October 23, 2025 • 30 mins
O today's podcast we get an update on Palestine from Activist Suzanne Yatim
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Civic Cyper Studios. Welcome to the QR Code,
where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes. Q
Ward is on Family Business today, But have no fear.
Ramsey's job 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
this show, and we don't want to spend today's conversation
(00:22):
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,
he's a writer as well as an activist. As an
(00:44):
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 act Orvist and we're going to make sure
that we establish some connective tissue for new folks that
(01:05):
are just now hearing your voice. But welcome back to
the show. It's been over a year.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's been over a year. I missed you, guys.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
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, certainly from a Palestinian perspective,
what the goings on in Gaza and the West Bank
(01:34):
were like. But for a lot of people who are
just hearing your voice for the first time again, the
show has done a lot of growing since you were
last here. 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 interro.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
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
(02:11):
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,
(02:32):
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 Quinton and we started I started coming here,
I've been six times and I'm going back again for Christmas.
(02:54):
So I have it's so intimate for me, you know,
I walk the streets with this understanding of what what
it means. And I can see Palestine when I'm there
through the lens of an American which is amazing and
frustrating at the same time. Because I went there in
(03:16):
December and 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,
(03:37):
and I 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
(03:58):
like ten guys. 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
(04:19):
and kind 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. Sorry that was a
(04:42):
weird long intro.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
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 in into Palestinian life and
(05:04):
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.
(05:28):
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 lensto 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
(05:52):
I don't know if this is true, but maybe there
was a sense of hopelessness that probably said it in
some times 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
(06:13):
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 spoke, and
(06:33):
so 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
(06:54):
this is significant. So I'm going to say this just
so that our listeners know, and I happen to know this.
You are Christian woman, and your family in is Christian,
in Palestini is Christian, right, And so I want to
say that not because I want to diminish.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
No, I totally get what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Islamic people, but I want to show that there's a
diversity of faiths in this land. For people that might
harbor anti Islamic sentiment, maybe that's a way that they
can find something.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
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 millions of dollars
are leaving our economy or leaving our land and it's
(07:45):
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, will I will mention
that's an important point. Hey, you're our country.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Year.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Our government is murdering Christians in the Holy Land, just
casually without any regard. They're destroying ancient churches casually, without
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
(08:21):
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, 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
(08:42):
just it's just the strangest thing to me. So it's
really really important to show the diversity.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
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 how true
this is, but I believe it to be true. I
typically will only engage in scholarly sources or journalistically credible
sources of news content, and then I have to do
(09:09):
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 ended up in some sort of trouble.
(09:30):
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
(09:51):
you lived in 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 the particulars,
I might get a couple of them wrong, but the
story overall is factual. You could look this up. So anyway,
(10:12):
this 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
(10:33):
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
(10:56):
is that that that is not more widely celebrated.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I know, it's really cool, right right.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
And we know that Jesus comes from Jewish people.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Jesus is Jewish Jews in Palestine, right exactly, and that
it's not weird to us at all.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Okay, all right, so anyway your thoughts and then we'll
talk about the billions spent.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Because 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.
(11:41):
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 they have like a parade
(12:01):
down the streets and then 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 (12:17):
Sure people, 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
(12:38):
he pray 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,
(12:59):
you were, remember he said that that was what that
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 (13:14):
He also has every right to be fuming, has every
right to hate as much as he wanted to hate
exactly 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. You
(13:35):
must understand it's a black man. If something happens, if
a police officer does something to a black man, it's like, well,
what do you do?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
You know, maybe did you comply right?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Right? And that's pretty similar to us. So anyway, we're
we're angry. We're really angry. Are 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 show on radio shows, talking to people, going out
on the streets and trying to with as much as
we can speak with love.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Well, 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 you know,
(14:32):
when you talk about how 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 means that you're
(14:56):
anti Semitic.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Propaganda, point right, that's great propaganda.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
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
(15:25):
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
(15:48):
that a lot of folks are trying. We're trying to
chronicle back when I was a little bit more deeper
in my investigative, you know, 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.
(16:08):
We last 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 the third party.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
If I'm not no, I decided for the first time
since I was eighteen years old not to vote.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
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 Harris. I remember that part very clearly. Do you
feel like, well, how about this? What are your thoughts
(16:56):
on how the election went?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
As a Palestinians as well as a Palestinian short but
as you two, we felt so.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
He has said 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.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
And his.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Vice president, who finally decided to run. I think, if
I remember correctly, Biden tried to run for a little bit, right,
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
(17:59):
cannot vote for you. That makes no sense. In what
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,
(18:25):
who do we vote for? And I'm like, why are you?
Why are you asking me?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
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 Israel lobby group, it does not happen. They
are in their pockets and they run everything. This really
(18:52):
is the United States of Israel and ways people I
don't think they understand how deep it goes. So either
way we were we were screwed. And then just emotionally
like I remember talking to you guys, and I remember
Q talking about what's that twenty project? Yeah, and him
(19:12):
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, that's it, that's all
we could do. And so we felt so And the
(19:33):
problem is that everybody was coming to Palstinians 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 something that you understand
as a black man, the system runs to fine. The
(19:54):
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 is insane.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
We'll get to 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
(20:32):
want you to reflect on it, you know, in terms
of how it how it fits in your world. I
think this is gonna take me a while, so give
me a long runway here, okay. I think that I'll
speak for myself for me because I consider myself an activist.
