Tangle - A conversation with Palestinian-American Yousef Munayyer

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

The fundamental promise of Tangle is to share the best perspectives from across the political spectrum on the most divisive issues of the day.For the last few weeks, we’ve been covering the Israel-Palestine conflict and everything that has happened since October 7. Throughout that time, you have gotten several Tangle editions that included a wide range of perspectives on this conflict: Israeli, Palestinian, American, European, and, of course, my own. But given the personal nature of this story to me, you’ve gotten an unusually frequent rate of editions that included just my own personal views on what is going on — including last Friday’s 10 thoughts about what is happening in Israel.Of course, Tangle is my publication, and it’s okay for me to occasionally climb out on some limbs and share my own views independent of others. But in times like these, I also think it is critical for me to elevate perspectives that are decidedly different from my own. At times, my efforts to do that have created some content that is — for lack of a better word — unhelpful. But those same efforts often create content that I find very valuable.Yesterday was one of those times. I got to sit down with Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American writer and political analyst who is the head of the Palestine/Israel program at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C. Munayyer is one of my go-to voices on this conflict, as evidenced by the fact that I actually interviewed him for our podcast way back in 2021 — before I even had a proper microphone to record these episodes. Despite the difficult circumstances surrounding our conversation, it was great to bring him back on. Just like in 2021, while I have bones to pick on plenty of points Munayyer made, I also learned a lot, found his arguments cogent and challenging, felt my own position shifting on certain specifics, and was left feeling that these kinds of conversations should be more frequent. In fact, they need to be more frequent.You can also check out our latest videos, and interview with presidential candidate Marianne Williamson here and a look at what a potential second term for Donald Trump could look like, here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to

your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Hey everybody and welcome to the Tangle Podcast. Today we are sitting down with Yousef Munair. Yousef is a Palestinian-American writer and political analyst who's the head of the Palestine Israel program at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C. His focus is on Israeli-Palestinian issues,

U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine, and regional dynamics that are affected by or impact them. He's also directed the Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center, a DC-based center focused on Palestine policy. Yousef is, without question, one of my most followed voices among people who write or talk about the issues of Israel and Palestine. He has been on this podcast before, a couple of years ago in 2021, during one of the last spades of violence. He was one of the first people I called to come on. So I was really excited to speak with him again. It goes without saying that him and I don't agree on everything. And this interview is not about that. It is about giving him an opportunity to share his perspective

and to put to our listeners his views on what is happening, especially because they differ from my own and because you so often get my voice and my perspective about what is happening right now. So I was really thrilled to bring him on. As always, it was a super fascinating conversation where I learned a lot and had some of my views challenged and changed and shifted in certain ways. And I hope you guys enjoy it too. So without further ado, here it is. Yusuf Munair, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Sure. Good to be with you.

First, I'd like to start maybe just a little human to human here. How are you doing? How are you holding up? I imagine this is a really difficult moment in time. And for many of us who have family members who are on the ground under bombs, it becomes increasingly more difficult. Nobody is okay, even if they're alive during this time. Everybody is profoundly impacted by this. And I think, you know, I speak for many, many people when I say we just wanted to see it come to an immediate end. So that's more or less, I think, how a lot of us are doing right now. Can you tell me a little bit about what you're seeing? How would you describe, in your words, I guess, the current situation of this quote-unquote military operation in Gaza and also what you're seeing in the West Bank right now? What's your perspective and description of what's happening? Yeah, I mean, in some ways what we're seeing is new because of the level of spectacular violence that we are seeing.

