Life Under Occupation Archives - Nora Lester Murad - The View From My Window in Palestine

CNN essentially publishes ADL PR, fails to investigate recent educational conference accusations

December 30, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

CNN (December 16, 2024) chose not to investigate the ADL’s accusations of antisemitism against speakers at a recent conference of the National Association of Independent Schools, but rather to simply repeat and amplify the ADL’s dishonest and slanderous narrative.

Serving over 2,000 private schools in the United States and internationally, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) claims to help their members to

deliver exceptional learning experiences through research and trend analysis, leadership and governance guidance, and professional development opportunities for school and board leaders.

The People of Color Conference (PoCC), an annual event that has taken place for decades, is the flagship of NAIS’ “commitment to equity and justice in teaching, learning, and sustainability for independent schools.” According to their website, the theme of the 2024 conference was “a call to action for the unique time we’re experiencing.”

The 2024 PoCC in Denver, attended by over 8000 educators and students, featured a talk by a physician, Dr. Suzanne Barakat. The former executive director of the Health and Human Rights Initiative at UC San Francisco, Barakat is renowned for her expertise in mental health of Arabic-speaking communities worldwide and as an advocate against Islamophobia, she recorded a TED talk after her brother Deah, his wife Yusor and her sister Razan were murdered in an anti-Muslim hate crime in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2015.

CNN’s headline, “US Private Schools Group Apologizes After Criticism of Antisemitic Remarks During Conference,” makes the NAIS apology the story rather than the ADL’s false accusation of antisemitism against Barakat and Ruha Benjamin, a widely acclaimed professor of African-American history at Princeton University who also spoke at the NAIS event.

In its coverage, CNN reported the ADL’s claims that the remarks were antisemitic, even as the network noted that it had “not seen a transcript or recording of the remarks.” Genuine reporting on NAIS, the PoCC, and the ADL’s and other pro-Israel groups’ insistence on blasting any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, would have included — at a minimum — the content of the speakers’ remarks and reactions from conference attendees (including those for whom the mere acknowledgement of Palestinians’ existence marked a watershed compared to previous PoCCs). And more serious reporting would have noted the extent to which NAIS already promotes the work of the ADL and similar pro-Israel organizations, as well as taken note of the cases of teachers at NAIS member schools who have been fired or forced to resign because they spoke up for Palestinian rights.

Instead, CNN failed to note the remarks about genocide and Israeli racism did not mention Jews at all, nor did they note that the remarks reflected well-researched conclusions of experts at the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’tselem and hundreds of legal and human rights experts across the world.

Labeling criticism of Israel as antisemitic is a tactic of Zionist advocates to normalize Zionism, including in educational spaces, a practice that incorrectly claims this political criticism is in fact religious hate speech. This distorted definition of antisemitism is being promoted in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, the codification of which is considered a “best practice” for K-12 education by the ADL and their allies.

CNN relied extensively on the complaint letter to NAIS sent by the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Jewish Federations of North America and PRIZMAH: Center for Jewish Day Schools, without noting the political motivations of the accusers. It does not even appear that CNN verified the complaints of the Jewish students whose stories form the basis of the complaint.

CNN quotes the complaint saying that “Jewish students and faculty were forced to hear” their colleagues applauding what they characterized as antisemitic rhetoric, presenting audience support for the speakers as further proof of antisemitism rather than as broad commitment to truth, equity and justice that fully includes Palestinians.

Ruha Benjamin, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University and one of the speakers the ADL and their allies slandered as antisemitic, responded to NAIS’ capitulation. She pointed out (New York Times, DATE):

The weaponization of the charge of antisemitism is a disservice to everyone. Such accusations are watering down its meaning and wielding it against anyone who dares name the reality that Palestinians are living.

Giving extensive space to allegations of harm to Jewish students, CNN reports on the apology by the National Association of Independent Schools, and doesn’t even consider the impact of NAIS’s apology on Palestinian students or on the speakers who were slandered. An action alert by Zinn Education Project aimed at NAIS notes that Dr. Barakat has received numerous death threats since NAIS issued its apology to the ADL et al.:

NAIS President Debra Wilson jeopardized the safety of the speakers and undermined the conference’s commitment to equity and justice by irresponsibly framing their remarks as “divisive” and mischaracterizing their credibly-cited critiques as antisemitic. These failures have emboldened those who weaponize intimidation and hate to silence differing views, and reduced the public reporting on the PoCC to a reflection of the very injustices it was created to confront.

The CNN article lists several other cases of accusations of antisemitism against educators – like the ADL, mixing what most would consider “real” antisemitism with weaponized false accusations). At no point does the article note that false accusations of antisemitism, whether through slander or lawfare, are a key tactic of the ADL and their allies, and these frequently target educators of color.

CNN should have written a story about the ADL bullying NAIS, causing it to immediately (within two days) issue an apology, that not only validates the mischaracterization of the speakers’ remarks as antisemitic, but also promises to censor future speakers, a stunning confession from an educational organization. (The apology links to resources of the ADL and other complainants, further entrenching their influence on schools.)

Characteristically, the ADL found the apology lacking and sought to extract additional concessions from NAIS. They asked NAIS to become a spokesperson for the ADL’s politicized agenda, and, using a common right-wing tactic, the ADL is mobilizing tuition-paying private school parents to pressure the NAIS to concede.

Without this context, CNN’s “coverage” of the NAIS event can hardly be considered journalism. Instead it is an advertisement for the ADL that endorses rather than challenges the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism, a growing tendency that threatens the teaching, learning and critical thinking that are essential to democracy and one that perpetuates racism against Palestinians.

