“Nakba” and the Holocaust: Where is the line between empathy and historical substitution

When in Israel there is another attempt to place the ‘Nakba’ alongside the Holocaust, the conversation immediately goes beyond the usual debate about the past. It is no longer just a matter of memory, political language, or personal empathy. It is a question of which historical events can be compared and which comparisons become a dangerous substitution of concepts.

One opponent says: it is important to hear the pain of the other side. The second responds: hearing the pain does not mean accepting the other’s historical framework. At first glance, the dispute looks like a conflict between humanism and rigidity. But in reality, it is deeper: it is not ‘good’ and ‘heartlessness’ that collide here, but two different logics of memory.

The first logic says: if another people had trauma, it must be recognized. The second adds: recognition of trauma should not turn into agreement with a political accusation against the very existence of Israel.

In Israeli society, there are enough people who understand: 1948 was a personal and collective catastrophe for Palestinian Arabs. There were lost homes, destroyed villages, displacement, fear, death, family separations, and a life that never returned to its former state.

But recognizing a tragedy is one thing. Putting it on par with the Holocaust is quite another.

Why comparison with the Holocaust breaks the conversation itself

The Holocaust is not a universal word for ‘a very great tragedy.’ It is a specific historical crime: a state, industrial, and ideological system of exterminating Jews precisely as Jews.

Here, the meaning cannot be blurred. It was not about the consequences of war, not about the loss of territory, not about the flight of the population, and not about the defeat of one side in an armed conflict. Nazi Germany built a mechanism of mass murder: ghettos, trains, Einsatzgruppen, gas chambers, death camps, deportation bureaucracy, and the systematic destruction of a people.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem, about six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. This is not a symbolic figure for denoting ‘great misfortune,’ but a historical designation of one of the most documented crimes of the 20th century.

— But the Palestinians also had a tragedy, — says the first opponent. — People lost their homes. Can’t we talk about it?

— We can talk, — answers the second. — But an honest conversation begins with accuracy, not with emotional equating of different historical phenomena.

And here a separate analytical emphasis is needed. Comparing the ‘Nakba’ with the Holocaust is dangerous not because Palestinian pain is ‘unimportant.’ It is dangerous because it changes the type of event. The Holocaust was not a side effect of war, but a goal. Not the chaos of the front, not the collapse of society, not the flight of the population, but a program of extermination. If this difference is removed, the word ‘Holocaust’ becomes just an amplifier of emotion, not the name of a unique crime.

‘Nakba’ is the tragedy of Palestinian Arabs associated with the 1947–1949 war, flight, expulsion, death of people, the collapse of the familiar world, and the emergence of the refugee problem. Different families had different stories. Some left out of fear of fighting, some were indeed expelled, some died, some participated in hostilities, some awaited the victory of Arab armies and hoped to return after the destruction of the Jewish state.

That is why this topic is complex. But complexity does not give the right to equate it with the Holocaust.

There is no single indisputable figure for the Palestinian Arabs killed in the 1947–1949 war. Different estimates range from several thousand to about 13–15 thousand; at the same time, sources count civilians, combatants, irregular formations, and losses of Arab armies differently. Even the upper limit of these estimates is incomparable with the six million Jews whom the Nazi machine deliberately exterminated as a people.

There is another important point. In such comparisons, it is often not historical analysis that works, but moral symmetry: if Jews have the Holocaust, Palestinians must have their own ‘equal’ catastrophe. But history does not have to be symmetrical. Different peoples can have different tragedies, different scales, different causes, and different consequences. Respect for memory does not require artificially leveling incomparable events.

1948: tragedy, war, and responsibility of the parties

In the Israeli conversation about the ‘Nakba,’ the main context often disappears: it was not a peaceful story into which evil Jews suddenly entered and destroyed a ready Palestinian state project.

Such a picture simply did not exist.

The plan for the partition of Palestine was adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947. The Jewish side accepted it, the Arab side rejected it; after that, the conflict turned into a war between the Jewish and Arab communities, and after the proclamation of Israel in May 1948, into a war involving the armies of neighboring Arab states.

— Ordinary people are not always responsible for the decisions of leaders, — objects the first opponent.

— Yes, — answers the second. — But recognizing human pain does not cancel the question: who rejected the compromise, who chose war, and what political project was actually proposed by the Arab world then?

In any war, ordinary families pay the price for the decisions of politicians, armies, commanders, and radical movements. This is the tragedy of the civilian population. But if you remove from the picture the rejection of the partition plan, attacks on the Jewish population, and the invasion of Arab armies, you get not a history, but a political montage.

Here appears the main analytical error of many modern conversations about 1948. The event is torn from the chain of causes and consequences. First, they show displacement, destroyed homes, family losses, and pain. This is all real. But then they remove the war, the rejection of partition, attacks, Arab armies, and the intention to prevent the emergence of Israel from the frame. As a result, the viewer is offered not a history, but an emotional photograph without a caption.

After the war, Judea and Samaria came under Jordanian control, Gaza under Egyptian control. In 1950, Jordan annexed the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian administration until the 1967 war. An independent Palestinian state was not created there.

This is an important fact that often falls out of the emotional narrative. If the main goal of Arab leaders in 1948 was precisely a Palestinian state, why did it not appear where Israel did not control the territory at that time?