The sheer number of people who are being killed, the amount of destruction that we are seeing is unprecedented. Um, the mass displacement, um, and the level of, of cruelty, I think is something that's hard to find, um, hard to find an analogy for in, in, in the history of, of, um, Israeli-Palestinian interaction. And that's saying a lot. At the same time, there's a lot that's not new here. And I look at what we are seeing today and have seen over the last few months as just the most recent episode within a situation where there is a lack of freedom and justice. And until I think those things are fundamentally addressed, this is stuff that we're going to continue to see. And sometimes it might take more horrific forms than others. And we're watching, as I said, a truly horrific version of this now. But it is part of a system. It's part of a system that did not start on October 7th,

long predated it, and will most likely exist after this war is over, which I think is probably the most important piece to focus on. And I think without challenging that system, we're likely to find ourselves watching future versions of this. You know, I've been critical of, I think, especially how far this particular bombardment and ground invasion and military response from Israel has gone. And I've written a little bit about this in my newsletter. And one of the things I hear very often from, I think, a lot of people who are maybe more ardently on the pro-Israel side is, well, what should Israel have done? What were their options then in response to the October 7th attack? And I have different kinds of answers for that. One of which I think is just there

were no good options on the table, and this is a particularly bad one. But I'm curious how you would answer that question and respond to that framework. I mean, you could wave a magic wand and have some influence on what happens on October 8th. What's your guidance? How do you approach that? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few ways to respond to that. First of all, I think there's no situation that justifies the mass killing of innocent civilians. And we should make no mistake, this is what we are seeing in Gaza. Thousands of people, thousands of children who had absolutely nothing to do with the events of October 7th are being killed in what is called an act of defense against it. And that's not justifiable in any circumstances. At the same time, though, you do hear people attempting to justify this war by raising the very point that you did. What is Israel supposed

to do? You have to sort of sympathize with this impossible predicament that Israel is in. I think there's a couple of responses to that. First, we know that this is not the only way that Israel can defend itself, because Israel was capable of defending itself on October 7th, but failed to do that for a number of reasons. What happened on October 7th was not because Hamas was somehow militarily superior to Israel, was somehow, you know, somehow had more resources, more guns than Israel, or had superior intelligence.

It was made possible by a failure of Israeli intelligence and security apparatus, right? So there is clearly a way to prevent against another attack like that without having to do what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip. What it is seeking to do now in the Gaza Strip is not defense. It's some form of accountability, right, in the most generous sort of description of it against sort of the key architects behind October 7th. But it's not defense. And I think it's important to separate those two things. I would also say that there are people who look at the situation in Gaza and say, well, if you look at it from the Israeli perspective, this is an impossible situation. What are you supposed to do? There is this group that wants to come and attack you, and they have a base here in Gaza. And how else are we supposed to respond, right? But I think we need to ask ourselves, how did this happen? How do you get into a place where there is a group like this that controls this territory and is able to develop the capabilities to launch these kinds of attacks, right? And the reason we are in this place is because Israel created a sort of exceptional status in Gaza that is unique, right?

There is an occupation, right, in Gaza. has security perks that it gets in the role of being an occupier, while also having responsibilities towards the population it occupies. And this is supposed to be the way that international law and the expectations of occupation internationally work. But the situation that was created in Gaza by the Israelis with their disengagement in 2005 created a situation where Israel wanted to retain the right to have the security perks of occupation without the responsibilities of governance or to the people it was supposed to protect in Gaza. And so this predicament, right, that people are being asked to sympathize with is also a creation of decisions that the Israeli government made for self-interested reasons. And we could go into all of that and sort of the logic behind the disengagement and all of those kinds of things. But if we are being asked to appreciate this predicament, we have to also understand the conditions that brought it about. It obviously

did not emerge on October 7th, right? There's a long history to this, and including multiple episodes of wars on Gaza that predate this most recent war. that predate this most recent war. One of the kind of wrinkles, I guess, to that answer that I think has become sort of front and center in the conversation, at least in my circles over the last week or two, is the role in which Israel played in elevating Hamas and kind of giving Hamas more power. The New York Times had some reporting about, you know, funding from Israel that was sort of being passed through Qatar to Hamas. And there's been a lot of discussion about these sort of declassified conversations where leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu have been quoted as saying, you know, that the tension between

Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is actually beneficial for Israel's goal of preventing a Palestinian state from existing. I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about your view on that, on Israel's role in putting Hamas into a position where it has power in Gaza and, you know, I guess how you view that general dynamic. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is again one of those things that's not new when it comes to the sort of the domination of Palestinians, whether by Israel and this most recent Israeli government or previous Israeli governments, or going back to the British mandate, this sort of principle of divide and rule has long been practiced against Palestinians by those in power over them. And also, of course, not just among

