November 7, 2023 • 30 mins
Today's special guest is former actor and Miss Arab USA turned writer Suzanne Yatim Aslam. She joins Host Ramses Ja and guest cohost Q - Ward to offer her perspective on the current conflict between Israel and Palestine. Part 1 of a 3 part series.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is the Black Information Network Daily podcast, and I
am your host, Ramse's job, and sometimes the amount of
stories that make their way to us means that we
simply can't cover everything that comes our way. But from
time to time, a story just stays with me and
I feel compelled to share it with you and give
you my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And now one more thing I don't want to.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
If you're a longtime listener of this show, you may
know that when the time came for us.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
To broach the subject of what is being called the.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Israel hamas War, I called in someone I consider a friend.
His name is Amy Horwitz. He is a journalist and
someone who has spent time on the ground underground as
(01:10):
a researcher. He spent time with Hama soldiers, He spent
time in Israel and Palestine and had some perspective and
could get us some insight into what was going on
or a person like me, he provided a lot of
insight into what that was all about and helped bring
(01:34):
me up to speed so that I could pay attention
and absorb information, Whereas without his involvement, everything may have
just sounded like noise. Well, one of the things that
I understood, and he understood is that there was only
(01:55):
so much that he could speak to because he himself
is a Jewish Man. In other words, he is not
a Palestinian person. He has not had access to what
the lived experience might be like. And while he could empathize,
(02:15):
again as an American Jewish American conservative journalist, what it
might be like for a Palestinian folks, his position was
rather more supportive of Israel, particularly in that moment right
(02:35):
after the Hamas attacks on I believe it was October seven.
But like I said, since then, I've he's helped me
establish a foundation upon which I could receive information and
declutter it. And it wasn't just noise. There were things
that I could now put into buckets, if you will,
(02:57):
and follow the story and look beyond the media narrative,
because to be fair, if you look, if you look
at the media, or really certain parts of the media,
you might not get really anything that.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Truly reflects what it's like to be Palestinian prior to
those Hamas attacks, what life was like day to day
for the Palestinian folks, and indeed what life is like
now that the bombs are going off. Those Israeli slash
US bombs are going off. And one of the things
(03:41):
that I wanted to do on this show. Again, if
you heard that episode with me and Ami, you know
that I said I wanted to bring on a guest.
I would find the right guest who could offer some
perspective into what it might feel like to be a
Palestinian person making sense of what's going on. Well, today
(04:10):
I have a person who I've come to truly appreciate.
Her name is Suzanne Oslom and this will be my
second conversation with her. Q is with us for this show.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I called in the big Guns because you know, you
know this is a very heavy heavy lift for us,
Q and I. You know, for longtime listeners of this show,
of course, you know that Q and I do SIVI
E sipher together and we often process trauma traumatic events together.
(04:46):
We have our own little community with the two of us,
and we have a system. We often have to make
sense of what activism looks like and what our role
is with respect to human rights violations, and on and
on and on and so Q being here is a
result of me feeling like in order to a give
(05:09):
you the interview and the insight that you deserve as
a listener. Knowing that he'll be here asking the questions
and providing the perspective that I've come to appreciate in
our private conversations, I thought that that would really strengthen
the conversation we're about to have. And of course, Suzanne
(05:31):
herself is in college you were a human rights major.
We talked about that just now, So not only do
you have the framework of how to make heads or
tails of human rights stuff, but you yourself are a
Palestinian woman. You're a former actress, former Miss arab Usa,
(05:57):
you're a writer, and you spent time in Palestine working
with a peacekeeping team, and you obviously have a deep
and personal understanding of the occupation over there.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
So not unlike what Ami was to Israel, you, i believe,
are the most qualified person that I've met to have
really the second part of the conversation that we've been
wanting to have, and I believe that the people deserve
to have access to So I appreciate you coming on today.
(06:33):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Welcome to the Black Information Network, And I want to
start by saying that since my initial conversation with Ami,
where there were a lot of rumors that proved to
(06:55):
be falsehoods about what I understand, and you can please
either of you correct me if I'm wrong. The initial
Hamas attacks on again I believe it was October seventh,
were horrible attacks. They were just attacking people. But what
(07:18):
was said about those attacks made them sound even more
heinous than they were, in particular the beheading of children.
And what I've learned since then is that that was
unsubstantiated or otherwise it was not true. Now since my
(07:38):
conversation with Ami, I have actually seen the video evidence
of people, but really children, who have been obliterated. I
don't want this to be a conversation where the details
(08:00):
are so graphic that you cannot listen, but I do
believe that it's important for me to express, at least
to some degree on this show, the horrors, to some degree,
the horrors that are taking place, so that you, our listener,
(08:24):
can understand why this second part of the conversation is
so necessary. And so I will say one of the
one of the many things that I have seen, the
(08:44):
things that have kept me up at night. One of
these things is I saw a man pull out from
a pile of look like body parts, two legs and
they were just legs, and they had the little kid
shoes still on the feet, and it was just two legs.
