San Jose, CA – On May 16, around 150 people gathered at the Santa Clara County Government Center to celebrate the county’s 25th annual Palestinian Cultural Day. The event, sponsored by the county supervisors and the Palestinian Heritage Committee, celebrates the 30,000 Palestinian-Americans living in Santa Clara County and their contributions to the South Bay community.
The event began with the raising of the Palestinian and American flags in front of the County Building, as each country’s national anthem played.
The opening speaker was Samir Laymoun, longtime Palestinian community leader and lead organizer of Palestinian Cultural Day since its inception. “A trauma passed down through every single generation. Today our hearts break because the violence has reached a terrifying depth. Israel is not just taking Palestinian lives. It is trying to kill the very soul of Palestine.”
Laymoun continued, “The deliberate destruction of schools and universities aims to silence our children’s dreams. This is a cruel attempt to make us forget and erase our history. Here in California, Palestinian students’ stories and history of Palestine are censored in K-12 under vague controversial issue policies and laws such as AB 715.”
16-year-old Mariam Al-Tamimi spoke about her personal experiences with this censorship at her
high school. Al-Tamimi wrote an article for her school newspaper about underrepresented students, including Palestinian students. “The moment that I mentioned Palestine in the article, the Zionists in my class immediately pushed back, ready to silence me, as if my article wasn’t already advocating for those who are silenced. They complained endlessly to the principal until the principal finally decided to take out the article, which I had worked on for weeks, in mere seconds.”
“However, this didn’t silence me. Instead, I was determined to publish my article. “I was able to publish my article in the Silicon Valley Voice, a professional newspaper,” Al-Tamimi continued. “That moment made me realize that they wouldn’t work so hard to silence us if we didn’t matter.”
Palestinian-American human rights lawyer Jennifer Zacharia stated, “Civil rights laws created to protect the most vulnerable and marginalized among us are being distorted and wielded as well. These attacks on our schools, wrapped in a misrepresentation of antisemitism, are naked efforts to silence both Palestinians and advocates for our liberation. These measures aim to criminalize teaching our history, impugn and make suspect our identity and culture, and quell dissent about the occupation, apartheid, and genocide that define how Zionism has been enacted on the lives and bodies of Palestinians.”
Zacharia continued, “We are dehumanized and told that our existence can only take muted, quiet, hollow shapes that don’t offend those who work tirelessly to negate us. But we are still here. We are building institutions and solidarity, and we are cultivating hope and imagination.”
The event concluded with a performance by Al-Juthoor Dabke, with attendees joining in at the end to dance together.
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