You always know when you live in Gaza that it's only a matter of time before the next bombs drop, you know, if you're in Gaza, that you are waiting for your death, people dream about going out in the world and pursuing education. People dream about going out in the world and pursuing economic opportunity.

In Gaza, your idea of opportunity is an opportunity to see the next year. That has been the case. And so when we talk about, you know, this not existing in a vacuum, if people only hear about Gaza on October 7th, that is, that is a major part of the problem.

And that is again, part of the problem of our ignorance and our apathy, right? Why is it that the plight of the people of Gaza is not brought up until an attack happens on Israel? The following is a conversation with Imam Dr. Omar Suleiman, his second time on the podcast.

He is a Palestinian American, a Muslim scholar, a civil rights leader, president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, and is one of the most influential Muslims in the world. Our previous conversation was focused on Islam. This time, the focus was on Gaza and Palestine. This is Alex Friedman podcast.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Omar Suleiman. What did you think, feel, and pray for in the days that followed October 7th? I think the first feeling was that there's going to be a lot of death and destruction in Gaza as a result, right?

We always kind of see this where one Israeli casualty leads to hundreds of Palestinian casualties, right? So it's a pretty familiar cycle in some ways, where there are daily transgressions against Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza. The checkpoints, the aggression on Masjid al-Aqsa, the settlements expanding the stories of Palestinian death, and then you have rockets fired from Gaza, and that's when the Western press catches up and starts to cover it.

Israel responds with hellfire missiles, white phosphorus bombs, and the casualties are wildly disproportionate. And so I think that, you know, I wasn't surprised. I prayed for the people that I knew were going to bear the brunt. Of this outbreak, but the outbreak was predictable. You wrote a statement on October 9th.

I was hoping to read it, if it's okay. Yeah, go ahead. "Our Palestinian casualties are always your footnotes, the daily humiliation of occupation ignored, the aggression by settlers and soldiers alike on holy sites and souls, the annihilation of entire families that follows, the devastation of whatever scraps remain in the open air prison of Gaza, unsustainable and inhumane.

So if you're waking up to a sudden interest in the region and want to know what's been happening, dig a bit deeper than two weeks and try to read beyond the headlines of a media that has been dehumanizing us for decades." Again, this was not surprising. This was very predictable.

If you've been watching what's been unfolding before October 7th, 2021, Human Rights Watch puts out the report, "Threshold Reached. Israel is an Apartheid State." Amnesty International 2022, "The Crime of Apartheid," showing how all of the legal determinations of apartheid have been reached. The occupation is only getting more aggressive.

Shireen Abu Aqla, a Palestinian American journalist is shot dead in 2022. In front of the world, the United States says initially that if it is shown that Israel was complicit or that Israel carried out the execution, then there will be consequences, of course, once it was shown that Israel was indeed responsible for the bullet that killed Shireen Abu Aqla, the United States did absolutely nothing.

Shireen's funeral was attacked. The Palbers were beaten. Her casket almost fell. And again, the world is watching. The aggression against worshipers in Al-Aqsa is getting worse. You have the flag march, the Jerusalem flag march, where extremist settlers are let loose and wild on Palestinians by the thousands, chanting things like, "Muhammad is dead.

We're going to murder you Arabs." All with the protection of the state with Israeli soldiers. And throughout this time, it's like something bad is going to happen. And then 2023 comes along. You had 13,000 settler units in 2023, a plan of 13,000 settler units, the most in the history of the occupation, the most racist and extremist government, Israeli government that you have ever had, and people don't realize that in 2023 alone, over 600 Palestinians had already been killed.

It just doesn't make Western headlines. And so if you wonder why the American public sees this so much differently than the rest of the world, it's because American media shows the American public something so much different than what the rest of the world has shown. And so this was a pressure cooker, this was going to explode.

It is extremely predictable. You've given people absolutely no hope. And so I think that as we're watching that, it's important for us to actually interrogate the ignorance that people have of the Palestinian plight, the ignorance of the root causes of this violence, the ignorance of the occupation. And also ask yourselves, you know, why is it that Israel can violate every single international law on the books, have all these determinations, and the United States keeps on issuing these inconsequential statements, while also at the same time funding these aggressions.

So it's like, stop the settler violence. The United States will issue statement after statement, stop the settler violence, stop the incursions on Masjid al-Aqsa, stop violating the people in Jerusalem, stop trying to wipe out the Palestinian people, stop openly saying, you know, that there is no two state solution, that we will never allow Palestinian state to be established.

But at the same time, here's your $3 billion check. And if the United Nations issues any sort of resolution against Israel, or if any international body tries to hold Israel accountable, the United States stands in the way of any accountability. It's important for us to ask why. And so I always tell people, read beyond the headlines.

Even now, with the backdrop of a genocide, over 30,000 people have been killed. If you open the front page of most American mainstream sites, you will see stories about the hostages, the Israeli hostages, you will see stories about October 7th, but October 8th is missing, October 9th is missing, October 10th is missing, a hundred days of genocide are missing.

And you'll barely have a story that shows up every once in a while that, you know, is still very much so controlled by the Israeli propaganda machine. Because while Israel kills Palestinian journalists, it also makes sure that American journalists are only able to tell a certain story. They're only able to see Gaza from a certain perspective.

They're only able to speak about Gaza from a certain perspective. And this is well-documented, that they have to review their media tapes with Israel before they can publicize them. And so this is state propaganda at this point. The mainstream media and the United States government are in lockstep telling a very skewed story, and that is leading to a greater sense of frustration.