Palestinians. This is just a classical tactic of colonial powers throughout history. And, you know, I think that the state of Israel, and you can look at the way that this was discussed at the time by the Sharon government, who sort of made the decision to, quote-unquote, disengage from Gaza in 2005. to quote-unquote disengage from Gaza in 2005, the way that they saw it was as an opportunity to kind of freeze any obligations that they had towards making peace with the Palestinians. And at that time, it wasn't about necessarily Hamas and Fatah, right? It was about keeping the West Bank and Gaza as separate entities.

And keeping them under different status, right? And the idea here was that if Gaza was separated from the West Bank and the Palestinians were divided and you could say, well, we have nobody to talk to, there's no Palestinian partner to talk to, then you really can't be expected to make concessions for peace, right? You need to have a partner to make concessions to, and if you don't have a partner, what's the point of having this conversation? And so, you know, Israel's policy towards Gaza, which developed into a policy towards Hamas in Gaza, was fit into this self-interested argument about putting off a peace agreement and perpetuating occupation and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.

And, you know, again, this is not limited to this most recent Israeli government. Obviously, Netanyahu has gotten a lot of attention and a lot of flack specifically for his policy towards Hamas in Gaza. But this is something we see from this Netanyahu government, from previous Netanyahu governments, and from non-Netanyahu governments as well, including, you know, you could look back and see statements from figures that are today in the opposition to Netanyahu supporting this sort of divide and rule strategy to put off, right, the pressure for greater concessions towards the Palestinians. And so when I talk about, you know, this moment being the result of a system that's in place, this is that system,

right? It's a system of unending apartheid, an absence of peace and justice. And, you know, there might be people like Netanyahu and others that see the maintenance of the system, the continuance of the system as one that comes with costs from time to time, but ultimately more benefits for Israel and for the Israeli project, and therefore see it as preferable, right? But I think there are a lot of others who are paying the costs, of course, of this who see it differently. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. One of the things that made me reach out to you in the last week was this poll that you posted on Twitter. It was a thread you posted about some recent polling from Gaza and the West Bank and Israel of Palestinians. There's a lot, I think, to unpack in it, but I'm curious if maybe you could just start by telling us a little bit about what we saw in the poll and what your takeaways from it were. Yeah, and there really is a lot. And we're not going to be able to capture it in this

conversation. And I would encourage listeners to actually go seek out the poll and read through the results and the details because it is important. I was looking forward to seeing this poll. I honestly did not know when to expect it because this is part of a series of polls that are done of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. And obviously, the situation in Gaza right now is so desperate and so dangerous that it's hard to do public opinion polling in these kinds of conditions. But the outfit managed to get it done during the period of the truce, the very brief, you know, six or seven day truce

in this war that took place recently, so that they could produce some of these results. And I have to say, I wasn't super surprised by the results that we saw. Some of the key takeaways, I mean, support for Hamas has gone through the roof. It was a party that had support previously, but now has far greater support. And I think what's important to note here is that, you know, more than just support for Hamas, if you look at the actual numbers, Palestinians support this idea of armed struggle and using arms to confront Israel. And support for that strategy has also gone up significantly. And the number of people who support that strategy, the percentage of respondents,

are greater than the number of people who support Hamas. And so sort of confidence in this strategy or support for this strategy does not simply correspond with an ideological political preference, right? It's a strategic choice that transcends sort of ideological preferences, which I think is important. You know, I'm not surprised by this because historically, and there's historical evidence in these polls over time that shows this, in moments like this, that happens. However, coming into this, we were at a point already where support for armed struggle was significantly high. And now it's, of course, gotten much higher. I think one of the key reasons this is important,

