A little background about me

Dating back from my childhood, I will never forget the time I was properly introduced to the Palestinian cause. I was very young, and I was the oldest in my family and my mum didn’t speak or understand the English very well and we have Arabic channels so my mum watched English, BBC channel at the time. It was a beautiful day in London and I was eager to play outside. The Palestinian issue came up on the news and my mum didn’t understand everything they spoke about. Yaser Arafat was president at the time, and he had talks to try and get peace treaty to stop the war. Unfortunately, my mum didn’t understand what was said so she called me from outside of my playing to explain to her, I remember her reaction and screeching voice. OH MY GOD, CURSES UPON THE ISREALI! THEY WANT TO PISS IN THE HOLY QODS!! THEY HAVE TO CLEAN IT UP!!I ran inside and sat down to see what exactly was going on, they explained about actual peace talks in Jerusalem. She misinterpreted the word Peace for piss. This was my first introduction to it. I was 9 years old.

A few weeks later, I saw an image on the news that changed forever my heart and created a fire within me that burns until today and wanted to help them and make a difference. I was only a child, 9 years old. It was the story of Mohammad Al-Durrah. I remember very vividly sitting shocked. A father hiding behind containers, trying to protect his son with his arms holding him behind his back crouching. Surrounding them were tanks 3-4 behind them and in front of them, loaded soldiers taking shots. Then a fatal clean sniper shot, killing the son. A child like me. But why, I kept asking myself, he’s only a child like me. Why did they kill him and not the father? That has never left my mind. And the genocide, nearly 30 years on has only gotten worse.

The Palestinian/Israeli history didn’t start from then, nor did it start from 1948. It started when the British decided that they wanted to colonise Palestine for no reason. They made something called a league of nation mandate, went to Palestine and decide it would take over (before then, jews Muslims and Christians lived peacefully together). It was 1920.