June 25, 2010

Rezeq Faraj: The legacy of a man without a childhood

It's hard to remain a child in hell, and Faraj would affirm matter-of-factly that his childhood had been non-existent. One midnight at age two, he, his family, and the rest of the village of Rafat were swept up in flight from advancing Zionist militia. He joined the three-quarters of a million Palestinians eventually driven from their homes in the unilateral population transfer that has come to be known as the Nakba (catastrophe).

April 2010

My Beautiful Palestine

by Samah Sabawi (formerly of Ottawa)

My family has lived in exile now for more than 40 years, and even though I've made many visits back to Palestine, I never really lived there. Yet like all Palestinians in the Diaspora would say, Palestine lives inside me. I have become weaved into the tapestry of Palestinian activism that places me in a larger community of human rights and justice advocates. My global village is filled with inspirational people and their stories of triumphs and tribulations in the face of oppression. Today, I know with certainty that my beautiful Palestine is not just that piece of geography my parents yearn for, and that my people don't all have the same Semitic eyes, skin or hair as I do. My Palestine is wherever there is injustice in this world and my people are the truth seekers and the peace activists. They are my sisters and my brothers.

January 21, 2009

Hamshari's Sycamore "Jummez Tree"  

 by Rana Abdulla (St. John’s, Newfoundland)

In 2000, my mother Fatima, accompanied my daughters, Rania 18 and Danah 13, visited her home in Um-Khalid for the first time in years. Most of the houses had been bulldozed over but some traces of familiar landmarks remained. When she walked through what was left of her village, she recognized some of the houses and spoke of the families that had lived there.

 

August 14, 2006

An Interview with Dr. Ismail Zayid, President of the Canadian Palestinian Association (Halifax)

Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from 1947 to the present has caused monumental devastation to the exiled, those hundreds of thousands who were forced from their homes and never allowed to return. Dr. Ismail Zayid’s family suffered this unspeakable horror in 1967 when their village of Beit Nuba was erased from the face of the earth by Israeli bulldozers....

Dr. Zayid: They came back having seen the village being systematically dynamited and bulldozers by more Israeli troops arriving to complete the job...... They related that some 18 elderly and disabled people, who were unable to move out, were buried under the rubble of their homes. These included an uncle of my mother, Mohammad Ali Bakr. A middle-aged relative of my mother, Lutfi, was shot in cold blood. [Read full article]

 

October 14, 2005

A Refusal to Disappear

Exiled toddler, refugee camp survivor, retired teacher - Rezeq Faraj won't let Montrealers forget about ethnic cleansing.

by Dave Himmelstein

I.    ROOTS
For Rezeq Faraj, ethnic cleansing is not a historical abstraction.

It's a three-year-old waking to real-life nightmare. Swept up in the arms of his older sister, Nejma. Unfolding chaos. The family is preparing to flee the village of Deir Rafat. So are all the other villagers. Zionist militias are on the way, and residents know what to expect. Deir Rafat will become one of hundreds of Palestinian villages bulldozed, ploughed over, and erased from maps issued by the newly created state of Israel. [Read full article]

 

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