Selected by Nazik Damra
Freemasonry is a secret society in terms of leadership, administrative structure, organizational hierarchy, slogans and gestures, and mutual obligations towards the association and the other. It has special means of communication among its members and helps each member to get to know other members when they meet by chance. This forced it to act like other extremist groups, secret organizations, racist organizations, terrorist groups, and criminal gangs, and to draw up conspiratorial plans that seek to achieve goals that bring benefit to its members, and that accuse others and the public interest of calamities. The little available information about Freemasonry indicates that it arrived in Palestine in the nineteenth century with the first Jewish settlers, and that it established its feet in the Arab region under British colonialism in the period after the First World War, especially in Palestine, Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon. And since the vast majority of people inherit their religious beliefs, and sometimes their ideas, attitudes, and interests, from their parents and grandparents, Freemasonry has become part of the heritage and traditions of most Arab and non-Arab families, one of whose children affiliated with that movement in the recent past. In fact, I believe that many Arab businessmen who were influential during the era of oil and in the Arab Gulf region in particular are active members of that movement, loyal to its principles and committed to its teachings… those teachings that led them to serve the interests of Israel and help it achieve its expansionist colonial goals at the expense of their homeland and the sustenance of their people and dignity of their nation.
Although Freemasonry claims that its goals are humanitarian and charitable, and that it requires that its affiliated member believe in the existence of one superpower, and that it does not delve into religious or political issues, its main goal is to create a global association, whose members are linked to each other by common economic, financial and commercial interests. Through secret channels of cooperation, serving their interests at the expense of other people and peoples. And since economic interest has come to dominate in today’s world over political ideologies, religious beliefs, and national and cultural affiliations, it is difficult for a member of Freemasonry to leave it for religious, national, or moral reasons, especially as it punishes those who leave it and those who reveal one of its secrets, just as it rewards those who belong to it. sticks to its principles.
After the fall of Yazur and the departure of the militants from it by order of Fawzi al-Qawuqji’s forces, the father joined us in Beit Nabala, where he arrived the next day carrying his rifle on his shoulder and holding his bicycle in his hand… He came through several Palestinian villages and dozens of orange orchards, grape groves and figs that he knew well and knew his way in. Al-Qawuqji’s forces, which were made up of Arab volunteers, had come to Yazur with the invitation to protect them from the Jewish gangs, but they ended their mission by handing over this village and other neighboring villages to the aggressors, under the pretext that the fall of Jaffa deprived them of the possibility of defending those villages.
We lived in the village of Beit Nabala until it fell into the hands of the Israeli enemy forces on July 14, 1948, the day following the fall of the cities of Lod and Ramla. It was clear that the war was chasing us, that killing and destruction were approaching us day after day, and that the ethnic cleansing operations were getting more ferocious with the passage of hours. On the morning of the day before we were expelled for the second time from Beit Nabala, the Jewish forces began intermittently shelling the chain of mountain villages adjacent and close to Beit Nabala with heavy artillery, especially the village of Deir Tarif. Once again, the slave Abu Rabi` asked his brother Juma’a to go to the village of Ni’lin and find out the matter… Juma’a returned the next morning driving a rather small car owned by Mr. Hassan Al-Khayyat, one of the family’s friends from Jaffa. As soon as the engine of the car stopped, our friends from Beit Nabala, who hosted us in their homes, started loading some things in the car in preparation for the escape, the most important of which was a bag of flour, another of sugar, quantities of olive oil, and some blankets. Before the car was fully loaded, the slave, Abu Rabi`, stopped them, saying that we must ensure that the women and children are deported first, provided that the men remain in the village until the car returns from Ni’lin, and then whatever personal property can be deported on the next journey.
