October 25, 2025 • 28 mins
Suzanne Yatim joins us to discuss the updates coming from Gaza and to give her insights on how the 2024 presidential election has shaped the war, how the ceasefire is playing out, and her thoughts on the protests that have drawn attention to the conflict.
In the second half of the show, we discuss the ceasefire in place in Gaza and the subsequent violations, the protests that took place over the past two years, and shared some optimism about the future of Gaza and the West Bank.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast
the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop
weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I'm your host
Rams's JOBBI. Shout out to q Ward who is away
on family business, and we are in the middle of
our conversation with Suzanne Ya Team. All right, back to you, Suzanne.
(00:25):
For folks just tuning in. Suzanne ya Team is a
human rights major form of miiust arab USA. She's an actress, filmmaker,
writer as well as an activist and as an activist
in Palestinian American she spent time in Palestine working with
a peacekeeping team and she has a deep and personal
understanding of the occupation. Please follow her on all social
media at the Actorvist. Thanks for sticking around.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Absolutely we are.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
One of the things I say around here is in
the weeds now. So you know, I meant when we're
talking earlier that I love getting out and being active.
You know, I like talking on the radio. I like
making this type of content here. This is kind of
(01:13):
what I do professionally. I've only had this job in
my life. I've never done it. Well, I guess I've
had other jobs, but do you give what I mean?
But I think in my heart going out and being
with the people and keeping people excited and getting excited
because of people is kind of my thing. I can't
(01:33):
imagine the level of devastation you might feel, because I
know how devastated I felt at various points throughout Israel's
campaign in Gaza and throughout the past couple of years
with significant developments in terms of politics, etc. And learning
(01:57):
lots of things about institutions like APEC and a lot
of that is really just heartbreaking stuff to learn that.
Oh man, when you said you felt like I know
you didn't say defeated, but that's the word I'm going
to use for me, felt like defeated. And it's like,
how are you?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
How do we get defeated.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
On this issue?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Right on genocide? Where is everybody at from this group
of people?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
People I know, right, But being a person that comes
from the background of a broadcaster and sort of finding
a sense of community and sense of purpose as a protester,
I'm curious and I'd love for my listeners to know,
because some of our listeners are you know, active as
(02:42):
you know in their own communities and protesters and so forth.
Do you think that people showed up for Palestine? And
if you say no, why why not? And what could
people do better next time? And if you say yes,
tell us what worked and what really resonated with you,
because you know people can only do so much. Yeah,
(03:05):
but maybe they can get your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Man, I've spent well, the genocide started two years ago,
so I would have been thirty eight, and I spent
thirty eight years not feeling loved as a Palestinian and
having to be like, first of all, the second people
find out of Palestinian, they assume that I don't like
Jewish people. Some people tell me Palestine's not a real place,
(03:30):
like there's always these these like it's combative, it's exhausting,
and sometimes I just didn't even like saying it because
it's so exhausting. And then the genocide started, and it
was the first live streamed genocide, and it changed the
whole world. The whole world, I mean Palestine. And I
will always say this is the epicenter of the world
(03:51):
for a lot of reasons, geographically and economically and spiritually
and all these things. And then you add the most
violent act possible on top of all of that, and
it just cracked the world open. And I've said this
before that it didn't separate us, like okay, well, like
you're pro Palestine and you're not. It's not like it's
not you know, left and right. It was more up
(04:12):
and down, like there were people who sort of like
their consciousness ascended, and then there's people who sort of
stayed down here. And the reason I say this is
because I saw people care about Palestine that didn't even
know about Palestine or really what was going on. And
they're like, oh, is that in a conflict of two
thousand years and you guys have always been fighting. No,
that's not true. And then they would start telling me
(04:33):
things about our own history and I was like, oh
my god, you know, I don't have to explain myself
to you anymore. And my god, do they care. They're
sacrificing their jobs, they're sacrificing their time, they're getting arrested.
I mean, I've never felt so much love. I go places.
I was in Tunisia last week, and when I go
to Europe, I see Palsinian flags everywhere, and I'm like,
oh my god, I've never felt so loved as a
(04:55):
group of people before. It has been amazing, and I'll
go to these protests. I really like the ones on
the East Coast because they're more disruptive, and I prefer
disruptive protest. I don't want to do one where it's
on the sidewalk and you're walking down in and it's
so pointless, like nobody's gonna nobody cares. Nobody cares. Some
guy might drive past you and be angry. Nobody cares.
(05:17):
You have to go and block Senator's offices, you have
to sit inside. You have to just annoy them so much,
keep going, uh huh, why are we not doing in
the thing? America's a little too polite, I know, and
just to light a match and just go. America's a
little too I don't know if it's we're too polite
or if it's we just don't want to be inconvenience.
Like I remember you and I were we were texting
(05:40):
about this, about how in Italy when this the oh
the flotilla, when everybody from that was on the flotilla.
It was an AID flotilla. Humanitarian Aid was trying to
get to to Razza because Israel wasn't letting it in
since March second, there hasn't been any aid in and
there's a famine and people are being starved to death
and children are being babies are being started to death.
