Rima Bordcosh’s Memories of Her Family’s Flight From Jaffa in ’48

Yesterday I blogged about the party for Raja Shehadeh's book on walks in Palestine, at which a lady named Rima told me about the day in August 1947 that her house in Jaffa was evacuated because a Jewish terrorist had brought a camel piled with explosives into the city. My telling of that story was a little nonspecific, I wasn't even sure if Rima had heard it from her mother, or observed it. I asked Rima to fill me in. Rima Bordcosh writes:

Here are the answers to your questions.

--- I lived it  and it is very vivid in my memory. I was  so scared and shocked. I  cried and sobbed as a child.  A  policeman  carried me to calm me down.

--- A policeman probably was   British since Palestine was under the British mandate.

--- We left Palestine in April 24 1948.  after very heavy fighting in Tell El Reesh, which was not far from our home. We were caught up in the Cross Fire.  I remember, my mother used to get us  up  in the middle of the nights, from our beds which were next to the window in our bed room, and  make us sleep on the floor in the corridor. She stayed beside us and said "Let us pray to the Lord to save us from the Zionists"  [The lord would have been Jesus; Rima is Christian] We left by car  to Amman and then to Damascus and then to Lebanon. It took us four days to reach Lebanon. We were supposed to spend the summer there as my family usually did, and return home by the end of the summer.  When we reached Damascus, a Damascene woman took us in. We slept on the floor. My father slept in the car. My mother was crying all the time. My father was hysterical. We the three children did not know what was going on.

Before we left, the only thing that came to my mind, to me, was that the terrorist wanted to kill me and my family on my brother's birthday. My mother and father did not want to leave. My mother  then was preparing for Easter celebrations. My father was convinced not to leave his home, his country, but still told my mother, "if any thing happens to the children, you will be responsible ". My mother panicked and became hysterical.  She sobbed and sobbed. She was obliged to leave  in  spite of her beliefs not to leave  her country and her home. She was convinced of what she was told that they will return after the Abdullah, King of Jordan will  overcome the invaders, the Zionists.  And  after  discussion between her and my father;  and after continuously hearing about killing of Palestinian  villagers by the Zionists Jews, the massacre of Deir Yassin [in early April 1948], the fighting, the rape of Palestinian women. Oh my God, the situation  has not changed since 1948- only the Zionists became stronger and only with the help of US.-- She then decided to leave for a short period until calm will come back to our beloved  city, Jaffa.

A few comments. Rima provided me this account in part so that I would influence the Jewish community. I would put this single account up against the mendacious bilge published by Commentary Magazine last month, by Efraim Karsh, in which he said that the Arabs were driven out of Jaffa by other Arabs. Karsh's account of Jaffa was underwritten by Roger Hertog, chairman of the New-York Historical Society. It is important to remember that Commentary's Zionist Nakba-denial has thereby tarred a great New York institution. Curators and archivists of the Historical Society, how do you assess the veracity of Bordcosh's document? What do you think of your chairman's position re the Arab expulsion in 1948?

I know someone who left Berlin before the Holocaust. After Kristallnacht in 1938, the mother yelled at the father, If you don't want to go I am going with the children by myself. Like Bordcosh's family, they were relatively privileged. I am not comparing the Nazi genocide to the expulsion of the Palestinians, only that religious/ethnic terror has a universal quality. And yes, people in Gaza and Sderot are experiencing that feeling now.