Tangle - The Sunday podcast: Isaac and Ari interview Daniel Bannoura

Episode Date: February 11, 2024

On this week's episode: Isaac and Ari sat down for an interview with Daniel Bannoura. Daniel is the founder of "Ultimate Palestine" and host of "Across the Divide" podcast. He is a PhD candidate in Theology at the University of Notre Dame. You can read today's podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.You can also check out our latest YouTube video where we tried to build the most electable president ever here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. The response to our first-ever Tangle Live event was better than we could have imagined and we're excited to announce we're running it back on Wednesday, April 17th in New York City! We'll be gathering the Tangle community at The Loft at City Winery for a conversation between special guests about the 2024 election moderated by founder Isaac Saul with an audience Q&A afterwards. Choose Seated General Admission tickets or VIP Tickets that include a post show meet- and- greet, Tangle merch, and the best seats in the house. Tangle paid subscribers will get first dibs on tickets a day early with a password protected pre-sale today, Tuesday, February 6th (password for subscribers below). Grab your tickets fast as this show is sure to sell out!Buy your tickets 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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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. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. I'm your co-host, Ari Weitzman.

We're going to have to get used to doing that together. You don't like sharing, I know, I get it. Yeah, I don't like sharing. We have, I think, a really special episode today. The majority of this is going to be an interview with Daniel Bonora, who is somebody from the Ultimate Frisbee community. So, you know, for the diehard loyal listeners who have been around Tangle for a while, they at this point know my background in Ultimate, and then there's also going to be a lot of listeners who know of Tangle only through

Ultimate and are hearing this only through the Ultimate community. There's a little bit of insidery stuff in this conversation. We talk about some stuff happening in the Ultimate Frisbee community in the context of Israel and Palestine. But I think literally everything we talk about has a greater application to this conflict, to the way organizations worldwide are navigating this conflict. I know from reading our emails and feedback, so many people hate the way that I conduct interviews sometimes. There's a sense that I should be more adversarial and jump in and push back. I don't like doing that for a few reasons, and I just want to talk about them briefly before we go in.

The first reason is you guys hear from me every single day. I share my take and my perspective in every podcast, in every newsletter, in every Friday edition. In most interviews, I slip in my opinion and share my views. You don't need to hear more from me. I think it's important for me to sort of fact check some things or push back on certain things, but there are rhetorical flourishes that people I interview are going to make that I don't actually think are worth challenging because I think you guys, by virtue of listening to and reading Tangle, are people who are really well-informed. Daniel and I have fundamental disagreements about some things related to this conflict. We have a lot of

agreement despite our different upbringings and different perspectives about what's happening right now and how to get out of it. There are a million parts in this interview where I want to press pause and stop and interject and say something. You know, you're going to hear him talk about the genocide of the Palestinian people. Anybody who's been around Tangle knows that I've written about, you know about why I wouldn't use that word to describe what's happening in Gaza. My perspective here is not important. I'm bringing Daniel on this show because he is an incredible advocate for the Palestinian position. He's a wonderful person. He's thoughtful. He cares about this issue in a very deep way, And he has personal firsthand

experience with it. And every single person, whether you agree with him or disagree with him, because I know he's going to say a lot of stuff that pissed a lot of people off. All I ask is that you listen to the interview in full and you hold in your heart that this is somebody I'm endorsing as a thoughtful, caring person who really, really understands this issue in a very deep and personal way, not just politically, but from the religious perspective, from the regional conflict perspective, from the Western perspective, because he spent so much time living surrounded by the Western world. I'm so grateful Daniel gave us time.

I had a million more questions I wanted to ask him, and I think we're probably going to have to do a part two. I say at the end, about two hours into this interview, it feels like we're just, the conversation's just starting in some ways. I bulldozed Ari. Ari, sorry for that. You didn't get to ask many questions, but you know, it's just, I couldn't help myself. Well, it's the Tango podcast with executive editor Isaac Saul and his friend who sometimes corrects his language. So I get it. Yeah, yeah. I'll assert myself when I feel like I've got to.

I will read and try to reply to feedback. I know there's going to be a lot of strong feelings about this. Again, all I can say is I think Daniel is an incredible advocate for the Palestinian people. I think his personal experiences give him an unbelievable amount of insight into this. I know there's people who would totally disagree. I've heard and gotten all your emails about the necessity of me bringing on another Israeli or Zionist voice because we've interviewed a couple Palestinian people who are offering the Palestinian perspective. You've been heard. That's going to happen. You hear from me very regularly. I'm an American Jew who believes in the project

of Israel. So I'm sensitive to that fact. And yeah, no more throat clearing. I think this was a fantastic interview. I'm really glad we did it. I hope to have Daniel back on. There's a lot I love, a lot I disagree with. I tried to challenge him in spots and I think it turned into something really valuable for you. So I hope you guys listen to the whole thing.

After the interview, Ari and I are gonna circle up and talk about some breaking news that happened right before we got on. And then we'll do our little grievances bit to lighten the mood a bit. And then we're going to get out of here because this is going to be a long pod. So thank you guys for listening. Hope you enjoy. Daniel Benora, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks, Isaac. It's good to be with you. Yeah, I have been watching some of your work from afar for a little bit. I mean, we have such an interesting connective tissue, all three of us, actually, this kind of weird ultimate Frisbee community, which some of our listeners obviously will know about and others, it will be sort of a foreign thing to them. So I want to talk about that and how this interview came to be and how we kind of connected. But I'd love to just

start with you, the person. We're going to be talking about the conflict in Gaza and all this stuff going on with Israel and Palestine and the history of this stuff and the religion around it. You have personal background, personal ties as a Palestinian American, and also, I think, a really interesting professional background, too, that I want to key in on a bit. So, tell us a little bit about yourself, why you care about this issue, what your background is. Yeah, thanks, Isaac. Yeah, I would just want to emphasize, I'm grateful to have this

conversation with you. I think for the Western audience, hearing a Palestinian voice is not common. There has been a normalized discourse where the Palestinian is only mentioned insofar the Palestinian is violent or aggressive or problematic. So for you guys here to center the Palestinian voice and to listen to what we have to say, I think is very important. It's important for us as Palestinians, but I think it's fundamentally important for those in the West to listen to what is happening from the other side and to hopefully add some nuance and perspective in the way they think about a very important and also messy and complicated issue as Palestine and Israel. So briefly about myself, yeah, I am a Palestinian. I am from the West Bank. I grew up in, I was born in Jerusalem

and I grew up in the town of Beit Sahour, which is right next to Bethlehem. So I claim to be a Bethlehemite and I come from a from along a big family, a tribe called the Banura family. It's been, at least as far as we can tell from our family tree, we've been around as a recognized family for the last 14 generations. I'm a Palestinian Christian, so I'm a part of a small minority of Palestinians who define themselves as Christians. Christianity in the Middle East has a very rich and complex history. We claim as Palestinian Christians that we come actually from the first church that was established in Jerusalem on Pentecost,

according to the biblical narrative in the New Testament in Acts 2. Antichrist, according to the biblical narrative in the New Testament in Acts 2. So, we have roots in the land for a long time, way before Islam, you know, from the first centuries of Christianity. And Christianity in the Middle East has a very rich and diverse history in Syria, in Egypt, in Iraq, Lebanon, and so on and so forth. so Palestinian Christians are within that complex kind of matrix of Christianity in the Middle East my family is Orthodox and I kind of grew up in a Christian community but is

fundamentally part of the larger Palestinian community that has a shared identity a shared story and history and folklore and music and you know food, especially food. So something that is, you know, a very beautiful historical culture and identity that informs me, informs who I am as a person. So I'm a Palestinian, I'm a Christian, I'm also an Arab.

My Arabic is my native tongue. I'm also an Arab. My Arabic is my native tongue. Maybe these are complicated identities for some people, but it is what it is. Yeah, so aside from that, I grew up in Palestine, in the West Bank, and also in the U.S. as well. I was raised in the U.S., actually in Indiana, and then came back to the U.S. for my undergraduate studies in physics, and then I had a kind of shift in my career, got interested in theology and philosophy of religion and comparative studies. So, I did a master's in theology and then got a master's in Islamic studies from the University of Chicago. And right now, I'm a PhD candidate in theology at the University of Notre Dame. I work on, maybe this is too academic for some folks, so apologies,

but I work on late antique scribal practices, how people in the 7th century were collecting information and recording manuscripts, and how that helps us think about the collection and composition of the Qur'an, the Muslim holy text. So, I'm a non-Muslim, but Arab, I speak the language of the Qur'an, but I'm a non-Muslim, but I'm super interested and just enjoy my work on the formation of the Qur'an, especially in connection to its Christian environment and the communities of Christians that have been around at the time, and to see the intellectual history there and the points of connection between both religions in the Middle East. And then, also to your point about our connection, Isaac, I happen to be the founder of Ultimate Palestine, the Palestinian National

Association for Ultimate Frisbee. We can talk about that later. But that's like a different hat I put on. And yeah, I've been doing a lot of things in Palestine, entrepreneurship, advocacy work for Palestine, and also my own scholarship on Islam and Christianity. So that's it in brief here. Ari, I know you have to say something about the University of Chicago thing. I do. I gotta ask. I went to UChicago from 2005 to 2009, and I'm wondering if there was any overlap there. I was there from 2011 to 2013.