(09:07):
And he shows it to the camera and then he
puts the legs there. And so when we talk about
who's actually bearing the brunt, whose children are actually bearing
the brunt of this.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
War? Based on the evidence that I've actually encountered, I'm
seeing that these are Palestinian children, and I don't want
to pretend like they're not people of all ages. Who
are you know, they're pulling again, forgive me because I
don't want it to be too graphic, but they're pulling
(09:44):
guts and body parts and what's left over and charred
remains and all these things, and people are weeping and
crying consolably.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
And you see the video evidence of another that comes
to mind. I saw a man. He's laying and you
can see that he's not going to last much longer.
I'll spare your graphic details. And he has these piercing
blue eyes as he's laying there, and I believe that
(10:13):
there's a loved one with him who is praying. I
don't understand the language. I wish that I did, because
he deserves for his last moments to be more than
just this thing that I'm able to do on this microphone.
Sometimes it feel so frustrated because I know that that
man deserved more than that, you know, I often wish
that people had a little bit more dignity in their
(10:34):
final moments when there's conflict like this. But to the
best that I'm able to recall, I just remember his
blue eyes opening in his dirty face from probably a.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Bomb or something, and a man praying for him. And
so it's not just children, although children is what kind
of gets the clicks in the headlines. I'm going to
ask you for your thoughts, which is basically carte blanche
to just start where you want to start. But first, Q,
let's play a video that.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Kind of moved me, and I think kind of gives
you a little bit of an aperture on audio, aperture
into what it sounds like to be there.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So let's go the different looks at home. They are
they'n't evacuating to ship up, sitting outside because there is
no places that ship up. They bumped the place outside,
they bumped in the.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Door up and there.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Just before two minutes, it's.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Suzanne talk to us about how that.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Where does where does that take you? Or tell you?
I know you know who that is, So talk to
us a little bit about her and where does that
take you? She said, her.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Name is Bi San. She is a journalist and she
was an aspiring filmmaker, but now this is her, this
is her life. She records as much as she can
when she has access to record. She every day will
put up a new video when she can, saying Hi,
it's Bisan, I'm still alive, and that's all she can
(12:24):
hope for.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
She'll show I haven't had.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Water in hours or days, and like this is the
amount of water I have. It's two hundred MILLI leaders
and she's grateful. And I was on a podcast the
other day with the woman who was talking about survivor's
skills and she's like, I'm about to go to Spain
just for fun, and how do I do this? And
(12:49):
it's just so difficult for me because I feel all
this pain and she's crying to me, and I said, no,
I understand. And then a few days later, Bisan put
out she's a broadcast on Instagram that I follow and
she put out a little voice recording that I sent
to my new friend, and it was saying life is
(13:10):
so precious and we want you guys to be happy,
and we hope that you're living your life to the
fullest and to the best that you possibly can. And
that was so moving to hear, because while they are
looking for support and they want to be heard and seen,
they also aren't asking for you to only have two
hundred millimeters millimeters of.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Water a day.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
They're not asking for you to be suffering along with them.
They just want their voice to be heard. But it
makes them happy to know that life is still existing,
that people are still alive, and people are still well
and happy. And that said a lot to me about
the san In particular, this woman in this video that
she paused and took a moment to say, just make
(13:52):
sure you out there are living your lives and it's
something that we shouldn't take for granted. It was really
beautiful what she's experiencing. People ask, just as an aside,
but also really important, what can we do? And people
think that social media doesn't matter, Why would Israel turn
(14:13):
off the Internet and Razza if social media doesn't matter, sure,
you know, and the best thing that we can do
for them not best, but one of the big things
is to find people like Bisan and other journalists and
make them as public as possible. The more they're in
the public eye, because they've already killed like almost two
dozen journalists, So the more we put journalists in the
(14:36):
public eye, it we're hoping it protects them because they
are actually targeting these people. But the more that they're
it's a pr nightmare for the State of Israel. If
it's it becomes very clear that they are purpose to attacking. Yes,
journalists getting because they don't want them to speak, they
don't want to.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Get the word out.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
So our goal has been to try to put them
in the public eye as much as possible and uplift
their voices as much as possible in order to keep
them safe. It's weird to have that kind of conversation
and they have to talk about it in that way,
but that's what we're hoping for. As far as where
to start carte Blanche, there's a lot of places that
(15:18):
we can go. But one thing I want to say
is we don't really see it as a war, and
words matter, and this is not a war because the
war is oftentimes two parties that are equal or almost equal.
I've got guns, you've got guns, and we come in
(15:39):
guns to blazon. This is not what's happening here. This
is just pure ethnic cleansing and genocide. When you call
it a war, we get to go, oh, well, let's
learn the history of both sides, and let's see who's
you know, what's going on here, and let's see if
we can really unravel who should win. That's not the case.
This is just a straight up and very intentional genocide.
(16:01):
And if I may be so bold, this is the
very definition of terrorism.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Today.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
We are joined by Suzanne Oslim and Q War discussing
the Palestinian perspective of the Israel Hamas War and the
Free Palestine movement.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Don't let me stop you so so people. My neighbor
asked me this the other day, when all this started happening.
