"Earlier this month, Nisreen Zaqout, a Palestinian student from Gaza studying at Illinois College, did just that. Watch the video above, and you can see how she told the audience at the closing session of this year’s New Story Leadership normalization program that she “wanted to quit” while in Washington, DC for the summer.
Nisreen described being part of NSL at such a time as “absolute torture.” Unlike the Israeli participants, her “firsts” were not of meeting someone new or going sailing for the first time, but instead, the first time she heard fear in her mother’s voice, the first time she heard her brother cry over the death of a young friend, the first time her grandfather said “no” to evacuation, “not again.” The ethnic cleansing and dispossession Palestinians experienced in 1948 — the year of Israel’s establishment — was enough."
Nisreen described being part of NSL at such a time as “absolute torture.” Unlike the Israeli participants, her “firsts” were not of meeting someone new or going sailing for the first time, but instead, the first time she heard fear in her mother’s voice, the first time she heard her brother cry over the death of a young friend, the first time her grandfather said “no” to evacuation, “not again.” The ethnic cleansing and dispossession Palestinians experienced in 1948 — the year of Israel’s establishment — was enough."
