Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine | Lex Fridman Podcast #391

00:00:00.000 | Regardless of whatever was written in these books

00:00:02.840 | that were written thousands and thousands of years ago,

00:00:05.020 | the fact of the matter is no one has a right

00:00:08.020 | to go on slaughtering people,

00:00:09.880 | removing them from their homes,

00:00:11.300 | and then continuing to live in their homes,

00:00:13.520 | continuing to drink coffee on their balconies

00:00:15.880 | decades and decades later with no shame,

00:00:19.820 | with no introspection, with no reflection.

00:00:23.300 | No one has the right to do that.

00:00:24.980 | No one has the right to keep an entire population

00:00:27.260 | of people in a cage, which is what's happening

00:00:31.420 | to people in the West Bank,

00:00:33.100 | who have no freedom of movement,

00:00:35.980 | which is what's happening in Gaza,

00:00:38.780 | which is blockaded through water, air, and land,

00:00:42.340 | and is deemed uninhabitable by human rights organizations

00:00:47.340 | like the UN.

00:00:49.020 | No one has a right to do that.

00:00:50.520 | - The following is a conversation with Mohamed Elkard,

00:00:55.700 | a world-renowned Palestinian poet, writer, journalist,

00:00:59.260 | and an influential voice speaking out

00:01:02.260 | and fighting for the Palestinian cause.

00:01:04.840 | He provides a very different perspective

00:01:06.940 | on Israel and Palestine than my previous two episodes

00:01:10.440 | with Benjamin Netanyahu and Yuval Noah Harari.

00:01:14.580 | I hope his story and his words add to your understanding

00:01:17.920 | of this part of the world as it did to mine.

00:01:21.080 | I will continue to have difficult,

00:01:22.780 | long-form conversations such as these.

00:01:25.620 | Always with empathy and humility, but with backbone.

00:01:30.620 | And please allow me to briefly comment

00:01:32.780 | about criticisms I receive of who I am

00:01:36.060 | as an interviewer and a human being.

00:01:38.680 | I am not afraid to travel anywhere

00:01:42.060 | or challenge anyone face-to-face,

00:01:45.340 | even if it puts my life in danger.

00:01:47.940 | But I'm also not afraid to be vulnerable,

00:01:50.780 | to truly listen, to empathize,

00:01:53.420 | to walk a mile in the well-worn shoes

00:01:55.300 | of those very different from me.

00:01:58.100 | It's this latter task, not the formal one,

00:02:00.860 | that is truly the most challenging,

00:02:02.920 | in conversations and in life.

00:02:06.140 | But to me, it is the only way.

00:02:08.100 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:02:11.300 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:02:13.140 | in the description.

00:02:14.300 | And now, dear friends, here's Mohamed Elkard.

00:02:17.860 | Tell me about Sheik Jarrah,

00:02:20.460 | the neighborhood in East Jerusalem where you grew up.

00:02:23.260 | - Sheik Jarrah is, in a way, a typical neighborhood,

00:02:26.660 | despite the absurd reality that surrounds it.

00:02:30.660 | It's a typical neighborhood

00:02:32.280 | in terms of Palestinian neighborhoods.

00:02:34.260 | It's one that is threatened with colonialism,

00:02:37.480 | with settler expansion, and with forced expulsion.

00:02:40.020 | And it has been that way since the early '70s.

00:02:44.100 | My family, like all of the other families in Sheik Jarrah,

00:02:48.180 | were expelled from their homes in the Nakba in 1948,

00:02:51.220 | and they were forced out by the Haganah

00:02:53.420 | and other Zionist parallel militaries

00:02:56.020 | that later formed the Israeli military.

00:02:58.780 | And they were driven to various cities.

00:03:01.380 | And my grandmother moved from city to city,

00:03:05.100 | and she ended up in Sheik Jarrah in 1956.

00:03:07.940 | Sheik Jarrah was established as a refugee housing unit

00:03:12.140 | by the United Nations and by the Jordanian government,

00:03:16.180 | which had control over that part of Jerusalem at the time.

00:03:21.320 | And then people lived there harmoniously.

00:03:25.680 | They were all from different parts of Palestine.

00:03:28.660 | And they managed to rebuild their lives

00:03:31.280 | after the first expulsion.

00:03:32.480 | And then in the '70s, you had settler organizations,

00:03:36.280 | many of whom were registered here in New York

00:03:38.540 | and in the United States,

00:03:40.200 | claiming our houses and our lands

00:03:42.420 | as their own by divine decree.

00:03:44.640 | And obviously, because the judges are Israeli,

00:03:48.040 | and the laws were written by Israeli settlers,

00:03:50.360 | and the whole judiciary was established

00:03:53.920 | atop the rubble of our homes and villages,

00:03:57.600 | we had no real pull in the courts.

00:04:02.520 | The Israeli courts would look at the Israeli documents,

00:04:05.400 | which we argue are falsifies and fabricated,

00:04:08.680 | and they would take them at face value

00:04:10.520 | without authentication,

00:04:11.600 | and they refused to look at our documents.

00:04:13.480 | They refused to look at the documents

00:04:14.840 | from the Jordanian government,

00:04:15.920 | the documents from the UN,

00:04:16.920 | the documents from the Ottoman archives.

00:04:19.780 | So you already have this kind of asymmetry in the court

00:04:23.240 | that for any person with common sense

00:04:25.080 | would lead you to believe that this is not,

00:04:27.520 | in fact, a legal battle or a real estate dispute,

00:04:31.440 | as the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

00:04:33.660 | likes to frame it,

00:04:34.720 | but rather a very, very political battle,

00:04:37.260 | one that is about social engineering,

00:04:40.160 | one is about demographics,

00:04:42.080 | one that is about removing as many Palestinians

00:04:46.240 | as possible from occupied Jerusalem.

00:04:49.100 | So we did what all Palestinian families in Jerusalem do

00:04:53.620 | when they're faced with this kind of threat,

00:04:54.940 | and we bought time.

00:04:56.220 | We pleaded and pleaded and appealed the courts

00:05:00.020 | and appealed the cases,

00:05:01.060 | and we got over 50 expulsion orders in 2009,

00:05:06.060 | rifle-wielding settlers accompanied by police

00:05:11.240 | and Israeli military came over

00:05:14.100 | and shoved our neighbors outside of their home

00:05:16.680 | around 5 a.m.

00:05:17.560 | It's like, it was the most brutal, violent thing

00:05:21.720 | I'd seen as a child at the time,

00:05:23.520 | and I didn't realize that my turn was coming.

00:05:25.460 | My turn was next.

00:05:26.920 | They threw them out in the middle of the night

00:05:29.560 | with sound bombs and rubber bullets,

00:05:31.440 | and they had to live in tents on the street

00:05:36.280 | for many, many months,

00:05:37.620 | and even lived in our front yards for a few months

00:05:40.280 | and lived in their cars.

00:05:41.800 | - Can you link on that process, 2009?

00:05:44.220 | You said 50 expulsion orders.

00:05:46.180 | What was happening?

00:05:48.700 | - Between the '70s and 2009,

00:05:50.620 | there had been many, dozens of expulsions orders

00:05:53.180 | against us and against many other families

00:05:55.380 | in the neighborhood, 28 families in total, actually.

00:05:59.640 | And in 2008, 2009, the first wave of expulsions

00:06:04.500 | finally happened.

00:06:05.640 | It actually began with Umm Kamal al-Qurid.

00:06:09.340 | We're not related, but we live on the same street

00:06:11.500 | in the same neighborhood.

00:06:12.760 | She was thrown out of her home.

00:06:15.040 | Her husband, an elderly man also named Muhammad al-Qurid,

00:06:17.840 | was pronounced dead on the spot.

00:06:19.840 | He had a stroke and died.

00:06:21.840 | The Israeli soldiers pulled him out of his home

00:06:23.440 | while he was urinating and threw him into the streets,

00:06:26.980 | and he died.

00:06:28.040 | A few months later, the Ghawi and the Hanun families,

00:06:31.360 | which are kind of not a clan,

00:06:33.700 | but in Palestine, you have sometimes a building

00:06:35.920 | that contains multiple brothers and their wives,

00:06:38.400 | each have little apartments.

00:06:40.520 | So the Ghawi and Hanun families, about 35 people,

00:06:43.400 | were thrown out in the middle of the street,

00:06:45.120 | right across from us.

00:06:46.260 | And then by the end of 2009, I had come home from school

00:06:51.200 | to find all of my furniture scattered

00:06:53.140 | across the length of the street,

00:06:54.360 | and I saw the settlers, many of whom had American accents,

00:06:58.160 | living in our house.

00:07:00.240 | And their justification for this,

00:07:03.820 | their reasoning for this is divine decree.

00:07:06.240 | This is what God wants.

00:07:08.480 | This is the promised land.

00:07:10.000 | This is so and so, as if God is some kind

00:07:12.240 | of real estate agent.

00:07:13.480 | So they took over half of our home,

00:07:17.280 | and we continued to be in courts for the following decade.

00:07:20.960 | I was still a child, and I had broken English,

00:07:24.640 | and I was talking to all of these diplomats

00:07:26.160 | and all of these journalists who would subjugate me

00:07:30.360 | to their racism and biases and so on and so forth,

00:07:37.160 | and I had to prove my humanity time and time again,

00:07:40.120 | and I had to do all of this, all with broken English.

00:07:44.560 | And we were lucky even if we got a quote

00:07:48.520 | in the article written about us by the Times

00:07:51.120 | or so on and so forth.

00:07:53.760 | Move forward to 2020, I was in New York City

00:07:56.000 | studying a master's degree, getting a master's degree,

00:07:59.000 | and my father calls me, and he tells me,

00:08:03.280 | we have yet another expulsion order,

00:08:06.320 | and we decided to launch a campaign.

00:08:08.320 | It was quite ambitious at the time,

00:08:11.080 | but the whole objective of the campaign

00:08:14.240 | was to demystify what is happening, right?

00:08:17.720 | Because it's reported on in the news,

00:08:19.960 | it's reported on around the world

00:08:22.720 | as this real estate dispute, as these evictions,

00:08:24.760 | which was not really what's happening.

00:08:26.200 | Evictions do not entail a foreign army

00:08:29.760 | in an occupied territory forcibly removing you

00:08:32.400 | out of your home.

00:08:34.840 | So I came home from New York and we launched a campaign

00:08:37.960 | which turned into a global success,

00:08:40.080 | and I believe it was a global success

00:08:42.560 | because finally the images on the screen

00:08:46.200 | matched the rhetoric that was being said.

00:08:49.040 | It wasn't so confusing or complicated anymore.

00:08:52.280 | All of this asymmetry was pronounced and articulated

00:08:55.360 | in a way that any viewer, be it in Alabama,

00:08:58.520 | be it in New York, be it in Egypt,

00:09:00.440 | was able to understand the asymmetry

00:09:03.840 | of the judicial system and the agenda of colonialism

00:09:08.280 | that was taking place here.

00:09:10.360 | And due to immense international and diplomatic pressure

00:09:14.480 | from all over the world, even the United States,

00:09:18.760 | the Israeli Supreme Court was forced

00:09:22.000 | to cancel all of the eviction orders in Sheikh Jarrah

00:09:26.080 | until further notice.

00:09:27.560 | This, I consider, was a small victory

00:09:29.560 | because obviously we are still at risk of losing our homes

00:09:33.000 | once they decide to do the land registry,

00:09:35.360 | which we can get into a little bit later if you'd like.

00:09:38.080 | But nonetheless, it was something

00:09:41.040 | that we haven't seen before.

00:09:43.320 | And the fact that the Supreme Court canceled

00:09:46.800 | all of these dozens and dozens of past eviction orders,

00:09:49.840 | it set a precedent, and it also proved

00:09:51.960 | that this was a political battle, not a legal one.

00:09:54.640 | - So let's just add a little more detail

00:09:57.240 | to the people who are not familiar

00:09:58.520 | with the story with the region,

00:10:01.040 | with the evictions, with the courts.

00:10:05.920 | So first of all, Sheikh Jarrah is in East Jerusalem.

00:10:09.240 | Maybe you can say, what is Jerusalem?

00:10:11.840 | Where is it located?

00:10:13.760 | What are we talking about in terms of regionally?

00:10:16.720 | And second, what kind of people that live there?

00:10:20.200 | So if you could talk about the Palestinian people.

00:10:23.160 | And we should also make clear

00:10:26.560 | that these evictions is literally people living in homes,

00:10:30.480 | and their homes are taken away from them.

00:10:32.520 | I suppose technically it's legal evictions,

00:10:38.120 | but you're saying that there's a asymmetry of power

00:10:44.080 | in the courts where the legal is not so much legal,

00:10:48.960 | but it's politically and maybe even religiously based.

00:10:53.360 | - Yeah, I mean, the biggest,

00:10:55.120 | the most important context here is that oftentimes

00:10:57.720 | Americans think that Israel and Palestine

00:10:59.360 | are some kind of two neighboring countries

00:11:02.360 | that live next to each other and they are at war.

00:11:06.080 | But the fact of the matter is,

00:11:07.560 | Palestinian cities exist all over the country,

00:11:12.760 | and it's just one country, it's just one infrastructure,

00:11:15.400 | and Israel is literally on top of Palestine.

00:11:17.640 | It was established on top of our villages in the late '40s.

00:11:23.760 | Now, according to international law,

00:11:25.280 | the Eastern part of Jerusalem is under occupation.

00:11:28.840 | So Israeli presence and jurisdiction over the area

00:11:33.840 | is completely illegitimate.

00:11:36.240 | They say the evictions are legal

00:11:38.120 | because the settlers write their laws.

00:11:41.480 | So obviously they're gonna allow settlements to expand,

00:11:44.160 | but according to international law,

00:11:45.760 | according to even US policy,

00:11:48.200 | Israel occupies the Eastern part of Jerusalem.

00:11:53.600 | Its jurisdiction there is illegitimate.

00:11:56.080 | We shouldn't even be going to their courts

00:11:58.520 | in the first place, but we have no other option.

00:12:01.520 | We're talking about Jerusalem,

00:12:05.120 | we're talking about generations and generations

00:12:06.960 | and generations of people who have lived there

00:12:09.280 | for the longest time, who now, even though,

00:12:12.720 | for example, me, I don't have a citizenship.

00:12:15.720 | I'm a resident, a mere resident.

00:12:17.920 | I have a blue ID card, even though my grandmother

00:12:21.120 | and my grandfather were born in Jerusalem,

00:12:23.040 | their grandparents were born in Jerusalem.

00:12:25.200 | Even though we've lived there for generations,

00:12:28.680 | but Palestinians in Jerusalem, we are not citizens.

00:12:31.360 | We're just mere residents.

00:12:32.920 | Same thing with residents of the occupied Syrian Golan.

00:12:37.320 | They are not citizens, they are just residents

00:12:40.000 | in their own hometowns.

00:12:42.600 | This is an important piece, but all of this gets convoluted

00:12:47.000 | and lost in translation, and I think,

00:12:51.120 | I would argue it's a lot more,

00:12:53.240 | it's, a lot of the time it's dubious, it's malicious,

00:12:57.240 | the fact that these little pieces of context

00:12:59.320 | that frame the entire story get lost.

00:13:03.320 | You know, I'll talk to you about something else.

00:13:05.480 | Just 10 minutes, 10 minutes across from my neighborhood,

00:13:08.640 | Sheikh Jarrah, there's another neighborhood called Silwan,

00:13:11.400 | and the people in Silwan are also threatened with expulsion,

00:13:14.280 | but not through evictions, but through home demolitions.

00:13:17.720 | And if you look at American state,

00:13:19.720 | American media or Israeli state media,

00:13:22.080 | you would read the headlines, you know,

00:13:23.520 | Palestinians living in homes built illegally

00:13:27.520 | are gonna face, you know, their homes,

00:13:29.480 | as they're gonna be torn apart.

00:13:31.320 | What these headlines don't tell you,

00:13:33.120 | and even sometimes, most of the time,

00:13:34.880 | the substance doesn't tell you,

00:13:37.000 | that Palestinians seldom ever get

00:13:39.360 | building permit applications.

00:13:42.960 | In fact, recently a spokesperson

00:13:44.920 | for the Israeli military confirmed that it was 95%

00:13:47.360 | of building permits applications submitted

00:13:49.000 | by Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank

00:13:51.000 | are rejected by the Israeli authorities.

00:13:53.640 | And to make this even more absurd,

00:13:57.280 | the guy, the councilman who is responsible

00:14:00.800 | for rejecting and accepting building permit applications,

00:14:06.320 | his name is Yonatan Yussef,

00:14:07.880 | and he's an activist in the settler movements,

00:14:11.680 | and he's a Jerusalem council member.

00:14:13.480 | And he, last week, following the expulsion

00:14:17.880 | of a Sublaban family in the old city of Jerusalem,

00:14:22.080 | he posted to his official Facebook account,

00:14:24.640 | Nakba Now, demanding a second Nakba,

00:14:27.960 | promising another Nakba.

00:14:29.000 | He has done so on many occasions.

00:14:30.760 | He has chanted with a megaphone just a few months ago,

00:14:33.360 | walking down the street in my neighborhood,

00:14:35.800 | chanting, "We want Nakba Now."

00:14:37.320 | This is a man who has vandalized our murals,

00:14:39.600 | who has screamed Islamophobic slurs.

00:14:43.040 | This is literally a man in the government

00:14:45.200 | making these decisions, right?

00:14:48.280 | And this is similar to, you know,

00:14:51.560 | Masaf Riatta in the South Hebron Hills.

00:14:53.440 | For those who don't know,

00:14:54.280 | it's a place in the occupied West Bank

00:14:58.320 | where Bedouin and cave dweller Palestinians

00:15:01.800 | have lived for generations.

00:15:03.040 | They have cultivated the land.

00:15:04.520 | And recently, they were expelled from their homes.

00:15:08.080 | Over a thousand people were expelled

00:15:09.400 | from their remote small villages.

00:15:11.840 | Again, if you're reading American media,

00:15:13.480 | they would say, it would say,

00:15:15.200 | "Palestinians living in firing zones were removed

00:15:19.840 | "because they were living in a military zone."

00:15:21.880 | What these media reports will not tell you,

00:15:24.200 | that in the '80s, the Israeli government

00:15:27.840 | purposefully classified many lands

00:15:30.080 | in the occupied West Bank as firing zones,

00:15:33.120 | as off-limit military zones,

00:15:34.800 | for the sole purpose of expelling the residents.

00:15:38.160 | And this is not some kind of conspiracy theory.

00:15:40.160 | This is declassified information

00:15:42.280 | that was released from the Israeli State Archive

00:15:43.800 | that was later reported on by Haaretz.

00:15:46.040 | Also, these reports will not tell you

00:15:48.000 | that the judge who rules on whether these people

00:15:52.280 | continue to live in their homes or not

00:15:53.920 | is himself a settler in the West Bank.

00:15:56.680 | And I'm not even talking about, you know,

00:15:59.000 | a loose definition of a settler,

00:16:00.120 | but according to international law,

00:16:02.120 | this is a settler living illegally

00:16:04.600 | in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank.

