Political is Personal / Israel+ Palestine

     HER STORY #79 -suzan 

Bir al-Mashash

It’s sometimes difficult to define, who I am, but I like to define myself as such: I’m Suzan. I’m a young Bedouin woman.  

I’m basically from the Naqab [“Negev” in Hebrew], from a Bedouin village called Bir al- Mashash. This village is defined as an unrecognized village, which means that it is not connected to electricity nor to water or to basic infrastructure, such as roads and cellphone network. You feel like it’s a home in the middle of nothing – very similar to villages in Africa.  

According to the [Israeli] state, the lands [of these villages] belong to the country, whereas the Bedouins deem that the land belongs to them. It’s a conflict that has existed since Israel was established, and still exists today.  

We use generators and sun panels, and sometimes it’s even difficult to bring water. Our town is “Bir al-Mashash” [“bir” in Arabic means well], so sometimes we bring water from the well, which is what people used to do, and we are in year 2021. And Israel is viewed as a technologically advanced country.  

Software Engineer

I am 25 years old.  

I’m a software engineer in the company Radware [Israeli cybersecurity company], within the field of cybersecurity, in Tel Aviv.  

I’m one of ten (female) Bedouin computer engineers [in all Israe]. We don’t have a lot of women in hi-tech. I’m one out of ten, and my path to get, where I am today, has been very difficult.  

Conservative

I also wanted to tell you a little bit about my family.  

My father is married to several women. Within the Muslim community this is allowed, also within the Bedouin community.  

My parents got divorced, when I was six years old – very young, and we are four children (two girls and two boys).  

She [mother] is a single parent – within a Bedouin village, which is very conservative. They don’t accept that women work.  

Our socio-economic situation also is not good. We have had periods, where we didn’t know, whether we would have enough money until the end of the month.  

It has been very difficult, since my mother and my father divorced, and my father also didn’t want to see us. He didn’t want a connection with us. I haven’t spoken to him for 20 years already. He doesn’t want to see me nor my siblings. If I would walk next to him in the streets, he wouldn’t recognize me.  

And this is how you behave within the Bedouin community. When women get divorced, then you forget the women and their children – because it’s a very conservative society, even more than Islam itself. The man can do everything, and the women can’t do anything. She can’t even decide for herself. We are not allowed to.  

We can’t even go to the kiosk or to a health service center alone – only if we get the permission from a man in the family, the father, husband, the oldest brother, the grandfather, or the uncle. We also can’t leave the village without being escorted by a man. We can’t make decisions.  

Phone

In our village it’s also forbidden for women to get a phone.   

In our village, there was only a primary school – no middle school or high school, and I went to the primary school.  

Once one of my classmates brought a phone with her to class, and she was playing with it. She was a child. She wasn’t doing anything else with the phone. We were in fourth grade.  

The teacher noticed she had a phone and took the phone from her, asking her: “Where did you bring the phone from? Who gave it to you? And what are you using it for?” She [teacher] didn’t think to herself that she [classmate] was a girl playing games on the phone. She instead imagined a scenario, where she [classmate] would be contacting young men [with use of the phone]. She immediately assumed this, and in cases like this, the teacher informs the school principal, who then informs the parents, which leads to the girl not being able to continue in school. The phone will be taken away from her, and she will be put in her home as in a prison.  

To avoid all this, I told the teacher that she was holding my phone. I lied to save her. I knew that her family was very bad, and perhaps it could end in murder. And I had a strong mother, and I received a liberal and free education from her, so I told myself: I won’t get into trouble with this. Perhaps I’ll end up having a small argument with my mother, and that’s it. But I will continue my studies.  

[After the divorce] my mother got custody of us. She is officially responsible for us, but the school principal wouldn’t agree to talk to women. Women are not perceived as eligible to make decisions. They don’t see them as an official body to talk to, so the principal called my father, whom I hadn’t been in contact for years already, and my father called a couple of other people, and eventually my mother got contacted and she went to the school and was told that I had been caught with a phone to which she said: “Was this the whole issue?! That’s not a real problem. What did you catch on the phone?” To which the principal replied: “Perhaps she is talking to men.” “She’s a child,” my mother said.  

