This past weekend, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation began a month-long advertising campaign in New York City to raise awareness about the 60th anniversary of the Nakba. Over the course of the next month, more than 1,000 of the above posters will be displayed on the streets of Manhattan, educating New Yorkers about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
The ads in New York have been strategically placed to coincide with the route of the June 1st “Salute to Israel Parade” so that everyone coming to celebrate Israel will be reminded (or educated) that Israel was established through an act of ethnic cleansing.
The poster featured in the New York ad campaign is a version of the winning poster design entry from the Expressions of Nakba multi-media arts competition sponsored by the Campaign earlier this year. The winning poster was created by Ildiko Toth, a Hungarian-born graphic designer who is married to a Palestinian man trapped in the Gaza Strip for more than one year.
The most important unreadable portions (due to size reduction) of this poster are:
Names of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948
The listed names of all of these villages,
And at the bottom,
In 1948, Israel destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee. These Palestinians and their descendants remain refugees to this day because Israel has denied them their right of return. Palestinians recall this record of dispossession, forced exile, and ethnic cleansing as the Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic.
Other cities in the US are also hosting Nakba demonstrations (see the above site for dates and locations). Copies of the above ad free for downloading are also available from the End the Occupation campaign site.
Slowly but surely the word is getting out.