00:16:07.600 | This is the judiciary that we deal with,

00:16:10.680 | which is hilarious considering how it's being reported on

00:16:14.840 | in American media recently as some kind of beacon

00:16:17.160 | of progress and democracy

00:16:18.400 | that the new government is trying to undermine.

00:16:20.680 | - So there's no representation in the courts

00:16:22.520 | for the Palestinian people?

00:16:23.760 | - I mean, we have lawyers, but no, there's no,

00:16:26.120 | in fact, there is, for Palestinians

00:16:28.040 | with Israeli citizenships, for example,

00:16:30.240 | there's over 60 laws that specifically

00:16:33.200 | and explicitly discriminates against them.

00:16:35.360 | - So again, it's technically legal.

00:16:40.000 | The evictions and the demolitions.

00:16:42.920 | - Yeah, so was Jim Crow was legal also, you know.

00:16:45.640 | - When something is legal, it can also still be wrong.

00:16:50.840 | - Absolutely.

00:16:51.880 | History has shown us time and time again

00:16:53.880 | that legality does not necessarily mean morality.

00:16:59.200 | And the law, you know, is a,

00:17:02.560 | the law is a bloodbath in many ways.

00:17:05.240 | It has been used and abused to facilitate

00:17:09.960 | the most horrendous atrocities.

00:17:12.880 | And in the case of the Palestinians,

00:17:14.720 | the law has served to facilitate

00:17:17.720 | and bureaucratize our ethnic cleansing.

00:17:21.120 | - Do you think there's people, judges,

00:17:24.360 | and just people in power in the judiciary

00:17:26.560 | that have hate for the Palestinian people?

00:17:29.720 | - I mean, I'm not really,

00:17:32.240 | I mean, the easy, simplistic answer is yes,

00:17:35.160 | but I don't really care about the contents of their hearts,

00:17:38.760 | what I care about the policy they enact, right?

00:17:40.840 | The laws they write and enact are hateful.

00:17:44.840 | Demolishing a person's home

00:17:46.400 | so you can have somebody from Long Island, New York,

00:17:51.120 | who's fleeing, you know, fraud charges,

00:17:54.640 | this is the case in my house,

00:17:57.440 | live in their, you know, front yard, that's hateful.

00:18:01.480 | So I don't need, you know, confirmation.

00:18:03.360 | This is something we see a lot, actually, you know,

00:18:06.200 | Palestinians and people who are pro-Palestine

00:18:08.640 | and just people who wanna make a difference

00:18:11.440 | in how this cause is represented,

00:18:14.160 | we often run for the first opportunity

00:18:20.040 | to cite an Israeli being hateful.

00:18:21.640 | You know, the recent, the last Israeli prime minister

00:18:26.160 | said that he has killed many Arabs

00:18:28.000 | and that he has no qualms with it.

00:18:30.840 | Netanyahu has said a slew of racist, hateful things.

00:18:34.720 | Jabotinsky, the pioneer of Zionism,

00:18:37.200 | Herzl, one of the pioneers of Zionism,

00:18:39.520 | all have said horrible, hateful things.

00:18:43.720 | We also, like, cannot wait to, you know,

00:18:47.000 | cite a confession from a former Israeli soldier

00:18:51.240 | whose guilty conscience is keeping them, you know,

00:18:54.600 | up at night, and we use all of these, you know,

00:18:57.680 | confessions or slip-ups as evidence

00:19:01.400 | to prove that this is a racist country

00:19:04.400 | that is enacting racist acts, but we don't need this

00:19:08.000 | because the material proof is on the ground.

00:19:10.080 | You see it in the policies that are enacted.

00:19:12.040 | You see it in how the country,

00:19:16.040 | how this regime has behaved for the past 75 years.

00:19:20.120 | I don't need, you know, confessions

00:19:23.120 | from the likes of Netanyahu to understand

00:19:24.960 | that his heart is full of hate.

00:19:27.480 | - So if you could return to 1948 and describe

00:19:30.720 | something that you've mentioned, the Nakba,

00:19:34.000 | which means catastrophe in Arabic,

00:19:36.760 | what was this event?

00:19:38.200 | What was this displacement and dispossession

00:19:39.920 | of Palestinians in 1948?

00:19:42.000 | - Well, you know, like, May 15th, 1948

00:19:46.840 | is commemorated every year as, you know,

00:19:51.200 | the anniversary of the Nakba,

00:19:53.080 | but I would even argue anything.

00:19:54.600 | This is like a very popular idea

00:19:58.760 | is that the Nakba did not begin or end in 1948.

00:20:01.640 | The '48 was rather, you know, a crystallization

00:20:04.440 | of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine.

00:20:07.680 | And what happened was is that many Zionist paramilitaries

00:20:13.960 | that again today merged and made the Israeli army,

00:20:21.040 | which calls itself the Israeli Defense Forces,

00:20:23.640 | even though they're literally always the aggressor,

00:20:26.200 | committed atrocities and massacres,

00:20:30.440 | and, you know, they destroyed over 500 villages,

00:20:35.440 | they killed over 15,000 people,

00:20:38.960 | they forced a very large portion,

00:20:42.760 | a majority of the Palestinian population

00:20:45.400 | to flee their homes.

00:20:47.600 | And this was, you know, the near total destruction

00:20:51.160 | of Palestinian society that continues on to this day.

00:20:54.240 | We refer to it as the ongoing Nakba,

00:20:56.320 | and you see it in Sheikh Jarrah,

00:20:58.520 | you see it in Silwan, you see it in Heron,

00:21:00.640 | and all of these people losing their homes.

00:21:02.560 | And in many cases, time and time again, you know,

00:21:06.200 | I grew up and my grandmother told me the stories

00:21:08.640 | about the Nakba.

00:21:09.480 | She told me stories about her neighbors

00:21:11.320 | who were running away in a panic

00:21:15.440 | and they had mistaken a pillow for their offspring,

00:21:18.720 | and they just took it with them,

00:21:19.800 | and they realized later that they forgot their child

00:21:21.640 | and they came back for it.

00:21:23.560 | Many, many people who were separated from their,

00:21:26.280 | my grandmother herself, she lost her husband

00:21:28.360 | for a few months, for nine months.

00:21:30.040 | He was imprisoned by the Israelis.

00:21:31.760 | You know, she told me all of these stories,

00:21:37.120 | and she wasn't just reminiscing about them.

00:21:39.680 | She was, you know, letting me know

00:21:44.280 | that this is still happening,

00:21:46.680 | and I didn't need to grow up that old

00:21:49.720 | to see it happening in my own front yard,

00:21:52.080 | to see that expulsion happen in the same fashion

00:21:55.960 | she's talked about it.

00:21:57.640 | But, you know, now they have replaced their artillery

00:22:02.120 | with the judiciary.

00:22:03.360 | They have replaced, you know, the slashing

00:22:07.680 | of the pregnant women's bellies in the Deir Yassin massacre

00:22:12.160 | with laws that say, you know,

00:22:14.360 | you're not legally allowed to be here.

00:22:16.280 | We're gonna kick you out of your home.

00:22:18.120 | And it's happening, and it has happened in broad daylight.

00:22:22.920 | One piece of context for the listener

00:22:27.440 | who is not familiar with the Nakba

00:22:29.280 | is the Balfour Declaration, which was a promise,

00:22:34.400 | quote unquote, promise made by the British

00:22:37.320 | to the Zionist movement in 1917,

00:22:40.800 | committing to the establishment,

00:22:43.880 | I'm quoting, I think, word for word,

00:22:45.360 | committing to the establishment

00:22:46.520 | of a Jewish state in Palestine,

00:22:48.280 | as if Palestine was, you know, the British to give away.

00:22:53.200 | And there was this whole movement

00:22:57.120 | that called for colonization of Palestine.

00:23:01.160 | And there were different schools of thought in Zionism.

00:23:04.520 | You know, people like Zangwell said

00:23:06.920 | that this was a country without a people.

00:23:09.160 | And Palestinians who have existed there,

00:23:12.760 | who have cultivated the lands, who have, you know,

00:23:16.320 | had diverse cultural and religious and political practices,

00:23:21.320 | they were completely erased.

00:23:24.720 | And other people like Jabotinsky

00:23:26.840 | were a lot more explicit and a lot more honest

00:23:32.000 | and said that we need to fight the Palestinians

00:23:34.640 | because they love their land,

00:23:36.000 | much like the red Indians love their lands.

00:23:38.840 | And he had a paper called

00:23:40.840 | "The Iron Wall Colonization of Palestine Must Go Forward."

00:23:45.520 | And all of these schools of thoughts

00:23:49.400 | were then shopping around for, you know,

00:23:52.480 | imperialist support for their cause.

00:23:56.960 | They tried to get support from the Ottoman Empire.

00:24:00.840 | They tried to get support from Germany.

00:24:02.960 | And this is in the 1800s.

00:24:06.000 | And then they got support from the United Kingdom.

00:24:09.480 | A great book to recommend is

00:24:11.720 | "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine" by Rashid Khalidi.

00:24:15.280 | That, you know, traces the Zionist movement,

00:24:19.680 | oftentimes in the Zionist's own words.

00:24:22.480 | And so today what we're seeing is a continuation.

00:24:27.240 | And, you know, people like Jabotinsky

00:24:28.960 | who are like profoundly and explicitly racist,

00:24:31.680 | who have called for genocide,

00:24:33.640 | who have called the Palestinians barbaric,

00:24:36.720 | who have said and done racist things, you know,

00:24:41.520 | Jabotinsky also was like the founder of the Ergun,

00:24:43.880 | one of the other militias that later merged

00:24:47.080 | to become the Israeli army,

00:24:49.680 | which was responsible for the Deir Yassin massacre,

00:24:52.920 | which was responsible for the bombing

00:24:54.440 | of the King David Hotel.

00:24:55.680 | This is a person who still celebrated in Israeli society.

00:25:01.200 | There are still streets named after him

00:25:03.000 | and Netanyahu just two weeks ago,

00:25:04.960 | if I'm not mistaken, honored him in a public celebration.

00:25:09.440 | So this is Zionism.

00:25:10.920 | It's not even through my own words.

00:25:14.280 | - What do you say to people that describe Israel

00:25:18.920 | as having historical right to the land?

00:25:21.680 | So if you stretch not across decades,

00:25:23.920 | but across centuries into the past.

00:25:25.760 | - This kind of thing is a red herring.

00:25:28.920 | It's a distraction because you don't think of any state

00:25:32.560 | as having rights, but there is this exceptionalism

00:25:35.600 | to the Israeli regime, where it has a right

00:25:38.640 | to defend itself and it has a right to the land

00:25:40.520 | and it has a right to shoot 14 year old boys

00:25:43.200 | because it thought they had a knife in their pockets.

00:25:47.800 | You know, a lot of the time people cite the Torah

00:25:50.000 | and cite religious books.

00:25:51.880 | And, you know, sometimes Zionists will even say like,

00:25:54.360 | read the Quran and blah, blah, blah.

00:25:56.440 | You know, regardless of whatever was written in these books

00:25:59.560 | that were written thousands and thousands of years ago,

00:26:01.760 | the fact of the matter is no one has a right

00:26:04.760 | to go on slaughtering people,

00:26:06.600 | removing them from their homes

00:26:08.040 | and then continuing to live in their homes,

00:26:10.240 | continuing to drink coffee on their balconies

00:26:12.600 | decades and decades later with no shame,

00:26:16.560 | with no introspection, with no reflection.

00:26:20.040 | No one has the right to do that.

00:26:21.720 | No one has the right to keep an entire population

00:26:24.000 | of people in a cage, which is what's happening

00:26:28.160 | to people in the West Bank who have no freedom of movement,

00:26:32.720 | which is what's happening in Gaza,

00:26:35.520 | which is blockaded through water, air and land

00:26:39.080 | and is deemed uninhabitable by human rights organizations

00:26:44.080 | like the UN.

00:26:45.800 | No one has a right to do that.

00:26:48.000 | - Do you have hate in your heart for Israel?

00:26:51.560 | - Why does that matter?

00:26:52.820 | - As one human being to another,

00:26:57.280 | you're describing quite brilliantly

00:27:00.680 | that the contents of people's hearts don't matter

00:27:04.400 | as much as the policies and the contents of the courts

00:27:08.000 | and the laws and what actually is going on on the streets

00:27:12.240 | in terms of actions.

00:27:13.320 | But this is also a human story.

00:27:17.880 | - Yeah.

00:27:18.720 | - And I feel like at the core of the situation here is hate

00:27:23.720 | or maybe inability for some group of humans

00:27:37.280 | to see the humanity in another group of humans.

00:27:40.480 | And so it's important here to talk about

00:27:42.160 | the contents of hearts.

00:27:43.840 | If we were to think about the long-term future of this.

00:27:47.520 | - Yeah, I mean, I would be concerned actually

00:27:50.720 | if I didn't feel some kind of way in my heart.

00:27:53.800 | I would be concerned for my own dignity

00:27:56.520 | because the people who revolt, the people who are angry,

00:27:59.480 | the people who refuse to live under occupation

00:28:01.760 | know that they deserve better.

00:28:04.560 | People start revolutions not because

00:28:08.120 | of some kind of cultural phenomenon,

00:28:09.880 | not because of some kind of desire,

00:28:11.320 | but because they cannot breathe,

00:28:13.720 | because they cannot breathe, they cannot live.

00:28:17.280 | They are living under excruciating circumstances.

00:28:20.040 | Palestinians, I don't know how many Palestinians

00:28:23.840 | have interacted with,

00:28:25.040 | but we are some of the most wonderful people.

00:28:27.560 | I mean, not all of us, I think some of us are insufferable,

00:28:30.720 | but most of us, you know,

00:28:33.640 | most of us, you know, we're very hospitable.

00:28:37.340 | We're very hospitable, even like in the early correspondence

00:28:41.560 | between the mayor of Jerusalem and Herzl

00:28:44.880 | who wrote "The Jewish State,"

00:28:46.920 | you know, the generosity through which

00:28:50.000 | the Palestinian mayor was talking to Herzl

00:28:52.360 | who was plotting to take over his land

00:28:55.320 | is impressive and at the same time, you know, heart-wrenching

00:28:58.320 | and, but I personally think there is,

00:29:03.320 | there's a lot of dignity in negating your oppressor.

00:29:12.040 | And I think it would be ridiculous today

00:29:14.880 | if we like look back at Jim Crow, for example,

00:29:17.600 | and we ask the person who's lived under Jim Crow

00:29:20.360 | if they have hate in their heart for Jim Crow

00:29:24.200 | as if that's not the absolutely logical

00:29:27.440 | and natural sentiment to feel.

00:29:30.560 | - In Rivka, you wrote, "My father told me

00:29:32.680 | "anger is a luxury we cannot afford.

00:29:35.280 | "Be composed, calm, still, laugh when they ask you,

00:29:38.520 | "smile when they talk, answer them, educate them."

00:29:41.640 | So let me linger on this,

00:29:45.920 | is there anger in there, in your heart?

00:29:48.400 | And does it cloud your judgment?

00:29:50.360 | - Does it cloud my judgment?

00:29:52.000 | I don't think so.

00:29:53.720 | I think our campaign to defend our homes

00:29:57.480 | was particularly successful

00:30:02.480 | because it was honest to what was happening on the ground,

00:30:07.440 | because it refused to follow the strategy

00:30:09.440 | that we have used in our advocacy before,

00:30:12.200 | where we shrink ourselves and we turn the other cheek

00:30:14.560 | and we try to convince American lawmakers

00:30:19.320 | and American diplomats and journalists of our humanity.

00:30:23.000 | Because we wait for their approval.

00:30:25.720 | I was 14 years old when I first flew to Congress

00:30:29.320 | to speak to Congress people

00:30:31.240 | and to speak at the European Parliament.

00:30:33.720 | And at the time I thought,

00:30:35.080 | "Wow, I must be such a brilliant 14-year-old

00:30:38.600 | "for them to have me here."

00:30:41.560 | And looking back, I didn't know what I was talking about.

00:30:44.240 | I had horrendously broken English

00:30:47.440 | and I didn't have any talking points.

00:30:51.120 | And I came to realize that the reason why we send our kids

00:30:54.560 | with their PowerPoints to the Hill

00:30:56.920 | is because of the racism and the hatred that lingers

00:30:59.640 | inside the hearts of American politicians

00:31:01.840 | who refuse to sit on the table

00:31:03.960 | with Palestinian adults as equals.

00:31:07.160 | And so we resort to sending our kids who will not threaten

00:31:12.480 | and who will not trigger the biases

00:31:15.840 | they have against Muslims and Arab people,

00:31:18.040 | which Palestinians, even though we're not all Muslim,

00:31:20.400 | are racialized as Muslim.

00:31:21.840 | And this is why we emphasize the deaths of women

00:31:26.840 | and children as though the deaths of our men

00:31:29.640 | does not count or does not matter.

00:31:31.800 | All of these things, I think the new generation

00:31:34.040 | of Palestinians is rebelling against.

00:31:36.400 | I think words like, you know, I think it's loaded.

00:31:40.760 | It's loaded language, anger and angry and hate

00:31:44.960 | and so on and so forth, because it mischaracterizes people

00:31:49.480 | and it kind of delegitimizes them a little bit.

00:31:52.040 | You know, I think the real anger is the bulldozer

00:31:57.080 | bulldozing through my house.

00:31:59.600 | I think the real anger is the 18-year-old soldier

00:32:02.680 | who refuses to see me as a human being

00:32:04.640 | and strip searches me every chance they get.

00:32:07.240 | That's where the real anger lies.

00:32:09.160 | And I'm quite honestly proud of, you know,

00:32:15.760 | our unabashedness and our refusal to, like,

00:32:20.480 | bow our heads or bury our heads in the sand.

00:32:23.360 | I think that's the only way forward.

00:32:25.600 | - So anger, whatever it is, is a fuel for action.

00:32:30.600 | - Absolutely, and it has been throughout history.

00:32:34.200 | It has been.

00:32:35.040 | - How much of this tension is religious?

00:32:39.200 | In the practical aspects of the courts

00:32:43.320 | and the evictions and the demolitions,

00:32:47.680 | and you mentioned something, divine decree.

00:32:51.320 | How much underneath of it do you feel

00:32:53.480 | the division over religious texts and religious beliefs?

00:32:58.080 | - You know, it's convenient to market

00:33:02.440 | what's happening in Palestine as a religious conflict,

00:33:05.520 | because it allows the listener the luxury

00:33:10.080 | of believing that this is an ancient, complicated thing

00:33:13.240 | that stretches thousands and thousands of years ago.

00:33:15.920 | But the fact of the matter is,

00:33:17.440 | the people who invented Zionism,

00:33:21.360 | who pioneered the Zionist movement,

00:33:22.800 | who called for emigration and settling into Palestine,

00:33:27.080 | a lot of them were atheists.

00:33:29.120 | A lot of them were not religious at all.

00:33:32.000 | And the leaders of the Israeli state today,

00:33:37.200 | a lot of them are atheists,

00:33:41.600 | and a lot of them are secular, and so on and so forth.

