SAILAK (1)

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good morning good afternoon good evening welcome everybody my name is maito

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benatu my name is zaia benatu we are here in thean the territory of the

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castal Miwok people in South Palo so called the colonial name Sebastapol

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California and actually um when we visited the occupied Westbank two years

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ago for the film and we got back to California we were like wow we are

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settlers but we had to go there to realize the history here that was our

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journey well we’re really settler yeah I remember driving on the road and seeing

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like like being in the West Bank with this road for the I I I was like completely blew my mind it’s completely

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change any so today is a day two of the

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film Premiere where olive trees weep um yesterday we had our first conversation

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with the main character Ashira derwish and if you missed the conversation is

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still available on YouTube so you can watch it later today yeah and today the conversation

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panel the is De humanization and the ongoing nakba in Palestine we have three

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guest I’m going to briefly read a a short bio of each and every one of them

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before we enter the the conversation so Shereen

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seali PhD associate professor of history at UC Santa Barbara PhD in history and

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Middle Eastern and Islamic study from NYU and a master from Georgetown University a former director of Middle

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East studies Center at American University in Cairo held fellowship at Georg toown with shaft Zu

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Berlin thank you sheren I hope I I didn’t destroy all the names appreciate

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thank you then we have Usama mck PhD professor of history and

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Chancellor chair at UC Berkeley Carnegie scholar in 2009 for work on

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Muslim societies author of awardwinning books including the age of coexistence

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age of coexistence in 2019 and artillery of Heaven in

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2008 expert in Middle Eastern history and US Arab

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relation thank you s thank you and last but not least we have Nathan throl

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Jerusalem based American author and journalist his book A Day in the Life of

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Abed Salama won the 2024 Pulitzer for non-fiction contributed to the New York

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Time Magazine La the review of books and and New York Review of Books he a former

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director at the international crisis group and a professor at Bard College

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welcome Nathan thank you and you in Berlin now Nathan right not in Jerusalem

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no no I’m in Jerusalem oh you are okay wonderful okay

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yeah okay well welcome everyone and what a pleasure to have the three of you in

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conversation we’ve prepared some questions but um we can also just flow

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what what feels alive in the conversation and we will leave questions to hear also from the audience at the

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end for the last 30 minutes to share your question please pleas type it in

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the Q&A uh box and raise your hand ideally you’ll have your video on and we

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can bring you on camera or we can read your question you can indicate which one you prefer and please keep the questions

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very suin you will yeah exactly somebody already practice um great so Osama maybe

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we’ll start with you first since you have the Deep history look on the where

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we at today in your book age of coexistence you explored a historical

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context of interfaith and intercommunal relationships in the Middle East how

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European colonialism and the emergence of colonial Zionist Zionism has

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disrupted the age of coexistence without idealizing the age

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of coexistence too and has led to the occupation to the upper TI the ongoing

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Naga and to the genocide in Gaza today if you yeah sure uh well thank you

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for having me it’s good to see my fellow panelists thank you also for the film that you that you made and thank you of

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course um for the for the the question um and basically the the answer is very

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simple there is of course in the Middle East an extraordinarily long and Rich

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history of coexistence as you said that shouldn’t be romanticized but should be

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underscored and appreciated for the depth and the interactions over

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centuries in very different ways between Muslims Christians Jews among Muslims

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among Christians among Jews all sorts of peoples whove lived together in various conditions um and there’s a depth of of

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uh of intimacy that that we barely even know about and

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acknowledge we’ve barely studied we have the broad outline but we don’t have a very strong sense and what’s interesting

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is that by the end of the 19th century early 20th century in the Arab uh part

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of the otoman Empire there was in fact an extraordinary um coming together of

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Muslim and non-muslim uh the very sense of being Arab in a modern sense developed in the late 19th century in

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Palestine in Lebanon or in place that would become Palestine Lebanon Syria

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Egypt Jordan all these places Iraq an extraordinary ability and willingness

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and desire on the part of people to actually take their own destiny in their own hands and shape a future

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together and and so that’s where you have the sense of being really honestly a Christian Arab in a modern sense a

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Muslim Arab in a modern sense and were it not for Colonial Zionism there would have also been a Jewish Arab belonging

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and being and what’s interesting is how then Zionism which emerged not in the Middle

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East not among the Jewish communities of the Middle East not among uh any of the

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indigenous communities of the Middle East including the Jewish communities but in Europe answering European

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questions Zionism proposed a completely different model of of politics which is

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an exclusive ethn religious nationalist project which came into Palestine

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insisted on recreating a multi-religious space as and destroying a multi-religious

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space and recreating it as an exclusive an exclusionary Jewish nationalist

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project through the help of British colonialism and then the rest is history in a sense so it’s really that that

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sense of a contrast between a profound history of coexistence and a multi-religious

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area and a European project that that was conceived to answer European anti-Semitism European Romanticism

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European nationalism and then borrowed European Colonial techniques and ideologies to actually remake Palestine

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and and the result was Thea and where we are

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today and the borders where we drawn first by European colonialists right

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before they AR to the region um for sure yeah the borders were

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remade I mean all the modern Middle East the modern Arab world as we know it today the modern Middle East was remade

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by European powers after World War I especially the Arab East so all the the

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modern States the mandates that were called so-called mandates European colonies basically so the Europeans had

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to figure out how do we colonize this part of the world and at the same time pay lip

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service to the idea of self-determination which was a new idea that came out in the after World War I

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and so the way they came up with this is to create this fiction of mandates this idea of

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European civilized allegedly civilized tutors to help natives achieve independence and that was the fiction

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the the late colonialism the fiction of how Syria Lebanon eventually Jordan and

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Iraq were created as States and the interesting thing is that they they drew these borders and maps and and um and

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States they dominated these areas with the idea that each of these places would eventually lead to Independence except

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for Palestine I mean sh knows this and Nathan I’m sure knows this and your listeners and viewers should know this except

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Palestine it’s the one mandate the one area the one colony where the natives were completely ignored as a political

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people and they were they were and so the the Europeans came in and said no in Palestine alone unlike Syria unlike

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Lebanon unlike Jordan unlike Egypt unlike Iraq in Palestine alone the the

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the Zionist movement will be privileged and a Jewish National home will be established irrespective of The Wishes

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of the vast majority of the indigenous population it’s it’s kind of a scandal when you actually like read the history

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and know the history and Shireen you have done a lot

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of research on the more uh recent history and how the suppression of the

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Palestinian narratives and Palestinian history and experiences has led to the

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dehumanization of Palestinian people um from your work like how do you see that

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connection of suppression of history and narrative leading to

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dehumanization um thank you on you were muted again hold on one

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second no okay thanks um thank you very

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much it’s an honor to be here um actually like Osama I do work in the late 19th century um and up until the

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20th so I’m not that much more contemporary than that I’m also a historian and um My Book Men of capital

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scarcity and economy and mandate Palestine was a book that was about the

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period between 1917 and 1948 when um the very period that Usama

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was describing as the um initiation of the politics of deferral that we see

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that Palestinians are living under until today what I mean by that politics of

