Ma'loul Celebrates Its Destruction

Since the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, countless Palestinian villages have been erased from the map. Ma’alul, just west of Nazareth, is one such ruined village. It was inhabited principally by Palestinian Christians, who were forced to leave in 1948 during the Israeli War of Independence. A painting contains their memories of the village, which had seen Jewish, Roman, Ottoman and Palestinian rulers come and go since ancient times.

Each year on Independence Day, the elderly take their grandchildren to their ancestral ground. Apart from the ruins of their houses, only a mosque and two churches remain, hidden amidst the fir trees that the Jewish National Fund has planted on the land. That same day, a Palestinian schoolteacher explains the history of Zionism to his young students—and why in the wake of the Holocaust, the Jewish people had such an urgent need for their own nation, a place where they could feel safe. An older man considers it unjustifiable that the Palestinians have become the indirect victims of the Nazi terror, in which they played no part whatsoever. In his mind, “We are the real children of Israel.”