“The Nakba” was not originally intended to denote loss of land and property in 1948. It was first supposed to mean the “catastrophe” of losing to the Jews, seen in the Arab world as a cosmic embarrassment that they would spend the next several decades trying to make up for. When people today use the term, it is mostly to continue the violent, militant nationalism that went into crafting it to begin with, only with twenty-first century flourishes (“it’s about human rights”) in order to attract western ears.

At GW, I was harassed by a group of students yelling "Yahood! Yahood!" on my way home from a Shabbat dinner wearing a kippah. Then a student was caught on camera saying "We're going to bomb Israel, you Jewish peices of shit." Then a Torah scroll was vandalized. Then a professor was caught bullying Jewish and Israeli students. Then student protestors called for an intifada outside the Hillel building. Then flyers were dropped on campus which said "Zionists fuck off." Then the sexual assault support group compared Zionists with rapists.

Russia is not closing down its Jewish Agency simply because Israel is siding with Ukraine, in the same way that Russia didn’t refuse Jewish emigration in the 70s solely because Israel had aligned itself with the West against the Soviet/Arab bloc. Rather, so long as Jews exist in Russia and Israel exists miles away, we are perceived as threatening the hegemony of Russian nationalism and loyalty. We are seen as a fifth column, corroding whichever leader’s (be it Stalin’s or Putin’s) grip on his people.