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deferral is to draw on uh what Usama was suggesting which is the the ways that um

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in the Mandate structure itself a structure that was based on a civilizational logic that was racialized

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um it’s important to note here that the Eastern Mediterranean the Arab provinces of the former ottoman Empire that had

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then at that point been dismantled along with the um German um territories um uh

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the German and Austrian territories in Asia and Africa all came under a mandate

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structure and those mandate structures were themselves racialized categories uh

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um under categorized as either a b or c the Eastern Mediterranean and the Arab

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provinces were deemed area a that is um they were deemed that they were uh

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uh uh available to eventual self rule right and so just as AMA said this

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mandate structure which was put together by the League of Nations the precursor to the United Nations was based on a

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civilizational hierarchy the exception in Palestine was that civilizational

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hierarchy was further erased because of the ways that British mandate rule was

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committed from the outset to the Zionist project of creating a Jewish State on a

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piece of land where the majority of the people were not Jewish in the permanent mandates commission which was the

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overseer of this mandate structure Palestine was the sole space in which uh

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the permanent mandates commission signed onto settler Colonial

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dispossession as for your second point about dehumanization I’d like to really also

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um insist that we step out of this formula I think the formula in which we

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as Palestinians are evidencing our humanity is long it is it is a long time

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to reject this formula I don’t want to use the language of humanization and

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dehumanization I will consist to continue to insist on our Humanity what

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Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are doing now how they are making life despite

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death you can see in these makeshift tents that are coming up right and we’ve seen these makeshift tents of schools uh

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um since 1948 where education is understood as a

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if not the key to our Liberation and return and so in that in that sense I

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think one of the lessons that we’ve learned and as historians we know that every single Israeli assault on

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Palestine and the Palestinians have has targeted archives has targeted

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Palestinian archives has held them captive has held those captive those archives themselves captive and in that

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sense we understand that settler colonialism is most threatened by our

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existence is most threatened by our capacity to narrate our power past to

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understand our present and to imagine a future and and I think what settler Colonial regimes from a Palestine to

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Turtle Island don’t understand is that however hard you try to destroy those

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those archives we are the archive we actually embody the archive and our

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capacity to tell stories is not going to be extinguished by this genocide and

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this is in particular why you see journalists being targeted we have to think of all of the thousands of people

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that have been targeted University professors poets writers creatives

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journalists all the people who are there to Bear witness and tell the story

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because it is the story itself that is the biggest source of threat wow absolutely

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yeah and if there is humanity the gazans can teach us

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Humanity what humanity is that’s what I have seen every time I tune in to those videos coming through Gaza is this is

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Humanity we have forgotten what it is actually to feel and to be a human being

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and to be connected and to be ready to give your life for somebody else or yeah

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yeah and I would just I want to just lift up my colleague Sam smir who’s also s’s colleague and she you know she’s

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taught us in in her work and especially in her book judical Humanity that it’s that very formula that if we accept that

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formula of human non-human dehumanized not you know the colonial project cannot

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give us our humanity and it cannot take it away either so this is a plea to

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really try to move beyond that formula beautiful thank you

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beautiful before we move to Nan I’m just curious like Osama where did this story

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about Arabs being associated with vience and like how did this story began how

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did This Racist view of of this part of the world

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started like historically do you have any I’m sure you have well I mean it’s

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it’s quite it’s obviously it’s a quite old story and a narrative that that goes back to islamophobia that goes back to

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represent presentation of Islam that goes back to the the idea of what Islam is in European Christian culture um but

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then of course it took on a very sort of uh an even more malign I would say salience in the 19th and 20th centuries

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when the idea that people in the Middle East are inherently sectarian that they’re inherently violent that they are

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live only by their religious difference and so on and so forth and the and the most extraordinary myth uh came racist

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myth came over and helped to justify Aina saying the Zionist project in Palestine which is to say that in our

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part of the world despite in in the Middle East in other words despite the enormous history of coexistence and

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religious difference and pluralism religious ethnic and so on and so forth without minimizing the tensions and the

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contradictions I don’t we’re historians in the end but this extraordinary history of coexistence somehow people in

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the Middle East were defined monolithically by their religious identities so that people are thought of

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only as Sunni or sh or Arab or Jewish or do you see what I’m saying and this idea

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somehow that Europeans and Americans as in the United States the idea of people

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who had slavery who had colonialism who had racism who had anti-Semitism who who killed Protestants

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and killed Catholics and killed Jews and did all these things to horrific things to indigenous populations somehow they

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were able to be pluralist but our part of the world was considered to be inherently and perpetually sectarian and

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that’s the myth that then allows Europeans to come in after World War I and divide up our part of the world the

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Middle East and and specifically then justifying legitimate Zionism in Palestine so it’s a very old myth but it

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took on and it was weaponized in in a very destructive way after World War I

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in the Arab East the meat of the Civilized Western

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yeah as the word the myth that in the west religion just pluralism and in the Middle East there’s only sectarianism is

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really what it is it’s it’s that myth that goes on we’ve seen it everywhere

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yeah yeah and in the other indigenous part of the world we brought our

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religion Christianity right or and and we taught Christianity the indigenous

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people because their belief in spirituality was not civilized yeah

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that’s what we’ve seen traveling filming our next movie oh that and and the idea that that

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Christians that Christianity is Western is like one of the great myths as well the Christianity and Islam and Judaism

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come from the Middle East and you’ll be surprised how many people don’t understand this very basic idea that

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Palestinians many of them are Christian many people in the Middle East are Christian uh many people in the Middle

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East are Jewish many people are Muslim many people are secular and there’s a whole range of diversity that we just

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never that we we tend to forget about yeah

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conveniently yeah so Nathan your your your book pser price wining book the day

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in the life of a b Salama he provide a powerful portrait of

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the impact on a daily life of the Israeli occupation and the apartheid system in on the Palestinian life how do

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you see your work contributing to to The Liberation to

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the to the new world we want to say how do you see it in the in the perspective

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of and why did you choose to write a story that’s seemingly an ordinary story

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uh to to review the reality of occupation in the West Bank and

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Jerusalem thank you um I’m uh honored to be here I’m longtime uh reader and

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admirer of my uh co-panelists and um I love the film I thought it was very well

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done and very moving um you know the the um the way that I

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see narrative non-fiction in uh this place is really about reaching a broad

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uh audience I spent a lot of my career writing reports for um an international

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NGO called the international crisis group and um they would write very detailed on the ground reports about

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what was happening here and and in other areas all over the world and um I was

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enormously frustrated by um the conversations that I had in the uh

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writing of those reports and and then in uh discussing them with policy makers and

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other um Elites that were involved in uh in Israel Palestine um because

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the the issue for them was not really a lack of understanding many of them did

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understand what was going on they did understand that there is a system of ethnic domination here that it meets the

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uh definition of a parthe um in international law and um and the issue

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and and that they are complicit in it the senior US policy makers who would say to me uh behind the scenes of course

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uh we are supporting something that is tot immoral and we are helping to perpetuate the system so I had enough of