(06:00):
So this flotilla, all these ships, it was like, I
can't remember it now. It was fifty something ships representing
forty four nations. They went, they all got arrested, every
single one of them by the Israelis, and that night
Europe blew up that continent from city to city. It
(06:23):
just spontaneously was on fire. They had protests, they were
in the streets, they were shouting. It wasn't this like organized. Okay,
let's meet next Saturday at two pm. Hey, I hope
you can make it. Oh I can. I got a
thing with my kid later. No, Like, they stopped their
lives and they went out and they did this. That's
like next level protest that I wish I could see
(06:43):
here in America. But I still but still that aside,
I still feel so much love by Americans that I
never felt before. And it's been really really beautiful. The
amount of support that we've gotten has been really amazing.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Thank you for those kind words. I know that a
lot of people hearing from a person like you that
that matters, and that type of thing keeps people energized.
You know, we're not out of the woods yet, and indeed,
we probably have a bigger fight on our hands now
than we've ever had before in many ways. But words
(07:21):
like that, I think keep people.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well because I'll say this, Palestine will never be for
if we if we were capable on our own of
freeing Palestine, we would have done it already. We need
the international community because we are up against the Sleviathan.
We need you, and now that we have you, it's
just it's we get to do this together, and it's
really exciting, and it's so much more than Palestine. Like
what happens there reverberates. You're experiencing it here right now
(07:45):
with this administration. That is that is a response of
what's been happening in Palestine.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
If I may, I want to say that I was
able to go out for a couple of the Palaestadian
pre Palestine protests and walk around and I knew some
of the people that either lost their jobs or risk
(08:12):
losing their jobs, people at schools, people that worked because
there's laws that say if you protest Israel, so yeah,
you can lose your job. Come to the United States,
they have nothing you can You can protest the United States,
but not Israel. And that's the actual law.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, so it's nuts.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
So I saw people that had to cover their face,
but they were like, I'm going to use my body
and be counted in the numbers or whatever, and I
could be out. I can't have my face anyway, I
can't have my hair, none of that. People just kind
of know I lived a good life, man, So if
they take me off the set, man, just know I came.
I saw a conquered but and I probably went out
like a g for a good cost. And I'm good
because all we get is a you get a good life,
(08:51):
and if you're lucky, you get a good death. Right anyway,
So I've been able to be out there and see that.
And so I feel like a lot of the people
hearing from a person that has such strong connections to
the land and whose heart has been broken, a lot
of these people would hear your words and feel energized,
and they would feel like, hopefully they've done the right
(09:14):
thing right. Another thing I do want to say is
that after having recently traveled, I spent some time in
Italy sort of been back in August.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Did you see all the flags everywhere?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Talk to me about them flags? Watch this, yo. So graffiti,
I found out is an Italian word. It's a graffiti,
think of it. And ghetto is Italian too. But anyway,
graffiti yo, and you know come from hip hop. So
you know, I'm friends with a lot of graft cats
(09:45):
and graffiti artists and all that sort of stuff. And
so I go to places. I've been in France, I've been,
I've been all over the world, so I've seen graffiti
from trains and all that sort of stuff. Is or sorry,
anti anti Israeli graffiti there, not anti Semitic, not anti Jewish,
because it'll be Jewish people. Clearly these are Jewish people
(10:06):
that are doing the graffiti because they were like, yeah,
we're Jewish and Jewish people for free Palestine and sort
of thing. But so many places you see free Palestine
everywhere like later with it, and it's not like it's
such a beautiful thing, just the express because you get
the sentiment that again, it's not what I think the
(10:27):
powers that be would rather have chronicled. It's not anti Semitic,
it's really pro human and the humans that need the
help are the Palestinian peoples. This is what I gathered
from my own eyes, and I want to share again
with anybody listening to this show that I grew up
with Jewish people. Jewish people are in my heart. They'll
be in my heart to my last breath. I have loved,
(10:47):
I have cried with, I have very Jewish people, I
have celebrated with them. I have been very humble in
my approach to Jewish people and been received as a
brother in my whole life. So I would never intentionally
say anything that is anti Semitic. But while I can
be a brother to Jewish people, I can also be
critical of the nation state of Israel, just like I
(11:09):
can love American people and be critical of the administry
of the Trump administration. Correct I can also and I
will also love my Palestinian brothers and sisters. Last thing
I want to do is before we switch gears, another
big switch. We didn't quite touch on this propaganda stuff,
so allow me to say something. Okay, I saw a piece,
(11:32):
it was a recent piece. It might have been John
Oliver talking about this, and he said something like a
right wing media outlet took some pictures of some starving
children and did some deep dive researches on the starving
children on the ground in Gaza, and the research yielded
(11:53):
that these children who were all skin and bones, weren't
skin and bones because they were starved, but because they
have existing conditions. Right, this was the right wing coverage
of these children. Him and his team did a little
bit deeper dive and said, oh, these children, some of
(12:15):
them did have these conditions, but there's some critical context
left out. These conditions affect how they metabolize food. There's
certain foods that these children need to eat. They can
eat these, they cannot eat these other foods, etc. On
and on. Right, and so, while this right wing publication
was trying to accuse the liberal media, which there really
(12:38):
is no liberal media in terms of ownership really anymore
in this country. There's all owned by like right wing people.
But in any event, while this right wing outlet was trying
to I think it was like the Free Press or
something like. It might have been the Free Press, they
were trying to say that quote unquote liberal media was
(13:00):
misrepresenting the famine in Gaza. It turned out that the
liberal media was telling the truth. And you know, you'd
have to check out John Oliver to get him more accurate.
Yeah he is. And but to get a more accurate
version of this story, you get it from the source
because him and his team did the research. And then
you said something earlier where you talked about how there
(13:22):
was billions spent on propaganda, propaganda that mischaracterized Palestinian men.
