Palestine: ‘If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time.’ Sarah Dobbie (Australia-at-Large & Linacre 2017) is currently reading for an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, and was part of the inaugural Eden Palestine Fellowship for Rhodes Scholars* trip. In this piece, she reflects on the experience of witnessing injustice, and what we should do with what we have seen.
I
was, and am, a witness. As part of the inaugural Eden Palestine Fellowship for Rhodes Scholars, I had the privilege of sharing briefly in the lives and stories of those living in the occupied West Bank, and in the territories designated as Israel since 1948. I feel the weight of the voices I heard, and the responsibility that comes from bearing witness. The fear of not doing justice to their injustice almost choked my words. But recalling the stories of the activists, journalists, lawyers and ordinary Palestinians I met – not just surviving but living their lives against military rule – I know that silence is not a luxury I can claim. As much as it is about what I saw, this is a reflection
on the fact of seeing – about being a witness to injustice, and what we must do with what we have seen. As a law student, and now a lawyer, I have spent years studying international law and international relations – fields shaped by histories of mass atrocity. I ‘knew’ about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I had studied the International Court of Justice Opinion on the Construction of the Wall, the laws of occupation and apartheid, and the rights of refugees. During my work as a refugee lawyer in Egypt, I had worked with the displaced in their exile. But I had never been standing there, watching, in the midst of their ongoing displacement. When you study mass
I feel the weight of the voices I heard, and the responsibility that comes from bearing witness.
Hashem Abushama (Palestine & Linacre 2017) congratulates one of his teammates after the squad score a goal. Abushama is one of the first two Rhodes Scholars from Palestine and was a pivotal force in organising the Eden Palestine Fellowship this year, along with Nur Arafeh (Palestine & Exeter 2017) (image by Sarah Dobbie)
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