Toward Palestinian Liberation, Toward Humanity
Growing up, my Palestinian identity wasn’t very important to me. My dad grew up in Palestine but rarely spoke about his childhood there. While other Palestinians took so much pride in their culture and their history, I sometimes felt that there was a piece missing from me. When others asked me where in Palestine my family is from, I could only give the vague answer of “next to Jerusalem.”
That changed my sophomore year of high school, when my class was asked to write and perform poems about where each of us is from. I decided that I would take this opportunity to delve deeper into what my dad had told me about Palestine. In my poem, I pulled together pieces from his memories about the Israeli occupation, about the night raids where Israeli soldiers broke into his home, about the forced separation from his family. I remember standing on stage, sharing these stories with an audience of 200 people and realizing that I enjoy being in the spotlight.
Speaking publicly about this part of myself that I had never fully embraced, I started coming alive in a new way.
Of course, not everyone embraced my poem and my growing pro-Palestine advocacy. The poetry performances were recorded and posted online, and mine immediately began to receive backlash from Zionists. An article was published claiming that midwestern schools support the BDS movement, which it called a “terrorist organization.” The article included my name and my face—a 16-year-old who spoke about olive trees being burnt in my village. That publicity scared me, but I knew that it was an attempt to silence me and that what I had performed was my truth. And the support that I received from my community encouraged me to get more involved in advocacy efforts.
Watch Shahd perform her poem about her Palestinian identity.
I started to read and research about the history of Palestine and my people. I had 80 years of occupation and centuries of resistance to learn about. I joined the youth group for the Minnesota chapter of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), and I performed the poem again at their annual Palestine Day. I was also privileged to travel to Palestine and visit my family there for the first time—although I was denied entry to Jerusalem, which shocked me as someone who had heard about Masjid Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock my whole life.
My heart broke to be so close to something so significant to my faith but still too far away. To be arbitrarily barred from the third holiest site in Islam shattered my heart in pieces while reminding me of the injustices that Palestinians face wherever they go.
When I started college, I joined the university chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and became the event coordinator. At SJP, our long-term goal is to pressure and persuade the university to divest from Israeli funding. We don’t want our tuition to fund Israeli companies, which are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians. We also want the university to end their study-abroad programs in Israel, when we have a large Palestinian student population that can’t visit our homeland.
Our short-term priority is for the university to call for a ceasefire. When the university president released a statement in support of Israel, we met with him to demand that the administration stop ignoring the pain and anger of their Palestinian students. Those of us who have family in Gaza shared what it’s been like to see homes demolished and relatives killed.
Through protests, teach-ins, and vigils, we’ve been gaining respect and raising support from other students, even those who have never been part of the Palestinian liberation movement.
One of the most important lessons that I find myself grappling with and teaching over and over is that language matters. Language that dehumanizes Palestinians, which we see more and more in media coverage, is actively harming those most vulnerable right now. Especially for organizers and activists who interact with the media, we have to be direct, concise, and to the point. If an interviewer tries to distract or divert us, we have to bring it back to Gaza. In fact, we train anyone interacting with media to mention Gaza in every sentence.
For me, watching a genocide unfold through a screen has taken an immense toll. Especially at the beginning, seeing videos and photos of the violence and devastation made me lose my appetite. I was lost and overwhelmed, trying to follow new developments and work with other organizers to plan our next moves, all while keeping up with schoolwork and day-to-day life. Now, I find myself alternating between sadness, frustration, and anger. The worst is when I feel desensitized, because I know that Zionists want us to feel tired and numb to what they are inflicting on our people.
At the same time, I know that all of my pain is nothing compared to what those in Gaza are going through. And what they are telling us is that even more than money or food, what they need from us is our voices.
I consider it my privilege and my responsibility to raise my voice figuratively and literally. You’ll often find me unable to speak the day after a protest because I’m the one hyping up the crowd and leading chants.
If my 16-year-old self knew that I would become a vocal advocate for Palestinian liberation, I think she would be proud. I’ve grown through my advocacy and become a better, braver version of myself. Advocacy is how I return to my Palestinian roots and how I hold onto my humanity.
Shahd Abouhekel is a Palestinian American studying Management Information Systems at the University of Minnesota. In her free time, she loves to write poetry about personal growth, cultural expectations, and social injustices. Writing gives her an outlet to be creative and escape from reality.