Palestinian Heritage Quotes

There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist.

My mom is a woman who grew up in a small farming village in the West Bank called Beit Ur El Foka. She only went to school up to 8th grade and then dropped out to go work in a tailor shop that made dresses and different embroidered designs to make money for her family.

I grew up in St. Louis in a tiny house full of large music - Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson singing majestically on the stereo, my German-American mother fingering 'The Lost Chord' on the piano as golden light sank through trees, my Palestinian father trilling in Arabic in the shower each dawn.

We, as Palestinian-Americans... will not change who we are to make anyone comfortable.

As a young girl, I watched my mother hand-stitch thobes while sitting on the floor with a lamp at her side. She would make the small designs of flowers and different shapes. Just thinking about it brings up so many memories of my mother and how proud she was of being Palestinian.

Being half-Palestinian comes with its own challenges, especially after 9/11 and also, working in Hollywood. But denying my own father, the three siblings I have on my father's side, I would essentially be destroying my own essence. So I decided I'm going to be me.

I would like to go and dance in Palestine one day, with great pleasure, great pleasure.

I definitely have my Palestinian gene. I love to play host.

My mum is Palestinian and my dad is British but worked all his life from the European Union for their Foreign Action Service. So I was born in Hammersmith but moved away when I was one. That's when dad joined the European Commission.