Ha'artez article about Bir'im

Zochrot visited Bir'im a week ago; and I found this article appropriate to post here.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/611494.html


Israel cheated the people of Biram.

Summer Camp
By Yotam Feldman

Saturday, Biram.

This is a summer camp at which people cry all the time, says counselor Natali Makhoul, 19, from the village of Jish. She's talking about the summer camp for the displaced persons of Biram, which is held every year on the ruins of the village, next to Kibbutz Baram, in Galilee.

Yesterday, she also cried, when the children held hands and became a "train" that travels to all the countries. When they got to Syria, one of the children said that bad people had made a border and prevented people from going from one country to another. Thanks to the Internet and the digital camera, Makhoul at least speaks regularly with her nephew, who lives in Lebanon, and sometimes with her relatives, who are originally from Biram and now live in France and Gaza.

She completed her studies at the prestigious Reali High School in Haifa a year ago, cum laude; this fall she will begin her studies in molecular biochemistry at the Haifa Technion. She spent long hours at home last year, after her request to do national service at the Jish community center was denied. "I wanted to do true national service, for my nation, the Arab nation," she says.

One of the aims of the camp is to organize a meeting of Biram residents who in 1948 were scattered around the country - in Jish, Haifa, Nazareth and Acre. Richard, who is 10, was sent to the camp by his parents, former Biram residents who live in the United States.

The refugees from the village also visit the site during the rest of the year, and on weekends, when they come to clean up, they pay NIS 12 to the Nature and Parks Authority to enter their village. The weddings and funerals of the village people also take place in Biram.

Jews, and even Arabs, who did not come from Biram will never fully understand the experience of those who were displaced from the village, Makhoul says. They will not be able to see the old village when they look at the present-day ruins. How can she and the campers see them, as they point to the now-empty places where the homes of their parents or grandparents stood? This is made possible mainly thanks to the testimonies of the original residents, who come to the camp every year to talk to them.

One of the witnesses is Tommy Magzal, 78, a relative of Makhoul's who lives in Jish with his wife, Elsie, a British woman whom he met in Brazil. Most of his dreams are still set in old Biram, and Magzal remembers well the day on which the Israeli army asked them to leave the village for short time, five to ten days. That week and a half has stretched to almost 60 years now, and government after government has dissociated itself from the promises to let the DPs return.

Nevertheless, Magzal says, only Israel can solve the problem of the refugees. "We do not rely on the world, on the UN, on the Arab states - we rely only on the good Jews."

Makhoul does not take the conciliatory tone well. "I can't come to the elders with complaints," she says. "When you are poor and hungry, you can't fight."But she is very angry at Israel. In a high-school paper she wrote, she reached the conclusion that Israel cheated the residents of Biram and asked them to leave with prior intent, as part of the "Judaization of Galilee." There is no other reason for the expulsion, she says. The residents did not fight. "It was a pro-Jewish village, even a collaborationist one."

She finds the claim that the Israeli army wanted to protect the residents even more absurd. Her supervisor for the paper, a Biram man who lives in Jish, asked her to tone it down, as it might have adverse consequences for her in the future. He also asked her to delete the section in which she drew a comparison between the events at Biram and the Holocaust.

In the evening the children at the camp enjoy a little culture. First there is a play, which is about the mukhtar (headman) of a village who dispossesses the inhabitants and demolishes their homes, claiming he wants to improve the place. Then a deejay plays songs about the village of Biram. Parents and children, young people from the village, friends of Makhoul, among them a few couples, fill the makeshift dance floor next to the ruins of the church.