Moghrabi's Olives

Kamel Moghrabi loved three things passionately—his family, his homeland in the Galilee region of Palestine, and his olive groves—and thus dedicated his life to the vigilant protection of all.

Raised by his grandfather who fiercely resisted Ottoman rule, Kamel embraced nationalism early in life as he struggled to rid Palestine of one ruling power after another in his quest for independence and self-rule. When the threat of losing his family to war with the Zionists compelled Kamel to take them and flee Palestine in 1948, he lost his riches, his land, his olive groves—and most enervating—his hope. Despite his personal collapse into a chasm of grief, his family became his crucible, and from the nadir of poverty and despair his wife and nine children slowly and painfully ascended together.

Still desirous of returning to their homeland in Galilee fifty-two years later, the Moghrabi children continue to work in diaspora for the re-creation of Palestine, hoping to return to the land their father lived and died for, ending their half-century of statelessness.