August 5, 2025 • 29 mins
George is joined by journalist Elias Jahshan, editor of the anthology "This Arab is Queer." Elias was born in Australia to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. He tells George about breaking stereotypes, explains the meaning of 'pinkwashing' and how LGBTQ+ rights discourse is being weaponized, especially in the context of the Israeli occupation in Palestine. Together they discuss the power of words when it comes to Gaza, as well as the importance of global solidarity.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I just happened to be editor around the time when
an ass was doing awful awful things in our can Syria,
and I felt really frustrated.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I just couldn't really do anything about that.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Elliots josh And is a journalist and editor born in Sydney, Australia.
His father is Palestinian and his mother is Lebanese. Elias
is also queer, and as a queer Arab, he always
felt like he was in a strange position. The atrocities
committed against gay Rabs by Isis were used to reinforce
Islamophobic stereotypes and reduce his community to those stereotypes too.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Our experience as queer Arabs was reduced to the narrative
of the victim, the passive victim of a barbaric, patriarchal culture.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
The other story told about queer Arabs is that they
don't even exist.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So often we're told that there are no queer people
in our world, that is the Western cultural thing. No
such thing exists amongst Arabs, Whereas if you look at
the history of that region, we have some of the.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Gayest histories in the world.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Like you look at the ancient Egyptians, the Roman, the
Phoenicians like they have some really queazy stuff going on
back then, you.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Know, elliots wanted to change both those narratives. So he
got eighteen queer Arab authors to contribute to a book
called This Arab Is Queer.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I guess I wanted to show you that it is
possible to be Arab and queer at the same time.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
And they got hand in hand together.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Singing in them heavy handy such of the world. Take
a super brandy spoken guy, you know what the plan is, or.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Became a Latin. You know one does understand me.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
My name is George M. Johnson.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I am the New York Times bestselling author of the
book All Boys Aren't Blue, which is the number one
most challenged.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
Book in the United States. This is Fighting Words.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
A show where we take you to the front lines
of the culture wars, with the people who are using
their words to make change and who refuse to be silenced.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
Today's guest Elias Joshin.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I am here today with mister Ilias Joshin, who is
a writer and journalist born and raised in Sydney, the
child of a Palestinian father and a Lesbithnese mother.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Welcome to Fighting Words Today. How are you doing.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I'm really good. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
Guys, super excited to talk to you today.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
I'd like for people to be able to introduce themselves,
and sometimes the world gives us our own definitions of
who we are. So can you just let everyone know
who is iliask Josh.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I'm the editor of an anthology called This Arab Is Queer.
It was published in twenty twenty two. It's a nonfiction
anthology of short memoirs, essays, and other forms of creative
nonfiction of LGBTQ plus writers who identifies our represent the
various countries across the our world. Some of them live
still live there, some of them live in the immigrant diaspora,
(02:56):
and some of them straddle both worlds.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
And other than that, I'm almost list than Rada.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Before I moved to London, I was the editor of
Star Observer, the longest running queer media outlet in Australia,
and I was the first POC editor in the Star
Observers now more than forty year history. And I've got
another book coming out later this year in October.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Some awesome anthologist can be hard because it's so many
different voices and even though it could be eighteen different perspective,
it all still needs to make sense.
Speaker 5 (03:25):
As one body of work.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So one, what was the inspiration and putting together the
anthology This Arab Is Queer? And two what was your
process to making sure that the book was cohesive and
that people left with the knowledge that they needed to
understand about the intersection of being Arab as well as
being queer.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
I guess the genesis of This Ab Is Queer I
think go back to more time when I was the
editor of Style Observer. Despite the fact that it's been
around for a long time, it has such a huge
reputation in create community in Australia, it had a shoestring
budge it and it was frustrating to not be able
to cover some of the stories from our world as
an Arab person with the nuance that it deserved. And
(04:09):
I just happened to be editor around the time when
Isis was doing awful, awful things in our can Syria,
and I just felt a sense of helplessness. But at
the same time, more than anything, I saw the discourse
on social media and the discourse in mainstream media, how
our stories were weaponized or we were spoken over and
(04:30):
all these tereotypes were put were implemented against us in
ways that we didn't ask for, and our experience as
Qui Arabs was reduced to the story, the narrative of
the victim, the passive victim of a barbaric, patriarchal culture,
and so there was a lot of orientalism, there was
a lot of racism. There was a lot of mythogeny
as well, because that's what patriarchy fees on. And I
(04:54):
felt really frustrated. I just couldn't really do anything about that,
and that sort of like bubbled in my mind for
a while, and then I moved to London and had
that perspective of distance, and then basically the year before
the pandemic, there was a series of amazing anthologies that
came out in the UK. Two really good ones that
I'm really a big fan of is The Good Immigrant,
(05:14):
and also another one called Our Women on the Ground
is an anthology of our female journalists. We've talked about
their experiences reporting its correspondence living in the Middle East,
and given my journalists background, just reading these anthologies got
me ticked, my brain ticking, and I thought, I wonder
if I could do something like this myself, and then
(05:34):
before you know, my publisher came on board. I was
really lucky with my publisher because they're based in London,
but the family that owns is the Lebanese family.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
They're really progressive.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And the whole purpose of it was to provide a
space for us to share our stories on our own terms,
without the interference of the white gaze, without the interference
of orient tellist narratives interrupting or intervening with how we
share our stories. The point of these books to challenge
the gatekeepers who decide which stories from our community is
worth sharing. And I just wanted to be able to
(06:07):
stress stories of joy, share stories of sex, share stories
of parties, or at the same time still have gotten
nuance in there where we share stress, stories of challenges
and grief and sadness. We are, you know, a three
dimensional community with so many diverse experiences.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Yeah, I think about that often, being from two communities
that have shared oppressions but also have very different depressions.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
Many years ago about an essay about just how the.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Narrative is often pushed that black community is the most
homophobic community of all communities, right, Like that was a
narrative that was being pushed, and it was like, no,
we have homophobia, but all communities exactly, and ours wasn't
derived from like we had queerness in Africa, so we
know it wasn't necessarily derived from us.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
But colonialism played a major role.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Religious doctrination during slavery played a major role in how
our community started to look at queerness differently from where
we came. So what is that experience like for you?
