An informal ‘Public Truth Commission’ set out to find exactly what happened to the Negev Bedouin between 1948 and 1960. While Bedouin witnesses told stories of massacres, rape and expulsions, former Israeli soldiers said they were just following orders.

I identify as straight, so I cannot claim to know how it feels to be in the closet. But I do have friends who identify as LGBTQ, and they have taught me a little about what it is like: to constantly evade the subject is exhausting. If you demand that people hide such central parts of their identities, you’ll never have close relationships with them. Likewise many people I know see themselves as “pro-peace” or “pro-Palestine,” but expect Palestinians to remain “in the closet” about their history, particularly that of 1948.

Zochrot, an Israeli NGO, is experimenting with ways to bring awareness about the Palestinian Nakba to the Jewish Israeli public. After two years of preparations, they convened an informal Public Truth Commission at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba last week, in order to examine the displacement of Palestinians in the Negev/Naqab by Israeli forces that took place from 1948 to 1960. Why until 1960? Most people are actually unaware of the fact the majority of local Bedouin tribes were driven off their lands into either Sinai, the West Bank, or an isolated reservation east of Beersheba (the “Sayag”) in the 1950s – long after the war ended.

But how can “nomads” be driven off “their lands?” Most people also do not know about the Bedouins’ semi-nomadic form of settlement, which included tilling plots of land in particular areas associated with each tribe. The Ottomans had noticed this practice in the 16th century, but Israeli state representatives have continued to deny this in court in order to justify the present-day eviction of entire communities.