Oh, you just missed each other. Yeah, yeah. Well, I probably met a lot of the same people. Yeah, might be. Were you at the theology department or the Div school? I was just an undergrad, but I knew a couple people who went through the Div school. They had a really good coffee shop. I know that. Actually, I used to work at that coffee shop, Grounds of Being,

and that was the biggest influence for me to open a coffee shop in Bethlehem. So, actually, the layout of that coffee shop in the basement of the Divinity School is the same layout of the coffee shop that I opened in Bethlehem. Wow. So, our Chicago listeners will know where to go to feel at home if they're ever in Bethlehem. So, I have a question about your upbringing. I'm curious to hear a little bit about what living in Jerusalem was like for you as a Palestinian growing up and traveling back and going back,

what that's like for you now. I think, you know, one thing our readers and listeners are certainly engaging with right now are conversations about, you know, Palestinian freedom and equal rights throughout Israel, in Gaza, in the West Bank. And I don't think people have a great grasp of that all the time. And I'd love to hear you talk about maybe your personal experience and what it's been like for you. Yeah, good question. So, just to clarify, I did not live in Jerusalem. I was born there. My mom used to be a nurse in Jerusalem at a hospital there. And so, she just gave birth to me there. But I grew up in Bethlehem. In Bethlehem. was much easier for West Bank Palestinians into Jerusalem. I remember in the 90s, we used to drive into Jerusalem, and then my mom working in Jerusalem, and that was common. And then with the Oslo process and what followed in the 2000s, restrictions of movement basically became the norm,

and the kind of entrenched system of militarization of the West Bank through the Israeli occupation became the norm for us as Palestinians in the West Bank. And there's a lot to say here, Isaac, about what life is like for the Palestinian in Israel, sorry, in Israel-Palestine, or at least specifically for me in the West Bank. Bank. How much can we do here? But basically, it is a system of segregation and militarism and oppression that has been normalized for both for the Israelis, where the Palestinian becomes invisible. Most Israelis do not know Palestinians. They hide behind the wall, the segregation wall that Israel has built in the West Bank. And the Palestinians, like myself, got used to a lot of restrictions and things that are very unacceptable, should be unacceptable to people, but they have become normal to us. For example, restrictions of movement, you can't really go places without passing through a checkpoint. If I want to go from Bethlehem

to Ramallah, a different city in the West Bank, I would have to go through an Israeli checkpoint. Roads designated for me as a Palestinian versus roads designated only for Jewish settlers. And if I want to enter into Ramallah, I have to go through a different checkpoint. The vast majority of the West Bank is controlled by Israel. I think Palestinians have control over 18% of the West Bank, which is what is called Area A, which is where the Palestinian government or Palestinian authority has actually effective control. But even within that 18% control, it's really Israel that maintains all the control on the infrastructure, on the water, on the air, on the internet, on exits and entries into the West Bank, through the walls and through the network of settlements and roads and so on. And there's a lot to unpack about this.

The refugees in the West Bank, basic rights and freedoms are denied to the Palestinians. The whole system has been described, I think, inadequately in many ways as a system of apartheid that is very similar. It's also different, but similar to the system of apartheid in South Africa, where there's one ethnic group, in this case, Israeli Jews, who have complete authority and control, and a different people group who happen to be the indigenous populations of the land historically, the Palestinians who live under the control of that, what is called Jewish supremacist system, where Jews have, you know, complete power and Palestinians are disempowered, disenfranchised, displaced, are disempowered, disenfranchised, displaced, and dispossessed.

So that is the reality. We can talk about that disempowerment and abuse of Palestinians in the West Bank, like I tried to describe briefly, and then within that also in East Jerusalem and the restrictions on the lives of the Palestinians there. You can talk about the refugees as another class of Palestinians who are also controlled by the Israeli military occupation, and then the Palestinians of Gaza, and there's a horrendous reality that they have been going through, and also Palestinians in Israel who also face discrimination

and there are specific laws in Israel that discriminate against Arabs and Palestinians vis-à-vis Jewish Israelis. So the word of, you know, apartheid as a system to describe the reality on the ground, I think, could be very apt here, with some nuance, of course. So I think that's it as to help the audience to understand the power dynamics. Always you have to think about power structures and dynamics of power. It's been described by a Palestinian author, Ghassan Kenefani, as a conversation or a dialogue between a sword and a neck. One has the power to wield power and violence at any time, and then there's a neck that is facing that, or a description of the boot and the neck as well. There's a boot that is pressed against the necks of every Palestinian. And Israel

has been successful at maintaining this system, to enforce this system in a way that the Palestinian becomes invisible, in a very systemic and just brilliantly done system. And it's a system of divide and conquer. You can separate the Palestinians into different legal and militaristic and civil quarters and systems of dominion and control, and that's how you can maintain control over them. But yeah, I think maybe that's kind of helpful here to kind of frame the conversation. I have a follow-up question for you, Daniel.

So I heard you mention very early on that you had said you could observe the systems of movement and regulation become more stringent since the 90s. And I was hoping that you could try to illustrate with some examples how things became more stringent. I know that was hoping that you could try to illustrate with some examples how things became more stringent. I know that you mentioned that you could travel by car through East Jerusalem, but I'm curious if the checkpoints that were within the West Bank were implemented within that time, or how you saw things change during that time period. Yeah, so before the Oslo process and the whole

idea of giving Palestinians some kind of self-autonomy or self-governance, and that led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, all of the West Bank was controlled by the Israeli occupation directly. So you had the soldiers in Bethlehem, you had the soldiers in every town. But it was a normalized system of occupation. So movement within that system was normal. Not a system of equality or freedom, it's a system of domination, but the Palestinians were controlled by the occupying power. And now when the Palestinian Authority came to power, there was this kind of, hey, let's have this division of the West Bank into areas A and B and C, so the Palestinians would have some control in some of the cities. But then

areas B and C, and people can look up the map of the areas and can see what that looks like, where Israel would have security control. And then area C, which is a majority of the West Bank, would be completely shut off to the Palestinians. So these would be the military bases, these would be the settlements and so on, and Palestinians have zero access to them. Water preserves, and so on and so forth, that are completely controlled by Israel. So like, for example, the Dead Sea area, like this is West Bank area, should be Palestinian, like on paper, right? Two-state solution, all that nonsense about the two-state solution. But then it's completely monopolized by Israel,

by the settlements in Jerusalem, and all the money, billions of dollars annually go to the Israeli government and the settlement network in that area, and it's monopolized by them. Now, moving on, when the PA came to power in 1994-95 and the establishment of these, a ban-to-stand system, really, where Palestinians have some localized power, but really no effective power. And then the increase of the settlement movement, the expansion, like it skyrocketed in the 90s. And this is way before 2000 and what is called the Second Intimada. And that's when the Palestinians have

been squeezed into certain areas. Until right now, when we talk about a Bantustan system, we have these pockets, holes, if you will, in the West Bank, where the Palestinians have some semblance of governance, but then the whole thing is controlled by Israel. It's been described, it's been given the analogy of a Swiss cheese, where the West Bank basically becomes the cheese. Israel has control of the cheese, and the Palestinians are in the holes in that Swiss cheese. So yeah, described. So and then since then, just been decrease of power and the denial of a lot of our freedoms of movement, of democracy and access to water, access to resources, access to our fertile land. Palestinians, you know, we don't have a lot of land.

A lot of people lost their farming land, especially olive groves behind the walls and the fences that Israel has established. A lot of the settlers would take over lands of the Palestinians, take over open land and build their own kibbutzes and settlements, and Palestinians are shut off from access to their lands. And there's a historical reality for this. There's a way that law has been established and implemented in the West Bank that really trapped Palestinians in that system of domination.

Access to the internet, Palestinians in the West Bank domination. Access to the internet, Palestinians in the West Bank only have access to 3G right now, which is 15 years ago in the US, because Israel controls the airwaves. And they would not let us have 4G, for example, or 5G, right? So I would tell you without exaggerating here that every aspect of life is controlled by the system of discrimination and apartheid and it manifests in so many brutal ways

like that like i have said have been normalized uh by the system and israel projects itself as this liberal democracy that cares about people that is a is a bastion of liberty and freedom for people. Yeah, for some people, but not for the Palestinians. And that is kind of the myth of the Israeli democracy that has to be debunked. And anyone who goes to the West Bank can see what life is like, and can obviously see this is not democracy, this is apartheid. Okay, so Daniel, I do actually want to talk about the Ultimate stuff quickly because I think it's really important for our readers to have the context of how we know each other. But I played competitive Ultimate Frisbee for many years. Ari and I actually met at the University of Pittsburgh playing Ultimate together and we ended up in a writing group. very niche community. It's a, I would say a small, fairly insular kind of weird community that we're all part of these people who are obsessed with this sport that not a lot of people play. And after the, you know, Hamas's attack on October 7th, and then Israel's ground invasion

and the Arab bombardment started, I started seeing a lot of ultimate Palestine stuff pop up on my timeline. And I saw a lot of players in this community sharing stuff. And it made me think, you know, there's got to be people in this organization we should be talking to. And our community is too small and too insular to not be having dialogues like this. So that prompted me to reach out. and I was so stoked when you were just game to come on. And I've known from following that work that the reality of this war has hit home for Ultimate Palestine. I know a coach from Ultimate Palestine was killed in one of the Israeli airstrikes that happened in Gaza. And I know that, you know, in a different way for you than for me, the reality of this war is really close to home. I lived in Israel for six months in Yeshiva in Jerusalem. I have a lot of,

you know, Jewish-Israeli friends who have been deeply impacted by the war, certainly emotionally, who have friends and family who are, you know, hostages or were killed in the attacks or whatever. I mean, it's, in the Jewish community, it's spread in a similar way, I think, in that everybody sort of knows somebody who's been touched at this point by the latest conflict. You know, people have called it like Israel's 9-11, which I think is sort of true. It's like, it's something that happened that a lot of people feel like they have a touch point for. And then I know a lot of Arabs and Muslims who I became friends with or got to know when I was living in Israel who have been deeply impacted by it, either because they are in the Palestinian territories, they're in Arab countries where

it's a really big issue politically, or they're living in Israel as somebody who's a Palestinian or Arab and sort of living through this conflict that friends and your family personally, because I know I've written a lot about what I'm hearing in my community in Tangle. Yeah, thanks, Isaac. I appreciate the framing that, you know, we can emphasize our connection to ultimate, even though we come from different point of views and perspectives. So, there are a few questions in there. I want to have a small pushback, Isaac, but I think it's important. The description of Palestinians in Israel as Arabs, for me, is a very problematic one. I don't think you were intentional here. in a way that it wants to erase the Palestinian identity and reduce it to a linguistic one. So they're citizens, but the distinction between them and everyone else is that they speak a different language. And that does violence to the Palestinians. Now, the Palestinians in Israel, what we call as Palestinians, we call them Palestinian Israelis or Palestinian

citizens of Israel, in a way to emphasize their historical ethnic identity, they are there because they were among the fortunate ones who did not leave when the war broke out, when the Nakba happened. So they were the lucky ones, while the vast majority of Palestinians today remain to be refugees, because they're not given the right of return to go back to their homes. They clung on the keys of their door at the homes, hoping to go back after the war is gone. Little did they know that they would not be allowed to go back to their land. So, this is a population that has been brutalized and traumatized for a long time, the Palestinians who, in what is called now Israel or historic Palestine. Israel has tried to erase them in

many ways. They erased them demographically by ethnically cleansing the majority of historic Palestine and pushing the Palestinians out to create a Jewish majority in Israel. It's a reality, what is called the Nakba, the catastrophe 48, where the Palestinian Arab majority becomes a minority so that European Jews could have the power and the majority in the land. So I want you to be sensitive, Isaac, and I want everyone to be sensitive to this reality, the trauma of the Palestinian Nakba,

and how that impacts how we think about it. So this is a side note, but I thought I need to emphasize this for us. Because, Isaac, you know, our identity is being erased. Our existence as Palestinians is being erased. Our land is taken from us. Even our falafel and hummus and salad is now considered Israeli. Our towns and villages are being erased and given Jewish names. So there's an active, so when we talk about ethnic cleansing, it's not just what happened in 48, it's an ongoing Nakba of erasure of the Palestinians. So we tend to be very sensitive about our identity, that we want to protect this identity that has been under attack for 76 years. Okay, so that aside, yeah, so I'll talk briefly about the history of Ultimate Palestine and why we have it, and then your second point about with it. And yeah, and some of the stuff you said, Isaac, about the ultimate community and kind of the obsession we have with the sports, I really caught on very quickly to that.

This beautiful community, the spirit of the game as just a fun and just a great way to connect and speak and have a good community. And that was very impactful for me. I used to play a lot of soccer, and soccer usually tends to be very violent and aggressive and a lot of, you know, faking and yelling about fouls and so on. And then ultimately comes like, hey, you know what, you can just say a foul, call foul, and then everyone is going to stop playing and listen to you. And this is great. And that for me, as someone who came from a bit of an aggressive background when it comes to playing sports, it's like, okay, this is actually very therapeutic.

This is actually healthy for me, so I need this. But anyway, I loved Ultimate in the U.S., and then I got myself a free Frisbee, and I went back to the West Bank, to Bethlehem, and I started playing with some friends. There were some expats in the area as well who were living in Bethlehem, and we came together, we started playing. And that was in 2009. And then by 2014, we saw the need for us to organize ourselves as a Palestinian group. There was an organization there that continues to be functioning within Israel that we found very problematic in their discourse and how they

were using sport to silence Palestinians. Let me just put it that way. And sell a narrative that is not really true or authentic to the Palestinians. And we felt, hey, we can do this. We do not mean to rely on anyone coming from the US or otherwise to tell us how to play sports and how to be a good player, and we can do this. And there's that sense, to emphasize this kind of sense of pride of our identity that is under threat. We can do this. We can. We have what it takes to do it. So we started organizing ourselves, and we had this ambition to make ultimate frisbee a fundamentally Palestinian sport. So we started in Bethhlehem and we soon after expanded to ramallah and different areas within the west bank like showcasing in different schools and

summer camps we went to hebron we went to east jerusalem and we have this kind of ambition to keep expanding in the west bank um and that continues to be this the the focus of the work we're doing right now is to continue the growth and development of Ultimate in Palestine. Now, that also included Gaza at some point. So in 2020, I was able to access Gaza. Now, I refer to the restrictions and the lack of freedoms for the Palestinians. We do not have access to Gaza as Palestinians from the West Bank. Different legal system and keep the Palestinians separate is how you do it. So I couldn't have, I accessed, I entered Gaza as a child, I think in the 90s. And that was the last

time I entered Gaza until 2020, just before the pandemic. I was working with a development organization in Ramallah that gave me a German organization functioning in the West Bank that gave me access to Gaza. They applied for a permit. Daniel is the expert that we need, and therefore, please give him a permit to enter into Gaza because he's an expert and we don't have anyone else who does ultimate frisbee, right? And that's how Israel let me into the Gaza Strip. Those who say that Hamas controls Gaza and not Israel, it's like, this is nonsense. Israel controls all the boundaries of Gaza. It's been considered an open-air prison.

Everything is controlled by, aside from life within the Gaza Strip, the borders, the air, the water, the infrastructure is controlled. The amount of food that enters into Gaza is controlled by Israel. But anyway, I was able to get a permit. And that's when I coached Ultimate and gave training to 20 coaches in the West Bank, 10 women and 10 men. Incredible, incredible people. I've never in my life, Isaac, never met such generous and kind and sweet people. And it was so heartbreaking for me because I'm one who's very privileged. I have access, I speak more than one language, and I grew up in a very privileged space as a Palestinian.

And to go visit Gaza and to see the heartbreak, the destruction, the infrastructure, the poverty in Gaza was horrible. This is in 2020, before the war in 2021 and before this current ongoing war. Such remarkable people. for this current ongoing war. Such remarkable people. But anyway, I coached there, had an intensive three-day training for them, and basically they were qualified to start their own practices in the Gaza Strip.

And they launched practices in five different athletic clubs, already established clubs in the Gaza Strip. And Gaza was considered one of the most populated areas in the world. And they had, there's no room in the Gaza Strip. So people were like, hey, you know what, we can go play on the beach, because they have access to the beach. So they, you know, Beach Ultimate basically began in Gaza, and they had summer camps, you know, they would play on

concrete and courtyards and so on. And they were so in love with this sport. And it was such a beautiful sight to see. Also, there are a lot of athletes in Gaza who are disabled, amputees and so on, who lost their limbs during the Israeli wars, the attacks on Gaza. There had been five wars on Gaza over the last 16 years since the blockade began. And a lot of people lost their limbs and legs and so on. And you saw this incredible community of athletes coming together on wheelchairs, playing wheelchair ultimate. Just an incredible sight of grit and love of life and excitement. And for me to be part of that and to see the joy that Ultimate brought to them,

especially a population that was so brutalized for a very long time and so in such despair and poverty was just a beautiful thing. But honestly, they were teaching me life. They were teaching me how to find joy in the midst of tragedy, how to love their land and each other in a way that myself, as a very privileged person,

even though I'm a Palestinian, but very privileged in comparison, I didn't have. So, and that continued to be the case, and we did a lot of incredible work with them since then, doing their own practices, and growing and developing as coaches, and led practices for them online, like online training for the coaches,

advanced level ultimate coaching using kind of WFDF material, the World Flying Disc Federation's material. And then the war broke out on October 7th. And my gut response then, Isaac, was to, you know, I'm a Palestinian and this is all shocking. And so I didn't make that connection to Ultimate. It was more like, hey, are you guys alive? Are you okay? How are you doing?

