Calling People In with Palestinian-American Actor, Writer and Activist Amel Khalil
On confronting fears and implicit biases, being your own North Star, and building bridges for difficult conversations through kindness.
A few weeks ago, I posted a sandwich video about gossip, and how it can save lives. I’d learned about how gossip was redefined by the patriarchy to control women from the fantastic podcast WITCH, in which BBC’s India Rakusen details how the term that dates back to the 12th century is rooted in the word “godsibb,” which meant a godparent or sponsor at a baptism. Gossiping was something that close friends and family members used as a way of bonding and showing affection towards each other; it was a way of communicating with your community. You can read more about the history of how gossip was redefined in this excellent essay by Winifred J. Akpobi.
I received a comment on that gossip video that made me sit up and think. It was from Palestinian American actor, writer, and activist Amel Khalil, who asked: “Are we also godsibbing for the women in Palestine?”
I have wanted to make a video, to write something, to do anything about the disastrous conditions that women and children in Gaza are facing every day, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do it without seeming like an asshole, frankly. Not only was I afraid to get ripped to shreds by trolls (although I love lighting them up in the comments!), but I didn’t want to be disingenuous, or somehow take away from the reality of what’s happening in Gaza as a white woman in the comfort of her Los Angeles home, making a sandwich. No thank you!
I replied to Amel’s comment: “One million percent.” Amel kindly responded with a series of hearts. I DMed her, and asked if she would consider making a video with me. I sent her a couple of collaborations I’d made with country musician Gwen Levey and comedian Ali Lu as examples. She replied, “Absolutely. Would love to.”
Working with Amel, who just might be the most responsive, thoughtful, collaborative person on the planet, to make this video was a profound experience. I asked what she wanted to highlight, she gave me her talking points, I sent her a draft of a short script, and we made this sandwich together:
Afterwards, Amel sat down with me to chat about her work. Here’s our conversation.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
MaryJane: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me.
Amel: I appreciate you doing this, because it's so much easier as a non-Arab or non Palestinian to just stay out of it. So you putting yourself in the line of fire, so to speak, is really wholesome for me, and us.
MJ: I’d wanted to figure out a way to address the topic, but I didn't want to be inappropriate with my voice, so you giving your voice to my platform, and for us to make a sandwich together, means the world, and I'm very grateful. To start off, I’d love to know a bit more about you — can you tell me about your work?
A: Yes — hi to your readers! My name is Amel, which means hope in Arabic. I’m a writer, actor, and performer, and I do a ton of work in the nonprofit space, creating pilot programs that help communities thrive. We try to take what we learn from those pilot programs and move them up to policy on a national scale. Those are my two areas of work, and merging them together creatively is where I love to be.
MJ: What sort of policies are you hoping to help shape?
A: I'm currently working with an organization called Impact Charitable on their Healthy Beginnings program, which is aimed at giving direct cash and guaranteed income to pregnant individuals in Colorado. It's a small pilot program of 20 people, and we're trying to see how it does knowing that the cash is unconditional and unrestricted, meaning we do not tell people how to spend it. It gives agency back to the community to say, “We trust that we're going to give you money that you need, and you're going to know what's best for your family.” And that will help them have freedom of space, and agency, and also have money left over to save, because they decide what to do with their budgets.
A lot of the work we do is to fight myths about poverty. Many people think that others are poor because of their own decision-making, as opposed to the society we live in and how it leads to poverty, and keeps people in poverty. We're going to look at the pilot program, and do a study with a focus on storytelling so that we can highlight how even a little cash injection can help a family thrive. There are a growing number of direct cash programs across America that show, statistically, that people do not waste money, or misspend it. They actually end up saving, and moving up the economic mobility ladder.
MJ: The misconceptions around economic hardship and systemic poverty are wild, especially coming from politicians who shape policies that affect those people.
A: Yes. When it comes to direct cash and guaranteed income, there are a lot of politicians invested in stopping those types of programs. What we’re trying to do is say, here's our pilot program — what are other communities doing? Then we’ll put our data together, and create bills based on our findings. It’s a lot of grassroots work, and several organizations working together — kind of like how you and I collaborated to get the word out about Gaza.
MJ: I want to ask you about your content creation, and what you’re seeing as a response — or lack of response — from other content creators, specifically people like me who aren’t Arab, or Muslim, or Palestinian. How are you seeing it play out?