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those conversations that I really came to the conclusion that I was wasting my time uh writing reports for those people

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and what I really needed to do was to try and uh reach a broader uh audience

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because only if they if these policy makers felt that there was a different public climate that would accept them

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taking a different attitude uh enacting different policies toward Israel Palestine could they even begin to

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imagine doing something like that and some of them would frankly say to me you know the kinds of steps that I could

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take in the direction that you would like are tiny and you would laugh at them you would you would you would mock

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me for the kind of thing that I might propose realistically in my job um and I

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could lose my job over it I could actually sacrifice my career um so for

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all of these reasons you know I came very late to a conclusion I probably should have come to without even

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starting uh this work um this is a pretty obvious point I think uh but it took me a while

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to to reach the conclusion that really what we needed was a change in public

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Consciousness and and so that’s how I view the work of this book is is really

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to try and um change the the environment in which uh policy makers are acting um

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and uh I forgot there was a second part of your question and I I can’t uh oh why did I choose choose to tell about an

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accident um you know I I think that um part of the aim of my book is to um

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describe something that’s systematic um and if if one focuses on some uh

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horrific event it’s very easy to exceptional it and say that this was

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some horrible uh event but it’s it doesn’t it’s not the everyday reality um I was

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just uh watching actually a documentary that’s that’s going to uh come out um

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someone I know is working on it about the uh kaf kasum massacre in

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1956 when uh at the start of the 1956 War Israel very

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deliberately um imposed a curfew on a town of Palestinian citizens of Israel

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um it there these people were always living under a curfew but they lowered the time of the curfew I forgot what it

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was normally they lowered it to 5:00 pm and they made this announcement after

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all of the workers had gone off to work outside of the village so anybody who

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was returning as they normally would after 5:00 p.m was in violation of the

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curfew and the order was to shoot and kill them and 47 people uh were killed

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In Cold Blood uh in this uh Massacre and and it’s a huge and very important event

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um and it was part of a larger plan actually Israel thought that there might be a war with Jordan uh in 1956 when

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they started the war with um uh the UK and and France against

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Egypt um they thought that there would be a Jordanian front as well and this was part of a plan to push Palestinian

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citizens out um as you know this title of this presentation is ongoing

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nakba uh this was in the eyes of the soldiers who were executing it it was to

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be a second nakba they were going to push they were going to Massacre these

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uh villagers and villagers elsewhere and then everybody would be told to leave and they would uh go toward Jordan and

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um as I was watching this documentary and I’ve long been really interested in the in the um a massacre I thought to

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myself you know it’s so important but I think that somebody who doesn’t know a lot about Israel Palestine could hear

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this story and say to themselves yes this is an exception this is this massacre that happened and and it’s only

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really through the testimony of the soldiers who were investigated afterward where they said you know I was behaving

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normally and this is what my normal routine was and actually the Palestinian citizens we regarded as enemies we

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weren’t there to protect them and um uh you know they were asked in their interrogations would you you know kill a

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a child who was Palestinian Citizen and they said yes of course and and I found

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those kinds of testimonies just about their normal behavior much more damning

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and persuasive um than than actually the details of the massacre which could be written off as some terrible commander

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who went uh uh Rogue or what have you um and so with that was also a kind of

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similar thinking behind my choosing to tell the story of something common place like a bus accident um I didn’t want to

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focus on you know a war in Gaza or um you know some major event in the second

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intifa or something like the kerum massacre I wanted to choose something

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that um happens all over the world but show what it actually looks like for

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tragic bus accident to take place in this specific place with uh a Bus full

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of kindergarteners who are Palestinian on a road in area C that’s under full

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Israeli uh control security control and administrative control where Israel police give out traffic tickets and to

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show what it is for these parents to try and reach uh their children some of them told that they’re at hospitals in

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Jerusalem that the parents themselves cannot reach because of the color of their IDs

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and through their navigation of this system I felt that it was a way to

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explain a very um elaborate uh bureaucracy of control that can be quite

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dry and boring when you read about uh all of the rules and all of the details but when you actually are in the shoes

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of a person who has to get through the system and they have to get through it on the worst day of their life trying to

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find their child um I I found that that was actually

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um a way to really convey the whole uh architecture of segregation and uh

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domination beautiful and I’m hearing this from all of you like inviting us to

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see what’s happening because we’ve been now trained for eight months even I was

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starting my uh presentation to say it’s 244 days since October 7 not to not to

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count October 7 as not even starting but like as a

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reference point yes it’s important but how important is to start seeing the

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larger context and the the historical context but also how we are

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indoctrinated us each and every one of us because we’ve been consuming this media for all these time to see it

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through that lens as like oh yeah that’s the beginning and that’s why all this is happening

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um and and there’s one more question I want to bring and then each one of you can reflect so s since we started

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speaking on October and I know you have all experienced some form of silencing

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and being attacked and being questioned and being cancelled we’re constantly getting uh

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indoctrinated Zionist questions and two of those that we hear all the time is like well but you see the whole Arab

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world is against Palestinian they don’t like them like this is over and over we hear that and the other one is

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um yeah uh Israel has to protect itself in the middle of all these Arabs right

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are mids like they have to protect but nobody well

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nobody you bring the lens like how did we arrive to this simplistic narratives

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that nobody can even question because that’s considered anti Semitic so this

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is very long question but maybe each one of you can pick a part that feels relevant to to your

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work Shireen do you um where to begin I mean narrating

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Palestinian history is itself a form of resistance in this country we have seen

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that through the intense policing of

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even insisting on Palestinian existence through things like the IH the IRA um

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the long tradition of attempting to conflate Judaism with Zionism a

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dangerous um um cynical conflation we all know that Judaism is the world’s

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first mon abrahamic monotheistic religion and that Zionism is a modern

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political movement what it means to be Palestinian in this country in the midst of this genocide mean it means to be

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gaslit constantly while we are counting our dead it means to be shut down um it

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means that it that we are charged with violence for saying the word genocide as

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opposed to the genocide itself being the source of violence it means uh an

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intense fre fragility of the forces much stronger than us um that are so deeply

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threatened by the insistence on Palestinian life and and Palestinian PE

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peoplehood um I want to back up because I did see a

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question about um semitism and anti-Semitism and the

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Holocaust or the showa which also means catastrophe in Hebrew and I think that

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it is very important for us to hold the histories of the shaah and the neba

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together not to compare them in any way but to think about the centrality of

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catastrophe in Palestinian and Jewish experience and to then differentiate

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between Jewish and Zionist we all know that not all Jewish people are zionists and we all know that not all zionists

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are Jewish this is the logic of the Israeli state so the I think there are

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three points on want to make here number one I think we have to always learn the

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lessons of how different people are racialized and evacuated from the

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category of the human and I think this is a primary technology in genocides

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more broadly number two I think we really and and part of that is to study

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the is to study anti-Semitism we actually need to know what it is and to know how it emerged and to know how it

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took shape in order to differentiate it from the policies of

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Zionism um the second point I want to make is about um is about this kind of

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cynical weaponization uh um that’s attempting to shut down our very um narration in this