And here my father ordered me to go quickly to the house where we were staying, and to ask my mother and my brothers and sisters to come immediately… There was no one who disobeyed or argued with my father’s orders. They all came at once, without any of them changing their clothes or putting on their shoes. While the children and women were climbing into the back of the car, one after the other, the slave Abu Rabi’ turned to his brother Juma’a and asked him to go home and bring his wife and children as well. However, my uncle refused his brother’s request, saying that the trip would only take two hours at most, and that he would prefer that his wife and children stay at their house until he returns to them. In fact, there was no space left for anything else or an additional person after more than twenty women and children had climbed into the back of the car. Before the car moved towards the village of Ni’lin, the invaders’ bombs began to fall heavily on the outskirts of the village of Beit Nabala, threatening its people with death and destroying their homes, which prompted us to hasten to leave the village. At about one in the afternoon on July 13, 1948, the car driven by my uncle drove off towards Ni’lin, while I was standing next to my father. And before the wheels of the car accelerated completely, my father looked at me and ordered me to catch up with the car, saying run, and whistled his usual whistle indicating who was on the back to stop… I was actually faster than the car that was moaning from the weight of what was on its back.
Less than an hour later, we arrived at the outskirts of Qibya village, near Ni’lin. Our car stopped there because it ran out of fuel. We were confused and started crying. The displaced were passing us on foot, their faces tired and covered with dust, their clothes torn, their legs bloody, and on their backs were their children, some flour, oil, and a little water. In the opposite direction, the armored vehicles of the Jordanian army were moving in the direction of Beit Nabala, making the road difficult and moving very slowly due to the narrowness of the road and the rugged mountains around it. However, the armored convoy soon stopped, and when my uncle asked the tank officer that stopped right in front of us why they stopped, he told us that the village of Beit Nabala had fallen into the hands of the Jews, as well as the cities of Lydda and Ramla and dozens of other villages, and that they could not advance after that. It was clear that the Israeli soldiers stormed Beit Nabala within minutes of our leaving the land. My uncle burst into tears, shouting as if he had suddenly lost his mind, repeating the name of his wife and the names of his children one after the other. He immediately got out of the car, walked towards Beit Nabala like a lunatic man following his shadow, and left us sitting on the back of the car crying alone in a pitiful state… Jumaa Abu Rabi` returned wandering on his face looking for what he had from a family whose fate he no longer knew. Within minutes, we saw the Israeli enemy artillery shelling the civilian cars parked near us on both sides of the road and moving on them like a turtle, which led to the destruction of one of them, killing and injuring the men and women on board, the elderly and children. We got out of the car quickly, trembling with fear and panic. We walked towards Ni’lin on foot. We passed the village of Qibya, then we continued walking, led by Mr. Hassan Khalil’s wife, until we reached Ni’lin at sunset. We went to the village mosque and sat there waiting for the unknown. He immediately got out of the car, walked towards Beit Nabala like a lunatic man following his shadow, and left us sitting on the back of the car crying alone in a pitiful state… Jumaa Abu Rabi` returned wandering on his face looking for what he had from a family whose fate he no longer knew. Within minutes, we saw the Israeli enemy artillery shelling the civilian cars parked near us on both sides of the road and moving on them like a turtle, which led to the destruction of one of them, killing and injuring the men and women on board, the elderly and children. We got out of the car quickly, trembling with fear and panic. We walked towards Ni’lin on foot. We passed the village of Qibya, then we continued walking, led by Mr. Hassan Khalil’s wife, until we reached Ni’lin at sunset. We went to the village mosque and sat there waiting for the unknown. He immediately got out of the car, walked towards Beit Nabala like a lunatic man following his shadow, and left us sitting on the back of the car crying alone in a pitiful state… Jumaa Abu Rabi` returned wandering on his face looking for what he had from a family whose fate he no longer knew. Within minutes, we saw the Israeli enemy artillery shelling the civilian cars parked near us on both sides of the road and moving on them like a turtle, which led to the destruction of one of them, killing and injuring the men and women on board, the elderly and children. We got out of the car quickly, trembling with fear and panic. We walked towards Ni’lin on foot. We passed the village of Qibya, then we continued walking, led by Mr. Hassan Khalil’s wife, until we reached Ni’lin at sunset. We went to the village mosque and sat there waiting for the unknown. Within minutes, we saw the Israeli enemy artillery shelling the civilian cars parked near us on both sides of the road and moving on them like a turtle, which led to the destruction of one of them, killing and injuring the men and women on board, the elderly and children. We got out of the car quickly, trembling with fear and panic. We walked towards Ni’lin on foot. We passed the village of Qibya, then we continued walking, led by Mr. Hassan Khalil’s wife, until we reached Ni’lin at sunset. We went to the village mosque and sat there waiting for the unknown. Within minutes, we saw the Israeli enemy artillery shelling the civilian cars parked near us on both sides of the road and moving on them like a turtle, which led to the destruction of one of them, killing and injuring the men and women on board, the elderly and children. We got out of the car quickly, trembling with fear and panic. We walked towards Ni’lin on foot. We passed the village of Qibya, then we continued walking, led by Mr. Hassan Khalil’s wife, until we reached Ni’lin at sunset. We went to the village mosque and sat there waiting for the unknown.