00:33:44.080 | It's easy to say that this is,

00:33:47.480 | you know, about Muslims and Jews fighting over the land,

00:33:52.920 | and so on and so forth, but it's not.

00:33:55.080 | It's about the land itself,

00:33:56.280 | and it's about people being forced out of their homes.

00:34:00.480 | - Benjamin Netanyahu said, "Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism."

00:34:04.920 | - Of course he said that.

00:34:06.160 | - Do you disagree?

00:34:09.120 | - Absolutely, I disagree.

00:34:11.040 | - What's the gap between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism?

00:34:15.600 | Those who are against the policies of Israel

00:34:19.440 | versus those who are against the Jewish people.

00:34:24.360 | - I watched the first 20 minutes,

00:34:28.200 | and then I couldn't do it anymore.

00:34:30.240 | But I watched, and then what was interesting

00:34:32.640 | about Netanyahu is that he said,

00:34:34.400 | "Being anti-Zionist is like saying I'm okay with the Jews.

00:34:38.920 | "I just don't believe the Jews have a right

00:34:40.920 | "to form their own state.

00:34:42.720 | "That's like saying I'm okay with Americans.

00:34:46.760 | "I'm just not okay with Americans having their own state."

00:34:50.520 | And there is so much wrong with that statement

00:34:52.680 | in the sense that Jewish people are a religious group,

00:34:56.560 | and Americans, and being an American is a nationality

00:35:00.240 | that consists of a diversity of religions,

00:35:05.240 | and so on and so forth.

00:35:08.360 | First of all, and the second thing

00:35:11.120 | that's wrong with that statement is the whole idea

00:35:12.800 | that states somehow have a right to exist or whatever.

00:35:16.640 | It's such a distraction.

00:35:18.720 | You have people getting shot in the street.

00:35:21.880 | You have millions and millions of people besieged.

00:35:24.280 | You have people losing their homes.

00:35:26.120 | You have people who are held in Israeli prisons

00:35:28.040 | without trial or charge indefinitely.

00:35:32.120 | But the conversations that are being held on the Hill,

00:35:35.480 | the conversations that are being held on CNN,

00:35:38.280 | are does Israel has a right to exist,

00:35:40.800 | or why would you negate Israel's having a right to exist?

00:35:43.760 | That's one.

00:35:44.600 | Now, of course, I just find it's ridiculous, again,

00:35:49.600 | that opposing a secular political movement

00:35:54.120 | that was explicitly colonialist, expansionist,

00:35:57.200 | exclusive, and racist through the words of its own authors

00:36:01.360 | is somehow, and also, again, opposing such a political

00:36:06.120 | movement that is quite young and quite recent

00:36:10.160 | is somehow equivalent to opposing a religion

00:36:15.160 | that is thousands and thousands of years old.

00:36:17.320 | But it is convenient, again, for Israeli politicians

00:36:21.280 | to frame us who oppose Zionism,

00:36:25.240 | a form of racism and bigotry, as anti-Semites.

00:36:28.800 | But I can guarantee you Benjamin Netanyahu

00:36:31.280 | has no problem with anti-Semitism.

00:36:34.040 | This is the same man who has no problem getting on stage

00:36:37.440 | and shaking hands with Pastor John Hagee,

00:36:40.960 | doing webinars with Pastor John Hagee.

00:36:45.720 | For those who don't know, Pastor John Hagee

00:36:47.400 | is the founder of Christians United for Israel

00:36:50.720 | who has said on multiple occasions that Hitler was a hunter

00:36:54.400 | who was sent to hunt the Jews,

00:36:57.320 | who said on multiple occasions that Jewish people

00:37:00.600 | are gonna perish in hell.

00:37:02.080 | You can, all of this is like very viable by Google.

00:37:05.200 | And this is one of the Israeli regime's closest allies.

00:37:09.280 | So the Israeli regime does not have a problem

00:37:15.560 | with anti-Semites when it serves its interests.

00:37:18.240 | It has a problem.

00:37:20.080 | I mean, like if you look at evangelicals

00:37:23.720 | or like Christian Zionism at large,

00:37:26.200 | anti-Semitism lies at the heart of Christian Zionism.

00:37:31.480 | It's the idea that we wanna drive all of the Jews

00:37:33.720 | outside of the United States

00:37:36.320 | so that Armageddon could happen or whatever the fuck.

00:37:40.320 | This accusation has been a muzzle.

00:37:43.240 | It has been used as a muzzle

00:37:45.480 | to silence political opposition

00:37:47.360 | and to stifle political advocacy

00:37:51.000 | for the liberation of Palestine.

00:37:53.080 | And a lot of the time people get caught up in denouncing it

00:37:57.120 | and in justifying themselves and disclaimers

00:38:01.480 | and so on and so forth, that you lose the point,

00:38:03.800 | that you're distracted from the focal point.

00:38:05.440 | That is, there is an ongoing colonialism happening

00:38:09.000 | where people every single day are killed.

00:38:11.400 | I cannot keep count.

00:38:12.680 | This morning, a kid was shot in Palestine.

00:38:17.480 | It's embarrassing even for me

00:38:20.520 | that I don't even know the numbers here.

00:38:22.960 | But this muzzle has been effective.

00:38:25.320 | And I think the only righteous option

00:38:29.160 | is to oppose these labels,

00:38:33.640 | these smear campaigns that target us.

00:38:36.560 | I myself have been labeled an anti-Semite by the ADL.

00:38:41.560 | And I mean, if you want to talk about that surface level,

00:38:46.160 | people will say, "Wow, the ADL, Anti-Defamation League,

00:38:51.160 | "condemned you."

00:38:52.760 | But people do not look at the history

00:38:53.960 | of the Anti-Defamation League,

00:38:55.080 | do not look at the present of the Anti-Defamation League.

00:38:57.880 | The fact that they are the largest

00:39:01.400 | non-governmental police training department in the country

00:39:05.480 | where they train police in racial profiling and militarism.

00:39:09.920 | The fact that they have historically

00:39:11.640 | and continue to have engaged in surveillance

00:39:14.920 | on black liberation movements,

00:39:20.640 | on anti-apartheid South African activists.

00:39:22.920 | Most recently in Charlottesville,

00:39:24.760 | when white supremacists were marching

00:39:26.680 | and chanting anti-Semitic shit,

00:39:30.800 | the ADL advised local police departments

00:39:35.440 | to spy on the black organizers

00:39:38.760 | opposing the white supremacists.

00:39:41.920 | This is, again, all verifiable on the internet.

00:39:44.200 | Go to droptheADL.org.

00:39:46.240 | - So the ADL does not alleviate

00:39:51.960 | the hate in the world,

00:39:55.680 | as it probably is designed to do.

00:39:58.560 | - No, it's the guys.

00:40:00.880 | I don't think the Apartheid Defense League

00:40:03.000 | is really our most progressive.

00:40:06.440 | - That's what it stands for.

00:40:07.520 | - Yeah, in case you didn't know, now you know.

00:40:09.800 | - If we could just linger on this idea of anti-Semitism,

00:40:18.840 | there's quite a bit of anti-Muslim sentiment

00:40:23.200 | in the United States, especially after 9/11.

00:40:26.280 | I've spoken to people about that.

00:40:28.480 | There's also anti-Jewish, anti-Semitism sentiment

00:40:33.480 | in the United States, but also throughout human history.

00:40:37.400 | What do you make about this kind of fact of human nature

00:40:42.400 | that people seem to hate Jews throughout history,

00:40:47.400 | especially in the 20th century,

00:40:49.880 | especially with Nazi Germany?

00:40:51.440 | What are your, in general, thoughts

00:40:54.680 | about the hatred of the Jewish people?

00:40:57.560 | - I mean, I think it's obviously wrong.

00:40:59.520 | I don't know.

00:41:00.360 | It's this idea that I even have to clarify

00:41:03.040 | when I think about anti-Semitism that doesn't sit right

00:41:06.400 | well with me.

00:41:07.280 | I think it's completely unfortunate and wrong

00:41:09.640 | that Jewish people have been persecuted across history.

00:41:13.880 | - So one of the criticisms,

00:41:16.360 | I think I've read the ADL making this criticism of you,

00:41:19.600 | is maybe you've tweeted a comparison

00:41:22.360 | between Israel and Hitler,

00:41:27.080 | and thereby diminishing the evil that is Hitler.

00:41:31.880 | What would you say to that?

00:41:34.120 | - Amos Azar talks about this a lot,

00:41:36.440 | the exceptionalization of Hitler.

00:41:39.320 | Hitler is a deplorable, I don't know,

00:41:43.240 | condemnable, rotten, racist, horrible human being

00:41:48.200 | that belongs in the depths of hell.

00:41:50.720 | Obviously, that goes without saying,

00:41:54.000 | but I am allowed analogy,

00:41:59.000 | and I'm allowed to say whatever I want.

00:42:03.360 | Now, I don't necessarily think that such an analogy

00:42:07.880 | is a good strategy to have,

00:42:11.800 | but at the time, the context came in 2021

00:42:15.800 | when Israeli soldiers and policemen and settlers

00:42:22.120 | were literally burning down our neighborhood,

00:42:24.360 | again, verifiable by Google.

00:42:27.120 | And I tweeted it, and also, I remember I tweeted something,

00:42:31.320 | I hope every single one of them dies.

00:42:33.360 | And to this day, this is some kind of gotcha for me,

00:42:37.400 | as if I should have tweeted,

00:42:38.440 | oh, here's the apple pie for every single soldier

00:42:41.280 | that's throwing tear gas in my house.

00:42:43.120 | There is such an exceptionalism

00:42:49.760 | when it comes to Palestinians.

00:42:52.120 | We're not allowed analogy, we're not allowed expression,

00:42:55.000 | we're not allowed armed resistance,

00:42:56.560 | we're not allowed peaceful resistance,

00:42:57.920 | we're not allowed to boycott, because that's anti-Semitic,

00:43:01.080 | we're not allowed to do anything.

00:43:02.760 | So what are we allowed?

00:43:04.560 | If I can't boycott, and that's against American law

00:43:07.520 | not to boycott, and if I can't pick up a rifle,

00:43:10.000 | because that's against the law,

00:43:11.560 | and if I can't even tweet my frustration out,

00:43:14.720 | what am I allowed to do?

00:43:15.920 | Maybe Netanyahu can send me a manual he's happy with.

00:43:21.320 | - So you've spoken about the taking of homes,

00:43:25.200 | the IDF killing civilians, killing children.

00:43:30.200 | What about the violence going the other direction?

00:43:34.440 | Israelis being killed, in part, by terrorist action?

00:43:39.560 | - Well, it depends on how you define terrorism, right?

00:43:42.400 | Across history, one man's freedom fighter

00:43:45.200 | is another man's terrorist.

00:43:46.760 | I don't necessarily subscribe to the definition of terrorism.

00:43:53.640 | If a foreign army is in my neighborhood,

00:43:57.600 | which it's not supposed to be in,

00:43:59.160 | and they're shooting live ammunition at my house,

00:44:03.660 | I'm allowed to do what I'm allowed to do.

00:44:06.240 | And again, this is yet another case

00:44:08.320 | of Palestinian exceptionalism,

00:44:09.440 | because when it comes to Ukraine,

00:44:11.680 | people have no problem seeing Ukrainians

00:44:15.640 | defending their homes, seeing Ukrainians dying for their land,

00:44:20.520 | seeing Ukrainians making makeshift Molotovs on Sky News.

00:44:25.520 | Sky News was running Molotov-making cocktails.

00:44:28.560 | The New York Times ran an article

00:44:29.880 | interviewing a Ukrainian psychologist

00:44:31.680 | who said that hatred, I'm paraphrasing,

00:44:33.400 | but he said hatred for all Russians

00:44:37.400 | is actually a healthy outlet.

00:44:38.720 | The New York Post ran a headline

00:44:40.480 | championing quote-unquote heroic Ukrainian suicide bomber.

00:44:45.480 | These things we would not even dream of as Palestinians.

00:44:52.800 | We are told to turn the other cheek time and time again.

00:44:57.400 | We're told that we should continue living

00:45:00.000 | inside these enclaves without access to clean water,

00:45:03.120 | without access to the right to movement,

00:45:05.100 | without access to building permits,

00:45:06.880 | without our natural right to expansion,

00:45:09.160 | without a guarantee that if we leave our house,

00:45:12.240 | we're not gonna be shot,

00:45:13.600 | and we're supposed to not do anything about it.

00:45:16.040 | That is absurd.

00:45:16.920 | Any person watching this understands this completely.

00:45:21.800 | People understand.

00:45:22.960 | People understand that if somebody is attacking your home,

00:45:26.120 | you fight back.

00:45:26.960 | If somebody is attacking your family, you fight back.

00:45:29.200 | That is not.

00:45:30.920 | But again, who gets to call who a terrorist?

00:45:33.400 | Who gets to define terrorism?

00:45:35.000 | This is all about who has power.

00:45:37.280 | Who gets to write these laws?

00:45:38.680 | Who gets to write these definitions?

00:45:40.520 | Why is it that American actions

00:45:46.680 | and Iraq is not called terrorism by American politicians?

00:45:51.840 | Violence is like this mutating concept,

00:45:58.320 | and it takes on many shapes and forms,

00:46:01.420 | and if it's in a uniform, if it speaks in English,

00:46:05.360 | if it has blonde hair, it's somehow acceptable.

00:46:08.240 | It's okay.

00:46:09.080 | We make movies about it.

00:46:11.620 | We sell out tickets about it.

00:46:16.680 | We make games about it.

00:46:18.320 | But if it's without a uniform,

00:46:20.520 | if it has a thick accent, if it has a beard,

00:46:22.760 | that's condemnable.

00:46:25.640 | That's wrong.

00:46:26.460 | That's terrorism.

00:46:27.500 | - Do you think violence is an effective method

00:46:30.820 | of protest and resistance in general?

00:46:33.400 | - In general, I think it has been.

00:46:35.280 | I think, you know, I believe in fighting on all fronts.

00:46:37.480 | I don't think violence alone is gonna bring about change.

00:46:41.840 | I think there's so much to do in culture

00:46:46.840 | and shifting public opinion.

00:46:49.800 | There's so much to do in media

00:46:51.040 | and fighting back against media,

00:46:53.040 | erasure and censorship.

00:46:55.160 | There's so much to do diplomatically and politically.

00:46:59.520 | And I think I would be naive

00:47:02.620 | if I don't take the power imbalance into consideration.

00:47:07.620 | One side has makeshift weapons

00:47:11.560 | and the other side is one of the most sophisticated armies

00:47:14.280 | in the world.

00:47:15.580 | So I don't know.

00:47:16.820 | I don't know how effective violence could be in this case.

00:47:19.660 | - But if you look at the flip side,

00:47:21.820 | do you see the power of nonviolent resistance?

00:47:24.680 | So Martin Luther King, Gandhi,

00:47:27.900 | the power of turning the other cheek.

00:47:29.940 | He spoke negatively about turning the other cheek.

00:47:32.860 | - Yeah.

00:47:33.700 | - Do you, so I sense that doing so

00:47:37.280 | has not been effective for the Palestinian people.

00:47:40.060 | - We've turned the other cheek generation after generation.

00:47:43.720 | There is this Zionist trope that is used against us.

00:47:47.300 | They say Palestinian rejectionism.

00:47:49.600 | They say that we reject everything.

00:47:50.960 | But if you look at the history, like our leadership,

00:47:53.420 | the Palestinian Authority has given up inch after inch,

00:47:57.780 | has compromised on acre after acre,

00:48:01.260 | has signed deal after deal after deal after deal,

00:48:05.500 | and still there is no peace.

00:48:08.780 | So turning the other cheek is not, you know,

00:48:11.820 | the most effective method in my book.

00:48:14.780 | - What are the top obstacles to peaceful coexistence

00:48:17.820 | of Israelis and Palestinians?

00:48:19.380 | - The occupation comes to mind,

00:48:22.980 | the shoot to kill policies come to mind,

00:48:25.580 | the siege comes to mind,

00:48:28.420 | the asymmetry of the judiciary comes to mind.

00:48:31.000 | The whole system needs to be dismantled.

00:48:35.820 | I will quote my dear friend Rabih Ghabariya,

00:48:38.260 | who's a lawyer who says, you know,

00:48:40.580 | the solution, justice comes about through recognition,

00:48:45.400 | return, and redistribution.

00:48:49.020 | There are millions of Palestinian refugees

00:48:51.300 | who are living in excruciating circumstances

00:48:54.380 | in refugee camps around the world.

00:48:56.380 | There are thousands of Palestinian prisoners

00:48:59.500 | who are held in prisons for defending their homes,

00:49:04.180 | hundreds of which are held without charge or trial,

00:49:07.040 | by the way.

00:49:07.980 | There are many Palestinians who get killed

00:49:11.780 | in broad daylight with no recourse,

00:49:13.380 | journalists and medics and everyday people,

00:49:16.620 | not just the freedom fighters.

00:49:19.180 | We need, again, recognition, return,

00:49:23.820 | and redistribution.

00:49:25.460 | And peace comes about when they stop killing us,

00:49:29.900 | when they stop keeping us in a cage.

00:49:31.460 | I mean, that's quite simple.

00:49:33.740 | - Can you describe recognition,

00:49:35.780 | redistribution, return, and redistribution?

00:49:38.380 | - Return, right of return,

00:49:40.860 | the right of return to all of the Palestinian refugees

00:49:43.360 | to their homes.

00:49:44.660 | You know, when I'm driving around Haifa

00:49:46.500 | and I see my grandmother's home

00:49:50.020 | that's now turned into a restaurant,

00:49:52.900 | I could have, you know,

00:49:53.940 | I made a joke in one of my essays recently

00:49:56.460 | that had I had that, I could have had it all,

00:49:58.900 | you know, the beachfront views,

00:50:01.060 | her smug attitude, you know,

00:50:02.820 | she grew up by the sea

00:50:05.580 | after she relocated to Haifa after Jerusalem.

00:50:10.420 | We want that, we want that.

00:50:14.100 | You know, they're lucky I don't want Netanyahu's home,

00:50:16.780 | but I just want my home.

00:50:18.260 | I just want my home.

00:50:19.100 | We want to return.

00:50:19.940 | I also, there needs, you know,

00:50:21.660 | in like, I believe in the 1960s,

00:50:24.780 | the Israeli government classified 90%

00:50:27.500 | of all of historic Palestine as state-owned land.

00:50:30.860 | This is all land that was owned by Palestinian farmers

00:50:34.900 | who have cultivated their lands for decades.

00:50:37.140 | You know, since the establishment of the Israeli state,

00:50:39.540 | there has been Jewish-only towns popping up

00:50:43.620 | every few years, and not one town,

00:50:46.220 | not one Palestinian town has emerged.

00:50:48.420 | We are, even those of us who have Israeli citizenship

00:50:51.860 | who live outside of the wall are encircled

00:50:54.700 | and cannot have their natural community growth

00:50:57.180 | in their towns.

00:50:58.200 | That needs to change.

00:50:59.980 | That needs to change.

00:51:01.220 | - You mentioned the wall.

