A Palestinian you should know: Amira Mattar
Attorney. Currently the Michael Ratner Justice Fellow at Palestine Legal.
Palestine in America (PiA): What balad(s) is your family from?
Amira Mattar (AM): Dad is from Beit Jala, mom from Egypt.
PiA: Was there a moment(s) that drove you to begin your career?
AM: Some of my most formative moments in life were spent in Palestine as a child or during my coming of age. I fell in love with all the beauty around me-- my cousin’s laugh, my aunt’s embrace, the sunsets, the way you check in on neighbors, haggle for goods at the souk, the way we celebrated marriages. It was a stunning example of a people insistent on living-- an unmistakable act of defiance. The beauty consumed my life, and by extension, anything that threatened it. It became clear to me that my role was not to dwell on what I fell in love with, but to work for what I intend to preserve. At the time I believed the best way to respond to the circumstances around me was through the law. A lawyer speaks a particular language understood by institutions of power. If I learned this language, and maybe if I spoke loud enough, things would change. I was quite young when I had to make the decision to pursue law and my views on the totality of the law and the impact of lawyers have since changed, but there remains an acknowledgement of the profound impact law has on affecting our circumstances.
PiA: What is your earliest memory of participating in political work?
AM: There weren't a lot of Palestinians around in Seattle when I was growing up. I found myself needing community to be with, especially as the bombs dropped over Gaza and the world felt so unbelievably cruel (Operation Pillar Cloud, Operation Protective Edge). I was yearning to be with others who understood the pain and the urgency of the moment. So when I found an active Palestinian community on Twitter (when Twitter was first emerging), my access to political organizing greatly expanded. I believe my earliest memory, with the resources I had at that time, was participating in a worldwide hashtag hour for political prisoner hunger strikes. Because I was younger when I began exploring my political voice on twitter, I was also exploring my identity, my belonging, my authenticity, and so forth. Trying to figure out ways to combine an intimate connection I had with Palestine and my personal development with these emerging public platforms. Through twitter I later found ways to plug in: local protests happening in my area, organizers to connect with, etc. That eventually paved the pathway to organizing more intensely on my college campus.
PIA: How does Palestine play a role in your work?
AM: Palestine was my first language. It was my introduction to understanding systems of oppression and a sense of justice. It was also Palestine that taught me what a people’s struggle for freedom looked like-- it helped me to grasp onto the struggle for Black justice, for Jewish safety, for queer liberation. Palestine remains my focal point in understanding the world around me-- it is the reason I am prompted to question the stories the system has told of itself, to interrogate the history we have been taught, to see past popular stigmas, to look out for the voices not given a platform.
PiA: What’s a Palestinian adverb/quote/person/poem/song that you often reflect on in this work?
AM:
هدي يا بحر هدي طولنا في غيبتنا ودي سلامي ودي للارض اللي ربتنا وسلملي على الزيتونه على اهلي اللي ربوني
This was my sedo’s favorite song. He was a gardener and a taxi driver. We were generations apart and even languages apart at times. He couldn’t necessarily identify with my love for Rafeef Ziadeh, Suhair Hammad spoken word, Edward Said books-- but he often played folklore songs about the land he loved and gave life to. It was my Sedo in all his simplicity who resembled all that I loved about Palestine, as he hummed his songs, “hadi ya bahr, hadi…”
PiA: What do you hope to achieve in your line of work?
AM: As a lawyer I have somewhat of a two-fold objective. One is to lend the tool of law wholly in service of peoples’ movements and their demands; the other is to challenge injustice when the law is used to legitimate structures of oppression (admittedly this is a more limited space). I have learned all the ways in which the law can be deployed as a vehicle-- to exploit, destroy, and lend credence to. But I have also seen it strengthen, validate and uplift. I hope that with this knowledge I can be in full service to the people, the peoples’ movements, and their freedom demands. I am here to build with others who work towards a freer future.
PiA: Many times, Palestinians endure marginalization on all sides of the aisle -- what obstacles do you face/have you faced, and how have you overcome it?
AM: I grew up in a majority white affluent community where being a Palestinian was a liability. You were either attacked or exotified. So you either assimilated or dealt with the consequences. And as a Palestinian Christian, I was commonly placed in a precarious position with identities forcibly in tension with one another. In this country my Christianity almost acted as a redeeming quality to compensate for my being Palestinian. A saving grace for being too Eastern, too Islamic, too not-white. Identity is always political; and mine were made to be contenders in a ring. There were also some moments where I found myself among Palestinians who had never met a Palestinian Christian before. With that came its own form of intragroup exotification, and even ostracization, that dismissed the deep roots of Eastern Christianity in Palestine. It felt as though, in whatever circle I ran in, I would always belong to the minority. And for those who are dispossessed and in a lifelong quest for belonging, I can only explain in so many words this pain. But overall being among Palestinians provided me some of the solace I needed since my other communities were divided by even stricter lines (be they religion, gender, class or what have you). I learned to embrace all parts of me, regardless of whether they’re acceptable to you or conform with your ideals.
