Nakba 71

My mother is 74 years old born at Lydda, Palestine in 1945. She became a refugee at 3 years old. Her father, my grandfather was a Palestine Traffic Police Officer under the English mandate of Palestine. One day he, Nabeel Abu Ghosh, came home early from work; the family had to leave. 'By evening, approximately 35,000 Palestinian Arabs had left Lydda in a long column, marching past the Ben Shemen youth village and disappearing into the east. Zionism had obliterated the city of Lydda. Lydda is the black box of Zionism.' The last apostrophe line is also within the text of 'Lydda, 1948' written by Ari Shavit. My mother is older than this made-up country and this fake humanity! My grandfather, may he rest in peace, never left the refugee camp in Jordan and kept the keys to our house. My mother went to visit and to get her birth certificate before Jerusalem was occupied by Israel in 1967 and wanted to visit the home where she was born at but the settlers didn't let her enter to have a quick look. The English Police Officers under the English Mandate in 1948 were flown back to England while the Arab Police Officers were left to walk, and they eventually ended up in refugee camps in Jordan