A Personal Statement
For Graduate School Admission
I grew up reading The Diary of Anne Frank. Having lived under brutal Japanese occupation, Koreans at the time crossed cultural and continental divides to identify with the Jewish people. Now, a graduate school admission essay by a Palestinian student some years ago shows that there are not too many divides to cross—only the propaganda of dehumanization—to discover again our common humanity.
My name is O.B., and I am a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks, Gaza Refugee Camp, class of 2005. Of course, this is not a real school…. It is the diploma you receive in pain, displayed in a thick frame of sadness, left to hang in perpetuity on a nail over your heart. My school was a particularly difficult one, I think. My diploma reads: “To O., in recognition that, despite the hand life has dealt you, you dare dream of a brighter future.”
My first class at the School of Hard Knocks was Politics 101. I was probably no more than four years old. In Palestine, one’s formal education in politics can never start too early. Pop quizzes each morning at the checkpoints on the way to kindergarten. What to say when the soldiers address you. How not to make eye contact. What to do if … someone starts shooting, or something explodes; instinct kicks in, standing the hairs on your neck on high, causing every rational thought in your head to flee, inclining your body to follow.
Even today, I can recall discussing these lessons with my friend M., as I pushed her down bumpy streets in her wheelchair. The wheelchair was a gift from the Israeli security forces. She was an unfortunate finalist in a debate on armed incursions and the effects of collateral damage on children. It was just one of many lessons in the Refugee Camp School of Hard Knocks. The Israelis were very generous with their lessons. They even let her keep two of the bullets.
In 2005, after sixteen years in the Gaza Refugee Camp School of Hard Knocks, my family was very proud of me when I graduated, and all in one piece. It was at that time that I won a major scholarship to go to high school in Italy. It was a rather fortunate occurrence…. A few months earlier my family’s home was part of an Israeli initiative to demonstrate the efficacy of using tanks as negotiation technique in successfully resolving eons-long conflicts. I missed my family dearly for the next two years. Sitting in the school’s cafeteria, I would stare blankly at the food on my plate, fighting back the tears as the smell pervaded my nostrils to the point of intoxication.
In reward for becoming a better global citizen, learning English and Italian, and completing an International Baccalaureate, I had the luxury of simple food that my family had to overcome insurmountable odds every day to get. My time in Italy was quite transformative, and I made great lifelong friends. This was also the first time I had the privilege of conversing with Israelis about our combined destiny. As we parted ways at graduation—I off to college in the USA and they to army basic training in Israel—my eyes swelled, fighting off visions of meeting my friends again in a future where I was just another Palestinian with a cause and they a figure in combat fatigues with a gun.
I was delighted in 2007, as my heartache was lightened when I fell in love in America … with French. While on full scholarship at a great liberal arts college in New Jersey, I took part in the Global Francophone Culture Exchange. While I had always liked French, I fell in love with it in my cultural exchanges in Quebec, France, and Senegal. It is not to say that English, American-English that is, isn’t a great language; but as I learned French, speaking in French became more like speaking in Arabic—from the heart.
That is one of the reasons I am applying for universities for the Master’s Program in International Affairs in France as well as the U.S. In my heart, I will always be the four-year-old little girl, staring at the muzzle dangling inches over the soldier’s dusty boot lodged against my mom’s cheek as he presses her head into the concrete. Grad. School will provide me the opportunity to not only improve my ability to communicate that feeling to the world, but will also empower me with the knowledge and insights to lift that boot off of the face of every Palestinian.
Upon my return to Palestine, I hope I will be able to work at Wefaq Society for Woman and Child Care, an NGO whose mission overlaps with my personal interest…. I feel I will finally be able to return home with a confidence to help my people. I will work on different initiatives at Wefaq, pursuing my primary mission, which is the greater inclusion of women in the political process. I feel that where men have failed in the last sixty years, women now have the opportunity to help bridge the gap between the factions. Women’s greatest attribute is not just our ability to bring men into this world but maybe to help lead them as well.
I look forward to bringing the diversity of my life’s experience in Gaza and education in Italy and the USA to my graduate school. As so, I feel I come before you not only with the accumulation of my own experiences but also with an amalgamation of the hopes and aspirations of all those in refugee camps around the world who, despite the hand that life has dealt them, dare dream of a better future.
What is Hamas?
1- the government and army of the people of Gaza who chose to bring war into the streets of cities and towns with no care whatsoever for the population they represent. A government that started a war they knew they could not win and that would bring death and misery to the people they represented.
Or
2- a terrorist organization keeping two million Palestinians as hostages. Hostages that have been abandoned by the international community and that no one dares rescue.
Or
3-???
What is reactive abuse?
What is DARVO?
Can you look at the horrors the population of Gaza is living from a domestic abuse perspective? As a parallel process.
The ideal solution is in a U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, appropriately interpreted and administered. "Appropriately" is in prioritizing secular law, with equal justice based on independent objective evidence (which also pertains to science). It also includes recognition of belief systems from ancient times--religious faith- or opinion-based types. As such, it is simply realistic about how many humans continue to take comfort in explaining things, even in this scientific age. This ideal solution would not only be best for the Middle East but everywhere. The reality, of course, is how Israel maintains a right to exist basically because of a belief in a god that gave land to the Jewish people. After just about forever from having been persecuted, they now have a geographical area not only God-given but for a way of protecting themselves. The Muslim peoples/countries have their own priority of religious belief and their authorities to maintain it within their territories. Tragically, without universal justice in a common priority of secular law--regardless of geographical areas--there will be conflicts over demands for territory purportedly due to religious belief. The tragedy is furthered in how devout religious believers are abused by people who are power-hungry and use religion for control of territories. Thereby, the Israeli people and those like the author of this Personal Statement get horribly drawn into vicious cycles of conflicts that occur inside the box of prioritizing religious belief in governance. There is a sad irony in how the author found she could thrive in relative peace in countries that prioritize secular law. A humane step in the Middle East would involve everybody recognizing this kind of universal law, which would put Israel and Palestine on equal footing, to co-exist in relative peace with justice. Unfortunately, it would be such an immense step to take that it would be too big for the foreseeable future.