PiA: What’s your advice to folks looking to deepen their political journeys?
AM: Dig into the roots of justice and oppression. Seek out information about struggles for justice throughout history. My political journey took a sharp dive when I was immersed in material relating to issues I didn’t know anything about. I was reading books and watching documentaries about the construction and fluidity of race in U.S. history, the predatory surveillance system over welfare recipients, movements for farmer and laborer rights, the criminalization of sex workers, and so forth.
PiA: How do you see the Palestinian diaspora intersect with issue based work amongst other communities?
AM: There is a rich history between Palestinians in solidarity with other struggles, and vice versa. And over the years there has been a push to make these intersections meaningful and accountable-- particularly with regards to addressing the deep anti-Black and homophobic strains running through our communities. It’s panned out in long overdue educational conversations, accountability processes, and fierce organizing around how to tackle your contribution to oppression and how to show up for communities in the ways they ask us to (and not to).
PiA: How would you define solidarity?
AM: Solidarity is to recognize that all struggles for justice are linked by a common source of oppression. To recognize that your community’s marginalization is a product of a society that has chosen to exploit people and lands rather than value their humanity. This arrangement harms multiple groups and manifests itself in different ways. It is no wonder why we see those driven by capitalist, imperialist and right-wing values associate together to oppose anything which threatens their privilege-- they even move together to pass anti-black and anti-protest laws.
But in turn, it also means that we are linked together in our strength and unity. Our demands when informed by collective liberation goals are more powerful and sustainable. It means we are working towards a world where the walls have not only fallen in Palestine but also right here in the U.S. Where Black lives are valued and cared for unreservedly. Indigenous people are honored and their lands cherished. Where the safety of all people is intertwined and we dismantle all forms of antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism together. Overall, solidarity is a partnership. It is to honor, learn from, ache with, move with and show up for these communities.
PiA: What do you want people to know about you/your experience as a Palestinian in this work?
AM: Simply walking through the day as a Palestinian is a mountain to climb on its own. It’s a type of pain that is carried and there are a number of ways you find yourself coping with what feels like a race against time and erasure. Especially to be a Palestinian visible and public in this work, it’s not hard to find that the otherwise intimate lines between self, growth, development and identity are blurred under the lights of exposure. Needless to say there are very few moments to rest!
But to walk through the world as a Palestinian is also an act of open of resistance. I am in awe of the fierce passion, resolve and courage of Palestinians who stand tall in the face of immense repression. Not only do they rise, but they laugh and sing and celebrate. Palestine and Palestinians taught me to love life. So I am really indebted to the people in my life, particularly the Palestinian women, who have taught me what it is to be a Palestinian. They are physical embodiments of resilience in all its forms.
PiA; What does a free world mean to you?
AM: I love this question. I don’t know what a free world would look like though I am making more of an intentional effort to visualize it (thank you to all the radical artists helping us with that!). But I know what it must feel like: a world with no borders, where prisons and police do not exist because Black lives are honored and safe, where we value people over dividends, where we believe women, where refugees return. In my direct situation, a free world means that my father might enter his homeland not as a visitor or outsider, but as a man returning to home. And that I might one day join him.
PiA: Was there a moment that made you consider leaving political work? What was it and what kept you working in politics?
AM: Palestinians are intentionally targeted so that they have a million reasons to leave political work. There is an entire repression machine of tools and laws wielded against the Palestinian voice because of its deeply moving power. It’s not easy to be blacklisted online and horribly smeared. It’s not easy teaching about Palestine at your school knowing you might be punished for it later. And it’s certainly not easy to have really tough conversations within your community and even among family to address harmful words and behaviors.
The mere fact that this repression network exists should speak volumes alone. It is absurd the extent of resources and time spent devoted to restricting the Palestinian identity and all expressions of it. They try to falsely brand you, “cancel” you, and even pass laws to clamp down on your right to stand for Palestine. Because Palestinans have been sharing their powerful stories, people are becoming increasingly conscious of the violence committed against Palestinians (and which they take part in). They’re being challenged to oppose either their complacency or indifference, and to treat Palestinian humanity no differently than their own. In other words, the fabric of the world is changing and time is running up.
I stay in this work becausePalestinians still haven’t returned to their homes. They shouldn’t have to live another day under bombs, among Occupiers and within cages. And in the grand scheme of things, these consequences are quite different than what they face in the homeland. Palestinians have been imprisoned and killed for simply being authors, poets and lawyers-- because they dared to use their voice. But the truth is, even non-politically-active Palestinians are already in the crosshairs of the Israeli state. Your existence has already been relegated as a “demographic threat” in a settler-colonial project insistent on your erasure. Doing “political work” to resist this, at the end of the day, changes very little other than the odds of your fate.
