At UCLA, When 'Nakba' Fails, Switch to 'Naksa'

(L-R) Uzi Narkis, Moshe Dayan, & Yitzhak Rabin enter the Old City at Jerusalem’s liberation.

Change the language people use, and you’ll change the way they think. Part of the historical revisionism through which the Middle East studies establishment attempts to delegitimize the state of Israel includes introducing new terms to reverse readings of history that are accurate and therefore, for anti-Israel scholars, impediments to achieving their goals. As Eric Golub demonstrates in a Campus Watch report published yesterday in The Algemeiner, the latest of these is “Naksa":

Keeping up with anti-Israel buzz words is a full-time job. UCLA’s notoriously biased Center for Near East Studies recently held a conference whose title caused a double take: “The Naksa at 50: Nostalgia and Memory in the Middle East and Beyond.” Naksa?

While the term “Nakba” — Arabic for “catastrophe,” which refers to Israel’s creation in 1948 — is fairly well-known, “Naksa” is less familiar. It refers to the “setback” experienced by the Palestinians when the Arab world lost the 1967 war that it initiated against Israel.

While the speakers at the UCLA “Naksa” conference remained upbeat, the audience sat silently and solemnly. Many of the approximately 12 students in attendance gradually trickled out well before the entire 90 minutes was up, but an equal number of elderly academics in the audience remained.

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Winfield Myers

Winfield Myers is managing editor of the Middle East Forum and director of its Campus Watch project, which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North American universities. He has taught world history and other topics at the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Tulane, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He was previously managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine and CEO of Democracy Project, Inc., which he co-founded. Mr. Myers has served as senior editor and communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is principal author and editor of a college guide, Choosing the Right College (1998, 2001). He was educated at the University of Georgia, Tulane, and the University of Michigan.

At UCLA, When ‘Nakba’ Fails, Switch to ‘Naksa’