A: There are a lot of things I can say about that. The first is that I actually owe you an apology for the way that I was thinking — I put a little bit of this in my Instagram story. When I saw you, I was like, “Okay, a white-presenting woman talking about feminism.” As you know, there's a huge vacuum in that people who care about animals, and feminists, and whatever else, are all of a sudden blind and deaf when it comes to Gaza. So even though I politely asked you, “Are we godsibbing for Palestine?” I wasn't going to give you a follow because I was like, this is another person [like that]. I walked in with an assumption of who you might be. So I was happy when you responded so quickly.
The only thing that's going to move us forward as Palestinians and non-Palestinians is that bridging.
You showed me that the more you call people in, it may be that they are, like you said, uncomfortable speaking in a space that they're unaware of — or it could be a number of other things. My fear was adding to polarization, and I had to acknowledge that there was bias in me as well. The only thing that's going to move us forward as Palestinians and non-Palestinians is that bridging. That's step one.
Another thing is, speaking as a Palestinian, there’s a range of hurt. There are people in our circles who are not saying anything, and that’s the worst part of the vacuum. There are facts from legitimate news sources of what is happening in Gaza, and you can share those without getting political. That's where I stop accepting excuses from people. There's enough information. You cannot say you don't know enough to speak up. We're five plus months into over 35,000 people being killed, the majority of whom are women and children. If you have friends who are Arab, or Palestinian, we are feeling this and we are hearing silence, and it hurts just as much as the news that we're seeing, because it's like an abandoning of everyone who we've spent decades building bonds with.
There's enough information. You cannot say you don't know enough to speak up. We're five plus months into over 35,000 people being killed, the majority of whom are women and children.
On a macro scale, it shows the hypocrisy of everybody's values and core principles. It has been this great awakening for everyone to figure out who they want to align themselves with — whether it's celebrities they respect, or organizations they want to donate to. Palestine, as it’s been said, is the litmus test. Where do they stand on the subject of Palestine? Then you know if they're really about all of the “values and core principles” they claim to be about.
MJ: I'm learning about having difficult conversations, and I'm trying to open myself up to sitting with discomfort, to acknowledge that I'm often wrong, to acknowledge my own privilege and racism, and things that I didn't know existed in me, and to have that discomfort be okay. Do you have tips for having difficult conversations with people?
A: I think number one is what you said — to look at our own implicit biases and say, let me turn the mirror on myself first before pointing a finger, to see where this exists in me, or why something's bothering me. I’m a recovering people pleaser, and speaking up for Palestine because I'm Palestinian has encouraged and emboldened me to meet confrontation head-on. Before that, I definitely tried to stay on the safe line of everything when it comes to content creation, especially as a woman.
We quadruple check everything that we're saying. We want to make sure that we're likable, that we're giving the “right” presentation. It's like a perfectionism of our voice before it comes out. I encourage anybody reading this to believe that your voice is perfect as it is. Put out what you're really feeling, your thoughts, your questions. It's okay to be vulnerable. And it's also okay to apologize afterwards and say, I learned something. With content creation, I don't feel the pressure to be a hundred percent right anymore. I just feel pressure to be myself, and that's enough.
I encourage anybody reading this to believe that your voice is perfect as it is.
MJ: I'm also learning that I need to listen and ask questions way more than I need to state my opinion. To say, let's have a conversation: can someone inform me?
A: One hundred percent. Even with Palestinian advocates, there are divides in terms of our schools of thought. I think people who are outside of it are confused because it's like, “listen to Palestinians,” but Palestinians are not all saying the same thing. At the end of the day, you have to listen to multiple sources, and check in with yourself, and figure out who you resonate with. A lot of my content is saying, “Hey, I'm a Palestinian in the diaspora. This is what I can offer. I cannot speak for 7 million people worldwide. It's not possible.” As a viewer, you need to understand that you're just listening to one person.
MJ: Can you talk about your experience of being a woman in comedy? I have many friends who are female comics in Los Angeles, and their experiences make me want to set the world on fire.