Educators Beware: The Anti-Defamation League Is Not the Social Justice Partner It Claims to Be

September 29, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

By Nora Lester Murad; Illustrator: Maryam Aswad

This article was published in Rethinking Schools (September 27, 2024)

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) calls itself “the leading anti-hate organization in the world.” But it is not the social justice educational partner it claims to be.

The ADL is a divisive political advocacy organization. It is a leader among Zionist organizations — like the Jewish Community Relations Council, the American Jewish Committee, the Institute for Curriculum Services, and the Jewish Federations of North America — that reinforce unconditional support for Israel and erasure of Palestinians in schools across the United States. The ADL harms everyone who opposes racism and supports equality — including Jews.

The ADL’s programs are widespread in U.S. schools, with wholesome names like “No Place for Hate” and “A World of Difference.” According to their website, in 2023 alone they reached 7 million students and provided professional development to 24,000 educators. That’s partly because the ADL makes it so easy for districts and schools to partner with them: They provide free, ready-made materials, from lesson plans on antisemitism and the Holocaust, to professional development on anti-bias for educators, administrators, and even school police. For example, the ADL partners with Boston Public Schools as part of its anti-bias 24/7 Respect initiative, and the Boston Public Schools website prominently features the ADL. When the National Association for Independent Schools recently offered webinars on antisemitism and Islamophobia, they tapped the ADL to provide the antisemitism content. When school districts and educational organizations circulated recommended resources after Oct. 7, 2023, they frequently linked ADL materials — like in the often-shared “Resources for Educators, Families to Discuss the Events in Israel and Gaza with Students,” compiled by the San Diego County Office of Education.

The ADL gives schools an easy route to show that they oppose antisemitism and bias. The ADL provides data, takes incident reports, gives input on educational policy, and offers “Jewish perspectives” without the need for schools to engage with the diverse perspectives of Jewish community members.

But the ADL’s unfounded attacks on groups working for Palestinian rights and the ways it undermines BIPOC communities, have made it unwelcome among social justice groups. A diverse group of more than 300 organizations — from the Movement for Black Lives to the National Lawyers Guild to the Red Nation — have signed on to the #DropTheADL campaign, which reminds progressive organizations that “the ADL is not an ally.” Since #DropTheADL launched in 2020, there has been a plethora of deep analysis by Jewish and non-Jewish sources into the history of misrepresentation and harm caused by the ADL. This includes schools.

Inciting Fear Based on Unreliable and Manipulated Data

From news outlets to school officials, many people rely on the ADL for information about antisemitism. For decades, the ADL’s statistics have been repeated by mainstream media without scrutiny. The ADL presents a terrifying picture of a crisis that escalates year over year. Speaking about the ADL’s 2023 audit of antisemitic incidents, its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, warned: “Antisemitism is nothing short of a national emergency, a five-alarm fire that is still raging across the country and in our local communities and campuses.”

In the past few years, though, multiple analyses, often in Jewish news sources frustrated by the ADL’s sensationalizing claims, have pointed out the ADL’s reliance on vague reports, lack of verification, and the lumping together of weighty and trivial incidents. Jewish Currents points out this “makes it more difficult to measure antisemitism in American life.” The ADL also includes what they call “anti-Israel rallies” in their database of antisemitic incidents. In fact, the Jewish newspaper, The Forward, newspaper reported that of the 3,000 “antisemitic incidents” recorded by the ADL in the first three months after Oct. 7, 1,317 were rallies where activists expressed hostility toward Zionism, not Jews. These practices led to Wikipedia’s recent designation of the ADL as a generally unreliable source. Wikipedia editors took this stance, they wrote, “due to significant evidence that the ADL acts as a pro-Israeli advocacy group and has repeatedly published false and misleading statements as fact, unretracted, regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict. The general unreliability of the ADL extends to the intersection of the topics of antisemitism and the Israel/Palestine conflict.”

ADL statistics are based on conflating criticism of Israel or the political ideology of Zionism with hatred of Jews. One way that the ADL promotes this conflation is by advocating use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition has been critiqued by experts and advocates as circular, racist, and punitive toward critics of state violence. It includes 11 examples, seven of which shut down criticism of Israel and Zionism. One example says that it is antisemitic to: “[deny] the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” This enables the ADL to label as “antisemitic” any discussion of the more than 700,000 Palestinians expelled during Israel’s founding as well as discussion of findings by Israeli and international human rights organizations that Israel is an apartheid state. The IHRA definition is the basis for a spate of laws against the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement. These laws aim to control speech of public employees and contractors, including educators like Bahia Amawi, the Austin, Texas, public schools speech therapist who lost her job for refusing to sign an anti-boycott pledge and was featured in Just Vision’s award-winning documentary Boycott. It is also the basis of proposed bills that would deport immigrants without trial if arrested at Palestine-supporting events and strip funding from public schools if they fail to impose repressive measures on teachers or students who criticize Israel or uplift Palestinians.

The reality of antisemitism is more nuanced. On the one hand, antisemitism, along with other forms of racism, has clearly increased with the Trump-era emboldening of right-wing actors. Antisemitism in the United States has gained new visibility in chilling scenes like the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that killed 11 people and wounded six, and the 2017 Charlottesville rally of white men marching through the streets chanting “Jews will not replace us!” Yet U.S. Jews no longer experience the material discrimination (in housing, jobs, etc.) they did in previous historical periods, and they enjoy a relatively high standard of living on average, having become integrated into economic and political structures.

The conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism is racist because it implicates Palestinians as hateful for talking about their own life experiences.

Israel’s claims to act on behalf of world Jewry, even as it slaughters Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, complicate matters. Peter Beinart, a prominent commentator on Jewish politics, notes that “three academic studies — one in the U.S., one in Belgium, one in Australia — over the last 20 years all show a strong correlation between substantial Israeli military operations that kill a lot of Palestinians and a rise in reported antisemitic incidents.” So, there may be a connection between the genocide in Gaza and anger toward Jews. But how do we parse out what is and isn’t actual antisemitism when both the Israeli government and the IHRA definition consider it hateful to protest human rights violations against Palestinians?

The ADL’s framing makes it difficult to see the role antisemitism and its weaponization play in upholding white supremacy. Instead, they falsely smear social justice movements, including those standing up against genocide, Islamophobia, and police violence — and they erase the Jewish communities who support and participate in those social justice movements. And when the ADL misreports acts against Zionism as discrimination against Jews, it blurs the distinction between political disagreement and hatred against a group.

Furthermore, the ADL’s conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism is racist because it implicates Palestinians, and supporters of Palestinian human rights, as antisemites who commit “hate acts” merely for talking about their own life experiences as refugees, living under Israeli occupation, or fighting colonialism.

Unfortunately, despite the occasional exposé of the ADL’s distorted statistics, no organization provides alternative data — partly because measuring antisemitism, like measuring racism, is a more complex project than lists of “incidents” can reflect and partly because groups concerned with racism often don’t address antisemitism separately from other forms of discrimination.

Claiming to Support Students and Educators but Actually Bullying Them

The ADL leverages its reputation and relationships with policymakers and funders to rail against groups with whom it disagrees politically. Greenblatt characterized Black Lives Matter as “wrong on the facts and offensive in tone” when the Movement for Black Lives 2016 policy platform recognized links between U.S. policing and Israeli militarism. In 2022, the ADL declared Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations to be antisemitic. In November 2023, the Intercept reported that the ADL labeled Jewish organizations calling for a ceasefire “hate groups,” later reporting that the ADL urged schools to investigate students based on the “unsubstantiated accusation that Students for Justice in Palestine had sent money to Hamas, urging schools to investigate students without providing evidence.”

In schools, the ADL works with partners to bully educators and students directly by disparaging their reputations, calling for disciplinary action against them, and submitting formal complaints that subject schools, educators, and students to invasive and exhausting investigations. To protect Israel, the ADL deceptively mixes legitimate calls against antisemitism with politicized calls to censor Palestinians and their supporters.

For example, for years the ADL has played a leadership role in the right-wing opposition to liberated ethnic studies. In February 2024, in cooperation with the Louis D. Brandeis Center, the ADL filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the Berkeley Unified School District alleging that administrators failed to take action to stop the “nonstop bullying and harassment of Jewish students by peers and teachers.” Civil rights organizations like Palestine Legal say the ADL and its partners are increasingly weaponizing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race, national origin, and shared ancestry. By claiming that schools that allow criticism of Israel create a “hostile environment,” they essentially argue that students who support Zionism — a political ideology — are a protected class under the law.

The ADL’s punitive response to what they deem as antisemitic interferes with efforts to implement restorative justice.

In response to this pressure, some school districts are clamping down on educators’ freedom to teach and students’ right to learn. After two high school students in Philadelphia made a podcast comparing the art of Palestinians with the art of enslaved people, it was selected by their teacher and vetted by their principal to be played at the school’s week of Black History Month assemblies. But another teacher at the first assembly claimed the podcast was antisemitic and forwarded it to a local Zionist organization. The organization led a campaign that successfully pressured the school district to remove the podcast from the remaining assemblies. Although the podcast did not mention Jews or Zionism, the ADL nonetheless joined a call to pressure the school district to investigate the students’ teacher, Keziah Ridgeway, an award-winning anti-racist educator.

The ADL’s punitive response to what they deem as antisemitic interferes with efforts to implement restorative justice in schools. Months after joining the call to fire Ridgeway, the ADL brought a Title VI complaint against the School District of Philadelphia. In the complaint, the ADL advocates for the “suspension and expulsion” of students and the “suspension and termination” of teachers, who under the IHRA definition — which the ADL encourages the district to adopt — have engaged in “discriminatory conduct” for being publicly critical of Zionism. With this approach, schools cannot cultivate space to untangle antisemitism from anti-Zionism and grapple with real antisemitic (and other racist) incidents in meaningful, restorative ways.

The ADL uses right-wing tactics in its policy advocacy at the local, district, and state levels and in attacks on public schools. It uses anti-critical race theory rhetoric to derail antiracist curriculum, promoting a watered-down anti-bias pedagogy that hides rather than explores power, systemic analysis, and historic context. It denounces DEI programs in education and the private sector, including in a February 2024 appearance by Greenblatt on CNBC’s Squawk Box, where he asserted the need to “overhaul DEI,” because these programs, according to Greenblatt, “perpetuate the exclusion of Jews.” Meanwhile, anti-racist educators argue that while all forms of bigotry and discrimination have their own histories and manifestations, they must all be understood in the context of white supremacy and fought together in a framework of collective liberation. The ADL’s cynical efforts to privilege the comfort of some Jews over the human rights of Palestinians, and above the right of all students to learn in a safe and uncensored environment, should disqualify them from participating in any aspect of U.S. education.

