#PalestiniansSpeak: Ahlam Yassin
Can you give me an example of how the Palestinian occupation has impacted what you do now?
- Well I'll tell you a little story, and I'll tell you how that story may have very well changed the trajectory of my life. I was a university student, I was a part of the diplomat in residence program, and from that program I received a scholarship to live in DC for a summer and intern at an embassy. And I won't say the country's name but it's an Arab country, and I was so excited. You can only imagine, I was so excited. And my mom she was an immigrant Palestinian mom, she's like . I'm like mom, please I have to go. And then she finally gave me the yes, and I had everything in order and just, I was waiting for the day to go to DC. And before the summer trip I went down just to get acquainted with the embassy staff and just acquaint myself with the area, and so on. So in my conversation with the gentleman from the embassy, he asked me, what are your thoughts on Oslo? And I told him, well Oslo I mean we, and I gave him my thoughts which were not positive and decades later we can see that the outcome of Oslo were not positive. So we carried on with our conversation, I went back to my university, back to Philadelphia, this was in DC, I went back to Philly. And the next day I get a phone call from my professor, she's like you have to come to my office. I have to talk to you about something. Okay well that doesn't sound good. So I went into her office and she's like, I'm so sorry to tell you but they have revoked your internship. So they revoked my internship and I was devastated. I was devastated, because I really saw that this opportunity would have changed the trajectory of my life. So they revoked the internship. There was no ability for me to kind of maneuver and go somewhere else, whatever. So that was one very scarring kind of incident that very off the bat, in my young adulthood sent the message that if you say things that don't align politically with the status quo there will be very serious consequences. And so that is one kind of instance that shaped myself and what I thought I could do in life, I guess.