He was like, oh my god, I was there three
weeks before this went down, you guys, three weeks this
is your neighbor, or you me, I was there three
weeks before in Palestine before this went down. And so
my neighbor, you know, he's like, oh my god, weren't
(16:46):
you just there? And we were talking and I was
trying to explain to him what was going on, and
he's like, wait, so you you like Jewish people, right,
and he sort of, you know, got a little like
he cowarded. He felt uncomfortable asking me this question. But
he also really was wondering if I was just walking
around being racist. Sure, and this question drives me crazy,
but I also understand that the world, in the country
(17:08):
that we live in, prompts people to ask this question.
And it is not the first time when someone finds
out I'm Palestinian, wants to know if I don't like
Jewish people. So this is when we have to go Okay,
there's a difference between Jewish people and the State of Israel.
State of Israel does not represent all Jewish people. In fact,
our biggest supporters for free Palestine come from our Jewish
(17:33):
brothers and sisters. We have everything from Jewish boys for peace,
rabbis for human rights. The most interesting one to me
is breaking the Silence. Breaking the Silence is a group
of Israeli soldiers who thought, even though they've lived in Israel,
they thought that they were defending Israel. They join the army,
(17:55):
they go out to do their defending and then they
go oh no, we're just up holding an occupation. Oh
my god, look at what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
This is awful.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
And they created an organization called Breaking the Silence where
they teach other young Israelis about what's really happening in
the occupyatory territories in the West Bank and in Gaza
because they don't know, and they're like forty miles that
way and they don't know. So and that is an
organization made up of soldiers Israeli soldiers in Israel who
(18:27):
love Israel and want to see it prosper. And they're
still like, yeah, but not like this, not like this.
And so the fact that our biggest supporters are our
Jews says so much about what's right and what's wrong here.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I want to add to that. I saw something. It
was very troubling, but it was so where I live.
It's a neighborhood of their acidic Jews. Hasidic Jews are
the ones they have.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Like the the curly yeah right, cool people, quiet people,
keep to themselves. Obviously him walking around.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
And I saw a group of them as this filmed,
and I believe it was filmed on the ground in Israel.
Their protests and the soldiers are rather the police. It
might be police Israeli police, who, by the way, train, yes,
United States police officers. They go over there to get training.
(19:32):
And I've seen videos from these protests in Israel where
these Hasidic Jewish men are being beaten by the police.
So I'm guessing you've seen it too. I saw one where.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
There was a little girl. Little girls have to see.
You know, these are big guys, the police officers, and
you know, approximately the size of a little girl. You
can imagine we're men right with man and strength and testosterone.
They were treating this girl child. The height of the child,
(20:06):
I didn't see her face, but you could see the
height and the build. This is a child.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
This is not a tiny woman and this child, no
two ways about it. And they were just beating this
little girl. She might have said something or whatever, because
the video doesn't show what happened before then, but it's
very clear that the child cannot harm an adult man
police officer with the weapons, you know what I'm saying.
(20:33):
And so the reaction was like, whatever she did, it
doesn't warrant that type of response. And I think that
even that's indicative of where I've arrived at this point
in terms of how I'm looking at Israel's response, which is,
if you have an issue with Hamas, your attitude of
(21:00):
you got to break a few eggs to make an
omelet seems way too cavalier of an attitude when you're
dealing with human beings. And I want to say this,
and I want to get your response, and feel free
to jump in you if you feel a songclinent. But
when I first spoke to Amy about this, walking into
it not knowing anything, there was an attack the day
(21:21):
before or two days before.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
He and I are just talking, Okay, so what's going
on here? Tell me?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
And he's like, yeah, so there's a group. They're called Himas,
And I got it from the beginning. He told me
in that conversation that Hamas has the tactics of a
terrorist organization and that they are unafraid to use human shields.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but this
is what he said. He said that Hamas will set
up bases inside of schools, hospitals, places that typically not
be targeted as military locations, but that's where Hamas sets
up their bases because they feel more fortified against those
(22:14):
missiles that you're not going to blow up a hospital
because where you're not going to kill three hundred people
to get twelve of us in the basement. This is
that's true. Were they wrong?
Speaker 3 (22:23):
So this is you're right, right exactly, but this is
kind of what he was saying. Hamas felt right and
Israel needed to respond because obviously an attack like what
happened on October seventh cannot go unanswered.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
For so.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Israel has done again. This wasn't a good or a
bad thing, according to Ami. As he said it to me,
He's like, this is not good. I wanted to sound
like it's good and it's not bad. It's just where
they've gotten it to. But he said, the number that
they've arrived at is one civilian casualty per one Hamas soldier,
(23:13):
based on the density of the area and based on
the tactics that Hamas is using, effectually using regular civilians
as human shields. In other words, there's no way for
Israel to respond and root out Hamas without there being
some collateral damage or breaking a few eggs now. And
(23:33):
I do want you to say this, just says last piece.
As he's telling me this, I could see that he
didn't love that that was the reality, right, but that
was the prevailing thought as he articulated it.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
To me, what I've seen since then, and this is
what I want you to respond to. What I've seen
since then suggests to me that at that number was
either something that was used to quell the investigative questions
(24:18):
the parents, you killing a bunch of regular people over here.