two reasons this is very important. First, because the Israeli sort of strategy, or at least the stated Israeli strategy, is that they are doing this to weaken Hamas and eliminate Hamas, and their order of operations that they put forward is to get to peace, first you have to get rid of Hamas, right? And the way you do that is by doing what we're doing in Gaza. This is sort of their theory of change, right? But the evidence that we have now pretty clearly is that this is not doing that at all. In fact, what it's doing is quite the opposite, right? Which, you know, it's doing is quite the opposite, right? Which, you know, for anyone who understands the Palestinian experience, no one is going to be surprised by this at all. You know, I don't think anybody has ever succeeded in making their neighbors like them by force and by bombing. It usually doesn't work

like that, right? So it's not surprising to see these results in Palestinian public opinion. The other reason I think it's really important, not just because it tells us something about, you know, Israeli strategy in Gaza, but really tells us something about sort of the international community's handling of Israel-Palestine for years

and the failure to take into account what Palestinians think, right? And you see from this poll, one of the things that was quite striking was that the vast majority of Palestinians want Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, to resign, right? I think something like 11% are the ones saying that he should sort of stick around, 11%. And this is the man, of course, that Joe Biden says should take control of Gaza after the war, right? And I think there's a lot of things we can say about the Biden administration's handling of this, There's a lot of things we can say about the Biden administration's handling of this. But this problem is not unique to the Biden administration.

This approach of basically trying to shape Palestinians into a mold that suits both American and Israeli interests but doesn't take into account Palestinian views is something that has been a cornerstone of American policy on Israel and Palestine for a long, long time, right? And it doesn't work. And, you know, I think part of what we're seeing today is a product of that, is a product of that failure. So, you know, we need to look this stuff in the face. And that's not easy to do because it requires acknowledging that the parties are much further apart than we'd like to acknowledge, right? And it's much easier to go back to this boilerplate language about a two-state solution. But the Israelis don't support that right now. There isn't Palestinian confidence in this right now.

And the primary Palestinian voice that's pushing for that has about 11% support among Palestinians. Right. And so you need to meet people where they are. Right. And there's no shortcuts to that. And shortcuts bring us to where we are today. So, you know, people are looking for easy answers to this. There aren't any, right? But that doesn't mean that, you know, there are ways around it or that

by ignoring it, it's going to go away or that we won't see major eruptions of violence if we do ignore it. Yeah, I think that's a really nice segue kind of into the second part of this conversation I want to have, which is the, I guess, the look ahead, the what's next part of this. So... anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians.

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November 19th, only on Disney+. You raise, I think, the most important points, kind of, you know, looking to the horizon about what's coming, which is everything that's happening right now is increasing the popularity of Hamas as a political organization. It's damaging faith in Israel or the Palestinian Authority or the United States as a legitimate partner to the Palestinian cause. And in the United States, in Israel's case, I think it's kind of shocking that it could have gotten worse based on what the polling had shown beforehand, but it seems to be. So I'm interested to hear how you sort of view Hamas and all this as a political organization. Can peace exist with them as a leadership group in Gaza? And how do we kind of navigate, you know, picking up the pieces whenever this war does end

with them clearly in control and with, you know, rising popularity, as you note? Yeah, I mean, again, this goes back to what I was talking about previously. Like, you know, the United States and their relationship with Israel, you know, the United States recognizes Israel as a sovereign and independent nation. And because of that, we don't tell the Israelis who to elect. They don't tell us who to elect. They elect their leaders. We have to deal with them. We may not like them. We may not like the choices that they make. The choices that they make may not advance the policies or the visions that the United States sees. Nonetheless, we have to deal

with them. We don't treat the Palestinians the same way, right? Because we simply don't see them as a people who have self-determination and sovereignty and should be able to choose their leaders. That has to change. Obviously, Hamas does not fit into the stated vision of the United States. It doesn't fit into the interests of Israel. They're there. And whether we like that or not, ignoring them doesn't make them go away, right? Nor does it make it any easier to get to some sort of comprehensive agreement if that is in fact the goal, right? And at the same time, plenty of people on the Israeli side that don't fit within that vision, right? Including the entire government of Israel right now, not just one faction, but the entire government