Is it, you know, being queer and being area?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, I mean, look, that was the other purpose of
the book is to sort of tell our own our
communities that we exist, because so often we're told that
we there are no queen people in in our world.
That is the Western import that it's the Western cultural thing.
It's not no such thing exists among amongst Arabs. Whereas
if you look at the history of that region, like
we have some of the gayest histories in the world,
(07:32):
Like you look at the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, the Phoenicians,
like they have some really queer stuff going on back then,
you know, and.
Speaker 5 (07:41):
To egyptianman that were buried in the tomb Togetist.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
Twenty five hundred BC. I remember reading that story.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, and I need to I don't need to explain
to people, like, you know, the fact of Roman baths
and how men would go in and just do stuff
in the bathrooms and swornas like it happened.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And we're all descendants of that.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
The Romans were there in our regions, so we're all
descendants of that. And my point is that we've always
existed and we're always going to exist no matter where
we are in the world. And I guess I wanted
to show that it is possible to be Arab and
queer at the same time, and we had that lived
experience of enjoying both and the fact that they go
hand in hand together. Sure, they're going to be some conflicts,
(08:18):
there's to give me some people who disagree with us,
but I kind of wanted this.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Book to be like a written record to.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
People who challenge us that even though you say we
don't exist, we're showing you that ways that we can exist.
My book is not the first of queer our book ever.
There's been some fiction novels beforehand, but it's probably the
first nonfiction anthology of queer Arab stories. I do get
told a lot that Arabs are homophobes, and you know,
we're often given this implicit or even blatant expectation to
(08:49):
choose one identity over the other, so we can either
be gay and forget about being Arabs in Western spaces,
whereas an Arab spaceis we're told we can be Arab
and forget about being gay, like we can't do both
at once, and coming from Sydney where there's.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
A very large Arab community.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
But when I was living in Sydney ten years ago
in my twenties, being a baby gay going out, even
when I used to be on Vinty to tell people
that are gay in Palestinian even telling them that to
their face. Sometimes the guys will look at me like
that meme of the woman trying to figure out all
these mathematical quationres like how can you be Palestinian gay
at the same time, and often it was like a
(09:25):
way sort of weed out all the dodgy men, I guess,
because sometimes the first thing they'll say is like, oh, I.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Don't don't like us back there, do they?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
And they don't realize saying that as one of the
most racist things you can say, because it just eraises
our existence. They're just raising us by saying that, and
they're also raising our agency, like we can live our
own experiences on our own terms. You don't need you
to come with this white savior complex BS or that
they clearly need to unlearn. I do acknowledge that there
(09:55):
is definitely homophobia amongst Aurbs, But like you said, there's homophobia,
so it's like comity.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
And a lot of the homophobia and transphobia in our
communities does come from colonialism as well. Of course, the
Ottoman Empire was nowhere near perfect. It's not perfect at all,
but there was no law there that criminalized homosexuality in
Ottoman Empire. When the Britain of French came and carved
up the region with borders and the stupid colonial ambitions
(10:26):
in the region, that's when they introduced the laws and
many of the laws that still exist there today.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I hangover from those.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Colonial years and I do wonder, like how much more
acceptance there would be if colonialism never happened. And of
course I do wonder how much more acceptance there would
be if the state of Israel was never created because
of the pink quashing day pedal and the racism that
comes with the pinku washing and the way it enforces
(10:52):
a divisive rhetoric between our communities and isolates queen members
of the community in that way.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Pink washing For people who don't know, could you explain
what you know pink washing means? You know, especially in
the context of you know, Israel Powerstown.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Pink washing is the exploitation of queer identity, is queer bodies,
queer culture for public relations purposes, for marketing purposes, business entities,
corporations have been doing it for years and years by
just taking part in pride praise for example. But I
guess the State of Israel they use it to justify
(11:30):
Zionism and the set of colonialist project. Did they thrive
on a perfect example of pink washing. Often you will
hear Israel being the so called safe haven for queen
people in the Middle East, and it just pushes this
idea that it's the only place in the Middle East
where it's safe to be queer, which is absolutely bullshit.
(11:51):
Could if you look through that, really the safest place
really to be queer in Israel is Tel Aviv, and
like every other part of Israel is like kind of
a religious so kind of conservative, you know, especially it
plays like jewisdem like that's like the heart of religious
of anything.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I'm sure there are progressive pockets in those areas. I
don't want to deny that. But then also we look further.
When you see how televised pride, for example, is promoted,
you don't often see a.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Lot of diversity.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
It's like, ah, so, who's in the safe haven for exactly?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Is it for people with Western passports?
