If you have a chance, watch this video about the Palestinian Refugees that was made in 1950.
Sands of Sorrow
It is filmed in Gaza. Of note is that there are no veils on the women and they seemed fully integrated into the camp society. Another item that struck me was that only one out of five newborns survived. Little is made of the Muslim religion except to mention that prayer was a part of the culture. By necessity, I suspect, there was no mention of why the refugee problem existed. The commentator does mention that the refugees fully expected to return to their homes, and this was why they brought little with them.
Many of the children in the film will be in their sixties, if they survived. I wonder how they feel watching this film.
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5 comments:
1050 ????!
I agree − SoS is a must see.
That period was a tragedy for everyone concerned, and everyone concerned is still, in one way or another (but the Palestinian Arabs most painfully and immediately), paying for it.
Thank you for highlighting it.
Blush! Thanks for catching that Felix. It just makes me incredibly sad seeing all those children anxious to learn and realize that their grandchildren are in the same boat. I don't think anybody sees a way out of this (see my previous post).
That's an incredibly sad film; sad for its content and in the picture it paints of the Palestinian refugee experience. The sadness is all the more profound in hindsight because we see what has happened and what has not happened in the intervening years. We look at the children and the hope they represented and held, and realize how prophetic was the fear expressed in what would happen when large numbers of those children had no education and no future outside of the camps; no opportunity to use whatever education they might have gleaned. There is no mystery about a desperate people turning to a more fundamental religion which offered hope and a vocation. It is hard for us to comprehend the suicide bomber until you juxtaposition this film of 1950 against a modern news broadcast which spotlights the inevitability of the current tragedy.
Judy Fauntleroy
Great reading your bblog post
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