Imagine trying to sleep at night, but not being able to because of the sound of guns firing in the background. Imagine witnessing the demolition of your home and the destruction of the once fertile land a couple of blocks away from your bedroom window. Imagine having to pass a number of check points on the way to school, and at each check point, being harassed and threatened. Imagine a child wanting to play outside but not being able to because of the fear that he or she may be tortured or killed. Imagine growing up watching your father being beaten and killed and your mother being raped in front of you, simply for defending their home and their family. Imagine not having enough water to cook with, bathe in or to drink in order to stay alive. Imagine that at 10 years old, you know that this isn’t the reality for every child in the world, but because you are a Palestinian, this is the punishment for a crime that you never committed.
Zionism, the modern Jewish ideology to create a Jewish state, has forcefully oppressed and institutionalized the indigenous people of Palestine for more than 60 years.
The 1948 British mandate that allowed the Israeli regime to occupy Palestine has been the catalyst of unrest in the Middle East. This regime, denying its oppressive nature, has been the cause of tension amongst Jews, Christians and Muslims – a problem that never existed before the inhumane occupation.
People much too often make the mistake of labeling the Palestinian people as terrorists and suicide bombers without making the effort to understand their plight.
Let’s forget for a brief minute that the Palestinian people are Arab or even that their population is both Muslim and Christian. Let’s try and see them as regular people like you and me.
They are people who have resided in a land for many centuries in peace with their Jewish neighbors, until Zionist settlers decided to invade their home, destroy their land, steal their resources, beat their elders, rape their women, torture their young and kill their babies in front of the eyes of the entire world. If that doesn’t seem bad enough, the Zionist regime has constructed an apartheid wall that makes the Berlin wall look minuscule. The apartheid wall is 8 meters high and 1,000 kilometers long, while the Berlin wall was only 3.6 meters high and 155 kilometers long.
This man-made barrier has been used to imprison the Palestinians, cut through their property and separate them from loved ones. I ask you now, how can the world remain silent to such atrocities?
My passion for this cause has nothing to do with my ethnicity, my religion or the stereotype that I am anti-Semitic. So when asked why I care so much about the Palestinian cause, the answer lies in the fact that the Palestinian issue is a humanitarian issue.
Naadiya Sanna is a senior biochemistry major and an active member of the Muslim Student Association.
