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Sarah Linder (c) Catherine Richard |
Sarah Linder decided to embark on a project focusing on the impact of the conflict on women in Israel and Palestine in 2015. The decision resulted in the birth of Political is Personal. Read her story here.
I grew up in a very international environment. My mother is
Danish, and my father is Israeli by origin but has been Danish for a while.
Since my mother worked as a diplomat, I spent my growing years in a rather
global environment and had a lot of friends from all over the world. That
really shaped my personality. The mindset and space that supported my
upbringing was one where things like racism were not okay. These early
exposures helped me shape my mind.
My brother was adopted in Romania, and seeing the children
there only firmed my resolve to do something that could mend injustices.
Someday, I want to do something with Romanian children, and that remains a
dream for the present.
I moved to Israel when I turned 20, and have been there
since. It was not a part of my plan though, although I am Jewish. A lot of
people who relocate to Israel do so out of a desire to pursue Zionism, but I
never had that in mind. I had lived in New York for a year, and came to Israel
to visit my parents, who had moved in to Israel by then.
I have a background in government, diplomacy and strategy. I
majored in conflict resolution and diplomacy. I enjoyed my classes tremendously.
Women in the Middle East and Gender and Society were two subjects that I had
during my Bachelor’s degree. These subjects triggered my awareness, and made me
think. I began to become aware of the many issues challenging women, not only
in the Middle East, but beyond, too. It made me introspect and inquire into
what it meant to be a woman - whether in Denmark or in Israel, or anywhere in
the world. I also learned about Islam, and came to understand how the ideas of
the Western World dominate in the realm of feminism and I gathered that there
is a common misconception that Muslim women are enslaved or oppressed. I also
discovered that there are a lot of double standards.I wish women would begin
defining themselves without society’s interference.
I worked in different fields, and also did my master's
degree in Middle Eastern History. Slowly, I personally came to see that if I
didn't do any work in these fields that didn't tie in with women and women's
issues, there was no point in it for me. I was attracted to the domains of
peace, dialogue, human rights and gender. I finished my MA in the summer of 2014.
By then, I realized that I wanted to do something of my own. I had thought
about a lot of different things that I could explore, but by the beginning of
2015, I began thinking about something that then led to the birth of Political
is Personal(PiP). I wanted to combine some aspect of women's issues
with writing. Political is Personal began in May 2015 as a Facebook page where
I collected stories. I was still working in a company then. By the end of two
months since then, I realized that I loved what I was doing and that it was
gaining interest and readership, and quit my job to work on PiP full time.
In a nutshell, PiP is based on interviews with Palestinian
women in Israel within the Green line and West Bank and Gaza, and Israeli
Jewish women. I look at their stories of how conflict affects them and their
lives, and a lot of different things come up. I saw a need for these voices
because one rarely hears them. Many women I have interviewed so far have been
politically active. I have spoken to a few women who generally aren't so
regularly heard in the Political space, and want to reach out more to them –
which was one of the reasons why PiP came about.
In the beginning, I wasn’t sure know what I wanted to
achieve through this. The vision developed on the way. I wanted to curate a
platform of unfiltered voices that were influenced by UNSCR 1325 and wanted to
find ways to increase the number of women's voices in this space. A lot of
times, outside, people only hear things like "5 people dead" or
"Two missiles fired." There are extraordinary stories of resilience
and these stories need telling. I also find that the stories are useful for
researchers and academics, think tanks and policy makers. The project is aimed
at adding human perspectives, faces and voices to conflict.
It has not been easy to get the women to share. Some of them
tend to view me suspiciously, or wonder if I am a leftist (for the Israeli
Jews) or collaborating with the IDF and trying to get information out of them
(for the Palestinians), or pursuing a hidden agenda. There is a lack of trust
and a fear of repercussions for speaking out.
Follow Political is Personal and read their stories here.