After reaching Nilin, the wife of the mayor, Hassan Khalil, kneaded flour with water, baked it, and provided food for all the children. For three days in a row, she kneaded the flour, baked the bread and distributed it to us, keeping a portion for everyone who missed a meal. The crowds of fugitives and those who were dispersed had chosen, without awareness or prior planning, the square of the Ni’lin Mosque as a place to gather and search for lost family, relatives and friends. Before the night was too late, my father, my uncle and his family, and my grandmother had joined us successively, as the father and grandmother arrived first, then the uncle and his family. My grandmother had refused to leave the village with us when we got into the van, as she insisted on waiting until her children left so that she could leave with them. My father arrived very tired, riding his bicycle, carrying his gun and my uncle’s small bag of clothes, and holding his mother’s hand. During the waiting period, I used to walk about every half hour towards Qibya village for half an hour or a little more, explore the road, ask those who came about the situation and about the family, then go back and tell my mother what I saw and heard, I repeated the same thing twice before I became tired and felt exhausted. Then I laid my head on my mother’s thigh, fell asleep next to the wall of the mosque, and only woke up in the morning to my father’s voice. As soon as I opened my eyes, I noticed that the hundreds of people who had gathered the previous evening around the mosque, their number increased during the night at least twenty times to become a few thousand, most of them came from the cities of Lydda and Ramla.
After the artillery shelling intensified on Bayt Nabala, and the shrapnel of the bombs reached the house of my aunt and uncle, and her children screamed in fear, Aunt “Rahma” took her children and ran away from the house… She fled under the rain of bombs without having a companion, and without knowing where The Road. When my father arrived at his brother’s house in search of his cousin and nephews, he did not find any of them there, except that he found a small bag of clothes ready for travel, in which my uncle had put some of his clothes in preparation for his departure. With his gun on his shoulder. As for Rahma, because of the difficulty of walking alone with five children in need of care, she had to throw her daughter “Muntaha” and her son “Muhammad Khair” into a cart pulled by a mule, which was traveling in the east direction away from Beit Nabala.
My uncle Jumaa walked after leaving us on the outskirts of Qibya for about two hours before he found his wife and children, and when he saw them from a distance, his wife was standing in the middle of the road on that miserable hot day, wearing a short, torn dress, tears falling from her eyes profusely, and blood was flowing from her leg And her feet, holding her infant to her breast, while her two children, Bassam and Najah, stand on either side of her, each holding one of the ends of her torn dress, crying silently. Jumaa Abu Rabi` ran towards his wife and children, hugged them, and started crying. Immediately, he noticed the absence of Muntaha and Muhammad Khair, but before he asked about them, his wife told him what she had done and why, which made him return to weeping and wailing again, but he had no choice but to hurry towards Nilin in search of them and the rest of the family. He carried my uncle Nabil on his chest, Rahma held Bassam in one hand and Najah in the other, and they walked with hundreds of homeless people towards the village of Nilin, where we promised to meet.
We could not have continued walking far from Ni’lin towards Ramallah or other Palestinian cities before finding Muntaha and Muhammad Khair. After two days, and the majority of the displaced and homeless had left the place, we found Muntaha and her brother after we heard a man shouting at the top of his voice, saying: “Who is lost children… Who is looking for lost children?” The man followed us tens of meters, and there, under a perennial olive tree, we found Muntaha and Muhammad Khair with about ten other children… They were all in a miserable condition, suffering from hunger, thirst, misery, and fear. The harshness of the experience weakened Muhammad Khair’s body and spirit despite his young age, which made him lose the desire to live and the ability to live. While Muntaha lived to become a mother and grandmother to a large number of grandchildren, Muhammad Khair died months later in Aqabat Jabr camp and was buried there.
