 As-salamu alaikum, I first want to thank Allah swt for the opportunity to speak today and of course the MCC community for providing a platform for the all too often silent voices of today. My Lord expand for me my breast with assurance and ease for me my task and untie the knot from my tongue that they may understand my speech. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. My name is Amir Nicole. I'm a Palestinian American with family that still lives and owns land in the West Bank. Being born in America, I was born into the ideals of this country. Ideals spoon fed to us from a young age that we should be proud to be an American where the Bill of Rights protects freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and the freedom to petition. How cruel to be taught to empower these ideals, to be grateful of them, only to realize too quickly that these basic human rights don't apply to me because of my ethnicity and faith. Some of my earliest memories I like to think that they're from my core memories or from my summers in Palestine. My mother passed away when I was very young so my aunts and uncles took me in and treated me as their own. I was and am truly blessed to have the connection and safety of a community that looks out for their youth. I couldn't have been more than five years old at the time but I still remember the smell of the fresh baked bread in the kitchens, the feeling of the sun while running through the olive trees on my family's land and the taste of fresh figs and grapes freshly plucked off the branches of a tree. The sweetest you could taste. That day my aunt was taking me to a local city to do some shopping. I was always very excited to go out and explore. I could never turn my brain off needing to see, hear, and experience everything around me. As we were walking down the street in this nearby city, things quickly took a turn. I heard screams, dust and smoke everywhere. I saw IDF soldiers beating on men, tying them together in long lines along the side of the road. I heard the sound of a man yelling then being dragged away by a soldier to an alleyway where I heard shots in silence. They threw tear gas at us. My aunt grabbed me by the hand and ran for the city limits. A man with a truck was there telling everyone he could see, just get in, just get in. So we all crammed ourselves into the back of his truck as he sped away from all the violence. I was five years old at the time. I later learned that this, uh, sorry, I'm pregnant. So I'm a little emotional at times. Alhamdulillah. I later learned that this was part of the first intifada when Palestinians who had had enough of the apartheid regime, the military occupation started to protest. That protesting was met with violence, cruelty, and death. In my later visits, I realized how oppressive it truly was. I felt the discrimination of being Palestinian, being held for hours on end every time I tried to enter my country. When I was 16 years old, I traveled alone to visit my aunts and uncles. Israel held me for eight hours with rifles in hand, interrogating me without just reason. I still believe this is a tactic that they used for many of us to intimidate us and scare us from ever returning. Simple visits to the Holy Land, just a short drive away from my village, maybe 15 minutes, were made almost impossible for many members of my family. And for me, with an American passport, it was still extremely difficult. Unable to pray in a luxe semester and only being 15 minutes away, can you imagine? I realized quickly that the wall that supposedly separates Israel from Palestine was separating Palestinians themselves from neighboring Palestinian villages and from their own land. For example, we had wanted to go to a bakery in a neighboring village, and we couldn't because of the checkpoints. There are no other words to describe it. It is a civilian prison. My family this year could not even go to their own land to harvest the almost 5,000 olive trees, which used to be much more. But in recent years, the Israeli settlers, the illegal Israeli settlers and the IDF burned and tore down over 1,400 trees. The settlers have now began building homes on the mountain tops surrounding the smaller villages, and they've been armed with weaponry. When I left that trip, I had to go back through Israel to get to the main airport. Seeing the contrasting differences in resources and amenities and rights was very hard to witness. I went more than six hours earlier for my flight. I almost missed it due to the interrogations. Again, I was 16 years old at the time. In hindsight, I was protected. My friend's son, years later at 16 years old, was beaten merciless and held without legal or parental aid. His younger cousin murdered by his legal settlers in the West Bank. Shortly after returning to the States that summer, I was the target of a hate crime. A woman saw me on a plane wearing a headscarf and she started screaming hysterically that I was a terrorist and that I was going to bomb and destroy the plane. She kept spewing out such hatred. When the flight attendants finally were able to calm her, they spent the entire flight looking at me. One man out of over 100 people present, only one man, I think he was of Asian descent, had the strength to say something against that woman. I had to endure the rest of the flight hearing her. And still hate in her kids. She had two young kids next to her and she would point out the window a lot enough so that I could hear, look, that's where she's hiding all of the bombs and ammunition. Don't tell her where you live or she's going to come and kill you in the night. I again felt powerless, voiceless, so young but unable to explain to the world what I had witnessed and seen. As our beloved religion teaches us, ikra, read. So I turned to reading and then to writing. I wrote some of what I had experienced downed and shared it with my high school newspaper. It caught attention quickly. Israeli students were