MANCHESTER, NH – Leila Hasan, a resident of Hebron, Palestine, traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to Manchester to relay her story to those who would listen. On July 7, those listening at the Green Beautiful Cafe on Wilson Street came for an event organized by members of the Southern New Hampshire Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).
The group has had previous gatherings at the neighborhood cafe, such as when they gathered in support of International Women’s Day two months prior. On that day, the group focused on revolutionary women in history. For Hasan’s visit, the focus was on women in Palestine.
Hasan, who is in her 60s, was a child when the Six-Day War between Israel and a coalition of Arab nations kicked off in June 1967. By then, as a Palestinian citizen, Hasan had grown up in a culture that had experienced forcible evictions and a loss of governmental autonomy following the United Nations establishment of Israel in 1948. That event created a tension between the new people of Israel, who Hasan called settlers, and the Palestinians who had lived there for two-thousand years.
Hasan spoke about her childhood memories that included friction between Palestinians and Israelis, and that as she grew up she was surprised to find that the Israeli people who had antagonized Palestinians for years were actually human, like her. Now, as a member of the Women in Hebron Textile Cooperative, she has seen first-hand her own people imprisoned, starved, beaten, burned, mutilated, and killed.
She continues to do her work, which involves making handbags, wallets, and long scarves. One of her handmade wallets bears the words “Women Can Do Everything” on one side while “Men Can Do Something” is on the other.
She spoke at length about children as young as 2 years old being arrested while a famine rages in Gaza. Schools, hospitals, homes, shopping centers there have been destroyed. Hasan said that doing her work on a daily basis is difficult; each day, a new difficulty may present itself, sometimes in the form of patrolling Israeli settlers or soldiers. Sometimes those soldiers enter places of worship to disrupt religious ceremonies.
As a person who follows the Muslim faith, Hasan stated that Palestinians do not discriminate based on color, ethnicity, or creed. While she has never fought back or picked up a weapon, she nevertheless continues to resist the extermination of her people.
“We are not fighting them because they are Jewish,” Hasan said. “Really, we don’t have any problems because Palestine had Christians, Jews, and Muslim people. We don’t look for religion. We don’t look for your color. It’s not a shame for your color or your religion. It’s a shame for you for what you did to other people, how you are against other people, how the genocide happened.”
Hasan and members of the PSL referenced Biden’s continual military aid to Israel as an enabling factor in what many characterize as ongoing genocide. Since its establishment as a nation, Israel has received $310 billion in foreign aid from America, $230 million of which was allocated for military spending. In 2023, military aid to Israel was set at $3.98 billion. In 2024, in the midst of an ongoing genocide, it rose to $12.5 billion.
“As Israel continues it genocide in Gaza, Joe Biden’s red line is nowhere to be seen,” Maddie Egan, an employee of the Green Beautiful and a PSL member, said. “He continues to authorize billions more in weapons shipments to be used to massacre Palestinians.”
“Where is the democracy? At least in the U.S.,” Hasan said. “There is no democracy in the U.S. What kind of democracy they give Iran? What kind of democracy they give Yemen, they give Libya? They should stand with us, not because we are Muslim but everyone has to stand for what’s right. Everyone has to say, ‘it’s enough.’”
Salaam Odeh moved from the city of Nablus in Palestine to New Hampshire when she was 16 years old. Today, she considers both New Hampshire and Palestine her homelands. After growing up in New Hampshire, she became a mother and a wife here. As a mother, she is both proud and concerned for her son, who has joined the Navy SEALS.
“That’s extra hard for me,” Odeh said.
After she invited Hasan into her house, she expounded on her own personal beliefs about the genocide in Palestine, despite never having been personally affected by it herself.
“I think I’m so shocked as an American to see our government is fighting there,” Odeh said. “There is now an American base in Palestine, what they now call Israel, now massacring many Palestinian people, and displacing 2.8 million Gazans. The sad part is, Gazans have nowhere to go, so we have lost over 150,000 Gazan people.
“We mourn not just the death of 45,000 Palestinians killed, the 70 or 80,000 injured, but also there is no infrastructure in Gaza. Everything is demolished. People have nowhere to go, and they are dying from the famine.”
Despite the situation in Palestine being about as bad as it could be, Hasan says the people there are still trying to do their best each day, whatever that might look like.
“We still have hope,” Hasan said. “We won’t give up.”