Sophia Khalifa: My Life in Israel as an Arab Muslim | Stories of Us

Israel gave me everything. I'm the product of peace between Jews and Arabs, and how Jews and Arabs can live peacefully side by side together, as brothers and sisters. My name is Sophia Salma Khalifa, and this is my story. I'm a Muslim Arab growing up in Israel. I'm a mother of two, and I have a master's from Stanford University. I was born to a Muslim family in Israel. My mom is a single mom. I have eight siblings. My dad has two wives in parallel, and my mom decided she didn't want to live with his wife in the same house and didn't want to be in that village, and she went and moved to Nahariya. This is a Jewish town in northern Israel where she raised us, nine children, on her own. We were supported by the welfare in Israel, by the welfare system, because otherwise my mom would not be able to provide. Israel is a very beautiful and strong multi-ethnic democracy. Around 20% of the population are Arab Muslims, like myself. We also have Christian Arabs. We have Druze. The Arab citizens of Israel receive equal rights. They get welfare. They get education. They get health care. They get all the rights, the protection, anything that a Jewish citizen would get. My Muslim teacher used to teach us everything about the Jews who stole the land. He would be teaching us that we would never be able to become anything in this country, because this is the Jewish country, and the Jewish people would not allow you to become an engineer. They would not allow you to become a doctor. You cannot be anything. And we would have to resist. We would have to fight. We would have to do everything that we can to get the land back. I remember leaving these classes feeling like I don't have a future. But that really contradicted my experience with the Jewish people that I met, because they were loving. They were kind. I was their friend. I would go to their houses. They didn't mind that I was Arab. They didn't see me as an Arab. They see me just as their friend. So it didn't land very well with me. I was with my girlfriend. She was staring, and I was asking her, like, what are you thinking about? And she said, like, you know, I really wish one day to become a suicide bomber. I really wish to become a shaheed one day. That moment really broke me to pieces. On the school break between eighth grade and ninth grade in the summer, I was discovered by a fashion photographer. That sounds really exciting. I should try that. But I knew that this is a choice of no return. I cannot step my foot in the village if I'm a model. I travel to Europe for work, and I spend a lot of my time in Tel Aviv. My uncle, my mother's brother, he threatened to cut off my head for dishonoring the family. And he obviously could not do that because we live in Israel, and Israel protects women. When he said that to my mom, she told him, you won't even touch a hair on her head. I felt so empowered by her. And I wanted to send this message to all the Arab girls, that you can be anything that you want. You can pursue any path that you want. It's very important to note that Israel pulled out of Gaza completely, unilaterally in 2005. They uprooted all the Jewish citizens who used to live in Gaza. All of them. All of them were taken out forcefully. After 2005, there was no Jew alive or dead in Gaza. They even take out the graves of the Jewish people because they didn't know what is going to happen to the graves. And this was a test case to see how a self-governing Gaza would look like. Gaza is a very fertile land. They had greenhouses that they used to export flowers to all of Europe. And the hope in Israel was that we're hoping that Gaza can become the Singapore of the Middle East. This tiny country that has this very good economy with all the greenhouses. And they have the most beautiful beaches in the region. And they can go and fish. They can build. We're going to help them in tech. This is our path for peace. Days after the Jews, you know, left Gaza, Hamas went and burned out all the greenhouses. They burned everything to the ground because this was the Jews' greenhouses before. If people care about Muslim lives or any Palestinian lives in Gaza, you first and foremost want to make sure that their leadership cares about them. And Hamas is a sovereign government of Gaza. It's a terror organization that hijacked the Palestinian people for their own religious cause of transforming the Middle East and the entire world into an Islamic state. Palestinians don't have the right to say the truth. They cannot openly speak about the atrocities that Hamas is doing to them. If they speak against it, they are dead. People keep saying, if you're calling Hamas a terror organization, this is Islamophobia. No, this is not Islamophobia, but this is the fact. I love Muslim people. I'm a Muslim. My family is Muslim. And I'm still condemning what Hamas did. Why people cannot see the truth about this situation? A lot of these people come from a reality that they teach you from a very young age to hate the Jews. The Jews stole the lands to the Palestinians. The Jews are responsible for all the atrocities in the world. And we just need to destroy them. So some of the people are brainwashed. And they're sometimes blinded to their own anti-Semitism. They say, I'm not anti-Semitic. I'm anti-Zionist. Now, what does that mean? It's like saying, I'm for women, but I don't think they should have rights. Because Zionism means that you believe in the Jewish people's right to have a state where they're safe and free from persecution. So how can you stand for the Jews and not wanting them to be able to defend themselves? And the other side, I think it's like a herd of sheep who are just like following whatever sounds good to them. And they think that Hamas is the weak part. Israel is strong. And thus, we need to support the weak. The weak could be a terror organization. And they're not that weak after we saw what they were able to do on October 7th. The everyday American should care about this because the West is going to be next. Israel is just the first. Some of the countries, the Arab countries, or let's take, for example, Iran, calls Israel the small devil and America the big devil. Is this what we want to support in this country? I hear a lot of people calling Israel an apartheid state. Maybe let's start with explaining what is an apartheid. It's a discrimination based on race. Arabs in Israel who constitute 20% of the Israeli population, they're equal citizens. They're getting all the rights from Israel. They have education, health care, welfare, full rights, full protection. They're equal citizens for everything. Where's the apartheid? I'm very proud in being Arab. I'm very proud about being Muslim. But all I needed as a child, as a human being to realize my full potential was give me the securities of safety, the education. Give me the opportunity. Israel gave me everything. I'm the product of peace between Jews and Arabs and how Jews and Arabs can live peacefully side by side together as brothers and sisters. As an Arab Muslim, it's very important for me to speak out about these topics to support Israel. You have to speak the truth. You have to stand with justice. I know the truth. People who didn't live in Israel don't know the truth. And we need to fix it. Thank you for watching this video. To keep PragerU videos free, please consider making a donation.