NAKBA 78 in New York City

Thursday, May 14, 2026. Lenapehoking (New York City) – Different events in New York City to commemorate the Nakba 78.

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May 15, 2026 marks the 78th anniversary of the Nakba (“catastrophe”), commemorating the (May 15) 1948 displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s invention. Commemorations focus on the “ongoing Nakba,” highlighting 78 years of displacement, occupation, and the demand for the right of return.

“At midnight on May 14, 1948, the Provisional Government of Israel proclaimed a new State of Israel. On that same date, the United States, in the person of President Truman, recognized the provisional Jewish government as de facto authority of the Jewish state (de jure recognition was extended on January 31, 1949).”_www.archives.gov

Dr. M. Reza Behnam wrote the article, “From Truman to Trump: Palestine: America’s Fork in the Road” on www.palestinechronicle.com.

“Eleven minutes after David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency, declared Israel a state in May 1948, President Harry S. Truman recognized his claim, giving legitimacy to Ben-Gurion’s bogus declaration,” writes Dr. M. Reza Behnam.

Harry S. Truman (Democratic Party) and Donald Trump (Republican Party) are two faces of the same terrorist yankee empire.

Democrat and republican politicians in the United States of America have always supported the zionist, apartheid entity.

May 28, 2026, marks 196 years since Andrew Jackson signed the “Indian Removal Act.”

“The Indian Removal Act ultimately led to the Trail of Tears, a brutal and deadly journey that caused the deaths of thousands of Native Americans, including nearly one-quarter of the Cherokee Nation. Because of his role in these events, many Native Americans remember Jackson as the “Indian-killer” president and strongly oppose any form of recognition or honor, including his continued presence on the twenty-dollar bill.”_Native News Online

Terrorists, white supremacists, slave owners, war criminals Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren were the founders of the imperialist, zionist, corrupt, terrorist Democratic Party on January 8, 1828.

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party represent the same terrorist yankee empire.

Ongoing Nakba: Building a People’s Archive of Displacement and Return.

Thursday, May 14, 2026. 2:30PM PST/ 5:30PM EST.
Online or in person (NYC, The People’s Forum. 320 W 37th St, New York, NY 10018.).

“Join the People’s Center for Palestine on Thursday May 14 at 2:30pm PST/5:30pm EST. Attend online or in-person in New York City. Fill in your details to register for the Zoom link and in-person event details. https://www.pcpalestine.org/webinar”_People’s Center for Palestine.

“Join us for a hybrid webinar with Palestinian writer, political analyst, and academic @abboudhamayel of Birzeit University. We’ll reflect on the scale of loss in 1948 and explore what it means to speak of an “ongoing Nakba, ongoing return” across generations – from the homeland to the diaspora.

After 78 years, more than four million Palestinian refugees continue to live the reality of the Nakba. How do we carry and defend this collective narrative in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza?

This webinar also invites participants to contribute to a people’s archive of testimonies of the ongoing Nakba, as part of an effort to collect stories of displacement and its ongoing impact,” said the People’s Center for Palestine on April 30, 2026.

On May 11, 2026, the People’s Center for Palestine said, “After 78 years, more than four million Palestinian refugees continue to live the reality of the Nakba. How do we carry and defend this collective narrative in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza?

Join us for a hybrid webinar with Palestinian writer, political analyst, and academic @abboudhamayel of Birzeit University. We’ll reflect on the scale of loss in 1948 and explore what it means to speak of an “ongoing Nakba, ongoing return” across generations – from the homeland to the diaspora.

This webinar also invites participants to contribute to a people’s archive of testimonies of the ongoing Nakba, as part of an effort to collect stories of displacement and its ongoing impact.”

