I am a Nakba survivor. In April 1948, my parents were forced to leave Palestine in fear for their lives. News had just come out of the April 9 massacre of men, women and children in Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem. Perched on Mount Carmel above the city of Haifa, where my parents lived, Zionists began a barrage of cannon fire. Neighbors were killed and Haifa Port, where my father worked, was also attacked. 

In panic, my parents fled. By May 15, eighty percent of the Palestinians were expelled or fled in fear. Around 530 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated and most were erased. The refugees, including my family, were never allowed back, and I was born a stateless refugee two years later. 

We Palestinians refer to the events of 1947-1948 as our Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe.” It is our very own Holocaust, which we commemorate every May 15 as Nakba Day. 

But for us it’s not only a memory. It has been an ongoing catastrophe that repeats every few years: now in Hebron, now in Galilee, now in Jenin, now in Jerusalem with residency laws as weapons. The piecemeal ethnic cleansing of the past 78 years became a full-fledged genocide in Gaza, in full view of the world. It is the latest and most horrific episode in a litany of massacres that the U.S. public has never even heard about. 

We have survived all those years, and will continue to do so.

Fateh Azzam
Georgetown