Leila Giries' home in the Palestinian village of Ein Karem before and after it was destroyed in the 1948 war. Credit: Courtesy Leila Giries

'Everyone needs to see 'Farha''

Not a day goes by that Giries doesn't wonder what life would have been like if her family was not forced to leave their home in Ein Karem, now part of Jerusalem.

 

"When I went back 37 years later, I realized I remembered every single house and building that used to be there," Giries said. "That's how many times I traveled to Palestine in my mind, every single day, wanting to go back home."

 

She still has the bag her mother grabbed for her as they ran for their lives while the village burned, she said. It's framed and hanging on a wall in her California home, alongside the key to her family's Palestinian home, which was reduced to rubble.

 

Like most Palestinian refugees, Giries is forbidden from returning to live in Israel. Many Palestinian refugees and their descendants -- which the United Nations says now number 5 million people -- live in UN camps established in neighboring countries. Others are internally displaced throughout the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

 

Mahmoud Salah, another survivor of al-Nakba, said the violence depicted in "Farha" was eerily similar to what he saw as he fled from the Palestinian village of Sar'a. After his family was expelled, they traveled by foot for six months, sheltering in caves and under trees as they searched for food and safety. He remembers every detail of that journey, from flyers dropped from airplanes urging Palestinians to flee, to the screams of villagers who lost loved ones.

 

To this day, Salah says he still thinks about life before al-Nakba, memories vivid with the beautiful colors of his homeland. "Since the day we were forced to leave, my eyes have been searching, searching for my village, for the books I left behind, for what of mine has been taken and destroyed," Salah, 90, told CNN from his home in Orland Park, a suburb of Chicago.

He said having his experience denied for so long only added to the pain and anger. "That feeling of being forced out of our home, our country, will never leave us.... READ MORE

 Written by Alaa Elassar, CNN

 https://www.cnn.com/style/article/farha-palestinian-film-nakba-darin-sallam-reaj/index.html

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TOT THE ORIGINAL LINK TO READ THE STORY IN FULL

 

Palestinians relive the raw and painful history of al-Nakba in Netflix's new film 'Farha'

"Farha," released December 1 on Netflix, is inspired by the story of a young Palestinian girl and the violence she witnessed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, when roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes by armed Jewish groups in what Palestinians have since called al-Nakba or "the catastrophe."