The People's Record

Q: What are your thoughts about 9/11?
Leila Khaled: l don’t agree with the murder of civilians, wherever it is in the world.
Q: Could you be described as a terrorist?
Leila: Our enemies say so. Our enemies call any form of popular resistance terrorism
Q: What you did was an act of terrorism.
Leila: Who decides and define what terrorism is? As far as I’m concerned, occupation is terrorism. My people and I have a right to fight it. I don’t care what others call it. People have a right. People have a right to fight those who occupy their country by all means possible including weapons. That’s what it says in the UN declaration.
Q: But Leila, if you look up ”terrorist” in a dictionary…
Leila: You, the whole of Sweden and Europe and the USA can travel to Haifa. But l can’t, l’m not allowed to. Not just me. 5 million Palestinians can’t see Palestine. lsrael doesn’t care about international law. Why should we accept that? What have we done to deserve this? We have suffered a lot. Why is what l did wrong? lsn’t it our right to resist? When we hijacked the planes the whole world wondered who we were. Regardless of what they thought about it, they wondered. But when we were tortured in lsraeli prisons, who heard our screams? We had to do what we did in order to get your attention. Our people suffered injustice. No sound person accepts that! No one.

— Leila Khaled: Hijacker (2006), documentary directed by Swedish-Palestinian filmmaker Lina Makboul → watch here

(Source: mizoguchi, via prometeoemplumado)