By Fidaa Abu Assi

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Look me in the eyes. Do I look like a terrorist to you? Scan my features: my teary eyes, my breathless smile, my weary mind, my bleeding heart. What the hell terrorizes you? Which part of me confuses you? Fear not my hijab. I don’t hide bombs behind my ears, and I don’t think that my hair has Samson-like power, either. Fear not my stone. I got no pistol, no machine-gun, no apache, no F-16, no phosphorus bombs.

It’s a stone. Only a stone. I don’t think you think I am too naive to think of throwing a stone to kill you. My stone doesn’t kill. We throw it to stop you from killing. Yet, you stop only to kill. When you robbed my land, I remain landless. Now, you want me lifeless? And hopeless? Don’t you think you were wrong when you made me your choice? No matter what, I won’t give up my Palestine. Fear only my Palestinian-identity and Gazan-personality. Fear me. I’m, and will always be, the albatross around your neck. I’m the angry Palestinian. I am the truth. The truth you fear.

And guess what? Feel free to call me whatever. I doubt your definitions. You kill then you call me a terrorist. Your talks of peace walk a war on me. You mess up everything, even the non-negotiable meanings of words in an Oxford-dictionary. I doubt you as much as you doubt yourself, as much as you doubt your skill. I have always wondered why when you kill, you re-kill what have already killed. Save the bullets. When you kill, don’t doubt your skill. You kill, professionally, nay unprofessionally. You could kill my body but not the phantom of my dead body which will keep haunting your dreams and nightmares, which will make your life too lifeless to live. You call me a terrorist because I am the reason you kill? Still, I do believe you made the wrong choice when you made me your choice to kill. Then, doubt your skill. Had you read about our historical background, you would have chosen another identity to target but not the Palestinian one. Fear us. We are the Palestinians.

 Long time ago, you vowed to eradicate us, to manipulate the long-standing history of us, and to fake new truths and impose other facts. Yet, we aren’t yet extinct. We still exist. 3 years ago, you vowed to mercilessly stab Gaza to death, to make it as though it never existed, and to teach Gazans to never ever think of fighting to live. Yet, so much to your chagrin, your fiery plans backfired on you. Gaza survived. So did we. When you thought you’d mastered your bloody plans of carrying out massacres, we were striving to master the art of surviving these bloody massacres. When you vowed to kill, we vowed to survive.

Give up the challenge. We were born too invincible to die. Blame your God who promised you the land then left you fight till the end of your life and never get the land. Blame your God who promised you something unreachable in our unbeatable hands. Blame your God who chose you an enemy whose spirit and will beat your power and hell. Your God must have hated you so much when you were promised that land. Save yourself the trouble. Our spirit will never die. Fear only our God who created us too adamant to give in and too resilient to give up. Doubt yourself. Doubt your god. Doubt your skill. Doubt your definitions of the words. You are fake. Your truth is fake. Your power is fake. Your hope is fake. Think twice when you make us your choice. Think twice because the truth has a voice. Think twice when you terrorize me then call me the terrorist because it’s too obvious to ignore the plainest.