Students flooded Columbia University's lawn to create the Gaza Solidarity Encampment in order to pressure their universi | dG1fNVNPZE5PLVhkRVk
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00I was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus in Syria.
00:06My family's history in Palestine actually goes back to as long as my grandparent could trace it.
00:15They lived in a very small village right next to Tiberias. Mostly they were farmers.
00:22My grandmother, she used to tell us that she had Jewish neighbors.
00:26They would share a piece of land where they would farm it. Tiberias was one of the first
00:33cities that the Zionists targeted in 1948 with ethnic cleansing.
00:40In April 1948, a month before the Nakba, the Zionist militias, they burned one of their
00:47villages. When they heard the news about it, they had to leave immediately. Some of the men
00:54went to fight. Big families, they had to go to Syria. My grandmother, she was pregnant at that
01:02time. She had to walk 40 miles. She gave birth on the way. When they arrived in the refugee camp,
01:11they thought it's just a matter of days until they would go back. They did not want to be killed
01:17because they heard about the horror stories across Tiberias. My dad was born in a tent.
01:24His family lived in that tent until like mid-70s when they upgraded to small structures.
01:33In the 90s, they finally kind of like had concrete buildings. To us, it was always a temporary home
01:41until we go back to Palestine. That's why very few families actually invested in their houses.
01:49Not necessarily because they don't have the means, but because investing more in these houses
01:54means that they may forget Palestine.