of Israel is not on board with a Palestinian state with a two-state solution or with any of that, right? So, you know, we can play this game of it's too hard. The cards are not right. The leaders are not there. They're too weak. They're not, you know, they're not bold enough. They're not willing to make sacrifices. We can say all of that and use that as an excuse to either ignore the situation or just

continue with the status quo of supporting Israel no matter what it does, right? That hasn't worked, right? That hasn't worked. So I think we need an approach that first and foremost looks inward, you know, at U.S. policy and says, what's gone wrong and how do we fix those things, right? This is not a normal moment in the Middle East or a normal moment in Israeli-Palestinian history. This is a major moment. And war is a failure. And this is a spectacular war and a spectacular failure, right? And this is a region where Israel and the United States have a tremendous amount of influence and have been shaping policy and outcomes for a really long time.

We need to think about how this happened, right, and how we got here and what we need to change. A couple weeks before this happened, maybe even 10 days before this happened, our national security advisor, right, Jake Sullivan, was giving an interview before October 7th where he said, you know, the Middle East is more calm and stable today than it's ever been. And I have to spend less time on conflict in that region than any of my predecessors going back to 9-11. OK, I think this just shows you how out of touch American policy has been with the currents in the region. Right. And that's you know, that's a product of willful choices. We need to re-examine some of those before we're really in a position to say, or to articulate a vision for the future for Israelis and Palestinians. On that piece, I would just say, look, I don't think Israelis or Palestinians are going anywhere,

certainly not anytime soon. We both live in this space. We both want to live in this space. And the only way you get to peaceful coexistence is through a just and agreed upon set of rules that people abide by. That's how it works. And if any party thinks they're above the rules, or if any party thinks the law doesn't apply to them, then you have a system of injustice that just perpetuates violence, right? That's what we need to break out of. And if, you know, the two-state model has failed, I believe it has, and I believe it has for a long time, the answer cannot be, well, we just got to stick with the status quo, right? Because we've seen the cost of that. We have to work for different alternatives and prioritize that with urgency. And that's the piece that we have not seen so far, right?

I think this administration, you know, in their language and in their priorities, has effectively acknowledged that, you know, the two-state solution is a vision at best, right? And not something that we're anywhere close to. But it's simply not enough to just, you know, to just resign to that, right? you know, to just resign to that, right? Especially when we are, when I say we, I mean, the United States are so deeply involved in supporting this system of injustice. We'll be right back after this quick break. So I guess sort of on that note, I mean, take the two-state solution off the table then. What's a realistic, difficult answer, proposal that you feel like is possible in the future, I guess, is 1A. And 1B is, can Hamas as a leadership group in Gaza be part of that, I guess. I mean, and, you know, showing my cards here, I personally

really struggle with a sort of flattening of Hamas and the Israeli government as being on the same footing. And, you know, I look at the way everybody's postured right now and I see, you know, the Israeli government just feeling like there's absolutely no way that they can deal with a group who committed the acts they committed. And I see the people standing in the rubble in Gaza saying there's no way they'll ever be able to deal with a group who committed this kind of military incursion in Gaza and all the destruction that's been wrought. So yeah, I suppose I'm interested in what you see as an alternative to the two-state solution. And then also that second piece, which is, can Hamas be a group that maybe evolves in a way politically that leads with some sort of

diplomacy to get to that solution rather than the violent uprising, I guess? rather than the violent uprising, I guess. Yeah, I mean, look, I think all political actors can evolve over time. I don't think there's any political actor that can never evolve if conditions change over time. So I would not look at any one group as a monolith or a permanent fixture in their positions, Israeli or Palestinian. That being said, I do want to say something about this idea about just the tremendous amount of bloodshed making people think that there's just no way. There's just no way. Right. There's there's just no way. A lot of times in mass conflict situations that have been going on for a long time, sometimes it is the tremendous amount of bloodshed that makes people look at the other side and say there has to be another way that that we cannot just keep doing this.

