A personal reflection on Nakba Day, intergenerational trauma, exile and the experience of carrying Palestinian identity and grief while living in the Australian diaspora.

My father was born in Jerusalem in 1947 – the year that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began in full force. Three Zionist terror groups – the Haganah, the Irgun and the Stern Gang (Lehi) – bombed and raped their way across Palestine, committing massacres and forcing people out of their homes at gunpoint.

When my father was one year old, he and his family were forced out of their home in West Jerusalem and found refuge in a place in East Jerusalem. Those terror groups took most of Palestine, and when the state of Israel was declared on top of it, they became the Israeli Defence Force and have continued committing acts of terror to this very day.

My parents said there was........

© Pearls and Irritations