(RNS) — Final three hundred and sixty five days, as I arrived in Eire, the airport customs officer asked me where I used to be firstly from. I told her, “Palestine.” She looked at me, smiled, and mentioned, “Every gorgeous Irish particular person is Palestinian at heart as smartly.” And with that, she stamped my passport and let me in.
On Wednesday (March 12) in Washington, President Donald Trump, sitting beside Irish Top Minister Michael Martin in the Oval Set up of job, outdated the note “Palestinian” as a slur to communicate down Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer.
“Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I’m concerned. He’s change into a Palestinian. He outdated to be Jewish. He’s now not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian,” Trump mentioned, responding to a reporter’s quiz about Schumer’s views on company taxes.
The admire is inserting. The Irish, a of us that perceive colonialism and occupation in their bones, perceive Palestinians as their family. The American political class treats “Palestinian” as one thing grievous.
The Irish aren’t the handiest ones who discuss about Palestinians with admire. This week, assembly with a displaced Gazan family, Mohammad Tahir, the Iraqi doctor who spent seven months in Gaza saving lives while the realm looked away, became to the refugees with tears in his eyes and mentioned, “My heart is Palestinian.”
I in actuality own heard this sentiment echoed over and once again. A health care provider from Pakistan who had fair returned from Gaza looked at me and mentioned, “I am from Pakistan, nonetheless my blood is Palestinian.” In almost every section of the Muslim world, in refugee camps, in battle zones, in gatherings of activists and students, I in actuality own heard, “Anaa damee Falasteeni” — “My blood is Palestinian.”
As the solar objects, Palestinians sit down at a orderly table surrounded by the rubble of destroyed properties and constructions as they get for iftar, the short-breaking meal, on the most considerable day of Ramadan in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, March 1, 2025. (AP Picture/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Beyond the Muslim world, too, Palestine is a rallying yowl for justice, a motive embraced by of us that perceive the battle towards oppression as accepted. Latin Americans, who own fought their very possess battles towards imperialism, proudly wave the Palestinian flag. South Africans, who lived below apartheid, perceive their battle mirrored in Palestine and own lodged formal complaints towards the conduct of the battle in Gaza in the World Court docket of Justice. Indigenous peoples of North The US, whose lands had been stolen and history erased, march with Palestinians because of they know what it capability to continue to exist colonial violence.
Birth air of The US, it is a source of delight, a badge of honor, a reflection of resilience in the face of one amongst essentially the most brutal and documented injustices of our time.
But to be Palestinian in the eyes of Trump, and in the eyes of worthy of the American political establishment, is to be one thing lesser. It’s to be cast as an enemy, a likelihood, a of us whose very existence is seen as suspect. In The US, to inform “I am Palestinian” is to ask suspicion, hostility and punishment. College students are blacklisted for supporting Palestine. Workers are fired for posting about it. Mosques are attacked for standing in cohesion.
And now, critiquing Israel on behalf of Palestinians can land you in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency penal advanced. Trump’s insult comes as civil liberties organizations, Muslim, Jewish and secular, are expressing outrage over the federal government’s abduction of Mahmoud Khalil after he assuredly protested Israel in some unspecified time in the future of campus demonstrations at Columbia University.
Khalil is married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant, holds a green card, or Eternal Resident Card. Yet that did now not stop ICE from focusing on him outside his house and wreaking fear on an staring at for mother. It’s graceful that this came about below a so-called “The US First” president, who claims to reject international affect but bends over backward to punish any individual who criticizes Israel.
Protesters get for an illustration in make stronger of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, Monday, March 10, 2025, outside the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in Unusual York. (AP Picture/Yuki Iwamura)
This is the actuality of being Palestinian in The US: your very existence is a political prison responsibility, and your gorgeous to communicate can even be stripped away in an instantaneous. Of us can communicate of you in essentially the most dehumanizing of systems with zero political final consequence.
Factor in that Trump had as a replace brushed off Schumer on Wednesday by calling him a Jew. The outrage could be swift, bipartisan and absolute. But Islamophobia has prolonged been normalized in The US, and anti-Palestinian bigotry is its most acceptable create.
The motive Trump can throw out “Palestinian” as a slur without final consequence’s because of Palestinians own already been dehumanized to the extent that their oppression is all nonetheless invisible to the elites in Washington, their struggling brushed off and their very existence puzzled. This is how the American government allows a genocide while pretending to be fair. This is how tens of thousands of Palestinian young of us can even be slaughtered with American bombs, and the political class barely blinks.
But here’s what Trump, and those that portion his bigotry, attain now not perceive: To be Palestinian is now not an insult. It’s an honor. It’s to be the newborn who stands in the rubble of his house and silent finds the strength to smile. It’s to be the mother who fasts in Ramadan, now not gleaming if she can own food to spoil her like a flash. It’s to be the of us which could be now not supposed to exist, but proceed to continue to exist.
Palestinians attain now not want The US’s approval to exist. The field has already chosen. The field has already embraced Palestine. Extra importantly, Palestinians themselves own embraced themselves and refused to forestall being Palestinians in their land whatever the total odds. Their resilience is inserting the realm to shame, and Palestinians’ nobility grows even because the American political arena abandons all decency.
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