To Al Lydd, my home.

From an ethnically cleansed region, to leading the resistance against occupation and colonialism

(PUBLISHED ON MIDDLE EAST EYE CLICK HERE TO READ )

Lydd or Lodd or Lidd, Palestine, was the province where the village of Jimzu resided in, the village my ancestral family lived in for generations. Jimzu was ethnically cleansed by the Israeli Defense Forces in 1948 in a military offensive called Operation Danny.

Lt. and Cl. Moshe Dayan, who then became Israel’s Defense Minister, gave the order to conquer all of Lydd and Ramle, and all of the villages that inhabited the region. Moshe Dayan’s intentions from the start was to ethnically cleanse and depopulate Jimzu and the surrounding villages, “torching everything that can be burned.”

My great grandfather, Issa Al-Jamal, sneaked into his village after the military operation was over. He recalled that the remains of dead people were scattered all around the village, unburied. “It’s as if their bodies were dismembered by wild dogs” my great grandfather said.

Most Palestinians from Lydd could not salvage almost any personal belongings. Our homes were destroyed along with almost all physical proof of our existence in Jimzu for centuries. Israel’s ethnic cleansing however, did not stop our oral histories from becoming the focal point of our identity. Our stories kept our history in Lydd alive.

My great grandfather Issa Al Jamal (left)

My great grandmother, Maryam Naseef, ran the village’s bee colony. She made gallons of honey every year to support her family. Yesterday, I sat around the dinner table with her grandchildren here in New York, as they recalled that Om Hussein (the mother of Hussein) was the toughest Palestinian woman our family knew. She used to say that even when she is under the ground, she will still be “the woman of the household. The woman who was in charge.”Her papers issued in Jericho after the Naksa, showed my great grandmother was born Al Lyd in the year of 1912.

My grandfather, Mohammed Issa Al Jamal, learned in the schools of Jerusalem. He was one of the very first educators of the village, and was a teacher in Ramleh. He started a chapter of the boy scouts, called Al Najjada. Al Najjada became an organization where the aim was to unite the youth and to strengthen a Palestinian consciousness among them. My grandfather, one of the very first activists of my family, understood the dangerous of the Zionist settler colonial project, and made sure to educate the members of his village to keep our existence alive. In many ways, Al Najjada became an organization of resistance against Zionist settler colonialism. Reja-e Busailah, a Palestinian professor, writes that the from a certain point on, “the people of Lydd outwardly adopted, invariably, an attitude and strategy of defense.”

In 1936, my grandfather gave a rousing speech in support of the general strike against the British that was happening at the time. This newspaper article highlights the meeting that took place for the Jimzu national committee, where my grandfather was the secretary general at the time.

My grandfather brought the idea of Al Najjada to the village, along with annual Mahrajans, or festivals, to which the surrounding towns are invited to to drum up support for resistance. On one the festival days was interrupted however. The British army sent a convoy to raid my village of Jimzu. They wanted to squander any support for resistance-especially armed resistance. My great uncle, Ahmed Issa Ibrahim al Jamal, recalls in his memoirs, that there were about 14 rifles with the townsfolk.

The rifles were collected hastily and my great uncle took the rifles quickly and hid them in the fields behind the house. The british army drove into town, stopped everyone and searched those who were present for arms.  Of course they did not find any and they eventually left.  My great uncle recalled that the Mahrajan resumed, food was brought out, speeches were made, and recruits and contributions were collected despite the seething anger of the towns people at the person who had informed the British of the event (my great uncle reveals the name of the person and says simply he just did not like my grandfather).

My grandfather, Mohammed Issa Al Jamal in his boy scouts uniform

My great uncle, was the Mokhtar, or town leader of Jimzu. He accompanied his father (my great grandfather) to census the population of Jimzu. He knew every resident and every family.

The Mokhtar seal of Mohammed Ahmed al Zaq, the mokhtar who came before my great uncle, year 1945.

On July 9th 1948, however, Ahmed, and the rest of the Al-Jamal family, were forced to leave as the Zionist “Yiftach” Brigade advanced and occupied the village of Jimzu. As my family, and the remainder of the village were expelled, Zionist militias shot at residents as they were fleeing. Ten were killed.

a journal entry of my great uncle writing about Nazeera, the woman who was killed by Israeli soldiers holding her 2 year old baby in her arms.