(20:57):
You know, I go out to protest. I love being outside,
like that's my joint. I like getting out there. I
marched with people who were so passionate about shining a
light on what was going on in Gaza. I was
also made to choose from the only two choices that
(21:22):
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. I admitted that prior to October seventh, Gaza
(21:48):
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, you're like, oh my gosh, this
is such an awful thing to be happening on this planet.
(22:10):
I have to vote. I have to bear in mind
that I know people who might vote will affect their
material reality. So when I ask, hey, I have to
do something otherwise it's chosen for me. Which of these
do I choose? It comes from that place. Okay. The
(22:32):
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, proper framing. Joe Biden, indeed
(22:58):
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, who said, you know, he
needs to finish the job. He just got, you know,
(23:19):
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 Israel and willfully intentionally ignoring the
(23:41):
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 light. In that position, this might be me
giving her a lot of grace, and I need you
to check me if I'm doing that. I'm sure you will.
But one of the things that we had to do
(24:02):
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 no power to change the material reality
(24:23):
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.
(24:43):
So when 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,
people that otherwise would have been votes for Kamala Harris
(25:06):
or 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
(25:29):
from voting, do the 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 (25:55):
I have seen Kamalo walk up to Apex and say
how she will always be a friend to Israel. I
want to 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
(26:18):
you're kind of doing 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.
(26:38):
It's a big ask. 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 the
(27:00):
victim card, 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.
(27:23):
That's not our that's not our faults. We're we're we're
already dealing with a lot.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
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 one.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I mean, I'm not a I have to I have
to as if I had to guess just based on her,
based on what she has already said, based on what
I know about her. I yeah, I don't see it going.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Going any better. Now, here's the other part.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
She's just can I just say, she'll just sound prettier,
She'll 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
(28:18):
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 (28:29):
Now on that one thing I want to say, because
and I'm sure you'd agree, when it comes to Israel
and Apec and what would have happened, Well, you know,
(28:50):
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
(29:11):
I think primarily to Q who's living in a different
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,
(29:31):
which again I can't say one way or the other.
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
(29:52):
say that. I want us to. I have a lot
more questions for you, so I want us to resume room.
This conversation is just a quick tick
Broadcasting from the Civic Cyper Studios. Welcome to the QR Code,
where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes. Q
Ward is on Family Business today, But have no fear.
Ramsey's job 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
this show, and we don't want to spend today's conversation
(00:22):
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,
he's a writer as well as an activist. As an
(00:44):
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 act Orvist and we're going to make sure
that we establish some connective tissue for new folks that
(01:05):
are just now hearing your voice. But welcome back to
the show. It's been over a year.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's been over a year. I missed you, guys.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
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, certainly from a Palestinian perspective,
what the goings on in Gaza and the West Bank
(01:34):
were like. But for a lot of people who are
just hearing your voice for the first time again, the
show has done a lot of growing since you were
last here. 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 interro.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
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
(02:11):
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,
(02:32):
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 Quinton and we started I started coming here,
I've been six times and I'm going back again for Christmas.
(02:54):
So I have it's so intimate for me, you know,
I walk the streets with this understanding of what what
it means. And I can see Palestine when I'm there
through the lens of an American which is amazing and
frustrating at the same time. Because I went there in
(03:16):
December and 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,
(03:37):
and I 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
(03:58):
like ten guys. 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
(04:19):
and kind 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. Sorry that was a
(04:42):
weird long intro.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
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 in into Palestinian life and
(05:04):
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.
(05:28):
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 lensto 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
(05:52):
I don't know if this is true, but maybe there
was a sense of hopelessness that probably said it in
some times 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
(06:13):
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 spoke, and
(06:33):
so 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
(06:54):
this is significant. So I'm going to say this just
so that our listeners know, and I happen to know this.
You are Christian woman, and your family in is Christian,
in Palestini is Christian, right, And so I want to
say that not because I want to diminish.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
No, I totally get what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Islamic people, but I want to show that there's a
diversity of faiths in this land. For people that might
harbor anti Islamic sentiment, maybe that's a way that they
can find something.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
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 millions of dollars
are leaving our economy or leaving our land and it's
(07:45):
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, will I will mention
that's an important point. Hey, you're our country.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Year.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Our government is murdering Christians in the Holy Land, just
casually without any regard. They're destroying ancient churches casually, without
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
(08:21):
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, 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
(08:42):
just it's just the strangest thing to me. So it's
really really important to show the diversity.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
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 how true
this is, but I believe it to be true. I
typically will only engage in scholarly sources or journalistically credible
sources of news content, and then I have to do
(09:09):
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 ended up in some sort of trouble.
