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Boston support group for the International Solidarity Movement

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1.August 3rd, 2005 "A Visit to the Spring of a Razed 1948 Palestinian Village"
By Kera

Saafouria was a Palestinian village that was attacked on three sides and
from the air by the Israeli Army in 1948.  The fourth side, that led to the
North, was left open so that surviving Palestinian families could flee their
homes.  The area was conquered and became part of Israel.  The state of
Israel --supported by the donations of an international Jewish (non-)
community-- planted trees to hide destroyed homes, lives, and any evidence
that a vibrant Palestinian culture and community existed here.  And to
support their claims of "a land without people for a people without land,"
this place was given a new name: Seppouri.  While often Israelis claim that
these Arabic places never existed, Israeli names often seem to originate
from the Arabic names.  The similarity in names is flagrant evidence that
Israel remembers its own shame.  And there are others who will not forget.

"Z" is a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship who now lives in Nazareth,
Israel.  "Z" took our group from Boston through the confiscated land of his
grandparents who lived in what was once Saafouria.  His pride and connection
to this land were unmistakable even as he described a grandmother who
could/would not return to bear witness to "Seppouri."  He invited us to
drink from the natural spring, which although truly clear and seemingly
clean, had begun to attract trash. We watched as a Palestinian man came to
fill his bottles with water and carry them back to a now distant home. We
watched as a Russian-Jewish Israeli family came to bathe its children and
swim in the drinking water of this destroyed community.  We listened as Z
explained the added insult to injury of a newcomer family that has inherited
but "doesn't know how to treat the land" of his people.

We watched as Z suffered yet another symptom of this "conflict of cultures"
with good humor.  He told us about the planned museum which
will hold the artifacts that were gathered as people fled the onslaught of
the Zionist army.  He spoke of his dreams to restore the village
cemetary on his ancestral land now owned by the state of Israel.  He told us
of widespread indifference to the issues of Palestinians
displaced and disposessed and of their persistence in their struggle for
recognition and human rights.  These are issues that we'd heard;
but we met Z and saw the stolen land of Safouria, and felt the cool spring
that fed his community, and the feeling of injustice continues
to be palpable.