You know, we got it one to one, so it
might not have been accurate. And based on what I'm saying,
it doesn't seem to be accurate. And the last point
I'll make, and I seem you both want to the
last point I'll make is that where I've arrived today
is that if that one to one is a civilian
(24:40):
approximately my age, you know, I'm a man. The nature
of my life, I believe our lives is to be
ready to be to to for death. The death could
be anything. If somebody disrespected Q's mother, that could be
the last day that Q lives or the last day
that some body else lives. You have to be ready
(25:01):
to protect your family all the time, at a drop
of a moment. And it's that state of readiness. So men,
we kind of live in that space a little bit
more so fit that one to one is one Hamas
soldier for one adult man approximately our age, and that's
your justification. Maybe that fits a little bit better. When
I saw them take out two baby's legs with the
(25:21):
shoes on it, and that baby is one to one,
that I don't believe is accurate. But if that's your
one to one, that baby's paying the price, and that's
price is too high. Now go first and jump. Okay,
three things.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
Number one, we need to understand that we are not
this is not a risk, This is not the regular
rules of war because this is not a war. So
Hamas was invented and I want to say, like nineteen
eighty seven. So first of all, we can ask what
(25:55):
were they doing before nineteen eighty seven when Hamas didn't exist.
But we're still terrorizing Palaesinians for fifty years.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Israel was terroristic.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Israel was terrorizing Palestinians for fifty years before the existence
of Hemas. So just like, keep that in your mind,
keep it in your mind that Hems doesn't exist in
the West Bank, where Palestinians are still constantly terrorized and
experience apartheid on a daily basis. My family included. Hamasin
doesn't exist there, so what is their justification there, which
we will talk about. Hamas was invented at a time
(26:25):
where the politics in the Palestinian territories.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Where they were.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
Creating organizations, political organizations that were trying to be more
more secular, more liberal, more like you know, like just
sort of regular political groups. But that doesn't work well
for the State of Israel because if you have secular,
just run of the mill political organizations that don't look
like terrorist groups, it becomes harder for the State of
Israel to decimate the Palestinians, which is the end goal, okay,
(26:56):
which I'll get to. So they supported the creation of Hemas.
They supported the creation of Heimas. This is not conjecture,
like this is this is true, and and they funded them.
This is like us when we funded Osama bin Laddin
back in the day to fight Russia.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Was it Russia?
Speaker 4 (27:15):
Yeah, So we funded them, and then all of a sudden,
we're like, oh, there are an enemy now like this
it's it's just sounds so familiar. It's the same thing.
So it's really important to know that because we're sitting
here going like, oh, but they're you know, this is
Israel's number one enemy. They were useful to them. Third thing,
(27:37):
when I heard a guy say this, and I was like, man,
I really love this response. When the United States was
looking for Osama bin Laddin and we found out he
was in Pakistan, did we go in and completely bomb
all of Pakistan?
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Billth helicopter didn't make any noise.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
We didn't know anything about it until it was over.
And Obama gave this speech and it was hush hush,
and they sent these these the Seal Team six in
and they did their Israel has a remarkable military. I mean,
I don't love them because what they do to my people,
but they have a remarkable military. They have the most
incredible intelligence in the world. You want to tell me
(28:14):
that the only way is to carpet bomb civilians that
you can't go in. There's tunnels under Gaza. From what
I understand, you can't go in, and you can't find them.
You can't use that intelligence to pinpoint exactly where they are.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
This is not.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
About catching and killing Hemas. This is a great excuse
to ethnically cleanse a region that you really want to
keep it for yourself. This has nothing to do with
hem as. They're just a really great story. And then
you get to tell Americans, because we all love an enemy,
(28:46):
you get to tell Americans, oh my god, it's the
war on Hemas. It's the war Israel and Hemas. It's
not Israel Hemas. That's not what this is about. Israel
has been terrorizing Palestinians for seventy five years. But when
we go, when they say, oh my gosh, Hamstad, this
really terrible thing, America gets to go, here's one hundred
billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Go do what you gotta do.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
And then what they wanted, because what they want to
do is they just want to take more and more land.
This is the Zionist project, which is a political philosophy,
not a religious philosophy. They want the entire state of Palestine,
and they got almost all of it, with the exception
of the West Bank and Gaza. Gaza is this densely
populated concentration camp of two million people that Israelians don't
(29:30):
live in, but they completely surround and it is controlled
by the State of Israel, water, electricity, food, imports, exports.
