How lessons learned in a SLO backyard prepared one Palestinian law student to speak up | Opinion

I spent much of the first three years of my life at my teta and jidu’s home in San Luis Obispo. In my grandparents’ backyard, they had a large garden with every fruit and vegetable variety imaginable. My jidu and I would walk around the garden identifying different plants — everything from cherries, figs, grapefruit, watermelon, avocados and zucchini to edible flowers 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 9-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 were instead 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.

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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 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. 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. I believe that they would also come to learn that Palestinian resistance is fueled by Palestinians’ profound love for their land and their culture, which are inextricably linked. 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.

Over the past three months, 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 — that 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.

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% in recent months.

Each day, I pose a list of questions to myself. Which is more bearable: violently compromising my morals, integrity and 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 feel strange at first, but it will also feel exciting. When we tend to each other during our collective regrowth, we will be a taller and greater force than ever before.

Catie Haddad is a California native and law student at the University of Virginia School of Law.