Rev Left Radio - On The Ground In Gaza: Service as Solidarity

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Willy Massay joins Breht in-studio to discuss his time as a medical volunteer in Gaza. Willy got back into town just last week and speaks candidly and movingly about his experiences with and among the Palestinian people in Gaza. Donate to 3 displaced families in Gaza HERE Donate to Fidaa and her children in Gaza HERE   Learn more about Rahma Worldwide HERE Learn more about Jewish Voices for Peace HERE Learn more about Nebraskans for Palestine HERE   Outro Song: World Goes Blind by Samer

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. Today's episode is very special, it's very emotional. It's very intense. We have on this show, Willie Maasai, a local medical worker here in Omaha who has recently traveled to Gaza to be of assistance to be a global medical volunteer on the ground in Gaza to do whatever he can to help the Palestinian people in their time of great suffering. And he just got back into the states a week or so ago and through a mutual friend who is a lead organizer of the Jewish Voices for Peace chapter here in eastern Nebraska and through our friends at

Nebraska's for for Palestine were able to to connect us up so that Willie could come on Rev left and talk about his time in Gaza and spread the message of of the Palestinian people who when he was on the ground he promised he would take their stories back to the United States and get it out to as many people as possible and so here on Rev Left we're trying to facilitate that this one is is deeply like I said in the beginning incredibly emotional some parts hard to listen to, you know, but it's a real life on the ground look at what's going on in Gaza as of, again, a week or so ago. So this is one of the most intense episodes I've ever recorded, if not the most intense. And I really hope that you listen to it and importantly

share it. Because these perspectives and this sort of understanding, It needs to catch fire. More people need to hear this stuff. We need to keep fighting with every fiber of our being for the Palestinian people and amplifying their struggle, affirming their humanity, and fighting by any and every means necessary against the brutal Zionist, colonial, apartheid, genocidal entity, and its number one backer and facilitator, the United States Empire. Justice in this world will be in popular.

until those two entities are finally dismantled in their entirety. So we send our heart and our love and our solidarity to the Palestinian people. And I also wanted to use this intro as an opportunity to plug two GoFundMe's for Palestinians on the ground in Gaza that have been personally vetted and verified from a very close friend and comrade of mine who has dedicated years of her life as a really principled and dedicated organizer on multiple fronts.

She is Jewish herself and is throwing herself into the pro-Palestinian movement and has for a very long time and she directly and personally has validated the two go-fund-mees for these people in Gaza that I'm going to link to in the show notes. So if you have any disposable income whatsoever, if you listen to this episode

and you are moved to do something about it, there's a million things we can do. Everybody can do something, right? Nobody has to do everything, but everybody can do something. And if one of those things happens to be you have some disposable income, an immediate and direct response to this episode and to the stories you're going to hear could be going directly to support these GoFund means. And the Rev Left audience is amazing in its capacity and willingness to help people in need. You've shown that time and time and time and time again. I am always blown away by the depth of generosity in this audience and I'm beyond grateful to have the sort of audience that we do. It's the most meaningful thing in my life, aside from my family itself, to have this community of,

of deep-hearted, intelligent, curious, loving human beings, you know, count themselves among the people who listen to and support our humble little show here. So if you are so inclined and you have the disposable income, I will link to the two GoFundMees in the show notes and know from, it's my word from the bottom of my heart, knowing the people and the organizer involved, these are 100% valid and verified GoFundMe's and the money goes direct. directly to Palestinians in Gaza. And it can make all the difference for these families to have something as their entire

worlds are attempted to be destroyed by Israel and the United States of America. So without further ado, here is my deep, wide-ranging and powerfully moving conversation with Willie Masay. And I hope you all enjoy it and I hope you share it. This is Willy Maasai. I am here from Omaha. I just came back from Gaza for a medical mission work. Welcome, Willie. It's an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show. A mutual friend of ours who is a local organizer, Daniel, who's been on the show in the past, has introduced us. And this is a wonderful, I jumped at the opportunity to be

able to talk to somebody, not only who has been on the ground in Gaza, but who has the huge heart to want to go sacrifice your time and even your safety to help other people. So before we get into, I just want to give you a huge salute from the bottom of my heart for your work. And the rest of this conversation is going to be exploring that. work and what you what you saw on the ground in Gaza thank you Brett I appreciate the opportunity to come in and talk and amplify the voices of the Palestinian people absolutely and you said before we started recording that was a promise you made to the Palestinians while you were there that you would come home and try to spread

the word as much as you could correct every Palestinian people I've met there and talked to them they asked me said all I want is to live in peace, to raise my family, to protect my children. But we are getting killed by Israelis. And a child asked me, what have I done? I just want to be a child and play and go to school. My school is destroyed by Israelis. And I didn't really have an answer.

All I said, I will keep speaking. As long as I have breath in me, I will talk about Alistine and I will get any opportunity back home in the U.S. to amplify your voices. I'm just one voice, but I know that there will be opportunities to find other avenues to amplify your voices. Yeah, and hopefully we can help play a small role in getting that out for sure. What makes this interview even more unique is this is in studio. So most of our interviews just for pure practical reasons, we're in the middle of Omaha, Nebraska. So most of our guests are not here. And so most of our interviews are done via Zoom, but this is more intimate because we are person to person.

And that's very nice, especially for an episode on this very serious topic. Correct. Thank you. So let's go ahead and get into it. And I guess a way to start is just kind of letting listeners know who you are and a bit about your medical and even perhaps political background. and then we'll get into, you know, you actually traveling to Gaza. But just some background on yourself. Yes. As I said, my name is Willie Maasai, and I am from here in Omaha. I have been in health care for about almost eight years now.

I am a critical care nurse, predominantly working in the ICU. I have some pediatric background in pediatric nursing. as well as in the operating room. I've done that. And are trained in the emergency medicine as well. So, but I have been working predominantly here in Omaha. I have done some traveling as a nurse. And I have been to Gaza before this genocide started.

And predominantly I worked at the European Gaza Hospital in the, And Gaza, as well as Shifa Hospital, that is now completely destroyed. All right. So you went to Gaza even prior to the current situation since October 7th. What was the reason that you went to Gaza in the past? So the first time I went to Gaza, it was this local physician and some other people from around the country had organized a trip to go. to do a pediatric surgery. So, you know, a lot of children have been maimed or injured by Israeli aggression over the years.

