October - November 2008Palestine Through Our Eyes: 60 Years Since the Nakba
Palestinian refugee children photograph ancestral villages:Birthright Unplugged is an education and justice promotion organization focusing on human rights in the Palestinian context. Our Re-Plugged program has been producing exhibits with children in Palestinian refugee camps since 2006.
In Palestine the exhibits are built about trips we take with the children. In two days, we visit Jerusalem, the sea and the children's ancestral villages, which is nearly impossible for most Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and outside Palestine. With children in refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, we gather stories and experiences related to the Nakba and their lives in exile. The children in both programs create photography exhibits in order to contribute to the collective memory in the refugee camp communities and to tour internationally.
This exhibit features photographs by children from a visit from a West Bank camp to the villages their families fled, and explores their relationship to these lands. The exhibit also includes panels from camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan that look at the children's relationship to the Nakba and their lives and experiences in camps now as well as contextualizing the children's work and the Palestinian refugee history and experience. The children whose work appears in this exhibit are from Jenin camp, West Bank, Palestine; Al Wehdat camp, Jordan; Burj al Barajneh camp, Lebanon; Khan Eshieh camp, Syria.
In this panel, photography and writing from Ein Hawd, the original village of child pictured on the panel, now living in Jenin refugee camp, West Bank