In my mother’s eyes it wasn’t enough of a reason to give me a punishment.  

She [mother] took the phone with her, and the incident was closed with as little trouble as possible. I told my mother that I had said that it was my phone, because I wanted to save my classmate. I didn’t want to cause my mother problems or an embarrassment.  

In this community, it’s an embarrassment to get caught with this, as a woman – and violence against women is accepted as a way of educating.  

The Punishment Is Violence

If a woman is supposed to do a certain number of tasks, tasks “a,” “b” and “c,” and if she ends up carrying out task “b” before task “a,” she will get punished for that, and the punishment is violence, and that’s okay. It’s accepted. 

If a man passes by a house and hears the screams of a woman from within the house, the man won’t get involved. He won’t even call the police, nor an ambulance. He won’t try to help her. He will say to himself: Those are the screams of a woman. Perhaps she did a mistake, so she deserves it. That’s how you behave within the Bedouin community.  

It’s Not The People Who Are To Blame

I’ve never hated the community itself.  

I love the people. It’s not the people, who are to blame. They don’t have enough education, and the mentality is wrong. People inherit this kind of mentality, and they don’t know why it’s like this.  

Outstanding

My story began, when I went to ninth grade, and I wanted to study in a school for outstanding students. There was such a high school in the Naqab.  

I had always been the number one student of the class, from first grade.  

My family has a low socio-economic status, so the only thing I could do to shine through was through grades.  

When I went to the high school for outstanding students, I wasn’t as financially well-off as my classmates, and this immediately made them look at me as less than them, so I thought to myself: The only way I can stand out is through studies, and I’ve therefore always been the number one student of my class.  

And I felt good about it. I didn’t let them [classmates] influence me or let them think that they were better than me. All of them were annoyed about the fact that I was better, despite my bad socio-economic situation.  

Responsibility

My siblings and I would always walk to school, and it took us twenty minutes.  

I would take care of my three siblings, and my mother would go to work every day – for 12 hours, from sunrise to sundown, so we would leave for school after my mother had left for work.  

I would prepare breakfast. I would organize everything for them [siblings]. I would tell them what house chores they each had before leaving for school.  

I would pick them up from school on the way back and make sure nobody hurt them. I got a lot of responsibility from when I was small. 

40 Minutes On Foot

Another thing: My mother wanted to work, but she encountered a lot of conflicts with my father’s family and her own family, who wouldn’t accept that she was working.  

When they refused for her to work, she told them: “Okay, I can’t work, but then give me some money instead, so that I can feed my children,” to which they said: “No, we won’t give you money, and you don’t get to go out to work.” “So, are we supposed to just die of hunger?” she asked them, to which they said: “Yes, in our community you are not allowed to work.  

She didn’t listen to them and began working, and when she went to work, she walked for 40 minutes on foot until the point, where she would be picked up by a driver. Why? Because they [father’s family] had told the driver not to enter the village to pick her up. Because my mother wanted to work and hadn’t accepted their decision, they said: We’ll make her life difficult. So, we will threaten the driver [who was taking people to their workplaces] not to pick her up from her house. The driver feared them and told my mom: “I was told this and this,” and my mother told him: “Wait for me on the main road,” which is outside of the village, on highway 25.  

Our village is 16km East from Beer Sheva by the way.  

Permission

Within the Bedouin community the children, by default, belong to the father.  

Because my mother struggled for us and took us with her, which basically is against Islam and against our traditions, they [father’s family] said: “Listen, you’ve taken the children, but the children still need to grow up within the same village as their father for them to be as close as possible to their [father’s] tradition.”  

As a woman, it’s forbidden to leave the village and to live somewhere else, far away. It’s forbidden. If you dare to take such a step, you will pay the price of your life.  

My mother feared dying, as it would leave us alone, so she agreed to stay in the village.  

Although she is divorced, and my parents have separated, she still needs permission from my father and/or his family to do all sorts of things daily. She needs permission, if she wants to take one of her children to a health service center or if she wants to buy something from the local kiosk. They won’t let her decide on her own – because she is a woman.  

