The city of Jaffa was a major metropolitan area when it was attacked by Jewish forces on May 13, 1948, two days before the end of the British Mandate over Palestine.
After three weeks of siege and attacks, Jaffa fell to Jewish troops. Those troops immediately began the expulsion, the ethnic cleansing, of Jaffa’s Palestinian population.
By the time they were finished, 50,000 people from Jaffa alone — all of them Palestinians — had been expelled, pushed into the Mediterranean Sea, or sent packing among the streams of destitute refugees looking for safety.
Many of these refugees died along the road. They were death marches.
Ebtihaj is now 86 years old. In April 1948 she was just a little girl, but she well remembers being forced from her home and expelled from Jaffa.
She vividly recalls the Jewish soldiers who shot and killed her unarmed brother as he watched them drive into town from his doorway.
Listen to her story here: