Plain English with Derek Thompson - The Fragile Hope for Peace in Israel-Palestine

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

In the last few weeks, our coverage of this conflict has tried very hard to see the problem from as many angles as possible. In our first episode, we considered the political motivations of Hamas’s October 7 attack. In our second episode, we considered the behavior of Israel’s government from a critical perspective. In a third episode, we asked whether Israel’s military objectives made sense by speaking to a counter-terrorism expert. And last week, we told the 150-year history of Israel, Palestine, and the origins of Hamas by speaking to two historians, one who was clearly more sympathetic to Israel and another who was clearly more sympathetic to Palestine. There is a voice we haven’t heard from in this series: a Palestinian voice. Today’s interview is with Sally Abed, a Palestinian-Israeli, who is an activist with the group Standing Together. We talk about the "psychosis" and "impossibility" of being Palestinian in Israel, what happens after a ceasefire, and how to build a coalition for peace. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [e-mail]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Sally Abed Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What would you do if you got scammed? Would you suffer in silence, or would you do something about it? Well, I got scammed once, and this is the story of what I did. I'm Justin Sales, the host of the Wedding Scammer, a true crime podcast from The Ringer. And for seven episodes, we're hunting a comment. A guy with a lot of aliases, a guy who's ruined a lot of weddings. And with the help of some friends, I just might be able to catch him. Listen to the Wedding Scammer on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Today, we have a very important interview on this show, and I want to give some context for this interview by reviewing the full picture of our Israel-Palestine coverage to date. In the last few weeks, our coverage of this conflict has tried very hard to see the problem from as many angles as possible. In our first interview, we considered the political motivations of Hamas's October 7 attack. In our second episode, we considered the behavior of Israel's government from a very critical perspective. In the third episode, we scrutinized Israel's military objectives by talking to a counterterrorism expert. And last week, we told the 150-year history of Israel, Palestine, and the origins of Hamas, by speaking to two historians, one who was clearly more sympathetic to Israel, and another who was clearly more sympathetic to Palestine. The diversity here, the diversity of approaches, with some episodes that might have sounded more like a defensive Israel, while other shows might have sounded more like a sharp critique of Israel, is not an accident.

It is a reflection of an expression of my own anguish on this issue. It would be easier for me to simply think that Israel is a genocidal colonial settler state and just be done with it. But I don't believe that frame is true. It would also be easy to say, on the other hand, that every democracy facing an invasion by a militant neighbor that burns its babies in ovens would, of course, wage absolute war to destroy the arsenal of its enemies.

but I do not believe that retaliation without limit is useful. There are many voices out there that find the history of this region to be uncomplicated. There are other shows that find the path forward simple, and if what you want is an uncomplicated story followed by a simple solution to Israel-Palestine, this podcast is not for you. And this show in particular is not for you. Now, there is a voice we haven't heard from yet in our series. we haven't yet heard from a Palestinian voice.

And that's why today's interview is with Sally Opet, a Palestinian-Israeli who is part of an activist group standing together. To give you a sense of what this group stands for, let me read a selection of how they describe the urgency of their cause. Quote, the current socio-political reality in Israel is unbearable. Unending occupation feeds violence, fear, and hatred between Israelis and Palestinians.

Rather than seriously address these problems, our political leaders use fear and racism to divide us. Instead of providing genuine security solutions, they deliver never-ending wars. End quote. When I read this, what strikes me is an idea so simple and yet so absent in the debates that I follow about this conflict. The governments of Gaza and Israel

don't just pose a threat to each, other. Their choices, their policies, their very words have made their own citizens less safe. Today there are open letters signed by some of the world's most famous writers and actors and artists that are calling for, quote, a free Palestine, a quote, self-determined Gaza state. And yet somehow, most of these open letters make no mention of the fact that Palestinians in Gaza are are not free under Hamas. They cannot self-determine under Hamas. There have been no elections in 17 years in Gaza.

Hamas is an autocratic, illiberal, kleptocratic police state. It is a war regime that steals from its own citizens, that diverts aid away from hospitals and schools toward the construction of military tunnels that it strategically places directly under those very impoverished hospitals and schools. Yes, clearly Hamas makes Israelis less safe. But it is just as clear to me that Hamas is a clear and present danger to the lives of Ghazans as well.

