Olfat Mahmoud
Dr. Olfat Mahmoud is a Palestinian refugee, born in Lebanon, whose life mission is to fulfill the dream of her parents and grandparents to return to their hometown, Tarshiha, in Palestine. Olfar started her career as a nurse with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. A turning point in her life was triggered by a community nursing course in Australia (1984-1985) - having seen enough of war and its atrocities, Olfat decided to return to academia. She joined the Faculty of Human Sciences at Beirut Arab University, where she eventually completed a PhD in Positive Psychology and Personality (2016).
Olfat is an instructor at Beirut Arab University and the General Director of the Palestinian NGO ‘Women’s Humanitarian Organization’. Olfat has also published a number of academic studies and works as an activist for Palestinian and women’s rights. In 2015, she was selected to represent Palestinian refugees in Lebanon at the UN celebration of the foundation of UNRWA in New York. Tears for Tarshiha is her first step on the road to return to Tarshiha.
Olfat Mahmoud
Olfat Mahmoud is a Palestinian refugee. Born in a refugee camp in Lebanon, she is a descendant of the Christian and Muslim people who were forced from their homeland at gunpoint by the Israeli military in the 1948’s Nakba, ‘Catastrophe’, and who fled Palestine in the period leading up to – and after – the subsequent founding of the state of Israel in 1948.
In 1949, David Ben-Gurion, one of the founders of the State of Israel and the first prime minister, stated that ‘we must do everything to ensure [the Palestinians] never do return… the old will die and the young will forget’.
Olfat’s life mission is to fulfil the dream of her parents and grandparents to return to their hometown, Tarshiha in Palestine. Her determination to help her people in their fight to return to their homeland, has led to a nursing career that has placed her at the front line of atrocious massacres and wars in the Middle East.
Tears for Tarshiha follows Olfat’s career – as a registered nurse, the director of an international NGO, an internationally recognised peace activist, and most recently, the recipient of a doctorate – amid the death and destruction of Lebanon’s many conflicts; and chronicles the Palestinian people’s remarkable capacity for love and bravery in the most extreme conditions. Olfat’s extraordinary story is emblematic of the Palestinian plight, illustrating their continued survival and determination that has become an inconvenience to the international community.
Despite Olfat’s parents and grandparents never seeing Tarshiha again, this book is part of Olfat’s ongoing campaign to keep her people’s predicament in the public consciousness. This is their story, and the story of all Palestinians and their descendants who were forced from their homeland.