If I'm not mistaken, okay, okay, So I don't know this,
So I would like for you to tell me a
little bit more about the billions spent on this to
what end? And you know what people should know.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
There's really there's really obvious talking points that are just
at I think at this point, I would love to
talk to people who haven't been in it their whole lives.
But if I hear the phrase Israel has a right
to defend itself one more time, because that is absolute garbage.
But it's a really good piece of propaganda to kind
(14:05):
of shut down the conversation. Do you condemn hermass is
really good propaganda to shut down a conversation because it
instantly puts you on the attack, on the defensive. They've
always had this like script that they hand people, and
I'm not exaggerating or being there's an actual script. APAC
will hand people a notebook and be like, here's your
(14:26):
talking points, And it's this propaganda that they've been using
since forever. Oh, the land was always the land was empty.
So the juice came and they moved in.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
They said that land was empty.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Oh yeah, it's a land for people, for people without
a land. And they said it was empty, and they
came in. But in nineteen forties they ethnically cleansed seven
hundred and fifty thousand people from their homelands in the
kind of the more than northern part of what is
now modern day Israel. And so there's these talking points
(15:00):
that they use that. Oh and here's what I'll say
about Israel. Every allegation is a confession.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
That's what Q says a lot.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
So tell me, way, okay, Palasinians, How mass uses Palestinians
as human shields. That's a great one. Israel uses Palasinians
as human shields. They do it all the time, and
there's documentation of it since way before October seventh. Because remember,
I've been in this my whole life. I've seen all
of this my whole life. I've been a part of
this my whole life. They use human shields, so they
(15:31):
just you know, they just take what they do and
then they just spin in and they say that the
other guys do it. They've been doing this since forever.
So this is not anything new, but it's gotten because
social media has. I mean, I usually would like to
say I looked to Scoff and be like, oh, I
hate social media, but look what it did. Look what
it did. It opened up It showed this genocide, and
it broke open the worlds and people are starting to
(15:54):
see that and they're starting to think for themselves. This
is why America tried to buy TikTok, this is why
they successfully.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Bought its jew.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yes, and and but only in America. And they're talking
about this. Netanyahu was here a few weeks ago, which
she shouldn't be, he's a war criminal, but he was
here a few weeks ago, and he's sitting across from
influencers and they're sitting there on camera. You can watch
it going Okay, how are we going to spin the
narrative here? What can we do? And say? They know
(16:26):
they've lost the narrative war, They've actually really lost the
whole war. If you think of what happened. We have
the most casualties, obviously, but.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
They lost.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
They are having a really really hard time, and their
system is imploding, and their their their people or against
the government in so many ways. It's it's been really
interesting to watch. But yeah, the propaganda's they lost the war,
the narrative war, and now they're sitting here trying to
figure out how they can fight it. And they're not
being very coy about it. They're being very obvious about it.
(16:58):
So I don't think anybody's really going to fall for
it anymore. They see it now, we see bb Nenyaho
for who he is, We see Israel for who they are,
an ethnocentric, stay Jewish, supremaist state, and that cannot be allowed,
I think you.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
One of the things that I want to say is
that a lot of people associate Israel with terrorism. Now. Yeah,
so they say terrorist state, yes.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
And I stand by that. I have one hundred percent
agree with that.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Now I want to I want to also say this
is that at some point in the future I'm probably
going to have to have another conversation with a pro
Palestinian or sorry, a pro Israel pundit. I got a
short list to choose from and see what they think
(17:49):
about all of this just because that's fair?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Can I ask, can I argue that why is that?
How is that fair? And here's my point, And I'm
going to go back to the whole Germany thing because
I think it's the most quinn example, because there's so
many movies about it, and we feel like we understand
the war, the World War two, so deeply and so
intimately in what worlds do we think it would be
okay to interview the head of the Nazi party?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Let me answer that? Okay, So watch this now. When
I say that's fair, that's me saying it like almost
like quoting what is said to me.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
This is what journalists do. They get both sides of
a story that's fair like that, you know what I mean.
I'm obviously turning up a little bit more. The other thing, though,
is that every time I've talked to a pro Israeli
(18:54):
voice personality pundit, I find that they are on the defense,
having to defend things that are indefensible correct, and it
lays bare the holes in their argument. And so while
(19:15):
there are still people that, oh, people will always be
impressionable and I would not invite anybody onto a platform
and not let them know what I'm about. I just
I just never see the point doing I'm not trying to.
I don't have I don't do gotcha journalism. I'm just
not my thing, Like, Hey, this is what we're going
to talk about, come prepared to talk about it. Right.
(19:40):
But a lot of people think that they they believe
that they have a position, They hold a position that
is based in a shared reality, and they can mount
uh if nothing else. They can mount a strategic defense.
Where it breaks down is that they simply cannot mount
(20:01):
a moral defense. And this is where I think a
show like this, when people say, hey, your show has
a lot of heart and it still qualifies as more
or less a journalistic platform, I think that this is
kind of the space where we occupy. But I see
your point. I would not willingly interview a white supremacist.
(20:25):
That just wouldn't be safe for me. The thing is,
given the framework that you know, we operate in, given
the far reach of institutions that we've delineated in this
conversation and so forth, to have one of those institutions
(20:45):
say hey, you're problematic because you haven't done the other
side of this, It immediately shuts that argument down. No,
I've had both conversations. There's people had a chance to
justify their position. They were unable to do so, suspect
because it is indefensible, and where do we go from here?
