Melbourne’s 75th Nakba Exhibition in St Paul’s Cathedral

16 September to 27 October 2023: St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne holds 75th Nakba Exhibition

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) in which about 800,000 Indigenous Palestinians (57% of the Indigenous Palestinian population) were expelled from their homes and villages by Zionist colonizers.

From 16 September to 27 October 2023 there is a very moving Nakba 75th Anniversary Exhibition at St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in central Melbourne (diagonally opposite to Flinders Street Railway Station).

Key numbers about the 1948 Nakba: Palestinians expelled (about 800,000 or 57% of the 1,400,000 total Palestinian  population), massacres (over 70), people killed (15,000), villages emptied (over 530), and mosques eventually destroyed (120). A further mass expulsion of 400,000 Arabs occurred in the 1967 Naksa (Setback) in which the colonizers seized all of Palestine plus parts of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Today’s 14.5 million Indigenous Palestinians: Exiled Palestinians (7 million, a big part of world refugees); Occupied Palestinians (5.5 million and deprived of basic human rights under military occupation including the right to vote for the government ruling them (i.e. subject to egregious Apartheid); 3.3 million in ever-dwindling  West Bank ghettoes and 2.2 million in the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp); and Israeli Palestinians (about 2 million; able to vote but subject to 60 race-based, discriminatory laws). Indigenous Palestinian Subjects of Israel total 7.5 million, 51% of total Israeli Subjects (Jewish Israelis 47%).

Today GDP per capita is a deadly $3,500 (Occupied Palestinians) versus $55,500 (Occupier Israelis). Each year  Israel violently kills about 500 Occupied Palestinians (active killing) and kills a further 4,000 Occupied Palestinians through imposed deprivation (passive killing). In the Occupied Palestinian Territories Israel is the world leader for “journalists killed per million of population” and is among world leaders for “children killed per million of population” (for a very detailed, documented  and alphabetically-ordered compendium of information see 75th Nakba Anniversary.)

Palestine has been known as such (with linguistic variants) for 3 millennia. Palestinians have continually inhabited that land for millennia. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (Al Quds) is the third holiest Muslim shrine, is the first major mosque, and was the progenitor of 1,400 years of brilliant Islamic architecture. However Zionist colonizers actively deny and  seek to erase the very terms “Palestine” and “Palestinian”. So far about 90% of Palestine has been ethnically cleansed by Apartheid Israel.

World anti-Apartheid hero and Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela:

The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.

I am a genocide-impacted, anti-racist Ashkenazi Jewish Australian scientist and humanitarian from a famous Jewish Hungarian family and with a sole allegiance to Australia. The key messages from the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (and indeed from all genocides and holocausts) are “zero tolerance for lying,” “zero tolerance for racism,” “bear witness,” and “never again to anybody” (including the sorely oppressed Indigenous Palestinians and Indigenous Australians). Please inform everyone you can.

Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He has published the following huge books Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950, Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History, US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide (2020), and Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions (2020). Read other articles by Gideon.