And then the news started to come through. One coach, Maha, she lost her brother. Another coach lost his dad. And others lost their relatives. And then we also lost connection with them. We couldn't connect with many of them. There are at least five coaches I haven't heard from since the war began. And then later on, we got the news that one of the coaches who got the training with me,

Mohammed Shakir, was killed as well. His house was, he was killed under the rubble of his house. We got a picture of his arms stretching out from the rubble, trying to maybe reach out for life, but then he died. And that was a heartbreaking realization that I kind of knew it. I knew that someone I know in Gaza is going to die. And it's such a heartbreaking reality. And that's an experience of most Palestinians. We have experienced loss for a very long time. So when Mohammed was killed,

we just knew we had to activate as a group. And there's a larger conversation, Isaac, to have about the intersection of sports and politics. It happens here in the U.S. It doesn't happen in many places. But even those conversations that happen in the U.S., they're mostly on the fringes of sports. But for the Palestinians, you cannot escape politics. Everything in my life is dictated by a political system that was enforced on me by a foreign government. I mentioned restrictions of movement in the West Bank. I talked about, you know, there are checkpoints that stop us, and so on and so forth. But then imagine what that is like for people in Gaza who have been under blockade for a

long time, who are being bombarded and brutalized in such a grotesque way over the last, you know, 125 years. And then we just had to, we realized as an organization, myself as a coach, as an advocate for my players and for my coaches, my only response is to advocate for them, is to speak up for them. And so it's inescapable for me to see the connection of sports and politics. Athletes are not there for entertainment. They're not there to make us happy and to spend our money and to make our bets and to watch TV late at night. money and to make our bets and to watch TV late at night. These are humans with full stories.

And athletes and players who have been subjected to a brutal occupation for the last, you know, 50 years, since 67. Athletes who have been under a nasty blockade for the last 17 years. Their lives are impacted by a political system that they did not choose, and all of them are victims. And for me to assume that sports is just for fun or sports is an escape is irresponsible. And I would dare and say it's unethical. That's not how it functions, because athletes are human and they have stories to tell. And we've done this, the work has been done in the US, right, to explore the intersection of sports and politics in some meaningful ways. And honestly, I've been inspired by some of the work that has been done within the Ultimate community, but also conversations at the NFL and the NBA and WNBA and so on and so forth. And I've been able, and we have been able as an organization to tap into the spirit of the game as a powerful tool to help us navigate through that intersectionality between sports and politics. For those who do not know, the spirit of the game is that kind of tool that is mostly used heavily and emphasized heavily in Ultimate, and not in any other sport, I think.

And one of the aspects of that is self-officiation, that you as a player, you're also a ref. You have a duty to speak truth. And if you see something wrong happening, you have to speak up. So if I got fouled, I have a responsibility and a privilege to speak up, say foul. And whenever I say foul, everyone has a responsibility, if you play Ultimate, you know this, to echo my call and basically force everyone to stop playing. Everyone has to stand still and listen to Daniel who's been fouled. And then whenever we stop the game, Daniel has a voice, and he can speak up. And he can speak his truth, and he can speak about the injustice that he just experienced, which is, in this case, an unintentional foul, presumably. And then everyone would listen, and they would engage, and they would ask questions, and they would talk about it,

and then they would reach a decision that ensures justice is being done. You see here, Isaac, I'm using political language, that the spirit of the game is a fundamentally political tool that gives Palestinians in this case, and everyone else, the chance to speak truth to power, to challenge a system, a system that ignores them, the system that says, shut up and play. And the spirit of the game says, no, we're going to challenge the system. And not only challenge the system, but also move towards justice, into restorative justice, into a system where those who have been hurt by the system can actually get the frisbee back, get what is theirs. So this is the work that we have done in emphasizing the political element of Spirit of the Game that is mostly ignored in the ultimate scene. And it's been such an incredible experience, Isaac, for me is mostly ignored in the ultimate scene. And it's been such an incredible experience, Isaac, for me to do this in the West Bank before I actually, you know, doing my advocacy work right now.

And this is what it hit me, and I'll kind of give this small story here, but it kind of really is representative of our experience as Ultimate Palestine, dealing with this stuff. When I first began coaching Ultimate, a lot of players come from a different athletic background, mostly soccer. And mostly when a foul happens, the kids usually tend to be aggressive. So they would like, you know, shout or curse, or just be violent about it in many ways, not physical, but at least verbally. And I'm like, hey, hey, guys, you know what, there's a way out of this. You can actually, we can stop the game and we can all listen to you.

You don't have to shout. You can just speak what happened. And for the, you know, 99% of the time, you're going to get the Frisbee back. You're going to be okay. And that's when the transformation happened for these people. Like, okay, well, we can do this. Okay, a foul happened. I'm going to call foul and let's see what happens and

initially the players were looking at me to like help them guide them to like okay what do we do now what happened do we go back a few steps what happens to the count uh i'm sorry if this is very technical for those who don't do ultimate but you know that's these are part of the rules of ultimate and then i realized that they were a bit dependent on me to speak for them and to explain the rules to them. But then I didn't want to do that for them. They need to know the rules, but then also they need to know how to advocate for themselves. So whenever a foul happens, I saw myself just turning around so that I would ignore them and then force them in a way to learn how to speak and learn how to use communication skills and conflict resolution skills to develop their own,

to call for a foul and work it out among themselves. And then eventually they learned how the rules work and then how to speak for themselves. And then it hits me, the reason that there is so much violence in the responses to a foul is because Palestinians, and this might apply to other people groups, and this might be just, you know, not really accurate, but as a Palestinian who have been experiencing injustice imposed on us for a very long time, we got used to the fact that we have no agency, and we can do nothing about the system. And the only thing we can do is to express our feelings and being angry and shout

and so on. And then Ultimate gave us a voice, right? That, wait, you actually can control the system. You can actually stop everyone from playing, and they can listen to you. And for many Palestinians, this is not a real experience. They've never experienced that reality where they can actually speak truth, and people could listen to them. And then eventually they learned to advocate for themselves, to pursue justice for themselves, to actually believe in themselves. And that has been just a very powerful way that Ultimate, for me and for a lot of our players and athletes, has just been such a powerful tool for them to teach them that you can pursue justice, you can be your own advocate, you can speak truth to power in a way that is

very transformative for you on the field and for you off the field. And Canada's been our hope and drive for the last, you know, for the last few years. And now we continue to do that, you know, and we're doing that for our players in Gaza, we're doing that for our players in the West Bank, and we continue to do so. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Yeah, one of the things sort of tied into this that happened recently that I'm sure was a big deal for you guys, and I know certainly came across my radar, was that The Nation actually published an article about some of the work you're doing, which I think most people who are listening to Tangle are probably familiar with The Nation,

but if not, a very large progressive magazine website that has a really big reach. And we cite authors from the nation regularly in Tangle, typically writing under what the left is saying about a certain issue. And kind of the crux of the piece was about some of the pressure that Ultimate Palestine has been putting on WFDIF, which is the governing body of Ultimate Frisbee globally, to make a statement and call for a ceasefire in the war. And there were a couple of things about the article I personally had some issues with that I want to talk to you about. But I think like the centerpiece of the story about this kind of pressure campaign on WFDIF is really indicative of things that are happening all across the country and the US for sure right now with various groups

trying to apply pressure and then governing bodies like this trying to figure out where they should go, what they should do, how they should operate. And I know this is like a little niche to the ultimate world, but I think it has a super wide application and is something that's relevant for a lot of different institutions across the country and the world, frankly. So I'm curious to hear you talk a little bit about why you want WIFDIF to make this statement and what do you guys hope comes of it, you know, in, I guess guess the end game and also define with diff for us yeah um okay i will um i'm actually i really want to hear your pushback isaac against that article i really want to see you i want to hear what you what you're thinking

about it but yeah so that was published by the nation i was interviewed in that article and i kind of quoted heavily there but so we when whenever we got the news about Mohammed Shakir was killed and other coaches lost their family members, we released a statement. We put it on our website and our Instagram page. And we were just overwhelmed by the incredible support we got from everyone. So many people were sharing our story,

our post and sharing it as stories and writing their own statements and their own responses to it. And we didn't really expect that. If you read that statement, it's just kind of born out of just brokenness and heartache for the loss of our coach, Mohammed, and others and so on. And we're saying, hey, again, to continue the conversation about sports and politics, these are players who are dying.

We don't really know what happened to our players. We know that one coach at least has, you know, was killed, but we lost connection with all of the players. And then there's a chance that some of them were killed, at least injured. And we just, you know, like I said, I'm a coach and I advocate for my players players if i see something that is dangerous that is happening on the field you know there's something like a something risky that is causing harm to could cause harm to my players i have to stop the game and like remove it from the field right and they're literally airstrikes falling down on the field right now they're fouls happening left and right in gaza um they're not just fouls like physical physical harm like a slap on an arm it's you're dying so we release the statements and we're saying

hey like you need to do something about it hey like hey ultimate community hey world flying disc federation which is to Ari's point this is the the umbrella organization that is basically puts itself as the guardian of the flying disc sports

in the world, in Ultimate Frisbee, Beach, Guts, and so on and so forth. And we're saying, hey, some of your Ultimate players, all of your Ultimate players are being traumatized and bombed right now. At least one coach has been killed. Some others might have been killed as well. Since you advocate for players, how about you release a statement for a ceasefire? And we're here, we're saying, we don't want you to make a political commentary. We don't want you to,

we would love for you to look into this issue of systemic oppression against Palestinians for 76 years, maybe look into apartheid as an unjust system that has to be abolished, and maybe you should not normalize Israel as an oppressive state in the world, you know, in the world, you know, theater and competitions and so on. I would love for you to do that maybe later on, but maybe for now, just because you put yourself as those who, you know, want to see the development and growth of ultimate, maybe you should speak up for the Palestinians in this case. And hey, not to, you know, show favors, you can also advocate for the Israeli hostages. And you can have a consistent ethic that fights for the humanity of all people. You don't have to choose sides. You're saying that you choose humanity and dignity and freedom for everyone, including Israelis, including Palestinians. Now, we felt motivated to push WFDIF to do that because we know two years prior, when Russia invaded Ukraine, following the IOC, the Olympic Committee, the WFDIF released

a statement, a very long statement condemning the war on Ukraine and sanctioned the Russian Federation from competing in athletic activities and championships, just like the IUC did, the Olympic Committee did. And they made a very strong moral argument why they're doing that, right? And we were saying, hey, apparently WFDF, just like the IUC, is not okay with occupation, is not okay with war, it's not okay with the killing of innocents in Ukraine. Surely, they would think the same thing about the Palestinians who have been victimized and oppressed and bombed, 27,000 of them today. Surely, they would show the same consistent ethical position in advocating for a ceasefire.