00:51:02.100 | Can you describe the wall?

00:51:03.500 | - The wall is a nine-meter high cement wall

00:51:06.180 | that was finished in 2003.

00:51:10.260 | And if you're American,

00:51:12.580 | you've probably heard the whitewashed,

00:51:14.460 | sanitized version of the name,

00:51:16.180 | which is the security wall.

00:51:17.980 | But it's a wall that literally has stolen

00:51:21.020 | thousands of dunams of land and has ripped apart families.

00:51:26.180 | My mother is a poet, or was a poet at some point,

00:51:28.300 | and she had this poem she published in the paper

00:51:32.260 | called "Love Behind the Wall," and it describes,

00:51:35.220 | you know, it's a poem, but it describes

00:51:37.020 | a real-life situation of two families

00:51:42.020 | who lived right across the street from each other,

00:51:44.100 | but were then separated by the wall,

00:51:46.180 | and they would fly balloons, you know,

00:51:48.660 | to see each other from each side of the wall

00:51:51.100 | or something like that.

00:51:52.940 | This, although it sounds absurd,

00:51:55.740 | but it's the reality for many Palestinian families

00:51:57.660 | whose lives were torn apart,

00:51:58.740 | whose livelihoods also were torn apart by the wall.

00:52:03.460 | Maybe this is a good opportunity to talk about

00:52:05.580 | the legal classifications for Palestinians.

00:52:07.820 | You know, Israel, much like any other colonial entity,

00:52:14.900 | has divided and fragmented the Palestinian people.

00:52:18.940 | As I said earlier, I have a blue ID,

00:52:22.220 | which means I'm a resident.

00:52:23.780 | A friend of mine who lives in Haifa, for example,

00:52:26.700 | two hours away from me, 150 kilometers,

00:52:29.140 | nothing too bad in this country,

00:52:31.620 | has an Israeli citizenship.

00:52:33.460 | He can, you know, travel, he can enter the West Bank,

00:52:37.660 | he can do a lot more, he's a citizen,

00:52:41.380 | he can vote if he wants to, not that we want to.

00:52:44.780 | You know, I always tease my friends,

00:52:46.340 | oh, you can go to Italy without a visa

00:52:48.300 | because you have an Israeli citizenship.

00:52:49.980 | But, you know, they battle national erasure,

00:52:52.260 | they battle crime in their own communities

00:52:55.620 | because of police negligence.

00:52:57.540 | They battle land confiscation

00:53:00.940 | and have battled land confiscations in the '50s.

00:53:04.260 | Whereas somebody with a green ID,

00:53:05.980 | somebody from the West Bank cannot leave the West Bank,

00:53:12.460 | cannot go anywhere without a special permit

00:53:15.620 | and lives behind these walls.

00:53:17.340 | And even within the West Bank,

00:53:19.420 | the West Bank, I think hilariously,

00:53:21.980 | George Bush described it as Swiss cheese

00:53:26.140 | because of the holes, every few,

00:53:29.900 | every hundred meters there's a new settlement

00:53:31.700 | or there's a new military checkpoint.

00:53:33.380 | So even if you live behind the wall in the West Bank

00:53:36.260 | with your green ID,

00:53:37.420 | even though you're robbed of your right to movement,

00:53:41.260 | you still even can't move from town to town

00:53:43.020 | within the West Bank without encountering settler violence

00:53:45.980 | or military violence while you're crossing the checkpoints

00:53:49.860 | and so on and so forth.

00:53:50.980 | And then the last category we have

00:53:53.380 | is people who live in Gaza.

00:53:55.060 | We are talking about over 2 million people

00:53:56.860 | who live in an open air prison,

00:53:59.100 | who have no right to movement,

00:54:03.220 | but also have no access to clean water,

00:54:05.460 | no access to supplies, no access to good food,

00:54:09.500 | no access to good healthcare and so on and so forth,

00:54:11.780 | who routinely get bombarded every few years.

00:54:14.700 | Gaza is like two hours away from my house.

00:54:18.380 | It feels like an absolute faraway planet

00:54:20.940 | because it's so isolated from the rest of the country.

00:54:25.060 | So imagine all of these different legal statuses

00:54:28.900 | fragmenting your everyday identity

00:54:32.300 | and creating different challenges and obstacles

00:54:34.700 | for you to deal with, for each group to deal with.

00:54:37.980 | You know, it's amazing and impressive

00:54:39.980 | that despite these colonial barriers,

00:54:42.220 | the real cement ones and the barriers in the mind,

00:54:47.220 | despite all of these barriers,

00:54:48.980 | the Palestinian people have maintained

00:54:51.580 | their national identity for 70 years.

00:54:53.980 | That is incredibly impressive.

00:54:56.540 | And it also sends a message

00:54:58.300 | that as long as we have a boot on our neck,

00:55:00.980 | we're going to continue fighting, you know,

00:55:03.980 | violence, cracking down on refugee camps,

00:55:07.420 | bombarding refugee camps is only

00:55:09.700 | gonna bring about more violence.

00:55:11.940 | - So West Bank is a large region

00:55:14.180 | where a lot of Palestinian people live

00:55:15.820 | and then there's settlements sprinkled throughout

00:55:18.980 | and those settlements have walls around them

00:55:21.860 | with security cameras.

00:55:23.340 | - And security guards.

00:55:24.340 | - Security guards.

00:55:25.180 | - There's almost a million settlers in the West Bank.

00:55:28.100 | - And so what are the different cities here,

00:55:29.780 | if you can mention?

00:55:31.020 | - In the West Bank?

00:55:31.900 | - In the West Bank, Ramallah, Jenin, Bethlehem,

00:55:34.260 | Lebron, Jericho, Nablus.

00:55:37.260 | They have their own stories,

00:55:40.100 | they have their own histories.

00:55:41.740 | - Yeah, and it's fascinating also

00:55:43.860 | how interconnected they are, you know,

00:55:45.260 | like a friend of mine, Mona Omari,

00:55:47.260 | recently did a documentary report

00:55:50.500 | on the day that Haifa fell during the Zionist invasion.

00:55:54.620 | The Haganah led the Palestinian residents of Haifa

00:55:59.620 | down to the city center.

00:56:02.460 | And as absurd as it sounds,

00:56:05.580 | those of them who stood on the right side of the street

00:56:08.540 | were forced into cars that took them to multiple stops

00:56:11.900 | that would later become multiple refugee camps,

00:56:13.740 | the last of which was Jenin refugee camp.

00:56:17.620 | And those who stood on the left side of the street

00:56:21.380 | were forced to board boats that took them to Lebanon

00:56:25.460 | to become refugees there.

00:56:27.820 | Last month, we saw the Israeli army invade Jenin

00:56:32.260 | in maybe the largest military invasion of Jenin since 2002.

00:56:37.100 | And they killed many people,

00:56:42.660 | they attacked medics and journalists

00:56:45.340 | in broad daylight on camera,

00:56:46.780 | they have destroyed infrastructure

00:56:49.380 | and it was all very painful,

00:56:50.620 | but I think the most compelling aspect

00:56:54.700 | of the raid on Jenin was what followed.

00:56:59.300 | Israeli soldiers at night held their megaphones

00:57:01.700 | and instructed hundreds of Palestinians

00:57:06.700 | to flee their homes.

00:57:08.380 | And they told them, if you don't leave,

00:57:09.940 | if you don't have your hand up in the air,

00:57:13.220 | you will get shot.

00:57:14.580 | And they were forced to leave their homes in the camp

00:57:16.460 | and walk to God knows where.

00:57:18.820 | I can guarantee you, because the Nakba is not that old,

00:57:21.980 | I can guarantee you that some people

00:57:23.860 | who were marching away from their camps,

00:57:26.740 | who were chased away from their homes in the camp in Jenin,

00:57:29.820 | were some of the same people

00:57:31.740 | who were chased away from their homes in Haifa

00:57:33.580 | in the first place.

00:57:35.100 | This perpetual exile that Palestinian people

00:57:40.100 | continue to live is unbearable.

00:57:43.460 | I mean, in my case, my grandmother was removed

00:57:45.420 | from her home in Haifa in '48,

00:57:48.660 | and then she moved from city to city.

00:57:49.980 | And then in 2009, she saw half of her home

00:57:52.900 | taken over by Israeli soldiers.

00:57:55.020 | My grandmother died in 2020,

00:57:56.540 | and two months later, we got the next expulsion order

00:57:59.800 | from the Israeli court.

00:58:00.980 | I'm quite ashamed to admit that I was relieved

00:58:06.580 | that my grandmother had died,

00:58:08.620 | because I did not want her, 103 years old at the time,

00:58:12.420 | to go through yet another Nakba.

00:58:15.740 | And this is the fact for so many Palestinians,

00:58:18.540 | regardless of where they are on the map.

00:58:20.540 | - If I may read the description of the situation in Jenin,

00:58:24.940 | and maybe you can comment.

00:58:26.380 | So this is on July 3rd, 4th, and 5th,

00:58:29.100 | just reading Washington Post's description.

00:58:32.260 | So this was an Israeli military incursion to Jenin.

00:58:35.460 | The raid included more than 1,000 soldiers

00:58:37.680 | backed by drone strikes,

00:58:39.180 | making it Israel's largest such operation in the West Bank

00:58:42.060 | since the end of the second Palestinian uprising in 2005.

00:58:46.380 | The Israeli military said it dismantled

00:58:48.700 | hundreds of explosive, cleared hundreds of weapons,

00:58:52.500 | destroyed underground hideouts,

00:58:54.480 | and confiscated hundreds of thousands of dollars

00:58:57.080 | in, quote, terror funds.

00:58:59.700 | Many of the 50 Palestinians who have attacked Israelis

00:59:02.980 | since the start of the year

00:59:04.540 | have come from Jenin camp and the surrounding area.

00:59:08.060 | Palestinian attacks inside Israel

00:59:09.980 | have killed 24 people this year.

00:59:12.980 | UN experts describe the Jenin operation

00:59:15.020 | as collective punishment, in quotes,

00:59:17.300 | for the Palestinian people,

00:59:19.660 | amounting to egregious violations of international law.

00:59:23.740 | Many of the more than 150 Palestinians

00:59:27.800 | killed by Israelis this year

00:59:29.480 | have also come from these communities.

00:59:31.480 | Palestinian fighters say they need arms

00:59:33.800 | to defend themselves against the Israeli occupation

00:59:36.800 | and military incursions into the camp,

00:59:39.000 | during which Palestinian civilians,

00:59:40.800 | including children, have been killed.

00:59:42.900 | So those are the,

00:59:44.340 | I would say, different perspectives

00:59:49.000 | on the many people on both sides who have been killed,

00:59:52.000 | many more Palestinians.

00:59:54.500 | - Can you comment more about the situation?

00:59:57.840 | - I mean, I think the Washington Post article

01:00:00.480 | is a little bit more careful than other media

01:00:05.480 | that came out recently about Jenin.

01:00:08.180 | I think, you know, I was listening to a Reuters radio show

01:00:11.320 | and they failed to ever mention the occupation.

01:00:13.460 | I don't even think this paragraph mentioned

01:00:15.400 | that Jenin is under occupation

01:00:16.920 | by the Israeli forces, by the Israeli regime.

01:00:21.540 | I think this is the most important piece of context

01:00:23.600 | that gets obsecured in our media reporting,

01:00:28.160 | is these cities, these refugee camps,

01:00:31.800 | are under illegal occupation.

01:00:34.000 | The Israeli army has no business

01:00:35.800 | being there in the first place.

01:00:37.580 | That is the departure point.

01:00:41.260 | That is the most important piece of context

01:00:43.900 | that will answer to you

01:00:45.480 | why these people are arming themselves,

01:00:48.760 | many of which, by the way, lived through the 2002 massacre

01:00:51.660 | and bombardment of Jenin and grew up in that violence.

01:00:55.920 | The context that Palestine is under occupation,

01:01:00.000 | that these Palestinian cities are under occupation,

01:01:02.360 | that they have to deal with land seizures at all times,

01:01:04.980 | that they cannot leave their towns without a special permit,

01:01:09.980 | all of this will give context to the violence.

01:01:13.620 | And, you know, the thousands of Israeli soldiers

01:01:17.940 | that raided the camp that day,

01:01:19.800 | that traumatized an entire generation,

01:01:23.800 | they think they will quell that generation.

01:01:25.920 | They think that with such bloodshed

01:01:28.800 | and such barbaric violence,

01:01:31.600 | destroying infrastructure, attacking medics,

01:01:34.800 | killing people left and right,

01:01:35.960 | they think with this kind of terror

01:01:38.820 | that they can quell people,

01:01:42.200 | tell people that they can guarantee

01:01:45.400 | that these kids are not gonna grow up and resist.

01:01:47.920 | But that's the opposite of what happens.

01:01:49.960 | One thing about Palestinian people,

01:01:53.140 | they will not compromise their dignity.

01:01:56.420 | These people live in dire, excruciating circumstances,

01:02:02.620 | and it is so courageous, in my opinion,

01:02:10.160 | that they even think to defend themselves

01:02:14.980 | against one of the most lethal,

01:02:16.420 | one of the most sophisticated armies in the world,

01:02:19.580 | against a nuclear state that can wipe them out

01:02:22.100 | in a matter of seconds.

01:02:23.620 | But it's not, at the end of the day,

01:02:24.660 | it's not even about courage.

01:02:26.160 | It's about survival.

01:02:27.580 | They don't do this because, you know,

01:02:30.460 | of machismo or because of heroic tendencies.

01:02:34.020 | It's because this is about survival.

01:02:35.960 | - So the degree there's violence, it's about survival.

01:02:40.220 | - Absolutely, absolutely.

01:02:41.780 | I think if there was no occupation,

01:02:44.160 | there would be no violence.

01:02:45.980 | It's quite obvious.

01:02:46.860 | And again, people understand this.

01:02:48.120 | I mean, like we saw on Twitter in the recent month,

01:02:51.980 | all of these Israeli propagandists

01:02:55.700 | who had tweeted pictures of little girls

01:02:58.940 | with guns in Ukraine and women making bombs in Ukraine

01:03:02.540 | and young men carrying their rifles in Ukraine

01:03:04.940 | and praising them as heroes,

01:03:06.660 | post very similar pictures of Palestinians

01:03:09.420 | and calling them terrorists.

01:03:13.100 | It's glaring, the double standard.

01:03:15.220 | I don't even need to linger on it.

01:03:17.380 | - Well, the double standard is glaring,

01:03:20.740 | but I also think the glorification of violence

01:03:22.940 | is questionable.

01:03:24.820 | There's a balance to be struck, of course.

01:03:27.540 | But...

01:03:28.380 | - Yeah, I mean, I don't think we should be glorifying

01:03:34.140 | violence at all, but I don't think

01:03:37.580 | we should be normalizing violence either.

01:03:39.620 | I think that's what it is.

01:03:44.180 | You know, I'll tell you a story.

01:03:46.220 | I was interviewing a person whose brother was killed

01:03:48.940 | by the Israeli military during a Israeli raid

01:03:51.620 | on their village, and the person was so concerned

01:03:56.680 | about whether I was gonna report that

01:04:01.100 | her brother allegedly had a Molotov cocktail in his hand.

01:04:07.980 | And I found it absolutely insane, absolutely absurd

01:04:13.340 | that we can just glance over the fact that there is,

01:04:15.700 | again, a foreign military in tanks

01:04:19.700 | with rifles and snipers invading the village

01:04:24.380 | at 4 a.m. in the morning,

01:04:26.060 | shooting live ammunition at people's houses,

01:04:29.020 | throwing tear gas.

01:04:29.860 | That we can just glance over, it's normal.

01:04:31.540 | We could just report on it.

01:04:33.020 | No problem, nobody's gonna bat an eyebrow.

01:04:36.100 | But the fact that potentially somebody might have picked up

01:04:41.860 | a Molotov cocktail to throw it at this invading army

01:04:45.940 | is where we draw the line.

01:04:47.500 | It says a lot.

01:04:48.660 | It says a lot about whose violence is normalized,

01:04:51.580 | is accepted, is institutionalized, is glorified even.

01:04:56.580 | You walk around Tel Aviv and you see all of the plaques

01:04:59.260 | plastered around the streets of the country,

01:05:03.180 | of the city, celebrating the battles that they had won,

01:05:07.800 | the massacres that they had enacted

01:05:10.860 | against the Palestinian people.

01:05:13.100 | But God forbid, God forbid,

01:05:16.820 | Palestinians have any kind of similar sentiment.

01:05:20.500 | - So on July 4th, during this intense period,

01:05:24.580 | a Palestinian rammed a car into pedestrians

01:05:27.500 | at a bus stop in Tel Aviv,

01:05:29.260 | injuring eight people before being shot dead by a passerby.

01:05:33.220 | Also that night, Hamas fired rockets into Israel

01:05:36.560 | and then Israel responded with strikes

01:05:38.340 | on what it said was an underground weapons site.

01:05:41.540 | So just to give some context

01:05:43.100 | to the intense violence happening here,

01:05:47.540 | what do you think about Hamas firing rockets into Israel?

01:05:50.720 | - Well, the framing makes it seem as though

01:05:55.500 | like unprovoked Hamas is like firing rockets onto Israel,

01:06:00.500 | regardless of what you think of Hamas, obviously.

01:06:03.420 | But unprovoked.

01:06:05.160 | But that's not the case.

01:06:06.380 | The provogation is the fact that they are forced

01:06:09.580 | to live in a cage, that they have no access to clean water,

01:06:13.060 | they have no access to basic rights,

01:06:14.540 | no access to imports, no access to anything,

01:06:18.780 | that they can't leave.

01:06:20.540 | They're living in a densely populated enclave

01:06:24.140 | that was deemed uninhabitable by the UN,

01:06:27.540 | that was deemed an open air prison.

01:06:29.900 | So the rockets in any case are retaliation for the siege.

01:06:35.620 | Let's start there.

01:06:36.860 | But again, this is just to prove my point.

01:06:38.740 | Violence begets violence.

01:06:40.180 | Palestinian people are not violent people.

01:06:43.640 | We are not violent people at the core.

01:06:45.660 | And I think what serves this narrative is Islamophobia,

01:06:50.580 | is like xenophobia towards Arabs,

01:06:52.900 | which we don't have, like I don't have the luxury

01:06:55.420 | to like to write laws about.

01:06:57.540 | By the way, I'm quite frustrated by this.

01:07:03.980 | I am preoccupied and the Palestinian people are preoccupied

01:07:08.340 | with the material violence that we have to deal with

01:07:10.500 | on the day to day, the demolitions, the bombings,

01:07:13.820 | the imprisonment.

01:07:14.940 | That's what we're distracted with and busy with

01:07:19.620 | that we can't even talk about the racism,

01:07:22.020 | the casual racism against us,

01:07:24.300 | the anti-Palestinian racism be it in the media,

01:07:26.500 | on social media, in diplomatic circles.

01:07:29.100 | But all of this racism that has gone unchecked,

01:07:32.580 | that has not been regulated for decades,

01:07:35.860 | allows for these tropes to continue

01:07:38.060 | in which Palestinians are promoted

01:07:39.740 | as these like barbaric terrorists.

