John Hanna Asfour- a Christian Palestinian... a bit of historical context ... True story by Raymond Khoury

 

John Hanna Asfour wedding in Haifa, Palestine

True story by

Raymond Khoury

  · A bit of historical context:

 

This is my grandfather's house in Haifa, which he built in 1934. His name was John Hanna Asfour, a Christian Palestinian. Our family tree records there go back over two centuries. That's him at his wedding. 

 

A prominent, successful lawyer, he hired a Jewish architect, Moshe Gerstel, to design his home. Gerstel was an immigrant from Europe who had just arrived in Palestine, and my grandfather generously gave him his first job there. 

 

In 1948, after my grandfather's assistant was murdered and his dead body was dumped outside the house, he sent his wife and five children (including my mom, who was 13 at the time) to safety in Egypt. He had to follow them a few weeks later. 

 

They never returned. 

 

His house eventually became an officers' club of the Israeli army (sorry, "defence force"--such brilliant marketing). Today it is an architecturally preserved site. He and his family were never offered any restitution. They lost everything. 

 

They were among the lucky ones. 

 

They never had to live in refugee camps, eat scraps, have no travel documents, or suffer humiliation and brutality on a daily basis. 

 

A dehumanising narrative has been promoted since then that Palestine before 1948 was a barren desert, ripe for a miraculous upgrade. It wasn't. Its people were not bedouins or primitive savages. It was a thriving, well educated, sophisticated twentieth century society. But its people lost a battle for their land. And as we know, history is written by the victors. 

 

What happened two weeks ago was tragic, abhorrent, barbaric. But when an entire people is brutalised for decades under a vicious apartheid occupation that has no comparable in this 21st century, and the media and governments who could make things right like the US and UK don't just consistently turn a blind eye to that ongoing tragedy but support it with weapon supplies, perhaps it shouldn't come as such a shock that hopelessness can lead to extreme rage and, sadly, bloodshed... 

 

It never ceases to amaze me how the victims of a horrific genocide could so quickly and heartlessly turn around and bulldoze through another people, like the victims of child abuse who turn into abusers. And be totally oblivious to the parallel. 

 

Empathy is tragically selective. The world cheered the Sioux in Dances with Wolves, the Na'vi in Avatar, the rebels fighting the empire in Star Wars. Hell, we're now even cheering the AI robots in The Creator (see it). But in real life, the stormtroopers are winning. 

 

But I see a faint glimmer of hope, that if not the governments of the US and UK, but at least the people, a lot of people, are now waking up to this tragedy, seeing and starting to understand what's been happening for decades, thanks to social media and despite the odious censorship and more insidious shadow blocking being done.

 

This is my grandfather's house in Haifa, which he built in 1934. His name was John Hanna Asfour, he was a Christian Palestinian. Our family tree records there go back over two centuries.