And you know, Isaac, asking for a ceasefire is not a big deal. You're just saying you don't want people to die. And asking for a ceasefire is also asking for the hostages to be released. These go hand in hand. But for some reason, the baseline request that you would like to see a ceasefire was rejected by the WFDF. They initially ignored our statement. Then there had been growing push from many organizations and associations and clubs. And eventually they tried to appease us and they released a very short statement and they made it very clear.

Here's a short statement because we don't want to spend a lot of ink on this issue. And I think the sentiment was, oh, we feel bad about what's happening and that's it. And that was just shocking to me. Why not? Why can't you write two paragraphs instead of one? Why can't you spend more time? Why not talk with us? We are full members of WIFF. We're regular members as an association at WFDIF. Surely you want to talk with us. And we didn't hear anything from them. Eventually, with more pushback from others, it was organized for me to meet with the president of WFDIF. And he gave me 30 minutes of his time. And I was like, hey, like asking for ceasefire is not a big deal. And so on and so forth. And his response was, you know what, this is complicated.

Russia and Ukraine was very easy for us to work with. But this is, you know, there's October 7th, there's Israel, and we cannot do it. And I'm like, yeah, of course you can complicate it. Just like you can make Russia easy, you can make this complicated. That's a choice you're making. And that was the end of it. That was the conversation. He's like, okay, we'll discuss this in our meeting, in the board meeting, and then that was the end of it. So it's been very disappointing to see the guardians of

ultimate, the guardians of spirit of the game, who claim to care for and protect and defend their players, not to show the same care as they did for Ukrainian players. And it made us think, Isaac, that maybe Palestinians are not really deserving of that protection or that advocacy. Maybe we're not fully human who have freedoms and rights just like Ukrainians. And that is part, and maybe this is here I'm going to get a bit more critical, and maybe people are not going to like what I'm going to say, there is an inherent racist discourse here that exists where the Palestinian or historical white Arab, the Muslim, and so on, is not really regarded as fully human in the Western discourse. And considering the makeup of WFDIF, considering the power dynamics in WFDIF and World Ultimate and World Sports, Palestinians do not have any power. Palestinians are not really significant to the conversation. But Ukrainians are. They tend

to be white and European. For some reason, they have that power and advocates and Palestinians do not have that. And it's sad for me to describe this in terms of West versus East or in racialized or ethnic terms. But there's a fundamental problem here with refusing to advocate for the players that they think they say that they advocate for. So I think actually this is a good entry point because I think my issue with the Nation article actually ties into a few of the things that you brought up here. So, I mean, first of all, I would say just fundamentally from where I'm sitting, the biggest failure was that there was really no counter perspective in the article. I mean, and this is not your fault. You're heavily quoted.

I would put this on the reporter. Like there was, you know, there's a lot of Israeli Frisbee players. There's a lot of Israeli ultimate organizations. I think an Israeli voice should have been represented in the piece or a dissenting voice should have been represented in the piece that wasn't there. I think that's really indicative of how this coverage tends to go in the Western press. It's either very, you know, sort of pro-Palestinian or very pro-Israel. There's not a lot of places that I think are doing a good job of providing some semblance of balance. I know people from both sides of this conflict who would say any kind of balance is, you know, the wrong way to do it because it equalizes them. And I'm sure there's a I'm sure you could articulate a very compelling position that sort of, you know, makes that point. that point. But I just thought like there was a responsibility for the reporter to at least talk to people and hear some of the dissenting voice, because I think it made it seem as if there was this really clear consensus in the ultimate community, which to your point, based on WIFDF's actions, I don't think there is actually. I think there's like quite a bit of dissent within

the Frisbee community and mixed feelings about people coming from different perspectives. I'll tell like a really quick brief story, for instance, like in my world, something that I heard about was, you know, the European Ultimate Masters Championships this year. They happened right after the October 7th attacks and an Israeli team was supposed to go. They had like 35 rostered players or something. They ended up sending two people because everybody got called up delegation, you know, it's like a world championship tournament and carry the Israeli flag. And at the last minute, the flag gets pulled from the tournament and they're told not to march because it would, you know, it was a sort of like a dangerous thing for them to do to include the Israeli flag in this march. And there was a protest from the Israeli Ultimate Federation. There wasn't really any sort of cogent response from with diff or the governing body about why they made that decision and for a

lot of israelis it was like you know they're feeling really alienated in the community and separate and villainized and like you know they they're sort of having their representation taking from from them and that was you, totally, I'll be the first person that can see that pales in comparison to seeing a picture of a coach in your organization buried in rubble from an Israeli airstrike. But I think it's like a perspective that would come across or be articulated in some way, like in this story, if people were, you know, if those kinds of people with that view or that perspective on this stuff were, were contacted. The other thing I would just say that made me

uncomfortable about it. And this is like something that I've just seen and that I think makes me uncomfortable about something you're saying is this sort of comparison to the Ukrainian situation that I think there's a tone behind it that sort of implies almost that like the Ukrainian ultimate federation or whatever shouldn't have gotten the kind of support that they got. I think there's like, it diminishes what they're experiencing in some ways by saying like, this stance that WFDF took in that situation was, you know, unworthy compared to the stance that they should be taking in the situation with the war in Gaza. And it also lacks the context of the fact that WFDF got a ton of criticism, actually, from one of the people on this call, Ari Weitzman, who was one of the people from the Ultimate Community who didn't like how they handled

the situation, their statement with regards to Ukraine and Russia, because it felt really alienating for a lot of Russian Frisbee players to sort of separate them from the sport. And I thought, you know, I think, I don really know anybody at WIFTA. If I know a couple of people who have worked there over the years, I would bet that they feel a little bit burned by how that turned out. Like they felt like they had done something unambiguously right. They came out and stood up for Ukraine. And then they got this big blowback from the Frisbee community where people were actually upset. they took a stance in that situation. And for them, it was like, this was so obvious in black and white.

And now all of a sudden, it became very not obvious that they had done the right thing. And then, you know, a year or two later, this spate of violence breaks out in, you know, I think one of the most third rail issues in global politics. And if I'm with DIF as an organization and I'm feeling like we have so many different perspectives to represent, I can understand seeing like a landmine there that's really scary to step onto, especially after the experience they had thinking that they were doing the like unimpeachably right thing to do by, by standing up and issuing this statement and calling for what Russian withdrawal from Ukraine and then getting the

blowback for that. So I, I, I'm not making any of these points to say that they're how I personally feel. I'm, I, I. My feelings are so all over the place, it's hard to sort them sometimes. But I had an issue with the article because I thought it lacked a lot of context that added some nuance. I thought that there should have been some other perspectives that were included. I thought you did an incredible job advocating for ultimate Palestine and the perspective that you were coming through. I mean, you were quoted heavily in it. And I think you, you framed it in a way that was really cogent and easy to hear. So those were

kind of my, my issues are the things that I, that frustrated me about it. I hear you, Isaac. Yeah, I get it. So let me share some thoughts based on what you said. The first point about not having another side represented, I hear you. I don't want to play the whataboutism kind of paper here or card here. Palestinians are never represented in the West. We're never represented only insofar as we are the terrorists and the violent people. Whenever Israel is mentioned, Palestinians are silenced and ignored. So this is one unique time, Isaac, that the Palestinians are centered, and this is, we should welcome it, and I think we should

celebrate that voices from the margins are being centered here in this piece. Usually, the Israeli story does, and I need to emphasize this, it always ignores the Palestinians. When you talk about Israel, the Middle East, there's always the good guys and the bad guys. We, the West, we're the civilized people, including Israel, and all the bad people on the other side, mostly Muslims. So, yeah, it is uncomfortable, I think, for people to see the Palestinian voice

represented by itself. And I think, I don't think you mean this, Isaac, but I think because we got used to the idea that those on our side have to always have a say in what is happening. And that the Palestinian or the other side to be represented as its own voice that is not contingent, that is not derivative, is not a common experience. So that's kind of what I'm, you know, I think we need to just kind of respect that, that there's, that to give agency to the Palestinian and that the Palestinian has his own voice and that voice can be represented and can stand on its own, I think it's something very powerful. It's not common, but it's necessary. And honestly, the article did not try to give the both sides. It was the journalists, they were

trying to make the point that there's something that is uniquely happening here, and let's talk about this advocacy for Palestine that is uncommon. I hear what you're saying, but I think the point of the article was just to emphasize a specific point about this kind of growing interest in that issue. Really quick, I just want to say, and I understand that. I think I personally don't feel very uncomfortable with the idea of a singular Palestinian voice or a singular perspective being focused. I mean, I consume so much news from so many different news outlets. I see that happen all the time, right? To me, that's actually not something that feels particularly rare because I try and go seek out those voices. I think it only bothered me because it's, again, this really niche intersection of like ultimate Frisbee, Israel-Palestine conflict, and feeling like it'd be more responsible to offer some sort of countervailing opinion. But to your point, I don't think that's what they're trying to do. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, you know.