If my father doesn’t answer the phone, when my mother calls to get his permission to do something, she will call my grandfather or one of my uncles.  

The situation isn’t nice, and they don’t help us. Imagine what it’s like. It’s like a prison.  

Liberal

I was 14 years old, when I decided I wanted to study at the school for outstanding students.  

I didn’t wear a hijab. I had curly hair, and I liked it.  

My mother has always been open-minded, and she was free, until she got married to my father.  

Until then she lived in Rahat [predominantly Bedouin city in the Southern District of Israel], and her father was working next to a kibbutz, and there she observed people and how they were living, and today she knows how to speak Hebrew, but my grandfather didn’t send her to school, because it was forbidden for girls to study in school, although she [mother] always dreamed of an open and liberal life. 

After she got married to my father, her life changed, for worse.  

Kidnapping

When I studied at the school for outstanding students, I had to walk 40 minutes to the nearest bus stop. We don’t have public transportation [in the village]. It was 40 minutes on foot. It was difficult in the morning.  

One morning when I was waiting for the bus, I saw some of my (more distant) family members there, but I didn’t really know them that well.  

I was 14 years at the time, and I remember them asking me: “Where are you going?” I was optimistic and thought that everyone was like me. I told them: “I’m going to a pre-qualification exam for a school for outstanding students,” and they said: “Join us. We’ll take you to the test.” Oh, that’s nice, I thought to myself. It will save me the money and the time. I’ll get there faster. “Where is it?” they asked. “Ben Gurion University, in Beer Sheba” I answered.  

I entered the car, and suddenly the car stopped, and one of the people who was sitting in the front [of the car] changed seats and sat next to me. Two-three minutes passed and then I felt them covering my eyes and my mouth with their hands and said: “We will teach you a woman’s education. If a woman educates her children, her children won’t turn out good. They will go to prison, and they will make problems.”  

That’s what they told me, and one of them put his hands on my mouth for me not to scream. They covered my eyes, tied my hands, and stuck something on my mouth, and so I understood that they were kidnapping me. I understood the picture.  

After they kidnapped me, a lot of time passed. At some point they uncovered my eyes and my mouth, and I found myself within a room in a building. I felt that the building wasn’t located in my village, because the building was not like the houses of my village, and I heard noises such as trucks, which made me understand that I was in the city.  

They started interrogating me: “Why didn’t you ask permission from us? Why didn’t you let us know that you’re going there? How did you make the decision on your own? Why do you want to study? Who are you for you to study there? Why don’t you go and study with the children of the village?” I said: “I’m an outstanding student. I can study there [in the school for outstanding students]. I have the grades and all the requirements, and I want to be something in the future.”  

They started hitting me in all kinds of ways and to curse me very badly as well. I thought to myself: If they hit me like this now, and this is how it will work, I will curse them too. Because I got angry, so every time they cursed me, I would curse them, and then they would hit me more, so in the end I got tired, and I kept quiet.  

I stopped cursing them, and then they left me in the room for 2-3 hours, I think. It wasn’t for a period shorter than an hour. The room was locked, and so I opened the window. I didn’t have my hands tied. They thought I was too scared of them to flee. I thought of jumping down from the window, but I had realized that I was in the city, and it wasn’t the first floor, so I would risk my life, if I jumped.

When they came back to the room I began crying and got angry. It was a shitty day, and in the evening hours they took me back home.  

This whole time, my mother had no idea where I was. She was in pain and feared something bad had happened to me, but I couldn’t call her, as I didn’t have a phone.  

When I came home, I told my mother: “This and this happened to me, and I know, who the people are. They are “x,” “y” and “z.” 

Courageous Move / “We’ll Kill You”

My mother didn’t accept what they had done to me, and she called the police.  

If you have such a problem within the Bedouin community, you are not supposed to contact the Israeli police, so my mother did a very courageous move by calling the Israeli police, and she filed a complaint against them [the kidnappers].  

One of them went to prison, and that’s how the story ended, but they didn’t shut up. They broke one of the windows in our house and threw stones at us and began threatening us with: “We’ll kill you. We’ll make your lives harder. Don’t think you’ve succeeded.”  