Speaker 1 (12:26):
And specifically is it people with white people from the West,
not so much anyone else.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I don't see any albs getting taken parts.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And also his stories of Israel supposedly accepting a lot
of Queen Palestinian refugees, and they make it sound like
it's a all roses and sunshine, like it's an easy process,
but like it is not easy, Like a claiming asylum
in any country as a refugee is a really dehumanizing process.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
There's no pink door in the apartheid war.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Just because you're queer in the West Bank doesn't mean
that Israeli authorities are suddenly going to give you special
treatment and say, oh yeah, let's roll out the pink
carpet for you come in, we'll give you a refugee status.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
It's not that simple.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
And pink question also pedals this idea that Palestinians are
supposedly better off under Israeli control, which is absolute bullshit,
because there's no way. No one is free as long
as you're living under occupation.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It's just like.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Whether you're queer, whether you're a woman, whether it disabled, anyone,
even a sis hep man is not free when you're
living under occupation, full stop. I'm pretty sure Angela Davis
is the one who says we are not free until
we are all free, and that applies it perfectly to
Palestine as well. You look at what's happening in Gaza.
There is a queer community there and they're still there,
(13:43):
and they're still just as much equally targets as everyone
else in the genocidal war that's happening there. It's just
a constant distraction from the war crimes that the Israeli
state is doing. It committing is constantly used to justify
by their war crime. It's constantly used to justify their occupation.
(14:03):
It's constantly used to justify the genocidal war and Gaza
I mean, we all remember the viral fur of the
Israeli soldier holding the rainbow flag a miss rubble behind him,
and it's that on the flag in the name of love.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
It was like, but there's all this destruction behind you.
What the love about that? You know?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
And now back to my conversation with Elius Josh, I
just saw something recently where a lot of Palestinians are
asking for us to not refer to it as a
genocide but start to refer to it as a holocaust.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Okay, yep, I.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Just see something recently about that, and I haven't had
enough time to fully because I am.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Very big on words mean things.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And when you use certain words, people will not react
to them because they one, they actually don't know what
the word means. Like people actually just have no idea
what a genocide actually mean. They know what a homicide is, right,
but when you say genocide, they actually don't.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
Know what that really means.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
And there is no physical connection to the word, because
no one has ever looked at slavery as a genocide, right.
No one looked at how they treated slaves as genocidal.
No one looked at Jim Crow and the lynchings across
the South as genocidal, right like, they didn't view them
(16:00):
as that, and that word was never used. So it's
hard for people to tie an event to a word,
but you can tie events to the word holocaust. And
if you start using it that way, how do you
feel about the importance of how we frame what is
happening in Palestine so that people really understand.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I think it's important to first and foremost to listen
to what Palestinis and Gaza are saying.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
And if they're saying.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
We need to call it a holocaust, then yes, I
think we should. And it's not the first holocaust in history,
and what happened in World War Two, the Jewish Holocaust
is not the first holocaust either. I'm pretty sure the
first historically recorded holocaust was the Armenian Holocaust that happened
that during World War One, undertaken with the Ottoman Turks
(16:48):
regime at the time. So I think it's the word holocaust. No,
there should be no exclusivity on who owns that word
because the definition of it what we're seeing now, especially
in the last two three days, where Israel is actively
starving Gaza, and it's really important to say is that
they are starving Gaza, rather than call it a famine,
(17:11):
rather than call it people are starving, because when you
put the emphasisis on Israel actually starving the Gaza, it
implies that what we all know the fact. But the
UN has gone on record to say that there is
enough food for three months, there's enough food and fuel
and water for the next three months, but the Israeli
(17:31):
authorities are just not letting it in the country. You
can't call it a famine because the fact the food
is there, they're just not being let in. And what
we've been seeing for the past two three days is
something basically akin to a holocaust because people are dropping dead,
people are dying of starvation that was imposed on them
by the Israeli forces. We're just seeing holocaust live in
(17:53):
real time on our tiny little phones, on social media,
on TV, and the leaders of the world are doing
nothing about it.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
What is the importance of, like the global world becoming
more invested in world politics Because growing up, we were
taught about the past, right, we were taught about the
French Revolution and all these things in the past, but
like world politics was not It just is not something
that we have ever been taught to be invested in
(18:20):
unless nine to eleven happens and then we're under attack,
and then everybody is like, wait, there's all this that
actually happens on the other side of the world.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
We don't know about.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
So what is the importance of us having global engagement
and not just isolation.
Speaker 5 (18:35):
Engagement from you know, where we live.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I think having this global engagement it's cool to who
we are as human being, because we need to be
able to empathize with other people. We need to be
able to have humanitarian approach to how we live our lives,
one that foster solidarity with other communities. I personally believe
we need to strive for is a challenge to state
(18:57):
the nation state the owners is placed on this date
rather than the people. That is really dangerous because that's
where fascism frives. When we have this more global outlook,
this more interconnectedness between communities and countries and cultures, there's
a lot more understanding, there's a lot more empathy between people.
And I was thinking the other day, like, I do
(19:18):
wonder how this general stidal war would have panned out
in an age where social media wasn't around, And it
makes me wonder like, you know, had World War two
happened when social media was around, could we.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Have stopped the Jewish Holocaust back then?
Speaker 1 (19:38):
You know, yeah, exactly yeah, And could we have allowed
for more space for critical thinking, critical thought to be
shared and discussed online because back then the mainstream media,
printed media, TV, radio was the only way we could
sort of obtain the information. There's very much one way
stroe with social media. It gives us a chance to
(19:59):
engage with that and to sort of hold these media
outlets to account.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
And I think that's really important.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I say that as a journalist myself, we do need
to be held to account in many ways. I get
the silver lining of the general style of war in
Gaza is that it is happening on social media, is
that it's making it impossible for people to ignore. It's
making it impossible for anyone to say, oh, I didn't know,
because everyone knows, and you can't pretend that you didn't know,
(20:26):
Like how millions of Germans could pretend they didn't know
when the Jewish Holocaust was happening because that was a
state of how things were back then. But today every
single person in this world can't pretend they didn't know,
And I think just using the active language war is
really important. We saw that every day, every minute we
saw a new headline, where when Russia invaded Ukraine, all
(20:49):
the headlines that we saw were really placed in the
owners on Russia being the aggress exactly, yes, the aggressor.
