General Discussion

Abuhamdeh said she was disappointed and hurt.

“It triggered a lot of thoughts and emotions that I felt when I was growing up here — being silenced and suppressed for being a Palestinian,” she said. “Saying the word ‘Palestinian’ or ‘Palestine,’ it was a taboo thing to talk about. It was something that I wasn't able to express. It even led me to begin telling people — when they asked me where I was originally from — to say Jerusalem because it felt [like] it was more comfortable for them.”

“But to us,” she added, “the real victims of injustice are those who we were raising the money for, and that's the children in Gaza."

-snip-

“The way [the girls] put it was, ‘We still want to know how this fundraiser was different and treated differently than the one in Ukraine,’” Abuhamdeh said.