my name is Simona Turkey and I’m a
Palestinian and I come from a family of
Palestinian refugees my father’s family
fled to Lebanon in the 1940s on refugee
travel documents it wasn’t until he was
12 that my father was given the Austrian
citizenship and because of that here
stands a perfect image of a privileged
teenage girl who’s never struggled with
the realities of the real world I’ve
never needed to worry about paying for
my school or having a roof over my head
and I’ve certainly never had to go to
bed fearing for my life but you see the
two million Palestinians living in the
West Bank and the 1.5 Palestinian
refugees are not as fortunate as I am it
breaks my heart to see that my people my
community are being dehumanized in a
sense that millions are being killed or
deprived from their basic necessities
and I think to myself how society been
able to turn a blind eye through the
brutal mistreatment of Palestinians
rings occupation how society been able
to belittle the importance of
Palestinian human lives to an extent
where no one intervenes through the
bloodshed and terror of this conflict
and only few who are lucky like me get
to lead normal healthy lives I wanted to
look at this concept of dehumanization
on a large scale to understand the
situation was back and when I did I
realize it a signal peace in all parts
of the world 130 thousand thousand
Mexicans have been slot in the Mexican
drug war four hundred and seventy
thousand Syrians have been killed in the
Civil War and one thousand and five
hundred Sudanese have been slaughtered
in the ongoing turmoil I’m stating all
these numbers but what do they really
mean well they mean that 130,000
Mexicans who look like this
four hundred and seventy thousand
Syrians who look like this and one
thousand and five thousand Sudanese who
look like this how are the people
responsible for these killings able to
justify themselves so many died in the
most gruesome ways and it seems that
little or no action has been taken by
any world leaders to seek justice and
peace for these people because the some
they’re viewed as less important and
this dehumanization of people can
structures for a skin color systemic
racism has degraded the human value of
African Americans in the u.s. to an
extent that campaign seeking justice
loudly need to tell you that black lives
matter self about these global issues I
wanted to understand why the
humanization occurred according to
Social Psychology people recognized two
kinds of social groups an in-group and
an out-group an in-group is a social
group in which people identify
themselves to and the out group being
vice versa and people can have multiple
in groups according to race age
nationality and so on so for example my
in groups would be Middle Easterners
seventeen-year-olds or if I liked it it
then the girls for my knitting club
these would be the group of people in
which I feel I belong to and the out
group would be everybody else such as
Russian Olympic gymnast so a bunch of
eight-year-olds in Timbuktu and so
dehumanization occurs because our brains
tend to view the out-group as less of
humans and this doesn’t necessarily
motivate people to be cruel but what it
rather does is stimulate a moral
indifference in which we recognize that
something is terribly wrong yet we say
or do nothing subject to this bias for
an in-group over our out group you see I
never realize how true this was until
last week I want miss trip to Cambodia
I’ve met our tour guide and he was such
a lovely man he’s very sweet and we had
just arrived after our 12-hour trip from
here to Cambodia and oh here’s the thing
they lost our luggage they lost our
luggage we’re on our way to our hotel
and our tour guide so it’s talking to us
about the Cambodian genocide that ended
in 80s
and how his father was killed in it now
I was thinking oh god this must be
horrible but I can’t really think about
this right now I mean the airport just
lost my luggage and how soon can I get
deodorant because I’m sure I smell
disgusting and so you see I sympathize
with this man but I didn’t really feel
any form of deep pain for him but as the
days went on I started to feel this
sense of guilt as I am Pereira Lee
integrated into the Cambodian community
on our third day all right tour guide
took us to a killing field where
thousands of Cambodians were slaughtered
in the Cambodian genocide and as he was
talking about the history you could hear
the pain in his voice and see the tears
in his eyes and in that moment I knew
that what he was feeling is exactly what
I feel towards the palestinian-israeli
conflict later that day he took us to a
prison where they kept victims in the
genocides and we actually got to meet
one of the victims as he was sharing his
story I felt my heart drop as he was
sharing these his awful memories in
details and so you see my reaction to
the Cambodian genocide was much
different than it was in the beginning
of the trip
I built this empathy through learning
something new about this nation and in
the end I didn’t look at their pain as
any less than the pain of my people who
suffer back home not everyone is able to
travel halfway across the world to
empathize with a different nation and
not everyone has to do
we’re also concerned for looking off our
in-group that we tend to forget that the
odd group are people too but if we all
tried a little harder to educate
ourselves about these different parts of
the world then there will start to
become this mentality in which we
identify with everyone reading a book or
an article or just simply watching a
documentary can go a long way that’s why
having different skin colors different
gods and different traditions there will
always be commonalities between us and
if we just took the time to discover
them then I can assure you our abilities
to empathize will stretch much further
ladies and gentlemen in the end of the
day we’re all part of the same in-group
which is being human thank you
[Applause]
