Home, My Family Consisted of a Palestinian-Muslim

¶ … home, my family consisted of a Palestinian-Muslim father and a Polish-Christian mother, and I grew up speaking their respective native languages to them individually and English, my parents' mutual language, when we were all together. Meanwhile, living in Jerusalem also made it essential to learn Hebrew too. Finally, in that regard, I began learning conversational French at the age of three when I started my primary education at the Lycee Francais de Jerusalem.

However, foreign-language fluency represented only the tip of the proverbial iceberg for Palestinian child growing up in Jerusalem. It is a region of intense political factionalism and conflict where one could very easily become indoctrinated with negative beliefs and expectations of others. My family promoted the opposite approach by teaching me to recognize the common humanity and potential for good in all people. I believe that I can say without exaggeration that few formative social environments are more conducive to the learned appreciation for the value of multiculturalism and ethnic diversity.

At the same time, I recognize the tremendous need for development in the region. The Palestinian Authority spends hundreds of millions of dollars on energy annually, mainly for imported fuel and electricity. The average Palestinian household pays 10% of its annual income for energy. That was the impetus for my continuing involvement in the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting sustainable development in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the self-reliance of the Palestinian people through greater control over their natural resources.

2.

The primary challenge I consider as primus inter-pares pertained to the need to learn multiple languages beginning at a very young age. Growing up in Jerusalem necessitated fluency in Hebrew in addition to my three primary languages at home, where I communicated with my father in Arabic, with my mother in Polish, and with them simultaneously in, English, their only common language. I also began learning conversational French at the age of three when I matriculated at the Lycee Francais de Jerusalem. However, I consider multiple-language fluency less influential in terms of the real lessons of my formative social environment. It is a region of intense political factionalism and conflict where one could very easily become indoctrinated with negative beliefs and expectations of others. Instead, my family and my educational experiences and opportunities instilled in me the ability to communicate with a wide variety of individuals from very different backgrounds and fundamental perspectives.