An act to the land that belonged to the author's grandfather, superimposed on an image of the high-rise building on this site in Beersheba today.
(Illustration Photo of Los Angeles Times; Images Adel Bseiso)
My father, Jawdat Bseiso, was 23 years old when everything changed.
As a favorite son of Mahrous Mustafa Bseiso – one of the largest landowners in Southern Palestine – he was treated to inherit the heritage of our family. My grandfather was an eminent businessman in Beersheba, a flourishing Palestinian city where Muslims, Christians and Jews formerly lived together in peace.
Then came on May 15, 1948. The Palestinians knew it under the name of Nakba – the disaster. That day, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including all my family, were forcibly moved during the foundation of the State of Israel. Our lands, our houses and our companies were seized, and we were labeled “absent” even if we had been violently expelled and that our expropriated properties.
My family has become a refugee overnight. Our house, as well as hundreds of thousands of acres from our lands in Beersheba and elsewhere, were taken and returned to the Israeli State. The property was listed under the owner of the property absent from this government, but we have never been absent: we have been driven and not authorized to return and regain our family properties.
I was born in 1962 in Al Bireh, near Ramallah in the West Bank. My family finally immigrated to the United States and became a citizen. Like many other refugees, my parents have protected us from the past. My father rarely talked about what had happened. He wore the pain silently, his eyes still apparently fixed elsewhere, trapped between memory and loss.
In America, I faced the difficulties of the usual immigrants: racism, intimidation and pressure to assimilate. To protect myself, I turned to the fight and the martial arts. As an adult, I finally had a career in the music industry, but even then, I felt that I had to hide. Instead of working under my first name, Adel, I went by Eddie, then Edvardo, and finally Vardo Bissiccio, leaving my Arabic name out of my career. The success has come, but the hunger for truth has remained.
I spent years looking for answers: what we had lost, which we were really and what had been stolen from us. Long after the death of my grandfather and my father, I continued to look for, and I found answers – a range of evidence such as terrestrial acts, tax files, sales contracts and correspondence letters, carefully gathered and verified. They tell a story of prosperity before displacement and the legal rights refused. They also preserve the heritage of my grandfather, a man who transformed the desert into gardens, firm and industry around Beersheba at the beginning of the 20th century.
Although this research started from a personal desire, I realized that the resulting collection could be precious for many others. Indeed, when I invited researchers to verify and assess the files, we concluded that the BSEISO family archives are the largest known collection of original documents from a single Palestinian family, detailing the property of legal land before the 1948 NAKBA.
In 2019, I started to scan the files and Columbia University finally agreed to host the collection in its modern Arab Studies program. In 2025, we launched Bfarchive.orgMake Palestinian history more accessible to academics, journalists and the public.
May 15 marks the 77th anniversary of the Nakba. Our documents now serve as legal and historical evidence not only of our own history but also as a broader diagram of dispossession.
None of this is intended to challenge the existence of the State of Israel or to erase the history of any other group. Our goal is justice. We aim to set the record straight and continue compensation for the billions of dollars in goods that have been illegally taken from our family and so many others.
Global conversation is changing. Millions of people now support Palestine. Nations around the world recognize the Palestinian state and the right to return. What was once hidden is highlighted. A moment of “black swan” – a tilting point for justice – approach.
The magnitude of what has been removed is amazing: earth, inheritance, opportunity. But behind these material losses is something deeper, a story, a legitimate place in the story of the country that we formerly called here.
For decades, I preserve not only documents but also stories. The oral stories transmitted from my grandfather, my father and our elders speak of a time before the Nakba – of the community, coexistence and peace. They also testify to what came after: exile, erasure and injustice in progress.
My family's archives exist to preserve these truths and make them impossible to ignore.
Adel Bseiso, an American Palestinian music producer, lives in Los Angeles.