Yeah, I think, yeah. I mean, you don't represent, Isaac, you are, yeah, you don't represent the majority of people how they think about Israel-Palestine, right? You have that nuance, and you listen to both sides, and it's incredibly commendable. So, you know, I think the general audience, the average person in the US doesn't have that, like, nuanced, balanced perspective that I think you're from your own energy, your own time you put into it. So your positionality is different from the average person that I think, you know, is trying to, you know, we're trying to address and work with here. And I, you know, I lament what happened to the Israeli team who couldn't represent, you know, their flag and so on.

I also know that many, also those who tried to raise a Palestinian flag at Worlds last, in November, couldn't do the same thing, and they were shut down. And there's a conversation to be had about political, you know, expression at, you know, at athletic, you know, tournaments and so on. And, you know, it's a tough conversation to be had about political, you know, expression at, you know, at athletic, you know, tournaments and so on. And, you know, it's a tough conversation to have and how to do it well. But I think, Isaac, the solution is not who's going to wave their flag and who's not going to wave their flag. The question is like, are we pursuing justice? Are we pursuing the end of

the occupation? Are we going to dismantle the system of oppression? Let's talk, let's move towards that instead of, you know, being an issue of raising flags and, you know, showing who's got the bigger, you know, the bigger representation and power and so on. And that's going to make hope for the Israelis to realize that you can never, you cannot erase the Palestinians. Palestinians are not going to go anywhere. And you can never underestimate a people's desire for freedom. And Palestinians are always going to be there and always going to fight for their freedom in different ways. But the time for us to ignore the Palestinian and the plight of the Palestinians, the trauma of 76 years, we cannot go back to this issue. We cannot pretend Israel is a normal state. It is not a normal state. It's a racist apartheid state, and we have to address that. WFDF has to address this.

The IOC has to address this. Yeah, I totally agree with you. The Russian players do not deserve what happened. And also, the Russian Federation came out against the Russian war against Ukraine. And so it's a very commendable position by Russia. And I don't want you to think that what I'm saying about WFDF, that I'm saying that Ukrainians do not deserve the advocacy and the political position. I'm saying politics has to play a role in sports. And we need to have that conversation about the normalization of violence and oppression and so on and so forth.

I'm saying, just because you made that courageous move with DEF and IOC, be consistent. Like, please continue doing that. Please engage with sports and politics. Stop giving, you know, a pass to systems of oppression, and especially when a genocide

has been committed in Gaza that is completely destroying lives there. So, these are difficult conversations to have, Isaac, and I understand that we probably will not agree on this right now, but we need to have these conversations and we need to center an ethic of love, which is not a language that is used in politics, but we need to humanize people, and fundamentally a people that has been dehumanized, and we need to have a consistent ethic that leads us towards justice. And not a political game of Israel versus Palestine, but a system and a worldview that advocates for the humanity of both people, and fundamentally,

essentially, the Palestinians who have been victimized and dehumanized for a long time. And that is the way forward for us, when we realize that the dignity and the worth and the security of a Jewish player and a Jewish kid is equal to the security and the freedom and the rights of a Palestinian kid. But in the Western imagination, again, the Palestinians are not human. Only certain people are human and not the Palestinians. And there's a lot to say also about how October 7th happened and why violence and why Hamas would do what it did.

But I think it's born out of a system where people feel despair that the only way, just like the kids in Playing Ultimate, the only response they have to systemic violence, to hurt, to abuse, to trauma, to an open wound, is to act violently, especially because the system has been violent towards them for a very long time, and they have not discovered a way to move forward in peace and love and in justice. But that's what we have to advocate for, right? Like the humanity of everyone, the Israeli kid and the Palestinian kid. And we are rational beings. We're complex. We can surely humanize both people. We can hold complex ideas all together in our heads, right? And act accordingly. When we say Black

Lives Matter, we're not saying that whites do not matter, but we're saying that this kind of people is oppressed, and we need to do something about it. So when we advocate for the Palestinians, we're not saying that Israelis do not matter, but we're saying there's something that is bad that is happening here, and we need to speak up about it. So I want to pivot a little bit, but I think this is actually a decent segue here. We've been talking a lot about the ultimate community, some of our backgrounds, some of your history and experiences in the territories. One of the things that you, one of your pieces of your background that really intrigued me that I wanted to talk about was sort of this religion theological side of this conversation. And I was very interested to

pick your brain about this because I think it's something that probably doesn't get enough attention. There's so many different threads to pull out here i guess like one one framing or setting the table thought that i'll put out is i see a lot of people both in the western commentaries and i think in commentaries that come out of the middle east talk about this conflict in a religious context. So, you know, there are people like Sam Harris who say that, you know, fundamentally understanding a group like Hamas requires fundamentally understanding Islam and jihad and this like path that like that Islamic jihadists are on and the way it's sort of taken a hold in certain parts in places like Gaza or in surrounding countries, Iran, whatever. Then a lot of people also talk about the sort of religiously motivated

settlements and expansions of Israeli territory that we see from people who are, you know, Jewish extremists, Jewish supremacists, however you want to frame it. I know from being much more well-read about that side of things that it's really complex in the Jewish community. Like, people always assume that really Orthodox religious Jews are like the big ardent Zionists, which actually isn't true. I think a lot of, it's like a big misconception that a lot of people have about, you know, ultra-Orthodox and Haredi Jews and stuff. It's like, that is not their, even in Israel, that's not their big issue. Their big issue is like being able to pray and go to synagogue and not get enlisted in the army. Some Orthodox Jews, by virtue of their religion,

are actually opposed to Zionism because they don't believe that Israel can be claimed again until the Messiah comes. So, there's like all this complexity and nuance that exists on that side of it. I'm so curious, you're a Palestinian Christian, You're a theologian. What kinds of religious threads do you see in this conflict that stand out to you? And I know that's a huge broad question, but I'd be curious to hear the first things that come to mind for you, because I think it's a really fascinating part of the discourse that I don't see spoken about in a really, I guess, you know, deeper, nuanced way right now. Yeah, Isaac, you really challenge your audience here, and you're the person you're interviewing. Thanks for doing that. Yeah, you want to have a tough conversation here, and I think we need to have these tough conversations. So, thank you for doing that. Yeah, so, religion. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's very unfortunate that people like Dawkins and Sam Harris just adopted a very silly and very narrow and simplistic way of thinking about the

Middle East. And I think for me, it's fundamentally grounded in Orientalism and some kind of Western elitism that rejects any nuance or complexity when they think about the Middle East. And the only way they can think about the Middle East is through the framework of Islam that is inherently bad because all religion is bad for them, right? And that's a problem with this kind of atheist discourse that is adopted by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and others. And it's so bad for smart, intelligent people like them to do that. Well, hold on a second. I actually, I want you to make that argument. I mean, I think that's really,

like, I feel like you just labeled the argument, but you didn't make it. Like, what, I mean, undermine that for me, because I think it's important. I mean, this idea that the part of the political movement that Hamas represents is driven by jihad is something I think a lot of people find really credible. Okay, so I'll address that specifically. That's a good question. I was just framing the conversation that you need to have nuance when you think about Islam, just in general. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. I just didn't want you to move past it because I want to hear you talk about that.

Yeah, this is an important conversation to have about Hamas and Jihad and so on. This is such a wide-ranging conversation. God bless your audience. So, I'm just, my framing,

my initial framing is that you need to develop a more nuanced and analytical way of thinking about Islam, the Middle East, fundamentalist Islam, jihadi is the discourse of Harris and Dawkins, and we are the good people, even though we're not Christians, but, you know, we're from the West, we're the civilized folks. And I think that discourse, before I talk about Hamas here, Isaac, I think that is part of a larger discourse that is called Orientalism, and it's been around for a very long time, and I think it's right now, it's rearing its ugly head in a very disturbing way in the way we think about Arabs and Muslims and so on. So those in the West have to do the work in analyzing how Orientalist attitudes, in fact, impact the way they think about Palestinians and Muslims and Arabs. And also Hamas. So how do I deal with this? Now, and this

is a very sensitive issue for me, right, as a Palestinian who is a Christian, not a Muslim, but I'm also friends with Muslims, and Muslims are my friends and my neighbors, and a lot of my athletes are Muslims, and all of the players of the coaches in Gaza were Muslims, and also someone who's a confessionally Christian, but who's also spending his career studying Islam and the Quran. But that is a shift that I had to do, Isaac, which is to move beyond a tribalistic way of thinking as a minority who's under threat by the majority, by the Muslim majority into thinking, wait, I as a minority actually can find beauty and goodness in the religion and the ideology of the majority and not feel threatened by them and actually find

something good in that. And that actually is enriching to me as a person and especially as a religious minority in Palestine. Now to the point about Hamas and jihad. I think what I'm saying still applies here, that for us to paint fundamentalist Islam or militant Islam in a very broad stroke is very unhelpful. Breaking news happens 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.

