Left: Abla Dajani, 18, at her home in #Jerusalem in 1948
Right: Abla, now 92, walks past her old home like a stranger. It's been taken over by Israelis since 1948
"A lifetime of beautiful memories hit me with a force that took my breath away... [but] I was not allowed to enter"
2\ Abla's family fled to Egypt in 1948, thinking they would return in a few days.
Her father was allowed into the neighborhood a week later with a special permit he got through the Belgian ambassador, but only to visit, not return.
He found another family in their home.
3\ "All furniture & family belongings had been stolen, including the jewelry that my mom hid in the window shutters." Abla recalled, "The only things surviving the robbery were the family albums that I cherish till this day."
#Israel never allowed the family to claim their home.
4\ In 1970, #Israel passed a law that exclusively gives Jewish Israelis the right to reclaim #Jerusalem properties that were once owned by Jews before 1948, even if they were compensated.
The law doesn't apply to Israeli Arabs or Palestinian Jerusalemites like Abla.
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Left: Hanna Basharat with his family in front of the villa he built in Talbiya in #Jerusalem in 1926.
The Zionist Haganah militia took the villa in 1948
In 1960s, Israel's Foreign Minister Golda Meir lived in the villa.
In 1969 she said "There was no such thing as Palestinians"
2\ Hanna tried to reclaim his house in Israeli courts, but to no avail!
In the villa, lived #Israel's labor minister Mordechai Namir, then Foreign Minister Golda Meir, then Knesset Speaker Kadish Luz, Supreme Court Judge Zvi Berenson, & Finance Ministry official Shlomo Arazi.
3\ In 1977, Hanna's grandson Prof. George Bisharat attempted to visit the Jerusalem villa were his father Dr. Maurice was born.
He rang the doorbell & explained the story to the old Israeli woman that answered.
She shrugged "Your family never lived here."
His pain was compounded
Netanyahu's casually saying here "We have... a record strong Jewish Lobby on our side."
The very term that @FranceskAlbs is now being accused of anti-Semitism for having used once a decade ago, although she recently said it was "analytically inaccurate & unintendedly offensive."
2\ Chuck Hagel, US secretary of Defense, once said "The political reality is… the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here."
Veteran diplomat Aaron Miller said the use of the term was "mistaken" but Hagel was not not antisemitic.
Major pro-Israel groups stayed neutral.
3\ During Chuck Hagel's nomination hearings, the @ADL's director wrote a piece explaining why the term "Jewish Lobby" is "so offensive" without calling Hagel biased or anti-Semitic a single time.