Meanwhile, there are pro-Israeli advocates with followers in the tens of millions who defend Israel's right to security, yet make no mention of the fact that Netanyahu's policies directly made Israel less secure. It was Netanyahu who subsidized Hamas to weaken the cause of Palestinian unity. It was Netanyahu who avoided corruption charges by surrounding himself with far-right ministers, ministers whose policies today are terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank and decimating Israel's international reputation. It was Netanyahu and his government that shifted IDF forces from the south to the settlements, thus leaving the Kibbutzim near Gaza vulnerable to the worst terrorist attack in that nation's history. Israeli defenders in the American media are sometimes so eager to dramatize the obvious danger of Hamas

that they've lost sight of the deeper and almost more tragic fact that a far-right pro-settler Israeli coalition under Netanyahu makes their own citizens less safe. And the lurid, lurid cruelty of this far-right coalition is destroying the reputation of the world's one Jewish state. it is impossible to imagine peace in this region without a multi-state solution and it is equally impossible to imagine a multi-state solution with either Hamas or a radical Israeli government at the table.

Peace requires regime change in Palestine but just as urgently it requires regime change in Israel. Without both, what you will get is death and death and death all marching under the banner of one-sided justice. As David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, wrote, quote, any world in which Hamas and an increasingly reactionary Israeli leadership dictate the policy and the temper of the region

is doomed to more injustice, confrontation, and death. I'm not naive. I know that what I'm asking for is not likely to happen soon. Certainly not this year. not next year, maybe not the next decade or two. I know it takes time for new political movements to grow, but I am interested in finding the seeds of any movement

that has the possibility of creating peace. I want to hear more from the Israelis and the Palestinians who see as I do that the old men who got us into this will not be the leaders to get us out of it. I'm Derek Thompson. This is plain English. Sally Abed, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you, Derek.

Thank you for having me. Before we talk about the difficulty of achieving peace and social justice and this part of the world, can you tell me on a personal level what it's like being a Palestinian-Israeli at this moment? At any moment, I would describe it as a psychosis. But right now, it's just, it's almost an impossibility.

it's almost an impossibility. It feels like there is this requirement for us to erase ourselves completely as Palestinians. It just seems like there is no space for us to exist as Palestinians right now in Israel. Anything that we are saying, anything that we are expressing is just not enough or not good or bad or incited. or hateful or terror supporting. We are immediately became the enemies from within. We are going through a lot of incitement and hostile environment around us, through the media and on the streets.

You know, our Minister of National Security and the head of police is an openly Jewish supremacist who is openly calling for, you know, the annihilation of Gaza and talking against our society here within Israel. He has been distributing tens of thousands of pieces of arms, of guns, to civil organized groups. especially in mixed cities like Heifa. So there's a very, very deep sense of insecurity, like physical insecurity. And then we are seeing mass arrests, mass like firing from work, students being expelled from universities. It's a near impossible situation to exist right now. It seems like to make it even harder, you're not just a Palestinian-Israeli. You are a Palestinian-Israeli who is an activist, who is a media figure, who speaks out and is a part of this incredibly difficult conversation that people are having is within Israel and around the world.

Just one more question on this point. What's been the hardest thing to communicate in this moment, where on the one hand, you have this horrific attack of October 7th. And on the other hand, you have this shelling of Gaza, which is clearly destroying many homes and killing many civilians. The exact number is up for debate, but the fact that there is a number is not up for debate. When you have these two sort of truths that are living side by side, what's been the hardest thing to communicate as a media representative? You know, when I said that it's near impossibility to exist as Palestinian right now, there's like this almost, there's zero space for me to express my pain and my collective trauma and my collective grief over my people in Gaza and it has to do with two main things. One, the fact that the Israeli public, the media, the government,

a lot of things for decades have systematically, you know, disconnect. connected our narrative as Arab Israelis, quote, unquote, you know, from the Palestinians. And if you want to be a good Arab, a partner, a part of the society, of the Israeli society, you absolutely cannot be Palestinian, right? And in these moments of really the experience, the duality of experience that we hold, you know, also experiencing the, the atrocities that we endured as Israeli society. You know, many of my friends lost dear ones. You know, I have been in funerals.