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his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Because we have to understand the context of the Middle East and these movements that have come about, and also the legacy of colonization from the West that has disempowered people in that region and led to such extremist forms of resistance and fighting to happen. And I think we need to move away from lumping together, for example, Hamas with ISIS, which is a very, very dangerous discourse, fundamentally because the conversation about terrorism in the West is an inherently dehumanizing discourse. A terrorist is someone who's not a human. A terrorist is a bad person ontologically, inherently, and the only solution to a terrorist is to bomb them and kill them without due process, without understanding, without nuance, without hearing, without trying

to understand their background. So you can kill a terrorist even if that terrorist wouldn't even know if that person is a terrorist, right? We don't have any proof of it. The government says they're terrorists, but they are not children, they're not fathers, they're not people full of life and desires and dreams. They're just savages that the only way to deal with a savage is to kill the savage. And that for me is similar to the way that people in the West have considered the other savages, whether it is the native in North America, whether it's the black savage, whether it's the Jew. You know, the Jew who is a violent, is a problem to Christianity, is the blood libel, right? And all these stereotypical, horrible, dehumanizing discourses that led to what happened in the Holocaust, right? We cannot have them.

They don't have any rights and so on. But that is a process of dehumanization that the West has excelled at doing. So I think we need to see that big picture there. Now, when it comes to Hamas specifically, I think we need to see that big picture there. Now, when it comes to Hamas specifically, Hamas is an acronym that stands for the Islamic Liberation Movement. Hamas, Harekat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah in Arabic, the Islamic Resistance Movement. It came out in the 80s, in the late 80s, 40 years after the colonization of Palestine

and the Nakba. And Hamas follows a very specific liberationist discourse that is part of the Palestinian narrative. They adopted religious language, but that is unique to them. But you don't have to adopt that religious language. People would know about Palestinian militancy from the 60s and the 70s that was inherently secular and non-religious. Actually, some of that was done by Christians.

So for example, the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine was established by George Habesh, a Christian, but adopted very militant tactics. So, Hamas came about in the late 80s, funded by Israel, as many generals in Israel also admit today, as to counterbalance the balanced secular Fatah party. And until recently, Netanyahu was boasting about his support for Hamas financially to keep him in power in Gaza. So that is very different from Takfiri movements. This is a technical term in Islam, which is these pietistic fundamentalist groups like ISIS who are seeking to purify Islam and find that they would make the argument that the reason for the decadence of the Muslim world is our deviance from Islam and so on. And they think that the

way to take care of this is to purify Islam. And that's what takfir is, to find who's the kafir and who's not the kafir. So, ISIS would be an example of this. Hamas is not a part of this. And here, this is a challenge because I'm trying to push people to humanize Hamas, right, to try to find complexity in Hamas, which is not common for people. And also, I realize this is also uncomfortable for me in this context, because I don't want to seem like an apologist. Just also to clarify the air here, I abhor violence in all its forms and shapes. I disagree with Hamas's policies and ideologies, so please understand this. As a Palestinian who is part of a larger and a complex Palestinian society, I'm a militant, nonviolent person.

I abhor any source of violence because violence is fundamentally dehumanizing. And even violence by the oppressed, I even reject. So none of what I'm saying here, I don't want it to be construed as a defense for Hamas, but I want us to understand Hamas. And I'm analyzing Hamas as someone who knows Hamas, who knows people in Gaza who are part of Hamas and in the West Bank, who met them, and also following what they say in their own constitution from 2017 and from the report they released a few days ago about the operation on October 7th.

So all I'm saying is that Hamas fundamentally sees itself as they define it, as they describe it as a liberationist movement that is fighting against Zionism and not against Judaism. And the claim that they would be jihadi takfiris akin to ISIS is a very bad way to understand Islam, to understand Hamas and how they operate. Many Palestinians, not just Hamas, believe in the right to bear arms and in armed struggle. They have been brutalized by a very brutal system of violence and terrorism that has terrorized Palestinians. And I'm using the word terrorism here carefully, because Palestinians have been terrorized for a very long time, along many people like in Iraq, and right now Yemen and other places who have been terrorized by Western imperialism. who have been terrorized by Western imperialism.

And they think that armed struggle is a legitimate way to fight against Israeli violence and terrorism that they have been facing. I completely reject it as Daniel, as a Palestinian, and as a Palestinian Christian. But it's not unique to Muslims or Arabs. I think it goes hand in hand with Native American struggle against pilgrims. It goes hand in hand again with other movements of armed struggle by oppressed people. Think of, you know, Black Power and Black Panthers in the U.S. Think of the analysis by Malcolm X and how he understood power and violence in response to systemic violence and racism in the U.S. So I think for me, those go hand in hand in the form as they are formulated by those who believe in these things as legitimate armed struggle against an oppressive system against them. Isaac, for you and I to connect on the issue, because we disagree here, to understand how religion plays a harmful role in dehumanizing people.

And I think that's legitimate, and I think we can talk about it. And we can talk about October 7th and how horrible that was. But we cannot—my problem with analyzing Hamas as part of this Takfiri movement or Jihadi Islam is that it rids Palestinians of context. And I'm saying if we understand the context of Hamas within Gaza as an oppressed reality, a violent reality, systemic violence that is not really visible to you and me because we don't see it on TV, but has been experienced by every person in Gaza. And if you understand the context of brutalization and apartheid and violence and oppression and killing of Palestinians left and

right since 1948, Hamas would make sense insofar as it comes as a response to violence. And I would say this as well, that abused people could easily become abusers. Hurt people hurt people. A victimized person could easily become a victimizer. So maybe these are some of the ways to think about it. Hamas claims October 7th, a lot of mistakes happened on October 7th, but they're saying that the goals for what they did was to get hostages and release Palestinian prisoners. That's what they claim. If they were a jihadi group, they would have killed all the hostages by now,

because why would you want to keep a hostage? Because their goal would be to destroy them, not to keep them as hostages. So it's fundamentally a political movement that is trying to assert some kind of power and credibility in a very awful way. But I think we need to have that more ability to move away from the terms of a terrorist or a jihadi because it's not helpful, and have an add more nuance in our conversation about them. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. I think I'll just jump in here real quick, Daniel, because I can resonate a lot with this idea that when you use the label terrorist, it turns the person you're talking about into something that's different.

That's not deserving of the same rights as other humans. We wrote a piece not too long ago about FBI entrapment. humans. We wrote a piece not too long ago about FBI entrapment. And part of the theme of that piece was how once you use the crime or have the charge of terrorist, it gives more leeway to different state actors to use more aggressive force. I think it's something that a lot of people, even in the West, can really, if we take a step back, see is something that happens with our discourse quite a bit, is you use the label terrorist, and then it changes the person you're talking about. I think it's the most challenging thing for people that are listening to this, and even the people that are on the call having the

conversation, is to understand that if we really want to seek to understand an organization like Hamas, we have to understand that they are people, and every person has motivations, and try to understand the motivations of those people. So I think, at least from my perspective, I can understand that what you're trying to do is not to excuse or apologize, but to explain what you think the motivation is and try to provide a little bit of differentiation between a group like Hamas and a group like ISIS. Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you for kind of emphasizing that. I would compare what happened or how Hamas thought or acted in a similar way to, for example, the Nat Turner's slave rebellion,

where Nat Turner, who was a very devout Christian who led the rebellion and killed many, I think, 50 white Americans. Or the Warsaw Uprising by Polish Jews against what's happening to them and Nazism. So these are horrible acts, right? You're killing civilians and so on, but it's born out of realities of oppression, fascism, slavery, and so on. These are not identical, but someone like me, as someone who has not experienced the trauma and the hurt and the violence that they have faced, I tend to understand where they're coming from. I reject it, and I wish they wouldn't do this. But again, we need to understand the context, at least, to all of this. Recently, Norman Finkelstein, an American Jewish scholar whose ancestors survived the Holocaust,

and he gave the anecdote that he asked his mom, like, what do you think about Nazis? And she was like, I want every Nazi, every German to be killed. And Norman Finkerson said, I disagree with my mom's, like, very problematic ethic, but I also have not been through the Holocaust, you know, and I'm not going to judge my mom for the way that she thought about Nazis and about Germans. Nazis and about Germans. But it's easy for us to sympathize with the survivals of the Holocaust, right? They're innocent humans, and they deserve dignity and liberty and so on. And what I'm saying is, we need to realize the dignity and the humanity of the Palestinians as well. And one more point here. When Gazans over the last 17 years have gone through five wars, where kids were killed, where the mothers were killed, where 50% of the population of Gaza has never left Gaza and have only experienced war in the last 16 years.

So if you're 20 years old in Gaza, you have lost a sibling, a mom or a dad or a friend or a brother, why wouldn't you pick up arms? Why wouldn't you want to defend your honor in a way that is irrational to us and is abhorrent to us? You know, I don't know, and I don't know those folks at all, right, like the Hamas militants and what they do and so on, But I knew of one suicide bomber in Bethlehem. This is during the second intifada in the year 2002. She was a refugee in the Dehesha refugee camp in Bethlehem. Israel bombed the refugee camp and killed her parents and her fiancé. What can we do, right? What feelings was she feeling at that time? And the

only rational thing she can do when she lost all love of life and all hope is to strap a bomb around herself and go to a checkpoint and kill two soldiers. But that's the context. If you cannot humanize this person and understand her hurt and her trauma, we can never understand what's happening and why people act violently. And I think violence is fundamentally, it's a sign, it's a marker. It's telling us there's something wrong here and we need to address it. And I'm saying that the context of Palestine is a system that is inherently violent towards Palestinians. of Palestine is a system that is inherently violent towards Palestinians. And Palestinians, just like, and again, like, this might be shocking and confusing, but I'm comparing my players in Bethlehem with people in Gaza, people who have never experienced justice.

