Lily Traubman, Kibbutz Meggido

Lily Traubman is a member of Kibbutz Meggido, which was built on the lands of the village of al-Lajjun. She spoke to Eitan Bronstein in preparation for Zochrot's tour and booklet of al-Lajjun on October 5, 2004.


Tell me a bit about yourself. Where were you born and since when have you been here?

I was born in Chile to a family that was active on the left. My father disappeared during the Pinochet regime and the remains of his body were only found a few years ago. A year after the revolution and the rise of the dictatorship, the army came to my house and I immediately ran away and hid in different houses until I received political asylum in the Columbian embassy. From there I asked to received political asylum in England or Israel. When I got a positive response from Israel I decided not to wait any longer. So that in practice I fled from Chile to Israel because I preferred not to wait for a response from England. My brother and childhood friends from the “Shomer Hatzair” younth movement in Chile also lived here. I came to Israel, to Meggido, in 1974. I didn’t know anything about the kibbutz nor about Israel. My mother joined me and ran away a month later.

What did you know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or about the village of al-Lajjun?

I didn’t know a thing about al-Lajjun, of course, but I had heard quite a bit about the conflict. There was an incident that made me understand the reality here. When I was taking Hebrew classes at Kibbutz Tzora I would got to Jerusalem a lot and I was very charmed by the city. One day I traveled with my mother in the shuk in the old city and someone asked me about the pendant I was wearing. I started to speak and I was surprised that he knew a lot about Chile. He told me that he taught Hebrew at the Hebrew University. We wandered around the shuk and I saw that he knew a lot of the merchants, to whom he spoke in Arabic, and I was a bit frightened. I wanted to ask him if he was Arab, but I was too shy. In the end I asked him if he was a ‘sabra.’ He responded, “My father was born here, and so was my grandmother and my grandfather’s grandfather. I was born here and my family has lived in Jerusalem for 300 years and I am Palestinian.” It was a powerful experience and it threw me off. I had only just arrived here a few months ago and being a ‘new immigrant’ Jerusalem belonged to me more than to him. I asked myself if I would have rescued this Palestinian and hid him in my home as other people did for me in their homes in Chile? The answer then was certainly not, because we were in a conflict with them.

When and how did you come to know about the village of al-Lajjun?

I came to Meggido and the village al-Lajjun was completely transparent. As if it didn’t exist. It is strange because there were and still are structures of the village. There was a gorgeous house of a Sheikh and I didn’t ask myself what it was. They called it the ‘Arab house’ but not much was said about its origins. The most they said was that “the Sheikh sold all his lands.” The kibbutz was founded in 1949 when there were no longer residents of al-Lajjun there. Being active in Women in Black led me to recognize al-Lajjun. It is one of the only places where Jews and Arabs are partners. We talked among ourselves and it raised my awareness.

When was the first time you met someone displaced from al-Lajjun?

During the end of the 1980s, at one of the Women in Black conferences, I met one from the Jenin refugee camp. She told me that she was from al-Lajjun and I said that I was from Meggido. I was completely silent. I couldn’t say another word. I tell you this now and I want to cry.

Why were you silent?

I was silent because I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t have anything to say to her. I live in her house and she is a refugee. I didn’t know how to cope with this truth. A lot of times in Israel they press into your head that it’s us or them. But here, we were together at the conference. I think that the only thing I said was that I was really sorry.

When was the first time you heard stories about the village?

Once, at the beginning of the 1990s, a Palestinian man from Umm al-Fahm came to my house in Meggido together with a Palestinian friend of mine. They wanted to write a book about al-Lajjun, an oral history of the village. We went to visit in al-Lajjun and he told me about the houses and what happened in the village. There was a very beautiful house there but it was full of thorns due to neglect. In the past it was used as the kibbutz laundry. He said that it was a medical clinic and that it was a large and important village and that the British wanted to make it into an important center. It took me some more time to see that even where there are only ruins, not complete houses, there, too, someone lived in the past. From this tour I came to understood something much more concrete about al-Lajjun. It was an established and central village and I could imagine it very alive.

Did the kibbutz pay any notice to al-Lajjun?

A long time ago, at the end of the 1970s, a young man from Meggido organized the 6th grade children from Meggido and they restored the flour mill. I thought it was a nice act but I don’t know why his did that.

Did the displaced villagers also take part in the restoration?

No, he did it without them. He is one of the first children of the kibbutz and he told me once that he remembered when he was a child, in the early 1950s, he heard the sound of the houses of al-Lajjun being blasted. These are fragments of memory like a puzzle and memories of others that I questioned and they intertwine with my memory. Thus, to some extent, I adopt memories of others, I see al-Lajjun and I imagine the life in the village, but what I see is not necessarily what the displaced villagers see.

