Palestine belongs to my best friend

Growing up, I was surrounded by those who sung praises of Israel. I learned of its holiness, its connection and value to Christianity, its power and righteousness. And then, when I drifted away from religion, Israel too fell off my radar. 

I'm ashamed to say I never new much of what was going on until October 7th. I'm ashamed that I never looked or learned even after I began to develop left-leaning beliefs. But now I know so much, and I've seen so much. I've seen babies stuck under rubble. I've seen malnourished, dirty children clinging barely to life. My TikTok FYP is littered with ghoulish, tired-looking Palestinians begging for the outside world to help them escape, and all I can do is click a few buttons. It's overwhelming. But so is getting bombed everyday, isn't it?

Little did I know a victim of Israel lived right across the street from my childhood home.

When I was in first grade, I asked a random boy at school where he lived. Being a pair of six-year-olds, that was a perfectly legitimate line of conversation, and I swiftly discovered that we lived across from each other. He was from a half-white, half-Arabic family. His father hailed from some mystical land I had never heard of: Jordan. 

I experienced little bits and pieces of Jordanian culture through the meals their father cooked, such as a modified za'atar flatbread that could simply be called "za'atar pizza". I was an incredibly picky eater as a child and yet, somehow, I was convinced to eat a green pizza -- and damn was it good. Their father was a skilled, practical man who loved to cook for his family to the point that he was frustrated when he found out my friend was learning to cook his own meals for fun.

As it turned out, their father was from Jordan, but he wasn't Jordanian.

Every now and then, I'd hear something along the lines of "Well, their father doesn't like Israel very much..." from my fundamentalist Christian parents usually accompanied with some thinly-veiled insult. And knowing only praise of Israel, I couldn't help but resent my friend's father for that. I could only wonder: what was wrong with him? Why did he hate god's chosen people? Why did he resent such a pure, magical place?

Of course, when Israel returned to my radar, it returned hard, violent, fast, all at once, erasing anything I had been programmed to believe by my religious parents. And then, as it returned to my radar, it came to stare me in the eye through a story from my best friend.

His father was born to a family expelled to Jordan by Israel's violent 1948 Nakba. I heard stories of the brutal poverty they lived in. I can see it in the way their father looks and acts; how trauma weighs down on his back. The world has drained him, and he hasn't always been able to be the best to his sons, but I know that he has given his 110% to protect the family and mold his sons into strong, capable men.

My best friend is the son of a Palestinian exile. He is half-Palestinian, and Palestine is his birthright.

Palestine belongs to my best friend.