Rihab , 29, youth worker.

Well I guess I am Palestinian, so I was born into a different world and into a struggle. Growing up in Australia the Israeli narrative dominates in the newspapers and TV and this contradicted the narrative which I heard at home. Initially it was the feeling that something did not add up, there was something which I knew to be true growing up in a Palestinian household, but once I stepped outside my house everything contradicted that. The newspapers would say the word “Palestinian” equals “terrorist” and I knew I wasn’t a terrorist. So I thought if they can lie somewhere, they can lie everywhere. I guess you could say I didn’t choose Palestine, I didn’t choose struggle, it chose me.

… I always been active since I was a kid, going to rallies with my parents, my father was in the PLO in Sydney and I was going to stuff with him. But I have problems with the term “activist,” its not the bullshit thing about terminology, but I think it is important as certain terms carry meaning and they carry meaning because of certain experiences. Like the word feminist. I believe in woman’s equal rights but the word feminist carries with it certain things I don’t identify with at all, partially because it was a white middleclass movement which was colour-blind. And the word activist now has come to mean the same thing, to be an activist in the west means a very different thing then to be an activist in the Third World, it is almost the most comfortable position of whiteness, because there isn’t the guilt that is usually associated with it, and there isn’t any real price which is being paid. It’s a very safe and comfortable position to speak out about the war in Iraq from here in Australia.

… I grew up in Bankstown and went to Bankstown girls high, I never really attended school, I used to go, get my name on the roll and then leave. I can understand now, on an intellectual level, but back then I didn’t understand that it wasn’t me that was the problem it was the school system. The majority of the teachers were very racist and told me that I was “stupid” so you begin to resent school. It was like they were establishing a power relationship then which it was representative of everything else later on.

I didn’t relate to the education system and failed miserably, but I guess all the other things I was doing were a type of education. People everywhere privilege an academic education over everything else. But I think struggle, without romanticising it, does educate a person in a way that no book can.

I did my own reading all the time. Most of my friends do not have a formal education and yet we can speak about issues in a way which goes deep into the core of things. Out of all the reading I have done reading stuff from African American people has really informed my politics, because of growing up with colour in a white society: Angela Davis, George Jackson, Audre Lorde, people like that.

When a person does not need to struggle they don’t need to think about certain things, like for example in a patriarchal system, there are very few things a man needs to think about as everything is directed at him and set up for him. But because it is not set up for women there are a lot of things women needs to think about just to get by. That process in itself is an education. A man will never learn those things, he can be forced to, or he can want to, but that unfortunately doesn’t happen very often. It takes more than reading a book by Angela Davis to understand the politics of privilege. A man can read books written by the most radical feminist in the world, but it takes more than that to step outside of his maleness.

I think the things you are forced to question are your education, like I said realising that the media was lying about Palestine made me question everything else they said.

…The most recent stark change I have been through has been my identification with political Islam, which I never used to have. I grew up an atheist, and my parents were very secular; but I am Muslim, culturally and politically, if not spiritually. I do now identify with the politics of Islam, so my politics has been redefined, and as I am a passionate atheist I never ever thought that this would happen. Recent events have polarised everything, it is now an east versus west thing, it’s like a line has been drawn in the sand and you have to choose your side. I have chosen my side: there is no question about that for me. Islamist groups around the world are the only people standing up against imperialism. It’s not enough clapping your hands and saying “one, two, three, four we don’t want your war”, it’s a matter of saying “ motherfucker if you come near us we will fight you. We will not bow down to your oppression. We will fight you until freedom" . We are dealing with people who are vicious and violence is the only language they understand.

I have never known a time when there hasn’t been a war, at least for my family. I grew up in a very, very political household, we had pictures of martyrs, suicide bombers, up on our walls, my parents often had meetings at home. But when I went to the Arab world I touched it, I smelled it, I tasted it. I have now been 10 times since 1991. Mostly to Lebanon, most of my family are in refugee camps in Lebanon. I feel that just because I was born in Australia it is not a reason to forget about what my cousins in refugee camps are suffering. I see it in fact as more of a duty as I am in more of a position to do something. I love my family and feel like I owe it to them to do something.