And then all of a sudden, when a curbs and happening,
the language that the media was using was very passive.
It's like, oh, exactly, how did if Palestinians die?
Speaker 2 (21:06):
But why are you saying die rather than killed?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
And what we're seeing now is in the past two
three days, don't say they're starving, just say they are
being starved by Israel or Israel is starving them, because
that is exactly what's happening.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
That is the cold hard fact.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
And now back to my conversation with Elios Joshin. So,
I just want to talk a little bit about you
have a new book, yes, coming out this October, Yes,
the Queer Arab Family. Can you just give us a
little insight on what to expect from this book?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (22:04):
So, this Queer Ab Family is a follow up to
that Fciaritis Queer. It's an anthology again, it's a collection
of nonfiction, short memoirs and essays, but mostly short memoirs.
And I told writers to explore what family means to
them as a Queer ab and that could mean, you know,
a biological family.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
That could be mean chosen family.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
It could mean community as family, it could mean solidarity.
There is one chapter in there that is centered around
the genocide in Gaza from a Palestinian writer, Randejore. She's
based in La She's in a phenomenal writer. She's amazing.
One writer talked about his journey with only fans and
how that allowed him to go from being the estranged
(22:49):
son to becoming the son that supported his family who
was still in Syria while he was in Canada earning
the money through earning fans to be able to support
his family. There's another story there from one of the
co founders of Club Up that's a Queer Arabic music
dance party that happens in Sydney. Pretty sure it's the
longest running Queer Arabic music dance party in the diaspora.
(23:10):
There's another story about Lebanie gay couple look into sharing
their journey to adopt a child and the whole reason
I wanted to do this book is to sort of
claim the idea of family as queer Abs, because in
our cultures, the idea of family is drummed into our
psyche from a very young age, like we're told that
(23:33):
nothing is more important than family. What we do is
individuals reflects on our family and reflects on our parents,
standing in the community and stuff, and a lot of
that means that we tend to sort of sacrifice our
personal needs for the good of a family, and worst
case scenarios, some queer abs might be excommunicated from their
(23:54):
families or they have to turn their back on their
families for their own mental health and own safety. So
because of that, I wanted to reclaim the notional family.
It's like, you know what, we're family too. Whether you
choose to accept us or not, we're still going to
celebrate being a family ourselves. And just because that family
is not biological family does not mean it's not family.
(24:16):
You know, we can still be proud of our cultures.
We can still practice our traditions, we can still speak
our language, listen to the music, and still engage with
other people through our cultural backgrounds, and we can still
be proud of that.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Regardless of who our what our sexuality is.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Yes, absolutely love the heart of most of my storytelling
this family like when it gets down to the bottom
of it, despite all the oppressions and everything else, family
is like at the core.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
We are coming towards the end of the show.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Like to always give people the space and the grace
to discuss things that they may be tired about. They
stay to have a calm God, George is tired where
every week I were right about what I was tired of.
I think right now, living in the United States, it
is I am very, very tired of our elected officials
claiming the bait and switch every single time they vote
(25:10):
for something that they know is disastrous and then pretend
after the fact that they didn't know how disastrous it
was going to be.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
I think people are seeing through it. Finally.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I think with the whole Epstein thing, I think watching
a base of people feel like.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
They were baited and switched when.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
It was so obvious that this was this is how
this was going to turn out has been very interesting,
but it's also very tiring.
Speaker 5 (25:38):
So I'd just like to give you some space.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Is there anything that you are tired of that is
going on for you in your life this week.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Look, I guess it's an easy one for me to answer.
I'm tired of Zionism. I'm just tired of the way
it sort of weaponizes an exploits Jewish history and Judaism
to the point where any quit of Zionism is deemed
anti Semitic, where that is not the case at all.
I'm tired of how Zionism erases us as queer Palestinians.
(26:08):
It silences Palestinian voices, it silences any form of criticism
to anything, any form of criticism to the state of
as well.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Yeah yeah, yeah, any words or any mantras that you
live by that you would love to leave our listeners with.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Good question.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I am a big fan of this poem by a
really well known Palestinian poets. The idea she did pun
called we Teach Life, And in her poem she goes
back and forth about her experience with media and stuff,
and it's this amazing quote that she ends her poem
is we teach life, sir. And I say that all
(26:49):
the time because we do teach life. And then it
just shows that how Palestinians always teach life, always prioritize
joy over trauma and how expressing who we are as
in a joyful way and showing pride and in our culture,
sharing the love with other people.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
That is how we teach life.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
It just encapsulates the joy that we as Palestinians have
and why we need to just hold onto that joy
because joy is a form of resistance.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yes, yes, joy is a form of resistance. As my
grandmother said, you call it all joy. Yeah, no matter
what you're going through, it's part of a church him
as well call it all joy.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
Alies. I would love to thank you for being here today.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
You know, your work, your words makes us all smarter,
it makes us all better people.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So thanks.
Speaker 5 (27:41):
I'm so appreciative of you coming.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
On back, and thank you so much for having me
on your show. I've been a big fan of your
writing for a long time, so it's an honor to
be on.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
Today.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
I'm leaving you with a quote from the Palestinian poet
my mood Darwish. Life defined only as the opposite of
death is not life. Fighting Words is a production of
(28:23):
iHeart Podcasts in partnership with BET's Case Studios. I'm Georgia Johnson.
