Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May-June 2009, page 68

Waging Peace

Jerusalem Fund Screens “Chronicles of a Refugee”

	Filmmaker Adam Shapiro points to a picture of a woman who, after Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, has been displaced for the second time. Her house key pinned to her clothes, Shapiro noted, is reminiscent of the symbolic keys held onto by the 1948 refugees (Photo J. Najjab).

ON FEB. 20, 2009 the Jerusalem Fund in Washington, DC held a lecture and discussion on “Palestinian Refugees: Identity without a Homeland.” Adam Shapiro and Dr. Laurie King-Irani presented a 30-minute screening the first segment of Shapiro’s innovative six-part documentary “Chronicles of a Refugee.” In some 250 interviews, the groundbreaking documentary features Palestinian refugees now living in more than 15 countries telling stories of their lives in the 60 years since the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe.

Each story told began with the words “I remember.” Whether it was a childhood memory or the location of a home, the participants recalled their lives in Palestine before 1948, and of how they were driven out of their homes, towns and cities following the passage of the U.N. partition plan in 1947. Parents worried about their children’s mental stability, and many of the refugees interviewed spoke about the well-armed Jewish militia and terrorist gangs.

One interviewee described the constant state of fear they lived in by describing how parents forced their children to sleep with their clothes and shoes on, in case they had to flee in the middle of the night. Many of the testimonies described the hardships endured on the exodus from their homes, many leaving with nothing but the clothes on their back, for they thought they would surely return home soon. They believed they would return in 15 days, but 15 days eventually turned into 21,915 days and counting.

Director and human rights activist Shapiro, together with his wife, Huweida Arraf, founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which brings civilians from around the world to Palestine to engage in nonviolent resistance. His previous films include a documentary entitled “About Baghdad.”

Dr. King-Irani, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, founding member of The Electronic Intifada, and currently managing editor of The Journal for Palestine Studies, opened the discussion following the screening with an analogy comparing the Palestinian dispossession with an insect trapped in amber. “While the world moves on from historical moments such as World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, the Cold War,” she noted, “Palestinians are trapped in this issue for 60 years.

”Where you belong can’t be codified with a set of laws,” she added. “It’s the detail of people’s memories. It’s not a political contest, it’s people’s lives—the irrefutable reality that their people belong here.”

—Meriana F. Alrabadi