01:07:42.500 | And the only way we could remedy that situation

01:07:45.380 | is by marketing them as these like defenseless victims.

01:07:50.380 | But the fact of the matter is not this simplistic.

01:07:54.780 | Palestinian people are human beings

01:07:57.100 | who should enjoy a full spectrum of humanity,

01:08:00.660 | which includes rage, which includes disdain,

01:08:05.580 | which includes happiness and joy and laughter,

01:08:07.660 | which includes celebration,

01:08:08.860 | which includes all of these things,

01:08:11.860 | but we're not allowed this.

01:08:13.300 | But we are doing exactly what any people throughout history

01:08:16.700 | who have been oppressed, who have been colonized,

01:08:19.100 | who have been occupied, have done and continue to do

01:08:22.220 | as we see in Ukraine, which is celebrated by mainstream media.

01:08:25.860 | I'm sorry to keep reiterating this point,

01:08:29.740 | but at this point, I am quite exhausted

01:08:34.740 | by how exceptional Palestine and Palestinian resistance is

01:08:44.340 | when the world tells me time and time again

01:08:46.980 | that it doesn't have a problem with violence,

01:08:48.660 | it just has a problem with who does that violence.

01:08:51.780 | - Do you in your mind and the way you see this region

01:08:56.780 | draw a distinction between the people in power

01:08:59.100 | versus the regular people?

01:09:01.220 | So you mentioned the Palestinian people.

01:09:03.220 | Is there something you can comment on Hamas and the PLO?

01:09:08.420 | Do you see them as fundamentally different from the people?

01:09:13.780 | What does Hamas do well?

01:09:16.860 | Where do they fall short?

01:09:18.180 | - I think governments, wherever globally,

01:09:22.980 | are different from people.

01:09:24.500 | No government is a true reflection of its people.

01:09:26.780 | I think this is even true in the case of like Arab countries

01:09:31.780 | that normalize with Israel.

01:09:33.860 | In many of the cases, they're unelected governments.

01:09:38.660 | I think the Palestinian Authority continues to fail.

01:09:42.460 | I think there are subcontractors of the Israeli regime

01:09:46.420 | through their security coordination.

01:09:48.580 | And also, I'd like to use this as an opportunity

01:09:52.300 | to comment a little bit on the analogy thing,

01:09:56.980 | not to stray away from the question.

01:10:00.140 | But the Palestinian Authority, two years ago,

01:10:04.620 | killed an opposition activist named Nizar Bennett.

01:10:08.580 | It was a horrendous crime.

01:10:10.700 | And I was in Ramallah with the people protesting

01:10:15.220 | against the Palestinian Authority.

01:10:18.020 | And at some point, they had their batons,

01:10:21.100 | the Palestinian Authority police, and they beat us with it.

01:10:23.420 | And many of the people in the crowd

01:10:25.380 | were liking the Palestinian Authority to Zionism.

01:10:28.540 | I think people, this is what people do

01:10:31.460 | when they are confronted by a great evil.

01:10:35.780 | They liken it to some other great evil.

01:10:38.180 | And this is where the Hitler analogy came from.

01:10:41.300 | Again, I don't think it's like the best strategy

01:10:43.460 | moving forward, but I refuse to be criminalized

01:10:49.940 | for a little sentence.

01:10:52.140 | - But to linger on those in power,

01:10:55.460 | one of the criticisms towards Hamas and PLO,

01:10:59.340 | towards the Israeli government,

01:11:01.740 | at least the current coalition government,

01:11:04.460 | is that there's a lot of incentive

01:11:08.420 | to sort of perpetuate violence to maintain power.

01:11:13.420 | There's a hunger for power and maintaining that power

01:11:17.540 | amongst the powerful.

01:11:18.660 | That's the way power works.

01:11:20.420 | So is there a worry you have about those in power

01:11:25.420 | not having the best interests of its people?

01:11:29.060 | So those in power, the PLO, Hamas,

01:11:31.340 | not being incentivized towards peace, towards justice.

01:11:38.580 | - You know, looking at the PA's action today,

01:11:42.900 | it tells you a great deal about what they're interested in

01:11:46.060 | and what they're not interested in.

01:11:47.900 | And maybe, yeah, the occupation is in their best interest.

01:11:51.020 | And you can infer similar things looking at Hamas,

01:11:57.140 | but these two entities virtually have no power, even Hamas.

01:12:02.380 | Yani, there is the context that Hamas is permitted

01:12:10.740 | by international law to use armed resistance, blah, blah, blah.

01:12:15.620 | Does that mean Hamas is like equipped to govern Gaza?

01:12:19.220 | I don't think so.

01:12:20.060 | Does that mean that people around Palestine

01:12:23.660 | necessarily want to live under Hamas rule?

01:12:26.660 | In 2006, Hamas was democratically elected.

01:12:33.220 | I don't know if that's still the case today.

01:12:35.420 | There's a lot to be said,

01:12:37.660 | but neither of these entities have any real power

01:12:40.820 | in perpetuating.

01:12:44.260 | They don't, the only body that has access

01:12:49.260 | that can flip the switch on all of this equation

01:12:52.860 | is Israelis.

01:12:56.220 | They're the ones who are keeping people in a cage.

01:12:58.540 | They're the ones who are wrapping the West Bank with a wall.

01:13:03.540 | Everything else to me is just secondary,

01:13:06.140 | regardless of what I think personally

01:13:07.860 | of any of those people.

01:13:09.260 | I know personally for me, the world I envision,

01:13:12.820 | not just Palestine, the world I envision

01:13:14.300 | is a world that goes beyond states,

01:13:17.060 | that goes beyond this framing of power,

01:13:22.060 | this hierarchy in which some people rule over other people.

01:13:27.060 | This whole idea of nation states,

01:13:28.940 | be it Israel or any other nation states,

01:13:30.940 | it's futile, it's not good, it's exclusive.

01:13:35.300 | I think that we can achieve a better world than that.

01:13:38.860 | - Well, how do you do a better world?

01:13:41.620 | Actually, if you just linger on that,

01:13:43.460 | politically speaking, geopolitically,

01:13:49.300 | you have to have representation of the people,

01:13:51.900 | you have to have laws,

01:13:53.940 | and you have to have leaders and governing bodies

01:13:56.580 | that enact those laws and all those kinds of things.

01:13:59.860 | You probably need to have militaries to protect the people.

01:14:04.860 | - Can you not imagine a world without militaries?

01:14:07.740 | - I can imagine it, but we're not in that world.

01:14:10.540 | - Yeah, I'm not saying, you know,

01:14:11.860 | I have all the answers or a PowerPoint in my pocket,

01:14:14.980 | you know, with the instructions,

01:14:16.220 | but I'm saying the world I'd like to live in

01:14:18.900 | is one that transcends borders,

01:14:20.980 | is one that, you know, does not necessitate militaries,

01:14:25.980 | that doesn't necessitate all of these prisons,

01:14:30.180 | all of these walls, all of these racist laws.

01:14:35.180 | - So you don't think violence is a fundamental part

01:14:37.420 | of human nature that emerges

01:14:40.660 | and combined with a hunger for power?

01:14:43.620 | - I do think that both of these things

01:14:47.660 | are truly intrinsic to human beings,

01:14:51.540 | but I also do think there is a way to move beyond them.

01:14:55.020 | I'm not saying I have the answers.

01:14:56.740 | I'm tempted to say sway, but.

01:14:59.860 | - But you have a hope that there doesn't have to be war.

01:15:05.340 | - Yeah, yeah. - In the world.

01:15:06.420 | - Definitely, definitely.

01:15:08.420 | - Well, if we look a little bit more short term,

01:15:11.740 | people speak about a one state solution

01:15:13.660 | and a two state solution.

01:15:15.000 | What is your hope here for this part of the world?

01:15:20.180 | Do you see a possible future with a two state solution,

01:15:23.420 | whether it's with Palestine and Israel?

01:15:25.860 | Do you see a one state solution

01:15:28.420 | where there is a diversity of different peoples,

01:15:32.420 | like in the United States, and they have equal rights?

01:15:36.180 | In the courts and everywhere else?

01:15:39.540 | - You know, I don't think there's a geography

01:15:41.100 | in which a two state solution is possible.

01:15:43.580 | As we said earlier, Swiss cheese,

01:15:46.620 | there's literally settlements all over the West Bank.

01:15:50.320 | And I don't think it's fair.

01:15:54.620 | A two state solution is fair to all of the people

01:15:57.580 | whose homes are still in Haifa,

01:16:01.140 | in Nazareth, in Jaffa, and so forth.

01:16:05.020 | And I don't think it's fair that I'm gonna have to

01:16:07.580 | travel to another country to visit my cousin

01:16:11.140 | who's married in Nazareth, for example.

01:16:13.040 | And beyond that, it's just not possible.

01:16:16.540 | I do believe that whatever you wanna call it,

01:16:20.300 | one state, two state, 48 states, 29 states,

01:16:23.260 | whatever you wanna call it, refugees need to return,

01:16:26.660 | land needs to be given back,

01:16:29.940 | wealth needs to be redistributed,

01:16:33.180 | and a recognition of the Nakba needs to happen.

01:16:36.700 | That is the only way we could move forward.

01:16:39.800 | And you know, regarding whether this is like

01:16:44.300 | a possible situation for two people to live side by side,

01:16:49.300 | let's ask two questions.

01:16:53.180 | Let's say you lived in a house with a person,

01:16:58.260 | your roommate, you just had a roommate

01:16:59.660 | who constantly beat the shit out of you.

01:17:02.940 | I wonder if you'd wanna continue to live with them.

01:17:04.900 | That's one.

01:17:06.220 | And let's try another scenario.

01:17:08.460 | Let's say you live in a house with a roommate

01:17:10.500 | who you just absolutely hate,

01:17:13.880 | just absolutely oppose their existence as a people.

01:17:18.860 | You don't even give him a key to your apartment.

01:17:23.820 | Let's say now you're like equal partners in the apartment.

01:17:28.340 | Would you wanna live with him?

01:17:30.860 | I don't know, we'll see.

01:17:31.740 | We'll see, time will tell, but you know,

01:17:33.660 | I don't think they wanna live with us.

01:17:36.740 | Israelis are quite good, you know,

01:17:38.340 | especially Israeli diplomats,

01:17:39.540 | they're quite good at using flowery language

01:17:44.540 | about peace and coexistence and so on and so forth.

01:17:48.260 | And they're good with making us seem insane or radical

01:17:52.500 | or like full of hate and so on and so forth.

01:17:55.500 | But the policies speak for themselves.

01:17:59.780 | The actions on the ground speak for themselves.

01:18:01.740 | And I truly, I mean, every time there's an uptick,

01:18:05.760 | many of them leave and I wonder, I would like to see,

01:18:09.540 | I wonder what would happen in a one state solution.

01:18:12.980 | - Well, okay, so you've spoken eloquently

01:18:15.680 | about the injustice of the evictions,

01:18:18.420 | the demolitions, the settlements.

01:18:21.280 | But is there, can you comment about the difficulty

01:18:27.500 | of the security from an Israel perspective

01:18:30.140 | when there is a large number of people

01:18:32.260 | that want to destroy it?

01:18:33.920 | How does Israel exist peacefully?

01:18:38.580 | This one state solution.

01:18:41.420 | - I don't know, by not shooting, you know,

01:18:43.940 | a journalist doing her job in the Zanine refugee camp.

01:18:46.700 | - But that doesn't-- - Why not killing

01:18:48.060 | a 14 year old standing in his front yard?

01:18:50.820 | This whole talk about, you know, security and security fence

01:18:55.500 | and the whole like propaganda of the Israeli defense forces

01:18:58.260 | and this whole iron wall ideology

01:19:00.220 | in which somehow they are always defending themselves,

01:19:02.860 | even though they're, you know,

01:19:05.100 | Netanyahu and the Israeli government continue to talk

01:19:08.540 | about an existential threat,

01:19:10.780 | about Iran being an existential threat.

01:19:13.700 | Even though the Israeli government is the only body

01:19:17.820 | that holds nuclear weapons in the region.

01:19:22.740 | They're the most sophisticated army in the region.

01:19:26.060 | And yet they continue hiding behind their fingers

01:19:28.500 | and talking about an existential threat

01:19:30.260 | and talking about how like they're insecure

01:19:32.580 | and so on and so forth.

01:19:34.460 | I came here on the bus, you know,

01:19:36.660 | I live in a house where everybody in the world

01:19:42.740 | can easily Google it and get its address.

01:19:45.180 | And anybody can just walk into my house.

01:19:48.620 | And this is just, and I'm lucky and privileged

01:19:52.440 | as a Palestinian journalist.

01:19:54.000 | There are many Palestinian journalists who lose their lives.

01:19:57.380 | This is like, that's real insecurity,

01:19:59.460 | but we don't even have time to whine about it

01:20:01.700 | because there's real shit going on on the ground

01:20:04.220 | that we're preoccupied with and reporting on all the time

01:20:06.820 | that we don't even have the time to talk about

01:20:09.100 | how limited is our institutional backing,

01:20:12.100 | how limited is our, you know, cyber security,

01:20:16.780 | how limited is our, you know, even healthcare,

01:20:19.380 | you know, like all of these things.

01:20:21.340 | We don't even have time to complain about.

01:20:23.880 | But the real life things that formulate

01:20:27.280 | an insecure population that Israel certainly

01:20:32.200 | does not suffer from.

01:20:35.040 | - There's a tension here.

01:20:37.720 | It's true that the ideas of existential threats

01:20:41.080 | to a nation have been used to expand

01:20:42.920 | the military industrial complex

01:20:44.520 | and to limit the rights of its people.

01:20:47.920 | So in the United States after 9/11,

01:20:50.620 | Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded under some justification

01:20:56.100 | of there being terror in the world, these big ideas.

01:21:00.460 | And in the same way, yes, Israel,

01:21:02.660 | with the existential threat of Iran is used to expand

01:21:06.120 | its military might over the region

01:21:08.500 | and control over the region.

01:21:10.060 | But it also has some truth to it

01:21:12.660 | in terms of the threat that Israel is facing,

01:21:16.700 | including from Iran.

01:21:18.280 | If Iran were to get a nuclear weapon,

01:21:20.360 | do you think there's a threat from that?

01:21:24.640 | - But who has the nukes?

01:21:26.960 | - Right now.

01:21:27.800 | - Yeah, but like we're talking about this far away monster

01:21:31.460 | that's like we're scared of, you know,

01:21:33.760 | it's like fear mongering.

01:21:34.880 | What do you mean?

01:21:36.360 | Who has the nukes?

01:21:37.400 | - Some of it is fear mongering, but some of it is true.

01:21:42.260 | - I don't think it's true.

01:21:43.600 | I don't think it's true.

01:21:44.440 | I think Israelis are obsessed with genocide

01:21:46.360 | because they have enacted genocide against us.

01:21:49.440 | Even when we talk about like a future,

01:21:51.240 | a liberation of Palestine,

01:21:53.160 | when we're talking about anything,

01:21:56.680 | they constantly jump to saying things like,

01:22:00.360 | "Oh, they wanna throw us into the sea.

01:22:02.720 | "They wanna kill all Jews."

01:22:04.280 | What kind of hyperbolic bullshit is that

01:22:07.240 | to say that if I am chanting and marching for my home,

01:22:11.120 | not to be taken away from me by some kind of settler court,

01:22:15.200 | I am somehow demanding the murder

01:22:17.160 | of all Jews across the world.

01:22:18.480 | That is hyperbolic.

01:22:19.920 | And the fact that we coddle it is insane to me.

01:22:23.240 | So no, I don't think as things stand right now,

01:22:26.420 | as the power balance stands right now,

01:22:29.080 | I don't think there's an existential threat to Israel.

01:22:32.160 | And also let's redefine what existential threat.

01:22:34.800 | Do we think Israel,

01:22:36.240 | the Israeli regime, the Zionist regime

01:22:40.040 | should continue to exist in its forms,

01:22:41.920 | subjugating people, enacting the crime of apartheid

01:22:45.200 | according to a bajillion human rights organizations?

01:22:49.320 | Do we think that it should continue

01:22:50.680 | keeping people in a cage?

01:22:52.120 | If that's what people are fighting to save,

01:22:55.000 | then that says a lot about the people

01:22:57.000 | who are feeling this existential threat, not me.

01:22:59.720 | - Do your beliefs represent the Palestinian people?

01:23:03.800 | Meaning how many people are there that want

01:23:07.480 | Israel to be gone?

01:23:10.480 | But what does it mean for Israel to be gone?

01:23:12.640 | - What it means is for people who think of Israel

01:23:16.160 | as an occupier who stole land,

01:23:19.160 | that needs to go away, that this should be all Palestine.

01:23:22.200 | - Yeah, but is that a bad thing for these borders to be,

01:23:24.640 | like for the occupation to end,

01:23:27.080 | for the land to be given back, is that a bad thing?

01:23:30.640 | - Well, there's different definitions of occupation.

01:23:33.560 | There's people in their homes now, right?

01:23:36.280 | - But is it their home?

01:23:37.400 | I'm not talking about,

01:23:39.280 | like some random home,

01:23:43.160 | but there are many, many, many, many, many, many,

01:23:46.680 | many, many, many, many, many, many, many Israelis

01:23:50.280 | who drink their coffee every morning

01:23:52.080 | from living rooms that are not theirs.

01:23:55.060 | - That are not theirs, that were taken

01:24:00.840 | just a few decades ago.

01:24:02.320 | - Yeah, where like the owners,

01:24:04.400 | the rightful owners of these homes

01:24:05.640 | are still lingering in refugee camps,

01:24:08.360 | are still dreaming of return.

01:24:11.180 | - There are homes on the land of Israel

01:24:15.280 | that you wouldn't classify as stolen.

01:24:17.200 | - I mean, there is, like if it wasn't stolen,

01:24:21.560 | like if it was built, but is the land stolen, right?

01:24:25.560 | But all of this, again, I try not to like fall into this

01:24:29.680 | because it just like, it feels so abstract and far away,

01:24:34.000 | and this is not how liberation is gonna look like whatsoever

01:24:38.560 | and I'm not like, I'm not fixated on ethnic cleansing.

01:24:42.360 | That is not, I'm not obsessed with ethnic cleansing.

01:24:44.960 | I'm obsessed with ending the ethnic cleansing campaign

01:24:48.800 | that has been visited upon me and my family

01:24:53.000 | and my community for seven plus decades.

01:24:55.560 | That's what I'm obsessed with.

01:24:57.280 | All of this other stuff about what happens to the settlers

01:25:00.240 | and like, you know, we wanna kill all Jews

01:25:03.920 | and all of this, I think it's bullshit

01:25:05.280 | and I think it's ridiculous and I think, you know,

01:25:08.160 | fixating on it is like distracting from the focal point.

01:25:11.400 | There needs to be an end to all of the injustices,

01:25:15.800 | to all of the atrocities.

01:25:17.600 | You know, a little boy from Jerusalem

01:25:20.240 | should be able to go jog around the city

01:25:22.400 | without fearing getting shot.

