Our friend, George Bisharat, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, has repeatedly tried to claim his grandfather’s home with house deed in hand but to no avail. During the 1960s Golda Meir, the fourth prime minister of Israel, occupied the upper flat. Before UN secretary-general Dag Hammerskjöld made a visit to Jerusalem, it is said that she ordered the sandblasting of the tiles in the front of the house to erase the sign, “Villa Harun ar-Rashid,” and thereby conceal that she was living in an Arab home. However, you can still see traces of the name in faint letters.
