Long Beach State’s Muslim Student Association concluded Palestine Awareness Week with Palestinian Culture Night on Thursday.
About 40 people attended the event to spend the evening together as they shared a traditional Mediterranean meal and painted individual Palestinian flags and the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem.
Aaysha Memon, a first-year gender studies major, discussed the difficulties of trying to educate students on the Israel-Palestine conflict when she was in high school.
“We have so many people here [CSULB] to come and talk about this,” Memon said. “[MSA] get[s] to show people who we are.”
President of MSA Leen Almahdi, said that Palestinian Culture Night was to show the campus who Palestinian people are, their traditional foods, music and clothes.
“It humanizes the people [Palestinians],” Almahdi said. “People come up to us saying, ‘Thank you for bringing the wall. My family is Palestinian.’”
“[Students] read the wall,” Memon said, “[and] they become more critical of everything, in terms of the media.”
MSA had displayed a pro-Palestine wall as part of the week’s activities. The Israel-Palestine conflict, which has been ongoing for 50 years, is a divisive topic for individuals within the two communities.
Yaman Jassam, a third-year civil engineering and construction management major, said that many individuals do not fully understand the Israel-Palestine conflict and hoped that Palestinian Culture Night and Palestine Awareness Week helped educate people.
One photo caption previously misspelled Insha Khan’s name. The correction was made March 1 at 8:44 p.m.