I went to Jerusalem for the first time in my life in the early 1970s, and I retain many memories from that first trip. The West Bank was under complete Israeli occupation and the only way in was through the King Hussein Bridge. The crossing was arduous, long, hot and dirty. Flies buzzed over children’s heads and the whole atmosphere was tense.

Security was tight on the Israeli side and I distinctly remember an Israeli soldier repeatedly passing her scanning machine over the body of a very large older lady wearing traditional Palestinian dress, only to hear it buzz again and again while the lady unfolded layers of thoubs which she had wrapped around her body and removed material packages from her ample bosom.

I was only a child and all I understood was that these people I was seeing were my enemy and had taken away the land of the Palestinians. We stayed at the house of my father’s uncle in Ramallah. It was a large stone house with a winding driveway through a magnificent garden. My favourite corner was in the back garden, which had a large vine “areesheh”, under which we would play, eat and meet other family members.

My father had rejected the idea of coming with us on this holiday for fear of coming face to face with Israelis and “losing it”, but as the date drew closer, he finally relented and joined us. I remember his agitation at the border crossing, his euphoria as we passed through familiar areas and routes and his peace when he found his father’s grave in Jerusalem and read Al Fatiha to his soul. But most distinctly I remember my father’s pain and tears as we huddled against the wall of a Jerusalemite family and looked across barbed wire at his family’s home in Sheikh Jarrah.

This imposing house, perched high atop a hill, had been considered “absentee property”, and taken over by the Israeli security and turned into headquarters for their operations. Yet all my father could see was the big tree on which he used to swing as a child and which was now lost to his children and grandchildren after him. As he proudly showed off the history behind his family, listing the surrounding homes of uncles and cousins, I could feel, even at that young age, that his pride was tarnished with embarrassment at the loss that came with allowing the occupation of his home.

I never went back to Sheikh Jarrah since then. Many years later, a Canadian friend of mine went back to Jerusalem on a reporting assignment and sneakily walked past the house while holding a video camera. She excitedly showed my father the sketchy tape and again my father pointed to the tree on which he used to swing as a child. She called him “smiley”, and would often tell me that it was because she loved his big smile as he watched that tape.

My father passed away five years ago. With him, we, as a family, lost much of the link to the Jerusalem he knew as a child and from which he drew his elegance, pre-eminence and sense of history. We have started to make alliances and develop identities that look beyond the geographic borders and limitations to embrace and celebrate humanity. Sometimes we forget the Palestinian origin, the Jordanian nationality and allegiance and the Western education and upbringing, and instead find ourselves engrossed in the pursuit of life and living.

I have reported on peace talks, attended peace-signing ceremonies and interviewed Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli delegations to peace conferences. I have wished for and advocated for peace. In fact, whenever I saw a bloodbath in the name of the land, I argued that land can never compensate for the loss of human life which, I believe, is more sacred than property or even political identity. I joined in arguments against extremism, terrorism, fanaticism and belligerence, always hoping for a happy ending.

Yet, as I hear the Israeli “historical” claims to Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah, followed by the chorus of feeble and ineffective protests from East and West, I realise that Sheikh Jarrah and Jerusalem are most probably lost to my generation and perhaps even my children’s generation, just as it was lost to my father’s and his father’s before him.

We let it go, we forgot it and we forgot to respect our own history and our own moral and legal claims to it. My father was ashamed of showing his children the family home occupied by strangers.

Israel and Israelis should be ashamed and embarrassed by the racist state they have created. But we, perhaps even more importantly, should be ashamed of our complete lack of shame.