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July 8th, 2023 
Awake Goy How can anyone dream? Or believe that there is hope in the world? Really, how??
Why must they break us every time we try to dream? Every time we feel hope, they crush it. We try to express ourselves and they silence us, we try to refuse and they destroy us, we try to move on and they provoke us, we try to get angry and they imprison us. If we take up arms, they call us terrorists and kill us, and if we try to resist through art, they bomb us. Why do we have no right to dream like any other human being created in God’s image? Why are our dreams nightmares full of ghosts and trauma and horrible memories, full of blood, murder and bombs?
Enough. I’m tired of feeling this grief over young men, women, and children, over youth and babies who die every day in the camp. Even the living are not really alive. I want to carry this camp away, whisk it off in the middle of the night, and flee with it to a far away place that no one knows of, a safe place that has more love than this. Because enough.
There is growing awareness in the U.S. that Israel has only one answer to Palestinian resistance–brutal violence.
Our work is providing an ever-larger audience around the world with a deep understanding over Palestinian dispossession, the role we all play in perpetuating it, and the work advocates are doing to fight it.
Enough! We have a right to live!
My father’s generation and my grandfather’s have lost their hope.
They stopped dreaming a long time ago, and now this generation is losing it as well. What a shame. I mean if you ask a child from the camp what he wants to be when he grows up, he’ll tell you, “a martyr.” Oh God, what a heart-wrenching dream. Do you know why that is the answer? Because quite simply, there are not many options in the camp, and the easiest option in Palestine is to be a martyr because your dream is % 100 guaranteed. The heartache is too much.
I met my dream by chance through a theater called “Freedom” in the Jenin camp. I was a child who had a dream, but the dream was still foggy, not yet clear. Yet with time, I began to discover that I love the camera, I love to write stories, and I also love acting. There in the theatre, I began to build a special place for myself. I began to express myself and my feelings. My voice began to be heard. I started to fear that I would lose my dream. I began to defend it in every way. Through theatre, film, and books I defend women, children, Palestine, the camp. That is where I found my way to resist, where I succeeded in realizing a small part of my dream. This theatre was the home of my dreams. It’s like when you find that light at the end of the tunnel. The theater helped me overcome significant traumas that the occupation has caused my generation.
In 2002, when they invaded the Jenin camp, they destroyed us emotionally and psychologically. They destroyed the future of an entire generation. One of these traumas was when the army killed Riham al-Ward in front of her classmates at school. This is one of our memories. I remember the next day we draped Riham’s school uniform that was covered in blood on her seat and placed roses on it, and continued the lesson with an ugly memory etched in the brain of every girl among us.
21 years later, a few days ago, they invaded the Jenin camp once again.
They blew up houses, killed people, and drove people out of their homes.
It’s heart-stopping. They blew up part of the Freedom Theater. They don’t care about houses or theaters or schools or hospitals, they don’t want them. They want us dead or to submit to their occupation. But we are a very stubborn people, we love life.
My love, the Jenin camp, the Freedom Theater, Juliano 
Thank you, Elan, for translating 
Editor’s Note: The article first appeared on Maryam Abu Khaled’s Facebook page, and was translated by Elan Cohen.
Maryam Abu Khaled
Maryam Abu Khaled, born in Nazareth in 1991, started in the theater when she was 15. She completed a training program at the Freedom Theater in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin. She has performed around Palestine, Europe, and the US. One of her projects is the documentary Art/Violence, inspired by the actor Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was killed in 2011. Since the 2016 season , Maryam Abu Khaled has been a member of the ensemble at the Gorki theater in Berlin, Germany.
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