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- [00:00]
Dana El Kurd
This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.
- [00:04]
Dr. Joy
This is Dr. Joy from therapy for Black Girls. A fresh sparkling kitchen. Yes please. The scrubbing it takes to get one. Not a favorite. That's why you'll love dawn powerwash, just free. From everyday dishes to the toughest messes, it makes cleanup twice as fast. Less scrubbing, more living. Find Dawn Power Wash Dish Spray at your favorite retailer. Dawn is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their industry advocacy and unwavering commitment to equality. Don't miss the Elton John Impact awards podcast, available June 1 on the iHeartRadio app. And everywhere podcasts are heard do you
- [00:43]
Public/CarMax/Professional Wrestling Announcer
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- [02:16]
Jacob Goldstein
is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out odoo@o d o o.com that's o d o o.com
- [02:50]
Dana El Kurd
Callzone Media. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Dana El Kurd. I am a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. I'm recording this on May 19, 2026 and this past weekend, May 15 was Nakba Day. Nakba is the Arabic word for catastrophe, and Nakba Day commemorates when close to a million Palestinians were expelled in 1948 with the founding of the Israeli state. So the Palestinian catastrophe. Hundreds of villages and towns were destroyed and many Palestinians were made refugees in camps around the new state in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and farther afield within Israel. Palestinians who somehow managed to remain were put under military rule. As the past few years have demonstrated, and as many Palestinians will tell you, this Nakba never ended. Usually I use this podcast to discuss current events or to interview someone who is an expert on a dynamic I'm interested in and I think is useful for people to hear. But today I'm going to be doing something a little different and outside my comfort zone. I'm going to share my personal family history and our Nakba story. I'm a Palestinian from Jerusalem, both sides. My mom and my dad are from Jerusalem and I was born there. Usually when people ask me where I'm from and I say that, they just assume East Jerusalem because that's where Palestinians have been sequestered today. They were driven out of west Jerusalem in 1948, but actually some of my family were from the western side of the city. My paternal grandmother and her family lost their home in west Jerusalem in 1948. My grandmother ended up spending three years in Akab al Jaber refugee camp outside of Jericho because my great grandfather had been wounded trying to defend the city and they were waiting to see if they could return. My grandmother has told me details about this time. She talked about the makeshift school in the camp that only went up to the eighth grade. So my grandmother repeated the year a couple times and then eventually dropped out of school because she couldn't continue past the eighth grade. Now the rest of her siblings, especially upon their return to Jerusalem, were all fully educated as adults. Many of them held advanced degrees. My grandmother was the only one, as the eldest, who had paid the price of displacement in this way, she was trained as a seamstress later on, but always lamented that she had to leave school early. She also told me about her house in Ba', a, which is in West Jerusalem, a neighborhood in West Jerusalem before it was taken during the Nakba. This was a newer neighborhood with nice views of the city, where middle class Palestinian families were expanding their homes as their families expanded. My grandmother's family had only moved into this house two months prior to the Nakba, and she used to tell me how the house had been newly painted and it was made of beautiful stones. Before she passed away, she would often cry over this house as if it had just been taken. That house, by the way, still stands in West Jerusalem. The last time I visited Palestine, my grandmother's younger siblings showed me pictures of themselves posing in front of their house, now occupied by Israelis. Now, my grandmother's story is very typical, but also very lucky because her and her family, they did become refugees, yes, but they found their way back to the city. Most Palestinians were never able to return back to their hometowns. They were lucky in that sense that they had property and family in other parts of the city on the eastern side. And they were able to continue. We were able to continue. That's how I was born in Jerusalem myself, because of that look. Now, on my maternal side, I don't know as much about them and their Neckba story. I left Palestine when I was a child. I don't have a close relationship with my mother's side of the family, and they harbor a lot of secrets. I never knew much about their histories and their dramas. My maternal grandmother is divorced and the family had fractured in particular ways. So there was a lot of touchiness. Many parts of the family were estranged from each other. One thing I did eventually find out when I was a teenager was that my mother's grandmother, so my great grandmother was actually Israeli. This was my mother's paternal grandmother, her dad that she no longer had a relationship with because of her parents divorce. And I didn't have much information beyond that. I knew her name, Rachel, but nobody really wanted to talk about this Israeli great grandmother. It was also an uncomfortable finding for me at the time because I'm a Palestinian from Jerusalem. The only Israelis I had ever engaged with at that point were soldiers. So I didn't press the subject. It was just another family secret we didn't talk about. When I got older, I got more curious about this and I asked for more information and I asked my dad to confirm whether this was true, that my mother did in fact had an Israeli grandmother like this wasn't just a rumor. And he said he had met her himself. In fact, he had met her while I was a toddler, apparently. And I had met her, though of course I had no recollection. My dad says that during her visit to my mother's family. So this would be Rachel's grandchildren and then her daughter in law. There