Embroidery from Palestinian thobe | Ma’moun Othman / CC BY-SA 4.0
As a genocide survivor who had relocated to New York from an open-air prison in Gaza in August 2024, I wondered what it would mean to be a Palestinian from the perspective of Palestinian Americans.
Was there a space in America that kept them connected with their Palestinian identity? Where was it? How were they supporting the homeland? What challenges faced them during the ongoing genocide?
A month after my arrival in America, I began searching online for information about Palestinian American communities in New York and New Jersey. I was surprised by how many websites I found.
Clicking on one of the links that caught my attention led me to a Palestinian American Community Center (PACC), a nonprofit organization and community space established in 2014. I saw an address in Clifton, New Jersey. Curious to learn more about this Palestinian American group, I decided to join one of their events.
A group of young Palestinians were assembled in a well-lit community center hall. The girls’ clothing was very mesmerizing: elegant, long, embroidered dresses that represent where they are from in Palestine.
There were gorgeous young girls with braided hair in the middle of the group, wearing long, loose, white embroidered thobes, traditional Palestinian dresses, adorned with red square chest panels and different floral motifs, each one typical of a specific place in Palestine. “Which city does your thobe represent?” I asked one of the girls. “This thobe is Yaffawi,” she smiled: “This means it represents my city Yaffa, Palestine.”
The boys wore black pants with wide belts and leather shoes. They were covering their heads with Palestinian black and white kaffiyeh, a traditional headdress.
At first, I thought the group was going to present a play. It wasn’t until I heard the lyrics “W ala dalouna w ala dalouna”—a clip from the Palestinian traditional song “Dalouna”—that I began nodding my head gently, as the song had me spellbound. With their hands held on one another’s shoulders, I observed them as they stepped forward, forming a line. Their left feet crossed over their right feet multiple times before they transitioned into turns, twirls, and knee lifts.
They were dancing Palestinian dabke, a Levantine folk dance that channels sentiments of outrage, sorrow, pride, and resilience, definitive of Palestinian struggle since 1948.
As the dancers spun and stomped, Palestinian flags hanging on the surrounding walls fluttered. These dabke sessions take place weekly as part of the regular programming at the Palestinian American center. The Clifton PACC offers educational, cultural, and social programs celebrating Palestinian heritage––breathing life into the minds of Palestine’s future generation—and supports the Palestinian diaspora in New Jersey and New York.
Gazans in exile are accustomed to witnessing their families in the homeland from afar, and they are constantly haunted by a pervasive feeling of fear for their safety, dreading anything that could hurt their flesh and blood kin.
In late 2023, when the Israeli army began its remorseless massacre of Palestinians living on Gaza’s mere 141–square-mile strip of land, the lives of these Palestinian American families were turned upside down in horrific ways. As I learned, many diaspora Palestinians have become unable to sleep, knowing that their families are not safe even in their homeland. By the fall of 2024, the families of the Palestinian Americans I was meeting had endured for more than a year the unending slaughter, settlement expansions, forced displacements, famine, indiscriminate bombardments, and repetitive cycle of ground offensives in Gaza.
I understood their pain. I am a Palestinian from Gaza, and I had lost both my mother, a UN worker, and my sister, a physiotherapy doctor, after several relentless Israeli aerial attacks that indiscriminately targeted our densely populated area with impunity.
I had experienced firsthand what it means to watch your own family and relatives living inside makeshift tents, being slaughtered, and enduring months of cold, famine, and suffering from the buzz of the drones striking on a daily basis.
With a heavy, broken heart, I always ask myself the same questions every night before I try to fall asleep: “Did my family find something to eat that might keep them alive? How many hours did my 10-year-old brothers’ thin bodies endure the freezing weather while surviving on only two 16-ounce bottles of water? Where did my family seek refuge after their tent leaked water from the heavy rains? Will they survive? Will we ever be reunited again?”
I have a profound sense of shame whenever I go to a restaurant, take a warm shower, or even lie down on a bed with a thick mattress while my family in the open-air prison lacks these fundamental necessities. That is why I generally try to eat only what they can eat and often shower with cold water.
Due to the shortage of telecommunication networks in Gaza, it is a rare, lucky day when I hear my dad’s voice on a one-minute international phone call once every three weeks. “Dad, are you all alive? Where are you now?” I ask, with a trembling voice.
For Palestinians in the diaspora, holding on to their Palestinian identity is not only a way of exhibiting their nationality; it’s also a way to keep the dream of a free Palestine alive. In this journey, the Palestinian American Community Center plays a crucial role.
At its early stages, PACC consisted of 15 members, led by the board president Diab Mustafa and his daughter, executive director Rania Mustafa.
Basma Bsharat, the organization’s current education director, is a Palestinian American, born and raised in New Jersey. Her family is from Ramallah, in the beating heart of the occupied territories. Like thousands of our Palestinian families, Basma’s relatives were expelled from their homes in Palestine during the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when Israel razed and occupied historic Palestine, displacing over 750,000 people.
Basma and her family began attending events at the community center in 2021, believing it would serve as a solid foundation for rich cultural and traditional Palestinian gatherings. To Basma and her family, this center became their haven, where Palestinian American families congregate to tell their stories to one another, forge deep connections, and participate in cultural festivals that delve their roots deeper into their heritage and where they belong.
September 2024 marked Basma’s first anniversary as education director at the center. “Before I was a full-time staff member at PACC, I was part of the community. My family and I always made sure to attend events at PACC. When we go there, we feel proud of our heritage and culture,” she said.
“What is really unique about PACC is that it is for everybody from the babies and the youngest to the elderly.”
In recent years, PACC has launched numerous programs that aim to educate Arab Americans about Palestine. The Homeland Project is a monumental initiative aimed at strengthening the identity of Palestinian American children by organizing yearly trips to Palestine. Through these journeys, they connect with their Palestinian roots, hear stories filled with love, anguish, happiness, and courage, and visit numerous historical and religious sites in Jerusalem, Hebron, and other Palestinian cities. This firsthand experience empowers Palestinian Americans with a stronger voice. Witnessing unfiltered realities on the ground and learning about their heritage and historical events help them share authentic stories and challenge the occupation’s attempts to distort and erase the Palestinian narrative.
Tatreez (stitching) classes and performance workshops— like the dabke performance I witnessed on my first visit to the center— is another way to weave together the past and present. Tatreez, a centuries-old art form, is like a thread that binds generations, with its colorful stitches narrating stories of resilience and heritage, beautifully etched into Palestinian textiles. The community center also offers online courses about Palestinian history, culture, traditions, and the broader context of social justice issues.
I return regularly to enjoy the dabke sessions at the community center stages every week. For Palestinians and Palestinian American alike, the dance evokes deep emotions of pride and perseverance. Our flag doesn’t just wave in the wind; it waves in the hearts of these families, reminding them of their roots and heritage. The Palestinian dabke program is only one of many rich and prominent programs held at PACC.
For Palestinians all over the world, this folk dance is never a mere moving of bodies in a rhythmic way; it’s an expression of mixed sentiments of outrage, sorrow, and pride, simultaneously.
Since 1948, we have been compelled to bottle up these feelings inside our occupied hearts. But not when we are participating in the dabke program. With stomping feet that express outrage at subjugation, and our heads held high in defiance, we can glimpse, however briefly, a vision of a Palestine freed—from the river to the sea.
Gaza children must get help!