By Brenda Mehos

We did not know at the moment of parting that it was a parting

Poem by Taha Muhammad Ali (1931-2011) Palestinian poet who fled from his village Saffuriya, Palestine in 1948

His village was destroyed along with 530 other villages in Palestine in 1948.  His family fled north towards Lebanon as many of the 7,000 residents did after the village was barrel bombed by Israeli’s army.  They returned weeks later to find it completely destroyed.

We had an excellent tour of the destroyed village with British journalist and author Jonathan Cook that started at a spring outside the area where villagers gathered their water prior to 1948 and which now feeds water to an Israeli settlement called a moshav. The site of Saffuriya is now covered with pine trees that were planted to hide its ruins as other villages such as Bi’ram were covered.

531 villages were destroyed

We entered through the gate of the moshav

We learn from Jonathan that 531 villages such as Saffuriya were destroyed in 1948.  We entered through the gate of the Moshav that is built adjacent to the hidden ruins and park on road leading to a Christian orphanage and ruins of a Crusader Church.  We walked to the cemetery used by the village prior to 1948 and is now in disrepair as relatives of people buried there have left the area for good or are too intimidated to return to this site.

We looked at pictures of the area prior to 1948

We looked at pictures of the area prior to 1948 and compared the picture to the current site.  For a moment my imagination hears the sounds of this rural village long gone, a donkey braying, children playing, birds chirping.   From this point on I have a chill when I see areas of the non-indigenous pines in between olive groves wondering if this is a site of another lost village.

We ask the obvious question of Jonathan… what do the current residents in the moshav think the ruins are from?  He said he’s asked people what the few remaining structures are from and they always answer “from the Ottoman period”.  Is it a common human trait to want to see and hear what we’ve been told or what we want to see and hear without asking the hard questions?

From the Ottoman Period