A: I got into comedy a year ago. I’ve had so much opportunity, and a little bit of luck, and I’ve been on stages way bigger than what I was prepared for. This also goes back to womanhood: we have to feel that we've earned that stage, that we won a Nobel Peace Prize, before we have the audacity to say we're good at something. As a woman, that internal process has been the hardest. I don't know how many people need to tell me I'm good enough for me to believe it, but I have to remind myself. And then also you realize that the men in the industry — I'm not saying they're not funny — but I've been on a lot of open mics, and the majority of the people in the room are men, and the majority are not funny.
I'm like, so it's okay to not be funny… but these guys do it with such confidence. They don't care if they fail, whereas I have a “you have to get fit before you go to the gym” mindset. I feel like I have to test my material before going to the open mic where you're supposed to test your material. That's where I've seen the most opportunity for growth as a woman is to be inspired by these men, because they do not care. They get up there, they do what they want to do, and then they move on, they survive. It's not the end of the world. If I get up there and a joke isn't funny, I’m like, “Ok, let's practice.”
MJ: I went to an open mic once where a guy was just reading his journal entries and I was like, my God, if one single woman dared to fucking do that, she would be booed off the stage. It was wild.
A: Did you ever consider standup? You could do it. I see it with your edits, there are some where you do sound effects, and there's clearly a big comedic bone in you.
MJ: I trained as an actor, and my place was onstage for a long time. Since moving to LA, I've hit some open mics. I mostly do characters. I'm not a joke teller so much, but I sure do love telling funny stories. Side note, I dated a comedian who told me that I wasn't funny.
A: Maybe there was a projection there. I could go on for days. I'm glad you got out of that relationship.
MJ: I'm out, thank you so much! I want to ask you about the sandwich that you chose to make with me, and about traditional Palestinian food, and how it fits into your life.
A: That's such an emotional bone for me — I don't even know if that's a term, emotional bone.
MJ: I love it.
A: When I was growing up, my Mom would have — a lot of Arab women are housewives, and that's the structure of the home. Every day I came home, and there was a hot traditional meal ready to go. After my Mom passed away when I was about 20, I’d never really learned how to cook the food she was making, and I found so much solace in American or non-Arab communities because it was easier than being connected to all the drama from post 9/11 Islamophobia, and all of the crap that surrounds Arab identity in the West. So I disconnected from not only the food, but the music, the culture, and the language — and in recent years I've been circling back to something as simple as smelling cabbage.
The first time I smelled cabbage boiling, it was in an Irish home, and I immediately started crying because I remembered my Mom's cooking. It's more than just a cultural food with the history in Palestine, like the olive oil in the sandwich that we chose to make. It's more than being indigenous to that land, and our connection to the land — it's something as simple as a connection to my mother, and what I was fed as a child. Being able to reconnect with that has been such an important journey of reclaiming identity and self after so many years of being separated. Something as simple as a sandwich can bring me to tears now, because it brings me home, and connects me with someone that I can only connect with in my heart now that she's gone.
The first time I smelled cabbage boiling, it was in an Irish home, and I immediately started crying because I remembered my Mom's cooking.
MJ: That's beautiful. I'm very sorry to hear that you lost your mom.
A: Thank you. I think that's also what led me to women’s spaces. Once you lose the matriarch, the woman, the root, you realize how important women are, and how much they hold and care not only for their unit, whether they have kids or not, but for the people that they love around them. We do so much. We nurture, we care, we fight, we work, we speak. We're so powerful, and we are constantly being told by the patriarchy that we are not, and then we are being denied that that’s even happening. Even though the loss was huge, I don't think I would've appreciated myself as a woman without losing the woman of my life. So, thank you to all the moms who might be reading this. You are powerhouses. Even if your children don't know it yet, they will.
MJ: My sister was my North Star. She was 11 years older than me, and she occupied that space for me. She died two and a half years ago, so I relate to you on the loss and the fundamental shift that happens in your life when you realize that the connection to womanhood, and to female community, is truly what matters.
A: I'm sorry, and I feel you. You’ve got to circle back and check with yourself to be your own North Star: “How do I do this?” That's where the respect comes from. The thing that I would love to leave your readers with is that no action is too small. Whether it's for Palestine, or someone you're passing in the street, kindness makes such a huge difference in somebody's day. It’s a reminder that you hold great power, and for you to walk with that power.
Learn more about Amel and her work at @amelmkay and www.amelkhalil.com.
Donate to relief efforts for women and children in Gaza at baitulmaal.org
Thank you for this interview MJ!! And for including all the sources that back up our conversation. You're amazing. <3
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