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country and as you started sort of you know I want to also acknowledge that I’m on Chumash land and I want to relate

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that to the lesson that we’ve learned in the last eight months which is a lesson

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that standing up and not just in the last eight months exactly as you were saying before sort of for for many

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decades which is that standing up for Palestinian freedom is standing up for freedom and for those of us who teach at

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universities who have been under the fire of silencing Erasure

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invisibilization doxing threats Lial the threat of of losing your position the

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fear of even speaking your history right we understand that fighting for those um

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for basic things like academic freedom and free speech is fighting for what

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kind of University that we return to and we understand that in this moment there

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is a a convergence of Zionist right-wing

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uh um xenophobic right we saw UCLA

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when the mobs came out to try and um dismantle the encampment in solidarity

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with Palestine and with Gaza it was a group of The Proud boys um the uh

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zionists and other um forces that were coming together in this convergence of

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racism xenophobia and actually existing anti-Semitism this is what drives me

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crazy when you see these show trials right in congress with uh uh people like

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Stephanie who is herself an anti-semite Holocaust deniers yes

38:40

questioning you know these University professors who haven’t bothered themselves to talk to the people who

38:47

work for them who might be able to tell them what in actually means right uh

38:54

it’s it’s it’s a deeply cynical moment and I think think at this moment we have

38:59

to understand those of us who are fighting especially those of us who are at public institutions who are fighting

39:05

for um the very idea of public education we understand that the kind of

39:10

Suffocation that we are under now is something that is that has a much longer

39:16

history and that fighting for continuing to utter the word Palestine and to

39:21

continue to narrate that history is again a fight for all of our freedoms

39:28

beautiful thank you beautiful AMA would do you would you can

39:35

you add to this well what I would agree with everything sharen said um but I would

39:41

also add as well that what we’re witnessing now is not just a backlash

39:46

obviously against everyone who speaks out for Palestine whether they’re they whatever Faith they are including of

39:52

course many Jewish anti zionists uh but what’s interesting to me is that there’s a generation shift taking place and this

39:59

is I think where I would like to to emphasize that for the first time Palestinians have been narrating their

40:05

history for for decades and decades and decades the question has never been a question of narration it’s been a

40:12

question of being able to listen to and accept a Palestinian perspective uh or

40:17

Palestinian perspectives and what’s happened now for the first time in my I’ve been teaching now for 27 years for

40:23

the first time you know there is an extraordinary generation ship taking place the Zionist narrative is no longer

40:30

hegemonic what the zionists have is of course huge amounts of investment that they’ve made over decades in their

40:36

various lobbying organizations in as Shan said the ideology the constant conflation of Judaism and Zionism and

40:43

Israel but what’s amazing to see is how many people especially young people in

40:48

North America but honestly around the world no longer accept this and the fact that Nathan’s book want to pull it

40:54

surprise I’m hoping is an indication of some kind of shift the only question that we have to think about since we

41:00

were’re addressing settler colonialism is that the the the fear I have um but

41:05

thus far it hasn’t been born out entirely the fear I have is that typically in the west they celebrate indigenous populations after they’ve

41:12

been devastated and destroyed to the point where they no longer pose any kind of sovereign threat and then there’s all

41:19

these like these these crocodile tears that get shed for Natives and Indigenous populations and and so on and so forth

41:26

and the question is now you know are we at that turning point I hope not because as Shan said and as Nathan knows and as

41:33

you know since with your film the Palestinians obviously still exist and continue to exist and and as do other

41:40

native peoples but they exist in in in a huge sort of despite the neba despite what happened in 48

41:46

despite despite all the massacr despite the genocide now in Gaza the Palestinians inside historic Palestine

41:53

still constitute 50% of the population let alone the refugees outside so all

41:58

this censorship to me is to is an indication of desperation on the part of

42:04

zionists who have completely lost the intellectual ethical moral argument

42:10

which is why they don’t engage with us I mean I don’t know sh’s experience is different from mine but almost never do

42:15

they engage with me intellectually or ethically or morally they only sort of defame us as anti-semites and they try

42:22

to shut us down sorry yeah they just scream at you and

42:28

and and at students and at anyone honestly anyone it does you don’t have to be Palestinian anyone who’s Allied is

42:35

also defamed because they don’t have an argument to make whereas in the 70s and the 60s of the last century the 20th

42:41

century they used to make very powerful at least in their minds powerful persuasive liberal arguments about how

42:48

beautiful Israel is how tolerant it is ETC now nobody nobody with eyes to see or heart that beats actually believes

42:56

this because everyone can see what’s happening in Gaza it’s so intolerable it’s so outrageous it’s so disgusting

43:02

frankly and the hypocrisy of the official West has been laid to Bear everyone can see it it’s right before

43:08

our eyes if I might just add I’m sorry quickly um really quickly sorry Nathan

43:15

um that I wanna I I also wan to definitely agree with Usama about the

43:21

generational shift and so I want to lift up some movement work here because I think often we you know we um we forget

43:30

that what we are living in now is the product of actual movement work that’s been happening for 20 years so the BDS

43:37

movement now is 15 years old right um the the the um no even more almost 20

43:45

years old um the the um so that’s how long students for justice in Palestine

43:51

have been taking shape and even before that students coming together in solidarity with Palestine across North

43:58

America you know through things like the general Union of Palestinian students that was happening around the first in

44:05

and even in the moment that um Usama writes about in in in in his books which

44:12

is this period when people in the Mahar or um you know Arabs in Exile were also

44:19

kind of shaping an analysis around Palestine right as early as 1917

44:25

throughout different period Arles so I I want to just really make sure that we highlight that movement I want to

44:32

highlight the movement of anti-zionist Jewish um labor that we now see as jvp

44:38

and not in our name but that also has a very long history uh um dating back to

44:43

the actual Inception of Zionism and I also want to you know think together

44:48

about the Resurgence and essence of indigenous movements in this country and

44:54

I you know I was recently in Hawaii and I just gained so much from thinking with

44:59

those indigenous struggles and you know to just remember also the struggle at

45:05

Standing Rock to remember the water protectors to remember the long tradition of Black Liberation in this

45:11

country you know that when in the assassination after the assassination of George Floyd we saw Millions coming out

45:18

onto the streets globally and many people at that time too were thinking of it in the presst but it’s actually such

45:25

a long tradition and so I think there’s a way that catastrophe In This Moment is

45:30

so generalized that Palestine has come into being as a space for imagining

45:37

freedom and demanding it for so many different kinds of movements wow and to approach it more

45:43

holistically rather than separate movements that have one specific Direction yeah we had a conversation

45:49

with Angela Davis a week ago and that’s exactly what she was calling that

45:55

standing for Palestine in stand for Freedom he standing for human rights all over the world not just in pal is a

