Twice a refugee amid conflict in both her homelands, Zoya Miari has received far more kindness as a Ukrainian fleeing war, than as a Palestinian. That double standard needs to end, she says.
Amid conflicts in both her homelands, Palestinian-Ukrainian activist Zoya Miari says the world tends to empathise with half of her identity, while dehumanising the other .
But now that the events started in October, I felt that the narrative is changing a bit. So before, when I used to introduce myself as Ukrainian, I didn't need to explain myself twice in order to really see the empathy in people's eyes. So of course, I thought at some point that half of me is being dehumanised when the other half is completely humanised. And with this contradiction, it created an internal conflict within me that I had to deal with on my own.I think growing up as a child, as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, whenever such events used to happen in Gaza, we got used to the media portraying the Palestinians as terrorists or like in a very dehumanising way. We got used to that.
Not only the Palestinians are Palestinians. And yet the whole world became Palestinians. So in a way that truly gives me hope, like with everything that is happening, I truly feel more hopeful than ever, because it's not only about Palestine anymore, it's about the world and just the injustices, hypocrisy and the world. How the world functions.A man walks past pro-Palestinian murals on the International Wall in support of Gaza, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, March 29, 2024 .
TRT World: Can you tell me a bit more about the difference of language and double standards that you witnessed?: So with this double standard of one side of me being completely humanised, the other side being completely dehumanised, I felt this irony within me. I felt it truly and it's not the problem of Ukrainians that they got this humanisation - that is how people need to be treated. That is how every refugee needs to be treated.
TRT World: What would be your message for the world for today? What would you like to tell them based on your background, your identity?: We have a priority, which is to stop this madness once and for all. The humans that are being killed could have been any one of us. And I guess so many Ukrainians are now really getting what's really happening because what's happening in Ukraine, being colonised and being oppressed has been happening in Gaza, in Palestine and West Bank, everywhere in Palestine for the past 75 years.
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