This episode was produced by Charlotte Morley. Executive producers are
myself and Twiggy Puchi Guar Song with Adam Pinkss and
Brick Cats for Best Case Studios. The theme song was
written and composed by kole Vas Bambianna and myself. Original
(28:44):
music by Klevas. This episode was edited and scored.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
By Max Michael Miller.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Our iHeart Team is Ali Perry and Carl Ketel following
rap Fighting Words Wherever You get your Podcast
I just happened to be editor around the time when
an ass was doing awful awful things in our can Syria,
and I felt really frustrated.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I just couldn't really do anything about that.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Elliots josh And is a journalist and editor born in Sydney, Australia.
His father is Palestinian and his mother is Lebanese. Elias
is also queer, and as a queer Arab, he always
felt like he was in a strange position. The atrocities
committed against gay Rabs by Isis were used to reinforce
Islamophobic stereotypes and reduce his community to those stereotypes too.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Our experience as queer Arabs was reduced to the narrative
of the victim, the passive victim of a barbaric, patriarchal culture.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
The other story told about queer Arabs is that they
don't even exist.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So often we're told that there are no queer people
in our world, that is the Western cultural thing. No
such thing exists amongst Arabs, Whereas if you look at
the history of that region, we have some of the.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Gayest histories in the world.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Like you look at the ancient Egyptians, the Roman, the
Phoenicians like they have some really queazy stuff going on
back then, you.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Know, elliots wanted to change both those narratives. So he
got eighteen queer Arab authors to contribute to a book
called This Arab Is Queer.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I guess I wanted to show you that it is
possible to be Arab and queer at the same time.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
And they got hand in hand together.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Singing in them heavy handy such of the world. Take
a super brandy spoken guy, you know what the plan is, or.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Became a Latin. You know one does understand me.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
My name is George M. Johnson.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I am the New York Times bestselling author of the
book All Boys Aren't Blue, which is the number one
most challenged.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
Book in the United States. This is Fighting Words.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
A show where we take you to the front lines
of the culture wars, with the people who are using
their words to make change and who refuse to be silenced.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
Today's guest Elias Joshin.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I am here today with mister Ilias Joshin, who is
a writer and journalist born and raised in Sydney, the
child of a Palestinian father and a Lesbithnese mother.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Welcome to Fighting Words Today. How are you doing.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I'm really good. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
Guys, super excited to talk to you today.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
I'd like for people to be able to introduce themselves,
and sometimes the world gives us our own definitions of
who we are. So can you just let everyone know
who is iliask Josh.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I'm the editor of an anthology called This Arab Is Queer.
It was published in twenty twenty two. It's a nonfiction
anthology of short memoirs, essays, and other forms of creative
nonfiction of LGBTQ plus writers who identifies our represent the
various countries across the our world. Some of them live
still live there, some of them live in the immigrant diaspora,
(02:56):
and some of them straddle both worlds.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
And other than that, I'm almost list than Rada.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Before I moved to London, I was the editor of
Star Observer, the longest running queer media outlet in Australia,
and I was the first POC editor in the Star
Observers now more than forty year history. And I've got
another book coming out later this year in October.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Some awesome anthologist can be hard because it's so many
different voices and even though it could be eighteen different perspective,
it all still needs to make sense.
Speaker 5 (03:25):
As one body of work.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So one, what was the inspiration and putting together the
anthology This Arab Is Queer? And two what was your
process to making sure that the book was cohesive and
that people left with the knowledge that they needed to
understand about the intersection of being Arab as well as
being queer.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
I guess the genesis of This Ab Is Queer I
think go back to more time when I was the
editor of Style Observer. Despite the fact that it's been
around for a long time, it has such a huge
reputation in create community in Australia, it had a shoestring
budge it and it was frustrating to not be able
to cover some of the stories from our world as
an Arab person with the nuance that it deserved. And
(04:09):
I just happened to be editor around the time when
Isis was doing awful, awful things in our can Syria,
and I just felt a sense of helplessness. But at
the same time, more than anything, I saw the discourse
on social media and the discourse in mainstream media, how
our stories were weaponized or we were spoken over and
(04:30):
all these tereotypes were put were implemented against us in
ways that we didn't ask for, and our experience as
Qui Arabs was reduced to the story, the narrative of
the victim, the passive victim of a barbaric, patriarchal culture,
and so there was a lot of orientalism, there was
a lot of racism. There was a lot of mythogeny
as well, because that's what patriarchy fees on. And I
(04:54):
felt really frustrated. I just couldn't really do anything about that,
and that sort of like bubbled in my mind for
a while, and then I moved to London and had
that perspective of distance, and then basically the year before
the pandemic, there was a series of amazing anthologies that
came out in the UK. Two really good ones that
I'm really a big fan of is The Good Immigrant,
(05:14):
and also another one called Our Women on the Ground
is an anthology of our female journalists. We've talked about
their experiences reporting its correspondence living in the Middle East,
and given my journalists background, just reading these anthologies got
me ticked, my brain ticking, and I thought, I wonder
if I could do something like this myself, and then
(05:34):
before you know, my publisher came on board. I was
really lucky with my publisher because they're based in London,
but the family that owns is the Lebanese family.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
They're really progressive.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And the whole purpose of it was to provide a
space for us to share our stories on our own terms,
without the interference of the white gaze, without the interference
of orient tellist narratives interrupting or intervening with how we
share our stories. The point of these books to challenge
the gatekeepers who decide which stories from our community is
worth sharing. And I just wanted to be able to
(06:07):
stress stories of joy, share stories of sex, share stories
of parties, or at the same time still have gotten
nuance in there where we share stress, stories of challenges
and grief and sadness. We are, you know, a three
dimensional community with so many diverse experiences.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Yeah, I think about that often, being from two communities
that have shared oppressions but also have very different depressions.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
Many years ago about an essay about just how the.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Narrative is often pushed that black community is the most
homophobic community of all communities, right, Like that was a
narrative that was being pushed, and it was like, no,
we have homophobia, but all communities exactly, and ours wasn't
derived from like we had queerness in Africa, so we
know it wasn't necessarily derived from us.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
But colonialism played a major role.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Religious doctrination during slavery played a major role in how
our community started to look at queerness differently from where
we came. So what is that experience like for you?