46:02

societal change that is needed total different approach is colonialism which

46:07

is still totally effective and working full force in every day in our lives now

46:13

yeah and Nathan I mean you live in Jerusalem like how was your

46:20

book receive or not received like was it ever covered or give us something about

46:26

the real reality there the life of the in Jerusalem right now and also I was

46:32

wondering about abet Salama how the release of the book might have impacted

46:39

his life or like we interviewed a lot of women for the film and we could not

46:45

include them in the movie because it would not have been safe for them to be

46:50

in a movie like this so was a hard Choice actually not to tell their

46:55

stories protect them I wonder if you encounter yeah um thank you you know

47:02

before I answer those two questions I want to just touch on a couple of things that were were said um earlier and and I

47:10

I very much uh agree with what was said by S and Shireen um one one of the

47:17

things that I I had been saying for years to friends is that um the fact

47:22

that the IH definition of anti-semitism is now the main weapon being used to

47:29

defend uh Israel um could be looked at in a positive light that this is the

47:34

weapon of Last Resort and the fact that they have no other argument and that

47:40

this is the only one being used is a sign that they really are uh realizing that they’re losing uh the argument or

47:46

have lost it and and you know to pick up on another thing that that Shireen said

47:52

about movement work and the BDS movement um so I uh uh taught a class titled

47:58

apartheid in Israel Palestine last year on a us uh college campus at Bard and I

48:03

believe it was the first time ever that a course with that title was taught but you know for over a decade prior to that

48:12

uh students for justice in Palestine at campuses around the country would have an apartheid week and it would be

48:17

enormously controversial and people would try and shut it down and when my class was taught it was also um uh faced

48:25

opposition there there was a major donor to the school who pulled out $2.5 million doar the New York Consulate of

48:32

the Israeli consulate in New York uh tried to have the class shut down um uh

48:37

but it went forward and I think it went forward in part because of all of that

48:42

years of work uh by uh younger people who were um changing the narrative and

48:50

talking about apartheid for years and years uh uh prior to it um I also feel

48:56

we didn’t really address the um the the your question about the Zionist uh

49:02

talking points uh earlier you had said you know we encounter people saying uh

49:08

Israel needs to protect itself because it’s surrounded by all of these Arabs um

49:14

and um it reminded me actually of a conversation I had just a couple of days ago there was uh somebody who was

49:21

visiting uh the West Bank um was not too familiar with it and I was helping to

49:26

show this person around and uh he had very much been indoctrinated and and you

49:32

know like most Americans and and Zionist talking points and he kept saying you know but you know what about the

49:37

security argument what about the argument that Israel is doing all of this for for its security and and the um

49:46

example that I gave him to try and address this was to say you know um heon

49:53

has a uh Jewish settler presence in the Heart of the City and this is a tiny

50:00

Jewish settler presence uh you know I don’t remember the numbers today but you

50:06

know rough less than a thousand surrounded by you know more than 2

50:13

200,000 uh Palestinians in Hebron and they need a heavy heavy Army presence uh

50:19

to to protect the settlers and and they take these drastic uh measures like

50:25

creating uh what the Army calls sterile roads roads that only the settlers can

50:31

go on um meaning that they are quote unquote clean of uh the local population

50:37

of Palestinians now um there are no um settlers in downtown rala and there are

50:44

no sterile roads in downtown rala and um and so you know you can insert settlers

50:53

into a the middle of a Palestinian population and have them take over

50:59

Palestinian homes and land with the aid of the army and then say well naturally they need uh protection they’re

51:06

surrounded by hostile Arabs um and and so you could zoom out and say it’s the

51:11

same actual answer uh with your question well Israel is surrounded by by hostile

51:18

Arabs um you know they need to to secure themselves but um it’s it’s the exact

51:26

same same process um with with respect to the reaction to

51:31

the book here I um really there hasn’t been much of one because it has not been

51:38

translated into Hebrew and so um people all the time ask me you know is it safe

51:43

for you do do people attack you there are Israeli journalists who are uh attacked there’s an ultra Orthodox

51:49

journalist named Israel fry who had just expressed grief for some of the Gaza

51:54

Dead uh in the first couple months of the war and he had a mob uh come outside

52:00

his home and I’ve never experienced anything like that I basically don’t think I will uh so long as my book isn’t

52:08

translated into Hebrew um and and so so far I I would like it actually to be

52:14

translated into Hebrew but Hebrew uh Publishers have not wanted to touch it um so so that’s the the short answer to

52:23

to um the the reaction here and and um you had asked about Abid and his

52:30

life and you know he and I were supposed to be on tour uh in the us together for

52:37

this book the book was published on October 3rd we were planning to be in the US for about six weeks uh in the UK

52:44

and um after October 7th he he lives in a walled Enclave um he’s surrounded on

52:52

three sides by the um uh 26t tall gray

52:57

wall famously known as the apartheid wall and on a fourth side by another wall which is the wall running through a

53:04

segregated Road Route 4370 with Israeli traffic on one side Palestinian traffic

53:10

on the other known also as the aparti road and this community of about 130,000

53:17

people today has two exits one through a checkpoint into the rest of Jerusalem uh

53:22

that only half of the people within the Enclave can use and then another at the

53:28

base uh of the of the enclave and it takes only about two soldiers at each exit to shut the whole thing down and

53:34

leave 130,000 people trapped and that’s the how the entire West Bank is designed you can just shut down a couple of key

53:42

roads and you’ve trapped a whole Community uh and it takes you know Two Soldiers to put down a yellow gate or

53:49

move a couple of Big Stone uh blocks across the road so that’s what happened

53:55

immediately after after October 7th to abid’s community and uh his family was

54:02

trapped uh inside all of the uh jobs in Israel and the settlements which nearly

54:08

every extended Palestinian family in the West Bank relies on these are much higher paying jobs they’re so much

54:14

higher paying that even people who have relatively good jobs in the Palestinian Authority will go on their days off and

54:22

work as laborers inside Israel uh for supplemental income because the pay is

54:27

so much higher um and so all of those jobs all but a couple of few thousand of

54:33

them have uh disappeared since October 7th Israeli employers are not allowing

54:38

Palestinians to come back to work there is a huge uh spike in uh killing of

54:44

Palestinians about 500 now have been killed since October 7th in the West Bank um uh one of them is a relative of

54:53

uh of close relative of abid’s wife haa um a and uh and also people are kind of

55:01

afraid to to use the roads because of uh settler violence and violence from the

55:06

Army those two things are uh uh go hand inand they’re not really distinct from

55:12

one another but now they’re even uh more tightly interwoven since October 7th

55:17

because the settlers have uh put on uniforms as uh Regional defense units

55:23

and so the same people who would go and attack their settlers who would go and attack their neighbor Neighbors not

55:29

their Palestinian neighbors not in um in uniform now do it in uniform um in in in

55:36

the West Bank and and the restrictions on movement are worse than they’ve ever

55:42

been I’ve as I ask basically everyone I I meet I say can you remember a time

55:47

where the restrictions on movement were worse than they are today because I didn’t live here during the second

55:53

intifa and in my mind that was the worst period and every single person I know

55:58

who was an adult during the second intifa and who’s lived through this entire occupation uh has said this is the worst

56:05

restrictions on movement they’ve ever faced um and so you know people are

56:13

really staying at home they’re they’re they’re trapped they’re economically strangled they’re uh constricted uh uh

