overnor, was responsible for the whole Galilee. He said he would give me a house, I could go back to work. I told him that as long as he was in military uniform I didn’t want it. He gave me a letter. I returned to Lod, and from there to Ramle at the instructions of the communist party, to manage the branch. I didn’t want to be in the prison of Tarshicha. In Tarshicha I was in prison, I couldn’t leave the borders of the village. In Ramle I worked in agriculture and later in a factory, until I retired. I raised seven children.
"Before 1948 in Majdal they would weave, weaving was an important source of income for the residents of Majdal. Every house had a loom and people would make a living from it. The whole family would work. The standard of living was good. During World War II Majdal became wealthy, they let them bring fabric from India for weaving. The whole family would work on the loom. There were also lands and orchards. A large and wealthy city. They would come here from every area, to the shuk, to the flour mill. During the period of martial law they continued to work in weaving and agriculture in cooperation with the Histadrut [Israeli national labor union]. Mor, from the Histadrut, didn’t let them expel people. They were helpful. They couldn’t expel people without their agreement."
The forgotten history
In a 2003 event organized by an Israeli peace group, Abdullah Zakout was able to visit his former home, “Here was a coffee shop and there was the school", he pointed out as he walked in the streets of Ashdod.
Zakout makes sure he tells his own story in response to Israeli claims over the village. “Some time ago I visited the village and saw a family touring the area and their father telling them about it. I told him I used to live here, but he was surprised and said that there was nothing here but some ruins. I told him that this was not true and that 4,000 people used to live here including myself,” he said.
Zakout’s words encouraged the group to paint the name of the village in Arabic and Hebrew on the remaining parts of the coffee shop, meanwhile Zakout went to do a job he never managed to finish in 1948. Filled with emotion, and determined to finish it 55 years later, he and the group hung a sign saying “Boys Elementary School in Isdud,” written in both Arabic and Hebrew, on the remaining walls of the boys’ school that residents of the village had just finished building before they were expelled in 1948.
Commemorating the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe) in Isdud is part of a wider campaign initiated by Zochrot (Hebrew for remembering) to bring knowledge of the Nakba to the Israeli public to raise the issues of historic responsibility and the Palestinian right of return. The initiative to commemorate the Palestinian Nakba did not come from an Israeli leftist politician but from an ordinary computer programmer.
“I was a Zionist” says Uri Zachem, “until I read the book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, by Benny Morris. I learned what I never wanted to learn before: that there was a nation who lived in Palestine before 1948. I realized the notion of ‘a country with no people’ is only a myth. I was told lies.”
“I started to drive around and looked at the landscape from a different point of view. Going through ruined villages I felt the sorrow and pain of Palestinian refugees. The Nakba is the mother of all sins,” said Zachem.
Zachem who lives in Kufur Saba (Kfar Sava in Hebrew) insists calling the town by its Arabic name, which he says “are the real names of villages and towns. What exists now is built either on the ruins of those places or next to them.”
Zachem explained that remains of Palestinian villages were being removed by Zionist groups and the Israeli government, but that groups like Zochrot were fighting to preserve the remaining parts of Palestinian villages and towns. Although Zachem does not feel personally responsible for the Palestinian catastrophe, he does feel that “as a Jew, it is my duty to do the best I can to change the beliefs of other Jews and correct all the bad deeds of our acti