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(On Monday, June 27, the court in Nazareth heard Dareen Tatour’s request to relieve the strict conditions imposed on her in her house detention, and, most important, to let her return to her home in Reineh, even if still under detention. As the prosecution firmly objected, the judge postponed his decision until July 18. In the meantime we had a chance to meet Dareen and she gave me the following letter to all of you who support her against persecution.)

One Who Does Not Thank People, Does Not Thank God

With these few words I open my letter to all of you who stood by me and my family in these difficult times and through this harsh experience.

I thank you with all my heart. Thanking you is perhaps the least I can do while I am in this detention and exile, far from everything I’d lived through before my imprisonment. In spite of all the difficulties I have experienced and still experience, your stand alongside me — and your voice, which has reached me — are like rays of light which give me the power for sumud.

My message to all of you, without exception, is the message of a loving woman, striving for peace and safety, and hoping that justice and equality will be shared by all human beings everywhere. A woman whose life has been condensed to a pen, a paper and an image… I dreamed one day about the existence of people like you, people looking for dreams amid all the nightmares that live around us and between us.

Yes, I thank you, and I put all the hopes of humanity in your hands — those hopes that you see, hear, and feel.

I love you

Dareen Tatour

June 27, 2016

(You can read the original text in Arabic or a Hebrew translation.)