I’m not sure when, exactly, during my visit I first heard the term the Nakba. Perhaps it was after being held at bay at the Lion’s Gate. Perhaps it was while touring the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, where I saw the bulk trash that settlers from Long Island had tossed into the yards of Palestinian families. The phrase, which means “the catastrophe,” originates in the driving of some seven hundred thousand Palestinians from their homes in 1948 and continues in the perpetual process of ethnic cleansing I saw in my ten days. By the end of my visit, I understood the Nakba as a
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