Catie Haddad '25
Guest Writer
I spent much of the first three years of my life at my teta and jidu’s[1] home in San Luis Obispo, California. In their backyard, they had a large garden with every fruit and vegetable variety imaginable. As my jidu and I would walk around the garden identifying different plants, I noticed everything from cherries, figs, grapefruit, and watermelon to avocados, zucchini, and edible flowers that he would incessantly encourage me to try. One summer, jidu chopped down one of the garden’s palm trees for the heart of palm, something my nine-year-old, suburban Californian self found both strange and exciting.
My teta and I would spend hours searching the patio for ladybugs as my grandparents’ Pomeranian, Jolie, played with her toys. When I think of their garden now, I feel grateful that they were able to have a sliver of homeland in their California backyard—that for a second when they woke up and looked out the window in the morning, they would be able to imagine they were not in San Luis Obispo but instead were in Baghdad or Haifa. When I think of my teta and jidu now, I think of the way my mixed identity has allowed me to grow up without certain Western biases. My jidu was Iraqi and Muslim, and my teta was a Palestinian-Lebanese Christian, but to me, even though I was half white and American, they were simply my grandparents.
In their garden and at their home, they taught me how to look at mundane objects and moments with tremendous love, curiosity, and humanity. Now, I advocate for Palestine and for the universality of human rights because of this love—my love for humanity has fueled my belief that if everyone had access to the information I have used to learn about Palestine, they would naturally reach the same conclusions as I have.
They would come to view Palestinians not as a population of terrorists, but as a people who have been occupied, displaced, and terrorized for years in their ancestral homeland.[2] They would see Palestinians as human beings who deserve to live as much as anyone else. They would mourn the deaths of Palestinians as they do the deaths of Ukrainians. They would also come to learn, I believe, that Palestinian resistance is fueled by Palestinians’ profound love for their land and their culture, which are inextricably linked.[3] Opening their eyes and hearts, they would no longer see those tending to thousand-year-old olive trees as the aggressors, but rather those bulldozing them.[4]
Over the past three months,[5] I have felt around me a growing sense of cognitive and emotional dissonance. It is difficult to remain socially and academically engaged in a reality where my ethnic identity circumscribes the feelings I’m allowed to express. I often think that if I was not Palestinian- or Arab-American—if I was Ukrainian or from another ethnic group whose pain the West views as legitimate—the only thing I’d be doing right now would be grieving and resting. This is not my reality. Instead, I must first attempt to assist my peers in recognizing my humanity and the humanity of my people.
I have put my thoughts on this page to process what is happening and to bring others into this processing. Every day, I think about different avenues and ways of getting my peers involved in the Palestinian liberation movement. I think to myself, Palestine might not feel like a natural cause to support for everyone, but I can show them why it is. I will tell those interested in environmentalism about the ongoing destruction of olive trees, the rampant herbicide attacks unleashed on Palestinian land both pre- and post-2023, and the weaponization of resources as tools of ecocide.[6] For those who care about women’s rights, I will tell them about how women in Gaza have been taking pills to suppress their menstrual periods because they can’t get sanitary pads due to the siege, or that miscarriages in Gaza have increased 300% over the recent months.”[7]
Each day as I ruminate through these mental exercises, I pose numerous questions to myself: Which is more bearable—violently compromising my morals, my integrity, and my humanity while willingly enabling a genocide in the process, or speaking up and losing a job or friends? When someone asks me and my peers someday what we were doing during this time, will we feel proud answering “nothing, our hands were tied”? Who has tied our hands, and why can’t we help each other to untie them?
My jidu chopped down the palm tree in his garden to see its heart and its core and to share them with others, knowing that this tree would grow back because he would nurture and tend to it. Right now, I am asking you to perform a similar act of labor and of nurturing: I ask you to cut through some of the defensive tissue that might be preventing you from thinking about, talking about, and advocating for Palestine. Getting to the heart of this can only be done through love, curiosity, and humanity. It will at first feel strange, but it will also feel exciting, and when we tend to each other during our collective regrowth, we will be a taller and greater force than ever before.
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avc4ku@virginia.edu
[1] Teta and Jidu translate to grandmother and grandfather in Arabic.
[2] See Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL (June 23, 2023), www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of- apartheid/#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20place%20for,still%20suffering%20every%20single%20day; Omar Shakir, HUM. RTS. WATCH, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution (Eric Goldstein et al eds., 2021), https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution; Press Release, United Nations, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in OPT: Israel Has Imposed Upon Palestine an Apartheid Reality in a Post-apartheid World (Mar. 25, 2022), https://www.un.org/unispal/document/special-rapporteur-on-the-situation-of-human-rights-in-opt-israel-has-imposed-upon-palestine-an-apartheid-reality-in-a-post-apartheid-world-press-release.
[3] Rouhana, A. (2024, January 19). The Subversive Act of photographing Palestinian life. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/opinion/palestinians-photography-war-israel.html.
[4] “Since 1967, more than eight hundred thousand Palestinian olive trees have been illegally uprooted by Israeli authorities and settlers. Many were centuries old.” (this article was published in October of 2023, so this number does not include the number of olive trees that have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes since then, nor the trees being destroyed by bombing right now in real time). Shehadeh, R. (2023, October 26). The uprooting of life in Gaza and the West Bank. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-uprooting-of-life-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank.
[5] Since the beginning of their retaliatory assault on Gaza, the Israeli Defense/Occupation Forces (IDF/IOF) have unleashed more than 65,000 tons of bombs on the besieged strip (around four times as much explosive power as the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima). 25,000 Palestinians, including 10,000 children, have been killed in just over 100 days. Nearly 8,000 more people are reported to be missing or presumed dead under rubble. Approximately 1,000 children have lost one or both legs. During the week of January 15th, the World Health Organization announced that none of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are fully functional, as many have been bombed and others are operating at 200% capacity with limited services. 95% of those facing starvation in the world are in Gaza. Siddiqui, U., & Pietromarchi, V. (2024, January 7). More than 8,000 people missing in the rubble in Gaza. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/12/16/israel-hamas-war-live-demands-for-justice-after-israel-kills-aj-journalist; Tétrault-Farber, G. (2023, December 21). Northern Gaza no longer has a functional hospital, WHO says. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/northern-gaza-no-longer-has-functional-hospital-who-says-2023-12-21; Coles, I., & Ayyoub, A. (2024, January 22). Tiny Gaza is home to most of the world’s hungriest people. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/tiny-gaza-is-home-to-most-of-the-worlds-hungriest-people-df62eeda.
[6] Forensic Architecture . (2019, July 19). Herbicidal Warfare in Gaza. Forensic Architecture. https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/herbicidal-warfare-in-gaza; Shuker , Z. (2023, December 19). War has poisoned Gaza’s land and water. peace will require environmental justice. The Century Foundation. https://tcf.org/content/commentary/war-has-poisoned-gazas-land-and-water-peace-will-require-environmental-justice/.
[7] Zhang, S., Images, A. via G., Sharon Zhang, Syed, R., Dilawar, A., Walker, C., Luthra, S., McNeill, Z., Hodge, R., & Johnson, J. (2024, January 18). Miscarriages in Gaza have skyrocketed by 300 percent under Israel’s siege. Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/miscarriages-in-gaza-have-skyrocketed-by-300-percent-under-israels-siege/.