In the beginning, Zionists invaded Palestine. They expelled the Palestinians and Gaza, an ancient place that hosted Ramses II, Alexander the Great, and Salahuddin, became a tent city. A wasteland for the dejected and destitute.

It didn‘t take long for Palestinians in Gaza to begin to fight to reclaim their homes from the Ashkenazis that displaced them. The Fedayeen – refugee militiamen – commenced with overnight raids as soon as the shock of their ignominious defeat began to wear.

The first Israeli massacre in Gaza occurred in 1956. My father was a small boy at the time, but he remembers how the men were rounded up and shot. Today, his grand-nephews and -nieces, also refugees, also born in camps, cower in terror as the third generation of Ashkenazis in Palestine shows them their place. Life in the shadows, balanced precariously on obsidian with fire on either side – that‘s their inheritance.