Why Palestine?

For my first post since changing the original focus of my blog, I thought I might take the opportunity to explain a bit more why Palestine and what is happening to its people are so important to me and in the process hopefully address some of the question my classmates raised when I first announced I would be working on this topic.

When the second Intifada began in 2000 I was 18 living in a small town in rural Indiana. Though I thought myself worldly, in reality, my exposure to the world was extremely limited. Then I went to college and the world opened up and like everyone else I was suddenly confronted with how little I actually knew. As a Peace Studies major I was constantly forced to examine the world and the role I played in it and would play in the future. I had heard of Israel and Palestine. I knew there was a conflict going on there, but I hadn’t yet put any real relevancy to it.

That began to change my second year of college when my circle of friends began to widen and among that growing circle I soon was able to count several Palestinian students. Though these students and I never became extremely close knowing them influenced me a great deal. Even ten years later I can still remember an incident involving one of the girls:

Anyone who has spent any time in Indiana knows that we have some amazing and at time terrifying thunderstorms. There was one Palestinian girl was scared to sleep in her room by herself (her roomate had gone somewhere) because the thunder reminded her of the bombs that the Israelis dropped or the sound bombs they would use.

I was stunned when I heard this. To rationally know you are okay and safe yet still so fearful was unimaginable to me. What did I have to be scared about? Not passing a class, being able to pay for college, the health of my mother, all of which were extremely serious to me but not in a life or death way. My desire to understand what life back home for my new found friends grew.

From the stories told by classmates and books I had read, I knew the media wasn’t telling the whole story about what was going on in the region. I wanted to go there and see it for myself. My experiences in Africa showed me that the media had a way of creating an imagine that they wanted the public to buy into even if that imagine was incomplete or even false. I wanted to understand the situation for myself and see if what the truth really was.

In 2009, I made my desire a reality. I spent three months living in the West Bank teaching English in the city of Nablus. It was hands down one of the best experiences of my life. I was constantly astounded by the grace in which the people there lived their life inspite of the restrictions they lived under. Also, their willingness to give even when having nothing to give would shame even the most giving of person. These people are reason why I chose to cover the Palestinian side of this conflict to focus on. Their story is not being told. I know and have even experienced firsthand that the media is not getting it right and that people do not know all the information.

Here I am to the left with several of my students at the girl's school in Balata Refugee Camp

On that note, I want to say, that I am fully aware that Palestinians are not without their share of blame. I do not look at their side of the situation through rose colored glasses. However, with greater understanding of their struggle and suffering comes, in my opinion, a greater understanding of their actions. This is not a justification, I am only saying with knowledge comes empathy.

I did consider other topics; mostly centered around social justice issues such as non-violent resistant movements in history. But this is where my passion is. That being said, I am not an expert. People far more knowledgeable than I have spent years studying or writing books over the topics I plan to write brief articles about. My goal is to simply share with readers information that they might not be aware of and maybe motivate them to take some sort of action.