We could have left the village, but we were also scared of leaving the village. If we chose to leave the village, the situation would get worse as well, and there is a 100% chance that they would want to kill us, but on the other hand, that was their plan anyway. We also didn’t have a place to go to [outside of the village], and my mother has a regular job in a factory – not something special.  

I Will Do Something That Will Make Her Happy

When I finished ninth grade, I wanted to do the Psychometric Entrance Test [a standardized test that serves as an entrance exam for institutions of higher education in Israel], so I registered for it, but there were all sorts of problems with this as well.  

My mother would wait for me at the bus stop for them [family members] not to approach me, yet there were exceptions, where I would get off the bus, and they would approach me to hit me, while asking me: “Why are you without a male escort outside of the village?”  

During this whole period, I was in a very bad state. I began to think of committing suicide and all sorts of other things, but I told myself: Because my mother comes home from work after 12 hours of work and pays a heavy price, I will do something that makes her happy. I will go study, fulfill her dream – the dream of getting an academic degree, and I will succeed in life.  

I Just Want A Degree

When I finished high school, I didn’t know how to enroll in a university, how to pay tuition and how to find a student job on the side.  

I didn’t know how to connect with the outside world, and I got my first laptop in ninth grade, in 2015 – it was the first computer we had in my home, and I would begin to study on computer and to learn programming languages on my own, and at the same time I would always search for how to enroll with the university and how to do this and that on Google. 

When I finished high school, I didn’t know what hi-tech was. Even the word “hi-tech” was a word I had never heard. I didn’t know about this world. I didn’t know that there was a degree for software engineering.  

I saw an ad for a program for outstanding Bedouin students, where all financial costs would be covered, including the tuition and a monthly stipend of 1500 shekels. I thought to myself: That sounds good. It doesn’t matter, what I’ll study. I just want a degree and to begin working, and from there I will fulfill my dreams.  

On the ad for the program, it said that one of the requirements was to study engineering, and that I could choose between chemical engineering or software engineering, but I didn’t know what was meant by software engineering. When I saw that software engineering included programming languages such as “C++” and “C#” I thought to myself: Wow, that sounds nice. I know “C#” and I know “C++,” and I like computers. Let’s go study there. That’s how I decided to study software engineering.  

A New World

It turns out I really do like programming.  

In high school I started learning the “C#” programming language, and it was the first time I became acquainted with the world of computers.  

I also always loved mathematics, and when I began learning “C#” and the logic in programming, I grew a fondness for it.  

At the same time, I dreamt about being something different and not like everyone else. I wanted to learn something different, which would take me to a new world. I wanted to connect to the liberal and advanced world and be successful.  

I didn’t even know, what I was going to do with this degree, where I would work etc. I didn’t know. I thought that in the end I would go back to school and teach computer science, and that was that. I told you: I didn’t even know, what the word “hi-tech” was.  

Career Fair

A year into my studies one of my friends told me about a career fair [at the university], and I said: “Let’s go and see, what it is.” Worst case, we would walk around, see what it was and then leave.  

So, we went there, and I saw someone, who was studying computer engineering, and who was going to work in hi-tech. These words directly entered my heard, especially the word “hi-tech.” I asked the person and the people surrounding the student: “What is hi-tech?” The students, who were Jewish, laughed at me. They knew that I was studying Software engineering and didn’t understand, how I didn’t know what “hi-tech” was.  

I didn’t feel comfortable with that, so I stopped talking to them and left.  

When I came home, I looked up the word “hi-tech” on Google and was amazed. I had always dreamt of being part of such a world.  

But it was also difficult for me to understand the recruiting process in hi-tech, such as how to write a CV. I would write them [CVs] the way they were written on Google. I also didn’t know that someone within the company needed to recommend me, and that I needed to begin working [within hi-tech] during my studies.  

I didn’t know all these things. 

Where Are You Coming From?

I like to be part of the Israeli state, but when I began studying and working, I met a lot of different people, and then realized that there are people, who are okay and who accept coexistence, but the majority don’t.  