How to justify the genocide of Palestinians in 14 easy steps: A graphical guide

April 25, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

This comics-based opinion was co-authored with artist Maryam Aswad and published by The New Arab.

Step 1: Erase history. Bury any fair and accurate analysis of how today’s violence came to be.

Step 2: Remove all context. Always depict Palestinians as the aggressors. Blame Palestinians for their own oppression.

Step 3: Monopolise the media. Discredit Palestinians and normalise their exclusion – including by threatening, firing, or even killing them.

Step 4: Dehumanise Palestinians. Use words that play into pre-existing anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim stereotypes.

Step 5: Misinform the public with boldface lies.

Step 6: Weaponise antisemitism. Accuse any Palestinian who tries to tell their story of hating Jews.

Step 7: Co-opt liberal and antiracist language so you appear to be the good guys.

Step 8: Criminalise liberation activities. Punish all Palestinian efforts to claim their rights, including by non-violent means.

Step 9: Repeat sensational Israeli claims without investigating in order to elevate emotion over rationality.

Step 10: Market trauma. Remind Jews of horrible things that have happened in the past so they’ll be scared of peace with Palestinians.

Step 11: Make token gestures to trick people into thinking there is progress towards respect and equality while you protect the status quo.

Step 12: Throughout it all, pretend you are being balanced and fair.

Step 13: Manipulate people into choosing sides as if well-being is mutually exclusive. Hide the fact that a just, political solution will uplift everyone’s rights, security, and dignity, and it offers the only sustainable future.

Step Fourteen: Rinse and repeat

Nora Lester Murad is a writer, educator, and activist. Her young adult novel, Ida in the Middle, won the 2023 Arab American Book Award, the 2024 Middle East Book Award, a Skipping Stones Honor Award, and was a finalist for the 2024 Jane Addams Peace Association Children’s Book Award. She is a Policy Member of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network and supports many social justice issues. From a Jewish family, Nora raised three daughters in the West Bank with her Palestinian husband. She now lives in Massachusetts and can be reached through her blog at www.NoraLesterMurad.com

Follow Nora on X: @NoraInPalestine and Instagram: @nora_lester_murad

Maryam Aswad is an Iraqi-Canadian student, teacher, artist, and mathematician at the University of New Hampshire. She grew up first in a war-torn Iraq, then as part of a diverse refugee community in the UAE, and finally immigrated to Canada in high school. Maryam hopes to use her journeyed perspective to view and illustrate the world with both logic and compassion.

Follow Maryam on Instagram: @meryemaswad

Unleashing Abolitionist Logic on International Aid

April 25, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

Abstract: “The abolitionist thinking, proliferated particularly by U.S. Black feminist radicals in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in 2020, exposed police reformism as liberal subterfuge facilitating the expansion of the carceral state. This article utilizes the relationship between police reform and abolition as a prism through which to look at international development aid. If international aid is thought of as a reform eﬀort serving the interests of colonialism, what is the abolitionist approach to international development? This commentary suggests that abolitionist logic grounded in the US-based movement for Black lives can expose international aid reform as a neoliberal tool and simultaneously unmask the potential for a radical vision of development based in a commitment to liberation rather than white/western/northern supremacy. Keywords: abolition, police reform, international development, international aid, colonialism, decolonization, mutual aid, redistribution, reparations.”

This is one of my stranger articles. Writing it made my head hurt! It was informed by my years as an aid accountability activist in Palestine and my experience organizing with the DefundThePolice movement. Read my article in the journal, Decolonial Subversions, main issue, 2023.

Reflections on Gaza: The Day After

March 22, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

This article was originally published on on January 3, 2024 in American for Middle East Understanding’s The Link (scroll down or download issue).

“There won’t be a ‘day after’ this genocide,” a friend in Nablus tells me on Signal. “The bombing may stop, but the project to erase Palestinians will persist in one form or another until Israel either wins or loses.”

True. We are in an existential fight against White Empire, and it won’t end just because Israel needs a bathroom break.

As an anti-Zionist Jew, it is crystal clear to me that if the Jewish supremacist colonial regime of Israel wins, both Palestinians and Judaism will be annihilated. Since I married a Palestinian and have Palestinian daughters, my mama bear energy is fully invested in the scenario where we all live together in equality with dignity, rights, and security for all.

But first, we must stop this goddamned genocide.

Like everyone, I’m running 24/7 with the heavy, sharp pieces of my broken soul dragging behind. Contemplating the “day after” feels like a Herculean task of acumen at a time when I can barely fathom reality.

Today, a friend in Rafah texted me on WhatsApp that he was depressed. What could I say? I replied,

Coming from someone who takes a hot shower every day, it sounds ridiculous. If I see him again when this is over, how will I look him in the eyes? I am overcome with shame about my powerlessness while he literally protects his small children with his body.

Yesterday another friend called me on Messenger from Khan Younis, chaos in the background. His daughter said, “Auntie, please tell Baba not to make us walk to Rafah.” My friend explained they are being forced to move from their shelter. He can’t afford a donkey cart, so the family of eight would have to go on foot, carrying whatever belongings they have left.

I didn’t know what to say.

Before this genocide, I stood on one side of a huge chasm. On my side were people who cared about houselessness, mass incarceration, discrimination, censorship. But many of those people have since planted “I Stand with Israel” signs on their lawns. I am dumbfounded! How can intelligent, decent people argue against a ceasefire? If it was wrong for 1,200 people to be killed, then isn’t it also wrong to kill 25,000?

