Theft of the Nakba Narrative - Left Curve

cultural appropriation since the 1930s. Discussions of
cultural appropriation, however, appeared in North
American and Western European academia only in
the late 1980s, and traveled to Israeli academia at the
end of the 1990s. Paradoxically, it is the Israeli academics
who are recognized as pioneers in the discussion
of the cultural confiscation of Palestine. The
Palestinians’ own research and writing about the
takeover has been completely overlooked in the West.
3. Both Israeli academia and the Israeli fine art establish
ment—the subject of my MA dissertation—have
merged Zionist content with Western avant-garde
ideas. Curators, artists, museum managers, art historians
and critics have helped absorb Western intellectuals
into the Zionist narrative.
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The Yemeni Shoshana Damari sings
“I am from Safed” written by the Poles
Vilenski and Alterman, who are using
the Arab Jewish performer as a means
to indigenize themselves.
There are three distinguishable phases to the Israeli
appropriation of Palestinian heritage.
In the first phase, the Zionist movement, and then
the State of Israel, made great efforts to indigenize the
European Jewish colonizers. They associated their culture
with the local heritage, claiming, “the return of an
Phase 1 - A
Artwork by Tzivi Geva
“Kufiya No. 25” 1990.
Phase 1 - B
4. Rosemary Comb argues that researchers who study
and define the culture of the Other without being
deeply familiar with it commit an act of cultural violence.
In most Israeli writings about Palestinian art,
Arabic resources are almost completely absent.
5. The Israeli intellectuals’ fashionable confessions of
the cultural appropriation and ethnic cleansing of
Palestine create the illusion of self-criticism. The
recurring pattern is as follows: First, the Israeli inflictors
commit the crime of expelling residents, destroying
towns and usurping culture. Afterward, they deny
the violence. Later, when there is no danger, they
confess their violent deeds—an act that wins them
international forgiveness and legitimacy, along with
widespread acceptance of the facts they have produced.
The Israeli Kufiya, 2007.
indigenous people to its homeland after two thousand
years.” This phase primarily involved the theft of various
elements from Palestinian heritage that were then redistributed
all over the world as ancient Jewish heritage.
For example: The Palestinian Kufiya.
Left: The first days of the Ein Hod Artists Colony. Right: Yitzhak Danziger 1977 “environmental art” project Oak tree planting ceremony in
memory of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) elite unit Egoz who died in combat in the Golan Heights in the 1973 war.
After the Nakba, the Israeli intellectuals dedicated
their work to supporting the seizure of Palestinian land
and physical property, and de-Arabizing all of the above.