Nakba

Itamar Shapira
Combatants for Peace Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I had never heard about Qibya or about other villages where Israel killed many people; I had never known about the Nakba. I never knew that there used to be Arabs here but that now most of them are gone, but I never considered that they once lived where Tel Aviv University now stands or where my community is or where another person’s town is. It wasn’t real. Even if I did know all this, then I thought the Arab villages had been there but had been “abandonded”--or something like that. I wasn’t aware of the intensity of the pain the other side bears. You can say, “But they use terrorism” but if you don’t understand the pain you obviously won’t understand things that evolved from it; it’s like on our side. If you don’t understand there was a holocaust and that people always suffered from pogroms and persecution, you won’t understand why Israel is here or why we insist on being here.” [Source in Complete Interview]

Melisse Lewine-Boskovich
Peace Child Israel Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I have a conviction about honesty and justice. When I myself cope with the fact of how the state was established, I think there needs to be some sort of recognition of the tragedy. Not that they should commemorate the Nakba every year. We need to recognize it and be able to acknowledge it and then move forward. Nobody's anywhere near that. When I think about the fact that what I want was established on someone else's pain, then sometimes that tells me that I have to let go of what I want. In a way. There's something not kosher about this. If we really are totally honest about how the state was established, maybe there was no legitimacy for it to happen. Okay, the world voted on it and the land was bought and worse things have happened in other parts of the world, but I'm not involved in contributing to those other people's pain, and in this case [with the Palestinians] I am.” [Source in Complete Interview]

Wafa Srour
The School for Peace Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I am from Eilaboun, a small village in the north between Tiberias and Nazareth. A massacre took place in this village in 1948; sixteen people were killed and the others fled for their lives. Both my maternal uncle and my paternal uncle were among those killed. My father could have been among them, as well, yet he somehow survived. I was born in the same village and in the same house.” [Source in Complete Interview]

Ali Abu Awwad
Bereaved Families Forum, Al Tareek (The Way) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ As you know, education is a major factor in any conflict. We try to explain our message to pupils and students. We are usually accepted. There are occasionally difficult things to hear, but eventually you begin to understand and attempt to analyze why a certain student talks with such hatred. The student wasn’t born with this hatred, so why is he like this now? […] children on both sides grow up according to different perspectives. The creation of the Zionist state among the Zionists or Israelis is the creation of the Zionist or Jewish state in 1948, but for us, it is the Nakba. Both sides should realize the source of this hatred. Through our lectures, we try to explain the reasons for the hatred and misunderstanding and convey that the people on the other side aren’t animals, they are human.” [Source in Complete Interview]

Yoa'ad Shbita
Building Bridges for Peace, Reut-Sedaka Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I do know that I want things to get better. That's why I'm not sitting at home or working and studying for the college entry exams. I want things to change. I'm only nineteen, my grandmother is eighty and she went through the whole Nakba. And she's still willing to accept the things that I'm doing [living in a communal house with Palestinian and Jewish Israelis]. Maybe not that we live together with boys and that I live away from home, but the fact that we're working on this, that there are Jews who come to our family's house, that we go to demonstrations; she's eighty and was expelled from her village and she can accept it! "Do it," she says!” [Source in Complete Interview]

Wafa Srour
The School for Peace Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ My father lived through 1948; I need to know what happened in order to be able to understand him and deal with him. I need to know what happened in order to know myself. Why do they keep that information from us? I need to know the truth in order to build my own identity. When we talk to Israeli Jews about this they say, “Why do you always focus on the past? Let’s start from now and look forward.” But if they don’t think the past is important, then why do they keep teaching their children about the Holocaust? Why can they teach the history of the Holocaust, when Arabs cannot teach their children about 1948? I studied about the Holocaust in school, but I was not taught about the things that my own father went through.” [Source in Complete Interview]