78th Anniversary of the Nakba

“On 15 May 2026, the UN Palestinian Rights Committee will convene an event marking the anniversary the Nakba to continue drawing attention to this tragic historical event and the enduring plight of the Palestinian people, as requested by the General Assembly (Res 79/82 of 3 December 2024).  The Committee special meeting will be held at the ECOSOC Council Chamber from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The event will revisit the historical context of the Nakba and the events of 1948 and examine the ongoing manifestations of dispossession and displacement. It will highlight how these developments have been experienced by the Palestinian people and implemented on the ground.

This event is open to valid UN Grounds Pass holders (delegates, staff, UN accredited NGOs & press)

The event will be taking place in the ECOSOC Chamber from 10 a.m. and will be broadcast live on UN WebTV.

Tentative Programme: Testimony of Ms. Wesam Hamada, Mother of Hind Rajab, statement of the President of the State of Palestine, delivered by H.E. Minister Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine, testimony from the family of Aws Al-Na’san, tribute to Walid Khalidi, the historian of Palestine and the Nakba and more.”_United Nations

NAKBA 78: RESISTANCE SINCE 1948.

Friday, May 15, 2026. 4:30 PM.
Washington Square Park.
Manhattan, New York City.

“78 years of Nakba. 78 years of genocide. 78 years of resistance.

On Nakba Day we join Palestinians around the world in uplifting our people’s resistance to genocide, zionism and settler colonialism since 1948. The Nakba, commemorated on May 15th of every year is ongoing to this day, as millions of Palestinians continue to be starved in Gaza, while thousands more are massacred and displaced from Gaza to the West Bank in “israel’s” ongoing genocide funded and carried out with the United States.

“Everything happening in Gaza today is not new. It has been happening since 1948, now on a larger scale for the world to see. Proof was never the problem, because we know this is how colonization operates. This is what they do to indigenous people. Palestine is not an anomaly, it is a litmus test, a moral compass, and what is allowed to happen in Gaza will not stop there.”- Nerdeen Kiswani (WOL’s chair & founder)

It is right here, in our own backyard, that this genocide is funded and made possible, and it is up to us to continue mobilizing against the ongoing Nakba until there is a complete end to the genocide.

Join us as we flood the streets of New York, amplifying the voices of our people and refusing to stay silent, demanding an end to the siege and blockade of Gaza and an end to the ongoing genocide, until Palestine is free within our lifetime.”_Within Our Lifetime

NAKBA 78: WE WILL NOT FORGET.

Saturday, May 16, 2026. 2 PM
72nd St and 5th Ave.
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; New York City.

“PROTEST TO DISMANTLE THE GENOCIDAL ZIONIST ENTITY—FIGHT FOR LIBERATION AND RETURN.

In honor of the 78+ year long plight and struggle for liberation of the Palestinian people, PAL-Awda will be in the streets of Bay Ridge protesting in honor of the freedom fighters and martyrs of Gaza and all of Palestine.

“NAKBA” [meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic], commemorated on May 15th, marks the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians from historic Palestinian lands, months before the settler colony declared “independence” in May of 1948. In 1948, zionist occupation forces and settler militias brutally murdered over 15,000 Palestinians and expelled 750,000+ Palestinians from their homes, destroying over 70% of Palestinian towns and villages and stealing 78% of Palestinian land.

For over 78 years, displaced Palestinians have demanded a “right of return” or “haq al awda,” while the zionist entity continues to escalate its project of ethnic cleansing, land grabs, and colonial expansion. WE DEMAND AN END TO THE OCCUPATION, full liberation, and the right of return for all Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and around the world to their original lands and homes.”_PAL-Awda NY/NJ

NAKBA 78: UNITY, LIBERATION, RETURN.

Saturday, May 16, 2026. 2 PM
72nd St and 5th Ave.
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; New York City.

“Since the Nakba 78 years ago, the US-backed Zionist project has continued to wage a war of extermination on the Palestinian people, culminating in the last two years of genocide in Gaza. Emboldened by the genocide they are still committing in Gaza, the US and Israeli war machine has expanded the scope of their imperial war to Lebanon, Iran and the entire region.

