October 25, 2025 • 29 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 first half of the show, we discuss the political developments over the last year that have led to the outcomes we continued to see in Gaza. We discuss the strategies deployed by voters to compel the government to take the war in Gaza seriously, and reflect on things that worked and things that didn’t.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship, empathy and understanding. Q Ward
is on family Business today, but have no fear. Ramse's
jaw is the name I go by. I am still
in studio with you along with a special guest that
we've waited a long time to get back on the show,
(00:22):
and we to spend today's conversation talking to her about
the latest developments in Gaza. All right, Suzanne Yatim, for
those that don't know, is a human rights major former
Miss Airbusa. She's an actress, he's a filmmaker, writer as
(00:44):
well as an activist. As an activist and a Palestinian American,
she spent time in Palestine working with a peacekeeping team,
and she also has a deep and personal understanding of
the occupation. We're going to say this again, but for
folks that might want to check her out while listening,
you can find her online at the Actorvist and we're
going to make sure that we establish some connective tissue
(01:06):
for new folks that are just now hearing your voice.
But welcome back to the show. It's been over a year.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
It's been over a year. I missed you, guys.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, we missed you too. Like I mentioned, there's a
lot of people, longtime listeners who have heard your voice before.
You were kind of a guiding light around here in
terms of helping people understand the goings on in Gaza
and the West Bank, we like. But for a lot
of people who are just hearing your voice for the
(01:35):
first time again, the show has done a lot of
growing since you were last year. Talk to us about
a little bit more about who you are that goes
beyond kind of the intro, and you know, for folks
that do know, give us an update on sort of
what you've been up to in the intro.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Ah. Yeah, So the reason that's all even came about
is because I just from the heavens. I met Quentin
on an airplane and we just started chatting and it
was two weeks into the genocide, and I was I
was a puddle, I was a mess. And when he
found out I was Palestinian and he was like, I'm
so sorry, and I just started bawling in the seat
(02:08):
of the airplane. And and but my my job, not
my job that pays the bills with my my in
my soul. My job has always been to explain to
people what Palestine really is and who Palstinians really are.
And there has been billions of dollars spent to dehumanize us,
(02:29):
and my job, I've always felt, is to break through
that propaganda and to show you who we really are.
So my family still lives in Bethlehem, and I go
back all the time. In the two years that I've
since I met Quintin and we started, I started coming here,
I've been six times and I'm going back again for Christmas.
(02:51):
So I have It's so intimate for me, you know,
I walk the streets with this understanding of what it means,
and I can see Palestine and I'm there through the
lens of an American which is amazing and frustrating at
the same time, because I went there in December and
(03:14):
I shot a film, a narrative, and I told the
story of two women and the crew I was working
with the most amazing crew, and there are these a
lot of them, were these men from the local refugee camps,
and there was a moment where I was watching them.
We were in between takes and lightning changes, and I
(03:35):
was watching them and they were just kind of messing around,
and there was music playing because we were shooting a
wedding scene, and the DJ kept playing the music and
they were all dancing and clapping and laughing, and I
remember recording them, just took a video on my phone
of them, and they were so beautiful. They were so beautiful,
these this group I might have been like ten guys.
(03:57):
And I was filled with so much joy in my
heart it wanted to explode. And at the same time,
I was filled with so much rage because I wish
that Americans or the Western world could see Palestinian men
the way that they were in that video. The way
I see Palestinian men just goofy and silly and kind
(04:17):
and warm, and that is lacking. And every time I
go that just gets confirmed. So that's just been sort
of my mission in life is to tell stories, whether
it's through books or film or on stage or whatever
it is. I want to tell stories that humanize Palestinians,
the good, the bad, the ugly. That was a weird
(04:39):
long intro.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
No, no, no, I'm appreciative of the intro. I'm going
to be very transparent with you. Well, I mean, I'm
sure that you know this. For me and q Quentin,
I think our primary aperture into Palestinian life, life and
(05:02):
culture and people has been through you. And I would say,
to a lesser extent, but not an insignificant extent, a
gentleman that calls himself Palestinian, he believes that by referring
to himself as Palestinian, that he puts his people before himself.
(05:25):
So that's how we know him. But we see you
more frequently. He's more in the field with his work,
but you being our primary lens into that world and us,
I think the last time we spoke was a little
more than a year ago, so the world has done
a lot of changing since then. I will say that
(05:49):
I don't know if this is true, but maybe there
was a sense of hopelessness that probably said in some
time toward the end of the last election campaign season,
and so people started to feel like, I don't know,
maybe there was a bit of a disconnect, and so
you giving us that intro for Ramses I'm going to
(06:10):
talk about Ramses is very important. It's very necessary because
although I've wanted to have this conversation with you for
some time, it just didn't quite come together. And then
there have been some obviously some significant developments in terms
of the genocide in Gaza since we last spoken. So
(06:31):
I appreciate that. I want to circle back. Though you
mentioned something about there being billions of dollars spent on
maybe you could say it the right way, I'm going
to probably say it wrong but mischaracterizing Palestinian people. And
then you said that you shot a film where you
really got to show Palestinian men in their element. I
also want to I do and don't think that this
(06:52):
is significant. So I'm going to say this just so
that our listeners know, and I happen to know this.