And so we went there to help with pediatric surgeries. So, yeah, that was mainly why we were there. And it was very rewarding to be in Gaza and the West Bank, and especially in Ramallah. that where we worked doing pediatric or pediatric medical care to young people and that's even before the current events you can only imagine how much worse it's gotten

I mean everybody listening to this show is clearly aware of what's been happening but this most recent time especially you know it's never a safe time necessarily to go to Gaza it's an open air prison it's an apartheid system it's Israel's a fascist country

conducting a long genocide on the Palestinian people but specifically since October 7th, it's become much more dangerous. So my question to you is, how did you find yourself in a position to travel to Gaza post October 7th? What is the organization you work with? And what was your personal motivation for going, especially considering the safety issues that would certainly be a part of this? So I had a big connection prior to October 7th, as I said, to Gaza. And I knew friends that were suffering and some of them I lost friends in since October 7th. So for me going to Gaza was not a question of if, it was when. Since October 7, I tried to go in and it's very

difficult to go to Gaza at this point. But finally, nine months later, I was able to go with Rahma worldwide, which is RAHMA worldwide. It's an organization that sends health care providers, nurses and doctors, to Gaza, but also they do a lot of other humanitarian work, like donating equipment and medical supplies, food, water, shelter. So I went with them and it was very difficult to be in Gaza, very dangerous, but I wasn't really afraid of that because the Palestinian people have been killed, maimed, bombed by the Israelis for the last 11 months. And I thought, what is my safety? why does it matter when we have little children being brutally

murdered every single day they are not safe displaced people being slaughtered daily what is my safety I could die in Omaha I could be here by a car

you know it's to me safety became a very you know loose word for me at least because I just wanted to be there so at least I can see some of my friends

I can help a child in Gaza so it was very dangerous but you I know we are humans you and I are called to you're doing it in journalism

you know I have some skills in healthcare and we you're amplifying their voices now so without your work without my work we cannot liberate Palestine so we have to work it together our safety will be at risk in some way or another absolutely well that's absolutely noble before we move on about your time on the ground in Gaza I'm just curious to know a little bit more about you personally which is what was your original motivation for getting into medicine in the first place aside from the politics and

from Gaza? I was born in Africa. And I moved here about 20 years ago. And I remember growing up as a child, you know, I had malaria many times a year. Waterborne diseases, because when I was grazing my livestock out in the wild, there's no water. You drink water that the animals are drinking. It's green sometimes with algae, you know, I remember those, but I don't want to paint Africa as if it's like, you know, there's a lot of good things, but also a lot of, you know, difficult life situations that I experience. And I remember, you know, people dying of diarrhea, you know, and malnutrition growing up. So I thought, what can I do as a person to help alleviate this pain? and suffering. And then I entered healthcare. I thought, as a nurse, I'm also going into

nurse practitioner school right now. As a nurse and a healthcare provider, I am able to help here in the U.S., help my life a little better, as well as help people back at home and around the world. So my work mission, my life became, you know, medical mission works and to start from the personal experience. It's very personal for me because I lived it. It's a lived experience. So for me and for us to see somebody suffering because of my nutrition, because of diarrhea because of, you know, being killed by bombs, by, you know, to me, that is, it's a no-brainer. We have to go and help. Absolutely.

Yeah, I find that very noble. And I think people like that are the cutting edge of human ethical development where you can see total strangers suffering and just be moved so deeply that your heart breaks so easily in the face of other people's suffering and to dedicate your life to trying to alleviate that suffering, I think, is one of the highest callings a human being can possibly pursue. But going now to the situation in Gaza, through the organization that you mentioned, you were able to get into that conflict zone, which is, you know, one way to describe it. How was your trip into Gaza? And then what surprised you most about it when you finally arrived?

I will start with my, what surprised me the most. You know, We have seen the destruction on social media. We have seen decapitated children after Israeli bombings. But what surprised me the most was the level of destruction in Gaza. There is no Gaza. It's flat. It has been flattened by the Israeli forces. Every building, every bridge, every water system.

him, everything is rubble. That's number one. Number two, to see the children on social media with missing limbs and heads after they have been bombed by the Israeli airstrikes is one thing. But seeing it in person, holding a child, one child is too many when I arrived that I'm trying to put their brain back into their skull. One is too many. I was heartbroken because this little girl, her name was Sabah.

I was my first child. She was only two. She came in bleeding heavily. But I saw in her head this brain matter is out. I'm trying to put it back in and stop the bleeding. But it was a very difficult fight for her life. And what I'm thinking in my mind was, I'm sorry, I paid for these bombs. And this is after an Israeli had struck a residential building and tent area.

there is no there is no comparison of what is seeing it on social media and what is happening in person and I just I'm pushing her brains back in I'm praying for her and all of a sudden I realized that

I paid for this we paid for it so that was a very very difficult today and I thought she would be the only one and the last one as I said one is too many but unfortunately only in Gaza that kids coming to the emergency room with missing limbs and their brain matters out or with gunshot wounds to the chest or to the head

one is too many but there was a lot hundreds after that where on the where on the Gaza Strip did you operate and can you tell us a little bit more about what your what your day-to-day life looked like when you were when you were in Gaza and your work yes um so can I backtrack a little bit of one of your previous questions how I got there it was very difficult to go in as I said and we had uh we had to be vetted and screened by the Israeli forces and finally when we they told they don't they tell you to leave the US on a Sunday night so that you'll be in Gaza by Tuesday It's 15 hours flight to Amman in Jordan.

And so they make it very difficult for you to go. And Israelis don't, they don't care. The Israeli government don't care. So you get to Amman. Then from Amman is not guaranteed until the next morning to go to Gaza. So then you cross into Gaza and once you arrive there, you'll be surprised of what happened. And so the day to day is very difficult to, you know, like here when I'm up, I go to work, it's 6 a.m. 6 p.m. It's preset every day. But in Gaza, it's not like that. It's very difficult to,

you're always working, 24-7 working. You may go to your, to a little corner to take a nap, but that's really about it because you are work every time. the Israeli strike a building, a tent, every time there's bombing, you just go. So many times when you think that you're going to take a little nap into your room, well, sleeping outside in a hospital, but you hear bombing at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., you know, midnight. You run to the ER.

You know, usually you hear a big explosion. You know within half an hour, 15 minutes, there's an influx of hundreds of people coming into the emergency room that have been injured. So it's, yeah, there's no, it's never predictable. You're always working. How do you travel from Jordan, I assume through parts of quote unquote Israel into the Gaza Strip? how is that journey itself how is that conducted who's who's like making sure that that you're getting through because I'm sure there's this chaos around you know that that that border between Gaza and the rest of quote unquote Israel yeah so once you leave Amman you go to the

to King Hussein Bridge on the Jordanian side so that's where they screen you your bags and then once you're done from Jordan inside you go to the Israeli side of King Hussein Bridge. That's where they will literally look at every equipment you brought in. They will search all your bags, the Israelis will, and they're setting equipment that you're not allowed to bring. Like, why are you bringing two bottles of Tylenol? Why are you bringing these few gases?

Why are you bringing like a stylet for intubation of a patient? Why are you bringing this? they don't allow a lot of things. So some of people were not allowed to bring a simple medication because a doctor asked you in Gaza, I say, hey, my mom has cancer, can you grab this medication? It happened to me. I wasn't allowed to go in with it. I bought some chemotherapy medication in Jordan, but they said this is not required.

