewish Commonwealth. The immediate Arab response was to attempt to commit genocide on their Jewish neighbors. They managed to murder about 6,000 men, women, and children, but that was nothing near their goal of a total massacre, and thus their understandable annual mourning. This public commemoration only began after the 1993 Oslo Accords, which emboldened them of course.

Had the Arabs wiped out the Jews as they had hoped, the Israeli Arab citizens — they call themselves "Palestinians" in recent years — would be living today under corrupt, humiliating Arab rule, as do all Arabs in the Arab world. They are the only Arabs in the region living in a country that guarantees them basic human and civil rights; a country with guaranteed free education and top-rated health care. And yet they mourn and rage.

They can live in any one of their brother Arab countries and not in the hated "Zionist entity." The door is open. This is not the former USSR — every citizen is free to leave. But they do not leave, and they know best why.

In fact, thousands of Arab brides from outside Israel seem to find their true love specifically in the hated "Nakba" state as they rush to marry Israeli-Arab men. Funny how true love only goes in one direction. Israeli citizenship is their guarantee to being treated with basic human rights for the first time in their lives. Nevertheless, they join the mourning and rage together with their new Israeli families on "Nakba Day.”

“Nakba Day” is not a good day for Jews to be near Arab communities.

Anything can happen.

In contrast, there is no day on the calendar when Arabs are careful to stay away from Jews. But this dichotomy is just another example of the mess we have made for ourselves, despite the miracles handed to us on a silver platter by G-d. It is G-d — and not silly, vain men — who ultimately calls the shots. That is why I am not despondent about the current absurd situation. Has not every single enemy of His People always felt His wrath?

How many times has G-d saved us from our own vain, arrogant leaders? How many times has he hardened the hearts of our enemies and thus saved us from ourselves?

When then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak wanted to give Yasser Arafat 97% of his demands, including half of Jerusalem, the terrorist's heart was hardened and the deadly concessions were not made. Yitzhak Rabin, Barak, and Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu wanted to give the Golan Heights — or parts of it in Bibi's case — to the criminal Assad family; but G-d hardened their hearts, saving us again.

Just the other day in Ramallah, the Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas repeated his blatant anti-Semitic slurs which brought the ire of the world down upon him, and thus hurt his nefarious cause. Like Bilam and Pharaoh, G-d moves the mouths of the evil ones and seals their fate.

In recent years Syria, our most implacable enemy, suddenly began to implode and ingest itself as we watch G-d at work, just as we did at the Red Sea.

The Iranians, who dedicate their economy and blood to our destruction, have been coddled and appeased by the "enlightened West" for a long time. Today there is a man in the White House who is turning that all around, and Iran is in a panic. Almost no one thought Donald Trump would be president.

So as I anticipate the joys of “Nakba Day,” remembering how we were saved yet again, I am moved to praise our Lord and recite the Hallel.

Our G-d is truly great.