How will I continue to work for social justice when I have lost faith in people?

Yet there are people who care:

When I read this tweet to my grownup daughter, her response surprised me. “What the fuck is the point of apologizing?” she erupted. “Palestinians never asked for pity.”

But I am sorry, I tell her. I’m so sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.

She says that like the woman of color in Samer’s tweet, my pain is from empathy not sympathy. “It’s happening to you too, mama,” she consoles, and I am momentarily relieved. But seconds later, an old colleague sends me photos of the shelter in Nuseirat camp. Feces is everywhere, and there is no water to clean up. How can I face her on the “day after” when all I have are empty platitudes like “May God protect you and keep you?”

My daughter reminds me that faith is inextricably ingrained into the Arabic language. The culture of collective care is upheld in every phrase. The idioms and invocations are not platitudes, she explains patiently. They manifest our hopes for others. The obligatory response, which is nearly always “praise to God,” shows how gratitude breeds strength. “Even during a genocide, every hard day lived is a privilege,” she tells me.

“Never hesitate to look them in the eye and reassure them, even though their wellbeing and liberation are not in your hands,” she says.

I nod, and I’m sure she feels my commitment across the long-distance phone line.

Because no matter what I do or don’t do, on the “day after,” whenever it comes, Palestinian steadfastness will be stronger than ever. And if my faith falters, my friends in Gaza will reassure me.

Anas Abu Jamous is 10-years old and Paralyzed

February 4, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

It’s hard to visit the Gaza Strip and not fall in love with the people. Sadly, very few people get the opportunity to visit. Israel has controlled the checkpoints with a heavy hand since they imposed a siege and blockade in 2007. They only approve a small number of permits to enter and exit, and only for very specific and self-interested reasons.

I was extremely fortunate to get consultancy jobs that took me to Gaza several times. I used those opportunities to develop a now-defunct project called Aid Watch Palestine–perhaps the most exciting grassroots advocacy I’ve ever gotten to work on. Community members learned how the international aid system constrained their lives (in addition to the Israeli occupation), and they took action to claim their rights from international donors.

In 2015, on one of these trips, I met the Abu Jamous family in Khuzaa near Khan Younis. Marwan and Hanady’s family was one among thousands whose homes were destroyed in the 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza and who were poorly served by the international humanitarian response. I wrote an article about their experience to bring attention to the problem. They were also represented in my photo essay of 2016.

I stayed in touch with the family over the years, celebrating the birth of each new child, fretting about their many health crises, following their creative efforts to take care of one another despite having insufficient resources. In 2017, I wrote another article describing the family’s unacceptable living situation resulting from the ongoing blockade and the lack of proper help. Also in 2017, Hanady’s brother helped my group create a powerful, short video infographic showing that the only way to genuinely help Palestinians in Gaza is not to provide humanitarian aid, but to end the Israeli blockade.

I stayed in touch with Fathi too, congratulating him when he married and had a son, and stressing when he decided to smuggle himself out of Gaza with the intention of reaching Lesbos for asylum. It was harrowing and dangerous but ultimately successful, and that’s how Fathi found himself outside of Gaza on October 7th. Marwan was also outside of Gaza on October 7th, getting much-needed medical care in the West Bank. When the bombs started falling, the women of the family bore the brunt, trying to protect themselves and their children, even though there was and still is no place that is safe from Israel’s indiscriminate violence. (Marwan was abducted by the Israelis from the hospital in Nablus and thrown back in Gaza in the midst of the bombing. He’s now with the family but sick, having not completed his medical procedure.)

I had hoped my friends in the Abu Jamous family would at least be spared from the worst of the violence, but they weren’t. With much difficulty, the family of 36 people (Marwan’s family and Fathi’s family, including all their brothers and sisters and their spouses and children and parents) were finally able to escape Khan Younis to go to Rafah. Although it was supposedly (but not really) safer, Israeli soldiers confiscated all their belongings at the checkpoint entering Rafah, and they started shooting randomly.

Fathi’s 10-year-old nephew Anas was shot in the back by Israeli soldiers.

Anas went back to Khan Younis with his father to the European hospital while the rest of the family moved forward, setting up three tents between Khan Younis and Rafah – one for the many men of the extended family, one for the women, and one for the children. Anas got x-rays that confirmed the bullet was lodged in his spine. My friend in Boston, a prestigious spine surgeon, reviewed the images and said that Anas needed surgery immediately. He needed to be moved out of Gaza, but not on a commercial flight. His spinal fluid needed to be monitored. He needed to be catheterized. He had to be moved carefully to preserve the possibility that paralysis might be avoided, and he needed the bullet removed to avoid lead poisoning.

Naive me got to work trying to get Anas moved to another country for treatment. A pediatrician friend liaised with the doctors at the European Hospital who explained that Anas had been put on a list. The Israelis would need to approve his transfer. Visas would need to be secured. A foreign hospital would need to admit him. Funds would need to be raised. And more relevant – there were thousands on the list before Anas.

Fathi told me that the hospital was releasing Anas back to his family, back to the tent where he would sleep on the wet ground. There was no point in keeping him in the hospital since they didn’t have the material or tools to treat him. They don’t even have paid medication to treat the poor kid; he cries constantly from the unbearable pain.

As of this morning, though, Anas is still in the hospital in Khan Younis. When they ultimately ask him to leave, he will return to a family that has no shelter, insufficient food and water, no access to medications, no money for diapers, and no prospects – because Israel continues to deny these basic rights, even while they continue bombing, despite the warnings of the International Court of Justice.