I've been going, it's been, we are devastated. And we see the loss and the fear and the pain. And at the same time, we see it against us. You know, we are like almost held responsible for it. And then parallel to that, we are just. not allowed to express our own experience as Palestinians and our own pain. And I think that's the hardest thing to portray just for people here, especially for Israeli, you know, Jewish public, just that duality and our right to grief our people

in Gaza. I really want to understand your perspective on how other Palestinians feel. in this moment. I don't want to hold you up as someone who can magically speak from millions of people who you are not. But, you know, last week, Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican senator in the U.S., tweeted, quote, anyone who claims to support the people of Gaza, but not Hamas, should remember that Gazans elected Hamas, end quote. I've seen this and other attempts to equate Gazans with Hamas. And this seems complicated to me.

Hamas won a plurality of the vote in Gaza in 2006. They are the state of Gaza, but also as someone who lives in a country that has elected presidents that I think were horrific human beings, I don't necessarily think that Americans are the equal of their government. So what is your idea of, what is your perspective on how to characterize Hamas as a representative of the interests of Gaza? That's a ridiculous claim, especially, you know, for elections that happened 17 years ago, where most of the people, if you really look at the population of Gaza right now, that was 17 years

ago. So most of the people that are currently live, adults that live today in Gaza actually didn't have, didn't elect, you know, their leadership. That's one. Two, if you really look at polls and people grossly overlook that, if you look at polls of the Gaza people, when they ask, when they ask them about how satisfied are they with their leadership, how supportive they are of their leadership. And you would see that over, you know, more than 50% of the people in Gaza actually are in opposition and then more are, you know, they don't know or they are not satisfied or they're, you know. So, and I think people really overlook the fact that Palestinians in Gaza just like most normal people in the world just want a leadership that can actually promote their interests, right? another thing, by the way, another very interesting point is that when they made a pull about whether people support Hamas or Fathah, you know, the other party which rules in the West Bank, there was more support for Fathah than Hamas.

And if you look at Natanyahu and his communication since 2014, he hasn't spoken to Fattah at all. and has only exclusively been communicating and negotiating with Hamas. So in many ways, you know, I think saying that Hamas is a legitimate leader of the Palestinian people in Gaza is not true. Like factually, statistically is not true. We've spoken to a few people on the show about the state of Gaza. How would you characterize the state of Gaza? People need to understand the situation and the dire humanitarian crisis that has been deteriorating for years. And in many ways, you know, what a 17-year-old who has not left Gaza, and if he was able to, he wouldn't be able to come back.

and he has gone through nine major wars, 18 attacks total, devastating results. Everyone in Gaza, you know, over 50% are unemployed. There's no employment. Over 90% of kids have PTSD and anxiety and depression. So you're looking at like such a devastated, militarily controlled community of millions that are refugees, by the way. People forget that the, you know, Palestinians in Gaza

are actually refugees from Heifa, from Yaffa, from Aka, from other villages, which in what is now Israel. You know, so they're like, dislocated as well. And just putting that all together, it's very tricky for me to explain that context to people because then they're like, oh, you're justifying their compliance to Hamas. And I'm like, I'm not. No one should justify.

Nothing can justify Hamas. And especially their, their attack on October 7th. Nothing can justify that. But we cannot look at this kind of population that has endured so much for so many years and be like, oh, why are you not, you know, rioting and like trying to get a new leadership?

I take it you hold Israel partly responsible, at least, for the conditions in Gaza. You mentioned the rationing all of these essential resources. To what extent do you hold Hamas responsible for conditions in Gaza as well? Like what is your appraisal of their leadership? Absolutely, 100%. You know, Gaza, Hamas has been receiving millions and millions and millions of dollars, you know, over the years for humanitarian aid, which they have not given to the people.