And so this has kind of been the way that
(21:07):
I've held it in my mind. Now, you can teach me,
my listeners can teach me. I'm open to be taught.
But this is kind of how I've made sense of it,
stumbling through learning as I go.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
I think the days of hearing their point of view
are over. I think they've had seventy six years to
steer the conversation to manipulate Americans. We've seen firsthand what
it is that they really do. They say, oh, we
just want peace, and Palestinians are violent, and then they
(21:41):
throw you know, thirteen what is it like, thirteen hiroshimas
or one hundred and thirty hiroshimas or something crazy is
the equivalent of what's been happening in Rasa. So you know,
they're saying this over here that they want peace and
then they're bombing their way into peace. They don't, they're done.
The victims people in Razza before anybody else. We need
to put their voices first, hear what's going on on
(22:04):
the ground there, amplify them. If you can't talk to them,
you talk to people in the West Bank, you can't
talk to people in the West Bank. Those of us
in the diaspora are happy to do it, but their
voices matter more than anybody else's. And to sit there
and give it like equal weight to me, is incredibly
disrespectful to the people that are dying and being slaughtered
(22:28):
by these people. And then we're going to give those
people air time to kind of just for what.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Well, having lived that reality, I one thing I can't
do is say that you're wrong, So I won't. All right,
let's shift yours. Trump's peace deal, Oh my, oh my,
talk to me.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
It's so crazy. I watched him in Egypt when they
signed this agreement. The President of Egypt obviously was there. Turkey,
I think the UAE, there's all these regional people. There
was nobody from Hemas or the Palestinian authority, and there
(23:15):
was nobody from Israel there signing this peace deal. I
just want to point that out. You deduce what you
wanted to deduce from that but I just think that
that's a really important note. Secondly, he goes, oh, look
what we did. We brought peace. Look what we did.
And I was like, hold on, you funded the genocide,
(23:35):
convinced them to stop, which, by the way, they didn't.
They violated the genocide the ceasefire eighty times. Eighty times
in the last two weeks. They have violated the ceasefire
agreement in two weeks. Yeah, the ceasefire has been less
than two weeks and they've already violated it eighty times.
And if Hemas steps out of line a little bit,
if they retaliate a little bit, houses we are going
(23:57):
to respond. They just they instantly forget that they commit
that they violated eighty times, and they're going to go,
oh my god, look what Hamas did and then attack
full force and feel by the American community that they
are justified.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I'm doing that so I know, we just have like
a little bit left here. But I want to make
sure that I say this, eighty violations in two weeks
is crazy. I read that Hamas turned over the rest
(24:33):
of the hostages. Yes, the living hostages. I'm not sure
what happened with the non living or you know, I
don't know the particulars to that degree, but the living
hostages are all back, So eighty violations seems crazy because
that was step one, was returning the hostages. The second
thing that I've read, I believe it was NBC No
(24:56):
USA today. That was where I read it was that
given the most notable skirmish to Israeli soldiers have died,
and I think it was either forty or sixty. I
suspect sixty Palestinian.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
People have died since the in the last two weeks.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Since this season.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, I think now it's at ninety three, if not more,
all right, but that's actively then that's still like you know,
finding people under the rubble and people kids dying from famine.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Like we're talking about the result of the ceasefire and
the continued fighting from their not recovery of body. So
that's the way I read it, in the way I
understood it.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
So yeah, but to go back to your question about
the ceasefire plan, they're nowhere in the ceasefire first of all,
and this is gonna people are gonna love this or
hate this. I don't understand why or how you expect
Palestinians to disarm when they are up against a genocidal
(25:59):
terrorist state that doesn't get to disarm, but the Palestinians
living in their tiny little sovereign land and their little
indigenous group of people there they have to disarm. That
makes zero sense. And there's no world in which that
you can explain to me how that makes sense. Okay,
go ahead, you can tell you want to say something.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
No, no, no, no, I agree with you. I think
that you know. I just want to get give me
like maybe thirty seconds or just your closing thoughts here?
What do you want people to take away from this
conversation who want to continue to support a free Palestine.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
The fight for a free Palestine has it ended? We
said free Palestine. The ceasefire, hopefully, God willing mostly stays
in place. I I say that because it's already been violated.
But if the ceasefire stays in place, now we've hopefully
stopped the bloodshed. But Gaza is still being They're still
(27:06):
under siege. There's still not enough aid getting through. They
still need to rebuild. There's still under siege. Is Reel
controls everything. They control the air, the water and the sea.
The air, the water in the in land. So we
need freedom. We need a complete We can complete freedom
within the West Bank. Right now, Palestinians are limited. It's
(27:28):
an apartheid state. There needs to be no apartheid. There
needs to be no siege of Razza. There's things like
that that we still need to ask for. We still
need a free Palestine. So this fight really is just
getting started.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Before you go social media websites anything like that, where
people can you know, stay up on your activism and.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Well, I mean personally it's as you know, Instagram only
at the activist. But there's also international news organizations that
have a really good footing on the ground that I
really like, Middle Eastern Monitor, the Middle Eastern i TRT,
which is a Turkish organization, and Al Jazita. Those are
all really good ones that provide really fair reporting.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Okay, well, thank you for coming and sharing all this
with us. We're going to have to do it again,
hopefully on better terms, happier terms. So I don't like
having sad conversations because you're such a happy person and
I don't get to share that side of you with
our listeners because we end up having to talk about
(28:36):
things that are that's more important to talk about this yeah,
so thank you again and if you like, be sure
to check me out on all social media. At Rams's job,
you can follow q at imqword on all platforms and
be sure to follow the show at Civic Cipher. And
until next time, y'all peace,
Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast
the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop
weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I'm your host
Rams's JOBBI. Shout out to q Ward who is away
on family business, and we are in the middle of
our conversation with Suzanne Ya Team. All right, back to you, Suzanne.