Selected by Nazik Damra
Freemasonry is a secret society in terms of leadership, administrative structure, organizational hierarchy, slogans and gestures, and mutual obligations towards the association and the other. It has special means of communication among its members and helps each member to get to know other members when they meet by chance. This forced it to act like other extremist groups, secret organizations, racist organizations, terrorist groups, and criminal gangs, and to draw up conspiratorial plans that seek to achieve goals that bring benefit to its members, and that accuse others and the public interest of calamities. The little available information about Freemasonry indicates that it arrived in Palestine in the nineteenth century with the first Jewish settlers, and that it established its feet in the Arab region under British colonialism in the period after the First World War, especially in Palestine, Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon. And since the vast majority of people inherit their religious beliefs, and sometimes their ideas, attitudes, and interests, from their parents and grandparents, Freemasonry has become part of the heritage and traditions of most Arab and non-Arab families, one of whose children affiliated with that movement in the recent past. In fact, I believe that many Arab businessmen who were influential during the era of oil and in the Arab Gulf region in particular are active members of that movement, loyal to its principles and committed to its teachings… those teachings that led them to serve the interests of Israel and help it achieve its expansionist colonial goals at the expense of their homeland and the sustenance of their people and dignity of their nation.
Although Freemasonry claims that its goals are humanitarian and charitable, and that it requires that its affiliated member believe in the existence of one superpower, and that it does not delve into religious or political issues, its main goal is to create a global association, whose members are linked to each other by common economic, financial and commercial interests. Through secret channels of cooperation, serving their interests at the expense of other people and peoples. And since economic interest has come to dominate in today’s world over political ideologies, religious beliefs, and national and cultural affiliations, it is difficult for a member of Freemasonry to leave it for religious, national, or moral reasons, especially as it punishes those who leave it and those who reveal one of its secrets, just as it rewards those who belong to it. sticks to its principles.
After the fall of Yazur and the departure of the militants from it by order of Fawzi al-Qawuqji’s forces, the father joined us in Beit Nabala, where he arrived the next day carrying his rifle on his shoulder and holding his bicycle in his hand… He came through several Palestinian villages and dozens of orange orchards, grape groves and figs that he knew well and knew his way in. Al-Qawuqji’s forces, which were made up of Arab volunteers, had come to Yazur with the invitation to protect them from the Jewish gangs, but they ended their mission by handing over this village and other neighboring villages to the aggressors, under the pretext that the fall of Jaffa deprived them of the possibility of defending those villages.
We lived in the village of Beit Nabala until it fell into the hands of the Israeli enemy forces on July 14, 1948, the day following the fall of the cities of Lod and Ramla. It was clear that the war was chasing us, that killing and destruction were approaching us day after day, and that the ethnic cleansing operations were getting more ferocious with the passage of hours. On the morning of the day before we were expelled for the second time from Beit Nabala, the Jewish forces began intermittently shelling the chain of mountain villages adjacent and close to Beit Nabala with heavy artillery, especially the village of Deir Tarif. Once again, the slave Abu Rabi` asked his brother Juma’a to go to the village of Ni’lin and find out the matter… Juma’a returned the next morning driving a rather small car owned by Mr. Hassan Al-Khayyat, one of the family’s friends from Jaffa. As soon as the engine of the car stopped, our friends from Beit Nabala, who hosted us in their homes, started loading some things in the car in preparation for the escape, the most important of which was a bag of flour, another of sugar, quantities of olive oil, and some blankets. Before the car was fully loaded, the slave, Abu Rabi`, stopped them, saying that we must ensure that the women and children are deported first, provided that the men remain in the village until the car returns from Ni’lin, and then whatever personal property can be deported on the next journey.