56:21

they’re uh uh facing uh high levels of violence and the levels of of

56:27

dispossession are also at a at a real high there the un uh issued a report in

56:34

September um that was trying to raise the alarm about how much um the force

56:40

displacement of Palestinians in area sea had increased in the preceding 18 months

56:46

I think it was they said that more than 1100 Palestinian mostly um uh

56:53

pastoralists had been um uh for forcibly displaced and in just the month or so

57:00

month and a half after October 7th an even greater number more than 1100 more

57:05

were forcibly displaced that process the theme of this panel is ongoing nakba

57:10

that is happening uh today at very very uh High rates um so yeah that that’s

57:18

kind of a picture of of of abid’s life just to give another anecdote you know his his brother who whom he’s very close

57:25

to lives in rala and works in rala and I went to an ifar uh dinner at abid’s home

57:33

um not that long ago and um his brother had not it had been more than six months

57:40

since his brother had not visited anatha which should be 20 minutes away by car

57:46

since October 7th he’d go and see his family all the time under normal circumstances he just wasn’t leaving um

57:52

the immediate area around his home uh because of the the conditions in the West Bank right

57:59

now like becoming monstrous like I wish to believe is before it collapses fully

58:05

this is we’re seeing the last gasp is like

58:11

before maybe it’s wishful thinking may maybe there’s more to the monster before

58:16

it collapses fully but I I I yeah I I think we should be it’s very hard to

58:23

it’s when we’re sitting with historians who have an allergy to any kind of prediction but um but I I I you know I

58:32

don’t think that um of course it depends what you know kind of scale of time

58:38

we’re talking about when we say last gasps but um certainly I I do I’m not

58:44

among those um uh who believe that this is the end right now and I’ve heard some

58:51

uh people say that um but um I think that you know we need to as much as this

58:58

generational change is very important and I Echo everything that was said about that I really do believe we’re

59:04

going to have to wait until these kids who are on on the campuses right now are in power which is 20 years from now to

59:10

see really the kind of change that we want to see um and um you know just to

59:17

give a sense of proportion you know the moment now we have mass mobilization for Palestine and

59:25

so if there’s ever a moment to put forward real policy changes it’s today

59:30

when palestine’s on the front page of the newspapers the day that this if this war ends uh the day that it ends the

59:39

ability to make real changes here will decrease that mobilization will decrease

59:45

so if there’s a moment to do something it’s now and where are we despite the shifted public opinion despite you know

59:51

Elizabeth Warren a fairly mainstream politician saying uh genocide real

59:57

changes that I don’t discount at all but like where are we in terms of policy let’s look at you know the lowest

1:00:03

hanging fruit you know in Europe for example a ban on settlement products

1:00:09

something you would think most European Cent interests could get behind it’s not on the table uh something that simple is

1:00:17

not on the table today and so um I do believe we’re in a very important period

1:00:23

of change I really Echo everything that’s said about this generational shift and how important it is but I

1:00:29

don’t I I I don’t use the language of of last gasps myself although you know I

1:00:34

also can’t don’t have a crystal ball I mean I also feel very hesitant

1:00:42

about these kinds of predictions right um I do think that Israel will not come

1:00:49

back from this the same state that it went into it and I do think that the

1:00:56

United States won’t come back from this I mean when you see Congress attempting

1:01:01

to pass a bill to cond or passing a bill to condemn the IC there are many big

1:01:08

shifts that are happening in this moment and and I I totally agree with Nathan that this is a long

1:01:15

duray you know this is gonna have this is going to take decades more but it’s

1:01:20

also going to be a time of great attenuation of the very Western

1:01:26

Civilization that Usama was talking about um in the beginning there is much that has been unveiled in this moment

1:01:33

and I think the consequences of that unveiling for those of us who’ve always known it to be there but the

1:01:40

consequences of this explicit unveiling are going to live on with us and

1:01:45

sometimes it might and it might live on with us in ways that are even more brutal we you know that’s why I think we

1:01:51

have to be careful about the the predictions yeah thank you absolutely you have word than

1:02:00

that keeping the Long View and the historical perspectives well I mean I I I agree

1:02:07

with what’s been said uh 100% um it’s hard to say it’s impossible this to be

1:02:12

optimistic in a moment like this it’s just impossible it’s heartless in fact on the other hand you know when Nathan

1:02:19

talks about when when we talk about a generational change and Nathan says yes we have to wait for people to come to

1:02:24

power sure of of course we’re talking about decades um on the other hand so

1:02:30

much of Zionism and so much of Israel depends on narrative and depends on this

1:02:35

idea of getting a past and having an impunity that for decades and decades and decades they have enjoyed to the

1:02:43

point where was 1956 the was 1948 the the so we can go back de generation so

1:02:50

it’s it’s not that it’s not that anything is going to change overnight as such but nevertheless the fact of the

1:02:57

matter is that for the first time in In Living memory Palestinian solidarity is

1:03:02

no longer first of all just Palestinian and it’s no longer just Arab or Muslim it’s transcended that and that shift is

1:03:09

not something that you’re going to be able to sweep back under the it’s very difficult to change it’s it’s a

1:03:14

narrative battle as much as it’s an a political economic military battle so

1:03:20

for sure Palestinians are are are suffering and are going to suffer even more let’s see what happens in the West

1:03:25

Bank was talking about the the the the slow moving genocide in the West Bank it’s going to accelerate without any

1:03:31

doubt in my mind that that’s that’s next but that doesn’t mean that that that the

1:03:38

the the shift is not taking place and some things that sh is saying some things are irreversible this is an

1:03:44

irreversible shift it’s a generational shift that’s irreversible honestly I really do believe that maybe it’s

1:03:50

wishful thinking I don’t think so as a historian I think we’re talking about tracking this extraordinary

1:03:56

that has taken place and as sh was saying we need to lift up uh activism but it’s also remember the BDS movement

1:04:03

itself Builds on Decades of student activism before I mean Palestinians have been and Arabs have been active as

1:04:09

students in this country talking about Palestine right after the nakba but in the 50s nobody would listen to them and

1:04:16

their English perhaps wasn’t as good now we’re talking about generations of people who are as American as apple pie

1:04:22

and at the same time are also Palestinian are Muslim are anti Zionist are Jewish are you know

1:04:28

anti-zionists are Allied you know are so you see what I’m saying there’s a shift taking place and that is going to be

1:04:34

accelerate even more which is why the Crackdown is so severe right now um and

1:04:39

let’s see what happens it’s an ongoing struggle but in the end um it’s it’s the

1:04:45

the shift itself can’t be undone that’s my sense yeah but with our movie and

1:04:51

generally people ask us constantly but what can we do now an individual

1:04:56

collectively what are the important step that we as a community that we can do towards this process as a

1:05:04

individual Europe euroamerican human being what can we do to support the

1:05:12

struggle for human I guess that comes also with the notion of like oh yeah just can we just do it get over that

1:05:20

that the Savior yeah how that can actually hurt more if

1:05:25

we focus on Solutions so exactly so help us what can we say what can we do and uh

