Why They Call It “The Catastrophe”

But growing up I never heard about Deir Yassin and all that it represented. So, at the ripe old age of 15 I stumbled across information about a phenomenon that we would now call ethnic cleansing; and it was ethnic cleansing carried out at a monumental scale by Zionists against the Palestinian population immediately prior to the founding of Israel.

Had Deir Yassin been an isolated incident it would have been criminal enough. Unfortunately, the ethnic cleansing that took place in that village in April 1948 was symptomatic of an orchestrated effort to drive the Palestinians off of their land. In all, more than 400 villages are reported to have been destroyed and some 750,000 people – Palestinians – driven into exile by the Zionist military units.

The Palestinians have never been able to exercise the right of return. Instead, weeks became months; months became years; and years became decades. Interestingly, following the 1948 war, the United Nations reminded the world that the Palestinian refugees had the right of return. This ‘reminder’, however, has never been enforced. United Nations resolutions have been subsequently ignored, whether it concerned the right of return or the demand that the Israelis withdraw from the territories that they occupied in June 1967.