Right. And right now, the answers that we are being given is that there is no alternative to this. Right. That we have to keep doing this. And, you know, if more Palestinians support Hamas, well, that just means that Israel has to kill more Palestinians. I mean, this is insanity. Right. At some point, voices of conscience need to be able to say there's been enough. Bloodshed. There's been enough bloodshed. I don't care who's on the other side. There has to be a way out of this, right? And if we wait to do that until the next round, it'll be more difficult the next round, right? And part of the reason it's as difficult today is because we've waited to do that previously, right? And obviously, it's not easy. There's no Palestinian in Gaza that has seen what they've

seen that has an appetite for thinking about living with Israelis after that, right? But at the same time, as I said, Israelis and Palestinians aren't going anywhere. And the answer, we simply cannot accept that the answer is a return to the October 6th status quo, right? There can't be a going back to that. The going back to that, that was also violent, right? That was also unacceptable. So, you know, I think if we really want to see an end to this, there needs to build systems of justice, right? We need equality before the law. We need the enfranchisement of all people, right? things that create systems where grievances can be redressed through legitimate processes and not through violence, right? That's why you see less violence in democracies than in non-democracies, because those processes exist. Here, they don't. We have a system of military occupation, discrimination, and so on. And so long as that continues, you're going to have eruptions of violence. So like those are the choices before us.

You know, I've been thinking a lot about Jimmy Carter in the last couple of months. His wife died recently, and I know he's in difficult shape as well. And he wrote years ago, you know, that Israel is facing this choice between peace and apartheid. Right. this choice between peace and apartheid, right? And, you know, I think the Israeli government has really gone down the route of doubling down on apartheid. And we heard yesterday the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom basically saying, you know, there can never be a Palestinian state, but also, you know, Palestinians are not going to have a right to vote. So basically apartheid is their answer, right, in perpetuity. What I worry about

is that there are Israelis today who are looking at this as another binary choice between apartheid or genocide as the options that they face. And there needs to be people who communicate to those folks that that's simply not acceptable, right? That there has to be a different alternative. And it would make sense for that voice to come from Washington, but we haven't seen the political courage within our own leaders to do that either. One of the things that I just notice about the coverage, especially in the West around this issue, and even in our conversation right now is there's always a really central focus on these kind of three players, the Palestinian

movement, the Palestinian territories, and political leaders, Israel and the United States. I'm curious if you could maybe talk a little bit about how you view the kind of Arab states' role in this, specifically maybe, you know, Egypt or Jordan. I know there was sort of a brief spurt of news coverage around the fact that Egypt was maintaining this blockade as well on Gaza and not letting refugees through. How do you view them and their relationship to the Palestinian cause right now? And what role, if any, do you think they should have in kind of changing this paradigm that you're talking about? Yeah, I mean, and, you know, I think to understand

their behavior, the most important thing to keep in mind is that, yes, these are states in the region that are next door. They're impacted by the geopolitical situation. They are ethnic kin of Palestinian Arabs. That's obviously very important. But also, it's really important to understand that these are authoritarian regimes, which are themselves threatened by the prospect of democracy. And they are part of a regional security architecture where Israel is central, where American security assistance is central. And they too are threatened by the prospect of democratic systems emerging between Israel and Palestine. And so on the one hand, they deal with the domestic turbulence anytime something like this happens because people in their countries are outraged at what

is taking place in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine and their government's lack of support. and their government's lack of support. And because many of these countries have normalized ties with Israel, they see their governments as being complicit in this. As you know, Egypt has a role in Gaza and at the Rafah crossing and so on. And they also understand that democratization presents risks to their regimes themselves. So they have a balancing act that they are sort of trying to maintain that doesn't exactly lend to solving this problem either, right? But that's not something that is separate from American interests or Israeli interests, because these are all part of a sort of common collaborative when it comes to a security setup in the region.