01:25:24.040 | That's like the simplest thing we're asking for here

01:25:27.400 | and we want our land back.

01:25:28.720 | And those things do not mean actually at all

01:25:33.280 | the ethnic cleansing of another people.

01:25:35.240 | - Well, but that, we should be precise here.

01:25:39.280 | So a little boy being able to run around Jerusalem,

01:25:43.280 | that's a great vision, not just safely,

01:25:46.160 | but without racism, without hate.

01:25:51.040 | That's a beautiful vision, yes.

01:25:52.800 | But people in West Jerusalem,

01:25:56.240 | people in Tel Aviv that have homes,

01:25:58.360 | should they stay there?

01:26:01.200 | Do they have the right to stay there?

01:26:02.920 | That's like maybe number 99 on my priorities list.

01:26:06.360 | I'm concerned with the refugees,

01:26:07.800 | I'm concerned with the teenagers in the prisons,

01:26:11.960 | I am concerned with my house,

01:26:13.520 | I'm concerned with my family's house in Haifa,

01:26:15.880 | I'm concerned, there's a lot for me to do

01:26:20.160 | before I can even tend to the needs of my occupier.

01:26:25.160 | That is the least of my concerns.

01:26:28.440 | - So you want the low-hanging fruit,

01:26:30.080 | the obvious injustices to end.

01:26:32.320 | - Yeah.

01:26:33.920 | - But still, the long-term vision

01:26:36.480 | of existential survival of Israel,

01:26:42.120 | which is the concern of its government,

01:26:44.040 | is the concern of its people.

01:26:45.760 | Do you see a future where Israelis have a home in the region?

01:26:50.760 | - Sure, just not in my front yard.

01:26:52.640 | - Which, where's the front yard,

01:26:55.040 | and where's the back yard?

01:26:57.040 | - There are literally Jewish settlers,

01:26:59.600 | one of which from Long Island, in my literal front yard.

01:27:03.280 | And this is the case in hundreds,

01:27:06.240 | if not thousands of Palestinian homes.

01:27:08.560 | You know, no one is saying Jewish people shouldn't exist

01:27:12.920 | or they shouldn't have a state of their own.

01:27:16.320 | I mean, I think all religious-based states

01:27:20.800 | are a bad idea, all nation states are a bad idea,

01:27:22.840 | but whatever, if that's what they wanna do,

01:27:24.800 | that's what they wanna do.

01:27:26.280 | But that doesn't mean that they are allowed

01:27:28.920 | or have a right to create and implement

01:27:32.400 | a system of Jewish supremacy at my expense.

01:27:36.280 | That's not a crazy thing to say.

01:27:38.640 | That is not a controversial thing to say.

01:27:41.320 | You can have your state, just don't kill anyone.

01:27:44.440 | Thank you, have a good day.

01:27:45.640 | You know, like, that's not a crazy thought to have.

01:27:49.920 | - And seek and establish a symmetry of power in the courts,

01:27:53.880 | which is the current source of injustice.

01:27:56.520 | - I mean, that's when it comes to like force expulsions

01:27:58.600 | in our home, but there's a myriad of other ways.

01:28:03.360 | - Through the military?

01:28:04.320 | - The military, I mean, the police.

01:28:07.160 | If you look at like how many times,

01:28:08.880 | I should have brought the data with me,

01:28:10.520 | but if you look at how little times the Israeli military

01:28:13.840 | or police has like investigated its own people

01:28:17.880 | or indicted its own people.

01:28:19.080 | I mean, just recently, the killer who has been hailed a hero

01:28:24.760 | by some of Israeli society who killed a Palestinian man

01:28:29.760 | who is autistic, who lives inside the occupied old city,

01:28:34.400 | where again, Israeli military has no business being there

01:28:37.400 | or jurisdiction whatsoever.

01:28:39.160 | He was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier

01:28:40.960 | who was trigger happy because again,

01:28:43.040 | they have this like siege mentality

01:28:45.800 | where like any moving object is gonna kill them.

01:28:48.040 | And he was shot and killed.

01:28:50.080 | And despite it being in broad daylight,

01:28:52.320 | despite it being well-documented,

01:28:54.200 | despite the victim being disabled,

01:28:56.760 | despite all of this, he was acquitted by the Israeli court.

01:29:00.240 | The military, the courts, the government,

01:29:02.000 | they all work together, which is why it's so ironic to me

01:29:05.320 | that there are hundreds of thousands of people

01:29:07.640 | marching on the streets of Tel Aviv,

01:29:09.760 | trying to save the progressive beacon

01:29:14.440 | that is the Israeli Supreme Court

01:29:16.600 | when you find its fingerprints all over the injustices

01:29:21.440 | perpetuated against Palestinians,

01:29:23.240 | be it legalizing and upholding the withholding

01:29:28.240 | of slain Palestinian bodies

01:29:31.040 | who were killed by the Israeli military

01:29:32.560 | to be used as bargaining chips with Israeli militaries,

01:29:35.520 | be it making decisions to dispossess entire villages

01:29:40.400 | like Amr al-Hiran, be it never once granting release

01:29:45.400 | to any Palestinian who was held in administrative detention

01:29:50.920 | without charge or trial,

01:29:52.600 | be it upholding the legality

01:29:54.760 | of the family reunification law

01:29:57.080 | that does not allow Palestinian couples

01:29:59.920 | who hold different legal statuses

01:30:01.920 | of reuniting and living together as families.

01:30:05.160 | I mean, those are just some of the few things

01:30:07.360 | I can think of about the Israeli Supreme Court.

01:30:10.920 | So the real tension that exists

01:30:15.840 | is the lack of diversity on the Israeli political spectrum

01:30:20.880 | that makes the vision for a future so limited

01:30:24.760 | because those on what seems to be like the far left

01:30:28.880 | are defending an extremely conservative institution

01:30:35.120 | that is the Supreme Court

01:30:37.360 | that they regard as progressive

01:30:39.120 | when in fact it is the opposite of such.

01:30:42.600 | So what do we do?

01:30:44.000 | How can we talk?

01:30:45.400 | How can we have peace with people

01:30:48.400 | who are chanting to save the very body

01:30:53.160 | that is displacing us?

01:30:55.080 | It's ridiculous.

01:30:56.440 | - What's your vision?

01:30:58.840 | Let's just take it as a microcosm of Jerusalem.

01:31:01.640 | What's your vision for Jerusalem looks like

01:31:04.240 | with a peaceful coexistence of people?

01:31:06.600 | - You know, as it looked like

01:31:09.800 | before the Israeli state emerged,

01:31:14.280 | I mean, we should be reading our history here.

01:31:17.520 | When you read like European and white historians,

01:31:20.640 | they'll tell you like Palestine was barren.

01:31:24.840 | Many of them would say like it was even without a people.

01:31:27.240 | There were nobody, nobody was there

01:31:29.160 | or like some of them will say we were uncivilized.

01:31:32.160 | But the fact of the matter is Palestine,

01:31:34.840 | Jerusalem particularly had a diversity of religion,

01:31:39.040 | Druze, Jewish people.

01:31:41.400 | You know, my grandmother continues to talk about,

01:31:43.960 | well, she continued until she died.

01:31:45.680 | She continued to talk about her Jewish neighbors

01:31:48.760 | when she grew up in the old city

01:31:50.280 | or like when she was born in the old city

01:31:51.720 | and then her Jewish neighbors in Haifa.

01:31:55.400 | We even had one Jewish member of our family,

01:31:58.680 | M. Sammi actually, who just also recently passed away.

01:32:03.480 | Like Druze were a part of Palestine

01:32:06.640 | and they spoke Hebrew, a different kind of Hebrew,

01:32:09.360 | but they spoke Hebrew and they were,

01:32:11.280 | people really need to read "The Hundred Years War on Palestine".

01:32:13.680 | It's really an excellent synopsis of the history.

01:32:16.760 | But this whole idea that this is like some kind of war

01:32:19.720 | between two religions is so misleading

01:32:22.760 | because what's happening is a bunch of,

01:32:26.840 | frankly, European settlers

01:32:28.560 | with a certain political secular ideology

01:32:31.840 | came and relocated here

01:32:33.760 | and turned it into a religious conflict

01:32:36.080 | between people who have lived harmoniously together

01:32:39.440 | for decades before that.

01:32:40.960 | And the whole idea, be it like Christian Zionism

01:32:45.960 | or John Hagee or like the calls for Jews

01:32:49.440 | to leave the United States and relocate in Israel

01:32:52.360 | or like recently, which we've heard about a long time ago,

01:32:57.360 | but recently an Israeli historian confirmed

01:33:00.400 | the fact that Israeli organizations were bombing Baghdad

01:33:06.720 | and bombing synagogues in Baghdad in Iraq

01:33:09.760 | to get Iraqi Jews to leave and come relocate in Israel.

01:33:13.920 | All of this is manufactured.

01:33:15.560 | And again, none of this is a conspiracy theory.

01:33:17.360 | I know it sounds absurd and anytime I look at my life

01:33:21.680 | from a bird's eye view, I think, what a circus.

01:33:23.920 | But it's real and it's verifiable.

01:33:28.480 | Call the fact checkers.

01:33:31.400 | - You mentioned the land registry.

01:33:32.760 | Can you elaborate what's happening there?

01:33:34.880 | - Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

01:33:35.720 | So our small victory in the Israeli courts

01:33:40.720 | was that they would keep us in our homes

01:33:45.240 | until a land registry is completed.

01:33:47.680 | Basically, it means that they have to check

01:33:51.880 | who owned the land prior.

01:33:55.080 | And then they could decide if the land is ours

01:33:57.840 | or the land belongs to the Israeli settler organizations

01:34:01.240 | that are headquartered in the United States

01:34:03.120 | and enjoy a tax exempt status here.

01:34:05.560 | And that sounds great on the surface,

01:34:10.000 | but then you look at Israeli law,

01:34:11.480 | you look at the Israeli courts, you look at ownership

01:34:13.640 | and you see that, oh, Israelis refuse to authenticate

01:34:18.320 | or take into consideration any land ownership documents

01:34:21.640 | from the prior of the establishment of the state.

01:34:24.400 | So all of us in Jerusalem who have their taboo papers,

01:34:29.240 | their ownership papers from the Ottoman era,

01:34:32.800 | that's not legit in the eyes of the Israeli court

01:34:35.480 | because that existed before,

01:34:37.440 | like your ownership deeds existed

01:34:39.800 | long before Israel even existed.

01:34:41.680 | So we're not gonna take this into consideration.

01:34:43.920 | So not to be cynical here,

01:34:46.600 | but unfortunately the likely result of the land registry

01:34:51.600 | is that they're gonna say,

01:34:52.520 | oh, all of this land belongs to these Jewish organizations

01:34:55.680 | because they're not gonna take

01:34:56.760 | any of our documents into consideration.

01:34:59.160 | But that means that there's going to be another campaign

01:35:01.520 | and there's gonna be a long-winded fight

01:35:03.960 | and we'll see what happens.

01:35:05.840 | But that's the fear and there's a huge dreadful fear

01:35:10.320 | of a massive loss in property in Jerusalem

01:35:12.400 | following this land registry

01:35:13.960 | for the reasons I just told you.

01:35:15.200 | It's the mere fact that they just refuse

01:35:17.600 | to look at land ownership documents.

01:35:19.400 | - What is the process of the fighting this

01:35:22.160 | in the courts look like?

01:35:23.280 | If you can maybe just comment on it.

01:35:25.240 | So there's--

01:35:26.280 | - I always make a joke that being in an Israeli court

01:35:28.160 | is like playing a game of broken telephone

01:35:31.000 | because everybody's speaking in Hebrew

01:35:32.600 | and then your lawyer says something to your dad

01:35:35.440 | and your dad says something to your mom

01:35:37.320 | and your mom whispers it in your ear

01:35:38.880 | and then you say it to your cousin

01:35:41.240 | and your cousin has a completely different idea

01:35:43.160 | of the verdict than what the verdict is.

01:35:44.960 | But that's really the reality.

01:35:46.280 | - So a lot of the fights happen family by family?

01:35:48.840 | - No, it's like groups.

01:35:50.680 | So in our case, it's like four houses, every four houses.

01:35:54.400 | But again, it happens in a language we do not speak.

01:35:57.880 | And a lot of the time, our strategy is buying time

01:36:01.200 | and building a global campaign.

01:36:04.000 | Like we know that there is no recourse

01:36:06.640 | in the Israeli courts.

01:36:09.000 | I mean, my grandmother used to say,

01:36:10.280 | and this is like a popular proverb,

01:36:12.360 | if your enemy is the judge, to whom do you complain?

01:36:16.880 | - So to the whom you complain

01:36:19.960 | is maybe the international community.

01:36:22.080 | - Yeah, I mean, in our case,

01:36:23.960 | it was the international community,

01:36:25.240 | but in our case also,

01:36:26.080 | it wasn't just the international community.

01:36:27.720 | It was the hundreds of thousands of people in Palestine

01:36:32.040 | and abroad who were marching on the streets,

01:36:36.280 | getting beaten and brutalized in Jerusalem.

01:36:39.000 | And I don't know, sometimes arrested in places like Germany

01:36:41.520 | and so on and so forth,

01:36:43.680 | who forced themselves inside the media cycle.

01:36:47.000 | This was what was unique about Sheikh Jarrah.

01:36:49.600 | We were able to penetrate an industry

01:36:52.120 | that usually ignores us

01:36:53.520 | and usually refuses to use any of our framing,

01:36:55.800 | any of our quotations.

01:36:57.440 | And these people that marched,

01:37:00.240 | these people that spread the rhetoric,

01:37:03.040 | spread the facts, wrote articles,

01:37:05.240 | these people that made videos online and got arrested,

01:37:08.600 | and many of whom are still in Israeli prisons

01:37:10.240 | paying higher prices than I have ever paid.

01:37:12.760 | These people are the ones that truly moved

01:37:15.400 | the international community into action.

01:37:18.400 | It wouldn't have.

01:37:19.560 | The United States, I don't think, would have said anything

01:37:22.120 | had it not been for the immense media pressure

01:37:24.760 | that was created from the immense popular pressure.

01:37:27.480 | There are a lot of moving parts to a global campaign,

01:37:30.160 | and I think it's so impressive, you know,

01:37:32.880 | that we were able to do this without any media backing,

01:37:36.160 | without any institutional backing,

01:37:37.440 | without any training, without any budget, nothing.

01:37:41.560 | - You mentioned the United States.

01:37:43.400 | What's the role of the United States

01:37:45.840 | in the struggle that you've been describing?

01:37:47.960 | What's the positive, what's the negative?

01:37:51.920 | - The role is perpetuating what's happening, Yanni.

01:37:55.760 | It's all a negative role, to be honest.

01:37:58.040 | - With the money, with power?

01:37:59.680 | - Yeah, it's like the 3.8 billion in military aid every year.

01:38:04.680 | It's the standing ovation.

01:38:08.360 | - Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid

01:38:11.080 | since World War II.

01:38:12.120 | To date, the United States has provided Israel $158 billion.

01:38:17.120 | As you said, it's providing currently 3.8 billion

01:38:20.640 | every year.

01:38:22.000 | A lot of people raise the question of what's the interest

01:38:26.040 | of taxpaying American citizens in this kind of--

01:38:29.320 | - Yeah, zero interest.

01:38:31.680 | - Foreign aid.

01:38:33.040 | - Zero interest.

01:38:34.320 | I don't think Americans, I think Americans,

01:38:37.200 | a lot of Americans are concerned with healthcare.

01:38:38.920 | A lot of Americans are concerned with clean water in Flint.

01:38:42.600 | I don't think they're concerned with funding apartheid

01:38:44.960 | in another country, and I think it's a disturbing phenomenon

01:38:48.200 | that although public opinion in the United States

01:38:50.160 | is shifting, I would argue drastically about Palestine.

01:38:55.160 | People in Washington are yet to catch up.

01:38:59.840 | It was only, I think, nine Congress people

01:39:02.240 | who boycotted Herzog's speech in Congress yesterday,

01:39:07.240 | and he received standing ovation after standing ovation

01:39:10.760 | after standing ovation after standing ovation,

01:39:12.520 | and I wonder if the everyday American is concerned

01:39:18.720 | that many of their politicians are Israel First politicians

01:39:21.520 | or politicians who care more about maintaining

01:39:26.520 | a relationship with the Israeli regime

01:39:28.800 | than they care about their own districts.

01:39:30.840 | - You've tweeted that 49 years ago, Ghassan Khanifani,

01:39:36.880 | well, you can maybe correct me on the pronunciation,

01:39:40.720 | was assassinated.

01:39:42.080 | You wrote, quote, "His revolutionary articulations

01:39:45.240 | "of the Palestinian plight for liberation

01:39:47.720 | "shook the colonial regime, yet he's not dead.

01:39:51.360 | "His ideas remain ever timely and teachable,"

01:39:54.920 | and you also tweeted an excerpt from his writing,

01:39:57.880 | "Between 1936 and 1939,

01:40:00.280 | "the Palestinian revolutionary movement

01:40:01.880 | "suffered a severe setback

01:40:03.640 | "at the hands of three separate enemies

01:40:05.920 | "that were to constitute together the principal threat

01:40:08.280 | "to the nationalist movement in Palestine

01:40:11.560 | "in all subsequent stages of its struggle.

01:40:15.240 | "One, the local reactionary leadership.

01:40:18.040 | "Two, the regimes in the Arab states surrounding Palestine,

01:40:20.880 | "and three, the imperialist Zionist enemy."

01:40:24.120 | Can you analyze what he means by those three things?

01:40:27.360 | The local reactionary leadership,

01:40:29.280 | the regimes in the Arab states surrounding Palestine,

01:40:32.000 | and the imperialist Zionist enemy.

01:40:34.320 | And also, could you comment on him as a person?

01:40:37.320 | - Yeah, I mean, Ghassan Khanifani is a brilliant,

01:40:40.120 | brilliant, brilliant writer, and he was prolific.

01:40:44.600 | He's authored so much books,

01:40:47.440 | even though he was assassinated in the '70s,

01:40:49.560 | but he was 37, if I'm not mistaken,

01:40:51.600 | 35 when he was assassinated.

01:40:53.360 | He was an inspiration to me in school,

01:40:57.360 | and I remember even my teachers had qualms about him

01:41:02.360 | because he was a secular person.

01:41:04.880 | But I love Ghassan Khanifani.

01:41:06.680 | He's a beloved figure in the Palestinian community,

01:41:10.080 | and I hope to one day be able to achieve a fraction

01:41:14.800 | of what he's achieved in the terms of shaping

01:41:17.560 | a political consciousness for Palestinians

01:41:20.400 | and for people in the region.

01:41:21.760 | - Did he classify himself as a politician,

01:41:24.520 | as a philosopher, as an activist?

01:41:26.720 | Do you know?

01:41:27.560 | - He was a writer, but he was also part

01:41:28.680 | of the Palestine Liberation Front, PFLP.

01:41:33.600 | - So he used the words to fight for freedom.