I really support peace. I don’t like wars. I also don’t want antisemitism to come back again. I look at people in an equal way. I love people and to connect to people from outside of my culture, but a lot of the people in hi-tech were recruited from “Unit 8200” [intelligence unit of the Israeli military], and a lot of them don’t like to talk to me.  

However, there are still people for whom it’s difficult to accept me. Once I was standing in the company’s kitchen. I was preparing a cappuccino for myself, and someone from the company entered the kitchen. Although I was carrying a company ID tag, he looked at me, surprised, as if he was saying: “Where are you coming from?” I said “hi,” but he didn’t answer. He turned around and walked away. There are people like this.  

If I Stop

Sometimes you get irritated. You tell yourself: I’m a good person. If I wasn’t wearing a hijab and they thought I wasn’t Arab, maybe they would accept me.  

I want to connect to people, and I don’t want them to think of me as a bad person – a person who doesn’t accept the other one. I accept everyone, as I want everyone to accept me, and they are not like that. They have decided not to community with me – not to say “hi” or “good morning.”  

Okay, that’s their decision. I say “next.” I don’t stop because of that, because I’ve learnt from my experience that if I let this stop me, I would not be able to move forward in life.  

Better Than Us

The people [Palestinians] from the West Bank don’t really like the Bedouin from the Naqab.  

Before Israel became Israel, it was Palestine, and back then they didn’t appreciate the Bedouin. They didn’t treat them right. They threw the Bedouins out to the desert. They weren’t interested in them. They feel that they are better than us.  

If I meet someone Palestinian and say that I’m from the Naqab, or if they know that I’m Bedouin from my accent, the person automatically feels that he or she is better than me, although one should not compare. I’m a person, and you can’t compare people like this. Perhaps you are better in “x” “y” and “z” but don’t generalize.  

It’s difficult for them to accept, but sometimes I also meet people, who are okay with us [Bedouins], especially people from places like Hebron [in the West Bank]. There is a little group of people, who accept the Bedouins. 

We Can’t Fix The Mistake With Another Mistake

I’m not a person, who shuts up. If I see something that I don’t like, I will say it. I say what I think, and I’m not scared.  

And in some cases, I would tell [Palestinians] that I support peace and not wars, and then people look at me in a strange way and will ask me: “Why are you giving up on the people, who died?” And I say: “People on both sides will die, and we won’t get anything out of it. And perhaps you will die, or I will die or someone from your family will die. Let’s stop it here and try to fix it and look forward. We can’t fix the mistake with another mistake.”  

I think that wars are mistakes. It’s forbidden to take the life of someone else. It doesn’t matter, what the conflict is about. I don’t think there should be wars.  

Our House

Until this day there have been nine attempts to kill me. Yes, nine, not one.  

And for ten years, from when I was 14 years old, I have had days, where I went outside of my house not knowing, if I would come back. Not only have I had this feeling – so have my siblings and my mother.  

There was an incident in 2020, at the beginning of corona, where 30 men stood outside of my home. The conflict started because they decided they wanted to take over our house. They were cousins from my father’s side.  

They had decided to take my house, and my mother and I told them: “Where are we supposed to be?” They said: “Find- or a build a small shack and live there.” I told them: “How is that supposed to happen? And why should I do that? Do you want to take our house by force?” “Yes,” they said to which I answered: “No, you won’t do that.” Then three of my father’s cousins warned us, saying: “Tonight you will sleep in your house. But if by noon tomorrow, you are still in the house, we will take you out by force.”  

I didn’t accept that. I got mad and told them: “Under no circumstances will you take our home. It’s our home. And we stay here, and you won’t take it.” One of the cousins began cursing me, and then he took a hammer and threw it at me. I’m not that tall so I managed to avoid it. I don’t like to be hit, so I took the hammer and threw it back at him, and it hit him. It made me happy. I felt that I did something – finally.  

Within the Bedouin society it’s forbidden to hit a man [as a woman], even if he has hit you. That’s a red line.  