No child should be shot. Anas was shot in the back! He was shot by Israel while following Israeli orders to move to Rafah!! Anas was learning to play soccer. Anas loved playing soccer.

If you would like to help Anas and his family, please contact me at nora@noralestemurad.com. I have a secure way of getting money to them that is still working. It won’t help Anas walk, and it won’t make the family safe from the ongoing genocide, but it may in some small way lift the family’s spirits to know that we care and we wish them the best.

Even if you can’t help Anas, PLEASE help stop the violence in Israel/Palestine by calling on the your governmental representatives to demand their constructive intervention. If you live in the United States, tell your senators and congressional representative to call for: an immediate, sustainable ceasefire; release of all captives in Israel and Gaza; Israeli facilitation of humanitarian aid, including medical; resumption and expansion of US aid to UNRWA; an end to US weapons transfers to Israel until they comply with all international law; facilitation of accountability for Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity; accountability for US complicity in Israelis violations of Palestinian rights; an end to the siege on Gaza; an end to the occupation and colonization of Palestine; and a just political solution that respects the rights, dignity, security of everyone. (Here is a tool and here is another tool that will help you make those calls and send emails. Please call EVERY SINGLE DAY!)

UPDATE! Anas and his mother and siblings (not his father) have been evacuated to Cairo where he is being evaluated by a doctor! This is absolutely miraculous! Of course the road ahead will be painful and costly, and his family continues to need as much support as they can get.

ANOTHER UPDATE! Marwan’s father and nephew were hit by a bomb strike. Marwan’s father lost both his legs and died two days later. The nephew lost an eye, but I don’t know if he lived. I can’t reach the family.

OPINION: Uplifting Palestinian American students makes everyone safer (Hechinger Report)

November 2, 2023 by Nora Lester Murad

This article was original published in The Hechinger Report.

In Newton, the liberal suburb of Boston where I live, parents of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim children gather weekly to discuss our concerns about how schools are responding to events in Israel/Palestine. We come together to find community and safety amid escalating hostility toward us because of a crisis we did not create and do not condone.

Schools should support the well-being of all students equally. They should help children develop a healthy sense of identity and belonging, encourage curiosity about divergent perspectives and teach the skills needed to constructively address conflict. Unfortunately, we feel that Newton schools, like others throughout the United States, not only fall short, but are complicit in perpetuating divisive anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment — and their complicity is not new.

When 9/11 happened, my oldest daughter was in school in Newton. The principal took great pains to tell the children that they and their families were safe. But it felt like she was only considering the white kids, oblivious to how others, especially Muslims, would increasingly be subject to suspicion. My daughter, just 5 at the time, got the message at school that being a Muslim Arab was something “different” and to be ashamed of.

Schools should support the well-being of all students. They should help children develop a healthy sense of identity and belonging, encourage curiosity about divergent perspectives and teach the skills needed to constructively address conflict.

Seeing the writing on the wall, our mixed American Jewish-Palestinian Muslim family relocated to Jerusalem so the kids could find pride in their culture. When we returned to Newton 13 years later, our youngest daughter found friends here, most of whom were Jewish. But the kids worried they would be ostracized if they spoke about Palestine at school, and when my daughter raised concerns about censorship with school staff, they dismissed it as a simple misunderstanding. She decided to leave the district and graduate from a school where kids from marginalized backgrounds were believed when they talked about their own life experiences.

One year later, during the 2021 Israeli attack on Gaza, a teacher was dismissed from that same Newton school for writing a pro-Palestinian (not anti-Israel or anti-Jewish) statement on a white board. While we do not know enough about what happened in the classroom to determine if the termination was justified, the principal’s explanation to the community was definitely not appropriate. He wrote that “our students” had been put in an emotionally vulnerable position – but he certainly wasn’t talking about the district’s Palestinian students. My daughter read the letter and said it felt like being told that “others need to heal from your existence.”

Now, in 2023, everything is exponentially worse.

In the last three weeks in Newton, as in other cities, the superintendent, school principals, PTO groups and a local antiracism group issued statements about the current violence. A few expressed compassion for all those affected by events in the Middle East. But those messages were quickly walked back under pressure and revised to clarify solidarity only with Israelis. To us, it felt as if our city was condoning the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians.

If teachers and students are too frightened to learn about Arabs and Muslims and too uncomfortable to discuss the role the U.S. plays in international affairs, how can schools help kids become informed, global citizens?

References to the historical context, including 75 years of Israeli expulsion, colonization and occupation of Palestine, were absent. Uninformed people were left to misunderstand that the deplorable violence against Israeli civilians on October 7th was motivated solely by some kind of innate or religious hatred of Jews.

False accusations of antisemitism make Arabs and Muslims targets, threatening their children’s safety, both inside and outside of schools. A six-year-old Palestinian boy was murdered, and his mother seriously injured, by their Chicago landlord who was motivated by anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim hate, fueled in part by media bias that relies on inflammatory words like “brutal” “and “violent” in relation to Palestinians. In Newton, a Palestinian American mother, who was fearful that flyers of Israeli hostages posted around the city would increase division between Muslims and Jews, removed them with the approval of city hall. She was subsequently doxxed, lost her job and now has police protection because of threats against her family.

