I almost gave up hope people will see humanity in Palestinians | Opinion

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This time, I almost gave up the hope that one day, people will see the humanity in Palestinians, my people. See the humanity in me.

As if the number of innocent civilians killed in the latest war between Israel and Hamas hasn’t been horrifying enough, the count continues to rise.

The sheer number of bombs Israel dropped in five days is more than the U.S. dropped in Afghanistan in a year after 9/11, the Washington Post reported.

Condemnation of the killing of innocent Palestinian and Israeli civilians should be easy to come by, yet I watch in frustration as Palestinians are dehumanized, as if their lives are less valuable.

This is America: I was arrested in the USA. My mother was detained in Israel.

I’ve felt this frustration before — too many times. The pain of feeling less than human is never less gut-wrenching.I feel this rage and sadness, but I harness that. It drives what I do, who I am.

And instead of waiting for people to see Palestinians as humans, I have the power to show them. As journalists, we have a duty to expose injustice, to think critically. To show humanity.

Palestinians just want to live

As a woman living in diaspora, I watch events in Palestine from afar while my family there lives through it.

March 30, 2018, marked the beginning of the monthslong Great March of Return, when tens of thousands of Palestinians came together to protest across Gaza, the West Bank and within Israel’s borders.

They demanded the end of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, the end of its now 75-year brutal military occupation that human rights groups have described as apartheid, and the return of the 750,000 Palestinians who were expelled from their homes to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948. Today, there are an estimated 7 million Palestinian refugees.

I did what I always do when Palestinians dare demand their right to live freely: I checked on my family in the West Bank, to make sure they were safe.

And then, my stomach already in knots, I braced myself for what was to come.

Israel responded to these protests by using live ammunition on peaceful protesters, the United Nations reported, sniping down women, children, journalists and medics, along with tear gas, rubber bullets, drones; 214 Palestinians were killed, 46 of them children. Over 36,100 Palestinians were injured, including 8,800 children, according to the UN. One in 5 were injured by live ammunition.

Watching these events unfold in horror and devastation, I remember thinking to myself, maybe this time the world will get it. Palestinians just want to live. We want to be regarded as human. And even when protesting peacefully, Palestinians still pay the price in blood.

Looking back, I realize I was naive.

Injustice I can't unsee

Just a few months earlier, 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi was sentenced to eight months in Israeli prison for slapping an Israeli soldier. She was protesting the expansion of Israeli settlements ― illegal under international law ― near her village, Nabi Saleh. Her cousin, 15 at the time, was critically injured after an Israeli soldier shot him in the head with a rubber bullet at close range.

I feel such frustration that a child was imprisoned for eight months, in a country the U.S. supports and in which there is little challenge to these practices and policies by the media or the Israeli government or our own government.

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In 2021, thousands of Palestinians across the region again erupted in peaceful protest against the expulsion of eight Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Tensions were already high following an Israeli police raid on worshippers praying during Ramadan at Al Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. (The image of Palestinians beaten by Israeli forces has been juxtaposed with images of the soldiers protecting Israelis as they marched, chanting “death to Arabs” during that same time).

Two million Palestinians are trapped in Gaza under a 16-year Israeli siege, now subjected to repeated bombings described by the UN as collective punishment. Half of Gaza residents are younger than 15.

After the Sheikh Jarrah protests, I remember thinking to myself, in deep pain and frustration: Maybe people will see the daily realities that Palestinians live through — like forced expulsions, even Israeli settlers taking over Palestinian homes while Palestinians still live in them, and boasting about it in the media.

A year later, when prominent, veteran Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, also a U.S. citizen, was shot and killed, likely by an Israeli sniper while covering the near-daily raids and killings of Palestinians, maybe, I thought, the image of those carrying Abu Akleh in a casket, almost dropping it as Israeli police beat them, would be enough for people to understand what Palestinians live through.

Or even now, maybe the news of entire neighborhoods, entire families, obliterated by Israel’s bombs in the latest war between Israel and Hamas — and now Israel’s order for the forced evacuation of 1.1 million people from northern Gaza, which the U.N. calls an impending humanitarian crisis — would be enough to show people just how unequal this war really is.

Maybe the 6,000 Israeli bombs that hit Gaza over five days would be enough to remind people that Israel occupies Palestine, subjecting it to violent oppression for the last 75 years.

Or maybe Israel’s Minster of Defense calling Palestinians “human animals” when he ordered “complete siege” on Gaza, cutting off water, electricity, fuel, and food, as hospitals are bombed and on the verge of collapse, would spark some sympathy.

It can feel lonely and empty to see others disregard your humanity. To paint your people with the broad brush of terrorism.

I’ve witnessed my mother strip-searched and thrown in an Israeli detention cell for trying to visit the country she was born in, told never to fly through Ben Gurion Airport again, simply because she is Palestinian.

I’ve seen the separation wall. I’ve heard the gunfire. I’ve driven segregated roads.

I’ve seen Palestinian homes bulldozed in East Jerusalem, settlements built right in the middle of Palestinian neighborhoods, settlements that continue to expand, surrounding my family’s villages in the West Bank.

It’s injustice that I cannot unsee, I cannot unlive.

But Palestinians are strong, they are resilient. Both our strength and our suffering reminds me of why I’m a journalist. Because I’ve seen firsthand the oppression that Palestinians face, and I’ve lived it during every visit to Palestine. Interrogation by Israeli soldiers, and at military checkpoints, guns pointed at me by Israeli soldiers.

Palestinians protest even though they know that they can die, and they do it because they have no other choice. It's their freedom they're protesting for.

I have faith that journalists will find the bravery, as Palestinian journalists have, leading the way for humanity to be acknowledged — to ask these questions and think critically and demand that Palestinians be seen as worthy.

To see our humanity, our right to self-determination.

Our right to simply live.

Andrea May Sahouri is a Free Press staff writer. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: In Israeli-Hamas conflict, I hope people will see Palestinian humanity