Ethnic Cleansing in Jerusalem/Palestine, and North America
Perhaps you are aware of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians being attempted in Sheikh Jarrah, a community in East Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine. I have been following it in the media, listening to reports from the community, looking at images, and reposting images on social media. Many of the images I’ve posted have been removed by Instagram and Facebook. Throughout all of this, I have been Co-Counseling and discharging.
I am Palestinian, and the same thing happened to my family in 1948. My grandfather, grandmother, and their five children lived in the Musrara neighbourhood of Jerusalem. In April of that year, they were told they should leave their home because there was going to be fighting in the area, that they’d be better off [more secure] away from the neighbourhood. They did leave, and they were never allowed to return. That was how my family was forcibly removed from their land, their home, and their homeland. They were “ethnically cleansed” to make room for settlers and colonizers to move into their home.
Settler colonialism is not unique to Palestine/Israel. It is also what happened, and is happening today, to Indigenous people here in North America. I am an “unwanted settler” on Coast Salish territory here in Canada.
Now my family is all over the world. None of us are in Jerusalem, and none of us are in Palestine. I love my extended family, but I have not spent much time with them because of the diaspora. I had an uncle whom I never met. None of my cousins, nor I, speak Arabic—we all speak English and French. None of us have been able to visit Palestine. My grandfather is buried in Jerusalem, and I have never visited his grave. Before 1948 my grandfather and his brother ran a successful photography business in Jerusalem. All of their equipment, negatives, and prints were either destroyed or taken.
I’ve been discharging on the following: What communities of people no longer live in my neighbourhood? When did they leave, and why? How would it feel if I and my children were forcibly evicted from our home? What would it be like to belong to the land (as opposed to the land belonging to me)? I’ve also been discharging on wanting to go to Palestine and wishing I had family to visit there.
Canada
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of wide world change
(Present Time 205, October 2021)