Ok, so this is my first entry at the Daily Kos. A little about me, why I'm here- etc.
Ok, so this is my first entry at the Daily Kos. A little about me, why I'm here- etc.
I'm a Palestinian American graduate student. This may sound like an oxymoron of sorts- 'palestinian' and 'american'. on the one hand, you've got people saying that palestinians are terrorists, and that America stands for liberty and freedom and french fries (oh wait, no we got that from french and oo we have to boycott the french cuz well you know the french and their crepes they know nothing about american values- or liberty for that matter). so how could you possibly be both? then you've got people who point out the obvious, looming fact: your taxes, as an american, go to fund the israeli army and then in turn are killing your people. how do you reconcile this?
and when i begin to talk about these issues, more questions arise. Questions like, why am i critical of the american government? my goodness, where do i begin? how about our track record in latin america, for example? or you know, let's go back further, and talk about how the country came into existence:
My fellow Americans, we are all standing on stolen land. Abd yes, this includes me too.
My parents immigrated to this country- my grandparents fled Palestine in 1948- and well to make a long story short, it came to be that i was born on this stolen land. this may sound harsh, but the fact is its true. it doesnt matter that it happened X amount of years ago, fact is, it happened: religious fundamentalists with a stern belief that God had granted them the right to take other people's land came over from europe- and well, we all know what happened next. so if i acknowledge this fact in itself, my identity as an American is illegitimate. But the fact of the matter is i am what i am, i have no other passport- so if, in theory, i relinquish my identity and give up my citizenship- where would i go? i would return- not to palestine- but to the state of being palestinian; which is to be stateless, homeless, stuck at the border.
So to the critics i would say that this scenario really is the only conflict that i face when describing myself as a palestinian american- because i deeply empathize with the native americans of this country. Yes, my taxes kill my people, but you know what- I (and i really mean we) have the power to change that. Yes, it may take a while, yes it will be difficult, frustrating, you name it but i'm sure as hell going to try. And no, Palestinians are not terrorists- just as blacks are not criminals and latinos are not stupid.
And that brings me to an important point that i want to make: why should Americans care about what's going on in Palestine? What does it matter, its so far away, the conflict makes no sense, we have our own sh*t to deal with here, etc. But you see its all interconnected; we are conditioned to think that all these narratives of injustice flow on a trajectory of sorts- in a vaccum, isolated from everything else. yet the truth is that we live in the era of globalization: so i would argue that these narratives- these struggles for freedom- are like various stands of string all tied up together. At the end of the day we could separate them into different strands but there are certain points- knots- at which these issues come together and intersect. So in a sense, the palestinian struggle has everything to do with the struggle for justice in south africa during apartheid; our current US immigration policies; neo-liberalism; racism within the US (and yes, it exists!); native americans; our crumbling education system; insufficient healthcare system; civil rights; the war on iraq....really the list goes on. And if you fail to see the connection between all these things and the struggle for justice in Palestine- or anywhere else for that matter- that's ok, because it is my hope that through my posts here I will be able to tackle these issues and make those connections. What i'm saying is that we need to reassert our humanity- and the only way we can really do that is if we all come together- blacks, palestinians, latinos, asians, whites, u name it- and have an honest discussion about how to go about achieving justice for everyone.