When we have problems we鈥檙e advised
never to catastrophize,
and should therefore not be surprised
to hear the Arabs鈥� dreadful lies
when they call Israel鈥檚 independence
鈥渃atastrophe.鈥� Themselves they curse
this way since they pronounce a sentence
that God is certain to reverse,
if He exists, and if by chance
He doesn鈥檛, Jews will be compelled
without a partner in the dance
to dance without Him, self-propelled,
as a majority now do,
completely in denial of the view
that God has helped the people who
cling to false facts their foes eschew.
I call these foes the Naqabees,
who saying naqba can鈥檛 undo
the way that Jews called Maccabees
defeated Greeks — Jew haters who
denial post as a naqba,
Arabically devoted to 鈥渄efeat,鈥�
foes by the words Allahu aqbar
deceived, fake 鈥淧romised land鈥� receipt.
In 鈥淧ost-it notes: Do prefixes trap us in the past?鈥� TLS, 7/25/25, Ben Hutchinson鈥檚 review of POST-: Nachruf auf eine Vorsilbe, by Dieter Thom盲, suggested to me that the basic fallacy of naqba 聽ideology is that it bases post-Israeli reality on fixing this label onto the past like a post-it note, attempting to inflict a post-naqba defeat on Israel rather than attempting to fix the present and future.
Ben Hutchinson argues, only semi-facetiously, that we need a new discipline, 鈥減refix studies鈥� 鈥� as part of which 鈥減ost鈥�, coming after all the others, would be first among prequels:
Thom盲鈥檚 ambition, in the end, is not so much diagnostic as curative. He wants to knock 鈥減ostisms鈥� from their pedestal, to provide fixes rather than prefixes.聽 Declaring that one period comes after another one, as he sees it, is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, since it is the very declaration 鈥� and subsequent discourse 鈥� that makes us feel this way. If we want epochal agency, he suggests, if we want to feel in control of our present age, we would do better to shake off the 鈥渂ackspin鈥� of the past. Whether removing a prefix from our vocabulary will really make that much difference remains open to question: it is doubtful whether soft-pedalling the 鈥減ostcolonial鈥� history of the Israel鈥揚alestine conflict will change much on the ground.
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored 鈥淟egal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.鈥� He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