You know, you cannot not hold a radical Islamist. movement for their opinions, you know, and for their policies and for their politics and for their ideologies. You know, obviously that's on Hamas. Absolutely. Yes. And yeah, my my view on Israel's responsibilities is clear. Yeah. I think you did. Yeah. You have said before, quote, if you are pro-Palestinian liberation, you necessarily have to be pro-Israeli people. And vice versa. If you care about Israel, you have to be. be pro-Palestinian liberation. Can you tell me what you mean by that? Yeah, let's be very honest. There is not really left, left in Israel. And we're trying to rebuild it and, you know,

hold on what we have and build a new kind of left. I always ask myself, what am I supposed to do? What is my responsibility as an activist? as part of Israeli society. What's my mission? Who am I convincing? Right? And my answer is always, you know, I need to build the political will,

the political capital within the Israeli society to end the occupation, right? Like that's what I need to do. And I think that's like so disconnected from the Palestinian liberation movement abroad, which grossly overlooks that critical condition of having the political will within Israeli society. Right?

And I cannot come to, you know, people in Israel, to Jewish Israelis and tell them to liberate me as a Palestinian. I'm a partner. I'm part of their society. And I also understand and acknowledge that the majority of us here, Israel have a shared interest in advancing, you know, many of our issues here, you know, of social and economic injustices within the Israeli society against our government, right?

When I talk to people about that, and I think October 7th in many ways have highlighted that need, you know, many of the Palestinian liberation movements have failed to acknowledge the humanity. of the Israeli people. And that is not only, you know, morally lacking, but it's also like strategically catastrophic for the Palestinian cause. If you're unable to hold the humanity of people, you know, regardless of how just your your cause is, then you're just compromising your cause. You said there is no left left in Israel. It seems to me that there is, a sort of missing, moderate middle on both sides of this equation, both Israel and within Palestine. And the radicalism seems to be almost symbiotic. It seems to feed on itself. Like the far-right

lurch of Israel seems to feed the radicalism of some Palestinian militants. And the specter of Palestinian militant groups seems to justify and feed the political strength of the far-right Israelis, which is one of the things about this situation. I find, most tragic, but also most confounding. I would love you to help me understand why you think the forces of radicalism have been so politically and ideologically successful in the last few years. First, within Israel, as a left-wing activist trying to bring the left and moderates onto your cause, clearly you were paying really close attention to the success of far-right

orthodox and ultra-Orthodox groups in Israel. Why do you think these more far-right groups have had so much political success in the last few years? Two things. One is really the failure of the left to actually build a popular politics, a people's politics in Israel. The left in Israel for many years have been, you know, have neglected. the people, the social justice issues, progressive issues on the ground, and has been portrayed almost as this outsider observer who's like morally lecturing people about peace and about immorality and liberalism and secularism without actually providing real people's politics

and real solutions to people's problems. And with right populism and the, gradual but rapid deterioration of the left, especially after 94, after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin in 94, in 95, sorry, we saw that the left has completely lost touch. And we saw like a very gradual, you know, with also expansions of settlements after that, which now have become completely normalized within Israeli society, right? Like settlements, illegal. settlements are just not even a political issue. It's not even something that people, you know, talk about. And this very deep idea of like, you know, that you are expanding settlements on stolen land and it's like normalized. It does something to the public. It does something to the Israeli consciousness. And it's like gradual normalization of this kind of regime and policies. the policies of Netanyahu, you've seen this dramatic increase in settlements. The number of settlements has increased along the side of military outposts. These military outposts and this sort of

separation of civilian and military law has led to, has led many people to describe the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank as a kind of apartheid. How has this been reflected in, like, the political institutions that Palestinians have in the West Bank? Like, what is their relationship with the Netanyahu government? Well, you know, it is divided. You know, you have Area A, B, C, and A is the one that is mostly being settled. By the way, we need to acknowledge the fact that over 100 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th in the West Bank, mostly by the IDF, but also by settlers.

You know, there are mass political arrests right now as well there, an invasion on Janine. In many ways, the Palestinian authorities is actually an extremely oppressive authority. You know, if you really look in recent years, there has been some kind of attempts of resistance within the Palestinian people in the West Bank, which have been met with extreme violence and sometimes killings of assassination of activists and, and resistance voices within the West Bank. So when we talk, it's very important for me to place that, you know, I am extremely critical of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Obviously, Mahmoud Abbas is not a legitimate leader, you know, Abu Mazin. And of course...