The Israeli immilitary to me at Karim Abu Salem. at King Hussein Bridge. So I had to leave some of that stuff back. Then you go through most of, you go for about three, four hours through the occupied territories of, in Palestine, in the West Bank. And then you go into,

you arrive at Kramer-Busalam Crossing. And Kramer-Boslam Crossing, that's when you go into Gaza. That's when you see the destruction. That's my first time. to see head on face-to-face with an active-duty Israeli forces. It wasn't pretty. Yeah, how was your interaction with the active forces?

So while we're waiting to go into Gaza, we were sitting in our bus. They just appeared in the middle of nowhere in their Humphys and armored vehicles with big guns mounted on top of them. And they're just aiming at our bus. I'm sitting right in front by the driver and you can see is zooming his scope. I'm thinking why why is

we it's only only four of us three doctors and one nurse that are going in we're not a threat we have been vetted but why are you zooming at me is the most surreal feeling because they know who you are

they do and they're trying to intimidate you I mean why do you need yeah yes why do you need to go in but when I was crossing the Karima Bussalam crossing, it's like three football fields from one gate to the other side of the gate to go into Gaza. And these cameras everywhere within the crossing. It's hot.

I'm pushing two big bags with medical supplies and my backpack with only my clothing and the food. They only allow us, I think, four kilograms of food to take in for ourselves because they know food in Gaza. And you can hear them. They will tell me, stop, move, stop. Move, stop, move.

I'm thinking, and then when they say stop, I heard them laughing over the speakers. How we got them, you know, some mean words, really inappropriate words. We got him. And then they're laughing, giggling, and all you can hear him. And then move, stop, moves. I finally said to myself, I'm not going to stop. I know they have guns everywhere. They have the AI guns that, you know, they're zooming around and following you.

Like drone drones? Yes. And they have quadcopters. Those are the most deadly ones. That's why you see a lot of headless children, helpless people coming into a hospital because they have been struck by a quadcopter. So I just decided to keep walking. And I crossed the other side of the crossing and then got into our bus.

And when we went to, so we started at NASA Hospital in the south. That's where we started working first. and then four of us we were allowed to go to the north now the north is 80% displaced only 20% of people in the north are left there

um Israeli uh so the 20% is only 40,000 people left in the north out of a million something before and they're living amongst largely rubble rubble it's rubble it's literally

uh that nothing is left in Gaza. People are living in destroyed buildings, in destroyed schools. These are displaced people, poor people who have nothing. Earth has turned inside out. What Israel has done in Gaza is will haunt humanity forever. They have made Gaza, Israeli has made Gaza,

an inhabitable for Palestinians. because everything is inside out. It's dust and rubble. And on our way north, I saw on the side of the road between the Mediterranean and sea and the little, not road, actually a little pavement. It's all dust or sand.

A pelvic bone of a, it looked like a child. It was left there. I think they try to clean up the humanitarian pathway for so that, but they still left some human remains. And the devastation is something that you cannot imagine. You know, I, it's, Gaza is an inhabitable. And that's, of course, a conscious strategic goal of Israel to make it

uninhabitable. And even if Israel were to pull out of Gaza completely tomorrow, it would take a generation at least to rebuild it to anything like a functioning society. Yeah. Yeah, it is you look at

the destruction of hospitals. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. You know, you look at the whole society's infrastructure. You know, before you know, previous year when I went to Gaza, going through to the north, through the Rochade Highway, it was beautiful

both sides. Even though it was, even though Gaza was, you know, nobody goes in, nobody gets out, nothing goes in, nothing gets out, but still people were able to, to live with, you know, to survive with whatever they have. So there was nice little tiny grocery stores on the side of the road, nice hotels. You know, it was catastrophic before. But now everything is gone.

Because to me is what is the military strategic value to destroy every little building in Gaza? What is the point? So it is ethnic cleansing

101 so that nothing, nothing remains in Gaza. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I remember after October 7th and the horrors of what Israel was doing had already started, but on YouTube, the internet, there's all these opportunities for you to see, even like on the ground in Gaza before October 7th. And, you know, it's obviously a very poor place, a very, you know, purposely underdeveloped place, but also the perseverance of the Palestinian people brought genuine beauty. to Gaza. There are elements of the Gaza strip that were beautiful and that's 100% because of the Palestinian people taking care of what little

they do have and to see that absolutely obliterated for this maniacal fascist settler colonial project of domination and ethnic supremacy. It is just so grotesque and the fact that

you and I go to work every day I have three kids I make money to try to provide for my family and I have to pay taxes those taxes don't give me in my family health care or, you know, affordable education or affordable housing or any of the social investments that our society needs. It goes to send money to Israel so they can drop bombs on babies by the hundreds of billions of dollars. And how that does not make every single human being with a heart in this country, you know, rabidly angry is just beyond me.

The fact that people just like, you know, maybe don't know about it, maybe they just like, oh, I've heard about that. they've been fighting forever and to shrug their shoulders. The inhumanity, it never ceases to really disturb me. Yes, yes, yes. To piggyback on what you just said, Brett, is when that child asked me, what have I done? You know, her name is Hadil. What have I done?

What's my fault? Why is America sending weapons to kill me? They know. They know what I would do. I was afraid at first to introduce myself as American because I'm thinking they know I'm paying for their bombs. We are paying for it. You're taxes.

You go to work. You know instead of that money coming back to the country and helping our own people with homelessness, education, healthcare is bankrupt here. But we are subsidizing and paying the Israelis' health care. housing. We are paying them to kill Palestinian people. We're helping them to occupy and colonize Palestine.

Where is our moral standing? What happened to us as a people? And people in our country who do not know yet what's going on, I'm asking them. We're asking them, please wake up. Wake up. We are guilty of this. after World War II, we said never again. And never again means never again for everyone. Justice is for all.

Selective morality is not morality. Selective justice is not justice. I want our taxes. You want our taxes. We all want our taxes to do good for humanity. For our families, for our communities, for our homelessness. homeless population for our education

why is our money our politicians in Washington sending our money to go kill children it's a world historic crime and you know we're in the fog of the moment and people are ignorant or they focus on their own lives

or they don't care they've picked one of these two disgusting political parties to be their team you know Kamala Harris and the Dems or Trump and the Republicans but in the cold sober light of historical retrospect. It'll be very clear what has happened here. And it will be very clear who the evildoers are. And it's on par with the crimes of Nazi Germany. It's that same sort of indiscriminate, ethno-supremicist, genocidal, maniacal, mass murder campaign that really defined

the Nazi regime. And at least in that case, for all the faults of America back then still, at least they have the ability to see good and evil clear enough to fight the Nazis to some extent. And then here, you know, and so far as that analogy holds up, you're on the side of the genocide errors, of the Nazis, of the people conducting this mass murder campaign. And more than that, you're facilitating it

because without the U.S.'s support, you pull away that money, you pull away those weapons, you pull away that political cover, and Israel collapses tomorrow. So the U.S. is, you know, uniquely responsible for what's going on here. Now, speaking of that, in the mainstream Western press, the narrative that is allowed is exclusively the narrative of Israel and takes for granted the Zionist perspective.

