As a Palestinian living in the US, I have lost friends, job opportunities – and my faith in humanity
Every year has been catastrophic for Palestinians around the world, but the past 12 months have been unimaginable
Sun 6 Oct 2024
It has been a year of heartbreak, a year of horror, a year of hell. I know I am not alone when I say that this has been the very worst year of my life. I have lost friends, I have lost job opportunities and, most of all, I have lost my faith in humanity.
But, before I get into that, let me fulfil my duty as a good diaspora Palestinian and recite the obligatory incantation: I condemn Hamas, I condemn Hamas, I condemn Hamas. We Palestinians, you see, are not allowed to open our mouths without someone demanding we denounce violence and condemn Hamas. And then we are told to shut our mouths, to stay silent, while the very same people demanding we decry violence salivate over our deaths and celebrate murder on an unimaginable scale. Anyone an Israeli kills is an act of self-defence. Anyone an Arab kills is an act of terrorism. These are the rules we must all abide by.
The US has never been shy about how much it hates Arabs. But ever since 7 October that hatred has shot to such disturbing new levels that I no longer feel at home in this country. Were it not for the fact that I have built a life and a family here, I would get the hell out. Why would I want to stay in a country where Palestinians are so dehumanised that elected officials such as Senator Lindsey Graham can fantasise about dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza – a place where half of the population are children – without facing any meaningful censure? Where John Fetterman, who is my senator, openly mocks pro-Palestinian protesters and seems to take immense joy in our pain?
And then there’s the fact that, simply by paying my taxes, I am complicit in the slaughter and starvation of my own people. Increasingly I can’t rationalise living in a country where such a large portion of my taxpayer dollars is spent on funding war and what Kamala Harris has gleefully described as the “most lethal fighting force in the world”. I live in Philadelphia, where the schools are so underfunded that just four out of more than 200 schools have full-time librarians and 98% of school buildings’ drinking outlets have tested positive for lead. There is no money for schools in the US; there is plenty of money to help bomb schools in Gaza.
Again, the US has never been shy about how much it hates Arabs – and Palestinians in particular. Well before 7 October I was subject to plenty of racism on that front. I’ve had innumerable people tell me that I can’t possibly be Palestinian because Palestinians don’t exist. Still, even though I thought I was numb to how dehumanised we are, the bloodlust has shocked me. At the time of the Hamas attack I was taking a break from my Guardian column to work on a corporate copywriting gig with a large ad agency. The internal Slack channel for the agency immediately filled with people cheering on the bombing of Gaza. I was in too much of a state of shock to say anything to the agency’s leadership and, if I’m honest, I was too cowardly. It’s hard to make a living as a freelance writer and I normally depend on a few corporate gigs a year. I didn’t want to lose future opportunities by speaking up so I kept my mouth shut, my head down, and waited for the bombing to stop.
But, of course, the bombing hasn’t stopped. Ten thousand dead Palestinians; 20,000 dead Palestinians; 30,000 dead Palestinians; 40,000 dead Palestinians. There doesn’t seem to be any number of dead Palestinians that will satisfy Israel or that will make politicians in the US finally say: enough. For a while I was delusional enough to think the ascent of Harris might mark a change for the better. But the vice-president has refused to shift on Joe Biden’s unconditional weapons policy; she has refused to acknowledge international law. When she was crowned the Democratic nominee in August, the party leadership refused to put a Palestinian-American on the main stage for even a minute. That’s how little the Democrats think of us.
As the death toll mounts, as the humanitarian situation in Gaza – and now Lebanon –grows increasingly desperate, politicians across both sides of the aisle in the US keep telling Palestinians that our suffering is all our own fault. Let’s remember where all this started: 7 October. Harris repeated this line during her debate with Donald Trump. Tim Walz repeated this line in his debate with JD Vance.
But that line is a lie. History did not start on 7 October 2023. While that date may mark a tragedy for Israel, every single day for the last 76 years has marked some sort of catastrophe for Palestinians. My paternal grandparents originally lived in Haifa; in 1948, during the Nakba, they were among the 700,000 Palestinians forced to flee or expelled by Israel. Their home was demolished. They lost everything. Eventually they made it back to the West Bank but then, in 1967, my father had to flee again. He became a refugee, unable to ever return to live in the country where he was born. He has, however, taken me back to visit. I went back to his village when I had just turned six and had a brief taste of what a Palestinian childhood is like – by which I mean Israeli soldiers shot teargas at me and raided our village to burn the Palestinian flag.
History did not start on 7 October. But as the world stops to mourn it will for ever be a reminder of whose lives matter.
Arwa Madhawi is a Guardian columnist