Chicken Fried Emmess

The number of disgusting comments and DMs I received after yesterday’s post about the little girl is beyond belief. These people are furious, not because a 12-year-old girl was humiliated and denied her right to education, but because her story challenges the idealized image they’ve created of Gaza: a perfectly religious, virtuous society where such things supposedly never happen. They would rather silence a Palestinian child than admit that the society they romanticize has problems of its own. And somehow, telling the truth about these problems makes me the one “damaging Gaza’s image.” Today, I’m putting work and studying aside. I’m going to respond to these fools, one by one. We’ve tolerated their nonsense for far too long. Enough is enough.

This girl is 12 years old. Today, she went to school in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis wearing these clothes. Although she was wearing a hijab, the school administration sent her home because her clothing did not meet its requirements for full Islamic dress. According to her mother, her teachers called her disrespectful and accused her parents of failing to raise her properly. Her mother appealed publicly to the Ministry of Education or the organization running the school to provide the garments she cannot afford. A mother was left pleading for clothes, not to protect her daughter from the cold, but simply so she could enter a classroom. But the problem goes beyond poverty or clothing. This is the subjugation of Palestinian women, beginning in childhood: stripping a girl of her freedom and demanding obedience in exchange for an education. A fundamental right is being turned into a bargaining chip to control her. What are these teachers teaching her? That authority gives them the right to humiliate her? That her dignity depends on their approval, and her parents deserve contempt for allowing her to dress differently? Their religious convictions do not give them ownership of her body or her conscience. Yet how many human rights organizations will speak out for this girl? How many voices that rightly defend Palestinian women against the Israeli occupation will defend her when those denying her rights are Palestinians? I fear her story will pass almost unnoticed because it does not fit the narrative through which so many have grown accustomed to seeing us. We may speak of bombardment, hunger, and displacement. We may be mourned as victims and admired for our resilience. But when we speak of religious coercion or oppression within our own society, we are accused of weakening our cause. Whose cause is protected by a girl’s silence? What freedom requires her to surrender her own? The occupation is responsible for its crimes. That does not relieve us of responsibility for what we do to one another. We are human beings with different beliefs, convictions, and dreams, and our society must not be placed beyond criticism. Giving this girl the required clothes may get her through the school gate tomorrow. It will leave intact the power that shut it in her face today. I want her to return knowing that she has done nothing shameful, that the adults who humiliated her were wrong, and that her education is not a favor to be granted when she submits. It is her right, and it is not negotiable. We are not struggling to free ourselves from occupation only to spend our lives under one another’s control. If we defend Palestinian women and girls against killing and hunger but remain silent when their freedom is taken away, we are defending their survival while abandoning their right to live freely. #SurvivalTestimony