". . . memory is not just an idle capacity. Rather, who can remember, and who can be made to forget, is, fundamentally, an expression of power." George Bisharat in today's San Francisco Chronicle
Link for George Bisharat's For Palestinians Memory Matters: It Provides a Blueprint for Their Future in today's San Francisco Chronicle
Bisharat provides definition for Al-Nakba (Catastrophe) in his powerful and poignant op-ed:
A living, breathing, society that had existed in Palestine for centuries was smashed and fragmented, and a new society built on its ruins. Few Palestinian families lack a personal narrative of loss from that period - an uncle killed, or a branch of the family that fled north while the others fled east, never to be reunited, or homes, offices, orchards, and other property seized.
Bisharat notes the importance of memory for Palestinians amidst admonishments from some Israelis and Americans that it "doesn't get us closer to a solution."
Ironically, Palestinians live the consequences of the past every day - whether as exiles from their homeland, or as members of an oppressed minority within Israel, or as subjects of a brutal and violent military occupation.
While the Nakba and its effects are never alluded to in literature or social studies curricula in US schools, knowledge of it is central to approach understanding of the situation in Israel/Palestine and is central to understanding the psyche of the Palestinian.
Professor Elias Khoury,commenting on the new book Nakba, Claims of Memory, writes
Claims of memory are part of the struggle for justice, and justice for Palestinian victims begins by recognizing their right to speak.
It is in this spirit that I invite Kossacks to read the words of Walnut Creek, California resident Darwish Addassi, whose story is reprinted here with the permission of Institute for Middle East Understanding.
Darwish Addassi wishes his fellow Americans could spend a day in his shoes.
Maybe then they would know what it feels like to be a refugee. The 73-year-old retired chemist still remembers the day he was expelled from his home 59 years ago and became a refugee. Addassi has not been back to Lydda, Palestine since.
On July 11, 1948, when Addasi was just 14 and in the eighth grade, an "informal" Israeli military unit entered Lydda after days of encircling the city.
"My brother came into the house and he said 'Lydda fell,'" Addassi said. "The Israelis came and announced that we have kicked you all out."
His family's farm of oranges, grapefruits and lemons, more than 4,000 years old, was gone. Making matters worse, Addassi, along with the other men of his family, were rounded up and detained by the newly formed Israeli government. They were deemed a threat because before falling, Lydda was one of the few Palestinian towns to resist the takeover and to refuse to sell its land to the future Israeli state.
"They took about 1,500 of us to a place called Jalil," he said, adding that each prisoner was interviewed, numbered and put in a pen. "It was like a prison or a concentration camp."
For two days Addassi and his fellow prisoners of war did not get any food and were even forced to dig their own latrines. Forty men were crammed into each tent. "So if you sleep on your back the other guy has to sleep on his side," Addassi said.
Addassi spent nine months in detention all the while having no communication with his mother and two sisters who had fled to Jordan.
"We were part of the lucky refugees because we knew people in Jordan, influential people," he said. "They came and they took the whole family to Amman and they gave them a small house."
Still, the horror stories that Addassi heard from his mother and sisters about their journey are difficult to share. Stories of Israelis stealing whatever the refugees had - from rings to watches - and of people being killed for the few possessions they were able to sneak along, since they were not allowed to take anything with them, not even water.
After working in Jordan and Kuwait to support his family, Addassi moved to Chicago in 1957, with $2,000 in his pocket, to go to school. Now retired and living with his wife in Walnut Creek, California, the father of two enjoys making wine and trying to recreate the beautiful gardens he remembers from Lydda in his backyard, all while waiting for his right to return home 59 years later.
"If the Jews gave themselves the right to go back after two thousand years I should have that right, too," he said. "What would you do? Put yourself in my shoes. What would you do if someone came and kicked you out of your house?"