They can't go fishing five miles out into the Mediterranean
because they won't let them, so they want that, and
now they're saying there's talk of like, well, why don't
(29:51):
you just send them to the Sinai. Israel is trying
to get Egypt to take them by saying, hey, we'll
pay off your debts to the World Bank, go ahead
and take these gossains.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
This concludes part one of our three parts special with
Palestinian American human rights major and former Miss arab USA
Suzanne Oslan discussing the Palestinian perspective on the Israel Hamas
War and the Three Palestine movement. Check back in with
us tomorrow for part two of our three part series
right here on the Black Information Network with me your host,
(30:24):
ramsis Jah
This is the Black Information Network Daily podcast, and I
am your host, Ramse's job, and sometimes the amount of
stories that make their way to us means that we
simply can't cover everything that comes our way. But from
time to time, a story just stays with me and
I feel compelled to share it with you and give
you my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And now one more thing I don't want to.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
If you're a longtime listener of this show, you may
know that when the time came for us.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
To broach the subject of what is being called the.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Israel hamas War, I called in someone I consider a friend.
His name is Amy Horwitz. He is a journalist and
someone who has spent time on the ground underground as
(01:10):
a researcher. He spent time with Hama soldiers, He spent
time in Israel and Palestine and had some perspective and
could get us some insight into what was going on
or a person like me, he provided a lot of
insight into what that was all about and helped bring
(01:34):
me up to speed so that I could pay attention
and absorb information, Whereas without his involvement, everything may have
just sounded like noise. Well, one of the things that
I understood, and he understood is that there was only
(01:55):
so much that he could speak to because he himself
is a Jewish Man. In other words, he is not
a Palestinian person. He has not had access to what
the lived experience might be like. And while he could empathize,
(02:15):
again as an American Jewish American conservative journalist, what it
might be like for a Palestinian folks, his position was
rather more supportive of Israel, particularly in that moment right
(02:35):
after the Hamas attacks on I believe it was October seven.
But like I said, since then, I've he's helped me
establish a foundation upon which I could receive information and
declutter it. And it wasn't just noise. There were things
that I could now put into buckets, if you will,
(02:57):
and follow the story and look beyond the media narrative,
because to be fair, if you look, if you look
at the media, or really certain parts of the media,
you might not get really anything that.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Truly reflects what it's like to be Palestinian prior to
those Hamas attacks, what life was like day to day
for the Palestinian folks, and indeed what life is like
now that the bombs are going off. Those Israeli slash
US bombs are going off. And one of the things
(03:41):
that I wanted to do on this show. Again, if
you heard that episode with me and Ami, you know
that I said I wanted to bring on a guest.
I would find the right guest who could offer some
perspective into what it might feel like to be a
Palestinian person making sense of what's going on. Well, today
(04:10):
I have a person who I've come to truly appreciate.
Her name is Suzanne Oslom and this will be my
second conversation with her. Q is with us for this show.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I called in the big Guns because you know, you
know this is a very heavy heavy lift for us,
Q and I. You know, for longtime listeners of this show,
of course, you know that Q and I do SIVI
E sipher together and we often process trauma traumatic events together.
(04:46):
We have our own little community with the two of us,
and we have a system. We often have to make
sense of what activism looks like and what our role
is with respect to human rights violations, and on and
on and on and so Q being here is a
result of me feeling like in order to a give
(05:09):
you the interview and the insight that you deserve as
a listener. Knowing that he'll be here asking the questions
and providing the perspective that I've come to appreciate in
our private conversations, I thought that that would really strengthen
the conversation we're about to have. And of course, Suzanne
(05:31):
herself is in college you were a human rights major.
We talked about that just now, So not only do
you have the framework of how to make heads or
tails of human rights stuff, but you yourself are a
Palestinian woman. You're a former actress, former Miss arab Usa,
(05:57):
you're a writer, and you spent time in Palestine working
with a peacekeeping team, and you obviously have a deep
and personal understanding of the occupation over there.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
So not unlike what Ami was to Israel, you, i believe,
are the most qualified person that I've met to have
really the second part of the conversation that we've been
wanting to have, and I believe that the people deserve
to have access to So I appreciate you coming on today.
(06:33):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Welcome to the Black Information Network, And I want to
start by saying that since my initial conversation with Ami,
where there were a lot of rumors that proved to
(06:55):
be falsehoods about what I understand, and you can please
either of you correct me if I'm wrong. The initial
Hamas attacks on again I believe it was October seventh,
were horrible attacks. They were just attacking people. But what
(07:18):
was said about those attacks made them sound even more
heinous than they were, in particular the beheading of children.
And what I've learned since then is that that was
unsubstantiated or otherwise it was not true. Now since my
(07:38):
conversation with Ami, I have actually seen the video evidence
of people, but really children, who have been obliterated. I
don't want this to be a conversation where the details
(08:00):
are so graphic that you cannot listen, but I do
believe that it's important for me to express, at least
to some degree on this show, the horrors, to some degree,
the horrors that are taking place, so that you, our listener,
(08:24):
can understand why this second part of the conversation is
so necessary. And so I will say one of the
one of the many things that I have seen, the
(08:44):
things that have kept me up at night. One of
these things is I saw a man pull out from
a pile of look like body parts, two legs and
they were just legs, and they had the little kid
shoes still on the feet, and it was just two legs.
