My name is Ruya Hazeyen and I am a Palestinian and Turkish sophomore majoring in political science and Middle Eastern studies. As an international student living in the United States for the first time, I have encountered the most anti-Palestinian racism I have ever come across in my life. Attending an institution like the University of Massachusetts, where it is so normalized to be blatantly racist towards us, I have witnessed one too many questionable things that I have no desire to keep internalizing.

My grandparents are from Ein-Karem, a town in Jerusalem, Palestine. They were forcibly displaced during the Nakba in 1948. They had their homes taken by Zionists and were forced to move to Jordan to seek refuge. I have lived between Jordan and Turkey my whole life. Before moving here, I never thought of my ethnicity to be a political statement. Since moving here, though, every time I get asked where I am from, I feel like I am opening discussion for debate or argument.

Microaggressions regarding where I’m from have do not even phase me anymore. Going to a party and, after telling someone I’m Palestinian, hearing “oh, like, Israeli?” does not catch me off guard. Being met with the classic “oh, I know nothing about the conflict” after being asked my ethnicity has become normal. But it still angers me. My ethnicity and my existence are not a reason for debate.

Last year, as I was going back to my dorm on a late weekend night, a bunch of guys that I barely know in my building started screaming “F*** Palestine” at me. After the attacks on Gaza in May, my name was ripped off my room’s door and was the only name in our hallway to have been ripped off. None of these incidents are random.

I am starting this column to be a voice for all Palestinians on campus that UMass never granted us. In a series of different articles, I intend to recount the racist experiences that I have experienced here firsthand, talk about all things relating to Palestine as well as detail the institutional racism towards us that UMass regularly partakes in.

Ruya Hazeyen can be reached at [email protected].