Can you actually just stop there to explain briefly why you say Abbas is not a legitimate leader? He hasn't been elected since when was the last... elections, when was the last elections in the West Bank? I don't even remember. Yeah, in many ways, the PA is like an outsourced, you know, occupation force, an oppressive force, you know, in areas where Israel doesn't have, you know, military presence. They have military control over everything, but they don't have military presence, you know, like in Betlaheim and Ramallah, you know, the capital, the PA is doing a great job at maintaining an oppressive regime. And in many ways, they have been good allies in a very shared mission to suppress the Palestinian

people, unfortunately. And we see, you know, Israel has the interest in making sure the PA, as it is today, you know, stays in power, you know, because it is suppressing any kind of a rise of moderate liberal voices, of any kind of resistance that is beyond, you know, the PA, the Palestinian authority. Same thing with Hamas, by the way. Natalia, and this is a quote, and I was looking for it, I wanted the quote to be very, like, accurate. The coat says, what's maybe not, Natanyahu said, in Hebrew, I'm going to just translate it simultaneously, is whoever want to put a hindrance on the establishment of a Palestinian state absolutely needs to support

and strengthen Hamas and provide them with money. That's what Bibi Netanyahu said. That's a direct quote from Bibi Natalia. Why do you think he said that? Because, listen, I think the existence of Hamas, and in many ways it's such a sad, tragic thing to say right now, you know, the atrocities that we witnessed and the Hamas attack here in the south of Israel was in many ways beneficial for the extreme right.

Now, it is proven to be not very beneficial for BB Natanjahou because he's losing grip according to pulls. But if you look, you know, the settler Zionist religious, you know, movements and parties have not lost grip. They're getting stronger because they are, you know, when you have a radical rival, your radicalism is justified. I absolutely agree with that. This is why I said to you, and I've said before, one of the things I find most tragic about this situation is that radicalism feeds on radicalism, right? You're not suggesting that the far right had some false flag operation or that this is some kind of conspiracy. You're saying it's simply a political fact that a terrorist attack that dramatizes the danger of Palestinian. and Palestinian leadership is politically beneficial to those who previously tried to demonize Palestinians and Palestinian leadership. Is that essentially it?

Absolutely, absolutely. And for many, many, many years, the Israeli public has been taught that it's either us or them. If we let them lose, if we end the occupation, if we let them free, they're going to kill us. So this is where I would love to represent to you, what I think a more conservative Israeli might say. They would say, we face an unbelievably complex dilemma in Gaza. We want to keep Israel safe.

We're cognizant of the fact that we were attacked not just by a terrorist cell that lives in Gaza, but by the state itself, by the leaders. We cannot placate Hamas anymore. We have to destroy them. We have to go in there and bomb them out. of Gaza and pull up the weeds by the route. Now, it is a fact that Hamas sometimes hides behind civilians. They co-locate with civilian infrastructure. It's impossible to uproot our terrorist neighbor without destroying parts of Gaza.

And so this is simply the military action that we have to do as a state that has a democratic obligation to keep our citizens secure. how do you, in this incredibly complex political moment, how do you think about and respond to this argument, which I'm sure you are hearing every hour of every day of your life right now? Yeah, all the time, all the time. And it's honestly shocking the amount of people that have been aligning with that narrative here. First of all, I want to say, and it's important for me to say that because I don't want, you know, it's very easy. for people to hear Palestinian and demonize Israelis. You know,

and I can't believe I'm saying that because I'm getting so much heat and like, you know, threats and many, many disgusting things that I'm getting that I don't want to even say right now. And I'm really feeling the hate. With that being said, the Israeli people right now are hurting, you know. Most of them, unfortunately, are,

absolutely aligned with the idea that we need to do whatever is necessary to enthamas. Whatever is necessary. The tragedy is that the Israeli public is probably the only public in the world right now that is not exposed at all to the atrocities being conducted in Gaza at all. at all. What do you mean by that? You mean that they're not being represented in Israeli newspapers, Israeli television, that there's a kind of media blockade of the events in Gaza.