Palestinian humanity and suffering is an afterthought, if even that. I don't know how much media you've been able to engage with, but if you have been able to, I was hoping you could talk about the difference between how this genocide is portrayed in Western media. and how it's actually playing out in Palestine. I know we've touched on a little bit of this, but maybe you have some more thoughts on this front. Yes. The Western media, especially, I mean, the mainstream media here is complicit directly

to the killings and this genocide of the Palestinian people. Because they lie. They don't tell the truth. You know, journalism is to tell the truth, the whole truth. And the truth will set you free. But the mainstream media has always been playing this Zionist propaganda. I hate to quote the worst of humans in our history. Hitler said that, again, I hate quoting him, but he said,

if you tell a lie over and over and over again, people will believe it. I think even Henry Chimler said it too. And this is what the Western mainstream media is doing, continuing and to demonize the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people are not humans. Their deaths, it's an afterthought. For example, this is last week. The New York Times, after the hostages, the Israeli hostages,

that were in Gaza that were killed they painted this they had a biography of each one of those people hostages were killed rightfully so fine but they had talked about their dreams their hopes their families

the things they wanted to do and they said one thing that they were horribly murdered. But the Palestinian people just died. Right, right. Passively.

Possibly. They just died. They don't talk about the fact that Israel is directly responsible for this genocide, directly responsible for the massacre and slaughter

of the Palestinian people. This summer when Israeli forces went to rescue the three hostages 120 to 270 Palestinians were

murdered nobody in the Western mainstream media talked about the morality

of killing 200 Palestinian people 120 to 270 Palestinian people

to rescue three people I'm not saying these three people don't deserve to leave they do

but nobody questioned the morality of those killings. So how come in the Western media, Palestinians just die. Who killed them? They don't say it. How did I? Don't say it.

But when it comes to Israelis, they were horribly murdered. But we know the bias of this Western media someday they're going to be charged.

I hope they were going to be charged in the world court because they are directly complicit and responsible for the deaths and the killings of the Palestinian people, for the genocide, for colonial colonialism in Palestine, for apartheid in Palestine. They are all responsible. You cannot break, you cannot white, wash genocide.

Why is Israeli killing less less significant? Right. Palestinians just die. They don't exist.

They are not people. Absolutely. And, yeah, in a just world, the politicians that are responsible for this would be tried for their crimes against humanity and sentenced accordingly.

And these institutions, like these corporate media institutions that have, by any stretch of the imagination, actively helped facilitate this genocide, lied about it, provided cover for it, humanize the aggressors and dehumanize the victims. They would be stripped of all of their assets as a company's, and that money would be given as reparations to the Palestinian people, like the New York Times or all, you know, CNN, Fox News, everybody that's complicit in

this, MSNBC, those companies should be dismantled and that wealth should be given in a just world. Yes. We don't live in a just world, especially. But should be given to the the Palestinian people as just, I mean, not even that it would even come close to adequately dealing with the suffering that they've imposed, but that's step one in a just world. And that's, I hope that happens in our lifetime. I want to see that justice because I do not want to see these people grow old, comfortable, pass away in their sleep with all this blood on their hands. And only two generations later is there some sort of attempt to, you know, to wrestle with this evil. With this evil. And Brett, you really mentioned a good point there.

If you have noticed since this genocide started in Gaza, the independent media, you know, local journalists, the actual journalists who are actually on the ground, who are actually amplifying the voices of the people, of the oppressed, more and more people, I have seen a move, a shift in our country. People are moving away from watching or paying attention to mainstream media. people are looking into the media, the sources of information that are actually telling the truth. Gazons that are on the ground journalist with a camera, a cell phone camera, you know, a journalist in America who don't have this big corporate money, you know, who are actually doing something from their own homes or from their, you know, from their own little. you know, ways that they have to do anything and something for the Palestinian people, for the oppressed. These are the people now we are

searching for. These are the people who are telling the truth. Because if nobody is going to tell the truth in the mainstream media, of course they are not going to. We know they lie. We know they are complicit. The people that the independent media

these are the people and the devoid. of the voiceless and the hope they are the hope of the hopeless they are the strength of the oppressed this is what's happening and the corporate media is going to go down yes i hope so it's inevitable and unfortunately that transition is slow it doesn't happen as fast as it should but that transition is occurring and another big transition that's occurring that this horrific nightmare is accelerating is, I think, ultimately, the reputational and then the material decline of the U.S. Empire as such, this empire that presents itself as, you know, the international rules-based order. We're here to defend democracy around the world. We're here to defend freedom and

nobody believes that except the most brainwashed Westerners. The rest of the world sees exactly what's happening. And that reputational destruction is necessary to proceed the material. destruction of the U.S. Empire, just as the reputation of the corporate media has to be thoroughly destroyed before it can absolutely be materially destroyed. But I did want to mention you were saying earlier about how the hostages were given in the New York Times, this analysis that took into consideration their humanity, their subjectivity, their dreaming, right? And the calculus of three Israeli hostages are worth 100 or 200 innocent Palestinians. This is a another way which the corporate media pushes the Zionist perspective, because the Zionist idea

is literally that Israeli Jews are superior human beings to Palestinian Arabs, pure and simple. And so one of their lives is worth an infinite amount of Palestinian lives. And when the U.S. media does things like deeply humanized, three hostages, which you said is totally fine. Innocent people, I mean, they're all innocent. Well, our point is they're equal. they should be equal. But when you over, you know, or you deeply humanize only those people and you deeply dehumanize

all the rest, you are facilitating that genocidal Zionist narrative that says these people because of who they are, because of their skin color, their ethnicity, and their religion are inherently superior to these other people, you know. And that's the logic of genocide. That's the logic of Nazism. That's the logic of fascism. Correct. Absolutely.

Now, one thing I do want to talk about is talking about Palestinian humanity, and you've been alluding to this, but I was hoping you could tell us a little bit more about the Palestinian people you met, not only the victims of Israeli genocide, but the people helping alongside of you, and what you've learned about the Palestinian people, their culture, and their humanity in your time on the ground in Gaza. Oh, man, I wish we can write a book, my friend, here. So I have an example where, you know, there is no food, no water in Gaza, no medicine. So on a third of a week or so in Gaza, the World Health Organization somehow they were able to bring eggs to the north. This usually there's nothing there. And so these health care workers, these nurses and doctors were given eggs, 12 eggs, each person. But the next morning, this doctor comes back to work from his tent. The tent is about maybe 10 minutes away from the hospital.