(09:07):
And he shows it to the camera and then he
puts the legs there. And so when we talk about
who's actually bearing the brunt, whose children are actually bearing
the brunt of this.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
War? Based on the evidence that I've actually encountered, I'm
seeing that these are Palestinian children, and I don't want
to pretend like they're not people of all ages. Who
are you know, they're pulling again, forgive me because I
don't want it to be too graphic, but they're pulling
(09:44):
guts and body parts and what's left over and charred
remains and all these things, and people are weeping and
crying consolably.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
And you see the video evidence of another that comes
to mind. I saw a man. He's laying and you
can see that he's not going to last much longer.
I'll spare your graphic details. And he has these piercing
blue eyes as he's laying there, and I believe that
(10:13):
there's a loved one with him who is praying. I
don't understand the language. I wish that I did, because
he deserves for his last moments to be more than
just this thing that I'm able to do on this microphone.
Sometimes it feel so frustrated because I know that that
man deserved more than that, you know, I often wish
that people had a little bit more dignity in their
(10:34):
final moments when there's conflict like this. But to the
best that I'm able to recall, I just remember his
blue eyes opening in his dirty face from probably a.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Bomb or something, and a man praying for him. And
so it's not just children, although children is what kind
of gets the clicks in the headlines. I'm going to
ask you for your thoughts, which is basically carte blanche
to just start where you want to start. But first, Q,
let's play a video that.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Kind of moved me, and I think kind of gives
you a little bit of an aperture on audio, aperture
into what it sounds like to be there.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So let's go the different looks at home. They are
they'n't evacuating to ship up, sitting outside because there is
no places that ship up. They bumped the place outside,
they bumped in the.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Door up and there.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Just before two minutes, it's.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Suzanne talk to us about how that.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Where does where does that take you? Or tell you?
I know you know who that is, So talk to
us a little bit about her and where does that
take you? She said, her.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Name is Bi San. She is a journalist and she
was an aspiring filmmaker, but now this is her, this
is her life. She records as much as she can
when she has access to record. She every day will
put up a new video when she can, saying Hi,
it's Bisan, I'm still alive, and that's all she can
(12:24):
hope for.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
She'll show I haven't had.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Water in hours or days, and like this is the
amount of water I have. It's two hundred MILLI leaders
and she's grateful. And I was on a podcast the
other day with the woman who was talking about survivor's
skills and she's like, I'm about to go to Spain
just for fun, and how do I do this? And
(12:49):
it's just so difficult for me because I feel all
this pain and she's crying to me, and I said, no,
I understand. And then a few days later, Bisan put
out she's a broadcast on Instagram that I follow and
she put out a little voice recording that I sent
to my new friend, and it was saying life is
(13:10):
so precious and we want you guys to be happy,
and we hope that you're living your life to the
fullest and to the best that you possibly can. And
that was so moving to hear, because while they are
looking for support and they want to be heard and seen,
they also aren't asking for you to only have two
hundred millimeters millimeters of.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Water a day.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
They're not asking for you to be suffering along with them.
They just want their voice to be heard. But it
makes them happy to know that life is still existing,
that people are still alive, and people are still well
and happy. And that said a lot to me about
the san In particular, this woman in this video that
she paused and took a moment to say, just make
(13:52):
sure you out there are living your lives and it's
something that we shouldn't take for granted. It was really
beautiful what she's experiencing. People ask, just as an aside,
but also really important, what can we do? And people
think that social media doesn't matter, Why would Israel turn
(14:13):
off the Internet and Razza if social media doesn't matter, sure,
you know, and the best thing that we can do
for them not best, but one of the big things
is to find people like Bisan and other journalists and
make them as public as possible. The more they're in
the public eye, because they've already killed like almost two
dozen journalists, So the more we put journalists in the
(14:36):
public eye, it we're hoping it protects them because they
are actually targeting these people. But the more that they're
it's a pr nightmare for the State of Israel. If
it's it becomes very clear that they are purpose to attacking. Yes,
journalists getting because they don't want them to speak, they
don't want to.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Get the word out.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
So our goal has been to try to put them
in the public eye as much as possible and uplift
their voices as much as possible in order to keep
them safe. It's weird to have that kind of conversation
and they have to talk about it in that way,
but that's what we're hoping for. As far as where
to start carte Blanche, there's a lot of places that
(15:18):
we can go. But one thing I want to say
is we don't really see it as a war, and
words matter, and this is not a war because the
war is oftentimes two parties that are equal or almost equal.
I've got guns, you've got guns, and we come in
(15:39):
guns to blazon. This is not what's happening here. This
is just pure ethnic cleansing and genocide. When you call
it a war, we get to go, oh, well, let's
learn the history of both sides, and let's see who's
you know, what's going on here, and let's see if
we can really unravel who should win. That's not the case.
This is just a straight up and very intentional genocide.
(16:01):
And if I may be so bold, this is the
very definition of terrorism.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Today.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
We are joined by Suzanne Oslim and Q War discussing
the Palestinian perspective of the Israel Hamas War and the
Free Palestine movement.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Don't let me stop you so so people. My neighbor
asked me this the other day, when all this started happening.