01:41:38.600 | - Yeah, I don't think he would have thought

01:41:41.840 | his words were divorced from other forms of struggle,

01:41:44.800 | but I think he recognized the importance of culture

01:41:48.960 | and shaping culture and shaping public opinion,

01:41:51.920 | both in achieving a shift in global stance

01:41:57.840 | and also in achieving an awakening

01:42:05.400 | in the Palestinian generation as well.

01:42:08.720 | - There's a very famous interview of his

01:42:12.440 | where he's talking to, I believe, a British journalist,

01:42:15.840 | and the British journalist is asking him,

01:42:17.160 | "Why don't you have talks with the Israelis?"

01:42:20.920 | And he means, "What do you mean, talks?

01:42:22.920 | You mean capitulation?

01:42:23.960 | You mean talking that you can't have a conversation

01:42:26.640 | between the sword and the neck?"

01:42:28.240 | And I think that really summarizes the kind of values

01:42:34.360 | he stood for.

01:42:35.360 | Now to talk about the three things--

01:42:37.640 | local reactionary leadership, regimes in the Arab states

01:42:41.040 | surrounding Palestine, and the imperialist Zionist enemy.

01:42:44.280 | - Yeah, so in today's terms,

01:42:46.040 | the local reactionary leadership

01:42:47.920 | is the Palestinian Authority.

01:42:49.780 | The regional regimes we're talking about,

01:42:54.880 | actually, the normalization deals

01:42:58.200 | that have emerged in recent years,

01:42:59.680 | the Abrahamic Accords, have been talked about

01:43:03.920 | as though they're groundbreaking, new phenomenon.

01:43:08.360 | But many Arab countries have normalized relations

01:43:13.200 | with the Israeli regime.

01:43:14.400 | Since the birth of the state, it's not a new thing.

01:43:19.420 | But yes, I think he was talking about Egypt and Jordan

01:43:24.000 | at the time.

01:43:24.840 | Today we can include United Arab Emirates,

01:43:28.560 | we can include Bahrain, we could include Morocco.

01:43:32.960 | And again, these Abrahamic Accords,

01:43:36.920 | they are promoted and marketed and talked about

01:43:40.240 | as some kind of religious reconciliation,

01:43:44.680 | which I think is the most disgusting thing ever,

01:43:47.280 | because they're not about religious reconciliation.

01:43:51.120 | They're about arms deals and economic deals,

01:43:53.680 | and they're about consolidating power in the region.

01:43:57.760 | They're about mutual strategic interests

01:44:00.420 | that all of these nations have together.

01:44:02.720 | And some people argue that Palestine

01:44:06.920 | is no longer an Arab cause

01:44:08.300 | because Arab countries are normalizing.

01:44:10.940 | But most of these governments, if not all,

01:44:13.160 | actually, all these governments that have normalized,

01:44:15.600 | most of them are monarchies, are not elected governments,

01:44:20.000 | and they do not represent the will of the people

01:44:24.200 | or the desires or the opinions of their peoples.

01:44:27.560 | And the proof to this is places like Jordan and Egypt,

01:44:32.920 | even though they've normalized

01:44:34.080 | and had peace agreements with Israel

01:44:35.460 | for many, many, many, many years,

01:44:37.760 | Palestine and the Palestinian cause

01:44:39.240 | was still a talking point in the political campaigning

01:44:43.140 | of politicians, of Jordanian Egyptian politicians,

01:44:46.000 | and continues to be, for them to gain popularity,

01:44:49.680 | because that's where the hearts of the people are.

01:44:52.140 | And then the Zionist regime is quite explanatory,

01:44:57.860 | the imperial Zionist regime.

01:44:59.120 | I mean, what else do you call a regime

01:45:01.200 | that sought help from imperialist powers

01:45:04.560 | to depopulate an entire country

01:45:06.440 | and build a new one on top of it?

01:45:08.040 | - So mostly you would say the thing

01:45:12.200 | that Abraham Accords achieved

01:45:15.400 | is a negative thing for Palestine.

01:45:20.400 | So these kinds of agreements amongst the powers,

01:45:23.080 | between the leadership is not,

01:45:26.520 | yeah, it's not positive for the region.

01:45:30.480 | No, no.

01:45:32.000 | Obviously they're gonna be marketed as positive,

01:45:34.880 | and obviously they're gonna have this flowery language

01:45:39.880 | surrounding them, and the idiots in the room

01:45:43.320 | might nod and smile,

01:45:44.800 | but anybody with critical thinking skills

01:45:46.680 | can know that if people continue to be under occupation,

01:45:49.640 | there's nothing positive there.

01:45:52.400 | And it's also there's,

01:45:53.800 | let's linger a little bit on the mutual interests.

01:45:56.560 | The only way Morocco could normalize relations

01:46:00.080 | with the Israeli regime

01:46:01.280 | is so that the Israeli regime

01:46:05.920 | could recognize Moroccan sovereignty

01:46:08.200 | over the Western Sahara,

01:46:10.160 | which just happened actually last week,

01:46:11.840 | and now Morocco, and before that,

01:46:14.800 | Morocco recognized Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.

01:46:18.560 | It's not like Morocco itself just has no interest

01:46:21.240 | in this kind of deal.

01:46:23.440 | - You mentioned that you hope of accomplishing

01:46:30.000 | some of the things that Hassan Khanifani

01:46:32.280 | was able to accomplish.

01:46:33.960 | Let me ask you a silly question,

01:46:36.520 | perhaps a silly question.

01:46:38.040 | Do you have interest in running for political office

01:46:40.600 | into leadership?

01:46:45.200 | I hear laughter in the room,

01:46:46.640 | to lead in a leadership position in Palestine?

01:46:51.840 | - Not currently, no.

01:46:55.320 | (Lex laughing)

01:46:56.960 | Not at all.

01:46:57.800 | - Let's see if this ages well.

01:46:58.800 | - I don't think, yeah, no.

01:47:00.160 | I don't think there's a body through which

01:47:02.960 | I can run for anything.

01:47:05.640 | It's completely dysfunctional.

01:47:10.240 | And also, I don't wanna wear a suit all the time.

01:47:12.680 | - Who would wanna do that?

01:47:16.520 | So from which kind of pedestal,

01:47:20.080 | or from which kind of stage

01:47:22.000 | do you think you can be most effective?

01:47:24.000 | - I was born and raised in Jerusalem.

01:47:27.680 | I speak perfect Arabic.

01:47:28.600 | I think my Arabic writing is much superior

01:47:30.960 | to my English writing,

01:47:31.800 | but I choose to

01:47:33.720 | write in English because

01:47:37.720 | I think there's a disparity,

01:47:41.800 | and there's a chasm between what is said in Arabic

01:47:45.080 | on the street in Palestine,

01:47:46.960 | and what is said here about Palestinians,

01:47:51.480 | both by anti-Palestinian racists

01:47:54.520 | and people who are pro-Palestine

01:47:56.760 | and advocates for Palestine.

01:47:58.760 | And I believe I and a few others from my generations,

01:48:01.520 | or many others actually from my generation

01:48:03.280 | are working to fill that chasm.

01:48:05.240 | And I also believe that literature, culture,

01:48:08.440 | the public sphere,

01:48:09.960 | changing the public opinion,

01:48:11.200 | changing the narrative is important

01:48:13.400 | to affecting policy, to affecting change,

01:48:15.640 | affecting material change.

01:48:17.040 | I'm not gonna go read a poem

01:48:19.840 | in front of a checkpoint and watch it catch in flames.

01:48:24.760 | I'm not that delusional about the power of words.

01:48:28.080 | But I do think that

01:48:30.280 | I have a responsibility,

01:48:33.720 | and I have a privilege even to have a voice,

01:48:36.800 | to have some kind of platform.

01:48:38.680 | And if I'm not defining myself,

01:48:41.640 | if I'm not talking and representing myself,

01:48:44.360 | then other people will define me.

01:48:46.840 | And their definitions of the Palestinian people

01:48:49.920 | across the few past decades

01:48:51.520 | have not been kind or generous to the Palestinian people.

01:48:55.240 | That's one thing.

01:48:56.080 | The other thing is I believe in the United States

01:48:57.840 | as a front for change.

01:49:01.400 | I believe we have a lot more leverage here

01:49:03.880 | than we do back home.

01:49:05.840 | Again, I believe in,

01:49:08.160 | someone said the other day,

01:49:10.680 | I can't remember their name,

01:49:11.520 | but someone said, "No stone unturned."

01:49:13.720 | I believe in fighting on all fronts.

01:49:15.960 | But here really, I can go protest

01:49:18.320 | in front of the Israeli embassy without getting shot.

01:49:21.360 | There's a lot of work to be done here.

01:49:24.760 | There's a lot of people waking up.

01:49:27.040 | I would even argue that a reckoning is coming

01:49:29.600 | in the American public.

01:49:32.440 | And more and more American people are concerned

01:49:35.280 | where their tax money is going,

01:49:36.560 | are concerned what their politicians are invested in.

01:49:39.400 | More and more American people are saying not on our dime,

01:49:42.440 | are saying not, you know,

01:49:46.080 | not today, not here.

01:49:49.240 | And also there's many Palestinians in the diaspora

01:49:53.840 | here in the United States and Europe

01:49:56.040 | who benefit and could benefit from political education

01:50:01.040 | in the English language.

01:50:03.080 | Because of the diaspora across history,

01:50:04.800 | the Palestinian diaspora has been effective

01:50:06.520 | in the '70s and the '80s.

01:50:08.320 | And I'm hoping ever since 2021,

01:50:11.720 | there has been a resurgence of the power

01:50:14.040 | and influence of the Palestinian diaspora.

01:50:17.040 | - To ask another silly question,

01:50:18.920 | since you mentioned the United States,

01:50:21.520 | I don't know if you follow the politics

01:50:22.920 | in the United States,

01:50:23.760 | but do you have a preference of presidential candidates

01:50:28.600 | in the 2024 election?

01:50:30.500 | Or is that, do you follow--

01:50:34.680 | - I do follow.

01:50:35.520 | - Where each candidate stands on the different policies?

01:50:38.880 | - I do, I think everybody in the world

01:50:40.280 | should be able to vote for American elections, actually.

01:50:42.680 | (laughing)

01:50:43.640 | I do follow.

01:50:44.600 | - Because of the influence they have.

01:50:45.640 | - Yes, yes.

01:50:46.680 | - Yeah.

01:50:48.520 | - I do follow, I don't have a preference whatsoever.

01:50:52.600 | I don't.

01:50:55.280 | I saw Cornel West on CNN.

01:50:58.040 | I don't think, I don't know if he's gonna go far

01:51:01.120 | with his campaign.

01:51:02.360 | Cornel West is running with the Green Party.

01:51:04.480 | And I don't think he's gonna achieve much success,

01:51:07.320 | but I saw him on CNN berating Andrew Cooper,

01:51:11.120 | and I enjoyed that very much.

01:51:12.880 | Wouldn't mind seeing that on my screen.

01:51:15.040 | - Regularly.

01:51:15.860 | - Regularly, but don't really have an opinion about,

01:51:20.220 | you know.

01:51:21.380 | - You wrote Rivka, a book of poetry.

01:51:23.860 | How did that come about?

01:51:24.900 | Maybe you can tell the story of that book coming to be.

01:51:29.900 | - You know, I signed the book when I had a lot less

01:51:34.680 | visibility in the world.

01:51:37.500 | So when I didn't think thousands and thousands

01:51:41.340 | and thousands of people would be reading it,

01:51:42.720 | I decided to include many poems which I wrote

01:51:44.740 | when I was young.

01:51:45.980 | Because it's a long, it's a long,

01:51:49.220 | it's a long journey, this book.

01:51:51.100 | It starts in Jerusalem, it goes to Atlanta,

01:51:55.300 | it goes back to Jerusalem, and then it ends in New York.

01:51:58.540 | And Rivka is the name of my grandmother.

01:52:01.460 | And it's an Arabic name, a Hebrew name,

01:52:04.660 | and it means to accompany someone.

01:52:06.460 | And I wanted to write about displacement

01:52:10.500 | in a way that was beyond what we read about in English.

01:52:15.380 | Poetry as a medium, I don't know if I have much faith

01:52:17.600 | in it anymore, to be honest.

01:52:20.020 | Maybe like I'm turned off by it,

01:52:22.180 | and I'll revisit it again in a few years.

01:52:24.220 | But at the time of writing this book, Poetry as a Medium,

01:52:27.740 | it really was a source of hope and inspiration for me.

01:52:32.740 | So my mother was a poet, and she would,

01:52:39.180 | you know, her and my dad would play this game in the morning

01:52:41.300 | she would read her poems to him,

01:52:43.220 | and he would guess which lines would be red penciled

01:52:47.420 | by the Israeli military censor,

01:52:48.660 | because she would submit her poems

01:52:49.980 | to the local newspaper, Al-Quds newspaper,

01:52:52.460 | and you know, the military censor has to go over it.

01:52:55.780 | And you know, she would get her poems back

01:52:58.780 | with a bunch of words erased, and they would laugh about it,

01:53:01.260 | and blah, blah, blah, so poetry was very much

01:53:02.740 | part of my upbringing.

01:53:04.980 | And you know, as a Palestinian,

01:53:07.020 | when you're excluded from mainstream spaces,

01:53:08.900 | including media and journalism,

01:53:11.580 | poetry tends to be a place where you can say

01:53:13.740 | what you want to say without repercussions,

01:53:15.780 | and I say that, I realize that, our greatest.

01:53:18.940 | Writer Ghassan Kanafani literally had his car bombed,

01:53:25.620 | exploded because of his writings,

01:53:27.420 | and you know, recently, Darin Tatur,

01:53:29.140 | a Palestinian poet with an Israeli citizenship,

01:53:32.300 | was imprisoned for a few months

01:53:34.140 | for publishing a poem on Facebook

01:53:35.420 | in which he said, "Resist, my people, resist."

01:53:38.140 | So even that is not necessarily true.

01:53:39.980 | But anyway, it just felt like I could,

01:53:42.900 | it's a place where I could talk

01:53:44.020 | and express large ideas in a simplistic way.

01:53:49.020 | And you know, the best example I could give you

01:53:52.260 | is one of my favorite poets, Rosh Hud Hussain.

01:53:54.940 | When the Israeli authorities decided to do the land law,

01:54:03.620 | which classified, I believe, 93% of historic Palestine

01:54:08.620 | as Israeli-owned, state-owned, forgive me,

01:54:14.380 | and then when they also did the absentee property law,

01:54:18.740 | which allows the Israeli government

01:54:20.980 | to take over homes that were depopulated

01:54:23.860 | from the Palestinian owners,

01:54:25.260 | he wrote a poem called "God is a Refugee."

01:54:28.740 | It's kind of a sarcastic, sardonic poem

01:54:31.740 | in which he goes, you know,

01:54:32.980 | "God has become a refugee, sir,

01:54:34.780 | "so confiscate even the carpet of the mosque

01:54:38.380 | "and sell the church 'cause it's his property

01:54:41.380 | "and sell our orphans because their father is absent

01:54:44.340 | "and do whatever you want."

01:54:46.460 | It's a sarcastic poem that was in reaction to these laws

01:54:50.540 | that translated to the everyday Palestinian,

01:54:52.820 | to the farmers, to the landowners,

01:54:54.700 | what these bureaucratic, complicated laws meant to them,

01:54:58.620 | what they meant to their land,

01:55:00.340 | what it meant, what effect are these laws gonna have

01:55:05.340 | on these people's lands?

01:55:07.180 | And that, I think, is the role of poetry

01:55:09.700 | that I try to achieve.

01:55:12.660 | - So poetry ultimately prizes the power of words,

01:55:17.660 | and so the medium, the power of the medium of poetry

01:55:22.380 | transfers nicely to any medium that celebrates words.

01:55:25.660 | So even, I mean, just writing novels,

01:55:30.620 | tweeting, you're also working on a new book,

01:55:35.140 | a memoir, what's the title?

01:55:38.060 | What can you say about it?

01:55:39.420 | - Memoir is bizarre because, you know, I'm so young,

01:55:43.580 | so it's not really my memoir,

01:55:44.660 | but it's rather a memoir of the neighborhood

01:55:47.620 | which I grew up.

01:55:49.020 | The title, the tentative title is A Million States in One,

01:55:51.700 | and it's a nod to how many different realities

01:55:53.660 | and universes exist in this tiny one country.

01:55:57.420 | And it's, you know, it's kind of,

01:56:00.300 | it's kind of a documentation of the two waves of expulsion

01:56:06.660 | in 2009 and 2020 and 2021,

01:56:09.420 | and the kind of behind the scenes of the campaign

01:56:13.060 | that took place, the diplomatic and media campaign

01:56:15.860 | and grassroots campaign that took place to save our homes.

01:56:19.180 | And it's also an exploration of other communities

01:56:24.900 | that are threatened with expulsion

01:56:27.460 | and other communities who are resisting in their own way,

01:56:29.800 | be it in Beta, in Nablus, or South Herb on Hills,

01:56:32.420 | and in Masafariyatta, or in Silwan, or in the Naqab,

01:56:37.420 | all these communities that are dealing

01:56:38.940 | with different forms of expulsion.

01:56:40.820 | And, you know, the emphasis that I'm trying to achieve

01:56:43.660 | with this book is dignity.

01:56:45.500 | I want to write a book about, you know,

01:56:52.900 | my experiences that is like super, that is super dignified,

01:56:57.220 | that kind of kicks its feet up on the table

01:57:00.580 | and says what it wants unabashedly,

01:57:02.220 | because, you know, we are told not only

01:57:04.980 | are we going to be victimized,

01:57:06.220 | but we are going to be polite in our suffering.

01:57:08.780 | And I want to reject that completely,

01:57:10.380 | and I want to lean into the humor

01:57:12.100 | of the past few years of my life,

01:57:14.460 | 'cause I think that's really what the world needs

01:57:17.300 | and what I need to be writing.

01:57:18.860 | - A few questions here, but one of them is about humor.

01:57:22.180 | In Rivka, you wrote, "My mother has always said

01:57:25.380 | "the most tragic of disasters is those that cause laughter."

01:57:29.700 | What do you think she meant by that?

01:57:31.460 | - Yeah, it's, I don't know if,

01:57:34.140 | I mean, that's my mom saying,

01:57:36.060 | but I don't know if it's like probably a proverb

01:57:38.420 | that I first heard from my mom,

01:57:39.580 | but it's (speaking in foreign language)

01:57:42.200 | Like, the most evil of atrocity is what makes you laugh.

01:57:49.780 | And it can be, you know, it's open for interpretation.

01:57:52.700 | You should be aware of, one school of thought would say

01:57:55.820 | you should be wary of the things that make you laugh,

01:57:57.900 | but another school of thought would say

01:58:00.540 | this is a commentary on, like,

01:58:01.860 | our natural reactions to tragedies, right?

01:58:05.140 | In, like, 2012, 2011, something like this,

01:58:08.460 | we had, like, a protest, and after the protest,

01:58:13.460 | all of the women of the neighborhood

01:58:15.460 | were sitting down under the fig tree of our neighborhood,

01:58:19.300 | which they always do, and, you know,

01:58:22.740 | a bunch of soldiers, maybe 40 soldiers,

01:58:24.500 | started marching down the street,

01:58:26.380 | and everybody dispersed and hid in their homes.