And here my father ordered me to go quickly to the house where we were staying, and to ask my mother and my brothers and sisters to come immediately… There was no one who disobeyed or argued with my father’s orders. They all came at once, without any of them changing their clothes or putting on their shoes. While the children and women were climbing into the back of the car, one after the other, the slave Abu Rabi’ turned to his brother Juma’a and asked him to go home and bring his wife and children as well. However, my uncle refused his brother’s request, saying that the trip would only take two hours at most, and that he would prefer that his wife and children stay at their house until he returns to them. In fact, there was no space left for anything else or an additional person after more than twenty women and children had climbed into the back of the car. Before the car moved towards the village of Ni’lin, the invaders’ bombs began to fall heavily on the outskirts of the village of Beit Nabala, threatening its people with death and destroying their homes, which prompted us to hasten to leave the village. At about one in the afternoon on July 13, 1948, the car driven by my uncle drove off towards Ni’lin, while I was standing next to my father. And before the wheels of the car accelerated completely, my father looked at me and ordered me to catch up with the car, saying run, and whistled his usual whistle indicating who was on the back to stop… I was actually faster than the car that was moaning from the weight of what was on its back.
Less than an hour later, we arrived at the outskirts of Qibya village, near Ni’lin. Our car stopped there because it ran out of fuel. We were confused and started crying. The displaced were passing us on foot, their faces tired and covered with dust, their clothes torn, their legs bloody, and on their backs were their children, some flour, oil, and a little water. In the opposite direction, the armored vehicles of the Jordanian army were moving in the direction of Beit Nabala, making the road difficult and moving very slowly due to the narrowness of the road and the rugged mountains around it. However, the armored convoy soon stopped, and when my uncle asked the tank officer that stopped right in front of us why they stopped, he told us that the village of Beit Nabala had fallen into the hands of the Jews, as well as the cities of Lydda and Ramla and dozens of other villages, and that they could not advance after that. It was clear that the Israeli soldiers stormed Beit Nabala within minutes of our leaving the land. My uncle burst into tears, shouting as if he had suddenly lost his mind, repeating the name of his wife and the names of his children one after the other. He immediately got out of the car, walked towards Beit Nabala like a lunatic man following his shadow, and left us sitting on the back of the car crying alone in a pitiful state… Jumaa Abu Rabi` returned wandering on his face looking for what he had from a family whose fate he no longer knew. Within minutes, we saw the Israeli enemy artillery shelling the civilian cars parked near us on both sides of the road and moving on them like a turtle, which led to the destruction of one of them, killing and injuring the men and women on board, the elderly and children. We got out of the car quickly, trembling with fear and panic. We walked towards Ni’lin on foot. We passed the village of Qibya, then we continued walking, led by Mr. Hassan Khalil’s wife, until we reached Ni’lin at sunset. We went to the village mosque and sat there waiting for the unknown. He immediately got out of the car, walked towards Beit Nabala like a lunatic man following his shadow, and left us sitting on the back of the car crying alone in a pitiful state… Jumaa Abu Rabi` returned wandering on his face looking for what he had from a family whose fate he no longer knew. Within minutes, we saw the Israeli enemy artillery shelling the civilian cars parked near us on both sides of the road and moving on them like a turtle, which led to the destruction of one of them, killing and injuring the men and women on board, the elderly and children. We got out of the car quickly, trembling with fear and panic. We walked towards Ni’lin on foot. We passed the village of Qibya, then we continued walking, led by Mr. Hassan Khalil’s wife, until we reached Ni’lin at sunset. We went to the village mosque and sat there waiting for the unknown. He immediately got out of the car, walked towards Beit Nabala like a lunatic man following his shadow, and left us sitting on the back of the car crying alone in a pitiful state… Jumaa Abu Rabi` returned wandering on his face looking for what he had from a family whose fate he no longer knew. Within minutes, we saw the Israeli enemy artillery shelling the civilian cars parked near us on both sides of the road and moving on them like a turtle, which led to the destruction of one of them, killing and injuring the men and women on board, the elderly and children. We got out of the car quickly, trembling with fear and panic. We walked towards Ni’lin on foot. We passed the village of Qibya, then we continued walking, led by Mr. Hassan Khalil’s wife, until we reached Ni’lin at sunset. We went to the village mosque and sat there waiting for the unknown. Within minutes, we saw the Israeli enemy artillery shelling the civilian cars parked near us on both sides of the road and moving on them like a turtle, which led to the destruction of one of them, killing and injuring the men and women on board, the elderly and children. We got out of the car quickly, trembling with fear and panic. We walked towards Ni’lin on foot. We passed the village of Qibya, then we continued walking, led by Mr. Hassan Khalil’s wife, until we reached Ni’lin at sunset. We went to the village mosque and sat there waiting for the unknown. Within minutes, we saw the Israeli enemy artillery shelling the civilian cars parked near us on both sides of the road and moving on them like a turtle, which led to the destruction of one of them, killing and injuring the men and women on board, the elderly and children. We got out of the car quickly, trembling with fear and panic. We walked towards Ni’lin on foot. We passed the village of Qibya, then we continued walking, led by Mr. Hassan Khalil’s wife, until we reached Ni’lin at sunset. We went to the village mosque and sat there waiting for the unknown.