Hamas just published a video of the hostages, and they deleted it all from all media immediately, 10 minutes after it was published, all of it, from a government order. a democratic government order. It's a very, very peculiar situation to be in that in order to justify the humanity of my people and against the collective punishment of millions of people, I need to somehow provide expert opinion and alternative on what to do with terrorism, right? other than, you know, the most powerful country in the Middle East,

supported by the most powerful country in the world, just using the most advanced technology, cruel technology from above, just killing people in ways we didn't even know, like, you know, existed. And somehow we cannot ask for ceasefire without bringing an alternative while completely overlooking the context of the Israeli government and the fact that they have politicians right now who are also openly talking about annihilating Gaza. Yes, Hamas has an ideology of a very, very clear ideology to end Israel, right? Like that's obvious we understand the need to end that kind of ideology.

I think, you know, overlooking the fact that Israel has been in many ways advancing and strengthening the position of Hamas in Gaza and the fact that they have not advanced any kind of real efforts into strengthening a different kind of political current, a different kind of leadership. in the West Bank and in Gaza, they have actually actively prevented the rise of new leadership that can actually lead us to a more sane negotiations and actual negotiations. I want to ask you about the movement that you're trying to build. Before I do, Sally, I hope that you understand this question

with the sympathy with which I ask it. I don't have an answer to what is. real should do either. But you, as a political actor, don't you feel like you have to offer a clear policy alternative if for no other reason than to build movement behind it? Even if your policy alternative is just a ceasefire, I do think that you have an obligation as an activist and as a political leader to say, we're calling for a ceasefire, but here's what we're calling for after a ceasefire. because technically we kind of had a ceasefire on October 5th and October 6th,

and then we had October 7th. And so there's lots of Israelis that, as you know, are going to worry that you're going to get October 7th every month until the end of time if you simply go back to the conditions of October 6th. So what do you say?

What do you have to offer people that might be willing to join the moderate or left cause, but they want to see that a clear alternative to war exists. Do you think the billions of dollars that you guys are paying with your taxes right now,

do you think the American, the U.S. government has a responsibility to give us a plan after the war? They eradicated Hamas. Amas is done. We killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, okay?

Done. There's total destruction. Second time refugees. hundreds of thousands of people, you know, displaced. No Gaza is inhabitable. No Hamas. Who's taking responsibility? Do you think the Israeli government and the U.S. government and whoever is supporting this mass killings

and collective punishment right now has an answer? Sally, I absolutely do not. Exactly. So why am I supposed to expect an answer? So I think in many ways is just absolutely, infaruating to me that I am expected as a peace activist who is asking not to kill thousands of children to have an alternative to war, while people who are killing so many people with no intention to actually providing us peace as Israelis as well, you know? Not even talking about

Palestinians. You're pro-Israeli. How is this providing security to Israelis right now? You're delusional if you think this is providing security to Israelis. And you're delusional if you think that Israeli government or the U.S. government who is unconditionally supporting our crazy lunatic lunatics leaders that they have an actual plan of what to do after they eradicate Hamas. I don't think they have a plan.

So I don't have an answer for you. and I'm very upset that I don't. I really am because we're stuck in this in this like unfathomable conversation. But like I don't know. Like really? You want me to give you a like really? Like we saw what happened in Iraq.

A million people died. We saw what happened with Taliban. They're ruling right now. Like what's your plan? You are retracing all of my concerns that I've put to other people. Some have compared October 7 to 9-11 and said that, of course, Israel is going to respond the same way America did, to which I always want to say, you have followed the news for the last 22 years. You know how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq turned out.

Nation building is incredibly difficult in a territory where you have, on purpose or accidentally, killed thousands and thousands of people and inflamed the very radicalism that you're trying to uproot. I just had a counterterrorism expert on last week where, you know, I put it to him where he said, you know, I think that what's going to happen is, it's just going to go through, they're going to go door to door with the IDF, they're going to uproot Hamas, they're going to go into the tunnels, they're going to kill enough of the leaders, they're going to take over the territory and they're going to hand it over to Alfaata or some alliance of Arab states that will create some kind of temporary government. To which I say,

