I am a Palestinian/Syrian American school teacher. Since I have been posting on Daily Kos, a few commentators have inferred that I am fostering hate, for to some when I speak lovingly of my heritage, it is by implication hatred of Israel.
My mother is a Roosevelt Democrat and throughout her life has exhibited unswerving loyalty to the Democratic Party. My late father was a Republican; like many Palestinians who immigrated to the United States, my father was a businessman, which is probably why he gravitated toward the Republicans.
My two previous posts on Right of Return do nothing more than advocate that Israel abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which clearly states "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." Let me quote Eleanor Roosevelt, who was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.
I thought that people in the United States were over their demonisation of Palestine and Palestinians. I remember maybe about thirty years ago, when I was in college, Mike Wallace interviewed some Detroit Palestinian-Americans on Sixty Minutes. I was living in a small house in a downtown Central California town and I called my dad, who had also been watching the show. We both were crying, so grateful that Mike Wallace had conducted an interview with Palestinian-Americans in a humane, respectful way, so grateful that Mike Wallace humanised people who I knew to be loyal and loving and not terrorists, as Palestinians were so routinely depicted.
Many of us privileged European and North Americans of Palestinian heritage feel that it is our duty to speak out on behalf of those who are less fortunate than we are, and most of us started speaking out on behalf of Palestinians due to a major upheaval in the conflict; for me it was in 1967; for Michael Tarazi, former legal advisor to the PLO, it was the tragedy of Sabra and Shatila. In 1967, my father told me that things were not as they were presented in the mainstream media in the US. Luckily for me, I had the wisdom of his stories to guide me and also the intelligence of a righteous American Jew, Alfred Lilienthal, whose books I discovered in the Baker Street Library. I will never forget that my father, a native of Ramallah, told me, "It is a shame what they did to those people," referring to the ethnically cleansed refugees.
Today the United States is more receptive to Palestinian voices. The Chicago Tribune has published Ali Abunimeh, George Bisharat appears in the San Francisco Chronicle, and Saree Makdisi has been published in the Los Angeles Times. I have had several letters published in mainstream newspapers. I will continue posting here because I believe that it is imperative that the Democratic Party live up to its historical role in supporting just causes.
I will leave you with an excerpt from lovely poem by Laila Halaby with quotations from the poet, Rashid Hussein. I suggest that everyone read our poets instead of polls if they want to understand the Palestinian heart:
"Teach the night to forget to bring
dreams showing me my village.
"And teach the wind to forget to carry to me
the aroma of apricots in my fields.
"And teach the sky, too, to forget to rain."
My father closed his eyes.
"Only then, may I forget my country.
"