[I know where I stand: in historic Palestine. So my first words must be in Arabic. Thank you for inviting me here. It is the largest honor in my life. I salute Aswat.]
Why am I here when I remember, every day of my adult life, what happened to the people of Deir Yassin?
Why am I here, when the right of return belongs to those who, for thousands of years, planted the olive trees? Why am I here, since I am one of many Jewish activists in the U.S. who struggle to dismantle the Israeli settler state?
And most precisely, why am I here when I am one of many activists around the world who are working to build and strengthen the divestment campaign and economic and cultural boycott of Israel—as well as Caterpillar, Starbucks and Estee Lauder—while we demand at the same time that the U.S.-led economic embargo of the Palestinian Authority end immediately?
I say to you here, to all Palestinian and Arab people of the Middle East and the forced Diaspora and to oppressed peoples everywhere, that I am here for only one reason: I am here because Palestinian Aswat asked me to come.
I have long stated publicly that I would only travel here if the Israeli state had already been dismantled or if I were invited by Palestinians to travel here to support your struggle. What an honor to be able to be side-by-side with you today at your invitation. I thank Aswat for giving me this great honor to be here with you, to celebrate this publication in Arabic about [lesbians and male homosexuals].
Sometimes people say something is an honor, but they don’t mean it. I really do mean it. History has woven our destinies. I was born into a Jewish family of factory workers one year after al-Nakba. I am with Palestinian liberation with every breath in my body; every muscle and every sinew.
...
I respect and defend your right to self-determination. I will fight alongside you for every right—for full civil rights within the 1948 borders, for transportation between the villages of the triangle, for an immediate end to the economic embargo against the Palestinian people as collective punishment for electing their own government representative, for an end to the siege of the West Bank and Gaza—at your side.
And I will be with you on the day that we tear down the colonial garrison state of Israel, and Palestine is free from this racist, theocratic, apartheid, imperialist occupation—the day when all those who planted the olive trees will taste the fruit of freedom.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! Long live Palestinian Aswat!
--Leslie Feinbeg, guest speaker for Aswat, in occupied Palestine 2007




















