Source: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251101-two-men-two-journeys-one-for-life-and-one-for-death//

Two men, two journeys; one for life and one for death.

The stories of this tragedy are many. 

Here is a story of two journeys:  one to kill and another to survive. The two journeys are linked to one place Beer Sheba my native town.  It was the origin of one story and the destination of another. 

In October 2019, my speaking tour took me to the furthest east place ever, to Auckland, New Zealand. I spoke to about forty of the Palestinian community there. One young man, Nabil (who called himself Billy) took me to his home. On the way, he told me he was born in Kuwait but his father was born in Beer Sheba, Palestine in 1934. 

The place name struck me. His father must have been to Beer Sheba school, where I too was a student in the late 1940s. 

Like many of us, his father was expelled from his home town, Beer Sheba, when it was attacked and depopulated by Israel on 21 October 1948. The Israeli soldiers entered the city and started killing the defenders and the civilian people they found. Some survivors were found hiding in the mosque built in 1906. This did not save them. They were put in buses and carted away towards Gaza, and then thrown on the empty road halfway, some 40 km from Gaza. His father was possibly one of them. 

But his father did not give up. Under dire conditions in Gaza Strip, he pursued his education and became a noted pediatrician. He later worked in Kuwait, then Saudi Arabia. He finally found a place which called him a citizen. It was New Zealand. 

I wanted to speak to him as an old school mate and a fellow Palestinian refugee. Sadly, he had passed away and was buried there in Aukland. 

So, I went to visit his grave. Billy took me to a barren one-acre land fenced by shrubs. 

“Here it is”, Billy said. “This is the Muslim cemetery in Auckland”. Here lies Abdel Rahman Mohammed Assad Khalil Ibrahim Hania, born in Beer Sheba Palestine in 1934. Deserted, forlorn, and silent, his long journey of exile had made its final destination.

I looked around and saw in the empty acre barely a few scattered white stones, marking tombstones. It looked like the stones were strewn haphazardly, portraying the lives of the deceased. The cemetery looked like a comma in an unfinished sentence. 

Here was the end of a journey taken by my schoolmate. It took him several years and many stations to cover 16,200 km from his birthplace in Beer Sheba to die and be buried in Aukland. This is the odyssey of a Palestinian refugee. 

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I read Al Fatiha at his grave. Nothing could express the pain I felt for him and for us who are still alive and are still on our destination journey. 

Why did Abdel Rahman die in Aukland? Why was he forced into this journey and imposed onto, and into, foreign ground?  Because a man started on a reverse journey… to transfer him, steal his home, and make him a refugee. 

The criminal is a man born in Plonsk, a Russian Polish man. This man traveled from Plonsk to Beer Sheba, Palestine, a distance of 4,800 km. His life journey ended in Beer Sheba where Abdel Rahman had been born. This man’s end destination was the origin of Abdel Rahman life journey. 

This man, named David, travelled – by choice – to Palestine and claimed himself as Palestinian, at first. In Palestine he was received peacefully. But his aim was to destroy the country that received him. 

He gathered a group of like-minded immigrants to settle in Palestine, and formed a secret army to kill or expel his hosts. In March 1948, while Palestine was under the management of the British Mandate, he initiated his Plan Dalet and unleashed his force named Haganah to attack, occupy and expel the Palestinian inhabitants, his hosts. 

In a matter of ten months, the Haganah composed of 120,000 soldiers in 9 brigades attacked and depopulated 530 cities and villages. That could not have been executed easily. It required 95 massacres at least, in which 15,000 Palestinians were killed. 

He made 8 million Palestinian refugees today. 

He is the one who made Abdel Rahman die in Aukland. 

His name is David Grun, later changed to Ben Gurion. 

One week after the Israel attack on Beer Sheba on 21 October 1948, Ben Gurion came to inspect Beer Sheba town. He admired the fine stone government buildings, the boys’ school, where I and Abdel Rahman were students, and the Arab houses in the town. He liked them so much so he decided to eventually end his life there. 

He was buried at Sde Boker, a little to the south of the town, near the Arab village Rakhama (renamed Yeroham in Hebrew). His grave was not a motley of scattered white stones. It was a huge edifice in a big compound containing a lecture hall, a library and meeting rooms. The worshippers of Zionism hover around the grave in solemn procession, celebrating the demise of the deceased hosts.  

This is the tale of two journeys. One journey is the traumatic exile of Dr Hania MD from his birthplace in Beer Sheba Palestine, to Aukland New Zealand where he is buried, at a distance of 16,200 km away from his birthplace. The other is the journey of the mastermind behind this crime, David Ben Gurion, who travelled from his birthplace in Plonsk Poland to Beer Sheba Palestine at a distance of 4,200 km, to kill and displace his hosts and be buried in their town.   

Neither story will be forgotten or left without remedy.

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