He comes, he brings Shaksuka. Eggs is like really good Palestinian breakfast made of eggs. I am thinking, brother, your children have not had eggs in 10 months. And he's like, no, no, no, brother. My wife wants you to eat. No, no, we are okay. I said, no, no, I feel guilty to eat it. He's like, you have to eat.

In my culture, you eat. Of course, with the guilt in my heart, I ate the shakshuka. I ate the eggs they just received from WHO. and I'm thinking what kind of generosity is this Palestinian people are the most beautiful generous faith-filled

humble people and strong people you will ever meet they'll give you their bread before they eat it even though you know they are hungry I have I can buy catons, catons of eggs today. Before I went to Gaza, I don't need eggs.

But they wanted to feed me. So how do you explain that generosity, that kindness? In those conditions too. In those conditions. They literally have everything destroyed completely by the Israelis. Everything is gone. They have no eggs. There is no meat.

They have not seen meat in months, no protein. And yet they are saying, you have to eat. And another thing is that from my colleagues in Gaza, it is the hope you see it in their voice. Even when they are being bombed by Israeli forces, they are being maimed. Palestinians have been killed. They have lost everything.

But the only thing they have is they say this. Alhamdulillah, this is my home. They will kill me here. But someday, I will be free. You know what, Brett, my friend. You cannot bomb that out of them. You can bomb, Israeli can bomb everything they want.

Unfortunately, that is what they are doing. It's evil. It's horrible. They are bombing everything, Israelis. But they will not bomb that hope in the lives of the Palestinian people, in the hearts of the Palestinian people. No amount of missiles the U.S. will give, no amount of money our government will give to Israelis to diminish. to kill and to maim the Palestinian people and to occupy them, to expand this genocide,

to expand the colonialism and apartheid. No amount of money and weapons that our government will give will diminish and kill the hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people for their freedom, for basically just wanting to raise their families just like you and me. That's really it. cannot, the Israelis will not diminish that.

Absolutely. Just like the Nazis went down, that empire fell, the empire of Zionism warfall. Absolutely. Right will always prevail. Justice will always prevail. They will only delay it. Yes, exactly. And that is what Palestinian people have.

You will feel it in the air. You will feel it in their voices. They have the love for life. Palestinians have love for life. They have love for humanity. That's why they say, we know the world has forgotten us over and over and over again. We know the world has forgotten us.

But we know there are some people out there speaking for us. They deeply appreciate it. They say, thank you. Handel-Lah, inshallah. Those people, inshallah, like they keep saying, inshallah, Palestinians say, God willing, that all those people that are speaking for us will come to Gaza and see us, will cook for them. It's beautiful. I mean, you can't have a heart and not get emotional, you know, hearing that stuff, the generosity. You know, generosity in times of abundance is one thing.

But generosity in the face of starvation, of the worst sorts of scarcity you can imagine is a whole other thing. And, you know, that's one thing, as you were saying eloquently. Tyrants and empires and dictators and brutal rulers throughout history, they can take away everything. But they can't bomb or shoot or beat out the dignity and the love inside of a human heart. And the Palestinian people's dignity, you know, their refusal to bow down, their refusal to accept oppression. and they are they are they represent i think the best of humanity you know you really meant you nailed it right there because what i keep telling people here in the u.s and even in Gaza i kept telling the Palestinian people i'm sorry that we paid for the bombs to kill you

you are an orphan because we paid for your family your mom and dad brothers and sisters being killed. The stories are endless. But I tell them that you teach us to be human. You are the light in the darkness of brutality of Israelis and this genocide and the massacre of your family and people. But what I am taking from this and I want to tell people everywhere I go is that thank you for teaching us what it means to be human the Palestinian people are telling us

look look deep down in your heart and find the humanity that you have remove the dirt of hatred remove this toxic

vile and genocidal spirit of the Zionist, of Zionist empire. Find in yourself the humanity that connects us, the

brotherhood, the sisterhood, the personhood, the generosity and the love we have for people. Look deep down in your heart and find that. When you find

that, then go fight for justice, for peace, for everyone. Find for myself, fight for me as a Palestinian child and Palestinian father and Palestinian mother and brother and sister. That's what they're teaching us. Be human. Yes. And that is ultimately the way that we're going to purge the earth of these fascistic ethno-s supremacist ideas and movements and nation states is when we can connect to that part of our hearts and our humanity that is beyond

borders is beyond race, is beyond religion, that I can see in the suffering of an innocent Palestinian myself. You know, not to say that I have experienced anything that they've experienced, but it's on that raw level of human connection to see a father, you know, holding his brutalized child and to be deeply moved, to see myself and my own suffering in that, I think that is something that we all need to cultivate. And it's not that. not cultivated by, you know, just endlessly scrolling on your phone and, and the empty spectacle of modern society and go out and consume and the new iPhones out and the new Marvel movies out. Those are shallow. Those keep you on the surface of life. But to find your heart, to fight for

justice, to seek the deepest truths about humanity on our brief time here on this planet, that's what a well-lived life should be focused on. And the Palestinian people, they don't want to have to show us that. They would like a world when they live in peace and they aren't in the headlines. I'm sure they would all take that. But the conditions have been imposed on them and they have no choice but to be that lighthouse of humanity in a dark, dark time and an uncertain time. You bring something really important there, Brett. I just want to highlight something there. You know, it was a two in the morning. In the morning. In no. northern Gaza, I heard this big explosion. The whole hospital shook. Hospital is not even

functioning as a hospital. Most of it is destroyed. And half an hour later, I just run down into the emergency room, got ready. I knew that, you know, we all knew that there's going to be casualties coming in any time now. And I remember this child that came through with a shrapnel injury on his head. He was six years old. And his name was Ahmed. And I look at him. And next to him, the next bay, the Tuma Bay, is his father.

his father's legs are missing and the father is looking at us trying to save his child the father even though he was so much in pain while the other physicians are trying to amputate the leg that is hanging

by a thread because nothing is left he did not flinch I don't think they even gave him any anesthesia because there was none you know he's just staring at his child my

my left hand is holding the brain of this child I didn't even gloves trying to stop the bleed I had a gauze in my hand And it was saturated. And the most difficult thing was, this child looked up and kind of stared at my eyes, our eyes met. And I thought, oh, this hope, maybe, maybe.