My great uncle recalled in his writings, that he witnessed a mother, Nazeera, breast feeding her baby, Mali, as they were forced to leave their lives behind. A Zionist soldier shot the mother while the baby was still feeding on the mother’s lifeless body. He wrote a small poem on her behalf:

“You [Ariel Sharon and Moshe Dayan] attacked Jimzu with a massive army. One day, however, you will lose. You kicked the residents of our village and their families. You followed them with machine guns and tanks. You killed the old-and their children. You killed them without reason. You killed an old man-a leader- a man who was too old to run or hide. It then wasn’t enough what you did- you had to kill Nazeera while her baby was breastfeeding on her bosom. You made death everywhere and became an expert in killing us. The innocent child-what did she do to deserve no father? No mother? You prevented a small child from experiencing the love of a mother before the sun set. The small child tugged on the breast of Nazeera. She could only cry.”

A deed of land issued to a resident of Jimzu by the local government in August 25th, 1943.

From there, Ahmed had to find a new home. In October of 1956, many members of my family became refugees and settled in Jordan. Some had to move to the United States. Others had to find refuge in any country that would take them, such as Brazil.

Members of the Al-Jamal family arriving in Brazil.

For my family, remembering the remains of our home was everything. Ahmed drew the most detailed map of Jimzu that currently exists. No family home, well, field, mosque, or street was forgotten. Ahmed kept the people of Jimzu and their stories alive by virtue of his memory.

My great uncle, Ahmed Issa Ibrahim Eljamal drew a detailed map of Jimzu that included family and street names

The map my great uncle drew was displayed at the Spertus Museum in Chicago as part of the “Imaginary Coordinates” exhibit- albeit not for very long. Under intense pressure from angry Zionist patrons, Spertus closed the exhibit. The pretext put forward was that it “was clearly anti-Israel” and that it tarnished Israel’s reputation. They were “saddened” by my uncle’s map.

Clearly, the reminder that Palestinians used to live on their land angers Israel supporters. It is a reminder that their state was built by ethnically cleansing and destroying Palestinian villages, like my ancestral home of Jimzu. My uncle’s map is a damning reminder that Israel is an occupying power that could only exist when generations of Palestinian families are forced out of their homes.

A family tree of the Al Jamal family stemming from my great great grandfather where he was born in 1819 and moved to Jimzu in 1854

Palestinians, went back to Al Lyd and Jimzu after their forced exile in 1948, although only as visitors--and sometimes not even as that. I tried to visit Jimzu in 2016. I have seen photos of the ruins of my ancestral land, including the only standing grave of my maternal great uncle, Jamal Abdellatif Shehadeh who died in 1946 . I wanted to pay my respects in person.

However, Israeli settlers did not let me enter my village, or see the grave of my great uncle in person. The painstaking reminder that Palestinians can not even pause to remember everything they’ve lost was cemented by the reality that Israeli settlers kick us out of our homes-even to this day.

the last remaining grave in Jimzu belongs to my maternal great uncle Jamal Abdellatif Shehadeh who died in 1946.

Taken in 1980, a Palestinian man roamed through the ruins of Jimzu where his old village once was

Although resistance against the occupation in Al Lyd has been suppressed for decades, we’ve seen an unprecedented wave of protests that sparked al Lydd and other cities within Israel. Palestinians were re-asserting their identity by protesting and taking to the streets. My home, al Lydd, was telling the world they will not be called Arab Israelis. The protests showed solidarity with the families of Sheikh Jarrah , Jerusalem as a whole, and with the Palestinians in Gaza who were facing brutal Israeli bombardment and a 14 year military siege. Palestinians in al Lydd, are showing the settler colonial state that their containment policy no longer works as long as the apartheid continues.

Memory is a powerful tool of resistance that fuels the liberation movement of today. The right of return is the most crucial part of the Palestinian struggle. The story of my family and their life in Jimzu is not a unique one. Palestinians all across the diaspora can recall hearing about the beauty of our villages and the eagerness in our grandparents’ voices as they pray to come home.

There is no freedom without our right to return from the river to the sea.