Messages to America

During the last three months, I taught a Spoken English class for adults who teach English to young people in Nablus and the surrounding villages.  During the class, we had intense debates, told jokes and shared stories about our families and life experiences, from the loss of our parents and grandparents to personal stories about the occupation.

I once asked my class, what, in their opinion, I can do to help make a change for Palestinians.  They all responded with the same answer.  They all said that I should share the stories of the Palestinian people.

Today we had our last class and I asked them each to write a message to those reading this site.

Here are their messages to you.

• Hello friends,

I don’t know you individually and you don’t know me myself, but my short message for you is this.

Let politicians work in policy, this is their job, and let the world love its people.  We are two different groups of people but we share in our feelings of humanity.  We are all human and we should do our jobs for the world.  Give love, peace, happiness and hope toward humans, since we are not strangers who came from space or Mars.  My message for you, in brief, is this, “Warm words don’t cost much yet they accomplish a lot.”  We try to heal our wounds and pain from the occupation, especially Palestinian, Iraqi and Afganistani people.  So, we people have to like each other apart from politics since politics is a bad game.

All Palestinians love you and send their regards.

-Nisreen Ghanem

• Dear Americans,

Freedom started from where you are and then spread to the whole world.  Americans are well known for freedom and equality.  No country is still under the occupation except for Palestine.  We trust the American people, that they can do something to help us get rid of the occupation.

A Palestinian,

-Mahmoud Bsharat

• A message to America.

I hope you will treat all the citizens of the world the same.  Don’t humiliate people politically, then give them aid.  Please try to change your political policies around the world.  Life isn’t eternal, so make people happy.

-Muna Numan

• Dear Americans,

I hope that you never experience being under an occupation as we are.  I hope you know the truth about our issue and I wish for you to come to my country to see and judge for yourselves.  I wish you won’t take any side, just be a fair judge.

I hope you won’t suffer as we do.

-Hasan Ali

• A Message to the American people.

I am so happy to have this opportunity to write to you.  First of all, I would like you to know that we, the Palestinian people, are not terrorists. On the contrary, we are a peaceful and social nation.  We like foreigners, but our case is like that of any other occupied nation whose land is taken by strange people who don’t have the right to it.  We don’t want any financial help from anyone, but we only want your empathy and support.

-Samah Tuffaha

A few of the articles students’ chose for class discussions:
Liberating America From Israel, by Former Congressman Paul Findley
The Real Cost of US Support for Israel – $3 Trillion, by Christopher Bollyn
US hails ‘constructive’ direct Middle East peace talks, BBC News
US Military Aid and the Israel/Palestine Conflict
Support builds for boycotts against Israel, activists say
If Americans Knew – statistics