Maybe you'll pull it through. Please, buddy. Please fight for it. We're here for you. Please fight. And I think that was his goodbye. I know that was his goodbye. That look was saying,

I am going to rest from this pain. The difficult part came after that. Looking at the father that's looking at us trying to save his son, only six years old I think he realized from my look that it's over I looked

he looked our eyes met again and he just closed his eyes and cried I will never forget that I will never forget that our government

paid for those poems Israelis forces they did that and from human to human father to father looking at that father can't even tell him that his son is dead

he just knew it from how I looked at I was so angry I was so angry and I'm still very angry I walked away I didn't want to see that father again

because I don't know what to say to him no parent no parent should ever go through that as a father he didn't care what was happening to him

he was bleeding everywhere but she just kept looking at his little son that maybe maybe buddy please

keep fighting maybe it is hope but there was not unfathomable and I mean just like you're saying he's getting his legs amputated but his singular focus is so fixated on his son that he doesn't even feel his own pain I can't imagine you know then you just I mean how do you even continue about your life after something like that like you know usually like here in in

in our society at the moment, it's stable enough that if you or I were to deal with such horrific trauma that we would have access to hopefully, I mean, you know, there's money is always an issue, but you would hopefully have access to therapy, to mental health counseling, to family and friends, to be there to support you. And then they're robbed of all that. So you face that trauma and then you just walk back into the rubble, you know? Yes. And a very good point, but there my hope is this that part of me

wants to meet that father again if he makes it but I'm afraid he might not because there is no antibiotics in Gaza there is no literally no medicine

no sterile equipment to clean wounds infection rates is everywhere Because after Israeli destroyed everything, the whole of Gaza is raw sewer. Like now we have polio, we have hepatitis A. Everybody is already children and people are already malnutritioned. But now here they have diarrhea because of the diseases spreading because out there is

Israeli had bombed every social infrastructure and Siwa is everywhere and people are sick and dying of other diseases besides being bombed. So that's ethnic cleansing. They are really doing it as we're watching. They're bombing and then they're making sure they die of other diseases. Israeli is making sure that. So if that father, I hope he won't get an infection because he's. wounds were so severe he was getting there was not he was getting blood transfusion and I think we did had very limited amount of blood at that time and

um so if I ever meet him I don't think we'll have words I'll just give him a hug because it's it was like human to human father to father we just we had that connection And I don't know what happened to his wife. I don't know how happened to his other kids. Nobody knows because in the middle of all the chaos, when Israel strikes within, because usually strike within a short distance of a hospital, the people who are farther away will never make it.

Within a show, it's chaos. It's total chaos. So the family is probably there. Maybe everybody is there. Only, you know, only we do not know if we ever meet again. Yeah, I mean, it's, it really is on par with the great crimes of even the last century, I think, of, you know, you have the acute crime of brutalizing people, murdering people, and then the generational trauma that is facilitated through the destruction of infrastructure, which leads to diseases, the trauma that gets passed down. I mean, how many generations is that going to take to wash out if it ever does? You can think about after the Vietnam War and the use of Agent Orange, the babies for generations continue to have these horrific malformations and deformations from the poison that the U.S. just layered over the entire country after Hiroshima Nagasaki, the radiation poisoning.

these are the crimes against humanity that we that need to stop that need to be stopped that humanity needs to outgrow this phase and that will only happen with the destruction of these empires that where you have a country as rich and as powerful as the United States and instead of using that wealth and that power to do anything like good in the world they use it to brutalize people that they don't agree with politically or whose allies don't agree with them And that is profound evil. And so I could never understand somebody being, you know, as somebody born and raised. And how could you be a patriot?

How could you fly the American flag happily when you know the blood that it's drenched in? When we, in our country, when we say Israelis are only allied democratic democracy in the middle of here. Okay. This is a lie. They're brainwashing the American people. What do you mean it's a democracy, though? What is democracy? Can we?

Israel is occupying Palestine. Israel is killing Palestinians. It's brutally annihilating the people. How is that a democracy? It's a colony. They're colonizers. How can we call colonizers a democracy? Right.

Please. It's disgusting. They need to stop lying to us. And American people need to wake up and say, no, you cannot occupy our people. You cannot colonize a people. You cannot blockade the whole of Gaza and limit their freedoms and everything else and say that is a democracy. What is a democracy? It just doesn't make sense.

It's a lie. Absolutely. It's anti-democracy. It's a fascist apartheid ethno state where you get certain rights based on your ethnicity and your religion and where you live on a map and your relationship to the colonized colonizer dynamic. It's anti-democracy. I don't even think we have democracy here, but certainly a fascist settler colonial apartheid state in the Levant is not anything like a democracy. That's this Orwellian world we live in where Israel is the democracy. The IDF is the most moral army in the world. like anybody with a shred of knowledge in their head has to be offended by that by that language and then the United States pretending like yeah you know like in our constitution every human being has unalienable rights to life liberty in the pursuit of happiness as America and its allies destroy life liberty and the very possibility of the pursuit of happiness for countless people around the world but I saw one most of the patients came to us from children or women in our emergency room they had gunshot wounds to the head to the chest

and to the lower extremities so they meant to maim them or kill them and just murder them right off the back how can we call or how can they call themselves

the most Israelis how can Israelis call them themselves the most moral army when they're shooting children in the head civilians display civilians and I have video of a gentleman

that was shot in the back the exit wound was in his neck and they shoot his knees they shot his knees how can you how can you just shoot people like that

and you call yourself a moral army the American Turkish protester that was killed this week Yes A girl

Yeah I forget her name Yes She's just protesting You get killed Because you're protesting Journalists being killed And you see Targeted

Targeted Targeted killing And you say this is moral I mean What is morality? I said at the beginning of our interview, brother, is that selective morality is not morality. And as far as humanity is concerned, there is no morality in Israel that is left.

Absolutely. It's immoral. To its core, to its foundations. I do want to ask about, we talked about the state of the hospitals. And, of course, almost all of them have been bombed, even the ones that have elements, like maybe a wing that is still functioning, the rest of the hospital is destroyed. Can you talk about your experience of the state of the hospitals? We know the equipment is not getting in.

We know there's no anesthesia, you know, antibiotics, sterile equipment. How are you doing anything medically in Gaza right now? It's a horrific situation because after Israeli destruction of hospitals, Like, for example, at Indonesian hospital, many times we ran out of oxygen because Israeli had bombed the central oxygen supply of the hospital. So every patient has a little tank by their bed of oxygen tank. So when we ran out of electricity, when electricity goes, off when you know when because then when electricity goes off the ventilated patients cannot

get oxygen so you you start bagging them um ambulation bags are not even available I took five of them the doctors there was so happy it's like you've given them life of course you've given life in some extent but I've never been somebody I've never seen people so happy because you give them an ambulation bag to ambulate patients that, you know, to keep them breathing until, until the electricity come back or until there's no gas. If there's gas, maybe the backup generators will kick in and then oxygen comes back in through the little tanks that we have. And so it was very difficult to work in Gaza because of the,

the lack of supplies. No soap. No soap. When with all these diseases spreading, water was scarce, was not even almost of non-existent. You have water a little bit coming through. Water, of course, is contaminated in a tap water,

but then the next day is none, or the next hour is no water. They will deliver water with this big, carts that, you know, they poured in the buckets in the ER so you can wash your hands. Most of it, I can only wash my hands when I'm, you know, many times my clothes, my scrubs are completely saturated with blood. So you cannot wash, I had sanitized, hand sanitized. You cannot wash blood with hand sanitizer.

