Nakba denial is a form of historical denialism pertaining to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and its accompanying effects, which Palestinians refer to collectively as the "Nakba" (lit. 'catastrophe'). Underlying assumptions of Nakba denial cited by scholars can include the denial of historically documented violence against Palestinians, the denial of a distinct Palestinian identity, the idea that Palestine was barren land, and the notion that Palestinian dispossession was part of mutual transfers between Arabs and Jews justified by war.

Some historians say that denial of the Nakba has become a core component of Zionist narratives, and was largely facilitated by early Israeli historiography. Beginning in the 1980s, the New Historians, working from declassified archives, advanced historical accounts that challenged Nakba denial, and significant volumes of Israeli Jewish literature have also emerged shedding more light on the period. In 1998, Steve Niva, editor of the Middle East Report, used the term "Nakba denial" to describe how the rise of the early Internet led to competing online narratives of the events of 1948. Zochrot, an Israeli nonprofit organization, has aimed to commemorate the Nakba through direct action.

Nakba denial has been described as still prevalent in both Israeli and US discourse and linked to various tropes associated with anti-Arab racism. In 2011, Israel enacted a law colloquially called the Nakba Law that authorizes withholding state funds from organizations that commemorate Israel's Independence Day as a day of mourning. In May 2023, following the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made denial of the Nakba or 1948 expulsion a crime punishable by two years in jail.

Palestinians accuse Israel of using "Nakba denial" to absolve itself of responsibility while perpetuating conflict, a characterization Israel vehemently denies. Zionist historians justify the 1948 expulsion and flight by arguing that the invading Arab armies threatened the new Jewish state with annihilation. But some of Israel's New Historians contend that Israel's founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion overstated the Arab threat with the goal of expelling Palestinian civilians and taking hold of as much of former Palestine as possible. The term "Nakba denial" was used in 1998 by Steve Niva, editor of the Middle East Report, to describe how the rise of the early Internet led to competing online narratives of the events of 1948.

Palestinian writer and historian Nur Masalha has said that Israeli teachers and educators hide the Nakba's horrors from schoolchildren, constructing and upholding a national narrative that excludes Palestinian collective memory. Masalha says that Israel's "schoolteachers, academics, educators, historians and novelists" advance "Zionist knowledge" and Zionist collective memory by using "a campaign of Nakba denial and concealment." And this exclusion, according to Ilan Pappé, "is the main constitutive element in the construction of collective Jewish identity in the state of Israel."

According to scholar Nur Masalha, in Israel there is a politics of denial of the Nakba, embodied by statements by the likes of Golda Meir, such as the famous line "There was no such thing as Palestinians". Masalha has written, "denial is central to the Zionist narrative about what happened in 1948", adding that the politics of Nakba denial is itself one of the manifestations of "ongoing Nakba".

Scholar Mariko Mori's analysis of mainstream Israeli historiography of the establishment of nationhood found inadequate mentions of "the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem and the destruction of over 400 Palestinian villages in 1948, thus deliberately denying Palestinian memories of the Nakba." She finds that narratives justifying the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight rest on a number of assumptions, including that Palestine was an "uncultivated", "barren, uninhabited land"; that Palestinian Arabs were not a nation but part of a "greater Arab nation", disputing Palestinian Arab nationalism; that Palestinian Arabs were "rioters and pogromists"; that Jews were returning home (the negation of the Diaspora); and that population transfers were a "justifiable, universal solution to minority questions".

Historian Maha Nassar's analysis of Leon Uris's 1958 novel Exodus identifies the denial of Zionists' responsibility for the 1948 expulsion and flight of Palestinians and the claim that Arabs themselves were to blame (utilizing the anti-Arab racist tropes present in the novel) as a form of historical negationism she calls "Nakba denialism". The anti-Arab racist tropes include the notion that Palestinians lack religious attachment to Palestine, that they lack "modern feelings of national identity", and that they are easily induced to violence by their leaders. Within the paradigm of Zionism as settler colonialism, she says that such narratives blame the victims of settler colonial violence for their expulsion.