The Catastrophe
If these battered walls and buildings had the means to speak, would they crumble beneath our feet and mourn those once buried amongst the concrete and the soot? Would they grieve their bent steel and blackened architecture? Would there be stories behind each bullet embedded in even the smallest of fractures?
What would we be told of this throbbing fragment of discarded history, held together by shards of ignored words etched out in the stillness, bellowed through madness and whispered behind closed doors?
What of the catastrophe would they tell us, wherein 750,000 Palestinian men, women, and children expelled from their homes by Israeli forces, were left carrying their entire livelihoods on their shoulders?
33 massacres and 531 Palestinian towns destroyed in this catastrophe, by Zionist militias. Entire villages depopulated and razed to the ground. And it continues.
The story of the catastrophe begins with the oft-ignored horrors of displacement and conquest but it will be concluded with the cries of liberation and redemption; the old may have died but the young will never forget, and they shall return.
Recommended readings on Palestine and Al Nakba (The Catastrophe):
1. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine – Ilan Pappé
2. The Iron Cage - Rashid Khalidi
3. The Question of Palestine - Edward Wadie Saïd
4. One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – Ali Abunimah
5. Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide - Ben White
6. Palestine Inside And Out – Saree Makdisi