Is it, you know, being queer and being area?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, I mean, look, that was the other purpose of
the book is to sort of tell our own our
communities that we exist, because so often we're told that
we there are no queen people in in our world.
That is the Western import that it's the Western cultural thing.
It's not no such thing exists among amongst Arabs. Whereas
if you look at the history of that region, like
we have some of the gayest histories in the world,
(07:32):
Like you look at the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, the Phoenicians,
like they have some really queer stuff going on back then,
you know, and.
Speaker 5 (07:41):
To egyptianman that were buried in the tomb Togetist.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
Twenty five hundred BC. I remember reading that story.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, and I need to I don't need to explain
to people, like, you know, the fact of Roman baths
and how men would go in and just do stuff
in the bathrooms and swornas like it happened.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And we're all descendants of that.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
The Romans were there in our regions, so we're all
descendants of that. And my point is that we've always
existed and we're always going to exist no matter where
we are in the world. And I guess I wanted
to show that it is possible to be Arab and
queer at the same time, and we had that lived
experience of enjoying both and the fact that they go
hand in hand together. Sure, they're going to be some conflicts,
(08:18):
there's to give me some people who disagree with us,
but I kind of wanted this.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Book to be like a written record to.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
People who challenge us that even though you say we
don't exist, we're showing you that ways that we can exist.
My book is not the first of queer our book ever.
There's been some fiction novels beforehand, but it's probably the
first nonfiction anthology of queer Arab stories. I do get
told a lot that Arabs are homophobes, and you know,
we're often given this implicit or even blatant expectation to
(08:49):
choose one identity over the other, so we can either
be gay and forget about being Arabs in Western spaces,
whereas an Arab spaceis we're told we can be Arab
and forget about being gay, like we can't do both
at once, and coming from Sydney where there's.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
A very large Arab community.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
But when I was living in Sydney ten years ago
in my twenties, being a baby gay going out, even
when I used to be on Vinty to tell people
that are gay in Palestinian even telling them that to
their face. Sometimes the guys will look at me like
that meme of the woman trying to figure out all
these mathematical quationres like how can you be Palestinian gay
at the same time, and often it was like a
(09:25):
way sort of weed out all the dodgy men, I guess,
because sometimes the first thing they'll say is like, oh, I.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Don't don't like us back there, do they?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
And they don't realize saying that as one of the
most racist things you can say, because it just eraises
our existence. They're just raising us by saying that, and
they're also raising our agency, like we can live our
own experiences on our own terms. You don't need you
to come with this white savior complex BS or that
they clearly need to unlearn. I do acknowledge that there
(09:55):
is definitely homophobia amongst Aurbs, But like you said, there's homophobia,
so it's like comity.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
And a lot of the homophobia and transphobia in our
communities does come from colonialism as well. Of course, the
Ottoman Empire was nowhere near perfect. It's not perfect at all,
but there was no law there that criminalized homosexuality in
Ottoman Empire. When the Britain of French came and carved
up the region with borders and the stupid colonial ambitions
(10:26):
in the region, that's when they introduced the laws and
many of the laws that still exist there today.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I hangover from those.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Colonial years and I do wonder, like how much more
acceptance there would be if colonialism never happened. And of
course I do wonder how much more acceptance there would
be if the state of Israel was never created because
of the pink quashing day pedal and the racism that
comes with the pinku washing and the way it enforces
(10:52):
a divisive rhetoric between our communities and isolates queen members
of the community in that way.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Pink washing For people who don't know, could you explain
what you know pink washing means? You know, especially in
the context of you know, Israel Powerstown.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Pink washing is the exploitation of queer identity, is queer bodies,
queer culture for public relations purposes, for marketing purposes, business entities,
corporations have been doing it for years and years by
just taking part in pride praise for example. But I
guess the State of Israel they use it to justify
(11:30):
Zionism and the set of colonialist project. Did they thrive
on a perfect example of pink washing. Often you will
hear Israel being the so called safe haven for queen
people in the Middle East, and it just pushes this
idea that it's the only place in the Middle East
where it's safe to be queer, which is absolutely bullshit.
(11:51):
Could if you look through that, really the safest place
really to be queer in Israel is Tel Aviv, and
like every other part of Israel is like kind of
a religious so kind of conservative, you know, especially it
plays like jewisdem like that's like the heart of religious
of anything.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I'm sure there are progressive pockets in those areas. I
don't want to deny that. But then also we look further.
When you see how televised pride, for example, is promoted,
you don't often see a.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Lot of diversity.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
It's like, ah, so, who's in the safe haven for exactly?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Is it for people with Western passports?
Speaker 1 (12:26):
And specifically is it people with white people from the West,
not so much anyone else.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I don't see any albs getting taken parts.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And also his stories of Israel supposedly accepting a lot
of Queen Palestinian refugees, and they make it sound like
it's a all roses and sunshine, like it's an easy process,
but like it is not easy, Like a claiming asylum
in any country as a refugee is a really dehumanizing process.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
There's no pink door in the apartheid war.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Just because you're queer in the West Bank doesn't mean
that Israeli authorities are suddenly going to give you special
treatment and say, oh yeah, let's roll out the pink
carpet for you come in, we'll give you a refugee status.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
It's not that simple.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
And pink question also pedals this idea that Palestinians are
supposedly better off under Israeli control, which is absolute bullshit,
because there's no way. No one is free as long
as you're living under occupation.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It's just like.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Whether you're queer, whether you're a woman, whether it disabled, anyone,
even a sis hep man is not free when you're
living under occupation, full stop. I'm pretty sure Angela Davis
is the one who says we are not free until
we are all free, and that applies it perfectly to
Palestine as well. You look at what's happening in Gaza.