01:58:28.940 | But my aunt, who has now passed away,

01:58:31.540 | my aunt refused to go home.

01:58:33.180 | She wanted to gather her teacups,

01:58:35.940 | because she really cared about her teacups.

01:58:38.100 | So I was begging her to go inside,

01:58:41.380 | and she refused, she was gathering her teacups.

01:58:43.140 | So a soldier, you know, grabbed me and squeezed me

01:58:49.060 | between his baton and an electricity pole,

01:58:51.420 | and it was very excruciatingly painful

01:58:53.860 | and traumatizing for me as a child,

01:58:56.060 | but it was, it's also, like, a funny memory, in a way,

01:59:00.420 | despite the pain, despite the trauma that came with it.

01:59:05.420 | There's still something funny about it.

01:59:07.900 | - The absurdity of it.

01:59:08.860 | - Yeah, and it's, like, it's dignifying

01:59:11.500 | to find humor in these kinds of things.

01:59:13.260 | It makes you realize you are not so weak,

01:59:15.620 | you are not so powerless.

01:59:17.220 | Another thing is, you know, my same aunt,

01:59:19.260 | who was, like, super obsessed with cleanliness,

01:59:22.500 | would, you know, insist on not going to sleep

01:59:27.500 | before washing the dishes.

01:59:31.780 | And I would always tease her and say,

01:59:32.940 | "What, you're just gonna, like,

01:59:33.940 | "you're gonna give them the house clean?

01:59:35.420 | "Like, you can leave it dirty so they have to clean it up."

01:59:38.380 | And these little things, although, like,

01:59:39.980 | incredibly, you know, absurd and telling of a harrowing

01:59:44.260 | reality that our family and many in the neighborhood

01:59:46.700 | were living, are also the coping mechanisms

01:59:51.220 | that we were using to deal with our everyday reality.

01:59:55.540 | And so much in the public framing of Palestinians,

02:00:01.260 | be it in media and novels and diplomacy

02:00:03.700 | and so on and so forth, is that of the powerless victim,

02:00:07.580 | is that of the person who only weeps.

02:00:09.860 | You know, like, Israeli propagandists, for example,

02:00:14.100 | will, like, show pictures on Twitter of, like,

02:00:17.020 | a house in Gaza, and they'll be like,

02:00:19.980 | "Look, this house has windows."

02:00:22.060 | Like, they're talking about their BCs,

02:00:24.180 | but they have a nice, they have a balcony on their house.

02:00:26.820 | What are they talking about, like, you know?

02:00:28.940 | Or, like, they'll show a video of a supermarket in Gaza,

02:00:31.340 | and they'll be like, "How come they're talking

02:00:32.580 | "about a blockade when they have a supermarket?"

02:00:34.420 | And blah, blah, blah, as though, you know,

02:00:37.380 | the ceiling has been so lowered

02:00:39.620 | that we can't even afford joy anymore,

02:00:42.540 | or, you know, a little supermarket in the neighborhood.

02:00:45.300 | - So, as a poet, as a writer,

02:00:48.980 | I've written a book of poetry,

02:00:50.220 | but now working on a new book.

02:00:51.540 | What can you say about your process of crafting words?

02:00:56.460 | I think people listening to this can hear

02:00:58.500 | that there's a poetry to the way you speak in English.

02:01:01.940 | So, somebody that cares about the craftsmanship of words

02:01:06.940 | in both English and Arabic,

02:01:08.980 | what can you say about your process?

02:01:11.740 | - Oh, it's a lot more neat than, like, this conversation.

02:01:16.100 | It's like I am obsessed with sentences,

02:01:18.700 | and it takes me a long time to, like,

02:01:21.300 | finish a piece of writing.

02:01:23.140 | I am a perfectionist.

02:01:24.700 | - Do you edit a lot?

02:01:25.620 | - I edit all the time, and I, like,

02:01:27.340 | can't move on from one sentence until it's perfect.

02:01:29.700 | But I will say my other writer friends here in New York

02:01:32.860 | do not face is how easily disrupted my writing is

02:01:39.860 | by other news.

02:01:41.420 | I'll pitch a story to my editor

02:01:44.060 | about something, for example,

02:01:45.940 | and then as I'm writing it, 20 minutes in,

02:01:50.220 | some kid was shot and killed by the Israeli military,

02:01:52.780 | so I have to say something about it.

02:01:53.860 | And then 30 minutes later, as I'm writing it,

02:01:56.260 | there's news about a home demolition in Silwan,

02:01:59.660 | and there is this relentless onslaught of news

02:02:04.340 | that prevents us and deprives us of the ability to analyze,

02:02:08.500 | to frame, to think, to conceptualize,

02:02:11.220 | to write beyond the current affairs.

02:02:14.940 | We're stuck in the relentlessness of the occupation

02:02:19.020 | that a lot of the time I worry that the things I'm writing

02:02:25.100 | are always in reaction to a crime that took place,

02:02:28.980 | to a bombing that took place, and so on and so forth.

02:02:33.220 | And I think that's unfortunately true

02:02:35.380 | for so many Palestinian writers.

02:02:37.620 | So, you know, I would say isolation

02:02:42.380 | and stepping away from the news is very important to do,

02:02:47.380 | but I don't do it.

02:02:48.740 | (Lex laughs)

02:02:50.220 | - Okay, so the struggle to find the timeless message in it

02:02:55.220 | is an ongoing struggle for you.

02:02:58.740 | - I mean, there is the timeless,

02:03:01.260 | it's not even timelessness, it's timeliness.

02:03:02.980 | I think what you write is always timely

02:03:04.900 | because the occupation is ongoing.

02:03:07.060 | But the struggle is, you know, moving beyond the news

02:03:11.100 | and tackling more nuances.

02:03:13.220 | Because in Arabic, I can.

02:03:16.420 | In Arabic, I can philosophize.

02:03:18.060 | I can talk about violence,

02:03:20.220 | and I can talk about my complicated relationship

02:03:23.420 | with violence, or like my complicated,

02:03:25.820 | I can complicate and nuance and give things nuance.

02:03:28.340 | But in English, people still do not believe

02:03:31.340 | we are under occupation,

02:03:32.540 | even though it is an internationally recognized fact

02:03:35.620 | that is broadcasted 24/7

02:03:38.180 | through the world's most watched screens.

02:03:41.100 | So we're stuck in like a practice

02:03:44.940 | of providing facts and figure as in,

02:03:46.780 | actually this happened, and this person did this,

02:03:49.900 | and according to international law, and blah, blah, blah.

02:03:53.300 | So we're stuck in this because the basic truths

02:03:56.180 | about our own existence are denied,

02:03:58.540 | that we don't even have the luxury

02:04:00.460 | of evolving our writing beyond it,

02:04:03.460 | or at least evolving my writing beyond it.

02:04:05.420 | And this is what I'm trying to do with this new book.

02:04:07.700 | - That's fascinating that in English,

02:04:10.900 | your brain is more inclined to go towards activism,

02:04:17.940 | whereas in Arabic, you have the luxury

02:04:19.820 | to be more of a philosopher.

02:04:21.700 | - I wouldn't say activism, I would say journalism.

02:04:24.060 | - Journalism.

02:04:25.300 | - Just making sure, you know,

02:04:26.460 | like disrupting the flow of the sentence

02:04:28.260 | to insert a statistic,

02:04:30.500 | or insert a historical fact that should be implied.

02:04:35.340 | - Yeah.

02:04:36.180 | - And should be a household name,

02:04:37.260 | but it's not, you know, I can't just say the Nakba,

02:04:42.220 | I have to say the Nakba, the 1948 total,

02:04:45.340 | near total destruction of Palestinian society

02:04:47.140 | at the hands of Zionist militias

02:04:48.300 | that later formed the Israeli military,

02:04:50.100 | that now terrorizes us today,

02:04:51.940 | and there is like three tier legal system, blah, blah, blah.

02:04:56.940 | I can't just say the Nakba,

02:04:58.620 | I have to give all of these explanations.

02:05:01.340 | And that's heartbreaking,

02:05:04.900 | and people ought to do better,

02:05:06.620 | people ought to, you know, do better.

02:05:08.940 | This is not,

02:05:09.780 | it's not what my literature should be limited to.

02:05:16.660 | It's not what anybody's literature should be limited to.

02:05:18.660 | It's the job of,

02:05:19.700 | it's the job of, you know,

02:05:22.740 | news reporters to report the news,

02:05:25.620 | but a lot of the time,

02:05:27.540 | they use looted language,

02:05:29.060 | they use passive voice,

02:05:31.060 | they obfuscate facts,

02:05:33.900 | and it's on the shoulders of us, the heavy carrying.

02:05:37.700 | - Would you say that the press in the United States

02:05:41.460 | does a good or a poor job of covering Israel and Palestine?

02:05:46.420 | - Terrible job, horrible job.

02:05:48.220 | - What's the-- - Horrendous job.

02:05:49.540 | They don't do their job whatsoever.

02:05:51.140 | - What are the biggest failings?

02:05:52.700 | - Not mentioning that a town is occupied,

02:05:55.780 | when you're reporting about an occupied town,

02:05:58.140 | not mentioning that a settlement is illegal,

02:06:02.380 | or a settler is illegally present in a Palestinian village

02:06:05.900 | when you're reporting on them.

02:06:07.420 | Only quoting Israeli officials,

02:06:12.380 | and only quoting Israeli politicians and police officers,

02:06:14.900 | and framing your entire analysis with Israeli officials,

02:06:19.020 | and only interviewing Palestinians

02:06:20.660 | when they have been brutalized and victimized physically.

02:06:25.660 | Yeah, those are some of the issues.

02:06:27.220 | There is plenty, and then like saying things,

02:06:30.100 | you know, like Israel will bomb a hospital in Gaza,

02:06:35.100 | and the press will say like Hamas run hospital,

02:06:39.740 | and this negative association with Hamas

02:06:41.900 | will remove any sympathy from the reader

02:06:44.660 | towards the victims of this hospital bombing.

02:06:47.140 | A lot of things, and a lot of them are sinister.

02:06:50.980 | I have many friends, many journalist friends,

02:06:55.180 | and I've seen many journalists online

02:06:57.300 | speak about their experiences when talking about Palestine,

02:07:00.780 | the censorship that goes on into it.

02:07:02.660 | And I have many journalist friends,

02:07:05.180 | some at the New York Times,

02:07:07.060 | some that used to be at the Washington Post,

02:07:11.100 | who tell me the kinds of battles they had to do,

02:07:14.020 | they had to go through with their editors

02:07:15.700 | to let them even utter the word Palestine.

02:07:18.740 | And not even in like news pieces,

02:07:21.260 | like pieces about, let's say, a Palestinian artist,

02:07:25.260 | or a Palestinian chef, or whatever.

02:07:27.460 | You know, there's lots of,

02:07:29.420 | there's a lot that happens behind the scene

02:07:32.140 | that is not reported on.

02:07:33.940 | Because when it comes to Palestine,

02:07:35.580 | the rules and the laws of journalism are bendable.

02:07:40.580 | You know, passive voice is king,

02:07:42.700 | omitting facts is acceptable, anything goes.

02:07:46.420 | - So you personally, just psychologically,

02:07:49.860 | what have been the lowest points in your life,

02:07:54.020 | the darkest points?

02:07:55.380 | - A recent study came out and said

02:07:58.980 | that 52% of Palestinians have depression.

02:08:02.740 | I would argue that the number is much, much, much higher.

02:08:05.620 | I think it would be absurd for someone

02:08:07.980 | to live under the conditions we live under

02:08:10.460 | and not contemplate many things, many things.

02:08:15.460 | Not just suicide, but many, many, many things.

02:08:18.420 | And if people were to put themselves in our shoes

02:08:21.940 | for just one day, they would understand

02:08:24.140 | where all of the rage and all the resistance is coming from.

02:08:29.780 | It's not an easy life.

02:08:32.700 | - So where do you find the strength?

02:08:34.420 | - I'm surrounded by good people.

02:08:36.620 | And I'm surrounded by good people,

02:08:41.380 | and I don't even think of it as a strength.

02:08:43.020 | I think of this as my obligation.

02:08:44.460 | It just feels like the thing I have to do.

02:08:46.660 | It's not, I don't need inspiration,

02:08:49.140 | I don't need strength, I don't need,

02:08:51.980 | it's just my obligation.

02:08:54.260 | It's just, there is a great travesty

02:08:58.380 | taking place in the world.

02:08:59.820 | And I and few others have been put in a place

02:09:06.940 | where we're able to talk about it to a few more people.

02:09:11.260 | And it's just my obligation, I have to do it.

02:09:14.460 | - What gives you hope about the future of Palestine?

02:09:17.860 | - What gives me hope about the future of Palestine

02:09:20.420 | is taking a look at history

02:09:23.060 | and understanding that across history,

02:09:24.700 | there has not been an injustice that lingered endlessly.

02:09:29.700 | Everything comes to an end.

02:09:33.140 | It's not necessarily, there's not necessarily

02:09:34.740 | like a perfect resolution for everything,

02:09:37.740 | but nothing continues in the form that it started in,

02:09:42.740 | in the occupation and colonialism in Palestine and Zionism.

02:09:47.460 | All of these things are not at all sustainable whatsoever.

02:09:51.340 | So taking a look at history,

02:09:52.700 | a lot of what I'm saying today

02:09:54.980 | and what I have said in your podcast,

02:09:56.500 | many people would be pearl clutching

02:09:59.460 | hearing me say what I say.

02:10:01.300 | But I always try to remind myself that during Jim Crow,

02:10:04.620 | during slavery, during the Holocaust,

02:10:06.620 | during the occupation of Algeria,

02:10:10.940 | during any point of colonialism

02:10:16.500 | in the African continent,

02:10:17.940 | people did not possess the moral clarity

02:10:21.340 | they possess today when they talk about these things.

02:10:23.660 | And all of these things were contested and controversial

02:10:27.220 | and in many, many, many cases legal.

02:10:29.940 | And today they are deplorable, condemnable,

02:10:31.980 | and people say never again and they don't remember them.

02:10:34.580 | So that's what gives me hope,

02:10:36.300 | is believing in the, you know,

02:10:38.180 | believing in the inevitability of justice.

02:10:43.080 | - What do you love most about Palestine?

02:10:46.060 | What are like maybe little things

02:10:48.420 | that you remember from your childhood,

02:10:50.020 | from your life there in Jerusalem and elsewhere

02:10:53.940 | that you just, brings a smile to your face?

02:10:57.020 | - I think just the unabashedness of Palestinians.

02:11:02.940 | We are people who are told,

02:11:05.940 | and at some point we're told by the large majority

02:11:09.420 | of the world that we should shrink ourselves,

02:11:10.980 | that we should be ashamed of who we are,

02:11:12.480 | that we are monsters, that we are terrorists,

02:11:13.980 | that we are blah, blah, blah.

02:11:16.260 | And Palestinian people don't really give a shit.

02:11:19.300 | You know, they're continuing to live as they do.

02:11:21.260 | They continue to resist, they continue to write,

02:11:23.220 | they continue to do all that they do

02:11:26.340 | and I love that the most.

02:11:28.020 | And I love our ability to laugh more than anything else.

02:11:32.080 | One thing that's misunderstood in American culture

02:11:36.920 | about Palestinian culture, or just Western culture in general

02:11:39.500 | is like martyrdom culture.

02:11:42.100 | A lot of the time people will broadcast images

02:11:47.100 | of Palestinian women cheering

02:11:51.660 | when their sons have been killed by the Israeli forces

02:11:56.660 | and they will say, you know, these people glorify death

02:12:00.100 | and these people are eager to like have sex

02:12:02.540 | with the 70 virgins in heaven and so on and so forth.

02:12:05.620 | But that's not the case.

02:12:07.140 | The whole idea of the occupation,

02:12:09.580 | when they are killing our children,

02:12:10.800 | the whole idea is that they're trying to break our spirits.

02:12:13.700 | So these mothers whose hearts are broken, who are anguished,

02:12:17.620 | who are, you know, so,

02:12:21.420 | so, in so much pain, when they are cheering,

02:12:27.440 | they are not celebrating, they're not cheering,

02:12:29.940 | they are letting the occupier know

02:12:31.940 | that you have not broken my spirit.

02:12:34.360 | I have not yet been defeated.

02:12:36.700 | And I think that is beautiful.

02:12:38.060 | It's the same thing with our prison culture.

02:12:40.580 | You know, Palestinians are fascinating

02:12:42.820 | in the sense that Palestinians go to prison

02:12:45.300 | and they study and they come out with degrees.

02:12:48.420 | They can find ways to participate in civil society.

02:12:53.040 | They can even smuggle, you know, sperm from prison

02:12:56.020 | to give a life outside of it.

02:12:58.420 | Because they understand in their philosophy of prisons,

02:13:01.300 | they understand that these structures,

02:13:03.080 | these buildings were built to break your spirits.

02:13:06.580 | So what do you do?

02:13:07.460 | You allow it, you don't allow it to break your spirits.

02:13:10.460 | You resist it, you continue to hold on to life.

02:13:14.320 | You continue to hold on to your love of life.

02:13:16.700 | You continue to hold on to your love of freedom.

02:13:19.840 | And you come out of prison

02:13:20.940 | and you're celebrated by your community.

02:13:22.940 | And the prison has not broken your spirit.

02:13:26.280 | So all of these structures and system

02:13:29.140 | that the Zionist movement has put into place,

02:13:31.780 | be it the shoot to kill policies or the prisons

02:13:33.980 | or the demolishing our homes

02:13:35.660 | that were meant to kill our spirits, they don't.

02:13:40.060 | You demolish a home in Jerusalem

02:13:42.540 | and the people say, "Don't worry, we'll build another."

02:13:45.140 | And you demolish it and we'll build another.

02:13:47.000 | That's what I admire most about the Palestinian people,

02:13:49.060 | is this resilience.

02:13:50.560 | And you know, people love to say resilience,

02:13:52.220 | but I think it's stubbornness.

02:13:53.300 | I think we're such a stubborn people

02:13:54.660 | and I think that's great.

02:13:56.120 | - Well, Mohamed, thank you for being a man

02:14:00.860 | who exemplifies this unbreakable spirit.

02:14:03.880 | Thank you for the words you've written,

02:14:07.060 | the words you've spoken, and thank you for talking today.

02:14:09.620 | This is an honor and this is, thank you for educating me.

02:14:12.980 | - Thank you so much.

02:14:14.660 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

02:14:16.060 | with Mohamed Elkard.

02:14:17.540 | To support this podcast,

02:14:18.780 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

02:14:21.500 | And now let me leave you with some words

02:14:23.220 | from Nelson Mandela.

02:14:25.220 | It always seems impossible until it's done.

02:14:29.540 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

02:14:33.620 | (upbeat music)

02:14:36.200 | (upbeat music)

02:14:38.780 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine | Lex Fridman Podcast #391

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