Crosspost: "Ghost Worlds"

A great story about a tour which reveals the lost Palestinian towns of what is now Tel Aviv, and about the other side of Yom Ha'atzmaut/Israeli Independence Day, known to some Arabs as Al Nakba/The Disaster.

In each village we heard the stories of relatives scattered in every direction of the Palestinian Diaspora: Gaza, Amman, Cairo, Baghdad, Nablus, northern Israel, Lebanon, Canada. The randomness of the results of those frantic choices resonated and overlapped in both familiar and unfamiliar ways with the Jewish Diaspora. Each guide told us how their families had come to leave their land, bringing alive the terror and uncertainty of the years 1947 and 1948, proving how academic are the debates about whether the Palestinians of the region were exiled or fled. Life was made unbearable in various ways, and eventually everyone in the region was pushed further and further south, first to Jaffa itself, then maybe to Gaza or the open sea.

Continue reading "Ghost Worlds"...