The answer is uncomfortable. Because the political construction was different: not ‘two countries for two peoples,’ but a struggle against the birth of the Jewish state.

In the middle of such a conversation, it is especially important that the Israeli audience does not allow key facts to be pushed out of memory. Nikk.Agency — Israel News | Nikk.Agency considers such topics not as a dispute for the sake of dispute, but as a struggle for the accuracy of language: when words change places of cause and effect, society begins to defend itself not from facts, but from an imposed framework.

What happened to those who remained in Israel

Another important point: a significant part of the Arab population that remained within Israel after the war eventually received Israeli citizenship. Their situation in the first decades was difficult: the military regime for Arab citizens lasted until 1966, there were restrictions, discriminatory practices, and heavy land disputes. But the reality itself still does not resemble a picture of total destruction or expulsion of everyone.

The descendants of those who remained today live in Israel, vote, are elected to the Knesset, work as doctors, lawyers, judges, teachers, entrepreneurs, journalists, police officers, diplomats, and deputies. The country has serious conflicts, distrust, discriminatory practices, and political disputes, but there is no model that tries to be inserted into the formula ‘Israel was born as a crime.’

This is where the line between criticism and delegitimization lies.

Criticizing Israel’s decisions is possible. Discussing individual episodes of 1948 is possible. Talking about refugees is possible. But demanding that Israel recognize its emergence as a historical mistake is no longer a conversation about memory. It is a political demand for the Jewish people to renounce the moral foundation of their own statehood.

In this sense, the dispute about the ‘Nakba’ rarely remains academic. It almost always extends into the present. If 1948 is described not as a war in which the Arab side rejected a compromise and lost, but as ‘Israel’s original crime,’ then any subsequent dispute is already decided in advance: Israel is guilty not of individual mistakes, but in the very fact of its existence.

Jewish refugees from Arab countries: the forgotten half of history

In the same decades, about 850,000 Jews were expelled or forced to flee from Arab countries and Iran. They lost homes, property, businesses, ancestral graves, synagogues, language, familiar environment, and entire worlds in which their families had lived for centuries.

They came to Israel not to a beautiful fairy tale with a sea view. Many ended up in tents, barracks, ma’abarot, in poverty, without the usual status and without confidence in tomorrow. This is also a refugee story. Only it somehow rarely becomes central in the international conversation.

— But doesn’t mentioning Jewish refugees look like an attempt to avoid the Palestinian topic? — asks the first opponent.

— No, — answers the second. — This is not avoiding the topic, but a demand for honest balance.

If the Palestinian key to a lost home has become an eternal symbol of tragedy, then why should Jewish keys, Jewish cemeteries, Jewish quarters, looted homes, closed synagogues, and vanished communities be erased from memory? Why does one trauma turn into a global political language, while another remains almost invisible?

Here it is important to add: ignoring Jewish refugees from Arab countries is not accidental. This topic breaks the convenient scheme where there is only one refugee people and one guilty people. The reality of the Middle East after 1948 was much more complex: borders changed, communities disappeared, states were built on the ruins of empires, and Jews in Arab countries increasingly became hostages of a conflict they did not start.

The difference is also in how refugees were treated by their new societies. Israel, with difficulty, imperfectly, painfully, with mistakes, but integrated Jewish refugees. And the Palestinian refugee problem was preserved for decades because it became a political tool of pressure on Israel.

When memory becomes a weapon

The main problem is not that Palestinians remember their tragedy. Every people has the right to memory. The problem is that the ‘Nakba’ is too often used not as a language of mourning, but as an accusatory act against the very existence of Israel.

Not ‘recognize that we were hurt.’ But ‘recognize that your state was born in sin.’

It is this substitution that makes the conversation toxic. When memory becomes a tool of delegitimization, Israel is not asked for sympathy, but for recognition of its own historical wrongness. This is no longer a dialogue of two traumas. This is a political trial where the verdict is written in advance.

Israeli society is not obliged to agree with this. Especially after October 7, 2023, when as a result of an attack by Hamas and allied militants in Israel, about 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and hostages were taken.

After such a thing, demanding moral disarmament from Israel under the guise of empathy means completely misunderstanding the world we live in.

Yes, one can remain human. One can see the pain of others. One can recognize that the 1948 war left a heavy legacy for Palestinian families.

But empathy should not turn into agreement with someone else’s political accusation against one’s own country. A liberal view does not have to be naive. Humanity does not require historical blindness.

— So, can’t we sympathize? — asks the first opponent.

— You can sympathize, — answers the second. — You cannot, under the guise of sympathy, accept a framework where Israel must recognize itself as a historical mistake.

This is where the main fault line lies. A kind heart is an important thing. But in Middle Eastern politics, one kind heart is not enough. When the comparison of the ‘Nakba’ with the Holocaust is presented as moral courage, in reality, it becomes a framework in which Israel must not only recognize someone else’s pain but agree with the accusation against the very fact of its existence.

Analytically, this can be formulated more simply: the Palestinian tragedy can be the subject of conversation, study, and human sympathy. But it cannot be turned into a duplicate of the Holocaust and cannot be used as evidence that the Jewish state had no right to be born. There is a boundary between memory and political disarmament. Israel has the right to defend this boundary.

And this is no longer empathy.

This is capitulation to a narrative that from the very beginning was aimed not at reconciliation, but at denying the right of the Jewish state to exist.