A childhood memory: A group of kids and their teacher on a school trip. They are walking through excavations, listening to explanations from a tour guide about their ancestors who lived there two thousand years ago. After a while, one of the kids points to some ruins between the trees. “Are these ancient homes as well?” he asks.
“These are not important,” comes the answer.
Growing up in the seventies and the eighties you couldn’t miss those small houses scattered near fields, between towns and Kibbuzim and in national parks. Most of them were made of stone, with arches and long, tall windows. In other places they had cement walls. Sometimes all you could see was part of a stone fence, a couple of walls with no roof, or the rows of Indian fig that Palestinians used to mark the border of an agricultural field (it is one of history’s ironies that the Hebrew name of their fruit – the Sabra – became the nickname for an Israeli-born Jew).
Those pieces of the local landscape are gradually disappearing – partly due to the “development” trends which have left very few corners of this country untouched, but also due to a policy that is meant to erase any memory of the people who used to live in this land. But one can still find them sometimes, and in the most unexpected of places –the mosque, which stands between the hotels and expensive apartment towers on Tel Aviv’s beach, or a few homes behind Herzlia’s monstrous Cinema City complex.
As a kid, I never gave those ruins much thought. I loved history – but the history they taught us at school. I could probably have lead a tour of Massada at the age of 12, and one of my favorite books told the tragic story of the last convoy to Gush Ezion in ‘48, before it fell into Jordanian hands.
Once, also during elementary school, our class was supposed to go on a tour of Canada Park, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. We had been there before – they told us of the crusaders who passed through the area and the caves and homes Jews lived in, and I still remember the explanation on the ways they used to make wine—but this time my mother didn’t want me to go. The park, she told me, stood on the site of the last two Palestinian villages that were destroyed by Israel. Not many remember this story – it happened right after the war in 1967. Imwas and Yallu were demolished under a direct order by Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin. The Hebrew Wikipedia entry states that unlike in ‘48, the Palestinian residents were later compensated, but they weren’t allowed to return to their village.
I don’t remember if I ended up going on this trip or not. Lees Verder
Wij Blijven Hier werd in 2005 opgericht, omdat ze vonden dat ze er nog niet waren. Inmiddels zijn ze 3000 bijdragen rijker, die vrijwillig door beginnende én gearriveerde verhalenvertellers worden geschreven. Verschillend van columns, persoonlijke ervaringen tot verborgen nieuwsfeitjes. Ze kijken op hun eigen manier tegen de wereld aan, en vertellen zélf het verhaal. Wie zijn ze? Kijk om u heen. Want ze zijn hier. Zij Blijven Hier!
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Israëlische historici als Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe en Tom Segev en vele journalisten als Amira Hass, Akiva Eldar en Gideon Levi zijn gelukkig hard bezig het tij te keren.