You are a Christian woman, and you're family in is
Christian in Palestine is Christian, right, And so I want
to say that, not because I want to diminish. No,
I totally get what you're saying Islamic people, but I
want to show that there is a diversity of faiths
(07:13):
in this land. For people that might harbor anti Islamic sentiment,
maybe that's a way that they can find something.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
No, it's true, I find, you know, oftentimes when I'm
talking to people, and I've gotten really good at sort
of being like, Okay, if I'm talking to a conservative
person and I'm talking about the genocide, what I focus
on is, Okay, let's really talk about America first. Let's
talk about how billions and billions and billions of dollars
are leaving our economy or leaving our land and it's
(07:42):
going over to Israel. You should care about that. It's
your money, keep your money here. If I'm talking to
Christians who deeply care about Christianity, I will I will
mention that's an important point. Hey, you're our country here.
Our government is murdering Christians in the Holy Land just
casually without any regard. They're destroying ancient churches casually without
(08:07):
any regard. You should care about that as a Christian.
So there's certain things that like people and people also don't.
Really it's so weird to me. It's so weird to
me to come from a place called Bethlehem and then
for people here in America to be surprised that there
are Christians living in Bethlehem and Nazareth, you know, like,
(08:28):
like what do you what do you think happened? Where
do you think your religion came from? And people think
I or the people think when they find out I'm Christian,
they think I converted from Islam, I became a Christian.
It's just it's just the strangest thing to me. So
it's really really important to show the diversity.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
While we're here, I want to share a brief story,
and I do want to get back to the billion
spent on mischaracterizing Palestinian men. But while we're here, I
learned something. You can let me know how true this is,
but I believe it to be true. I typically will
only engage in scholarly sources or journalistically credible sources of
(09:04):
news content, and then I have to do my due
diligence after the fact. But I can't cite it right now,
so feel free to help me out. But this part
I know to be true. I'll paraphrase. But long time ago,
call it the twenties thirties, maybe in this country. It
was in California. There was a Middle Eastern man who
(09:25):
ended up in some sort of trouble. He was a
police officer, but he ended up like arresting a senator's
kid or something like that, the senator or whatever. Again,
I don't know the details of the story like that,
but basically they said this was an unjust arrest because
this man is not a US citizen. And so the
citizenship test at the time was if you lived in
(09:49):
the United States for a certain amount of time, then
you automatically got your citizenship. But that only applied to
white people, right and again, and the particulars I might
get a couple of them wrong, but the story overall
is factual. You could look this up. So anyway, this
(10:09):
case made its way up to the Supreme Court and
the argument, and this is why I'm telling a story.
The argument was because this man was a Middle Eastern man.
The argument ultimately became your honor, what race was Jesus?
And they had to decide in that moment, the Supreme
Court of the United States of America had to decide
(10:31):
if Jesus was Middle Eastern or if Middle Eastern people
were white. And they decided that Middle Eastern people were white.
And so where I'm going with that is that the
connection that I made there is that there was another
piece of information that I came across that said that
Jesus was Palestinian, and I thought that, like, how crazy
(10:53):
is that that that is not more widely celebrated.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
I know, it's really cool, right, right, and we know.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
That Jesus comes from Jewish people.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Jesus is always been Jews in Palestine, right exactly, and
that it's not weird to us at all.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Okay, all right, so anyway, your thoughts and then we'll
talk about the billions spin Because.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I was in Tunisia last week and I turned a
corner and with my friends and they were like, oh,
by the way, this is the Jewish quarter of this town.
And I was like, oh cool. There was not one
Israeli flag. They are Tunisians who happened to be Jewish
and in Palestine. That's what it was too, Like, they're
just they're from that land and they also happen to
be Jewish, and they've just it's not a big deal.
(11:38):
It got politicized pretty heavily in the last seventy six years.
But you know, my grandfather growing up, as one of
his close friends was Jewish. It just wasn't a thing.
Nobody talked about it. Between Christians and Muslims within my
mom tells me, you know, they would like celebrate each
other's religions and it's Christmas, we they have like a
(11:58):
parade down the streets and Muslims would be on the rooftops.
We have flat rooftops and they'd like throw candy down
onto the streets. It just there was nothing that you
see now that you hear about now. But it makes
really good propaganda, makes really good news stories. It makes
it good what Q likes to say about other ing.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Sure, if I may, before we move on, one of
the things that Palestinian said when he was last on
the show, and I want to I don't think that
this is a secret, so I'm going to share his faith.
He is an Islamic Palestinian man. But he said something
and it stayed with me. Not only did he pray
(12:36):
in my presence. I thought that was just beautiful because
the way Muslim people pray, I think is very special.
There's a certain reverence there. But he also shared something
on the show at the time he was on, and
he said something effectually. What he said was in terms
of Palestine, Jewish people beautify the land. I was here, Yeah,
(12:56):
you were, you remember he saying that that was so
BEAUTI I was like poetry. And he's a person that
can feel like he could he could be given to propaganda,
he can be given to all the lesser, more limbic
sort of response.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
He also has every right to be fuming, has every
right to hate as much as he wanted to hate
exactly right, he chooses not to. I choose not to.
And sometimes it's sometimes it's hard, if I'm being honest
with you, sometimes it's really hard because there's a lot
of pressure to feel like you have to be the
perfect victim, you know, like, and then this happens a lot.
(13:32):
You must understand it's a black man. If something happens,
if a police officer does something to a black man,
it's like, well.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
What do you do? You know, maybe did you comply? Right?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Right? And that's pretty similar to us. So anyway, we're angry.
