"I would, therefore, recommend editing the sentence to the following: 'The Nakba marks the ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion of Palestinians from their land to establish the State of Israel in 1948.' At the very least, please replace 'mass displacement' with 'forced expulsion'."
April 17, 2024
To:
Isabel Teotonio, Journalist, Toronto Star
Anne Marie Owens, Editor-in-Chief, Toronto Star
Dear Isabel Teotonio,
I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East to express some concerns regarding a recent article titled “Peel school board urged to remove Nakba Day from calendar of significant dates,” published on April 17 in Toronto Star.
At the beginning of your article, you write that the mass displacement of Palestinians occurred during the “1948 Arab-Israeli war.” Unfortunately, this highly sanitized, ambiguous language to explain the Nakba is inappropriate. Mass displacement, as you write, only puts into words one component of the ethnic cleansing that led to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. About 15,000 Palestinians were massacred, roughly 500 Palestinian towns were destroyed, and Israel stole 4,244776 acres of Palestinian land. These atrocities amount to ethnic cleansing and should be consistently referred to as such. Unfortunately, the use of the term “1948 Arab-Israeli War” obfuscates that these events occurred in clear pursuit of a Jewish ethnostate and absolves Zionist militias of their responsibility for these atrocities. I would, therefore, recommend editing the sentence to the following: “The Nakba marks the ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion of Palestinians from their land to establish the State of Israel in 1948.” At the very least, please replace “mass displacement” with “forced expulsion.”
I also noticed that the paragraph describing the Nakba and its significance is at the end of the article. Considering this is important context to further understand Peel District School Board’s decision to recognize Nakba Day, placing this paragraph at the beginning of the article would be more appropriate.
Sincerely,
Rose Mardikian,
Media Analyst, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East