(00:25):
For folks just tuning in. Suzanne ya Team is a
human rights major form of miiust arab USA. She's an actress, filmmaker,
writer as well as an activist and as an activist
in Palestinian American she spent time in Palestine working with
a peacekeeping team and she has a deep and personal
understanding of the occupation. Please follow her on all social
media at the Actorvist. Thanks for sticking around.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Absolutely we are.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
One of the things I say around here is in
the weeds now. So you know, I meant when we're
talking earlier that I love getting out and being active.
You know, I like talking on the radio. I like
making this type of content here. This is kind of
(01:13):
what I do professionally. I've only had this job in
my life. I've never done it. Well, I guess I've
had other jobs, but do you give what I mean?
But I think in my heart going out and being
with the people and keeping people excited and getting excited
because of people is kind of my thing. I can't
(01:33):
imagine the level of devastation you might feel, because I
know how devastated I felt at various points throughout Israel's
campaign in Gaza and throughout the past couple of years
with significant developments in terms of politics, etc. And learning
(01:57):
lots of things about institutions like APEC and a lot
of that is really just heartbreaking stuff to learn that.
Oh man, when you said you felt like I know
you didn't say defeated, but that's the word I'm going
to use for me, felt like defeated. And it's like,
how are you?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
How do we get defeated.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
On this issue?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Right on genocide? Where is everybody at from this group
of people?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
People I know, right, But being a person that comes
from the background of a broadcaster and sort of finding
a sense of community and sense of purpose as a protester,
I'm curious and I'd love for my listeners to know,
because some of our listeners are you know, active as
(02:42):
you know in their own communities and protesters and so forth.
Do you think that people showed up for Palestine? And
if you say no, why why not? And what could
people do better next time? And if you say yes,
tell us what worked and what really resonated with you,
because you know people can only do so much. Yeah,
(03:05):
but maybe they can get your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Man, I've spent well, the genocide started two years ago,
so I would have been thirty eight, and I spent
thirty eight years not feeling loved as a Palestinian and
having to be like, first of all, the second people
find out of Palestinian, they assume that I don't like
Jewish people. Some people tell me Palestine's not a real place,
(03:30):
like there's always these these like it's combative, it's exhausting,
and sometimes I just didn't even like saying it because
it's so exhausting. And then the genocide started, and it
was the first live streamed genocide, and it changed the
whole world. The whole world, I mean Palestine. And I
will always say this is the epicenter of the world
(03:51):
for a lot of reasons, geographically and economically and spiritually
and all these things. And then you add the most
violent act possible on top of all of that, and
it just cracked the world open. And I've said this
before that it didn't separate us, like okay, well, like
you're pro Palestine and you're not. It's not like it's
not you know, left and right. It was more up
(04:12):
and down, like there were people who sort of like
their consciousness ascended, and then there's people who sort of
stayed down here. And the reason I say this is
because I saw people care about Palestine that didn't even
know about Palestine or really what was going on. And
they're like, oh, is that in a conflict of two
thousand years and you guys have always been fighting. No,
that's not true. And then they would start telling me
(04:33):
things about our own history and I was like, oh
my god, you know, I don't have to explain myself
to you anymore. And my god, do they care. They're
sacrificing their jobs, they're sacrificing their time, they're getting arrested.
I mean, I've never felt so much love. I go places.
I was in Tunisia last week, and when I go
to Europe, I see Palsinian flags everywhere, and I'm like,
oh my god, I've never felt so loved as a
(04:55):
group of people before. It has been amazing, and I'll
go to these protests. I really like the ones on
the East Coast because they're more disruptive, and I prefer
disruptive protest. I don't want to do one where it's
on the sidewalk and you're walking down in and it's
so pointless, like nobody's gonna nobody cares. Nobody cares. Some
guy might drive past you and be angry. Nobody cares.
(05:17):
You have to go and block Senator's offices, you have
to sit inside. You have to just annoy them so much,
keep going, uh huh, why are we not doing in
the thing? America's a little too polite, I know, and
just to light a match and just go. America's a
little too I don't know if it's we're too polite
or if it's we just don't want to be inconvenience.
Like I remember you and I were we were texting
(05:40):
about this, about how in Italy when this the oh
the flotilla, when everybody from that was on the flotilla.
It was an AID flotilla. Humanitarian Aid was trying to
get to to Razza because Israel wasn't letting it in
since March second, there hasn't been any aid in and
there's a famine and people are being starved to death
and children are being babies are being started to death.
(06:00):
So this flotilla, all these ships, it was like, I
can't remember it now. It was fifty something ships representing
forty four nations. They went, they all got arrested, every
single one of them by the Israelis, and that night
Europe blew up that continent from city to city. It
(06:23):
just spontaneously was on fire. They had protests, they were
in the streets, they were shouting. It wasn't this like organized. Okay,
let's meet next Saturday at two pm. Hey, I hope
you can make it. Oh I can. I got a
thing with my kid later. No, Like, they stopped their
lives and they went out and they did this. That's
like next level protest that I wish I could see
(06:43):
here in America. But I still but still that aside,
I still feel so much love by Americans that I
never felt before. And it's been really really beautiful. The
amount of support that we've gotten has been really amazing.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Thank you for those kind words. I know that a
lot of people hearing from a person like you that
that matters, and that type of thing keeps people energized.