We're really angry. We're watching our family and friends and
people we love and our kin being ethnically cleansed and genocided.
We have every right to be really angry, and instead
we spend our time going on talk shows, on radio shows,
talking to people, going on the streets and trying to
with as much as we can speak with love.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Well, this this is not I would not intentionally or
deliberately profit or benefit from your trauma. I don't believe
in that. My hope is that this feels like a
way to bring people into the conversation, and I hope
that it's always felt that way. I do think it's
(14:29):
you know, when you talk about how it, you know
people feel angry. I think that at least the people
that I've talked to, they've been able to be very
clear minded and that their anger is with the nation
State of Israel and key actors and not with Jewish people.
And so the narrative that being critical of Israel somehow
(14:53):
means that you're anti Semitic.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
That's a great propaganda point, right, That's great propaganda.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I watch this as a as a journalist, a semi
quasi journalist. I mean, there's people who are more bona fide.
I'm a radio personality, but you know, I work in
a journalistic space. I have had to have conversations with
people who are pro Israel. And when you said that
(15:22):
you feel this pressure to be the perfect victim. I
feel like I've seen that. I've seen the framing of
conversations from people who are pro Israel in such a
way that you have to almost dig the humanity of
Palestinian people out of the conversation, out of the narrative
(15:45):
that a lot of folks are trying were trying to
chronicle back when I was a little bit more deeper
in my investigative bag once upon a time, And so
I think that your statement reflects the reality that I
have been exposed to. But let's move on. We last
(16:06):
spoke when there was an election looming in the distance,
and I remember asking you, I think you volunteered who
you would vote for, and I think you were voting
third party.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
If I'm not no, I decided for the first time
since I was eighteen years old not to vote.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Not to vote, Okay, so it was something like that.
But I think that you were considering third party once
upon a time, or maybe it was considering not voting.
I'm not sure, but it wasn't a Trump or a
common Harrison. I remember that part very clearly. Do you
feel like, well, how about this? What are your thoughts
(16:53):
on how the election went.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
As a Palestinians, as a palestinsury as you two we
felt so we felt so we were screwed either way
because the genocide started under the Biden administration, and he
was I mean, he's a proud Zionist. He has said
(17:17):
there's pictures of him when his hair was a little
bit darker, that if there was no such thing as Israel,
we would have to invent one. I mean, he's he's
so he did not care what was happening. And his
vice president, who finally decided to run. I think, if
I remember correctly, Biden tried to run for a little bit, right,
(17:39):
and then he stopped and gave it over to Kamala.
So she never said that, she never called it a genocide,
and she never said that she was going to stop
funding it. So we were like, well, obviously, obviously we
cannot vote for you. That makes no sense. In what
(18:00):
world would we vote for the woman who's saying, hey,
what's currently happening, I'm going to keep doing that and
I'm not going to acknowledge what's actually taking place. And
then but the other option, this is why we just
felt so screwed over. The other option was, you know,
the current administration. He's not any better. So people were like, well,
(18:22):
who do we vote for? And I'm like, why are you?
Why are you asking me? I don't know. They both
are horrific when it comes to Palestinian when it comes
to the occupation, when it comes to genocide because they
will always be in the pockets of APAC. They all
get funding from APAC. You cannot change the mind of
a politician if they have gotten money from the American
(18:43):
Israel Lobby group, it does not happen. They are in
their pockets and they run everything. This really is the
United States of Israel and ways people I don't think
they understand how how deep it goes. So either way,
we were rude and then just emotionally like I remember
talking to you guys, and I remember Q talking about
(19:05):
what's that twenty project? Yeah, and him just being like
horrified and he has kids, and he was like, you know,
this can't happen and what do we do? And we
were like, yeah, that's horrible, but there's currently a genocide
happening too, Like how do we ignore that to vote against?
Like it was, there was no these are our only options,
(19:27):
that's it. That's all we could do. And so we
felt so And the problem is that everybody was coming
to palcinioms being like what do you want from us?
Like who should we vote for? And we did not
have an answer for them. That wasn't one of those
we didn't want you to vote for either one, and
that we just felt like there was no way out.
And what really needs to happen is, and this is
(19:47):
something that you understand as a black man, the system
runs to fine. The system runs as it's supposed to, right.
It's not that there's the system is broken. It's doing
its job. It's a military industrial complex and it's making
money through a military complex. So it's been, it's been.
It's been rough, and a genocide continued, and the ceasefire
(20:08):
is insane. We'll get to.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
The ceasefire in a second. We'll get to the ceasefire
in a second. I want to ask a challenging question
to you, to my sister, okay, and for people that
are able to hear this question, I want you to
(20:31):
reflect on it, you know, in terms of how it
how it fits in your world. I think this is
going to take me a while, so give me a
long runway here. I think that I'll speak for myself
for me, because I consider myself an activist. You know,
(20:54):
I go out in protest. I love being outside, like
that's my joint. I like betting out there. I marched
with people who were so passionate about shining a light
on what was going on in Gaza. I was also
(21:16):
made to choose from the only two choices that we had,
which were Kamala Harrison and Donald Trump. But I also
wanted to bear in mind the sensibilities and the feelings
and the plight of my new Palestinian brothers and sisters.
(21:39):
I admitted that prior to October seventh, Gaza and Israel
I didn't know. The first thing I didn't I wouldn't
even know that Israel was a Jewish state. It was
a word that people said. I had no concept of
who lived there or anything right or Gaza for that matter.
