http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15850
EXCERPT:
When my parents were uprooted from Gaza, they carried my siblings and I on a journey that took them from the refugee camps, through the Arab Gulf all the way to Australia. We grew up in dozens of houses, always on the move from one contradiction to another, one culture to another, one life to another and one language to another. Throughout our life's journey, we knew beyond any doubt who we were and where we came from. We knew we were distinct. Our story was difficult to tell and school projects were particularly challenging. Like many others in the Diaspora we had to explain to teachers and peers where we are from and why the name of our country is not written on their maps. We became experts at reconciling the worlds and identities that inhabit us; feeling the weight of oppression in countries and places that offered us citizenship and freedom and traveling with ease with our Western passports while always remembering our relatives and loved ones under siege, under curfew, behind the checkpoints and under occupation. We appreciated our civil liberties in ways only those who were stripped from their human rights can. We, the generation born and raised in exile, began to see the world differently and as a result we now understand our human identity in a way that is truly unique.
My father always told us “To be a Palestinian means you must speak truth to power and you must never give up.” He was always busy teaching us through his poetry and his stories about being good citizens of the world, identifying with the oppressed and standing for the rights of those who have none. He brought home dozens of movies including "Ghandi", and "Cry Freedom" and he sat us down to watch the series "Roots", always discussing the movies and stories afterward. It didn’t matter if it was about abolishing slavery, apartheid in South Africa or non-violent civil disobedience in India, the message was always the same: Palestine is not one battle, it is an epic human story told again and again of how the oppressed stand up against the oppressors. "To understand our story, we must understand the age-old human battle for freedom". My father had a strong conviction that to be of use to Palestine you had to be a part of the world at large. “Palestine is not about a tiny spot on the map,” he always said, “it is about the awakening the human conscious”.
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