To be Palestinian is to know
73 years of occupation
73 years of Palestinian displacement
73 years of Palestinian death
73 years of apartheid
73 years of ethnic cleansing
as facts that disgustingly seem almost as natural as air itself
as facts that seem to be given, that go without saying
as facts that many of us don’t know life without.
To be Palestinian is to know
Resistance in the face of oppression
Resilience in the face of brutality
Patience in the face of injustice
Strength in the face of weakness
To be Palestinian is to know
that Palestinian resistance is not just any type of resistance
It is a type of resistance that exclusively runs in the blood of Palestinians
A type of resistance that perseveres even when the whole world turns away
A type of resistance that spits in the face of oppression
A type of resistance that laughs at any attempt to be silenced
And a type of resistance that thrives on the love for one’s people
and the yearning for their liberation
To be Palestinian is to know
the feeling of disgust that arises
when Zionist propaganda claims that Palestine served as
“a land without a people for a people without a land”
in justification for outright colonialism
The feeling of disgust that arises to hear the complete erasure of my lineage
A lineage that I can trace back generations and generations in Palestine
A lineage that I would have not come to simply be without
To be Palestinian is to know
that my grandparents are older than the state of Israel
That my grandparents felt the direct wraths of the 1948 Nakba
That my grandparents carried the burden of being
displaced
forcibly removed
exiled
from their homes
made refugees in their own land
Land and homes that they built and tended to with their bare hands
To be Palestinian is to know
that my grandmother, Khadija Sadeq Abdeljaber, came so close to being a victim
that she tasted the bitterness of death
before surviving the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre
in which Zionist troops raided the village of Deir Yassin located in the outskirts of Jersualem
massacring over 250 Palestinian Arabs and exiling the rest
Piles of Palestinian corpses burned
Individuals tied to trees and set on fire
She survived
but watched everyone else around her get slaughtered in the process
Livelihoods stolen from right beneath them
Homes never returned
Booted to fend for themselves or die
As if they were foreigners
To be Palestinian is to know
That decades later when my grandmother returned to the village her family built
she found an Israeli family living in the home she once lived in
completely unchanged otherwise
Same furniture
Same decor
Some members even wearing the clothes that were left behind
but completely oblivious and ignorant to how
Palestinians were massacred and displaced
in order to give these settlers their homes
Homes these settlers somehow still felt entitled to
To be Palestinian is to know
that just because my grandmother survived death
does not mean her life was smooth sailing
That she was subjected to a long life of displacement after displacement
Being refugeed and vilified
Made a second-class citizen
in the land she called her own
bearing
raising
tending to
seven children of her own under occupation
who went on to live the same lives as she once did
To be Palestinian is to know
that my cousin, Yousef Khamees Hassan
was violently killed at 32 years old
after living the entirety of his short life under occupation in Jerusalem
Attempting to make ends meet for his family
took a job in public transportation
Savagely strangled with barbed wire by a mob of Israeli settlers
who attacked the bus he drove
Corpse hung to be found by others
Killed in cold blood
No arrests made
No justice given
To be Palestinian is to know
that I am the daughter of individuals
who were born into occupation
Who lived under the systemic oppression of the Zionist regime
Who only knew life without freedom
before it ultimately drove them into exile
Serving as living embodiment of the ongoing Nakba
Born into a society that once thrived
But was made unlivable
Suffocating those who stayed
and forcing the rest the make the decision to leave
To be Palestinian is to know
that my father was displaced three times and made a refugee in his own land
before he even finished middle school
That my grandfather was born a free man
but died in exile to the land that he was indigenous to
That my family is filled with tragedies of
lives unjustly lost
martyrs
freedom fighters
To be Palestinian is to know that
such stories and traits are not exclusive to my family
That almost every single Palestinian has similar stories
and carries the same
hurt
trauma
pain
all rooted in the desire for freedom
To be Palestinian is to know
that today I am a proud first-generation Palestinian American
