Oakland

I was accused of “visually and biographically resembling” a man named as a “terror” suspect in a US State Department report.

Pro-Israel organizations pressured an Oakland children’s museum to cancel an upcoming exhibition of drawings made by Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip. Community leaders say the shutting down of the exhibition is the result of a disturbing — and well-funded — campaign to silence Palestinian voices across the US.

For the first time in US history, a peaceful protest was able to stop workers from unloading an Israeli cargo ship on Sunday, 20 June, in the San Francisco Bay area. From 5:30am until 7pm, social justice activists and labor union organizers blocked and picketed several entrances at the Port of Oakland, preventing two shifts of longshoremen with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union ILWU to come to work and unload the Israeli Zim Lines cargo ship.

As a Palestinian-American I enjoy the rights of my country of citizenship. This makes it difficult for me to understand what it must be like to watch another nation’s tanks roll into your community and destroy everything in their path—your car, your neighbor’s house, electrical poles, gardens and community businesses.