I understand why educators are scared to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. A few years ago, the Newton school district and several individuals were sued by the pro-Israel group Americans for Peace and Tolerance, which falsely asserted that the district’s instruction on Islam, the Middle East and Palestinians was antisemitic. Teaching accurate, nuanced history and providing unbiased context about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis has become dangerous for educators, not unlike the dangers they face from anti-critical race theory forces who seek to limit learning about the role of colonialism and slavery in U.S. history.

Unfortunately, that fear has led schools to avoid teaching about Palestinian experiences and narratives. To us, this censorship feels very much like blatant anti-Palestinian racism.

But it is not only Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students who suffer when fear and anti-Palestinian racism are normalized. All students do. If teachers and students are too frightened to learn about Arabs and Muslims and too uncomfortable to discuss the role the U.S. plays in international affairs, how can schools help kids become informed, global citizens?

The consequences of having an uninformed citizenry are dire. Without quality, unbiased information and antiracist education, U.S. citizens are less likely to support rational, humane policies and more likely to acquiesce to violent ones. As I write right now, Palestinian children are being killed in Gaza and Israeli hostages remain captive.

For all these reasons, Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and allied parents will continue to meet to support one another and the rights of all children. We will continue the important but often exhausting work of advocating for the recognition of Palestinian humanity in our schools and in Gaza and the West Bank. Only when U.S. educators stand bravely to uplift everyone – including Palestinians – can our schools ethically and credibly teach the next generation how to pursue justice and peace.

On the 7th day of the 2023 War…

October 14, 2023 by Nora Lester Murad

I’ve succumbed to my current irrelevance in the big project of peace with justice in Israel/Palestine. Please don’t email or text me messages telling me I’m a good person. I don’t feel bad about myself–I feel bad about the world. Even though I genuinely believe that crisis offers the most fertile opportunity for meaningful change in the mainstream narrative that constraints people’s understanding, I simply can’t make a dent there. Fortunately, there are those with the brilliance and the platform to make a difference. Follow these brave human beings:

https://www.instagram.com/motaz_azaiza/reels/

https://www.instagram.com/byplestia/reels/

https://www.instagram.com/wissamgaza/reels/

https://www.instagram.com/wizard_bisan1/reels/

https://www.instagram.com/ahmedhijazee/reels/

https://www.instagram.com/hindkhoudary/reels/

https://www.instagram.com/joegaza93/reels/

https://www.instagram.com/nouralsaqa/reels/

https://www.instagram.com/ajplus/reels/

https://twitter.com/m7mdkurd
https://twitter.com/PeterBeinart
https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi
https://twitter.com/theIMEU
https://twitter.com/palyouthmvmt
https://twitter.com/DecolonizePS
https://twitter.com/IfNotNowOrg

My niche now is smaller, but also important. To those of you who are only connected to the Middle East through me, I’m sorry I’ve been silent this week, leaving you to try to make sense of the senseless with few resources beyond the racist and distorted CNN and New York Times. I don’t imagine I can change your minds, but I hope that I can support you in your sincere efforts to learn, and I hope that by sharing my perspective and my anguish, we can at least stay in relationship. Or, dare I hope, perhaps we can work together to demand that world leaders end oppression and war?

-Nora

This video is long (26:42) and probably not interesting for those of you who are well informed about the Palestinian experience in Gaza, but I’m sharing my perspective nonetheless and welcome comments:

Some Articles I’ve Written Over the Years about Gaza
It’s 2020. Does the United Nations Care about Gaza? (September 6, 2020)

What Do I Say to Abu Fathi? (May 25, 2017)

Come With Me to Gaza (photo essay) (April 23, 2016)

One Year After Ceasefire, ‘Temporary’ Housing for Gazans Seems to be Permanent
(August 28, 2015)

My Trip to Gaza 2015 (April10, 2015)

Israel Devastated Gaza, but “Aid” Helps Keep it That Way (April 9, 2015)

Malala, Where is Your Money? (December 16, 2014)

During Gaza, a poem (November 2, 2014)

Rant on Humanitarianism (September 18, 2014)

Guest post: “I thought I was going to die, but it turned out to be my cousin” by Ahmed AlQattawi (September 8, 2014

Guest post: “When the Gaza Sky Burst into Flames” by Mahmoud Khalaf (August 2, 2014)

US Complicity in Israel’s Attack on Gaza (July 11, 2014)

Gaza Under Fire: What Does it Mean for Philanthropy? (July 8, 2014)

B- for my Gaza Birthday Campaign but an A for Effort (July 4, 2014)
With links to tens of videos of interviews with friends in Gaza

How Can You Help?

Every time there’s an attack on Palestine, people ask me where to send donations. This is a wonderful but problematic dynamic. Palestinians need and deserve support, but real solidarity must be more than money. It must also be political. And donations and solidarity must be ongoing, not sporadic, emotional responses. Funding has to go to local organizations, not sent for convenience sake to international agencies that build capacity and credibility at the expense of Palestinian civil society. Also, support has to flow to all Palestinian priorities, not be diverted from Jerusalem or Hebron or Jenin just because Gaza is on the front page.

To explain, and to answer people’s frequent questions, I wrote a book chapter called “Aiding Liberation” (pages 396-409) in Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out edited by Ramzy Baroud & Ilan Pappé. Clarity Press and The European Centre for Palestine Studies, 2022. You can read it at https://www.academia.edu/105722870/_Aiding_Liberation_Book_Chapter.

How to be a friend to a family at risk of demolition?

April 24, 2023 by Nora Lester Murad

Nurredin Amro has been my friend for more than a decade. For the last eight of those years, he has been fighting to protect his home in Jerusalem from demolition by the Israeli authorities.