You know, we're not out of the woods yet, and indeed,
we probably have a bigger fight on our hands now
than we've ever had before in many ways. But words
(07:21):
like that, I think keep people.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well because I'll say this, Palestine will never be for
if we if we were capable on our own of
freeing Palestine, we would have done it already. We need
the international community because we are up against the Sleviathan.
We need you, and now that we have you, it's
just it's we get to do this together, and it's
really exciting, and it's so much more than Palestine. Like
what happens there reverberates. You're experiencing it here right now
(07:45):
with this administration. That is that is a response of
what's been happening in Palestine.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
If I may, I want to say that I was
able to go out for a couple of the Palaestadian
pre Palestine protests and walk around and I knew some
of the people that either lost their jobs or risk
(08:12):
losing their jobs, people at schools, people that worked because
there's laws that say if you protest Israel, so yeah,
you can lose your job. Come to the United States,
they have nothing you can You can protest the United States,
but not Israel. And that's the actual law.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, so it's nuts.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
So I saw people that had to cover their face,
but they were like, I'm going to use my body
and be counted in the numbers or whatever, and I
could be out. I can't have my face anyway, I
can't have my hair, none of that. People just kind
of know I lived a good life, man, So if
they take me off the set, man, just know I came.
I saw a conquered but and I probably went out
like a g for a good cost. And I'm good
because all we get is a you get a good life,
(08:51):
and if you're lucky, you get a good death. Right anyway,
So I've been able to be out there and see that.
And so I feel like a lot of the people
hearing from a person that has such strong connections to
the land and whose heart has been broken, a lot
of these people would hear your words and feel energized,
and they would feel like, hopefully they've done the right
(09:14):
thing right. Another thing I do want to say is
that after having recently traveled, I spent some time in
Italy sort of been back in August.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Did you see all the flags everywhere?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Talk to me about them flags? Watch this, yo. So graffiti,
I found out is an Italian word. It's a graffiti,
think of it. And ghetto is Italian too. But anyway,
graffiti yo, and you know come from hip hop. So
you know, I'm friends with a lot of graft cats
(09:45):
and graffiti artists and all that sort of stuff. And
so I go to places. I've been in France, I've been,
I've been all over the world, so I've seen graffiti
from trains and all that sort of stuff. Is or sorry,
anti anti Israeli graffiti there, not anti Semitic, not anti Jewish,
because it'll be Jewish people. Clearly these are Jewish people
(10:06):
that are doing the graffiti because they were like, yeah,
we're Jewish and Jewish people for free Palestine and sort
of thing. But so many places you see free Palestine
everywhere like later with it, and it's not like it's
such a beautiful thing, just the express because you get
the sentiment that again, it's not what I think the
(10:27):
powers that be would rather have chronicled. It's not anti Semitic,
it's really pro human and the humans that need the
help are the Palestinian peoples. This is what I gathered
from my own eyes, and I want to share again
with anybody listening to this show that I grew up
with Jewish people. Jewish people are in my heart. They'll
be in my heart to my last breath. I have loved,
(10:47):
I have cried with, I have very Jewish people, I
have celebrated with them. I have been very humble in
my approach to Jewish people and been received as a
brother in my whole life. So I would never intentionally
say anything that is anti Semitic. But while I can
be a brother to Jewish people, I can also be
critical of the nation state of Israel, just like I
(11:09):
can love American people and be critical of the administry
of the Trump administration. Correct I can also and I
will also love my Palestinian brothers and sisters. Last thing
I want to do is before we switch gears, another
big switch. We didn't quite touch on this propaganda stuff,
so allow me to say something. Okay, I saw a piece,
(11:32):
it was a recent piece. It might have been John
Oliver talking about this, and he said something like a
right wing media outlet took some pictures of some starving
children and did some deep dive researches on the starving
children on the ground in Gaza, and the research yielded
(11:53):
that these children who were all skin and bones, weren't
skin and bones because they were starved, but because they
have existing conditions. Right, this was the right wing coverage
of these children. Him and his team did a little
bit deeper dive and said, oh, these children, some of
(12:15):
them did have these conditions, but there's some critical context
left out. These conditions affect how they metabolize food. There's
certain foods that these children need to eat. They can
eat these, they cannot eat these other foods, etc. On
and on. Right, and so, while this right wing publication
was trying to accuse the liberal media, which there really
(12:38):
is no liberal media in terms of ownership really anymore
in this country. There's all owned by like right wing people.
But in any event, while this right wing outlet was trying
to I think it was like the Free Press or
something like. It might have been the Free Press, they
were trying to say that quote unquote liberal media was
(13:00):
misrepresenting the famine in Gaza. It turned out that the
liberal media was telling the truth. And you know, you'd
have to check out John Oliver to get him more accurate.
Yeah he is. And but to get a more accurate
version of this story, you get it from the source
because him and his team did the research. And then
you said something earlier where you talked about how there
(13:22):
was billions spent on propaganda, propaganda that mischaracterized Palestinian men.
If I'm not mistaken, okay, okay, So I don't know this,
So I would like for you to tell me a
little bit more about the billions spent on this to
what end? And you know what people should know.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
There's really there's really obvious talking points that are just
at I think at this point, I would love to
talk to people who haven't been in it their whole lives.
