We Palestinians never say enough about our mothers. Yet all Palestinians — male or female, wherever they are — share a common reverence for the women who sustain us and keep the dreams of Palestine alive. If there is to be a Palestinian state and if the refugees are to ever return, then don't listen to the platitudes of our corrupt politicians. Kick the professors and their fancy vocabulary from your home. Jackslap the rhetoric of rich posers. Ignore the American experts.

They will have nothing to do with it. It will be because of our mothers.

My close friend Mohammad, a splendid and cheerful person passionately dedicated to justice, sometimes gets depressed when our campus activities are curtailed because Palestinians carry with them such a pernicious stigma. "Only God loves the Palestinians," he once told me.

I know why God loves the Palestinians so deeply: Because of our mothers.

I will avoid discussing politics in this essay. I am a single male without children. I am thus unqualified to analyze policy. I'd rather use the space to do something none of us does enough: Thanking our mothers.

I once visited you, mother, right after three of your children were murdered. Tears covered your cheeks as you recalled breast-feeding each of them. Still you stayed strong. Even as you spoke with strangers you watched over the children and grandchildren running around your home. You fretted over our comfort. You can mourn incalculable loss and console strangers all at once. I have seen you do this many times. Your strength is unreal but consistent enough to dictate how we define courage.

You have told me more stories than I can recall. I heard your voice quiver as you remembered pulling your child's limbs from a heap of rotting corpses. I saw your eyes darken as you spoke about the mushy red clumps surrounding your dead fathers. I smelled the stink of war as you recounted a life of endless oppression.

Your life is perpetual worrying. You comfort our elders and nurture our children. You work harder than any human. You rescue our society when the men are in prison. You constantly recreate the values that make us Palestinian.

Too many times, mother, I have seen you cry. Too many times I have seen soldiers beat you. Too many times I have seen you heave stones at those who killed your children.

And too many times you suffer without appreciation.

Some Israelis claim you happily send your children to slaughter. I honestly don't know what to say to this, only that I don't give a damn what they claim. They don't know us. That's why they are able to colonize us.

I don't want to counter their argument with logic. In this case logic can't work because we are dealing with racists, propagandists, and idiots. I know who we are, and I am too experienced to justify our actions to anybody. I am ceaselessly proud to be Palestinian. That's all I can say because that's exactly what you taught me.

All I know, mother, is that if there were any justice in this world, they would confiscate Arafat's Nobel Prize and give it to you collectively. I know it can't replace all the years you lost wiping blood from bullets, but you deserve it.

Too many times, mother, I have watched you peel off your flesh and use it to cover cold and hungry children. You have suffered the most of a people who have experienced unspeakable tragedy. I am in pain as I write because I have nothing to offer you but the acknowledgment that when Palestine is finally free, you will be the one who freed it.

[Steven Salaita is completing an English doctorate at the University of Oklahoma, with emphasis on Native, Palestinian, and Arab American literatures. A West Virginian with Palestinian and Jordanian parents, he splits his time between the United States and the Middle East.]

Steven Salaita encourages your comments: [email protected]