The Markaz Review has published my photo essay about Nurredin’s experience. Read it here. Please share it widely.

I’ve started a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for Nurredin’s legal and other expenses associated with being at risk of demolition. Support it here. Please share it widely.

Also…

It’s extremely helpful if you would contact your own elected officials (in the US, your congresspeople and senators) expressing your outrage and asking them to investigate and report back to you about Nurredin’s case. If you or they need more information, let me know. You may blind copy me if you’re willing so I can keep track of numbers, and if you get any reply, I hope you’ll let me know at nora@noralestermurad.com.

Sample text for you to pull from is below.

To Whom It May Concern,

I’ve become aware that the home of Nurredin Amro and his family in East Jerusalem has been completely surrounded by a wall, severely impeding entry and exit by Nurredin and his brother, both of whom are blind, and inconveniencing the other eight members of their family. Moreover, this escalation comes after eight years of harassment that started when the Amro home was partially demolished in 2015. During that time, many homes on the land between the vegetable market and the valley below the Mount of Olives have been demolished, the residents forced out of the neighborhood, ostensibly so that the Israeli Nature and Parks Authority can build a park.

As a justice-loving global citizen, I am appalled by Israel’s blatant disregard for human rights and morality in this case, and many others in which Palestinians are being forced out of Jerusalem, despite their demonstrated relationship to the land going back generations. East Jerusalem is occupied and forcible transfer within the framework of occupation is a war crime! I therefore call upon you to cease all harassment against the Amro and other families in the Sawanna area and allow them to live in peace and security with dignity.

Please respond to me with confirmation of what you intend to do in Nurredin’s case. I plan to keep members of my community and my elected representatives informed.

Thank you so much. Your support makes a difference. I promise you.

Book Review: The Waiting Place by Dina Nayeri with photos by Anna Bosch Miralpeix

January 20, 2023 by Nora Lester Murad

I received this large, square, hardback book with an eye-catching cover from i’m your neighbor books as part of Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2023. The title, The Waiting Place, lays in bright, red, capital letters over a photo of a scene that one might drive on the way to somewhere else. There’s a child upside down in an impressive cartwheel, evoking childhood joy, next to the incongruous subtitle: “When home is lost and a new one not yet found.” To be honest, the cover and its implications made me want to look away; it took a while for me to open the book.

The Waiting Place is a 64-page book of stunning photographs with limited words. Marketed for 12-17 year olds, The Waiting Place is a must read for everyone, regardless of age. It is compelling and disturbing, as it should be.

There are 82.4 million forcibly displaced people, author Dina Nayeri notes in the afterword. Some of them will experience part of their childhood in refugee camps, as Dina did. They will grow up, become writers and doctors and teachers and programmers. They are our neighbors. This book shows a slice of the experience that some of them have lived.

Nayeri personifies the refugee camp, the waiting place, and it becomes a predator: “At first the Waiting Place welcomes you. It has heard of the wars, the famines and the bombs in your home; it is very sorry. It has been waiting for you.” Then: “Inside its gated mouth is a dreary, lazy encampment where there is nothing to do but drift. Children wait, let time slip away. They forget things: first their sums, street names, their best books. Then beloved faces, stories. The Waiting Place doesn’t mind. It wants more children and mothers and fathers. It doesn’t want you to visit the nearby lake, to hike the frosted mountain, to learn your new language, or to work or build or learn. It craves your hours, weeks, years.”

But Nayeri relieves the reader by interspersing the chilling text with the most mundane, familiar details of life. Brothers fight. Kids make artwork. Families cook. And the photos are not sad. There is adorable, five-year old Matin from Afghanistan making a monster face. His ten-year old sister, Mobina is shown lost in her thoughts, examining a flower, in a field of weeds. Kosar, a Hazara girl from Iran, jumps on her bed in her striped pajamas. The raw description of the place alongside pictures of children being children left me disquieted. I can’t stop staring at the photos, completely taken in by the spirit in these children’s eyes–the same spirit I see in my own children’s eyes. I suppose that’s the point.

Nayeri doesn’t offer a sugar-coated ending because there isn’t one. We don’t know if these specific children are still at Katsikas camp in Greece, and if not, who are the children who might now be living in the lined-up shipping crates that they called home. From my own life advocating for Palestinian rights, I know the only way to process hard truths and still avoid despair is to take action. Candlewick Press offers a discussion guide and there are engagement ideas at https://imyourneighborbooks.org/waiting-place-engage/.

But for engagement to be anything other than guilt-driven charity, readers of The Waiting Place will need to understand that while refugee camps may feel like perpetrators to children, it is people who continue to cause displacement through decisions that lead to war and other conditions that force people to run from their homes. And it is well-intentioned people like me who too often remain silent and let those bad leaders get away with it. As I recently posted in relation to Palestine, angst is not an act of solidarity. For me to live up to the expectation of this #MustRead book, I will have to take political action. I will have to do my part to influence my own government to stop creating the conditions that lead to the need for refugee camps that steal childhoods.

Later: I keep pondering this book! I’m thinking about Palestinian kids who are born, live and die in refugee camps just waiting. They go to school, waiting. They get married, waiting. They become grandparents, waiting. What’s it like when generations live without a home, without papers, without hope – waiting?

The Waiting Place

Dina Nayeri with photographs by Anna Bosch Miralpeix

Candlewick Press, 2022

978-1-5362-1362-1