had been some argument and they had harangued her over the actions of her state and her state's military. And according to my dad, she replied that it had nothing to do with her because she came during the British Mandate era, she was classified as a Palestinian Jew. And he told me as much of the story as he had been told. Rachel was a Polish Jewish woman. She came to Palestine, she married my great grandfather, who by my father's description was kind of a wealthy Palestinian playboy type. They had two children. And in 1948, when Israel was founded and Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, my great grandmother and great grandfather split up. What my dad understood to have happened was Rachel left, her children joined her new countrymen, and that was that. So, as I said, Jerusalem was split up. The western side was cleared of its Palestinians. There was an armistice line where actually the newfound Israeli state housed recent Arab Jewish migrants, sort of as cannon fodder. One of those neighborhoods where Arab Jews were placed later birthed the Israeli Black Panthers. And then the western side was under Israeli rule, and Palestinians on the eastern side of the city fell under Jordanian rule. So the story goes that my great grandmother left and my great grandfather put his children in an orphanage. My dad says he heard they were often mistreated, possibly because their mother was Israeli. And later, when Israel occupied the rest of Jerusalem and the city was unified, my great grandmother did go looking for her children. But my grandfather didn't connect with her, so her son and moved to Jordan. Now, from my mother, I also pressed for more information. She had never told me any of this story. But this year, literally a few weeks ago, she finally gave me Rachel's last name. I dug around to see what I could find out about her. I asked online. I got the help of people who had expertise in Jewish genealogy. And what I found was a much more complicated picture. First, I found an academic article about a, quote, nonpartisan Zionist youth group in Belgium in the 1920s and 1930s. I don't speak Hebrew, so I'm going to mispronounce this. I think it's called Zer Haam. Getting their members ready to make the journey to Palestine. That's what this article was about. They were nonpartisan in the sense that they included a lot of different strains of Zionism. So right wing Zionism, left wing Zionism among the members. But the Zionism itself of course was taken as a given. Now the article included quotes from former members of this group and kind of grainy black and white photos of which the name Rachel appeared in the captions with her last name. And when I first saw the woman identified as Rachel in this group photo, I knew instinctively that I had found her because she looked like a blonde version of my mother. My intuition was very quickly confirmed because Rachel was identified by her married Palestinian name in the footnotes where she was quoted. So I found her. Here she was.
- [11:19]
Dr. Joy
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- [12:22]
Public/CarMax/Professional Wrestling Announcer
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures this
- [13:22]
Jacob Goldstein
is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? Business software is expensive and when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting. All linked and talking to each other. Check out Odoo at o d o o.com that's o d o o.com Professional
- [14:07]
Public/CarMax/Professional Wrestling Announcer
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- [14:41]
Dana El Kurd
I wanted to know more about what had happened to her after these pictures in Belgium were taken. The article states that she immigrated to Palestine in the early 1930s at the encouragement of her, quote, Zionist mother. But what had led her between 1933 and 1948 to marry and then leave a Palestinian? And then why was she visiting her grandchildren and apparently me in the 1990s? The second big piece of information I got was because of a bluesky account P Y M U N D Genealogy. This is a person who works on Jewish genealogy, has an interest in it and he helped find an article that had been written about my great grandmother in the Israeli magazine Ma'. Ariv. So shout out to this guy. Now. This article was dated June 12, 1987. It's a three page spread and in this interview that Rachel gives, she talks about her childhood in Antwerp, her immigration to Palestine as a young woman, and her marriage. So apparently after her civil ceremony with my great grandfather in 1935. They had traveled across Europe for a whole year, even meeting the extended family in Poland, where Rachel's family was originally from. Her new husband was honored by her uncle, who was an important rabbi. Now, for reasons she does not outline, Rachel discusses leaving her husband, maybe assuming the separation would be temporary in 1948. But unlike the story that my father had heard and I had been told, she had not left her children and in fact there had been four of them. She left two of them with their father and took the eldest and the baby that she was pregnant with to West Jerusalem. She kept her married name and she never officially divorced. I can only assume that she didn't guess the city would be divided or maybe didn't understand for how long. Now, when Israel took the rest of the city in 1967, she not only reconnected with her, I guess, Palestinian children, but it seems from this article, had warm relationships with them until the end. Rachel had assisted my grandfather, her son, in marrying my grandmother. Compiling the dowry the children who had been raised Israeli had reconnected with their family to varying degrees. Some of the Palestinian children visited the Israeli children in Tel Aviv. According to this interview, Rachel even reconnected with her husband, my great grandfather, living with him until he passed in 1983. Rachel had also maintained a relationship with her daughter in law, my maternal grandmother, even after her son's divorce. In this article I recognize the descriptions of my mother and my aunts. Rachel had kept visiting them until she died in the mid-1990s. So that explains the visit that my father had witnessed. I quickly realized that of course