You just rinse your hands off with the little water you have and then sanitize your hands. many times even your underwear is soaked with blood and so because of the lack of supplies and in one of the children that came through that I'm holding his neck because he got injured by an Israeli Shrapnel I'm holding to stop the bleed massive massive bleed and there were so many people

we didn't have sutures the ER physician is running around looking for sutures to come suture this kid there was not and child the little the gauze I had in my hand

was saturated and the child dies because there's no suture you can suture them and the physician is just looking and I looked I can never forget the look out of that physician. He was defeated.

We were all defeated. You say, here I work in the U.S., I have everything I need at my disposal and extra. I was thinking, this physician couldn't even suture a child to stop the bleed. And the child died.

because he's right to just kill him how can I ever be the same man again how can we as humans be the same again whether you are listening to this or whether you saw it doesn't matter

how can we explain that to our children to the generations to come Brett I don't know how how we can face our children children with that information and from what we see. I don't know. It's impossible.

And I mean, just to take it all in as impossible, it's too much for a single human heart to be able to withstand it, it feels like. And this is a personal question, and if you don't want to answer it, you certainly don't have to. But I'm sure as a medical worker of any sort, there's a certain professionalism with regards to, the horrors that you see on a daily basis so you're working here in omaha you have a you know gunshot victim or whatever you deal with terrible things there's a certain baseline um sort of i don't know how you'd say it but a baseline understanding of the work that you're in and a sort of desensitization to know if i were to walk into an ICU right now and see somebody deeply hurt it would be effective to me i'm not used to it i don't have the training for it i've never been around it

it would be startling to me. So health care workers have that. But then you get put in a situation in Gaza where, like you were saying, you don't even have the basic tools you need. And you know if you were in any hospital, even a rural under-supplied hospital in the U.S., you could be able to find sutures or oxygen or, you know, antibiotics, or at least clean your hands. You would have everything you need to at least do your job. So you're in a terrible war zone. You're trying your best to save life after life after life.

if you're not giving even the baseline adequacy of the tools that you need. And you're seeing the worst of humanity in the form of what Israel is doing to these people. How do you cope with it mentally and emotionally? Do you have your own trauma you have to work through? How do you know when too much is too much? How much can one person take? Very good question. I feel dead inside, really.

after seeing that. My soul is dead. My spirit is dead. I... I don't know if I've even to a point where I can... I know what trauma is in my mind. I know what it is. But I don't know if I've even really thought about it.

Because I'm still in shock that that's... The world is actually... just watching the Palestinians being annihilated. We are doing something. We are talking. We are protesting. We're doing stuff.

But this should not be happening. It should never have happened 76 years ago. Colonialism should never have happened of Palestine. And, you know, you see a lot of suffering and pain

when you work in health care. But nothing can prepare you to what the Israeli armed forces are doing in Gaza is the worst form of humanity and brutality so and of course it's not about me

it's about these children and civilians in Gaza and Palestinian people in Gaza have been living this in the last 11 11 I can't even imagine I was just there for for a short period of time. I can't even imagine living that for 11 months for almost a year

now. The trauma they are going through. It's horrific. I was there for a few weeks. I feel a dead man walking. I can't sleep. Can't eat.

You know? My brain is not working. I feel numb. I feel disoriented most of the time. I feel like I'm living in a world that is so blindfolded that we are walking, like we're dead walking, dead people walking. I feel like I am thrown into an ocean and I cannot swim

and somebody has tied my hands and my feet and they are yelling at me. can do swim. That's what the Palestinian people are going through. We tie their hands and their feet and throw them into the middle of the Pacific

of the Atlantic and we are blaming them why can they swim. And they are believing it for 11 months. I was only there with them for a few weeks. So

the death of humanity results into to the death of the death of morality and human and that human spirit of justice and peace and freedom and love and kindness that we are supposed to share with other people is directly related to the death of the human spirit in each one of us who have worked or have seen with what is happening to the Palestinian people. I feel that.

I'm dumb. but that's it's not about me it's the children and the Palestinian people who have seen it is purest live it for 76 years yeah and I I totally understand your

you know your urge to say it's not about me and it's admirable and I that self-sacrificing nature is certainly something that is noble but at the end of the day we are all human and and you know

their trauma is certainly deeply real but I truly hope that you can hopefully find some peace and maybe that peace can only come when the Palestinian people themselves are liberated from this madness. As the Palestinian people say,

inshallah. Yes. Inshallah. It's when they are free, when Palestine is free, humanity will be free itself from them.

this genocidal, ethno-state brutal terrorist terrorism of Israeli government. That is when I think that you and I and the rest of humanity who have, you know, the fiber of moral clarity about what is right or is wrong, that's when we can really truly be able to deal with our trauma. But as long as the genocide is happening, we're going to be traumatized because Israeli is not going to stop. But we're going to stop him because we're going to talk. Absolutely. I do believe humanity ultimately will win.

It'll never wash away the blood and the hurt and the trauma and the pain and the suffering of all the people that are destroyed along the way, all the Palestinian lives that are destroyed along the way. But as you were saying earlier, you know, evil can't last forever. it eventually comes up against the brick wall of human resistance. And wherever there is oppression, domination, brutalization, there is at the same time human beings rallying together to fight back. And that's one of the most beautiful aspects of our nature as human beings, is that we do not accept the boot on our neck. You can keep it there for a time, but eventually it will get knocked off.

And that's why no fascist state has ever stuck around for 100, of years because the more you try to impose on people, the more you invite that resistance. And I truly, speaking for myself, I believe that the Palestinian people should be able to resist by any means necessary, any means necessary, their Israeli oppressors. And I am unapologetically and unblinkingly on the side of the Palestinian resistance in all of its forms. Now, this has been a very emotional conversation, and I deeply appreciate not only your time with us here today, but you putting yourself in a position to go help other human beings,

even though that comes at a mental, spiritual, and emotional cost to yourself, but as you said, it's not about you, it's about the people in Palestine, and there's very, there's almost nothing else a human being could do that would be as meaningful. meaningful as sacrificing their own well-being to help other human beings who are suffering, complete strangers who are suffering. Before we wrap this up, though, I want to give you a chance to get anything else that you wanted to say off your chest, just kind of give you free reign to make any point you want to make or tell any story you want to tell or say anything else you want to say before we end this conversation. Thank you, Brett. Thank you for this opportunity to talk about this very pressing issue of our time, the issue that affects humanity in every shape and form.