Daughter of immigrants
Granddaughter of refugees
Diaspora
Living embodiment of the ways in which
I am still being impacted by the ongoing Nakba
a shared catastrophe
Unable to enter my homeland without security troubles
military checkpoints plaguing our every move
detainements
strip searches
“randomly selected”
special screenings
Fueled by the dedication I’ve vowed to the cause of my people
to do everything I can to fight injustice
study policy
attend law school
initiate change
large scale
To be Palestinian is to know
the feeling of being silenced as a Palestinian
The feeling of attending an institution
that pays no regard to the Palestinian voices or lives, for that matter, on their campus
Neglecting the fact that Palestinian students
have been calling for their voices to be heard by administration
for years on end
The feeling of being targeted for speaking out
The fear of my future being ruined
for simply standing up for what is right
Of advocating day and night for cause
to only be met with claims that my cause
the Palestinian cause
is much too complex to be discussed blatantly
To be Palestinian is to know
the frustrations of explaining
why it’s insensitive and tone deaf
for an article
to describes the ways
People of Israel turned ongoing airstrikes into a drinking game
Why it’s misleading to neglect the power imbalance
between the two entities at play
Why Gazans should be at the forefront of discussing
what it means to be bombed
Why anti zionism is not antisemitism
Why I should not be inherently labeled as spreading hatred
when I call for justice that has long been deprived of my people
To watch as news sources ignore Palestinian suffering
and wait for Hamas to react
before beginning to inaccurately cover
human rights violations and war crimes
and how phrases like
eviction
Conflict
War
Clashes
Both sides
Are inadequate in describing what is actually
Occupation
Apartheid
Colonialism
State sanctioned violence
Ethnic cleansing
Illegal settlements
War crimes
That there is not “both-sides”
rather an oppressor and an oppressed
To be Palestinian is to know
that Palestinians are not a monolith
That I live in relative privilege
That I will live my entire life as a Palestinian
without knowing the feeling of
being scared that I will go to sleep in a home
wake up under the rubble of that home
Without knowing the feeling of
of questioning whether or not I will be killed
by airstrikes that have rained on my city of hours on end
Without knowing the feeling of
living my life in an open-air prison
That Palestinians are not simply
numbers
statistics
deaths
That war in the “Middle East”
should not be seen as normal
That occupation is not normal
That bombs falling on Palestinian civilians
is not normal
nor is it “just part of war”
That we have a humanitarian crisis on our hands
and not a political one
To be Palestinian is to know
That every Palestinian
village
neighborhood
city
lost to ethnic cleansing and colonialism
was once a
That what is happening this summer
is nothing new
Just a continuation of
the systematic effort to
expel Palestinians from the land entirely
that has been ongoing for 73 years
To be Palestinian is to know
that a random American
who may or may not have ties to the land
has more rights
to visit
live
gain citizenship
unconditionally
Than Palestinians who faced expulsion do
Being forced to
carry permits
identification cards
Earn
visas
visiting rights
Subjected to
denials of entry
hostility
Despite the fact that
Palestinians know no other homeland
If this is not injustice then what is?
To be Palestinian is to know
that the bottom line lies in this:
The same entity that oppressed earlier generations of my family
and actively oppresses Palestinians today
is nothing more than
built upon the expulsion and massacre of indegenous Palestinian people
denying them their basic human rights
breaking countless international laws to do so
and I should not need to carry the emotional burden
of sharing my personal stories
of Palestinian death and destruction
for that to be understood
There’s nothing complex about it
And with all this being said
To be Palestinian is to know
That my roots run as strong and deep
as those of the hundreds-of-years-old olive trees
that my ancestors planted
with their bare hands on their land
Olive trees that thrive hundreds of years later
just like the Palestinian fight for liberation
That even shattered glass still glitters and gleams
And 73 years later
we tell them we still resist
MiC Columnist Reem Hassan can be contacted at reemh@umich.edu
Editor’s Note: On June 28th, a verse in the poem which alluded to internal Daily meetings was modified.
Editor’s Note: On July 1st, a phrase in the poem was modified to better reflect the cited author’s identity.