Why don’t you mention the crimes committed against Jews and the rights of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East?

Zochrot was established to re-expose the history of the dispossession of the Palestinian people - a history that was repressed and silenced by the Jewish public in Israel. Focusing on Israel's crimes against the Palestinians doesn’t imply that we ignore crimes committed against Jews: these offenses are simply already known to the Jewish public, and the voice of the Jewish victims is present in the Israeli discourse. Secondly, our aim is to promote recognition and accountability among the Jewish public in Israel for these crimes.

For those who have experienced the severe trauma of displacement and loss, the competition of pain and injustice is meaningless. However, there is a glaring disproportion between the prevention of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and the right of return granted to Jews. Palestinian refugeehood is often compared to other historical cases of ethnic cleansing throughout history in an attempt to excuse or justify it. No deportation is justified. Jews were also uprooted and deported with great cruelty, and this is one of the reasons the world recognized their right for a sovereign state. In several cases (including the present-day heirs of medieval Spain and Nazi Germany), the criminals have apologized after the fact, paid reparations, erected monuments, developed curricula, and enabled second- and third-generation victims to obtain citizenship and reclaim property. The same applies to Jews of Arab and Islamic countries who desire to return to their countries of origin. None of these steps have been implemented in the Palestinian context, and, moreover, the oppression continues apace.

Palestinian refugees are not at all responsible for the fate of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, and therefore the rectification of their situation should not be conditioned on the rectification of the situation of those Jews.

Additionally, the attempt to silence the Palestinian Nakba also underlies the ethno-class gaps within Jewish society in Israel. The Ashkenazi "founding generation", which held racist, colonialist views, used the Mizrahi communities as a buffer and substitute for the Palestinians while seizing Palestinians’ assets for themselves. A just solution to the atrocities of the Nakba will also put an end to the Ashkenazi privilege and will allow for distributive justice for both Palestinians and Mizrahis.