They [cousins] began chasing me and I somehow managed to run away from them and to enter the house of another family, and I began to call the police and to include lots of people to the picture, and by the way, the police usually arrive to unrecognized villages extremely late and don’t give them [Bedouins] the right help. They usually end up telling you: “Find a sheikh, who can solve the problem. Go to the Bedouin court of law.” They won’t try to take care of the problem. They look at the Bedouin, as if we are worthless.  

They Saved Us By Mistake

We went to the police station, and it was during Ramadan.  

We were very thirsty. We hadn’t eaten all day, from the morning, as we had been fasting, so we were also very hungry. None of the people from the police station gave us anything to eat or let us leave the police station to go and get something to eat. Noone was interested in us. They were looking at us, as if we were garbage, and they didn’t make an effort in investigating our case, so in the end, we said: “Okay, we will go back to our house.”  

They suggested we go to a shelter, but we refused, because the moment you go to a shelter, they separate you, so it’s a new prison. Better have a prison with a little bit of freedom than an official prison.  

So, we went back home, and the following day the police had caught one of the cousins, so a number of the other cousins showed up at our home telling us: “If he goes to prison, you will die.” He did end up in prison, and suddenly around midnight on that day, 30 men showed up next to our home, with the intention of killing us.  

I contacted someone that I know, who is Jewish and told him what was happening. He helped us a lot by calling the police and telling them that his friend was in danger of being killed, and the police showed up at our house within five minutes, because they thought that we were Jewish.  

A lot of the police force showed up, including the police commander, who took the incident very seriously.  

If they had been just one minute late, my mother, my siblings and I wouldn’t have been alive today. They were really close. They had managed to open our front door even, and they had one minute to get to the room that we were hiding in.  

When the police came, they entered our village without a police siren. They had turned that off, but the moment they reached our home, they put on the lights and the siren, and when the men saw the police, they ran away.  

The police entered our home and immediately asked us: “Where are they?” “What do you mean?” I said. “It’s us,” to which they replied: “No, where are they? There are Jews here,” and I said: “No, there are no Jews.” 

Yes, they saved us by mistake.  

I Would Like To Change It But I Don’t Know How

I feel very sad about that, but I don’t have a way to change it – in a country this big and with this amount of power. I can’t change anything. I would like to change it, but I don’t know how.  

Politically this is the Jews’ country, and they only take care of Jews. They treat the Arabs badly, but I don’t want to cause all sorts of trouble. I also just want to live and to succeed in life. I don’t want them to take me for inspections at the “Shabak” [General Security Services in Israel]. You can very easily be taken in for inspection if you begin talking about such things.  

Rent

By the way, this was the fifth attempt at murdering us that we experienced, and after it happened, we left our house.  

One of my brothers left the house without his shoes – out of fear, and we left without money or clothes. I only took my passport with me thinking perhaps we would have a chance to travel abroad.  

We left everything. We were in a bad state. We were on the streets without money, at the beginning of corona, where nobody would take us in to his/her house. Everyone was scared because of corona. We had no money, no work. Everything was closed. The airport was closed as well, and how would we get money to travel?  

One family helped us, and we stayed with them, and we eventually began working in all sorts of things to earn as much money as possible, and we rented a place.  

However, renting a place in an Arab neighborhood is challenging for a [female] single-parent family. They don’t allow renting out a place to a single parent, unless they get to speak to the woman’s brother or her husband or someone, who is a man.  

It was difficult for us to find a home. Every time we found something, they would ask my mother: “Why do you want to rent this place? What is your story? Where did you live before? Give us your father’s number or your older brother’s number.”  

My Revenge

The cousin that had been in prison was released after two months.  

You know, my brother did the full military service and was an outstanding soldier, and they [father’s family] also wanted to kill him. In fact, they once did a lynch on him – 12 people from our village – because he refused to kill me.  

When you contribute to the country and your brothers serve in the army, and you do everything, at the end of the day, they [Israeli state] still don’t care about you.  

But despite all this, two years exactly have passed since this incident, and I’m now working in Radware, which is a very successful company, and this year my sister began studying Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at the IDC [Reichman University] and wants to be a future ambassador or to work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She has dreams.  

