Mahmoud Shabeeb

The Palestinian Identity and the Generational Trauma

On April 9th of 1948, Zionist militants of the armed gangs Irgun, Lehi andHaganah committed the notorious Deir Yassin massacre in the eponymous village in the western outskirts of Jerusalem. Although the small village of roughly 600 civilians was entirely neutral in the tensions that preceded the Nakba and the subsequent establishment of the state of Israel, the militants went ahead to slaughter roughly half the village natives. The purpose of that was not the massacre itself only, but the emotional toll that soon-to-be Israel will use to frighten Palestinians, who at the time had not experienced such heavily publicized large-scale mass murder.

Soon after, in July 1948, the family of Abdullah, a 13-year-old orphanfrom another village in the western outskirts of Jerusalem named Ein Karem, lived in terror of facing the same fate of demolishing, rape, and mass murder that their Deir Yassin neighbours had faced. Similar fears were engulfing many other Palestinian villagers near and far. Amid their fear, Abdullah and his family fled their house in Ein Karem, burying some jars of olive oil, margarin, and pickled olives under the front doorstep, with the belief that in one week, or ten days at the most, they would return home. Over 75 years later, that week hasn’t ended.

Abdullah’s older brother, Abdul Khaleq, was kidnapped by Zionist militants and remained held hostage for months until they were certain that Israel had become a stable nation.

Abdullah and his mother lost each other’s tracks for what may have been a couple of nights while he was carrying two younger sisters, taking turns between his shoulders and the shade of random olive trees on their way, until they were reunited with their mother multiple villages away.They then hopped between the back of different pick-up trucks until they reached a town called al Salt in the west of Jordan.

Waiting impatiently for her son Abdul Kareem, who was an ambulance driver, my grandmother had hopes he would come alleviate some of her burden, being 19 at the time and the eldest of the boys. Sadly, instead of welcoming her long-awaited son, my grandmother welcomed his body. He was murdered by Israelis who targeted a bridge he attempted to drive over in the dark on his way to his family.

Growing up listening to all these stories and many, many more defined what it meant for me to be a Palestinian. My father, a now 89-year-old Nakba survivor, is alive and well, and continues to tell the tale. My mother was also a Palestinian refugee born after the Nakba to a family who had fled the town of al Abbasiyya (Yafa/Jaffa outskirts) when David Ben-Gurion forced them out of it in December 1947. Sadly, my mother passed away two years ago without fulfilling her dream of returning home to Palestine, or even saying goodbye to her only remaining sister, who resides in Ramallah, in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

My family’s story is not just a tale from the past. Every single day since the Nakba, Israel continues to persecute, oppress, and exude excessive power over Palestinians in the occupied territories; all across east Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the besieged Gaza strip, where Israel has been committing a full-scale genocide since October 2023, so far murdering at least 40,000 civilians, including over 7,000 unaccounted for under the rubble and believed to be dead, and includingmore than 13,000 children, and enforcing starvation as a punishment tool on over 1 million people in the strip, mostly in the north, not allowing any food, water, or much-needed medical aid in.

According to UNICEF, 100 percent of the children in the Gaza strip need mental health care. Anyone who knows anything about mental health knows that the road to treatment and healing is long and imperfect, lasting years, and in some cases an entire lifetime. Despite never having been displaced from my home, I’m not a stranger to mental health challenges myself; having been diagnosed with multiple, chronic, severe mental and psychological health issues; including depression. Most of my issues come through my generational trauma, and I am lucky enough to have access to regular medical, psychological, and psychiatric support at virtually no cost to me. However, as someone put it so eloquently: the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and east Jerusalem are not even able to go through PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) because they are not in the post-trauma stage yet, they are still living in the trauma. How, and when will they ever have all their trauma healed?

As a Palestinian, born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian family that consists entirely of refugees on both sides, and who grew up in Jordan, so close to home, yet so far from it, and currently living in Canada; I carry multiple identities wherever I go. Yet somehow being Palestinian is always what comes first for me. I wear my kufiyyeh wherever I go. Whenever anyone asks me where I’m from, I always say “Palestinian.” I have inherited my unconditional love and commitment to Palestine from my parents, the same way I inherited that generational trauma that never dies even when those who carry it perish. Because that trauma is not flesh, blood, and bones: but rather a spirit that supersedes place and time.

The same way the trauma has lived through generations, so has the identity: being Palestinian means the kufiyyeh and the traditional clothes, the beautiful embroidery, the songs, the dabkeh and the dihheyyeh; two of many types of Palestinian dances that continue to live through. The Palestinian identity means the food; maqloubeh, musakhhan, mulookhiyyeh, waraqinab (stuffed vine leaves), and countless other dishes that the occupation has never been able to destroy the same way it destroyed communities from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea, and from Ras an-Naqoura in the north to Em er-Rashrash (currently Eilat) in the south.

And they never will.

You see, an occupation is an intrusion: it lacks soul, authenticity, and homogeny. It simply does not belong. It is rejected by the people, and by the land. It is temporary in its nature, the same way our expulsion is.

Look out for any Palestinian in the diaspora; we reside everywhere around the planet and we come from all walks of life, but we all identify as Palestinian, and we always will, until the day we return, to a free Palestine, soon.

Mahmoud (Moody) Shabeeb, Palestinian by way of Jordan, living in Toronto, ON, Canada.