EMAN RASHID
I am a Palestinian American whose family has lived in the West Bank for three hundred years. Because of the Nakba (the catastrophe in 1948), Palestinians have traveled the world looking for a better life, and my family is no exception. For many years, my close family members lived in Rio Piedras in Puerto Rico. Many people don’t realize there was a Palestinian community in Puerto Rico, and that some Palestinians, like my family, speak Spanish as well as Arabic and English.
I also have family in Jerusalem. Visiting and living with them was one of the most painful experiences in my life. Israeli soldiers are everywhere in Jerusalem. When they see my Palestinian name, they treat me like a criminal. They check my bags and pat me down. It’s stop-and-frisk, Brownsville-Brooklyn style, every single day for Palestinians. I remember seeing a group of Israeli soldiers go up to a young Palestinian man and slap him around, calling him names. He looked confused and scared, with his hands up to shield his face. They had guns, while he had nothing. My instinct was to protect him, so I moved toward them. One of the soldiers put a gun to my head and said, “Do you want to die?” I walked away, feeling like a coward. I should have done something, but I didn’t want to die. I was in my twenties.
There was the time soldiers put guns to my mom’s neck and my dad’s head when they thought that my parents were using lights in the house to send out terrorist messages. My parents were in their sixties. Their lights had been going on and off because they were packing up for their trip back to Chicago and checking every room to make sure they didn’t forget anything. When I was sixteen and my sister fourteen, we went on a nonviolent women’s march. When the soldiers threw tear gas, we ran away. My sister and I were shot at and grazed by rubber bullets. The doctor said one more inch and we would have been brain damaged.
Another incident involved my eight-year-old brother who was being driven to school by our cousin. Palestinians have different license plates than Israelis, so settlers immediately know if a Palestinian is driving. This particular settler was going really slowly, so my cousin tried to pass him. The settler cut my cousin off and then got out of the car with a shotgun and went to the passenger side and pointed the gun directly at my young brother’s head. The settler was furious that my cousin dared to try to pass him on “his road.” My brother was terrified. The police were called but did nothing to the settler. They told my cousin not to pass settlers anymore.
The narrative we have been given has meant that many Americans are unable to see Palestinians, except as terrorists. The news media talk about Palestinian issues only when there is Palestinian violence. I have felt this “violent Palestinian” narrative run through the course of my life. At times, people have asked me where I’m from originally, and I hesitate to tell them, because when I say I’m Palestinian, I’ve had people snarl at me, physically step away in fear, yell at me, or call me a terrorist. Once, I applied for a waitress job in Michigan, and the Israeli owner threw me out of his restaurant when he found out I was Palestinian. On another occasion, a locksmith in Manhattan told me, while he was fixing my lock, that he “didn’t mind” Arabs, just not in his “backyard.”
Perhaps one of the most painful encounters I recall was when a friend introduced me to a man she thought I might be interested in romantically. He was handsome, smart, and funny. We had a great dinner and really connected, talking like we were best friends. He said he adored me and wanted to see me again—until he found out I was Palestinian. Then he looked at me with disgust. “I’m Jewish,” he said. He got up from the table, walked away, and never spoke to me again. I was devastated. When I told the friend who had set us up what my blind date did, she didn’t believe me. “He’s not like that,” she said. Because he was a “good guy,” which was even worse. If he had been a jerk, it would have been understandable. But he was a good guy; he just didn’t like Palestinians.
When I think of people’s racism against Palestinians, I think it’s not their fault—neither the blind date, nor the locksmith, nor the restaurant owner, nor the folks who call me a terrorist. It’s the narrative they have always heard or read, that I was the “other.” I was supposed to be scary or racist or violent. That narrative has meant that I struggle to feel connected to my Palestinian roots. It’s a battle against self-hatred.