OUR ARAB

On being Palestinian American in a time of torment.

Support Palestine, writes Barnard College professor Arafat, and one risks “consequences that range from silencing to job termination to detainment.” Being othered as an LGBTQ+ woman of color was very different from the experience of her father when, in 1963, he arrived in a small town in Minnesota as an exchange student; he was quickly accepted and befriended, elected to student council, and captioned in the yearbook, per Arafat’s title, as “our Arab.” Of course, as Arafat writes, that was well before the time of the Patriot Act, well before mosques fell under federal surveillance and armed vigilante attacks—and well before the silencing of pro-Palestinian discussion in the academy and media. When those days arrived, after 9/11, Arafat’s father was suddenly isolated from Palestine, his international phone line cut “as ordered by the Department of Homeland Security.” For all that, Arafat writes, her father retained hope that the America of old that he knew is the real America, about which she adds, “As a Palestinian, having hope can often mean ignoring a harsh reality and choosing to see otherwise.” But what is to be done to combat that harsh reality? Arafat writes that even in the face of protest against the war in Gaza, the expectation is that Palestinians are expected to engage in civil discourse without anger, for to do otherwise is for her to be branded as an “angry Palestinian woman,” her views immediately disqualified. “In some sense,” she writes, “Palestinian anger and female anger are equivalent in that they are both represented by their reactions rather than their sources, and their display undermines both parties.” For all that, she writes—reasonably—“the appropriate response is anger.”

A thoughtful view from the far-flung Palestinian diaspora of life at home and in exile.