I’m sorry your grandparents lost their house. Their orchard. Their field.
I’m sorry if it was my grandparents who drove them out, I’m sorry if they fled, willingly or unwillingly, away from advancing armies and militias, deep into the fog of war.
I’m sorry that their home, that they built with their own hands or that they inherited from their own grandparents, is just a bitter memory to you. I’m sorry that the past 76 years have been for you a story of what could have been, what should have been, and not a story of family life continuing for generations in the only place your grandparents knew as home.
There is always so much to say and to clarify and to debate and to refute.
But today is a day to listen, to hear what happened to real people and to hold space for their families’ real pain.
1948 was a year that we took the next step forward in rebuilding our people. But 1948 was also a year when – to some people – some really bad stuff happened.
And you know what? I’m sorry it did.