My Proximity to Palestinians Didn't Radicalize Me. My Love for Humanity Did.

One Muslim's view on the Palestinian people and the Israeli occupation.

I grew up in a split home. My father’s family are devout Roman Catholics, whereas my mother had converted (or, as Muslims refer to it, reverted) to Islam shortly after 9/11. Some of my earliest and fondest memories with my mom include going to Islamic Sunday school with the adults (my sister and I felt out of place as non-Muslims in the children’s classrooms), doing henna on Islamic holidays in the backyard of a family friend’s home, and playing with our Muslim friends.

My neighbors at my mom’s house in Milwaukee, Wisconsin were the Morrar family, comprised of a Hajja (woman who has completed Hajj, often a term for elders) grandmother, a mother and father, and their three children - two sons and a daughter. Their daughter was friends with my sister and I. All three of us would often gather in the apartment hallway to play and gossip. We all especially loved doing makeovers with my mom’s leftover Mary Kay samples, trading and bartering with each other for which samples we would get.

I began to learn about Palestine through the Morrar family, although not fully understanding the nature of the occupation. After all, I was maybe ten or eleven years of age, and the nuances were lost on me. What I knew was that some Americans didn’t like them simply for where they came from, that they could not return to their homeland, and that Israel took away this right.

Islamophobia and xenophobia were new concepts I learned very quickly as a child. My father would often call my mom and her husband racist and Islamophobic epithets, falling on our ears as children who defended their mother without fully understanding why this behavior was wrong. My mother experienced Islamophobia and racialized violence (note: she is a white woman, and racism versus racialized violence are not one in the same), being chased by a man who was trying to remove her hijab in a grocery store as well as coming out of Blockbuster with my sister and I to find a man who claimed to be in the army trying to break into her car, which had a Islamic medallion hanging from the rearview mirror. I began to realize that Islam and Muslims were seen as objectively un-American and boiled down to slurs like terrorist and towelhead.

I learned more about the Israeli occupation of Palestine in depth as a teenager in high school. After it was known to my peers that my Muslim family existed, I was called “the Arab girl” (I’m white, but the racialization of Muslims as inherently Arab was loud in this time period) and Islamophobic slurs often. I would stand up against students who made Islamophobic or anti-Arab comments in classrooms and was endlessly teased for this.

One day, my social studies teacher decided to bring the “Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” into the classroom, which was, and still often is, seen as a bold move. We watched a documentary with Israeli and Palestinian children that made one message clear: peace and the end of war was desired, but neither “side” could decide how to go about it. We were assigned to debate a “side” and, having the background I have, I chose to write in a paper and discuss Palestinian oppression.

It wasn’t until I got to college that I fully comprehended the occupation of Palestine, and that this was not some equally two-sided conflict, but a genocide of Palestinians done by Israel with U.S. backing. I had converted to Islam at the age of nineteen in my first year at Tufts, and quickly realized that showing my love for Allah outwardly would be a challenge in the current geopolitical state of the U.S.

Even more difficult was showing Palestinian solidarity as the Students for Justice in Palestine organization on campus was often disenfranchised by Tufts due to its strong Zionist ties. I was called a terrorist for wearing a keffiyeh as a hijab by a student’s parent while on campus and wrote an article about it for the Tufts Daily. I witnessed a Zionist organization being allowed to advertise in the Tufts Daily, putting people’s faces framed with the crosshairs of a gun in the ad, and wrote an article about it for Huffington Post. I watched my peers in International Relations and Middle Eastern studies class debate endlessly for and against the Israeli occupation until classes ended.

One of my good friends in college was Palestinian. She was named after a city in Palestine from which her ancestors had come from. She was incredibly intelligent and has gone on to have a successful law career, though we lost touch after I broke her trust in college due to childishly letting my tongue speak before my brain could. Her family embraced me as I found my footing as a Muslim, bringing me to `Eid celebrations in Staten Island, cooking qatayef and other delicious foods for me to try that reminded me of my childhood growing up to the Morrar family. I am forever grateful for her and her family’s kindness to me and inviting me into home and culture.

My favorite Arabic professor in college, whom I took five courses with, was also Palestinian, from Gaza. Her humility and warm heart shown through to everyone who met her. One day she came into class distraught, and informed us that her family member had gone missing in Gaza and was unreachable during the Israeli offensive operations in Gaza during the mid-2010s. She taught us about Arabic roots, a system of three letters that created the meaning of every word in Arabic. Her stress was clear as she began to cry while teaching us the root f-j-r, which was both the root for the Arabic words for “dawn” as well as “detonation”. Many of us shared tears and heartbreak for her, as we felt helpless.

Many of the students in my Arabic classrooms would show their love for humanity in the streets, myself included. We would march to the Israeli Consulate in Boston, stand chest-to-chest with Boston police officers, and some of us would be arrested to show our solidarity with a people who were being slaughtered, detained, disappeared. We would shout in English, Arabic, and Spanish different protest slogans until our lungs couldn’t hold them anymore. We went home after, exhausted, and talked in dormitory lounges about how we could continue to show our support for the people of Palestine.

I am vehemently pro-Palestinian, just as I stand with all oppressed people. Learning that all oppression is connected as an undergraduate student in my Sex and Gender class listening to a spoken word poem by StaceyAnn Chin was one of the best lessons I came to learn at Tufts. My life experiences may have informed my stances, but it is my faith in humanity that has led me to be so “radical”.

It took very little convincing for me to feel clear about my stance on Palestine. While I have personal experiences with being in proximity to Palestinians for over two decades, I don’t feel that I needed their stories to necessarily side with an oppressed people. My love for humanity is strong, and the Qur’an and my Muslim ancestors and loved ones have taught me this.

So when you ask me, “Why would you, a white American, support the Palestinian people?” My simple answer is this:

They’re human, and they teach life.