The Nakba, which means "catastrophe" in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Before the Nakba, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. The Nakba had a profound impact on the Palestinian people, who lost their homes, their land, and their way of life. It remains a deeply traumatic event in their collective memory and continues to shape their struggle for justice and for their right to return to their homes. The term Nakba was first applied to the events of 1948 by Constantin Zureiq, a professor of history at the American University of Beirut, in his 1948 book Macnā an-Nakba (The Meaning of the Disaster). The use of the term has evolved over time. Israeli officials have repeatedly stigmatized the term as embodying an Arab lie or as a justification for terrorism. In 2009, the Israeli Education Ministry banned using nakba in Palestinian textbooks for children. In 2011, the Knesset forbade institutions from commemorating the event. The Nakba anniversary is a reminder not only of those tragic events of 1948 but of the ongoing injustice suffered by the Palestinians. The roots of the Nakba stem from the emergence of Zionism as a political ideology in late 19th-century Eastern Europe. The ideology is based on the belief that Jews are a nation or a race that deserves their own state. From 1882 onwards, thousands of Eastern European and Russian Jews began settling in Palestine, where they started dispossessing indigenous Muslim and Christian Palestinians. The Nakba was a deliberate and systematic act intended to establish a Jewish majority state in Palestine. Amongst themselves, Zionist leaders used the euphemism “transfer” when discussing plans for what today would be called ethnic cleansing. The Nakba led to the displacement of approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland by Zionist militias and the new Israeli army during the state of Israel’s establishment (1947-49).