So this is probably one of the least important things we're going to discuss today. But before we get out of here, I wanted to give you a chance to share your thoughts on some of the Rashida Tlaib controversy around the expression from the river to the sea. And the reason I want to do that is because obviously with Tangle and my work, we are very explicitly trying to share a wide range of views on various topics. And I had an opportunity to kind of write a little bit about this just from my own personal perspective, which I know differs from yours and just expressed my feeling and sentiment that, you know, when I hear from the river to the sea, I kind of have visions of more militant, extreme, violent Palestinian liberation movements. And it sort of makes the hair on

the back of my neck stand up a bit. And I've seen some of your writing about this particular issue. And I thought it'd be important to kind of give you an opportunity to share your perspective and speak to that a little bit. So I'd love to hear you sort of talk about how you view, you know, the historical context of that chant and expression and why you might disagree with that sort of perspective that I've articulated in the past. Yeah, well, I appreciate the opportunity to do that. I mean, look, I think, and the way you put it was, to me, I think very interesting. And, you know, I think it's important to ask why it makes you uncomfortable, you know? And there were a lot of folks who, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement,

heard in that chant something that made them uncomfortable. And the first thing that they thought of is, well, what do you mean Black Lives Matter? Don't all lives matter? Doesn't my life matter? Right? And we heard what they were saying through our ears the way we wanted to hear it and with our own interests in mind, which I don't think is an abnormal reaction. But the whole point of these things is to make

people uncomfortable, to be provocative, and to make people think. And for Palestinians, when we say from the river to the sea, we're talking about a space, a physical space, where we're from, right? And I think what's interesting is that when people hear Palestinians say, hey, this is our home, one of the things that they may hear is, this is our home alone. And it's a choice to hear that that way. And I think it's worth asking why you hear it that way. When we talk about the land between the river and the sea, that's just where we're from, right? I mean, and for us to be free in our homeland, that's the goal, you know?

So it's as transparent as you can be about what it is that we see, right? And, you know, when protesters say Black Lives Matter, that's not because they want to see white lives matter less. That's because they want to see people recognize that black lives have not mattered. And for Palestinians, the reality is that between the river and the sea, there are millions of Palestinians who are not free. And there are millions of Israelis who are not free, right? And there are millions of Israelis who are. And that's the fundamental difference. That's what people are working to change, that system of inequality. So, I mean, I think I wanted to say that point, which sort of explains what this is about. But I want to also call out something else that's going on, and that's,

is about. But I want to also call out something else that's going on, and that's this policing of speech and expression that we are seeing now in overdrive, targeting Palestinians or those who support the rights of Palestinians, not just in the United States, but really around the world. We're seeing protests being shut down because of chants. We're seeing student groups being shut down. We're seeing people groups being shut down. We're seeing people being fired from their jobs for posting things on social media. I mean, this is a hysterical, repressive climate that has been building for some time. And it's a product of an effort to silence dissent against Israeli policies in the West, specifically because Israel relies on Western support to maintain what it's doing to Palestinians. And I think this is a cycle that is going to

escalate over time. We're going to see greater Israeli repression of Palestinians on the ground, leading to greater outrage in the West over Western support for that oppression. And in turn, we're going to see increased efforts to try to repress that activism. And in doing so, I think the Israeli state only reinforces this image of heavy-handedness, right, which doesn't really sell well among Western publics. And it's getting beyond absurd now. The other day you had a very well-known Jewish writer for The New Yorker who was writing about Holocaust memory and the horrors that are taking place in Gaza for The New Yorker, taking place in Gaza for the New Yorker, who had a prize named after Hannah Arendt rescinded in Germany because of what she was writing, right? So you had a Jewish writer writing about

the abuse of state power, right, And repression and horrific state violence being silenced by Germans, right? And, you know, in the spirit of Hannah Arendt. I mean, it's the height of absurdity that we're talking about now, but that's where the conversation is. And we got here because trying to defend a system of apartheid in the West

requires being absurd. Yousef Munair, I appreciate you giving us so much of your time today. If people want to keep up with some of your work, where's the best place for them to do that? I mean, I probably spend most of my time putting stuff out on Twitter related to this. You can find me at Yousef Munair on Twitter or X or whatever it's called. We'll be sure to link to it. Thanks so much for coming on the show, man. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me. written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Law. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our

podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. award-winning book. Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across

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