We Palestinians do not get a lot of acceptance, and I want to speak about that a bit. Because of that, I also wore my keffiyeh. It’s a demand for peace, for our people in Gaza.
And then I thought, I don’t want to talk about numbers, about statistics. I refuse for our deaths, or our humanity as Palestinians, to be some kind of topic for debate. However many dead Palestinians is too many, and the numbers of innocent Palestinians that are dying is justification enough to say: let’s end the killing. Ceasefire now! [...]
I’m here as a Palestinian woman, asking you to fight for the liberation of my people — [but] not to save me, to save us. I refuse for you to be part of a joint struggle just to “save us”.
I demand that every Jewish Israeli joins this struggle out of personal interest, out of patriotism, out of a belief that we have a deep interest in ending the occupation and in peace. Otherwise, we won’t build a real and equal partnership. I invite you to a joint struggle, in which we both have an interest, for a better life, for a better future, for peace, for liberty.
And I really hope that we will come out of this stronger than we were before, that we will come out of this with hope. We’re really creating hope — hope and belief in our ability to change things. And we can. Together, we are a force. We need to organise. We need a plan. We need to be angry, not just hurt. We need to be angry about this reality, about the fact that they are abandoning us. And only together will we reach a place of equality. Here, now, let’s start to imagine a better future [...] a future of peace and freedom for all of us.
• Lightly-edited transcript of excerpts of a speech given by Sally Abed, a Palestinian socialist activist and leader of Standing Together, at a protest in Haifa on 16 December. Video here