For Palestinians, Bernie Sanders is our new hope for self-determination and lasting peace
My grandmother Shahira Sadeq grew up in the quaint village of Dair Al-Qasi in pre-1948 Palestine, modern-day Israel. While there were no Jews living in her neighborhood, interactions between Arabs and Jews were quite ordinary to her. Her family journeyed to a Kibbutz in Nahariya whenever they sought medical treatment, and she frequently visited her relatives in Haifa which had Jewish communities living in it. In Haifa, she had regular exchanges with Jewish neighbors living in her uncle’s apartment building. The neighbors were two elderly women and one of their sons. “On Saturdays they would call me over to turn on their lights, or stove because they couldn’t”, she explained, “It was prohibited for them,” referring to the Sabbath. As she told this story, her tone revealed a hint of disbelief in a past life that is so disconnected from the present reality. “They even dressed like us, in black gowns” she continued, “Everything was normal and social relations were quite normal, indeed.”
In this past life that Shahira exposed, she revived a time of peace, coexistence, and respect. She described a country that safely harbored Muslims, Jews, and Christians within a unified culture of tolerance and acceptance. Her storytelling charmingly captured a naïve perplexity at the seemingly dramatic shift from her youth interactions to the modern endless conflict known today.
In 1948, everything changed during her first encounter of the Arab-Israeli war, when airstrikes first hit around the village. With no organized Arab army to guide them or protect their ground, Shahira, age 16, and her family fled Dair Al-Qasi by foot on a 5 km mountainous trail to Lebanon. On their journey, they witnessed bombs falling to the ground in the distance. Expecting to return after the airstrikes settled, they locked their homes taking their keys with them. Little did they know, they would not be granted the right of return — commencing the displacement of Palestinians as we know it. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, over 700,000, or 85% of the Palestinian Arab population fled or were expelled from their homes to Gaza, West Bank and to countries of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to evolve as an unwanted, ugly tumor that has been incessantly aggravated by one American president to the next in their multiple attempts to surgically remove it from our world, with no help from regional neighbors to assist in the operating room. Resolving the Middle East conflict has sounded like a pipe dream and a cause that many Palestinians and Israelis are now convinced requires generations to pass before ever catching a glimpse of peace again.
As a Palestinian-American, I had never conceived a realistic vision for conflict resolution in my lifetime. My entire 29 year old life, I was distraught by the lack of empathy or recognition for the Palestinian story in US media. Rather than boldly recognizing Palestinian right of return, I used what little outlets I had to at least convince people that Palestinian lives are worth caring about. The mainstream political language truly changed when Bernie Sanders, a proud Jewish American presidential candidate spoke out against corrupt policies of the Israeli government, denounced the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements under international law, and most surprisingly, recognized Palestinians as legitimate members of humanity with rights to self-determination.
In this political issue, Bernie Sanders has eloquently achieved what he has done so miraculously well with other topics like healthcare and education; he’s shattered the misconception of the impossible. Bernie has allowed Palestinians, like me, to dream of a prosperous future which is so desperately deserved: the self-determined right to peace and the recognition of Palestinians as equal partners in constructing a fair solution for all.
As Palestinian-Americans, we must remember the stories of our ancestors and recall their experiences of peace and tolerance. We must revive the memories of the ordinary, like walking over to the neighbor’s apartment to light their stove on the day of Sabbath. We must demand a seat at the table to construct a path forward, and we must unite with partners who stand up for us, like Bernie Sanders. In this long-awaited political revolution, I stand with Bernie, honoring my late grandmother, Shahira Sadeq and the displaced and mistreated Palestinians like her. For the excruciating years of suffering experienced by Palestinians, it is time that Americans elect a world leader who has the undeniable potential to restore a history of co-existence that doesn’t seem so impossible anymore.
