Randa asked me to share her family story.

– –

The 1948 Palestinian exodus, also known as the Nakba (Arabic: النكبة‎, “al-Nakbah”, literally “disaster”, “catastrophe”, or “cataclysm”), occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Palestine war. (source)

• • •

Randa Berouti, exiled in Lebanon, writes:

I am from Palestine, therefore it is not Israel. Every bit of the land is stolen.

My parents went to Damascus to be in a safer area, and then because they had both studied in Beirut and therefore had friends, they went there. Then like hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians they were not allowed to return by the newly declared ‘israeli’ (proxy war state), to their homes, properties, work, schools, farms, factories, ships, railroads.

My grandfather’s family had big orange plantations. We exported oranges to Europe. (Jaffa Oranges).. Imagine, they took everything .. Our homes, our books, our paintings.. Our beds.. Our gardens, our life, our homeland.

And guess what they exported our oranges under the same name! They did not even change the logo or name. ‘Sunshine’ oranges.

It is even worse. The banks blocked all their money. Therefore, whatever in the bank was blocked. In reality, confiscated. Because they only unblocked them after years, when the money had become of hardly or much less value. I think this was done so that Palestinians do not file a case against Britain. We were under British rule. Therefore they were responsible for not protecting the many civilians who were massacred. Men women children.

The men were mostly unarmed . Or with some old WWI rifles.. The terrorist Jewish groups come from Europe, would attack peaceful villages .. This is how and why people ran away leaving everything behind.

Then Britain withdrew giving its military posts to these gangs and their jewish state was declared. And these made a law called the ‘absentee’ law. All ‘absent’ are not allowed to return. All (except for some Palestinian Jews).

All of these nice ‘Israelis’ are on stolen property.

My uncle’s wife, her mother was Jewish. She had left with us.

I love the protective attitude of my grandmother ..