Since then, having learned who lives there and what's going on,
(22:01):
you're like, oh my gosh, this is such an awful
thing to be happening on this planet. I have to vote.
I have to bear in mind that I know people
who my vote will affect their material reality. So when
I ask, hey, I have to do something otherwise, it's
(22:24):
chosen for me. Which of these do I choose? It
comes from that place. Okay. The other thing I want
to say here, and this is probably I'll let you decide.
When you listen to what was being said at the
time and you frame it, everything in its proper light,
(22:51):
proper framing. Joe Biden, indeed a proud Zionist who said
that if there wasn't a nation state of Israel, we
would have to create one, sending money to net and
Yahoo to fund the genocide in Gaza. And Donald Trump,
(23:12):
who said, you know, he needs to finish the job.
He just got, you know, like he's like later he
went over and says, we need to put hotels all
over here like that was his general approach and approach
of a lot of people on the right. Some people
on the right, to be fair, have come around, but
at the time, a lot of folks were very pro
(23:34):
Israel and willfully intentionally ignoring the suffering on the ground
in Gaza. So it wasn't until Kamala Harris stepped in,
and you know, one of the things that we had
to do was frame her in a proper life. In
that position, this might be me giving her a lot
of grace, and I need you to check me if
(23:54):
I'm doing that. I'm sure you will. But one of
the things that we had to do was understand that
she was the vice president. It wasn't her administration. She
was a part of it. To say that Joe Biden
is wrong, while running for president under his administration is
a challenging position to put herself in, and she had
(24:17):
no power to change the material reality for anyone until
she became the president. Between her and Donald Trump, she's
the only person that said we need a two states solution.
And she said that repeatedly, and she said that in
a place where Ramses physically was in the building. She
could have been lying through her teeth, but Donald Trump
actually said, actively said the opposite of that. So when
(24:41):
I went to go and vote, I was voting with
as much of that in mind as I could, and
a lot of that didn't make its way to a
lot of people, which is why I suspect Q challenges
me on this, but why I suspect a lot of
people simply didn't vote because a lot of people, I
believe really cared about what was going on in Palestine
that otherwise would have been votes for Kamala Harris or
(25:03):
the Democratic Party. So my question is, and I think
I know how you're going to answer it and do it.
I'm ready for both barrels. If you have a magic
wand and you can go back and do it all
over again, do the protest votes, the abstaining from voting,
(25:27):
do the third party votes? Do we do that again
as a Palestinian group, Do we call on our allies
as Palestinians to do the same thing, or do we
choose between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump given where we
are at this point in our shared reality.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
I have seen Kamala walk up to Apex and say
how she will always be a friend to Israel. Liken
this too, some really high up politician in the nineteen forties.
I don't remember who the vice president was. I don't
know if I ever did know saying live in front
of people, Hey Germany, I know you're kind of doing
(26:16):
a bad thing right now, but just know we're always
there for you. We will always be a friend of Germany.
In what world would we go? Okay, but give him
the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's just talking, and
then later he won't do he won't be a friend
of Germany anymore. We can't do that. It's a big ask.
(26:37):
And what was so frustrating after the election is we
got blamed for it. We got blamed for Trump winning.
See if people weren't so pro Palestine, if people weren't
so up in arms about what that administration was doing,
then we would have kept voting for Democrats, and then
Trump wouldn't have won. So how many times do we
as Palestinians have And I don't like playing the victim card,
(26:57):
but how many times do we have to suffer? Here?
We're already being genocided and ethnically cleansed. Those of us
in the diaspora are watching it happen, and there's and
we feel so helpless. And then we got a crap
administration in and it's our faults. I don't know what more.
You like you you proverbially what you want us to do.
(27:20):
That's not our that's not our faults. We're we're we're
already dealing with a lot.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
So so let me the last thing I'll say, and
then we'll move on. You don't envision things having gone
any better than they're going right now, had Kamala Harris want.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
I mean, I'm not a I have to use I
have to assume if I had to guess just based
on her, based on what she has already said, based
on what I know about her. Yeah, I don't see
it going going.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Any better now. Now here's the other part.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
She's just can I just say, she'll just sound prettier,
She'll she she'll use flowery language. That's what Democrats do. Democrats.
Democrats use prettier language, and they dress nicer, and they're
a little bit more sophisticated, and they're the city slicker
blah blah blah, and that whole like trope, that whole
stereotype is what they use. But at the end of
(28:15):
the day, Washington is Washington, two sides of the same coin.
And I think people are starting to see that now
that there's really not that much of a difference.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Now on that one thing I want to say, because
and I'm sure you'd agree, when it comes to Israel
and a peck and what would have happened, Well, you know,
(28:47):
no one has a crystal ball, no one has that
sort of epistemic access to the future. I'll give that
to you. I will say that in its entirety, but
I would be remiss and it would be a disservice,
I think, primarily to Q who's living in a different
(29:09):
reality now, but also to a lot of our listeners
to say that Democrats had Kamala Harris won the reality
for a lot of people would have been the same
as it is under Donald Trump now barring the Israel thing,
which again I can't say one way or the other.
