Person of PACC: An Interview with Tareq Elsamna

Dear Dina

Person of PACC: An Interview with Tareq Elsamna Falastin Staff

Every issue, Falastin highlight a different member of the PACC community as the “Person of PACC.” This issue, we are incredibly honored to be highlighting Tareq Elsamna. Elsamna is a PACC board member and a highly respected person in our community. What inspired you to work with the community?

Ever since I came to the U.S. I have been working with different organizations and they all focused on helping their members, but I felt that we needed something more to uplift our community. We especially needed to focus on our kids to preserve our culture and heritage. In 2014 when the President of PACC, Diab Mustafa, called me and started talking about the idea of creating a unique non-political, non-religious organization to preserve our culture, I immediately I told him to sign me up. I knew this organization would fulfill some of my hopes and to sustain and strengthen ties to Palestinian heritage while empowering the success and well-being of the entire community. What do you think our community needs most?

Our community is incredibly vibrant and successful. One thing we need is real representation in the local authority, not only supporting certain candidates running for a certain office, but we need to input our thoughts and conditions and to vote and support our own people whenever they decide to run.

How do you see a free Palestine?

To answer this question, you have to see the big picture and see what the people in Gaza are doing right now to free themselves from the open-air prison that they have been placed in for more than 13 years. Gaza’s people have seen what no other nation has seen before. Gazans are facing the horrific impacts of the Israeli siege and are suffering physically and mentally.

Photo provided by Tareq Elsamna

Mohammad Al-Naem, who was horrifically murdered after being bulldozed by an Israeli bulldozer, represents the fear of every Palestinian. AlNaem was a part of the Great March of Return, one of the largest collective non-violent mobilizations in history. Tens of thousands of besieged Gazans took part in the inspiring protests very single week facing Israeli snipers with nothing but their bare chests and hands.

Al- Naem is every prisoner held unlawfully in Israeli prisons, tortured and humiliated as a punishment for demanding the most basic rights for his people. In my point of view, I only see Free Palestine when the world sees and feels only 10 percent of what Palestinian people see every day.