Kawthar

          When I was a little girl, I went with my family to a foreign country and because my name is an Arabic name they couldn’t pronounce it right, they even told my mother to change it for me to an easy one but my mother didn’t agree with that, she even gets mad. Because she feels that my name is religious. And tell now they still, sometimes call me with the wrong name or pronounce it wrong.

Waed

       At the age of 19, I was working in a laundromat in a kibbutz next to Nahariya with Arab friends. During this period, I decided to wear the hijab. When I went to work the next day, one of the employees asked me, who is a Jew, have I married? Because they have a habit among religious Jews that they wear hijab on their head as a sign of marriage. I tried to explain to them that the hijab has nothing to do with marriage, but this is my decision as a Muslim who prays to Allah’s pleasure, which made them ask me not to return to work the next day. I was very sad about this because they believe that the hijab is a barrier to work in this area that belongs to religious Jews.

Yara

          I remember how when I was a kid, I have been talking to my parents and I said ” knife “, they told me to not repeat that again anywhere, when I asked, they said we are “Arab”, and in this country, Jewish people like always expect to be “criminals ” because of political issues. Regardless of the truth that we are the oppressed but because of our identity and because we are Arab and I so proud of that, we always should think before saying anything, they think that they “own” the whole country, so we have to be careful because they are the majority, a small word can cause a lot of problems. That is an example of how we started to hide our identity in some places in the country, speak and behave like them to stay safe.

Zahrah

          I don’t remember that I have any identity experiences, but I can remember that one day a teacher asked us about how do we identifying ourselves. The answers were different from one to another. when we finish identifying ourselves the teacher told us how does she identifying herself.  after she finished, she told us that we must identify ourselves like her. we listened to her at that time, but now I am thinking of why we must Identify ourselves like others. I have my own opinion, my own religion, my one family, and my own life.

Jwana Namneh

          Being an Arab living in Israel, maybe a bit tough because sometimes we may feel like we don’t belong here. Since I was a child, I heard many stories about the history of the Palestinians, and I grew up with these stories. At different points in my life, I faced racism, and the fact we don’t have some rights that the others have, for example, the education system is so different than the one’s the Jews have, it’s easier for them to enter universities unlike us.

Yasmin

         Actually, I didn’t face problems in identifying myself, because I have the same identity as the people around me, so I don’t feel different. However, as Arab Muslims who live in Israel, I think we have some problems identifying ourselves because we do not belong to Jewish and also, we do not belong to Arabs, so I think we are in between, and sometimes we lost.

The End