(29:29):
As you mentioned that sort of flowery language, it's not fiery,
anti human, anti immigrant, anti black history, anti black women
and all that sort of language. And so I know
that you weren't saying that. But I just want to
be responsible with this platform and make sure that I
say that. I want us to. I have a lot
(29:50):
more questions for you, So I want us to resume
this conversation in just a quick tick
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship, empathy and understanding. Q Ward
is on family Business today, but have no fear. Ramse's
jaw is the name I go by. I am still
in studio with you along with a special guest that
we've waited a long time to get back on the show,
(00:22):
and we to spend today's conversation talking to her about
the latest developments in Gaza. All right, Suzanne Yatim, for
those that don't know, is a human rights major former
Miss Airbusa. She's an actress, he's a filmmaker, writer as
(00:44):
well as an activist. As an activist and a Palestinian American,
she spent time in Palestine working with a peacekeeping team,
and she also has a deep and personal understanding of
the occupation. We're going to say this again, but for
folks that might want to check her out while listening,
you can find her online at the Actorvist and we're
going to make sure that we establish some connective tissue
(01:06):
for new folks that are just now hearing your voice.
But welcome back to the show. It's been over a year.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
It's been over a year. I missed you, guys.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, we missed you too. Like I mentioned, there's a
lot of people, longtime listeners who have heard your voice before.
You were kind of a guiding light around here in
terms of helping people understand the goings on in Gaza
and the West Bank, we like. But for a lot
of people who are just hearing your voice for the
(01:35):
first time again, the show has done a lot of
growing since you were last year. Talk to us about
a little bit more about who you are that goes
beyond kind of the intro, and you know, for folks
that do know, give us an update on sort of
what you've been up to in the intro.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Ah. Yeah, So the reason that's all even came about
is because I just from the heavens. I met Quentin
on an airplane and we just started chatting and it
was two weeks into the genocide, and I was I
was a puddle, I was a mess. And when he
found out I was Palestinian and he was like, I'm
so sorry, and I just started bawling in the seat
(02:08):
of the airplane. And and but my my job, not
my job that pays the bills with my my in
my soul. My job has always been to explain to
people what Palestine really is and who Palstinians really are.
And there has been billions of dollars spent to dehumanize us,
(02:29):
and my job, I've always felt, is to break through
that propaganda and to show you who we really are.
So my family still lives in Bethlehem, and I go
back all the time. In the two years that I've
since I met Quintin and we started, I started coming here,
I've been six times and I'm going back again for Christmas.
(02:51):
So I have It's so intimate for me, you know,
I walk the streets with this understanding of what it means,
and I can see Palestine and I'm there through the
lens of an American which is amazing and frustrating at
the same time, because I went there in December and
(03:14):
I shot a film, a narrative, and I told the
story of two women and the crew I was working
with the most amazing crew, and there are these a
lot of them, were these men from the local refugee camps,
and there was a moment where I was watching them.
We were in between takes and lightning changes, and I
(03:35):
was watching them and they were just kind of messing around,
and there was music playing because we were shooting a
wedding scene, and the DJ kept playing the music and
they were all dancing and clapping and laughing, and I
remember recording them, just took a video on my phone
of them, and they were so beautiful. They were so beautiful,
these this group I might have been like ten guys.
(03:57):
And I was filled with so much joy in my
heart it wanted to explode. And at the same time,
I was filled with so much rage because I wish
that Americans or the Western world could see Palestinian men
the way that they were in that video. The way
I see Palestinian men just goofy and silly and kind
(04:17):
and warm, and that is lacking. And every time I
go that just gets confirmed. So that's just been sort
of my mission in life is to tell stories, whether
it's through books or film or on stage or whatever
it is. I want to tell stories that humanize Palestinians,
the good, the bad, the ugly. That was a weird
(04:39):
long intro.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
No, no, no, I'm appreciative of the intro. I'm going
to be very transparent with you. Well, I mean, I'm
sure that you know this. For me and q Quentin,
I think our primary aperture into Palestinian life, life and
(05:02):
culture and people has been through you. And I would say,
to a lesser extent, but not an insignificant extent, a
gentleman that calls himself Palestinian, he believes that by referring
to himself as Palestinian, that he puts his people before himself.
(05:25):
So that's how we know him. But we see you
more frequently. He's more in the field with his work,
but you being our primary lens into that world and us,
I think the last time we spoke was a little
more than a year ago, so the world has done
a lot of changing since then. I will say that
(05:49):
I don't know if this is true, but maybe there
was a sense of hopelessness that probably said in some
time toward the end of the last election campaign season,
and so people started to feel like, I don't know,
maybe there was a bit of a disconnect, and so
you giving us that intro for Ramses I'm going to
(06:10):
talk about Ramses is very important. It's very necessary because
although I've wanted to have this conversation with you for
some time, it just didn't quite come together. And then
there have been some obviously some significant developments in terms
of the genocide in Gaza since we last spoken. So
(06:31):
I appreciate that. I want to circle back. Though you
mentioned something about there being billions of dollars spent on
maybe you could say it the right way, I'm going
to probably say it wrong but mischaracterizing Palestinian people. And
then you said that you shot a film where you
really got to show Palestinian men in their element. I
also want to I do and don't think that this
(06:52):
is significant. So I'm going to say this just so
that our listeners know, and I happen to know this.