What I want to really finish up with is it's my promise that I gave to the people of Gaza, that this two shall end. These two shall end. That may not be a consolation because you are being bound by Israel, because you are being killed and maimed. Your family is being brutally wiped out by Israeli forces, but we will keep speaking. One of the parents, this mom,

she told me this. She has young kids. her husband is was murdered she was in our ICU but thankfully she survived at some point I thought she was not going to leave because

the situation was really bad she was multiple multiple severe and complex injuries and she says I am leaving the hospital but I think my time in this world

has come to an end end. I survived this first Israeli strike, but I don't know if I'll survive another one. And she said, please, when I'm dead, because my husband is dead, everyone is, my whole family is dead, please come back to Gaza and look for my children. And please wipe away the tears from their hearts when you see them. please wipe away the tears from their hearts when you see them. I cried like a child. I think that was the first time I cried.

I usually don't cry. With the little hope I had, I said, I said, ma'am, you're going to leave. I have hope. let's keep fighting together you are not alone in this I know you are going home into a tent not home a tent and sleeping outside

I know you have no food no water no shelter nothing but the human spirit will prevail against the evil of Zionism I know it will and I will come back hopefully inshallah

I'll come back to Gaza someday and we'll eat together we'll sit together we'll have a celebration of life I said please don't give up that is what

we're going to keep searching for meaning in this life even when we are faced with the atrocities of Israeli forces murdering and killing innocent Palestinians for 76 years. All they want is to live in peace at their homes and with their families. So I told her that, don't give up. I was able to, she finally was able to get, I gave her my number. We're not supposed to give her numbers, but I did. I don't care what anybody said, you know, Israelis, then don't get phone numbers.

It's illegal. It's not illegal to me. It's my choice. And she finally texted yesterday. She says, we're still here. We are alive. And she's not even asking about, she's not even, so, she's just asking, how are you doing? Are you okay?

Wow. You know? Do you eat? did you go to work how is work you're asking me all this question that to me I'm worried about I didn't hear from you since I came back a week ago I'm just worried that you are alive

I'm not sure if you arrive but here you are asking how I'm doing did I cook for myself did I eat did I go to work how was work how is your friends did you give them a hug from us. Yes,

I did. So my work all I want to ask people out there, if you're listening to this and when you listen to this, wherever you are, whoever you are, please amplify

the voices of the oppressed of the Palestinian people. This mother that gave up that she, that asked me to wipe the tears from the hearts of our children when she's dead because she said Israelis will kill her.

And please fight for justice. Please speak up. Participate in Nebraska's for Palestine. We have an organization. We have a great organization that brings peace

in our we promote peace and love. and coexistence freedom for Palestine JVP Jewish Voices for Peace these are the Jewish people who actually they mean exactly what they mean when they said never again the Jewish people the Jewish voices for peace these are the light of the world in times of darkness why because Because they know what it means to be marginalized. They know what it means to be massacred.

They know what it means to go through a genocide. They know what it means to be slaughtered by an oppressor. Because the Nazis wiped away over 6 million people of their ancestors. It was only a few years ago. So the JVP that is here today, they probably have grandparents, aunts and uncles, who are still alive today that survived the Nazi genocide, Nazi Holocaust. I was a teacher before I became a nurse. One of the classes I taught was the study of the Holocaust and genocide and ethics.

So I combined the study of Holocaust and genocide that have happened since World War II. with ethics, morality, what is right. We said no more. This should happen again. This will never happen again. But since then, we had the Rwandan genocide. We have the Sudan going on right now. They pulled part in Cambodia.

With so many, how and when can humanity learn? JVP is the sound of reason and science. sound of justice that is holding accountable the Zionist regime is telling them that you cannot keep doing this killing the Palestinian people

in our name not in our name not in the Jewish people's names not the whole of Israel is evil the Zionists are the evil they are doing this in the name of the safety of the Jewish people no they are endangering the safety of the Jewish people

JVP in America is the voice of the Palestinian people and the voice of the voiceless and the Nebraska for Palestine Nebraska for Peace Palestinian Rights Task Force please get engaged with them we try to shed the light of what this brutal Zionist regime is doing so that someday we can all be free and be happy and enjoy the freedom and justice for all.

Amen, my friend. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for your work in the organizations. I'll link to those in the show notes, but even if obviously most of the people listening will not be local to Omaha, you know, try to get involved in whatever ways you can. Everybody has a role to play. You might not be, you know, a medical volunteer. You might not have a podcast or a YouTube channel, but you have friends and family. You have a community and you can get activated

in that context and do everything you can to validate the humanity of Palestinians and throw in your lot with a fight against genocide, apartheid, racism, the mass murder of innocent human beings. And so I wish, you know, the Palestinians knew how many people here in the belly of the beast hate our government, hate what it's doing and facilitating in Palestine, and our whole hearts are with the Palestinian people and their liberation. So this is a very moving episode for me, and I know your experiences are incredibly moving for you. I wish you the absolute best, and you are welcome back on Revlect anytime for any reason. Thanks, brother.

Appreciate it very much. I go to sleep every night feeling traumatized. They say occupation trying to hide that it's a genocide. I just wish a kid could grow up to see his mom. I wish that I could do something about bombs dropped on Gaza. Her is so bad to know where do my tax dollars go? Murdered and cool. blood poor young soul all he knew was love the whole world goes blind turned to silence while i'm saying free

Palestine from the tyrants i don't even know if i could handle this pain every day's a murder kids get put in the grave shot for his race the place he was raised when peace was the only thing that he ever craved So how you justify what you do it? It hurts so bad to see all the lives we're losing. It feels like the world goes blind. Free, all Austin, free Palestine. Pray the guys that the world going finally see what goes on overseas and behind the scenes. A little boy got his neck on a concrete.

Like George Floyd and a kid when he's trying to breathe. He's through a rock, but they got a tank. Dead on the floor, he's been praying for change. You murder children, no, we're not the same. My people, they dying in chains. Ain't nobody evil like the IDF. No kid in his thoughts thinking I might be next. He got shot, and peace may he rest.

I see me in the videos and photographs. You shoot a kid and you laugh about it. Hurts about nobody ever ask about it. Too many bodies to count simple mathematics. Families gone and it's so traumatic. Leave his home alone. He was there his whole life. Now everything is gone.

He don't got no sure to cry. I'm not even moms. They don't made him homeless, now he got no one, family deceased by explosions. Mentally he's gotten all he sees of those moments. All he can do is pray. Pray he gonna live another day. I don't even know if I could handle this pain. Every day's a murder kid's get put in the grave.

Shot for his race. race the place he was raised when peace was the only thing that he ever craved so how you justify what you do it hurt so bad to see all the lives losing it feels like the world goes blind free all austin free palestine I don't know.