My brother also began to work. He loves trucks and is now trying to become a truck-driver. He bought a truck.  

My other brother found a temporary job within the modeling industry and wants to become a model.  

We are all beginning to fulfill our dreams, and now we are also renting an apartment. We are beginning to succeed in life, but I didn’t forget them [father’s family], and I want to avenge myself. My revenge is not to do something bad to them.  

Now they live in our house with all our things, so I’m thinking: I can’t sell this house to an ordinary person, because they [father’s family] will threaten this person and will ask them to give them the money and cancel the sale. I don’t want to end this case with being a loser. The court didn’t give them the best punishment, and many other cases they have closed.  

If You Touch Her

Unfortunately, the last attempt at killing me happened two months ago exactly.  

Today I work remotely and every time I find a temporary solution, and I only let people who know me help me, especially Jews, as they have power and can’t be touched. The people that help me have a high standing within society, so I can get help from them.  

At some point I lived with a Jewish family for a full month, and no one from the Bedouin cousins or from my tribe’s family got close to the house of the Jews. They are scared. The police treat them harshly and won’t let them hurt a Jew or do things within a Jewish community.  

Also, the Jewish people that I have lived with said that if something happens to her [Suzan], if you touch her, it’s like you’re hurting us, and you will be punished accordingly.  

We won’t shut up.  

I also told the company that I work in what has happened to me, and therefore they let me work from home – until this will all finish. 

There have been incidents, where we would rent a place, and they [father’s family] would shoot at our house. They looked for us and found us. Once it happened, while I was working from home.  

Talking / What Good Did I Do In Life?

One of my brothers stopped talking for a brief period. I also stopped talking for six months, from when I finished high school.  

It was very hard. I treated myself on my own, through meditation, yoga, and these sorts of things. I began talking again after a while, but I had a very difficult period, where I wouldn’t talk because of fear.  

Once I woke up from someone strangling me. I thought it was a dream, but suddenly I realized it was real. I couldn’t breathe.  

They haven’t succeeded in killing me. What did good I do in life to always survive like this?  

Problems, From Both Sides

And I always try to blossom from this and to use it for good, and I won’t shut up. I will continue talking about it.  

We opened a forum within our community for Bedouin girls focusing on everything that happens to them as in, for example, how they aren’t allowed to make decisions for themselves – even the Bedouin girls who move to Tel Aviv.  

They are not allowed to decide which apartment to rent, and on the other hand, they [people in Tel Aviv] don’t rent out to Arabs – hardly.  

We have all the problems, from both sides. Politically, they don’t accept us. Socially, they don’t accept me.  

Start-Up

Right now, I am participating in a competition, and most of the participants are from places like Ra’anana, Herzliya and Tel Aviv and got the best education. I didn’t get such an education, yet I sit next to them and do the same tasks, and I feel pride in this – like I succeeded in something finally.  

And I want to succeed and to have a startup or a company in the future.  

Another dream of mine is to build a school for engineering in the South, especially for the Bedouin community, to study there and to get the best opportunities.  

Home

Home, for me, is the strong connection that I have with my siblings and my mother – because of what we experienced together.  

My siblings really helped me. My brother, for example, didn’t agree to kill me, so he was lynched by a lot of people. He got physically hurt.  

I have the strongest family connection, and that’s home for me.  

Other Girls / They Are Scared

Although my path so far has been difficult, it has been easier in comparison to the path of other girls.  

There are women, who aren’t alive today. There is a woman that I got to know not a long time ago, who isn’t alive today. Her children have been left alone. The children’s father emigrated, so he is not with them.  

I want this situation to change. I don’t want to hear of killings of women.  

Like I told you, the ones who suffer the most in our community are mothers, especially in single parent households.  

They [community] already want me dead. I can’t do anything about that, and I would prefer to be buried with dignity instead of being scared. Whatever they’ll do to me, I don’t care, but there are other girls, who fear talking, because if they talk, they will get to the point, where I am today. 

And they fear that and of exposing themselves. They are even scared of cooperating with me.

Interviewed by Sarah Arnd Linder on December 12, 2021