On May 16th, join us as we demand an end to the ongoing Nakba and to affirm that we will struggle until full liberation and return.”_New York City Chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Palestine will live forever

Monday, May 18, 2026. 6:30 PM.
WORLD’S BOROUGH BOOKSHOP
3406 73rd Street. Queens, NY.

“Gather with us at @theworldsboroughbookshop for our monthly borough meeting. With Nakba Day approaching, we’ll be reading and reflecting on the 1948 Nakba — honoring the history of the displacement of 700,000+ Palestinians and tying it to the genocide Palestinians continue to face today, and their resistance to oppression.”_Shut It Down Queens

10 facts you need to know about the Palestinian Nakba

Published on 05-14-2023 by the BDS movement.

1- Between 1947 and 1949, Israel and pre-state Zionist militias forced between 750,000 and 1,000,000 Indigenous Palestinian Arabs into exile, making them refugees. 

2 – Today, there are around 8 million Palestinian refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and neighbouring Arab countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. Apartheid Israel has persistently denied their UN-sanctioned right to return to their homes, lands and other property simply because they are not Jewish.

3 – The ethnic cleansing during the Nakba was a deliberate, planned and systematic campaign carried out to create what human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Al-Haq, and B’Tselem call “a Jewish supremacy” in historic Palestine, which was overwhelmingly populated by Palestinian Arabs before 1948.

4 – Contrary to Zionist mythology, pre-state Zionist militias began their ethnic cleansing of Palestinian towns and villages months before the establishment of the State of Israel. The massacre and depopulation of the Palestinian village of Deir Yasin, for instance, took place on 9 April 1948. 

5 – Approximately 150,000 Palestinians remained inside what became Israel’s borders in 1948, many of them internally displaced. They were eventually granted Israeli citizenship but lived for years under military rule. To this day, Palestinian citizens of Israel live as second-class citizens in their own homeland, subjected to a system of apartheid enshrined in dozens of racist laws that discriminate against them.

 6 – During the Nakba, Zionist militias and, later, Israeli forces systematically destroyed about 530 Palestinian towns and villages to prevent exiled Palestinian refugees from returning. Many homes that remained standing were repopulated with Jewish-Israeli colonial settlers. 

 7 – The Jewish National Fund (JNF), an openly racist pillar of the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine, acquired approximately 78 percent of its land holdings from the Israeli state between 1949 and 1953, much of it agricultural land of ethnically cleansed Palestinian refugees that the state had confiscated and designated as “absentee property.” The JNF holds this stolen Palestinian land as “the perpetual property of the Jewish People.” 

 8 – The Nakba did not end in 1948 but continues to this day in the form of apartheid Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities; theft of Palestinian land for Jewish-Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory as well as inside present-day Israel; destruction of Palestinian homes and agricultural land; revocation of residency rights; expulsions; demographic engineering; and periodic massacres.

 9 – Israel is currently attempting to implement the largest mass ethnic cleansing since 1968, targeting some 1,300 Palestinians living in eight villages in the area of Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron. Many of the Palestinians in Masafer Yatta have already fled Israeli massacres in Al-Naqab, committed by Israeli forces during and in the aftermath of the Nakba.  What is happening now in Masafer Yatta is a prime example of the ongoing Nakba. It repeats itself still today in Al-Naqab, Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and across the territory under Israeli control. Indigenous Palestinians are being forced from their homes by state-sponsored violence at the hands of Israeli soldiers, Israeli police, and armed, fascist Israeli settlers.

 10 – Israel has a law that prohibits Palestinians–second-class–citizens of the state from commemorating the Nakba. This does not stop Palestinians from remembering and insisting on our right to return to our ancestral lands. 

Commemorate the Nakba wherever you are, share the stories of the Nakba from Palestinians, and join BDS campaigns, the most effective way to support our struggle to achieve our internationally recognized rights, including the right of return for refugees.

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