He was like, oh my god, I was there three
weeks before this went down, you guys, three weeks this
is your neighbor, or you me, I was there three
weeks before in Palestine before this went down. And so
my neighbor, you know, he's like, oh my god, weren't
(16:46):
you just there? And we were talking and I was
trying to explain to him what was going on, and
he's like, wait, so you you like Jewish people, right,
and he sort of, you know, got a little like
he cowarded. He felt uncomfortable asking me this question. But
he also really was wondering if I was just walking
around being racist. Sure, and this question drives me crazy,
but I also understand that the world, in the country
(17:08):
that we live in, prompts people to ask this question.
And it is not the first time when someone finds
out I'm Palestinian, wants to know if I don't like
Jewish people. So this is when we have to go Okay,
there's a difference between Jewish people and the State of Israel.
State of Israel does not represent all Jewish people. In fact,
our biggest supporters for free Palestine come from our Jewish
(17:33):
brothers and sisters. We have everything from Jewish boys for peace,
rabbis for human rights. The most interesting one to me
is breaking the Silence. Breaking the Silence is a group
of Israeli soldiers who thought, even though they've lived in Israel,
they thought that they were defending Israel. They join the army,
(17:55):
they go out to do their defending and then they
go oh no, we're just up holding an occupation. Oh
my god, look at what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
This is awful.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
And they created an organization called Breaking the Silence where
they teach other young Israelis about what's really happening in
the occupyatory territories in the West Bank and in Gaza
because they don't know, and they're like forty miles that
way and they don't know. So and that is an
organization made up of soldiers Israeli soldiers in Israel who
(18:27):
love Israel and want to see it prosper. And they're
still like, yeah, but not like this, not like this.
And so the fact that our biggest supporters are our
Jews says so much about what's right and what's wrong here.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I want to add to that. I saw something. It
was very troubling, but it was so where I live.
It's a neighborhood of their acidic Jews. Hasidic Jews are
the ones they have.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Like the the curly yeah right, cool people, quiet people,
keep to themselves. Obviously him walking around.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
And I saw a group of them as this filmed,
and I believe it was filmed on the ground in Israel.
Their protests and the soldiers are rather the police. It
might be police Israeli police, who, by the way, train, yes,
United States police officers. They go over there to get training.
(19:32):
And I've seen videos from these protests in Israel where
these Hasidic Jewish men are being beaten by the police.
So I'm guessing you've seen it too. I saw one where.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
There was a little girl. Little girls have to see.
You know, these are big guys, the police officers, and
you know, approximately the size of a little girl. You
can imagine we're men right with man and strength and testosterone.
They were treating this girl child. The height of the child,
(20:06):
I didn't see her face, but you could see the
height and the build. This is a child.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
This is not a tiny woman and this child, no
two ways about it. And they were just beating this
little girl. She might have said something or whatever, because
the video doesn't show what happened before then, but it's
very clear that the child cannot harm an adult man
police officer with the weapons, you know what I'm saying.
(20:33):
And so the reaction was like, whatever she did, it
doesn't warrant that type of response. And I think that
even that's indicative of where I've arrived at this point
in terms of how I'm looking at Israel's response, which is,
if you have an issue with Hamas, your attitude of
(21:00):
you got to break a few eggs to make an
omelet seems way too cavalier of an attitude when you're
dealing with human beings. And I want to say this,
and I want to get your response, and feel free
to jump in you if you feel a songclinent. But
when I first spoke to Amy about this, walking into
it not knowing anything, there was an attack the day
(21:21):
before or two days before.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
He and I are just talking, Okay, so what's going
on here? Tell me?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
And he's like, yeah, so there's a group. They're called Himas,
And I got it from the beginning. He told me
in that conversation that Hamas has the tactics of a
terrorist organization and that they are unafraid to use human shields.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but this
is what he said. He said that Hamas will set
up bases inside of schools, hospitals, places that typically not
be targeted as military locations, but that's where Hamas sets
up their bases because they feel more fortified against those
(22:14):
missiles that you're not going to blow up a hospital
because where you're not going to kill three hundred people
to get twelve of us in the basement. This is
that's true. Were they wrong?
Speaker 3 (22:23):
So this is you're right, right exactly, but this is
kind of what he was saying. Hamas felt right and
Israel needed to respond because obviously an attack like what
happened on October seventh cannot go unanswered.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
For so.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Israel has done again. This wasn't a good or a
bad thing, according to Ami. As he said it to me,
He's like, this is not good. I wanted to sound
like it's good and it's not bad. It's just where
they've gotten it to. But he said, the number that
they've arrived at is one civilian casualty per one Hamas soldier,
(23:13):
based on the density of the area and based on
the tactics that Hamas is using, effectually using regular civilians
as human shields. In other words, there's no way for
Israel to respond and root out Hamas without there being
some collateral damage or breaking a few eggs now. And
(23:33):
I do want you to say this, just says last piece.
As he's telling me this, I could see that he
didn't love that that was the reality, right, but that
was the prevailing thought as he articulated it.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
To me, what I've seen since then, and this is
what I want you to respond to. What I've seen
since then suggests to me that at that number was
either something that was used to quell the investigative questions
(24:18):
the parents, you killing a bunch of regular people over here.