You are a Christian woman, and you're family in is
Christian in Palestine is Christian, right, And so I want
to say that, not because I want to diminish. No,
I totally get what you're saying Islamic people, but I
want to show that there is a diversity of faiths
(07:13):
in this land. For people that might harbor anti Islamic sentiment,
maybe that's a way that they can find something.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
No, it's true, I find, you know, oftentimes when I'm
talking to people, and I've gotten really good at sort
of being like, Okay, if I'm talking to a conservative
person and I'm talking about the genocide, what I focus
on is, Okay, let's really talk about America first. Let's
talk about how billions and billions and billions of dollars
are leaving our economy or leaving our land and it's
(07:42):
going over to Israel. You should care about that. It's
your money, keep your money here. If I'm talking to
Christians who deeply care about Christianity, I will I will
mention that's an important point. Hey, you're our country here.
Our government is murdering Christians in the Holy Land just
casually without any regard. They're destroying ancient churches casually without
(08:07):
any regard. You should care about that as a Christian.
So there's certain things that like people and people also don't.
Really it's so weird to me. It's so weird to
me to come from a place called Bethlehem and then
for people here in America to be surprised that there
are Christians living in Bethlehem and Nazareth, you know, like,
(08:28):
like what do you what do you think happened? Where
do you think your religion came from? And people think
I or the people think when they find out I'm Christian,
they think I converted from Islam, I became a Christian.
It's just it's just the strangest thing to me. So
it's really really important to show the diversity.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
While we're here, I want to share a brief story,
and I do want to get back to the billion
spent on mischaracterizing Palestinian men. But while we're here, I
learned something. You can let me know how true this is,
but I believe it to be true. I typically will
only engage in scholarly sources or journalistically credible sources of
(09:04):
news content, and then I have to do my due
diligence after the fact. But I can't cite it right now,
so feel free to help me out. But this part
I know to be true. I'll paraphrase. But long time ago,
call it the twenties thirties, maybe in this country. It
was in California. There was a Middle Eastern man who
(09:25):
ended up in some sort of trouble. He was a
police officer, but he ended up like arresting a senator's
kid or something like that, the senator or whatever. Again,
I don't know the details of the story like that,
but basically they said this was an unjust arrest because
this man is not a US citizen. And so the
citizenship test at the time was if you lived in
(09:49):
the United States for a certain amount of time, then
you automatically got your citizenship. But that only applied to
white people, right and again, and the particulars I might
get a couple of them wrong, but the story overall
is factual. You could look this up. So anyway, this
(10:09):
case made its way up to the Supreme Court and
the argument, and this is why I'm telling a story.
The argument was because this man was a Middle Eastern man.
The argument ultimately became your honor, what race was Jesus?
And they had to decide in that moment, the Supreme
Court of the United States of America had to decide
(10:31):
if Jesus was Middle Eastern or if Middle Eastern people
were white. And they decided that Middle Eastern people were white.
And so where I'm going with that is that the
connection that I made there is that there was another
piece of information that I came across that said that
Jesus was Palestinian, and I thought that, like, how crazy
(10:53):
is that that that is not more widely celebrated.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
I know, it's really cool, right, right, and we know.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
That Jesus comes from Jewish people.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Jesus is always been Jews in Palestine, right exactly, and
that it's not weird to us at all.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Okay, all right, so anyway, your thoughts and then we'll
talk about the billions spin Because.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I was in Tunisia last week and I turned a
corner and with my friends and they were like, oh,
by the way, this is the Jewish quarter of this town.
And I was like, oh cool. There was not one
Israeli flag. They are Tunisians who happened to be Jewish
and in Palestine. That's what it was too, Like, they're
just they're from that land and they also happen to
be Jewish, and they've just it's not a big deal.
(11:38):
It got politicized pretty heavily in the last seventy six years.
But you know, my grandfather growing up, as one of
his close friends was Jewish. It just wasn't a thing.
Nobody talked about it. Between Christians and Muslims within my
mom tells me, you know, they would like celebrate each
other's religions and it's Christmas, we they have like a
(11:58):
parade down the streets and Muslims would be on the rooftops.
We have flat rooftops and they'd like throw candy down
onto the streets. It just there was nothing that you
see now that you hear about now. But it makes
really good propaganda, makes really good news stories. It makes
it good what Q likes to say about other ing.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Sure, if I may, before we move on, one of
the things that Palestinian said when he was last on
the show, and I want to I don't think that
this is a secret, so I'm going to share his faith.
He is an Islamic Palestinian man. But he said something
and it stayed with me. Not only did he pray
(12:36):
in my presence. I thought that was just beautiful because
the way Muslim people pray, I think is very special.
There's a certain reverence there. But he also shared something
on the show at the time he was on, and
he said something effectually. What he said was in terms
of Palestine, Jewish people beautify the land. I was here, Yeah,
(12:56):
you were, you remember he saying that that was so
BEAUTI I was like poetry. And he's a person that
can feel like he could he could be given to propaganda,
he can be given to all the lesser, more limbic
sort of response.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
He also has every right to be fuming, has every
right to hate as much as he wanted to hate
exactly right, he chooses not to. I choose not to.
And sometimes it's sometimes it's hard, if I'm being honest
with you, sometimes it's really hard because there's a lot
of pressure to feel like you have to be the
perfect victim, you know, like, and then this happens a lot.
(13:32):
You must understand it's a black man. If something happens,
if a police officer does something to a black man,
it's like, well.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
What do you do? You know, maybe did you comply? Right?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Right? And that's pretty similar to us. So anyway, we're angry.
We're really angry. We're watching our family and friends and
people we love and our kin being ethnically cleansed and genocided.