There is a queer community there and they're still there,
(13:43):
and they're still just as much equally targets as everyone
else in the genocidal war that's happening there. It's just
a constant distraction from the war crimes that the Israeli
state is doing. It committing is constantly used to justify
by their war crime. It's constantly used to justify their occupation.
(14:03):
It's constantly used to justify the genocidal war and Gaza
I mean, we all remember the viral fur of the
Israeli soldier holding the rainbow flag a miss rubble behind him,
and it's that on the flag in the name of love.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
It was like, but there's all this destruction behind you.
What the love about that? You know?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
And now back to my conversation with Elius Josh, I
just saw something recently where a lot of Palestinians are
asking for us to not refer to it as a
genocide but start to refer to it as a holocaust.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Okay, yep, I.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Just see something recently about that, and I haven't had
enough time to fully because I am.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Very big on words mean things.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And when you use certain words, people will not react
to them because they one, they actually don't know what
the word means. Like people actually just have no idea
what a genocide actually mean. They know what a homicide is, right,
but when you say genocide, they actually don't.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
Know what that really means.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
And there is no physical connection to the word, because
no one has ever looked at slavery as a genocide, right.
No one looked at how they treated slaves as genocidal.
No one looked at Jim Crow and the lynchings across
the South as genocidal, right like, they didn't view them
(16:00):
as that, and that word was never used. So it's
hard for people to tie an event to a word,
but you can tie events to the word holocaust. And
if you start using it that way, how do you
feel about the importance of how we frame what is
happening in Palestine so that people really understand.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I think it's important to first and foremost to listen
to what Palestinis and Gaza are saying.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
And if they're saying.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
We need to call it a holocaust, then yes, I
think we should. And it's not the first holocaust in history,
and what happened in World War Two, the Jewish Holocaust
is not the first holocaust either. I'm pretty sure the
first historically recorded holocaust was the Armenian Holocaust that happened
that during World War One, undertaken with the Ottoman Turks
(16:48):
regime at the time. So I think it's the word holocaust. No,
there should be no exclusivity on who owns that word
because the definition of it what we're seeing now, especially
in the last two three days, where Israel is actively
starving Gaza, and it's really important to say is that
they are starving Gaza, rather than call it a famine,
(17:11):
rather than call it people are starving, because when you
put the emphasisis on Israel actually starving the Gaza, it
implies that what we all know the fact. But the
UN has gone on record to say that there is
enough food for three months, there's enough food and fuel
and water for the next three months, but the Israeli
(17:31):
authorities are just not letting it in the country. You
can't call it a famine because the fact the food
is there, they're just not being let in. And what
we've been seeing for the past two three days is
something basically akin to a holocaust because people are dropping dead,
people are dying of starvation that was imposed on them
by the Israeli forces. We're just seeing holocaust live in
(17:53):
real time on our tiny little phones, on social media,
on TV, and the leaders of the world are doing
nothing about it.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
What is the importance of, like the global world becoming
more invested in world politics Because growing up, we were
taught about the past, right, we were taught about the
French Revolution and all these things in the past, but
like world politics was not It just is not something
that we have ever been taught to be invested in
(18:20):
unless nine to eleven happens and then we're under attack,
and then everybody is like, wait, there's all this that
actually happens on the other side of the world.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
We don't know about.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
So what is the importance of us having global engagement
and not just isolation.
Speaker 5 (18:35):
Engagement from you know, where we live.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I think having this global engagement it's cool to who
we are as human being, because we need to be
able to empathize with other people. We need to be
able to have humanitarian approach to how we live our lives,
one that foster solidarity with other communities. I personally believe
we need to strive for is a challenge to state
(18:57):
the nation state the owners is placed on this date
rather than the people. That is really dangerous because that's
where fascism frives. When we have this more global outlook,
this more interconnectedness between communities and countries and cultures, there's
a lot more understanding, there's a lot more empathy between people.
And I was thinking the other day, like, I do
(19:18):
wonder how this general stidal war would have panned out
in an age where social media wasn't around, And it
makes me wonder like, you know, had World War two
happened when social media was around, could we.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Have stopped the Jewish Holocaust back then?
Speaker 1 (19:38):
You know, yeah, exactly yeah, And could we have allowed
for more space for critical thinking, critical thought to be
shared and discussed online because back then the mainstream media,
printed media, TV, radio was the only way we could
sort of obtain the information. There's very much one way
stroe with social media. It gives us a chance to
(19:59):
engage with that and to sort of hold these media
outlets to account.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
And I think that's really important.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I say that as a journalist myself, we do need
to be held to account in many ways. I get
the silver lining of the general style of war in
Gaza is that it is happening on social media, is
that it's making it impossible for people to ignore. It's
making it impossible for anyone to say, oh, I didn't know,
because everyone knows, and you can't pretend that you didn't know,
(20:26):
Like how millions of Germans could pretend they didn't know
when the Jewish Holocaust was happening because that was a
state of how things were back then. But today every
single person in this world can't pretend they didn't know,
And I think just using the active language war is
really important. We saw that every day, every minute we
saw a new headline, where when Russia invaded Ukraine, all
(20:49):
the headlines that we saw were really placed in the
owners on Russia being the aggress exactly, yes, the aggressor.
And then all of a sudden, when a curbs and happening,
the language that the media was using was very passive.