1:05:33

no sh sh no go ahead go ahead what were you gonna say

1:05:39

and no you go I’m sorry the the whole thing two

1:05:45

states one state you know when you get in down that uh narrow path is also part

1:05:50

I think of the indoctrination and it’s a dead end Street when you agree when when

1:05:55

they yeah take you there okay I want to go back to the question about it um um Arabs not

1:06:03

supporting Palestinians um which was something you said earlier and we lost

1:06:08

that Arab states don’t support the Palestinians because Palestinians and

1:06:14

Palestinian Liberation also offers a a a a vision of Liberation that Arab states

1:06:21

have used since World War II to keep their people down right so so I think

1:06:27

making that distinction between Arab states and Arab peoples the second point about safety as long as Israel is based

1:06:36

on an unjust formula that Israeli rights supersede and Israeli super Supremacy

1:06:44

supersede the rights of the indigenous peoples on the lands which they settle

1:06:49

on and occupy there will be no peace it’s that simple and one of the things I

1:06:54

think to draw on is that this is the case for many settler colonies that PE

1:07:00

that there is always a sense of fear because if you are surrounded by peoples

1:07:07

who you have yourself been a a a as a state taking part in uh a dispossessing

1:07:15

you don’t feel safe so what we’re seeing now is the logic of a kind of preemptive

1:07:22

genocide you’re and this is what’s so crazy when they say to us when we when we when you say from The River To The

1:07:28

Sea Palestine will be free this is a genocidal call first of all no we’re not

1:07:34

genocidal like you are we can imagine freedom in ways in which we have we live

1:07:40

alongside of each other as Usama has taught us in this longer tradition and also the whole logic is we’re going to

1:07:46

genocide you before you genocide us right and this is not viable it is not

1:07:53

sustainable what can people in Europe and North

1:07:58

America and everywhere around the world do I think number one read read because

1:08:04

your life depends on reading it depends on it it depends on knowing it depends on understanding these details that

1:08:11

Nathan was drawing out about the ongoing slow and and in in the West Bank and in

1:08:19

Gaza this kind of slow death this slow erosion and dispossession this shrinking

1:08:24

of pal uh uh and paying attention to its Tempo

1:08:30

temporality both in when it’s slow and when it’s WAP it so read also follow the

1:08:37

lead of Palestinians who are giving us the Visions for how we ought to organize

1:08:42

in the future organize speak up Don’t Be Afraid right these are the things that

1:08:48

we all can do together and I think through that through that you know reading organizing following the the

1:08:55

lead of Palestinians working collectively we can begin to imagine how

1:09:01

do we expand the geography of Palestine just as that geography itself is

1:09:07

shrinking beautiful beautiful um if I could just add to what Shen is saying

1:09:13

Nathan if you you want to jump in or just if I could just add to what shine is saying very briefly um and to say

1:09:19

that uh I I agree of course that that it’s it’s important on two points there’s the first point about the Arab

1:09:25

States versus Arabs more generally there’s no question that that Palestine has always been and remains a core sort

1:09:33

of issue um of justice of basic Justice and Injustice it’s one of the things when I try to explain to people what

1:09:39

does it mean to be Arab you know one of the things about being Arab it’s just knowing without having to explain that

1:09:44

Palestine is a question of justice and Injustice you don’t need to go into the details people just know understand

1:09:50

intuitively because of this history the shared history of the 20th century and and prior

1:09:56

that’s point but I think on the Arab states it’s important also to emphasize that there are Arab states who have been

1:10:01

even historically have been supported of Palestine it’s simply that you know if you go back to the UN debates of 1947

1:10:08

and it’s the Arab states that were the ones who were most eloquent in defending the rights of the Palestinians they were

1:10:14

ignored it’s Arab states that that that sent minor detachments no question but

1:10:20

nevertheless sent unlike today uh the sent detachments to fight on behalf of the Palestinians in 1948 they lost but

1:10:27

at least they sent something as opposed to today where nothing is being done um

1:10:32

and so you know over the years the Arab states have fought Wars and they’ve been defeated time and again and in the end

1:10:38

the Arab states surrendered in part because the US policy has been so overwhelmingly pro Israel after 1967 in

1:10:45

particular that that the Arab states especially the egyps you know uh the the

1:10:51

Gulf States have thrown in the towel in effect and and conceded defeat at the

1:10:56

official level not at a popular level and so that’s where we are today but

1:11:01

there are states like Yemen today or at least places like Yemen Iraq and Syria and Lebanon where people are still

1:11:07

fighting so I think it’s important really to maintain that that understanding that this is not simply

1:11:13

done that this is an ongoing issue that can be revitalized at any moment when there’s a shift in the state system in

1:11:20

the Arab world as far as what I would tell people what you can do like shanin was saying you know read as and know the

1:11:26

history because one of the things that’s so stunning to me as a historian and as a scholar and as a person as a human

1:11:31

being is is just how the Palestinian narrative is so utterly basic it’s so simple doesn’t require aisc it doesn’t

1:11:39

require slogans it doesn’t require the absurdity of a land without a people for a people without a land or every other Z

1:11:44

of slogan that’s come up with to offc a very basic reality that people are Palestinians are human um and and so

1:11:51

there’s no fear Palestinians don’t have a fear sh are historians but but in general Palestinians don’t have a fear

1:11:58

of History it’s the opposite they know the history they know that everything they experienced is going to be

1:12:04

validated eventually and corroborated as time moves on it’s the Israeli narrative the Zionist narrative that has collapsed

1:12:10

entirely almost from where it was in 48 to where it is today the Zionist narrative the myths of Israel have all

1:12:17

one after another have collaps so read of course most of all be confident be

1:12:24

confident in speaking up for justice in the face of a of a of a barrage of of

1:12:31

hostility and ignorance and racism but just stick to the basic points and that’s what I would say

1:12:36

always beautiful we’ll take a couple of quick

1:12:42

questions unless Nathan let’s hear um yeah let’s keep the questions short

1:12:48

short we have more voices thank you aene okay I thank you for all the you’re

1:12:55

doing I’m while you’re using the word apartheid I’m thinking I was very young at the time but I’m thinking of South

1:13:02

Africa and the the boycotts that we did which was a which was a movement of the

1:13:08

people where we started boycotting products from South Africa which did not

1:13:13

ultimately was the Big Tool but it it ended up it helped in empowering the

1:13:19

population there and it’s it is a majority that ended up being oppressed by a major minority and and also

1:13:26

financially supported so I was wondering how can we start uh knowing which products are from

1:13:33

Israel how we can boycott the economic as as me as a person and asking my

1:13:39

friends to do the same that’s my because that seemed to have

1:13:45

worked in defeating a parte there so that’s my

1:13:50

question I just want to say really quickly I sent um I sent link to um um

1:13:58

the BDS movement website to the um to the organizers and I also just want to uplift that it’s that similarity that

1:14:05

you see is foundational to the BDS movement so it was it’s not just

1:14:11

coincidental it is that the 250 Palestinian Civil Society organizations

1:14:16

who first called for warat divestment sanctions in 2005 were explicitly drawing on the the your movement were