We have every right to be really angry, and instead
we spend our time going on talk shows, on radio shows,
talking to people, going on the streets and trying to
with as much as we can speak with love.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Well, this this is not I would not intentionally or
deliberately profit or benefit from your trauma. I don't believe
in that. My hope is that this feels like a
way to bring people into the conversation, and I hope
that it's always felt that way. I do think it's
(14:29):
you know, when you talk about how it, you know
people feel angry. I think that at least the people
that I've talked to, they've been able to be very
clear minded and that their anger is with the nation
State of Israel and key actors and not with Jewish people.
And so the narrative that being critical of Israel somehow
(14:53):
means that you're anti Semitic.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
That's a great propaganda point, right, That's great propaganda.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I watch this as a as a journalist, a semi
quasi journalist. I mean, there's people who are more bona fide.
I'm a radio personality, but you know, I work in
a journalistic space. I have had to have conversations with
people who are pro Israel. And when you said that
(15:22):
you feel this pressure to be the perfect victim. I
feel like I've seen that. I've seen the framing of
conversations from people who are pro Israel in such a
way that you have to almost dig the humanity of
Palestinian people out of the conversation, out of the narrative
(15:45):
that a lot of folks are trying were trying to
chronicle back when I was a little bit more deeper
in my investigative bag once upon a time, And so
I think that your statement reflects the reality that I
have been exposed to. But let's move on. We last
(16:06):
spoke when there was an election looming in the distance,
and I remember asking you, I think you volunteered who
you would vote for, and I think you were voting
third party.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
If I'm not no, I decided for the first time
since I was eighteen years old not to vote.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Not to vote, Okay, so it was something like that.
But I think that you were considering third party once
upon a time, or maybe it was considering not voting.
I'm not sure, but it wasn't a Trump or a
common Harrison. I remember that part very clearly. Do you
feel like, well, how about this? What are your thoughts
(16:53):
on how the election went.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
As a Palestinians, as a palestinsury as you two we
felt so we felt so we were screwed either way
because the genocide started under the Biden administration, and he
was I mean, he's a proud Zionist. He has said
(17:17):
there's pictures of him when his hair was a little
bit darker, that if there was no such thing as Israel,
we would have to invent one. I mean, he's he's
so he did not care what was happening. And his
vice president, who finally decided to run. I think, if
I remember correctly, Biden tried to run for a little bit, right,
(17:39):
and then he stopped and gave it over to Kamala.
So she never said that, she never called it a genocide,
and she never said that she was going to stop
funding it. So we were like, well, obviously, obviously we
cannot vote for you. That makes no sense. In what
(18:00):
world would we vote for the woman who's saying, hey,
what's currently happening, I'm going to keep doing that and
I'm not going to acknowledge what's actually taking place. And
then but the other option, this is why we just
felt so screwed over. The other option was, you know,
the current administration. He's not any better. So people were like, well,
(18:22):
who do we vote for? And I'm like, why are you?
Why are you asking me? I don't know. They both
are horrific when it comes to Palestinian when it comes
to the occupation, when it comes to genocide because they
will always be in the pockets of APAC. They all
get funding from APAC. You cannot change the mind of
a politician if they have gotten money from the American
(18:43):
Israel Lobby group, it does not happen. They are in
their pockets and they run everything. This really is the
United States of Israel and ways people I don't think
they understand how how deep it goes. So either way,
we were rude and then just emotionally like I remember
talking to you guys, and I remember Q talking about
(19:05):
what's that twenty project? Yeah, and him just being like
horrified and he has kids, and he was like, you know,
this can't happen and what do we do? And we
were like, yeah, that's horrible, but there's currently a genocide
happening too, Like how do we ignore that to vote against?
Like it was, there was no these are our only options,
(19:27):
that's it. That's all we could do. And so we
felt so And the problem is that everybody was coming
to palcinioms being like what do you want from us?
Like who should we vote for? And we did not
have an answer for them. That wasn't one of those
we didn't want you to vote for either one, and
that we just felt like there was no way out.
And what really needs to happen is, and this is
(19:47):
something that you understand as a black man, the system
runs to fine. The system runs as it's supposed to, right.
It's not that there's the system is broken. It's doing
its job. It's a military industrial complex and it's making
money through a military complex. So it's been, it's been.
It's been rough, and a genocide continued, and the ceasefire
(20:08):
is insane. We'll get to.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
The ceasefire in a second. We'll get to the ceasefire
in a second. I want to ask a challenging question
to you, to my sister, okay, and for people that
are able to hear this question, I want you to
(20:31):
reflect on it, you know, in terms of how it
how it fits in your world. I think this is
going to take me a while, so give me a
long runway here. I think that I'll speak for myself
for me, because I consider myself an activist. You know,
(20:54):
I go out in protest. I love being outside, like
that's my joint. I like betting out there. I marched
with people who were so passionate about shining a light
on what was going on in Gaza. I was also
(21:16):
made to choose from the only two choices that we had,
which were Kamala Harrison and Donald Trump. But I also
wanted to bear in mind the sensibilities and the feelings
and the plight of my new Palestinian brothers and sisters.
(21:39):
I admitted that prior to October seventh, Gaza and Israel
I didn't know. The first thing I didn't I wouldn't
even know that Israel was a Jewish state. It was
a word that people said. I had no concept of
who lived there or anything right or Gaza for that matter.