But if I hear the phrase Israel has a right
to defend itself one more time, because that is absolute garbage.
But it's a really good piece of propaganda to kind
(14:05):
of shut down the conversation. Do you condemn hermass is
really good propaganda to shut down a conversation because it
instantly puts you on the attack, on the defensive. They've
always had this like script that they hand people, and
I'm not exaggerating or being there's an actual script. APAC
will hand people a notebook and be like, here's your
(14:26):
talking points, And it's this propaganda that they've been using
since forever. Oh, the land was always the land was empty.
So the juice came and they moved in.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
They said that land was empty.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Oh yeah, it's a land for people, for people without
a land. And they said it was empty, and they
came in. But in nineteen forties they ethnically cleansed seven
hundred and fifty thousand people from their homelands in the
kind of the more than northern part of what is
now modern day Israel. And so there's these talking points
(15:00):
that they use that. Oh and here's what I'll say
about Israel. Every allegation is a confession.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
That's what Q says a lot.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
So tell me, way, okay, Palasinians, How mass uses Palestinians
as human shields. That's a great one. Israel uses Palasinians
as human shields. They do it all the time, and
there's documentation of it since way before October seventh. Because remember,
I've been in this my whole life. I've seen all
of this my whole life. I've been a part of
this my whole life. They use human shields, so they
(15:31):
just you know, they just take what they do and
then they just spin in and they say that the
other guys do it. They've been doing this since forever.
So this is not anything new, but it's gotten because
social media has. I mean, I usually would like to
say I looked to Scoff and be like, oh, I
hate social media, but look what it did. Look what
it did. It opened up It showed this genocide, and
it broke open the worlds and people are starting to
(15:54):
see that and they're starting to think for themselves. This
is why America tried to buy TikTok, this is why
they successfully.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Bought its jew.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yes, and and but only in America. And they're talking
about this. Netanyahu was here a few weeks ago, which
she shouldn't be, he's a war criminal, but he was
here a few weeks ago, and he's sitting across from
influencers and they're sitting there on camera. You can watch
it going Okay, how are we going to spin the
narrative here? What can we do? And say? They know
(16:26):
they've lost the narrative war, They've actually really lost the
whole war. If you think of what happened. We have
the most casualties, obviously, but.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
They lost.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
They are having a really really hard time, and their
system is imploding, and their their their people or against
the government in so many ways. It's it's been really
interesting to watch. But yeah, the propaganda's they lost the war,
the narrative war, and now they're sitting here trying to
figure out how they can fight it. And they're not
being very coy about it. They're being very obvious about it.
(16:58):
So I don't think anybody's really going to fall for
it anymore. They see it now, we see bb Nenyaho
for who he is, We see Israel for who they are,
an ethnocentric, stay Jewish, supremaist state, and that cannot be allowed,
I think you.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
One of the things that I want to say is
that a lot of people associate Israel with terrorism. Now. Yeah,
so they say terrorist state, yes.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
And I stand by that. I have one hundred percent
agree with that.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Now I want to I want to also say this
is that at some point in the future I'm probably
going to have to have another conversation with a pro
Palestinian or sorry, a pro Israel pundit. I got a
short list to choose from and see what they think
(17:49):
about all of this just because that's fair?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Can I ask, can I argue that why is that?
How is that fair? And here's my point, And I'm
going to go back to the whole Germany thing because
I think it's the most quinn example, because there's so
many movies about it, and we feel like we understand
the war, the World War two, so deeply and so
intimately in what worlds do we think it would be
okay to interview the head of the Nazi party?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Let me answer that? Okay, So watch this now. When
I say that's fair, that's me saying it like almost
like quoting what is said to me.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
This is what journalists do. They get both sides of
a story that's fair like that, you know what I mean.
I'm obviously turning up a little bit more. The other thing, though,
is that every time I've talked to a pro Israeli
(18:54):
voice personality pundit, I find that they are on the defense,
having to defend things that are indefensible correct, and it
lays bare the holes in their argument. And so while
(19:15):
there are still people that, oh, people will always be
impressionable and I would not invite anybody onto a platform
and not let them know what I'm about. I just
I just never see the point doing I'm not trying to.
I don't have I don't do gotcha journalism. I'm just
not my thing, Like, Hey, this is what we're going
to talk about, come prepared to talk about it. Right.
(19:40):
But a lot of people think that they they believe
that they have a position, They hold a position that
is based in a shared reality, and they can mount
uh if nothing else. They can mount a strategic defense.
Where it breaks down is that they simply cannot mount
(20:01):
a moral defense. And this is where I think a
show like this, when people say, hey, your show has
a lot of heart and it still qualifies as more
or less a journalistic platform, I think that this is
kind of the space where we occupy. But I see
your point. I would not willingly interview a white supremacist.
(20:25):
That just wouldn't be safe for me. The thing is,
given the framework that you know, we operate in, given
the far reach of institutions that we've delineated in this
conversation and so forth, to have one of those institutions
(20:45):
say hey, you're problematic because you haven't done the other
side of this, It immediately shuts that argument down. No,
I've had both conversations. There's people had a chance to
justify their position. They were unable to do so, suspect
because it is indefensible, and where do we go from here?
And so this has kind of been the way that
(21:07):
I've held it in my mind. Now, you can teach me,
my listeners can teach me. I'm open to be taught.
