These Children Could Be My Children

November 13, 2023

I am the mother of Palestinian children. I married into the ancient and highly respected Al Ramini family from Jenin. Our children, born in the west, have deep brown eyes, soft brown skin and they stand tall and proud and relish their Palestinian background. I am grateful that they have this heritage, but I am also so very grateful that they have never known the appalling deprivation of everything to do with being a human being that has befallen so many young people looking just like them, with all the hopes and dreams, just like them, but who were born and grew up in Palestine. Anywhere in Palestine.

Mary Kelly’s diarised account of the lives of Palestinian families is agonising. The fact that it continues to be ignored is numbing. I thank her for her honest and unsentimental account. It is being shared far and wide.