Imagine yourself drinking coffee at your favorite neighborhood spot. It’s 1947 in the Palestinian village of Lifta. Sipping your coffee and looking out over Lifta, you see buildings clustered along foot paths and narrow staircases. The homes are made of golden stone, and they climb the gentle slopes of a valley near Jerusalem.
Read MoreIn 1947 my grandmother, Mamo, was 14 years old. She was in high school, in Whittier, California. 85,331 people lived in Whittier. Mamo had slumber parties with her best friends and rode her bike everywhere. She went to parties on the beach and rode horses in the hills. She worked at a little corner grocery store stocking shelves.
Read MoreThinking about the preservation of memory and what happens when that connection severs. Umar, our guide, walking us step by step over the rocky terrain of Lifta, explaining how each disappeared village is meticulously recorded, preserved, named once again. They become, again, dots on a map, destinations now accessible by internet.
Read MoreWe visited the site of Lifta, one of over 500 localities from which Palestinians were expelled by force in 1947-48. Lifta is unique or nearly unique in that the broken shells of the stone houses still stand. The Israeli government has established the area as a nature preserve, one of many tactics to erase the history of this occupied land.
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