After reaching Nilin, the wife of the mayor, Hassan Khalil, kneaded flour with water, baked it, and provided food for all the children. For three days in a row, she kneaded the flour, baked the bread and distributed it to us, keeping a portion for everyone who missed a meal. The crowds of fugitives and those who were dispersed had chosen, without awareness or prior planning, the square of the Ni’lin Mosque as a place to gather and search for lost family, relatives and friends. Before the night was too late, my father, my uncle and his family, and my grandmother had joined us successively, as the father and grandmother arrived first, then the uncle and his family. My grandmother had refused to leave the village with us when we got into the van, as she insisted on waiting until her children left so that she could leave with them. My father arrived very tired, riding his bicycle, carrying his gun and my uncle’s small bag of clothes, and holding his mother’s hand. During the waiting period, I used to walk about every half hour towards Qibya village for half an hour or a little more, explore the road, ask those who came about the situation and about the family, then go back and tell my mother what I saw and heard, I repeated the same thing twice before I became tired and felt exhausted. Then I laid my head on my mother’s thigh, fell asleep next to the wall of the mosque, and only woke up in the morning to my father’s voice. As soon as I opened my eyes, I noticed that the hundreds of people who had gathered the previous evening around the mosque, their number increased during the night at least twenty times to become a few thousand, most of them came from the cities of Lydda and Ramla.
After the artillery shelling intensified on Bayt Nabala, and the shrapnel of the bombs reached the house of my aunt and uncle, and her children screamed in fear, Aunt “Rahma” took her children and ran away from the house… She fled under the rain of bombs without having a companion, and without knowing where The Road. When my father arrived at his brother’s house in search of his cousin and nephews, he did not find any of them there, except that he found a small bag of clothes ready for travel, in which my uncle had put some of his clothes in preparation for his departure. With his gun on his shoulder. As for Rahma, because of the difficulty of walking alone with five children in need of care, she had to throw her daughter “Muntaha” and her son “Muhammad Khair” into a cart pulled by a mule, which was traveling in the east direction away from Beit Nabala.
My uncle Jumaa walked after leaving us on the outskirts of Qibya for about two hours before he found his wife and children, and when he saw them from a distance, his wife was standing in the middle of the road on that miserable hot day, wearing a short, torn dress, tears falling from her eyes profusely, and blood was flowing from her leg And her feet, holding her infant to her breast, while her two children, Bassam and Najah, stand on either side of her, each holding one of the ends of her torn dress, crying silently. Jumaa Abu Rabi` ran towards his wife and children, hugged them, and started crying. Immediately, he noticed the absence of Muntaha and Muhammad Khair, but before he asked about them, his wife told him what she had done and why, which made him return to weeping and wailing again, but he had no choice but to hurry towards Nilin in search of them and the rest of the family. He carried my uncle Nabil on his chest, Rahma held Bassam in one hand and Najah in the other, and they walked with hundreds of homeless people towards the village of Nilin, where we promised to meet.
We could not have continued walking far from Ni’lin towards Ramallah or other Palestinian cities before finding Muntaha and Muhammad Khair. After two days, and the majority of the displaced and homeless had left the place, we found Muntaha and her brother after we heard a man shouting at the top of his voice, saying: “Who is lost children… Who is looking for lost children?” The man followed us tens of meters, and there, under a perennial olive tree, we found Muntaha and Muhammad Khair with about ten other children… They were all in a miserable condition, suffering from hunger, thirst, misery, and fear. The harshness of the experience weakened Muhammad Khair’s body and spirit despite his young age, which made him lose the desire to live and the ability to live. While Muntaha lived to become a mother and grandmother to a large number of grandchildren, Muhammad Khair died months later in Aqabat Jabr camp and was buried there.