How do you see this place, al-Lajjun?

To my eyes al-Lajjun was always a very lovely place. A magical place full of trees and water and the stones themselves integrated with nature. The water well, too, that flowed into a pool. On very hot days there is a cool, pleasant air that reaches a few places in the kibbutz. It is air from al-Lajjun. Maybe it also carries with it the memories from that place.

Was there every any kind of organized activity by the kibbutz on the subject of al-Lajjun?

A few years ago they screened a film by Ilan Yaguda that showed the refugees of al-Lajjun and the refugees of the holocaust, who established Meggido on al-Lajjun, whose residents were displaced. The refugees erected a home on the place from which other people were turned into refugees. Following the screening there was a discussion that was very difficult and lasted until 1:30 in the morning.

Why is it so difficult?

Any mention of al-Lajjun is perceived as a threat to drive out the Jews. Some people were very angry with me because in their view he gave too much room in the film to the refugees, even though in my view their place is relatively small compared to the Jews. We went, about five of us from the kibbutz, to see the film in Umm al-Fahm together with the refugees of al-Lajjun. That was also very hard. In the film, one of the men scorns the people of the kibbutz that they didn’t know about the olive trees of al-Lajjun, because they are foreigners in that place. In the conversation after the film there was a lot of anger on the part of the displaced because “they won’t even let us come to the mosque and restore it, so why are they coming here to watch a movie together?”

Was anything done as an outcome of watching the film together?

Indeed that is the more important and difficult question. In that small group we thought of working on public opinion in the kibbutz so that they would allow the displaced to come to the mosque. Someone planned to write something in the kibbutz newsletter. But then the intifada broke out and erased everything. There was also a screening of a film at the kibbutz about the Bat Shalom movement. One of the members of the kibbutz, who is a refugee of the holocaust, kept coming in and out angrily. He met me the following day boiling with anger and said, “One day they will come and slaughter us and may you be the first to be slaughtered.” This film screening was also very difficult. A Palestinian woman said to us, “Why are you doing this to us? It is reopening our wounds.”

What is happening with the cemetery and the mosque of al-Lajjun?

The cemetery wasn’t fenced closed for a long time and it was forbidden. The option was raised that the kibbutz would be punished for this, so they fenced it. The mosque was the kibbutz carpentry workshop for a long time and I didn’t know it was a mosque for a long time because it doesn’t look like one. It doesn’t have a dome or a tower. The United Workers’ Party donated money to build a new carpentry workshop and since then the kibbutz has stopped using the mosque.

What led you to understand the refugee issue?

I was connected to a project by Orna Mar in Jenin. During the first intifada she organized a number of people from the area and we drove to a refugee camp in Jenin. We arrived at the house of a family and the grandmother was a very special, strong woman. There was an old man with us, maybe 80 years old, from Ayn Hashofet. The old woman was also about the same age. He spoke Arabic because the veteran members of the kibbutz had relationships with the Palestinian neighbors before 1948. She asked him where we were from. He said “Daliyat a-Rouha” instead of “Ayn Hashofet.” She said she was from there. I thought about the fact that we were here in the Palestinian intifada and that we had taken her home. I thought that if it was the reverse I would tell them to get out of here. She started to tell us beautiful things about her village and about a particular, wonderful weed that grew there. She asked what was there now and he told her “nothing.” She said that it was not possible. Her parents were born there and so was she, and she could not believe that nothing remained from the village. She remembered the people of the kibbutz and he remembered the people from the village. She told us that she was a young girl and she would take the bus that departed from the kibbutz to Haifa and she would hide on the back seat so as not to pay. He brought challah bread because it was Shabbat and she was happy because she had no teeth and couldn’t eat pita bread. She asked him to take her to the village one time, but he never did that. During the conversation the old woman started calling the man “my husband.” It was a very instructive experience.

How would you resolve the problem of the displaced villagers of al-Lajjun?

I would like a new neighborhood or village to be built next to us and that the people of al-Lajjun return to live in it. I would like them as my neighbors. On the condition of equality we can have a wonderful life together. It doesn’t threaten me, it’s not good to live in fear. The reality shows me that there is no basis for fear. When we visited in Jenin, during the intifada, they could have killed us, if they had only wanted to. I know that even rebuilding is not perfect justice, but perfect justice doesn’t exist anywhere. I would be willing for our kibbutz to give up its lands for the benefit of al-Lajjun, because life without fear is a large gain. The man who is afraid they will come to slaughter us lives with this fear since 1949. I have not been afraid for some time now, but people are still afraid and it is terrible to live this way. We are not in Europe and we must understand that we must stop living in ghettoes. A refugee is a refugee and we must and can understand this better than anyone else. Today in Eastern Europe Jews get back their property and it doesn’t cause a tragedy.