it had been easier for many members of my family to pretend this had never happened, try to keep the truth of these relationships from their children. I suppose they preferred a neater story of clean breaks and solid national divisions. It's also not lost on me that much of this obfuscation relies on the common misogynistic trope of the negligent mother, which was apparently easy for everyone to believe. Now I won't say that Israeli Palestinian marriages are common or that intimate relationships between the two groups are easy to find, but they aren't unheard of. Israeli political parties are certainly scared enough of this prospect. They often voice condemnations of inter ethnic relationships of this kind. So this phenomenon must exist at some level. And I guess I shouldn't be surprised either because Palestine's most well known poet, Mahmud Darwish, was famous for his poetry. Among many of them, a poem he wrote to his Jewish girlfriend titled Rita. This was the same man that joined The PLO lived through the Israeli siege of Beirut and wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence. Now, Rachel's story really boggled my mind in its contradictions. Because she had been part of a Zionist youth group, she had actively joined an effort to facilitate the migration of Europe's Jewish population to Palestine, eventually leading to the displacement of Palestinians. But she had married a Palestinian. And in the interview for Maariv, she describes running to the eastern part of the city when Israel occupied it in 1967 to see, quote her friends, and she says she would marry my great grandfather all over again if she could. You see, dear, it was a great love, she told their interviewer. Ironically, my parents and my maternal grandparents, all of which share national and religious identities, both ended up divorced. But Rachel and her Palestinian Muslim husband somehow stayed together at the same time. Rachel turned a blind eye to many things, and she herself hid many things. For example, she doesn't reveal the details of her children raised as Israeli. The interviewer in the Ma' Arav magazine interview emphasizes that they wouldn't want their information known, especially about their lineage. It seems that neither ever reconnected with their Palestinian father. And most tellingly for me, in that interview, when my maternal grandmother, Rachel's daughter in law, complains of the Israeli soldiers in the neighborhood that she lived in, the interviewer reports that Rachel feigns deafness and returns the conversation to a discussion of the children. Now, Rachel isn't abnormal. Israeli society has turned a blind eye to many things. Many Israelis pretend that the Palestinians as a national group do not exist. They prefer to think of them prefer to think of us as the reincarnation of Nazis or the modern day manifestation of antisemitism. Or at best, Palestinians are merely generic Arabs with easily severed ties to this particular land. The Israeli state even grows pine trees over emptied and demolished Palestinian villages. To ensure return is impossible and to hide the extent of what happened in the latest war on Gaza. Images and videos from Gaza are dismissed as AI fabrications. They call it Pallywood. It's just an effort by Palestinians to put Israel in a bad light. And governments the world over seem to have taken this position of turning a blind eye to the oppression Palestinians have faced and assuming Palestinians would live and die never having exercised their basic rights. All I can say is I'm living proof that these silences prolong the inevitable, that the truth eventually comes out and the return is inevitable. The longer we wait to acknowledge the reality of the situation, the more people will suffer and the more this kind of intergenerational trauma will continue. I recently finished Molly Crabapple's book Here Where We Live Is Our country on the Jewish Bund. She quotes a Jewish Bundist, Levik Hodes, saying that, quote, belief in mankind is not popular today. In these last years, we have all seen it become deeply debased, despoiled and spat on. But if man is at heart a beast, no amount of running away will help. End quote. This really resonated with me. I firmly believe that we can't rely on silence to disappear our problems. We can't run from each other. Let my family history be a testament to that. When we understand that, then the truth and the resolution and the return is only a matter of time. And maybe then the nakba will end. Thank you for listening and hope you all stay safe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.
- [22:27]
Jana Kramer
This is Jana Kramer from Wind down with Jana Kramer so why do they call it a dishwasher? Well, don't worry, it's not a trick question or anything. It's just because it washes dishes. If the filter and the dishwasher itself are dirty, those dishes aren't actually getting clean. That's why you need Cascade Platinum Plus. Powered by two times the cleaning power of Dawn, Cascade Platinum plus doesn't just remove 100 of grease and residue from dishes, it cleans your dishwasher and filter too. So you get clean dishes and a dishwasher that keeps washing. Just scrape, load and done. Find Cascade Platinum plus at your local retailer. Cascade is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. Cascade would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of this year's deserving honorees. Don't miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast, available on June 1st on the iHeartRadio app, and everywhere podcasts are heard.
- [23:22]
Jacob Goldstein
This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way you can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out odoo D O O.com that's
- [23:52]
Public/CarMax/Professional Wrestling Announcer
O-O O.com professional wrestling fans, the action continues every week. Watch CNA Thursday Night Impact every week on it is like electricity flowing through your veins. Don't miss the adrenaline, the drama and the total non stop action. No one can ever be as good as this right here. Don't miss the action of TNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AMC. For showtimes and more information, visit tnarrestling.com
- [24:25]
Dana El Kurd
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