You know, we got it one to one, so it
might not have been accurate. And based on what I'm saying,
it doesn't seem to be accurate. And the last point
I'll make, and I seem you both want to the
last point I'll make is that where I've arrived today
is that if that one to one is a civilian
(24:40):
approximately my age, you know, I'm a man. The nature
of my life, I believe our lives is to be
ready to be to to for death. The death could
be anything. If somebody disrespected Q's mother, that could be
the last day that Q lives or the last day
that some body else lives. You have to be ready
(25:01):
to protect your family all the time, at a drop
of a moment. And it's that state of readiness. So men,
we kind of live in that space a little bit
more so fit that one to one is one Hamas
soldier for one adult man approximately our age, and that's
your justification. Maybe that fits a little bit better. When
I saw them take out two baby's legs with the
(25:21):
shoes on it, and that baby is one to one,
that I don't believe is accurate. But if that's your
one to one, that baby's paying the price, and that's
price is too high. Now go first and jump. Okay,
three things.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
Number one, we need to understand that we are not
this is not a risk, This is not the regular
rules of war because this is not a war. So
Hamas was invented and I want to say, like nineteen
eighty seven. So first of all, we can ask what
(25:55):
were they doing before nineteen eighty seven when Hamas didn't exist.
But we're still terrorizing Palaesinians for fifty years.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Israel was terroristic.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Israel was terrorizing Palestinians for fifty years before the existence
of Hemas. So just like, keep that in your mind,
keep it in your mind that Hems doesn't exist in
the West Bank, where Palestinians are still constantly terrorized and
experience apartheid on a daily basis. My family included. Hamasin
doesn't exist there, so what is their justification there, which
we will talk about. Hamas was invented at a time
(26:25):
where the politics in the Palestinian territories.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Where they were.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
Creating organizations, political organizations that were trying to be more
more secular, more liberal, more like you know, like just
sort of regular political groups. But that doesn't work well
for the State of Israel because if you have secular,
just run of the mill political organizations that don't look
like terrorist groups, it becomes harder for the State of
Israel to decimate the Palestinians, which is the end goal, okay,
(26:56):
which I'll get to. So they supported the creation of Hemas.
They supported the creation of Heimas. This is not conjecture,
like this is this is true, and and they funded them.
This is like us when we funded Osama bin Laddin
back in the day to fight Russia.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Was it Russia?
Speaker 4 (27:15):
Yeah, So we funded them, and then all of a sudden,
we're like, oh, there are an enemy now like this
it's it's just sounds so familiar. It's the same thing.
So it's really important to know that because we're sitting
here going like, oh, but they're you know, this is
Israel's number one enemy. They were useful to them. Third thing,
(27:37):
when I heard a guy say this, and I was like, man,
I really love this response. When the United States was
looking for Osama bin Laddin and we found out he
was in Pakistan, did we go in and completely bomb
all of Pakistan?
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Billth helicopter didn't make any noise.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
We didn't know anything about it until it was over.
And Obama gave this speech and it was hush hush,
and they sent these these the Seal Team six in
and they did their Israel has a remarkable military. I mean,
I don't love them because what they do to my people,
but they have a remarkable military. They have the most
incredible intelligence in the world. You want to tell me
(28:14):
that the only way is to carpet bomb civilians that
you can't go in. There's tunnels under Gaza. From what
I understand, you can't go in, and you can't find them.
You can't use that intelligence to pinpoint exactly where they are.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
This is not.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
About catching and killing Hemas. This is a great excuse
to ethnically cleanse a region that you really want to
keep it for yourself. This has nothing to do with
hem as. They're just a really great story. And then
you get to tell Americans, because we all love an enemy,
(28:46):
you get to tell Americans, oh my god, it's the
war on Hemas. It's the war Israel and Hemas. It's
not Israel Hemas. That's not what this is about. Israel
has been terrorizing Palestinians for seventy five years. But when
we go, when they say, oh my gosh, Hamstad, this
really terrible thing, America gets to go, here's one hundred
billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Go do what you gotta do.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
And then what they wanted, because what they want to
do is they just want to take more and more land.
This is the Zionist project, which is a political philosophy,
not a religious philosophy. They want the entire state of Palestine,
and they got almost all of it, with the exception
of the West Bank and Gaza. Gaza is this densely
populated concentration camp of two million people that Israelians don't
(29:30):
live in, but they completely surround and it is controlled
by the State of Israel, water, electricity, food, imports, exports.
They can't go fishing five miles out into the Mediterranean
because they won't let them, so they want that, and
now they're saying there's talk of like, well, why don't
(29:51):
you just send them to the Sinai. Israel is trying
to get Egypt to take them by saying, hey, we'll
pay off your debts to the World Bank, go ahead
and take these gossains.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
This concludes part one of our three parts special with
Palestinian American human rights major and former Miss arab USA
Suzanne Oslan discussing the Palestinian perspective on the Israel Hamas
War and the Three Palestine movement. Check back in with
us tomorrow for part two of our three part series
right here on the Black Information Network with me your host,
(30:24):
ramsis Jah
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