(09:30):
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
(09:51):
you lived in 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 the particulars,
I might get a couple of them wrong, but the
story overall is factual. You could look this up. So anyway,
(10:12):
this 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
(10:33):
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
(10:56):
is that that that is not more widely celebrated.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I know, it's really cool, right right.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
And we know that Jesus comes from Jewish people.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Jesus is Jewish Jews in Palestine, right exactly, and that
it's not weird to us at all.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Okay, all right, so anyway your thoughts and then we'll
talk about the billions spent.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Because 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.
(11:41):
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 they have like a parade
(12:01):
down the streets and then 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 (12:17):
Sure people, 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
(12:38):
he pray 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,
(12:59):
you were, remember he said that that was what that
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 (13:14):
He also has every right to be fuming, has every
right to hate as much as he wanted to hate
exactly 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. You
(13:35):
must understand it's a black man. If something happens, if
a police officer does something to a black man, it's like, well,
what do you do?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
You know, maybe did you comply right?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Right? And that's pretty similar to us. So anyway, we're
we're angry. We're really angry. Are 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 show on radio shows, talking to people, going out
on the streets and trying to with as much as
we can speak with love.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Well, 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 you know,
(14:32):
when you talk about how 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 means that you're
(14:56):
anti Semitic.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Propaganda, point right, that's great propaganda.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
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
(15:25):
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
(15:48):
that a lot of folks are trying. We're trying to
chronicle back when I was a little bit more deeper
in my investigative, you know, 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.
(16:08):
We last 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 the third party.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
If I'm not no, I decided for the first time
since I was eighteen years old not to vote.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
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 Harris. I remember that part very clearly. Do you
feel like, well, how about this? What are your thoughts
(16:56):
on how the election went?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
As a Palestinians as well as a Palestinian short but
as you two, we felt so.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
He has said 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.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
And his.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Vice president, who finally decided to run. I think, if
I remember correctly, Biden tried to run for a little bit, right,
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
(17:59):
cannot vote for you. That makes no sense. In what
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,
(18:25):
who do we vote for? And I'm like, why are you?
Why are you asking me?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
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 Israel lobby group, it does not happen. They
are in their pockets and they run everything. This really
(18:52):
is the United States of Israel and ways people I
don't think they understand how deep it goes. So either
way we were we were screwed. And then just emotionally
like I remember talking to you guys, and I remember
Q talking about what's that twenty project? Yeah, and him
(19:12):
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, that's it, that's all
we could do. And so we felt so And the
(19:33):
problem is that everybody was coming to Palstinians 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 something that you understand
as a black man, the system runs to fine. The
(19:54):
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 is insane.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
We'll get to 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
(20:32):
want you to reflect on it, you know, in terms
of how it how it fits in your world. I
think this is gonna take me a while, so give
me a long runway here, okay. I think that I'll
speak for myself for me because I consider myself an activist.
(20:57):
You know, I go out to protest. I love being outside,
like that's my joint. I like getting out there. I
marched with people who were so passionate about shining a
light on what was going on in Gaza. I was
also made to choose from the only two choices that
(21:22):
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. I admitted that prior to October seventh, Gaza
(21:48):
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, you're like, oh my gosh, this
is such an awful thing to be happening on this planet.
(22:10):
I have to vote. I have to bear in mind
that I know people who might vote will affect their
material reality. So when I ask, hey, I have to
do something otherwise it's chosen for me. Which of these
do I choose? It comes from that place. Okay. The
(22:32):
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, proper framing. Joe Biden, indeed
(22:58):
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, who said, you know, he
needs to finish the job. He just got, you know,
(23:19):
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 Israel and willfully intentionally ignoring the
(23:41):
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 light. In that position, this might be me
giving her a lot of grace, and I need you
to check me if I'm doing that. I'm sure you will.
But one of the things that we had to do
(24:02):
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 no power to change the material reality
(24:23):
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.
(24:43):
So when 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,
people that otherwise would have been votes for Kamala Harris
(25:06):
or 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
(25:29):
from voting, do the 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 (25:55):
I have seen Kamalo walk up to Apex and say
how she will always be a friend to Israel. I
want to 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
(26:18):
you're kind of doing 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.
(26:38):
It's a big ask. 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 the
(27:00):
victim card, 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.
(27:23):
That's not our that's not our faults. We're we're we're
already dealing with a lot.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
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 one.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I mean, I'm not a I have to I have
to as if I had to guess just based on her,
based on what she has already said, based on what
I know about her. I yeah, I don't see it going.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Going any better. Now, here's the other part.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
She's just can I just say, she'll just sound prettier,
She'll 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
(28:18):
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 (28:29):
Now on that one thing I want to say, because
and I'm sure you'd agree, when it comes to Israel
and Apec and what would have happened, Well, you know,
(28:50):
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
(29:11):
I think primarily to Q who's living in a different
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,
(29:31):
which again I can't say one way or the other.
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
(29:52):
say that. I want us to. I have a lot
more questions for you, so I want us to resume room.
This conversation is just a quick tick
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