Today is the 63d anniversary of the Deir Yassin massacre. The village lay on the Jewish nationalist fighters’ path to Jerusalem, and the massacre by the Irgun sent shockwaves through the city and initiated a flood of refugees. Mazin Qumsiyeh writes about it here.
Last Thursday night my co-editor and I gave a talk at Harvard Law School. We had been told there would be a lot of pro-Israel voices at the talk, and I keyed on the faces of a couple in a back row. They were in their 60s and seemed affluent, the woman’s hair was nicely done. I thought their faces looked Jewish. He had a satisfied, successful air. She wore an expensive scarf and seemed unnerved by things we said.
They didn’t say anything during the Q-and-A but afterward they came up and gave me a book to sign. The man told me they were doctors in the area, and both Palestinian. Their families had independently fled the country in ’48 and made a couple of stops before getting to the U.S.
I said I’m sorry, and he shrugged and said, “You are not responsible. It happened a long time ago. We did fine.”
His wife did not agree with him. She fastened on me with her big dark eyes and thanked me for my talk and then then spoke in a tumbling manner. Her family was from Haifa. They had Jewish friends, they had been told that everything would be OK and just ride it out. Then attacks began on Palestinians (yes I know, they went both ways; but one side was stronger) and the family had to leave. They’d gone from Lebanon to the U.S. Her father had lost his business.
“We were told to forget. We were told not to think of ourselves as Palestinians,” she said, getting more and more upset. In the last two or three years she has started writing to recover that experience. She has written a couple of hundred pages.
“I want to find out who I am, I want to find out what was taken from me when I was little. I’m not too old.”
As she spoke, a half dozen people had gathered to listen. “What a story,” one said. “You have to publish that,” said another. I gave her my email address.
The husband shook his head and started away. “It is not a story,” he said. “It’s over.”
But she said she was showing the book to her children, and then she followed him.
