Abeer Shinnawi is an educator in Maryland. In this blog post, as seen on her education company’s page Altaired. You can see the original post here .

Written by Abeer Shinnawi

(This blog post is dedicated to my maternal grandmother, Aminah, who lived through so much but was always one of the strongest women I have ever known.  May she be in the highest of heavens.  Allah yirhamik ya Sitti).

May 15, 1948 will be etched in the minds and hearts of Palestinians forever.  That was the day over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homelands overnight.  This tragic event led to one of the largest diasporas in history causing decades of trauma that still haunts the Palestinian people today.  To some, that date is a celebration because the state of Israel was formed.  But to the millions of Palestinians who now live in other countries other than their own, this is know as Al-Nakba or The Catastrophe.

Among those who were displaced on May 15 1948, were my maternal grandparents.  Simple falaheen (farmers), they were expelled from their native land of Deir Tarif and fled to re-settle in the town of Al-Beireh where they made a living with their simple farm stand in the hisbeh (farmers market), built a house and raised 6 children.  Although they lived a comfortable life in their new “home” they never let up the notion nor did they ever waver their pride of being from Deir Tarif.  When Palestinians meet each other for the first time, among the first thing asked is: Which balad (town) are you from? This may sound like an awkward question, but for Palestinians, this captures the resolve of our people to keep the names of hundreds of towns that were demolished, destroyed and re-named during and years after  Al-Nakba.  I will always remember my mother introducing herself saying that she is from Deir Tarif, muhajireen (emigrants but really meaning forcefully expelled) of ’48 but live in the town of Al-Beireh.  This did not denote the new place she was raised, or speaks ill will towards those who took my grandparents and many others in.  This is the practice of avoiding the most common of Western tactics with Indigenous people and that is one of erasure.

“As a second-generation Palestinian American, I’ve carried a sense of place-lessness my whole life that has turned me to writing stories. It has also made me acutely aware of the liminal spaces my students, particularly those of color and marginalized communities, might occupy and how they navigate across multiple identities and displacement. I am devoted to texts that center disenfranchised and largely silenced voices. I hope they might offer my students opportunities to critique systems of oppression and bigotry with the greater goal of dismantling them through their education. ”

— Sahar Mustafa renowned author of The Beauty of Your Face and Code of the West

The ease of erasure:

Many years ago, I attended a two-day conference about the Arab-Israeli conflict conducted by a reputable education company that is used by many including the county I work.  During one of the sessions, the presenter made a statement that solidified the importance of why teaching about silent voices and false narratives is so important.  He claimed, in a room full of educators from across the country, that pre-1948, there were no Palestinians and the concept of Palestinians only existed after the creation of the state of Israel to help develop a narrative to help falsify justification for the state.  My entire demeanor changed and given all of the other falsified information given during that presentation, I knew I had to respond to this false narrative.  I raised my hand and asked: So, you are telling me if I bring my grandmother from the grave, you will tell her that she is just an Arab and that her being Palestinian is a lie?  You want to say all the documents that were pre-48 stamped with the words the “government of Palestine” were all a lie or doctored?

He had no answer because when you tell a lie enough, that lie becomes truth. Those two days made many conversations uneasy creating a tension in the room, but I did not care.  I am happy to say that many teachers who attended that session sent me emails or personal letters thanking me for the Palestinian perspective and that they will be on the quest to start teaching our narrative.  Their most common answer to why they did not do that before was: we simply did not know; or we believed what we read and saw in the media or what we learned in school.  BINGO!

Importance of voice:

As a history educator, I believe it is my duty to teach the true history, the hard history that does not exist in curricula across this nation.  The white washing and erasure of Indigenous peoples and people of color has been the foundation of our educational system.  This is no different when teaching about Palestine.  We all know the tremendous backlash educators get when attempting to insert the narrative of the Palestinian people or when we try to assert our voice when creating a curriculum that is reflective of our own experiences and history. The mere fact that our own history in always spoken in terms of being the aggressor, terroristic acts or even the most common narrative of “a land without a people for a people without a land” seeps into your psyche which creates a stigma of ever wanting to identify by your true heritage.  What I have learned as an educator, is one must honor the history of those voices that are not valued and make sure to make space for those voices.  So, the question always asked is: how can I teach something that is not prescribed in the curriculum without getting in trouble? The answer: you find a space that allows it and you also need to make sure you are ready for consequences.  I love the phrase “do it now and apologize later”. No movement has come without the backlash, vitriol that has tried to stop it.  We as educators must work together to make sure silent voices are prevalent in our classrooms and connect our struggles as Palestinians to the struggles of those around us like those of our brethren in the African American and the Indigenous community. As renowned author of The Beauty of Your Face and Code of the West Sahar Mustafa eloquently states:

As a second-generation Palestinian American, I've carried a sense of place-lessness my whole life that has turned me to writing stories. It has also made me acutely aware of the liminal spaces my students, particularly those of color and marginalized communities, might occupy and how they navigate across multiple identities and displacement. I am devoted to texts that center disenfranchised and largely silenced voices. I hope they might offer my students opportunities to critique systems of oppression and bigotry with the greater goal of dismantling them through their education. 

Enhance your Toolbox:

The excuse that there are no real resources that can be used to teach about Al-Nakba and the Palestinians can no longer be used.  There is a plethora of vetted resources that can be utilized in many classrooms.  As a resource teacher and educational consultant, my job is to find, analyze and curate resources that will benefit students in any classroom.  To help add to the teacher’s toolbox on teaching the Palestinian diaspora, here are some helpful resources one can use:

1.  Teach Palestine:  The Teach Palestine Project is resource by and for K-12 teachers/teacher educators focused on bringing Palestine into our classrooms and schools.

2. Facing the Nakba: Jewish Voices for Peace Facing the Nakba offers educational resources to U.S. Jews and a general U.S. audience about the history of the Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic) and its present implications in Palestine/Israel.

3.  Palestine Today: explore how the Nakba transformed Palestine using an interactive map.

4. Palestine Remembered:  This important project was first motivated by Village Statistics of 1945 (which was published by the Palestine Government for the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry in 1946) which collected statistical data about Palestine's villages (Palestinian and Jewish) as of 1945.

5. American Indian Removal: What does it mean to remove a people?: from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian this lesson helps students understand what it means to remove a people, the long term affects.  This lesson can be used as a parallel to the Palestinian diaspora with an analysis of the similarities and how both communities can help to bring about justice to our people.

Final thoughts:

Although this year marks 72 years and two generations of those experiencing the diaspora, the heritage and pride of our people is resolute.   We will always commemorate this day with knowing that we are not just holding on for future generations, but to also honor those who fled, fought, lost love and their own lives, struggling to keep the Palestinian cause alive. 

I end by sharing a poem about love, loss and hope  by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha:

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY(originally published in Mass Review)

for Musa Khalaf, born 1938, Jerusalem, Palestine

This is how you open the box
when I am no longer here.

One of these might be the combination:

1975
The year you were born

1967
The year we lost the rest of our country

1936
The year your grandmother swallowed her gold coins
to hide them from the soldiers

This is how you keep yourself
safe, keep parts of yourself in different boxes.
Trust no one
with everything.

1949
The year my father died

1977
The year the checkpoints taught you
The difference between your name and your passport

1999
The year the last of our olives were uprooted
and the wall obscured Jerusalem

This is how you know it will end:

At night, the windows of the city become mirrors,

a key recalls the shape of its doorway, the stones of this earth
nestle in young hands.

Infamous image of Palestinians holding the "key" of their original home from which they were expelled. This image is called Al-Awda (The Right to Return).