By Syed Zafar Mehdi
As the world marks the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, Palestinian-American trauma social worker and clinician Dina Elmuti emphasizes that the catastrophe continues to haunt Palestinians to this day.
Elmuti, a first-generation Palestinian-American based in Chicago, recounted the horrors of the Nakba, where over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced, thousands killed, and numerous villages wiped out by the Zionist occupiers between 1947 and 1949.
Reflecting on her grandmother’s survival of the Deir Yassin Massacre, Elmuti highlighted the ongoing trauma and displacement faced by Palestinians, particularly in Gaza where thousands have been killed and millions rendered homeless due to Israeli bombings.
She criticized the complicity of Western countries, notably the US, in supporting Israeli war crimes and called for solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Elmuti commended the student-led movement in the US for standing up against the genocide in Gaza and emphasized the importance of speaking up against injustice and human rights violations.