Since then, having learned who lives there and what's going on,
(22:01):
you're like, oh my gosh, this is such an awful
thing to be happening on this planet. I have to vote.
I have to bear in mind that I know people
who my vote will affect their material reality. So when
I ask, hey, I have to do something otherwise, it's
(22:24):
chosen for me. Which of these do I choose? It
comes from that place. Okay. The other thing I want
to say here, and this is probably I'll let you decide.
When you listen to what was being said at the
time and you frame it, everything in its proper light,
(22:51):
proper framing. Joe Biden, indeed a proud Zionist who said
that if there wasn't a nation state of Israel, we
would have to create one, sending money to net and
Yahoo to fund the genocide in Gaza. And Donald Trump,
(23:12):
who said, you know, he needs to finish the job.
He just got, you know, like he's like later he
went over and says, we need to put hotels all
over here like that was his general approach and approach
of a lot of people on the right. Some people
on the right, to be fair, have come around, but
at the time, a lot of folks were very pro
(23:34):
Israel and willfully intentionally ignoring the suffering on the ground
in Gaza. So it wasn't until Kamala Harris stepped in,
and you know, one of the things that we had
to do was frame her in a proper life. In
that position, this might be me giving her a lot
of grace, and I need you to check me if
(23:54):
I'm doing that. I'm sure you will. But one of
the things that we had to do was understand that
she was the vice president. It wasn't her administration. She
was a part of it. To say that Joe Biden
is wrong, while running for president under his administration is
a challenging position to put herself in, and she had
(24:17):
no power to change the material reality for anyone until
she became the president. Between her and Donald Trump, she's
the only person that said we need a two states solution.
And she said that repeatedly, and she said that in
a place where Ramses physically was in the building. She
could have been lying through her teeth, but Donald Trump
actually said, actively said the opposite of that. So when
(24:41):
I went to go and vote, I was voting with
as much of that in mind as I could, and
a lot of that didn't make its way to a
lot of people, which is why I suspect Q challenges
me on this, but why I suspect a lot of
people simply didn't vote because a lot of people, I
believe really cared about what was going on in Palestine
that otherwise would have been votes for Kamala Harris or
(25:03):
the Democratic Party. So my question is, and I think
I know how you're going to answer it and do it.
I'm ready for both barrels. If you have a magic
wand and you can go back and do it all
over again, do the protest votes, the abstaining from voting,
(25:27):
do the third party votes? Do we do that again
as a Palestinian group, Do we call on our allies
as Palestinians to do the same thing, or do we
choose between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump given where we
are at this point in our shared reality.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
I have seen Kamala walk up to Apex and say
how she will always be a friend to Israel. Liken
this too, some really high up politician in the nineteen forties.
I don't remember who the vice president was. I don't
know if I ever did know saying live in front
of people, Hey Germany, I know you're kind of doing
(26:16):
a bad thing right now, but just know we're always
there for you. We will always be a friend of Germany.
In what world would we go? Okay, but give him
the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's just talking, and
then later he won't do he won't be a friend
of Germany anymore. We can't do that. It's a big ask.
(26:37):
And what was so frustrating after the election is we
got blamed for it. We got blamed for Trump winning.
See if people weren't so pro Palestine, if people weren't
so up in arms about what that administration was doing,
then we would have kept voting for Democrats, and then
Trump wouldn't have won. So how many times do we
as Palestinians have And I don't like playing the victim card,
(26:57):
but how many times do we have to suffer? Here?
We're already being genocided and ethnically cleansed. Those of us
in the diaspora are watching it happen, and there's and
we feel so helpless. And then we got a crap
administration in and it's our faults. I don't know what more.
You like you you proverbially what you want us to do.
(27:20):
That's not our that's not our faults. We're we're we're
already dealing with a lot.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
So so let me the last thing I'll say, and
then we'll move on. You don't envision things having gone
any better than they're going right now, had Kamala Harris want.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
I mean, I'm not a I have to use I
have to assume if I had to guess just based
on her, based on what she has already said, based
on what I know about her. Yeah, I don't see
it going going.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Any better now. Now here's the other part.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
She's just can I just say, she'll just sound prettier,
She'll she she'll use flowery language. That's what Democrats do. Democrats.
Democrats use prettier language, and they dress nicer, and they're
a little bit more sophisticated, and they're the city slicker
blah blah blah, and that whole like trope, that whole
stereotype is what they use. But at the end of
(28:15):
the day, Washington is Washington, two sides of the same coin.
And I think people are starting to see that now
that there's really not that much of a difference.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Now on that one thing I want to say, because
and I'm sure you'd agree, when it comes to Israel
and a peck and what would have happened, Well, you know,
(28:47):
no one has a crystal ball, no one has that
sort of epistemic access to the future. I'll give that
to you. I will say that in its entirety, but
I would be remiss and it would be a disservice,
I think, primarily to Q who's living in a different
(29:09):
reality now, but also to a lot of our listeners
to say that Democrats had Kamala Harris won the reality
for a lot of people would have been the same
as it is under Donald Trump now barring the Israel thing,
which again I can't say one way or the other.
(29:29):
As you mentioned that sort of flowery language, it's not fiery,
anti human, anti immigrant, anti black history, anti black women
and all that sort of language. And so I know
that you weren't saying that. But I just want to
be responsible with this platform and make sure that I
say that. I want us to. I have a lot
(29:50):
more questions for you, So I want us to resume
this conversation in just a quick tick
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