Talking to Palestinian Refugees as a Diaspora Jew
These are quotes from a discussion I encountered and I believe will bring insight to many, on both sides of the conflict.
It starts as follows:
"There is this one woman who sings for a local band and is from a Palestinian family. She often tells the story of how her family owned a house and a shop in Ashkelon but during the war of independence they had to leave their house and ended up in a refugee tent city in Gaza. Eventually they made there way to Cairo and then to America. She has the key to the family's old Ashkelon house that her grandfather passed down to her father, passed down to her and will show people it to tell about how she lost her homeland. Something she often says is "how come they get to be on the land because their ancestors were there 2000 years ago but I can't even go to the land my grandfather was at 75 years ago?"
how am I supposed respond to that? Am I really supposed to say no you don't have a right to your family's land???"
The answers I found most insightful:
• You can empathize with her families story while still realizing that the Palestinian leadership is failing her people.
• Half of my family were forced out of their home in North Africa and ethnically cleansed from there alongside nearly 1M other Jews. My grandparents did not get to keep the keys to their house or business because that’s not usually what happens when you get kicked out. they came to Israel with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. We didn’t even know grandmother’s birthdate because their citizenships were revoked. They lived in tents for months and a new disease was spreading every week. How come I’m still not legally allowed where my grandparents were born? How come Palestinians are eternal refugees and my grandparents weren’t? The irony here is just insane.
• Not to mention Arab countries encouraged Palestinians to leave and return once the genocide (war) is over: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." - 1st secretary of the Arab league, 1948.
• “The Arab states encouraged Palestinian Arabs to leave” - Jordan’s newspaper, Feb 19, 1949
• “it must not be forgotten that the Arab higher committee encouraged refugees’ flight from Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem” - near East Arabic broadcasting station, April 3, 1949
• “since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon Arab refugees…”- Khaled Al Azm, Syria’s prime minister.
• Refugees all over the world (including Jews!) are forced to leave their homes. They make new lives in new lands. I don't hold onto the key of my great-grandparents' house in Belarus and demand the government give me our house and try to kill random Belorussians because of it.
• A quarter of Baghdad in the 30' was Jewish. My friend's grandparents came from there, they were so rich her grandmother didn't even know how to brush her own hair or dress herself because they had servants. They had to leave everything behind and live in a tin hut in Israel. Wars cause population to move. It's a tragedy but it's been happening everywhere. You think Germans were happy about leaving their homes in what is Poland today? I don't see them trying to go home to Poland.