But this is kind of how I've made sense of it,
stumbling through learning as I go.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
I think the days of hearing their point of view
are over. I think they've had seventy six years to
steer the conversation to manipulate Americans. We've seen firsthand what
it is that they really do. They say, oh, we
just want peace, and Palestinians are violent, and then they
(21:41):
throw you know, thirteen what is it like, thirteen hiroshimas
or one hundred and thirty hiroshimas or something crazy is
the equivalent of what's been happening in Rasa. So you know,
they're saying this over here that they want peace and
then they're bombing their way into peace. They don't, they're done.
The victims people in Razza before anybody else. We need
to put their voices first, hear what's going on on
(22:04):
the ground there, amplify them. If you can't talk to them,
you talk to people in the West Bank, you can't
talk to people in the West Bank. Those of us
in the diaspora are happy to do it, but their
voices matter more than anybody else's. And to sit there
and give it like equal weight to me, is incredibly
disrespectful to the people that are dying and being slaughtered
(22:28):
by these people. And then we're going to give those
people air time to kind of just for what.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Well, having lived that reality, I one thing I can't
do is say that you're wrong, So I won't. All right,
let's shift yours. Trump's peace deal, Oh my, oh my,
talk to me.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
It's so crazy. I watched him in Egypt when they
signed this agreement. The President of Egypt obviously was there. Turkey,
I think the UAE, there's all these regional people. There
was nobody from Hemas or the Palestinian authority, and there
(23:15):
was nobody from Israel there signing this peace deal. I
just want to point that out. You deduce what you
wanted to deduce from that but I just think that
that's a really important note. Secondly, he goes, oh, look
what we did. We brought peace. Look what we did.
And I was like, hold on, you funded the genocide,
(23:35):
convinced them to stop, which, by the way, they didn't.
They violated the genocide the ceasefire eighty times. Eighty times
in the last two weeks. They have violated the ceasefire
agreement in two weeks. Yeah, the ceasefire has been less
than two weeks and they've already violated it eighty times.
And if Hemas steps out of line a little bit,
if they retaliate a little bit, houses we are going
(23:57):
to respond. They just they instantly forget that they commit
that they violated eighty times, and they're going to go,
oh my god, look what Hamas did and then attack
full force and feel by the American community that they
are justified.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I'm doing that so I know, we just have like
a little bit left here. But I want to make
sure that I say this, eighty violations in two weeks
is crazy. I read that Hamas turned over the rest
(24:33):
of the hostages. Yes, the living hostages. I'm not sure
what happened with the non living or you know, I
don't know the particulars to that degree, but the living
hostages are all back, So eighty violations seems crazy because
that was step one, was returning the hostages. The second
thing that I've read, I believe it was NBC No
(24:56):
USA today. That was where I read it was that
given the most notable skirmish to Israeli soldiers have died,
and I think it was either forty or sixty. I
suspect sixty Palestinian.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
People have died since the in the last two weeks.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Since this season.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, I think now it's at ninety three, if not more,
all right, but that's actively then that's still like you know,
finding people under the rubble and people kids dying from famine.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Like we're talking about the result of the ceasefire and
the continued fighting from their not recovery of body. So
that's the way I read it, in the way I
understood it.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
So yeah, but to go back to your question about
the ceasefire plan, they're nowhere in the ceasefire first of all,
and this is gonna people are gonna love this or
hate this. I don't understand why or how you expect
Palestinians to disarm when they are up against a genocidal
(25:59):
terrorist state that doesn't get to disarm, but the Palestinians
living in their tiny little sovereign land and their little
indigenous group of people there they have to disarm. That
makes zero sense. And there's no world in which that
you can explain to me how that makes sense. Okay,
go ahead, you can tell you want to say something.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
No, no, no, no, I agree with you. I think
that you know. I just want to get give me
like maybe thirty seconds or just your closing thoughts here?
What do you want people to take away from this
conversation who want to continue to support a free Palestine.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
The fight for a free Palestine has it ended? We
said free Palestine. The ceasefire, hopefully, God willing mostly stays
in place. I I say that because it's already been violated.
But if the ceasefire stays in place, now we've hopefully
stopped the bloodshed. But Gaza is still being They're still
(27:06):
under siege. There's still not enough aid getting through. They
still need to rebuild. There's still under siege. Is Reel
controls everything. They control the air, the water and the sea.
The air, the water in the in land. So we
need freedom. We need a complete We can complete freedom
within the West Bank. Right now, Palestinians are limited. It's
(27:28):
an apartheid state. There needs to be no apartheid. There
needs to be no siege of Razza. There's things like
that that we still need to ask for. We still
need a free Palestine. So this fight really is just
getting started.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Before you go social media websites anything like that, where
people can you know, stay up on your activism and.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Well, I mean personally it's as you know, Instagram only
at the activist. But there's also international news organizations that
have a really good footing on the ground that I
really like, Middle Eastern Monitor, the Middle Eastern i TRT,
which is a Turkish organization, and Al Jazita. Those are
all really good ones that provide really fair reporting.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Okay, well, thank you for coming and sharing all this
with us. We're going to have to do it again,
hopefully on better terms, happier terms. So I don't like
having sad conversations because you're such a happy person and
I don't get to share that side of you with
our listeners because we end up having to talk about
(28:36):
things that are that's more important to talk about this yeah,
so thank you again and if you like, be sure
to check me out on all social media. At Rams's job,
you can follow q at imqword on all platforms and
be sure to follow the show at Civic Cipher. And
until next time, y'all peace,
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