Nakba, in quotation marks, for thirty-eight yearsThe word in a headline, still in quotation marks · 1983 to 2021
A word held at arm’s length
Nakba, in quotation marks, for thirty-eight years
Colonization is a word the American press used plainly and then dropped. Nakba is the opposite case: a word it would not take into its own voice at all.
It appears in this archive in 1983, and it arrives already quarantined: quotation marks, a translation, and an attribution to the people who use it. A quarter of a century later it is still in quotation marks.
“Already the best-educated Arabs before what they call ‘al nakba’ — the disaster —”
The Register-Guard. The earliest use here, and it carries all three devices at once.
CP-1983-005“Arab Protests Erupt in Violence. 9 people die in riots over Israel’s birth.”
San Francisco Chronicle, running Serge Schmemann of the New York Times. The headline names the day from one side. The other name appears only in the body, twice removed: “an event they call the ‘catastrophe.’” The same report notes Israeli forces killed eight Palestinians in Gaza that day, two of them eight-year-old boys.
CP-1998-004“…commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, their uprooting after…”
Stamford Advocate, in a photo caption. Here it runs without quotation marks, glossed instead. The Houston Chronicle three days later: “unrest over ‘al nakba’”. The Arizona Republic in July: “Palestinians remember ‘Nakba’”.
CP-1998-006
CP-2005-001“‘Al-Nakba denial’ pervades letter.”
The Register-Guard letters page. A reader uses the word as a word, argues about it, and counts “the 531 villages and 11 urban areas.” The readers get there before the newsroom does.
CP-2007-005“Palestinians mourn Israel’s anniversary as the ‘Nakba’. Black-clad marchers, moments of silence mark the ‘catastrophe’.”
The Day, from the Los Angeles Times. Two sets of quotation marks in one headline stack, twenty-five years on.
CP-2008-001“They left without anything… It was called Nakba, ‘the catastrophe.’”
The Pantagraph, Bloomington, Illinois, quoting Noor Alsaqri of Normal on what her grandparents lost in 1948. Thirty-eight years after the first of these, and the quotation marks are still there.
CP-2021-003“Remembering the Nakba on Israel’s 60th anniversary.”
Wisconsin State Journal, a guest column by Judith Laitman and Tsela Barr: “we are Jews who will not be celebrating.” No quotation marks. It took a guest column by two Jewish writers for the word to run in a headline with no quotation marks around it.
CP-2008-002Every clipping here that prints the word Nakba →
Two words, opposite journeys. Colonization was the establishment’s own term for the project, printed without argument until 1948, after which it stops appearing in these papers. Nakba arrives in 1983 inside quotation marks and is still inside them in 2021, thirty-eight years later.
What the quotation marks track here is not the year. The one headline in this collection that prints the word with no quotation marks around it belongs to a guest column by two Jewish writers saying they will not be celebrating — a piece written from inside the Palestinian account of 1948 rather than reporting on it.