allowed to write rebuttals to one of my pieces, flooding the paper with their narrative. When I wrote my response, I wasn't told till it was too late, but the administration pulled the piece the night before it was scheduled to be printed, censored again. I recently reached out to my aunt to ask her about the more recent accounts of what is happening. It was just simply too painful for her to share. She did manage to tell me about the destroyed trees, the stolen land from our village, and all around as these legal settlers get closer and closer to our homes. She unfortunately has been banned from ever going back to the land and the home that she still owns. The injustices are sometimes too numerous to recount. Too often the voices of those being oppressed and mistreated are censored by those whose voices are louder and more aggressive than our own, the irony. That's why we must have the strength and knowledge to speak louder. Our beloved Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, known for his kindness and beautiful character, taught us the importance of speaking and advocating for those being mistreated. I pray we can all stand on the right side of history and stand before a lost Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi with a sound heart that we did what we could. Just remember I'm one story of millions. Don't let the media continue to vilify, censor and dehumanize us just to set their own agenda. I wanted to end with a poem that I had written while I was in college many years ago. Many years later it still holds relevant. It's called searching for humanity. One day I woke up to crying, running down his face with tears. My heart ached as I looked at him and knew I could not wash away his fears. His little body endured so much yet his years remain so few and the justice that he deserves is long overdue. When will the world open up its eyes and see all this in humanity? No, instead it just looks down upon them with such insensitivity. Palestine is and was the home buried deep within our hearts, the blood that flows to our souls giving life to all our parts. Palestine is the birthplace of our sisters and our brothers and the burial place of even more of our fathers and our mothers. So strong Palestine and its people have withheld all the fury and the guns yet time and time again it is Israel that receives international's excessive funds. Will you let me take you on a journey? Will you let me take you by the hand? Then maybe through the eyes of another you will begin to understand. Is apartheid too strong a word to make you see what's true? Can I believe that you will try to see things from another point of view? The year was 1948 when so many lost their lives. When the bonds that fell upon them were as many as a swarm of fireflies. Some who were capsaid it was as if the stars were falling from the skies and still at night they awaked to hearing all those heart-wrenching cries. Dar Yassin was but one of the many cities massacred that year before nightfall over 250 people were systematically murdered as the land was washed with children's tears. The death toll has been so vast that through my breath it's difficult to speak and yet in 2023 it still has not yet reached its peak. Now don't even get me started on Hafrada the segregation wall that rises as a prison over eight meters tall. In comparison it makes the Berlin Wall look like nothing but a joke dividing people from their land dividing them from their common folk. So why are there so many people misguided or has the whole world just gone blind? Is it just because it's not directly affecting what they believe is their own kind? We are all brothers and sisters in the fight for the rights of those who cannot speak out and so I leave you with just one last thing, the most important thing without a doubt that the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance itself it is the illusion of knowledge the misconceptions of one's true self. Please continue to make dots for the Palestinians in Ghazan, the West Bank and all those being oppressed around the world. If I said anything of benefit, it's from Allah SWT, if I said anything that was incorrect and it is all from me. Thank Allah if you come for staying and listening to all of that inshaAllah. Abidani wa jayin wa shakir Wa jayi kulli marrafa ta qadrah Mim min satar ta awna shar ta dikrah Wa jayi ayatil kitab il muhkameen Wa jayi il ism il a'zameen mu'azameen Ya Rabbi yafna fukara Beina yadaika do'afaa Wa qadda'a aban kareem man sa'a Faqbal du'ana bim ahzil fadlih Bim ahzil fadlih Fahisa bil adlih Wa minun a'la wa atif alayna Atfata al-halil Wa nshur alayna ya Rahim o Rahmatak Wa bsut alayna ya kareem o ni'matak Wa khirlana fisa'iril aqwali Wa khtarlana fisa'iril af'a Rabbi wajal da'bana atam al-suka Bil sunnatil ghurra iwa atan al-suka Wa hasr lana a'radana al-mukhtalifah Fika wa arifna tamam al-ma'lifah Wa jma'lana ma bina'il min wa amal Wa srif iladar al-baqa minna al-amal Wa jibina ya Rabbi n'ajil su'adah Wa khtimlana ya Rabbi khatm al-shuhada Wa ja'l banina fudala asulaha Wa ulama'a amilina nusaha Wa aslihi ilahumma haal al-ahleem Wa yassiril lahumma jam'a as-shamneem Ya Rabbi wa fta'fat haka al-mubina Lim ad-dawaz ad-dina Wa nusur huyaad al-tawli wa nsuh izbahu Wa mla'bima yurdi ka'anahu qalbahu Ya Rabbi wa nsur nasiqa ma hamadi Wa ja'l khitama izziyika ma budi Wa hafadhu ya Rabbi bi hafadu al-ulama Wa rfa'mana ila al-sama Wa fii wa aafi wa kfii wa gfir zimbana Wa zimbakul li muslimin ya Rabbana Wa salli ya Rabbi ala al-mukhtari Salata ka'l kamilata al-mukhtari Salata ka'l la ti tafi bi amri Ka ma yali qub irtifa'i qadri Tummas ala al-alil kirami wa ala Ashabi al-ghurri wa maal Wa alhamdulil bi hamdi Yablu ghudu al-qasdi tamama qasdi Al-Fatiha Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen Al-Rahmanir Rahim al-kiyya wa bideen Iyya ka nabud wa Iyya ka nasta'een Idina al-sraata al-mustaqeen Seraata al-ladina anatta aleyhim A'ir al-maldudi aleyhim wa l-attaa