Palestinian and I come from a family of
Palestinian refugees my father’s family
fled to Lebanon in the 1940s on refugee
travel documents it wasn’t until he was
12 that my father was given the Austrian
citizenship and because of that here
stands a perfect image of a privileged
teenage girl who’s never struggled with
the realities of the real world I’ve
never needed to worry about paying for
my school or having a roof over my head
and I’ve certainly never had to go to
bed fearing for my life but you see the
two million Palestinians living in the
West Bank and the 1.5 Palestinian
refugees are not as fortunate as I am it
breaks my heart to see that my people my
community are being dehumanized in a
sense that millions are being killed or
deprived from their basic necessities
and I think to myself how society been
able to turn a blind eye through the
brutal mistreatment of Palestinians
rings occupation how society been able
to belittle the importance of
Palestinian human lives to an extent
where no one intervenes through the
bloodshed and terror of this conflict
and only few who are lucky like me get
to lead normal healthy lives I wanted to
look at this concept of dehumanization
on a large scale to understand the
situation was back and when I did I
realize it a signal peace in all parts
of the world 130 thousand thousand
Mexicans have been slot in the Mexican
drug war four hundred and seventy
thousand Syrians have been killed in the
Civil War and one thousand and five
hundred Sudanese have been slaughtered
in the ongoing turmoil I’m stating all
these numbers but what do they really
mean well they mean that 130,000
Mexicans who look like this
four hundred and seventy thousand
Syrians who look like this and one
thousand and five thousand Sudanese who
look like this how are the people
responsible for these killings able to
justify themselves so many died in the
most gruesome ways and it seems that
little or no action has been taken by
any world leaders to seek justice and
peace for these people because the some
they’re viewed as less important and
this dehumanization of people can
structures for a skin color systemic
racism has degraded the human value of
African Americans in the u.s. to an
extent that campaign seeking justice
loudly need to tell you that black lives
matter self about these global issues I
wanted to understand why the
humanization occurred according to
Social Psychology people recognized two
kinds of social groups an in-group and
an out-group an in-group is a social
group in which people identify
themselves to and the out group being
vice versa and people can have multiple
in groups according to race age
nationality and so on so for example my
in groups would be Middle Easterners
seventeen-year-olds or if I liked it it
then the girls for my knitting club
these would be the group of people in
which I feel I belong to and the out
group would be everybody else such as
Russian Olympic gymnast so a bunch of
eight-year-olds in Timbuktu and so
dehumanization occurs because our brains
tend to view the out-group as less of
humans and this doesn’t necessarily
motivate people to be cruel but what it
rather does is stimulate a moral
indifference in which we recognize that
something is terribly wrong yet we say
or do nothing subject to this bias for
an in-group over our out group you see I
never realize how true this was until
last week I want miss trip to Cambodia
I’ve met our tour guide and he was such
a lovely man he’s very sweet and we had
just arrived after our 12-hour trip from
here to Cambodia and oh here’s the thing
they lost our luggage they lost our
luggage we’re on our way to our hotel
and our tour guide so it’s talking to us
about the Cambodian genocide that ended
in 80s
and how his father was killed in it now
I was thinking oh god this must be
horrible but I can’t really think about
this right now I mean the airport just
lost my luggage and how soon can I get
deodorant because I’m sure I smell
disgusting and so you see I sympathize
with this man but I didn’t really feel
any form of deep pain for him but as the
days went on I started to feel this
sense of guilt as I am Pereira Lee
integrated into the Cambodian community
on our third day all right tour guide
took us to a killing field where
thousands of Cambodians were slaughtered
in the Cambodian genocide and as he was
talking about the history you could hear
the pain in his voice and see the tears
in his eyes and in that moment I knew
that what he was feeling is exactly what
I feel towards the palestinian-israeli
conflict later that day he took us to a
prison where they kept victims in the
genocides and we actually got to meet
one of the victims as he was sharing his
story I felt my heart drop as he was
sharing these his awful memories in
details and so you see my reaction to
the Cambodian genocide was much
different than it was in the beginning
of the trip
I built this empathy through learning
something new about this nation and in
the end I didn’t look at their pain as
any less than the pain of my people who
suffer back home not everyone is able to
travel halfway across the world to
empathize with a different nation and
not everyone has to do
we’re also concerned for looking off our
in-group that we tend to forget that the
odd group are people too but if we all
tried a little harder to educate
ourselves about these different parts of
the world then there will start to
become this mentality in which we
identify with everyone reading a book or
an article or just simply watching a
documentary can go a long way that’s why
having different skin colors different
gods and different traditions there will
always be commonalities between us and
if we just took the time to discover
them then I can assure you our abilities
to empathize will stretch much further
ladies and gentlemen in the end of the
day we’re all part of the same in-group
which is being human thank you
[Applause]
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