And I think the American public has been wronged as well by not knowing what's happening. - So you mentioned settlements. So to you, this is bigger than Gaza. It is the West Bank. It is the Palestinian people broadly. - Absolutely. You can't disconnect Gaza from Palestine. You can't disconnect the West Bank from Palestine.

You can't disconnect Jerusalem from Palestine. And you can't disconnect the very human story from the political plight. You interviewed Mohammed al-Kurd, met him. What did the world do when it saw the images of the Kurd household being taken over by a guy from Brooklyn or Long Island who just shows up and lays claim to their home?

What did the world do when American settlers suddenly decided they could walk into historic Palestinian homes and throw people out of their homes? What did the world do? And so, yes, this is very much so connected to the broader issue of Palestinian existence. If you realize here, we are erased in peace and we are erased in war.

In peace, it's the Abraham Accords, agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which is supposedly to solve the Palestinian problem. The Palestinians are absent from their own fate, from discussions about their own fate. In war, it's the Israel-Hamas war. It's Israel and Gaza. Where are the Palestinian people, the millions of Palestinian people that have either been removed from their land or are being tormented on their land?

Where are they in this discussion? - What are the Palestinians in the diaspora feeling? - I think deeply frustrated, a great sense of anger, sadness. Every single Palestinian right now knows someone that's been killed. Every single Palestinian is a part of a story of displacement or destruction. Every single Palestinian has a relative that's either missing a limb or a loved one.

Every single Palestinian in the world is traumatized by this. And in some ways, being outside of Palestine, being away from it all, hurts even more because you see your people being killed and starved and brutalized and slaughtered, and you can't do anything about it. And the people around you are justifying that slaughter.

If you turn on a TV or if you open a mainstream news site, these sites are justifying your slaughter. And people are being killed over there because they look like me, because they're Palestinian like I'm Palestinian. And so we're watching this in diaspora with agony. We can't go, we can't heal our loved ones.

We can't comfort the people that are there. I recently spoke to a doctor who's lost 75 relatives, 75 relatives in Gaza. And he's a medical doctor. And all he wants to do is get in there and just use his medical expertise to help his people. And he can't. And so we're watching it from afar, but our hearts are there.

They are in the buildings that are being destroyed. They're in the hospitals that are being bombed. They are there and they are with the people. You're somebody who's always rushed into the midst of a crisis. So what does it feel like on a personal level to not be able to do that here, to go to Gaza to help?

Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, when any group of people are killed, my instinct and I think a lot of people is to go there to help, whether it's a natural disaster or especially after an incident of terror, wherever it is, right? It's rush there and do the best that you can to help people get through it.

So it's been extremely hard to watch this from afar and feel like I can't do anything about it. And so that's why instead, I think that most of us are driven to continue to be the voice of the voiceless. You know, I always say that if they've made them faceless, they can't make us voiceless.

They have reduced our casualties in Palestine to a number. The number is hundreds a day, over 30,000 people. We're averaging 10,000 people a month. The fact that they've been turned into faceless numbers with no stories, with no humanity, makes it that much more important for us to tell their stories here and to remind the world that you've lost your humanity.

If you can watch this unfold and not even have the decency to call for a ceasefire. I mean, that's the, that's where we've reached. That's how low it is right now. Calling for a ceasefire has now become radical. Uh, so we have to remind the world that if you're okay with the demolition of an entire town or a city or whatever it is that you want to call Gaza, because it wasn't always the Gaza Strip, but if you're okay with this and you're okay with this casualty count every single day, it's not just them who are being killed, it's your hearts that are dying and I think that when I look back to Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. and I mentioned this, he wrote about Vietnam. He said that if America was to succumb to its spiritual death, the autopsy would read Vietnam. I would say that it would read Gaza now. Speaking of the people, the faces, the voices, one of the people you've talked about, you've posted about, you've written about is Wael Al-Dahdouh and being hospitalized.

He's a Palestinian journalist and a bureau chief of Al Jazeera in Gaza City. What can you tell me about this man? If Wael Al-Dahdouh wasn't Palestinian, he'd be on the cover of Time magazine right now, he would be the most celebrated journalist in the world. Wael Al-Dahdouh is from Gaza, he has been in Israeli prisons, he has been under Israeli airstrikes, he has seen the worst of the occupation before he's seen the worst of the genocide while on TV.

I mean, and this is insane when you think about it. We have over a hundred journalists now, right? That's more than any conflict in history that have been killed. And there is sufficient evidence by international watchdogs that this is intentional, that journalists have been killed intentionally, but then their families, Wael was reporting on TV when an airstrike hits his wife, two kids, and a grandchild, he goes to the scene and he said this, you know, you never expect as a journalist to be the subject of the story.

Suddenly the camera's on him, mourning over his dead wife and kids and grandkid. And he's saying, he even says in Arabic, he says, "They're taking it out on our children, they're taking it out on our children." Uh, you know, I've heard this from multiple people that have had relatives targeted that I wish it was me instead.

He gets back on camera the same day because he feels a responsibility to continue to cover the lives of the people of Gaza, he understands that his story, as devastating as it is, is not unique in regards to the people of Gaza. That there are many people whose families have been killed in airstrikes.

All 2 million people have been traumatized in some way. And so he gets back on camera, tells the story again, and then he is targeted himself, uh, his arm struck, his cameraman, Samer Abu Dhaqa dies in front of him. He bleeds out, Wa'el watches him bleed out for hours.

And while any aid workers try to reach them in the building that they were in, uh, snipers would shoot all of those that were rushing to Samer. So he watches his cameraman and one of his best friends bleed out to death.