It's like, oh, exactly, how did if Palestinians die?
Speaker 2 (21:06):
But why are you saying die rather than killed?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
And what we're seeing now is in the past two
three days, don't say they're starving, just say they are
being starved by Israel or Israel is starving them, because
that is exactly what's happening.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
That is the cold hard fact.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
And now back to my conversation with Elios Joshin. So,
I just want to talk a little bit about you
have a new book, yes, coming out this October, Yes,
the Queer Arab Family. Can you just give us a
little insight on what to expect from this book?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (22:04):
So, this Queer Ab Family is a follow up to
that Fciaritis Queer. It's an anthology again, it's a collection
of nonfiction, short memoirs and essays, but mostly short memoirs.
And I told writers to explore what family means to
them as a Queer ab and that could mean, you know,
a biological family.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
That could be mean chosen family.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
It could mean community as family, it could mean solidarity.
There is one chapter in there that is centered around
the genocide in Gaza from a Palestinian writer, Randejore. She's
based in La She's in a phenomenal writer. She's amazing.
One writer talked about his journey with only fans and
how that allowed him to go from being the estranged
(22:49):
son to becoming the son that supported his family who
was still in Syria while he was in Canada earning
the money through earning fans to be able to support
his family. There's another story there from one of the
co founders of Club Up that's a Queer Arabic music
dance party that happens in Sydney. Pretty sure it's the
longest running Queer Arabic music dance party in the diaspora.
(23:10):
There's another story about Lebanie gay couple look into sharing
their journey to adopt a child and the whole reason
I wanted to do this book is to sort of
claim the idea of family as queer Abs, because in
our cultures, the idea of family is drummed into our
psyche from a very young age, like we're told that
(23:33):
nothing is more important than family. What we do is
individuals reflects on our family and reflects on our parents,
standing in the community and stuff, and a lot of
that means that we tend to sort of sacrifice our
personal needs for the good of a family, and worst
case scenarios, some queer abs might be excommunicated from their
(23:54):
families or they have to turn their back on their
families for their own mental health and own safety. So
because of that, I wanted to reclaim the notional family.
It's like, you know what, we're family too. Whether you
choose to accept us or not, we're still going to
celebrate being a family ourselves. And just because that family
is not biological family does not mean it's not family.
(24:16):
You know, we can still be proud of our cultures.
We can still practice our traditions, we can still speak
our language, listen to the music, and still engage with
other people through our cultural backgrounds, and we can still
be proud of that.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Regardless of who our what our sexuality is.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Yes, absolutely love the heart of most of my storytelling
this family like when it gets down to the bottom
of it, despite all the oppressions and everything else, family
is like at the core.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
We are coming towards the end of the show.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Like to always give people the space and the grace
to discuss things that they may be tired about. They
stay to have a calm God, George is tired where
every week I were right about what I was tired of.
I think right now, living in the United States, it
is I am very, very tired of our elected officials
claiming the bait and switch every single time they vote
(25:10):
for something that they know is disastrous and then pretend
after the fact that they didn't know how disastrous it
was going to be.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
I think people are seeing through it. Finally.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I think with the whole Epstein thing, I think watching
a base of people feel like.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
They were baited and switched when.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
It was so obvious that this was this is how
this was going to turn out has been very interesting,
but it's also very tiring.
Speaker 5 (25:38):
So I'd just like to give you some space.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Is there anything that you are tired of that is
going on for you in your life this week.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Look, I guess it's an easy one for me to answer.
I'm tired of Zionism. I'm just tired of the way
it sort of weaponizes an exploits Jewish history and Judaism
to the point where any quit of Zionism is deemed
anti Semitic, where that is not the case at all.
I'm tired of how Zionism erases us as queer Palestinians.
(26:08):
It silences Palestinian voices, it silences any form of criticism
to anything, any form of criticism to the state of
as well.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Yeah yeah, yeah, any words or any mantras that you
live by that you would love to leave our listeners with.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Good question.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I am a big fan of this poem by a
really well known Palestinian poets. The idea she did pun
called we Teach Life, And in her poem she goes
back and forth about her experience with media and stuff,
and it's this amazing quote that she ends her poem
is we teach life, sir. And I say that all
(26:49):
the time because we do teach life. And then it
just shows that how Palestinians always teach life, always prioritize
joy over trauma and how expressing who we are as
in a joyful way and showing pride and in our culture,
sharing the love with other people.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
That is how we teach life.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
It just encapsulates the joy that we as Palestinians have
and why we need to just hold onto that joy
because joy is a form of resistance.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yes, yes, joy is a form of resistance. As my
grandmother said, you call it all joy. Yeah, no matter
what you're going through, it's part of a church him
as well call it all joy.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
Alies. I would love to thank you for being here today.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
You know, your work, your words makes us all smarter,
it makes us all better people.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So thanks.
Speaker 5 (27:41):
I'm so appreciative of you coming.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
On back, and thank you so much for having me
on your show. I've been a big fan of your
writing for a long time, so it's an honor to
be on.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
Today.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
I'm leaving you with a quote from the Palestinian poet
my mood Darwish. Life defined only as the opposite of
death is not life. Fighting Words is a production of
(28:23):
iHeart Podcasts in partnership with BET's Case Studios. I'm Georgia Johnson.
This episode was produced by Charlotte Morley. Executive producers are
myself and Twiggy Puchi Guar Song with Adam Pinkss and
Brick Cats for Best Case Studios. The theme song was
written and composed by kole Vas Bambianna and myself. Original
(28:44):
music by Klevas. This episode was edited and scored.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
By Max Michael Miller.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Our iHeart Team is Ali Perry and Carl Ketel following
rap Fighting Words Wherever You get your Podcast
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