said, all of the political, and tell me if this is wrong, it seems like all of the political entrepreneurship in Gaza, like the new political organizations that have been created, are often militant themselves. So aren't we just going to have another civil war in Gaza just underneath this new leadership, whether it's Al-FATA or this alliance of Arab leaders? It doesn't seem to me like there is much of a plan, much of a clearly cited plan for what happens after the war. What you have instead is the clarity of blind hot rage. It's critical to build the political will within the Israeli society. And to do that, we need new leaderships. We need new leaderships. And just this whole condoning and normalizing the current government by the world

leaders is just catastrophic to us as Israelis. It's catastrophic that they're unconditionally supporting the Israeli government. Support the Israeli people. You know, send your solidarity to the Israeli people, to the Palestinians and Jews who live in Israel, and obviously to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Stop condoning and normalizing our government and start supporting us, the ones on the ground who are being persecuted, being arrested, being attacked and harassed to build a new kind of vision. You know, we actually exist here, you know, Palestinians and Jews who actually live together.

And we exist and we want to build a new kind of way. Can you tell me a little bit about the coalitional strategy that you're pursuing? How do you build enough momentum between these different parts of the Israeli center and center left to edge out the rising power of the far right that is, to my eye, pro-settlement, pro-militarism, and simply has no possibility to me of moving us closer toward a two-state solution. I mentioned before the disconnect almost between our mission as an Israeli left, you know, a Jewish, Palestinian-Israeli left, and the bigger, you know,

conversation in the world about Israel, Palestine, you know? Because our mission is how do we bring as many people as possible, as close as possible to our worldview, to our vision, to our political current, right? And, you know, people start asking us, oh, so two-state or one state? What about the right of return? Why don't you use the word apartheid?

Are you anti-Zionist? And stuff like that. And I think people need to understand that, you know, when you work with the Israeli public, you're actually working with people. Our work is just so day-to-day life of like literally, most of my work here is actually not like peace, anti-occupation work.

it's like minimum wage and affordable housing and like transportation and like real life issues while never ever ever dismissing my card as a Palestinian that's my that's my theory of change okay I want to claim my part and my responsibility within the Israeli public as part of it as a Palestinian. And I think creating that new paradigm, that shift in paradigm, and it's so weird to talk about this now, because it just feels just so challenged all of this. You know, our theory of change and our mission is just so challenged right now.

But we are hopeful that it will, you know, we will rehabilitate. But we need to shift the paradigm of what, who's us, who's the political protagonist, you know, Who is us? It's not us, you know, us the Jewish people or us, the Palestinian people. It's the people who live here, who have a deep interest, you know, in living securely and freely and equally. This all seems like incredibly hard work, but it also sounds to me like in the end, you are the opposite of delusional. You are betting on reality.

You're betting on the reality that Jews and Muslims and Christians and secular Israelis, and Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis, you all do live together. You all have the shared interest of sharing a land. And if you can orient the Israeli public around your collective need for higher wages, better housing, solidarity, you have a chance to use that political movement for plenty

to become a political movement for peace. I'm not naive. I don't think it's going to be easy. I also don't think that, hundreds of, you know, ultra-Orthodox or people who voted for the lukud, who I honestly, like, busted my ass off to, to, like, organize around minimum wage are going to come and, like, you know, go to Sheikh Jarach with me for Palestinian liberation, okay? They're not. I'm not delusional. For the political will that I'm talking about, you need to, like, gradually and

continuously and relentlessly, you know, move people on the spectrum. And you can, you only, you only can do that through real life issues. So for example, even now, you know, the conversation that you and I are having is not the conversation that I'm going to be having with Israelis right now. You know, the conversation that I'm having with Israelis right now is, oh, let's go and have solidarity watches and talk about, you know, how we can clean our streets or clean our bomb shelters right now in Haifa because we might actually be bombed by Hezbollah, who knows, you know, and we're in this together.

And it's like such, and this intertwined, complex shared reality is just so much more. It exists and it's so different than any conversation that I might be able to express outside. It's very complex, but it's possible because we actually live together. Sally Abed, thank you very, very much. Thank you so much for listening. Plain English is hosted by me, Derek Thompson, and produced by Devin Manzi. Some great news for you all. As you probably know, we are returning, have returned back to our normal schedule of two pods a week.

So be on the lookout for new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. If you like our podcast, please rate. Give us five stars. Subscribe wherever you listen. And I'll see you later.