1:14:24

explicit drawing on the experience of South Africa and here I want to uplift

1:14:29

South Africa for the incredible righteous and courageous work that it

1:14:35

has done on the international scale and um I also want to know so here this is

1:14:42

maybe another conversation because I we have some differences about Arab states I also want to note that the only state

1:14:49

that has actually completely dismantled its relations to Israel in this moment

1:14:54

has been in Colombia so I think that there are you know that from the that

1:15:00

the tradition and the resonance that you’re seeing is part of the effervescence of the moment that we’re

1:15:08

in I’ll look it up thanks very much Nathan I saw you wanted to do you

1:15:15

want to add anything or no no that that’s that’s okay I I see that shine sent um sent resources to answer the

1:15:22

question I was going to just volunteer something similar um and so yeah that

1:15:28

that that information is readily available and and there’s also a um the

1:15:33

United Nations has a uh database the UN Human Rights Council has a database of

1:15:40

uh firms that are uh complicit in Israel’s occupation uh

1:15:45

specifically um and uh and that’s also uh another readily available uh database

1:15:53

[Music] as you are gearing towards the the the

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closing like is it you want should we have few minutes each one of you to give us a closing statement I would say or

1:16:07

something that what what do you say so let’s I’ll just say really quickly that another thing I think um people in

1:16:14

Europe and North America have to do is reject all the forces that are trying to make us stupid which includes the

1:16:21

mainstream media which has been a really important actor in uh in obfuscating

1:16:29

what’s happening in this genocide yeah

1:16:35

definitely absolutely so let’s see if there’s any question um to read this how

1:16:41

is it possible that an ethnic religious group we kind of covered that already sees itself as the victim that’s

1:16:49

part of the indoctrination anyone yeah I think we covered that um

1:16:55

Nathan there is a question for you see from in Israel what do You observe in

1:17:01

the Jewish Israeli population do you see any critical mess of critical ethical

1:17:06

societal examination and the desire to move away from the role of militarise compressive occupiers and thought

1:17:13

something of mutual coexistence Liberation with Palestinian or this is a darker cynical and traumatized movement

1:17:20

that seems to be kep to dominant population stuck I would appreciate your perspective but it seem yeah I think we

1:17:26

touch that we got a request for the movie to be translated in Hebrew and there’s a rabbi two days ago show it and

1:17:34

we are doing it we didn’t even believe that would ever be possible but

1:17:41

um is there anything and or if you want to touch on normalization something that

1:17:47

people on this side don’t understand quite well we heard all the time like

1:17:53

why did you make one-sided movie why you didn’t show both perspectives this is

1:17:58

one of the most common question what about the other side um I don’t know I can well I’d like

1:18:06

to say something about the other side or about the two sides or objectivity and and always a reminder I I say this in

1:18:12

all my classes um neutrality of course is not objectivity there’s a huge difference between telling the truth and

1:18:20

being a witness which is another thing everyone can do is be Witnesses and act on your I and and and do do the things

1:18:27

that elevate people and that support Justice around the world not just in Palestine but obviously including

1:18:33

Palestine um the the idea of Truth being somewhere in between two perspectives is

1:18:39

absurd I mean there are truths and there are there are you know there there’s there’s something that if we don’t if we

1:18:45

can’t agree on basic ideas of justice and Injustice of history of narration of

1:18:50

what’s happened then we can’t make any kind of ethical decision about anything frankly and so again don’t be afraid of History

1:18:58

always remind those desists who come along and who basically as shim was saying don’t know the history at all they actually do not know the history

1:19:04

they try to make you stupid they try to make other people stupid in the sense of the most basic question of all if

1:19:11

Zionism why did Zionism emerge in Europe and not in the Middle East they don’t even have an answer to that question

1:19:17

because most of them have never thought about that in any serious way they don’t understand that there was no Jewish

1:19:23

question in the Middle East in the way there was in Europe and there’s a reason for that um and there’s you know there’s

1:19:30

a whole history again there’s there’s so much history that one can just um get

1:19:35

into and to understand the basic sort of humanity and history and so it’s so

1:19:41

important to just always maintain this this idea of insisting on a Palestinian

1:19:46

and people’s right to represent themselves and to be represented as human as opposed to Simply as the foil

1:19:53

for other people’s anxieties

1:19:59

fearce Nathan anything on the question of how do you see the the society in

1:20:07

Israel no I I I don’t uh I don’t see a movement for equality uh in Israel that

1:20:16

that’s um you know the the majority much

1:20:22

more than just the majority you know the super majority of uh Israeli Jews are um

1:20:29

content with a system of uh Perpetual domination um and um I I don’t see that

1:20:39

that changing in the foreseeable uh future and

1:20:44

[Music] um you know that that that has been the case for for many decades this isn’t I

1:20:51

not don’t mean to say that that’s the result of the right being in power now this is true of the center and the

1:20:56

center left as well there are differences in approach there’s differences in you know how rapidly they

1:21:02

want to move how much they’re willing to spit in the world’s face how much they’re willing to take off their masks

1:21:08

how much they’re willing to talk about uh expulsion um but um but in terms of the

1:21:17

uh willingness to have a system of domination that also of course as

1:21:23

Shireen put it so well makes them insecure as long as they have

1:21:28

that system in place and of course in apartheid South Africa as well that one of the main arguments about why you

1:21:33

couldn’t end it was that the afri coners said we we’re all going to die um so um

1:21:41

yes I I I do not I do not see any kind of movement for for equality uh within

1:21:48

Israel yeah yeah I so quickly about the

1:21:55

news where is that what are your sources where do you would you direct people to

1:22:00

read um and get the news learn anything that yeah any recommendations for

1:22:08

resources M um

1:22:14

anything feel free to I would read yeah I would read all those all these these these sites um read and consume I mean

1:22:21

the mainstream media we can see obviously it is what but it is there’s so many now alternative sites um

1:22:28

websites news services that that that the this the

1:22:34

there’s not I wouldn’t have one recommendation but but the ones you mentioned Jia there’s a million honestly

1:22:39

there’s so many differ there’s there’s no excuse anymore to be uneducated on this issue um and even on the mainstream

1:22:45

media I mean there are so many people who have left the mainstream media and have their their YouTube channels and

1:22:51

and so on and so forth that the a lack of education is not excusable anymore

1:22:56

honestly at this point we all need to do our homework

1:23:01

there is no excuse yeah well this has been a very enlightening conversation thank you all

1:23:08

so much for um for all that you brought and a lot to work with and a lot to

1:23:14

continue exploring and learning from the little bits and pieces you gave us to

1:23:20

continue learning so thank you so much and for connecting more dots together

1:23:26

because this is really what we are missing that holistic yeah visual approach yeah so thank you thank you for

1:23:34

having us um really a pleasure to be with with all of Youk thank you for your film as well yes

1:23:41

really beautiful and thank you everyone who tuned in today and this talk the recording will be available on YouTube

1:23:48

so feel free to share with your friends and we will see other tomorrow again the

1:23:54

same time at 10 a.m. Pacific Time thank thank you

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