A Palestinian memoir tells the other side of Israel’s independence

Fida Jiryis’s family portrait is also the story of the Palestinian people’s history and their struggle for emancipation.

"I experienced my first Israeli Independence Day. Israelis were out flag-waving and having parties and barbeques on what was Palestinian land.”

This is one book that I wish never had to be written. However, given the manner in which the state of Israel was established, this recently released volume is an indispensable contribution to understanding where, why, and how Israel has reached where it has, 75 years later.

As yet another generation of Jews in Israel and around the world celebrate Israel’s Independence Day, the blinkers of the foundational sins of the state’s establishment are slowly coming off. This book provides a single-volume read for all those with the courage to dig deep into Israel’s founding and its fallout for the people that were (and continue) living in the country, the Palestinians.

The author, Fida Jiryis, was born to Palestinian parents from Fassouta, a Christian village in the Upper Galilee, near the Lebanese border of what today is Israel. She was born in exile in Lebanon. As a child, she lived through the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon War and then relocated with her family to Cyprus.

She is one of a handful of Palestinians who actualised her right to return home, only to find that home was no longer home. She ended up studying in Scotland, living in Canada, and ultimately returning to Palestine: to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Jiryis eloquently guides us through her journey over the decades. First, though, she provides crucial context - including an account of her family’s trials, and traumas, in the aftermath of the creation of Israel by force and of their choice to stay on in Palestine rather than flee.