Nakba remembered in Limerick - Stolen land, stolen dreams

Palestinian villages put back on the map

On Saturday members of the Limerick branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign were on the street to inform and educate the public about the pre-planned ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist immigrants which began in 1948 and which continues to this day in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The curiosity and sympathy of shoppers in Limerick's Thomas street was aroused on Saturday afternoon by the visual representation and telling of the story of the catastrophe (Nakba) which befell Palestinians in 1948 when over 750,000 people were forced to flee from their homes, farms and property by terrorising Zionist militia.

People were told how the refugees had no time to gather any of their possessions and how they had expected to return to their property once the threat had dissipated. However they were not to know of the plans drawn up by the Zionist leaders to destroy their homes and villages in an effort to wipe them off the map and ensure they could not return thereby creating an artificial Jewish majority for a Jewish state in Palestine.

Lists of the 450 destroyed villages showing the area in which they were located; population and the %age of the land in Jewish ownership at the time were displayed so that people could grasp the enormity of the injustice Palestinians have been enduring for the past 59 years.

White flags with the names of the destroyed towns and villages were handed out and people placed them in the correct geographical regions on the map. Some Palestinians from a refugee camps in Lebanon came by and were grateful for the support of the Irish public for the justice of their cause. By the end of the day the map was a sea of white flags but this still represented only a fraction of the villages destroyed.