And the only response they have to injustice is to shout, is to be violent, is to curse, out, is to be violent, is to curse. But if I do not pursue justice for them, if I don't pursue a system of equity and freedom, where I'm not fighting for their voice and for them to find freedom and liberty and justice, I'm never going to understand them. And they're never going to be okay. They're never going to be fine. And they're never going to find life and life more abundant. And I think we need to pursue that. And that starts with us educating ourselves and us humanizing others. I think it's hard for us to be, it's easy for us to be tribal, and it's hard for us to empathize with people who are different than us, who are Muslim, who are Arab, who are Palestinian. But that's the hard work that all of us have to do. It's hard for me to care for Israelis. You know, the only Jew I experienced growing up in the West Bank is the person who killed my

classmate and who shot my cousin and now is in a wheelchair, is the soldier who sexually assaulted me on a checkpoint. That's the only Jew I know. That's the only Israeli I know. And it only took me to leave Palestine to make close Jewish friends at the University of Chicago, to fall in love with Maimonides and Buber and Jewish thinkers and be close friends with Jewish Americans

when I actually got to understand what it means to be a Jew, to understand their history and their trauma. But until then, the Jew or the Israeli is the one who brutalized me. But that's the work we have to do, you know, and that's when I've, you know, that's when someone like who does theology, who's a Christian, and this is to Isaac's question initially, you know, as a Christian, I share the traditions that Jews share, right, the Hebrew scriptures. And for me, I am motivated by the prophetic tradition in Judaism. I'm motivated, I'm influenced by Martin Buber and A.J. Heschel, you know, and love the works of, you know, Maimonides and other medieval Jewish scholars and so on. But that's the work I had to do and move away from my hostility and my anger and my trauma

and like actually find complexity and beauty in the other. And that's hopefully how I can do this work and how I can move forward. And it's still hard work, especially when I'm seeing the Israeli citizens. We didn't really talk about kind of the complexity of Zionism and Judaism there, and something I'm not an expert in. But for me, when I go to Jerusalem and when I go into Israel proper today and so on, there is this gap that exists between me and the Jewish person or this really person that I'm trying to bridge, that I'm trying to understand their trauma from World War II, to understand their connection to memory and to the land and so on and how they work

that out in their lives. But then I'm looking around and I'm seeing a people that is refusing to acknowledge me as a human, that I'm only good as insofar I'm cheap labor in a settlement or in a grocery store or behind a wall, you know? And also, to extend that to the rest of the West, because Israel is part of that, is for people in the West to understand that the full humanity, the full potential of Palestinians, and to advocate for their freedom and for justice for them. But that's where the work has to happen for all of us.

It's really interesting to hear your framing here because it's so similar to some of the things that I've written from a position as somebody who I think has more desire to see like the Israel project continue, but in a different way than it has existed for the last 75 years. So I, and because I think this is maybe the most important crux thing about the future, I want to really emphasize it is that I don't believe there's any path toward peace or justice or equality or, you know, the generational healing that's going to be required to end this conflict with bombs dropping and people being killed. And I've said this repeatedly and Tangle is every single time a neighborhood in Gaza gets flattened, there are a hundred people who survived that experience who have the potential to become, you know, quote unquote radicalized and take up arms or whatever.

And so there's no, like when, when I talk about to my, you know, Zionist, Jewish, Israeli, even moderate American friends who maybe have really strong negative opinions toward the Palestinian movement or towards Hamas or whatever, I say, you know, I support a deal that ushers in a ceasefire and the release of the hostages, because I think the war actually isn't just unsafe for Palestinians. That's self-evident. There's tens of thousands who are dying. It's making the world less safe for Jews and Israelis, because it's ensuring that there's going to be years and years more of armed conflict. And I want to live in a world that's safer for Palestinians and for Israelis and for Jews and for Muslims. And as long as like the

cycle, we're in the cycle, it doesn't happen. So fundamentally, that's the most important thing to me. I think, and I didn't want to make this religious, religion-oriented conversation all about Islam, because I do think the Zionism side is really interesting. I think the Western Christian side is really interesting. I know you wrote an open letter, which I'll be sure to link to in the show notes, criticizing some of the Western Christian support for Israel in this war from your kind of Palestinian Christian lens, which I thought was really fascinating to read. I think one of the things you said about Hamas and the kind of comparison to, you know, Nat Turner or something, the reason it doesn't land credibly for me is because

I don't fundamentally believe that Hamas has the, the interests of the Palestinian people at heart. I don't, I don't think it, I don't think it has a lot of interest in a, a future for the, the Palestinian liberation movement or, you know, whatever language you want to use. I know people will take issue with every little word in this conversation, but, um, I don't but I think what's happening right now is actually exactly what they wanted. I think they want regional destabilization, horrific tragedy in Gaza to demonize Israel on the global stage, a rise in support for this quote-unquote Palestinian liberation movement, whatever you want to call it. And they sort of sit back. I mean, there are leaders of Hamas who are, you know, wealthy and rich and hanging out in Jordan or Egypt or wherever else. There's, you know,

the larger geopolitical stuff at play through Iran or whatever. I mean, it's, I see what they did, you know, their narrative about mistakes being made on October 7th, and maybe they just wanted hostages and, you know, were looking for a prisoner exchange. I don't see them having a fundamental interest in, you know, the Palestinian people who are living in Gaza and the West Bank right now, living in some peaceful, singular state that is, you know, equal rights for all and whatever. I think this is what they wanted. I think this conflict is what they wanted. And so that to me is like the fundamentally different thing. And I think it's one of my hangups about the future. And this is sort of, you know, I guess, I guess to, to,

to push this conversation a little bit forward. One of the things that I said, you and I had to talk about on this podcast is what the future looks like and what the path forward is. And I think for me, like if, if I saw a, you know, Warsaw uprising character in Hamas, if I saw a Nat Turner character in Hamas, if I saw that, I think I would view them as a more credible leader for the future of whatever this is going to be. But I don't see that from them. And I guess, you know, one of the things, one of the sort of pro-Israel Zionist perspectives that I am very sympathetic to, that I'm aligned with, is that I don't think there's a future with Hamas and power in Gaza, a peaceful future. And the Palestinian perspective that I've encountered is you don't get to choose,

the Palestinian people do. And that's a really good, powerful perspective. I don't think the Palestinian people have a choice right now. I don't think they haven't had elections in Gaza in whatever, 20 years. So I don't think, I know Hamas has rising support in Gaza right now because they're fighting and that's what always happens when Israel is bombing Gaza is support for groups like Hamas goes up, which again is another reason why Israel should not be bombing Gaza. And one of the reasons I feel like it makes Israel and Jews less safe. So, I guess I'm curious here, you talk a little bit about the future you imagine for the Palestinian people, what that looks like, and maybe some reflections on where I sit here, I guess, because I'd be curious how you feel about that. Yeah, the comparison to Turner and the Warsaw

uprising. Yeah, I want to talk about the future. I think fundamentally that's what we need to focus on. How do we move from this moment and in pursuit of something better and a better life for both people? I understand why you don't want to make the comparison to the Warsaw Uprising and Turner and Ted Turner and so on. Not Turner, but I would, yeah,

I would make a distinction between a political movement or a militia movement like Hamas and between the sentiment that is behind Hamas, which is armed struggle. I'm saying that armed struggle has been understood by Palestinians as a legitimate response to the strongest military in the Middle East, the nuclear power that has been brutalizing them. I'm just saying they find that as a legitimate course of action for them. That's where I'm starting from. The second point to make that comparison between the slave who revolts against the slave owner or the Jewish, Polish-Jewish captives revolting against Nazism and so on in Poland. The point is that I'm trying to draw here for us is to

understand the context and to understand that violence should not be dismissed as barbaric and so on by a certain people group who are normalized for the other people group. We sympathize with Turner and with European Jews because we understand and we can empathize with their suffering. Today we do. We wouldn't have if we were slave owners. We wouldn't if we were German Christians, you know? But now we do, in hindsight. And I'm asking us to understand the trauma and the hurt and the abuse of the Palestinians, the context of Palestine, in order to help us to understand what leads people to violence. Now, your second point about the corruption of Hamas and the political, and they do not have the, what's the word, the best intentions for the Palestinians. Yeah, I don't disagree. I think as a political movement, it's awful.

And their tactics are terrible. I completely agree. I don't know if I could understand what Hamas thinks. People in the West tend to say and pontificate a lot about Hamas, and they think they understand Hamas. I don't know. I don't think we can do that. I don't know. I don't know what Hamas was planning. I don't know what Hamas thought would happen on the 7th. I don't know their motivations. We can't pontificate. Whether they care about the Palestinians or not, that's an interesting question. I would say all Palestinians want liberation. All Palestinians want freedom. All Palestinians want the end of the brutal system. And Isaac, the point I was trying to make, that as long as we ignore the Palestinians

and as long as we dehumanize them, we're not going to understand Hamas, and we're not going to understand the hurt of the Palestinians. Fundamentally, Hamas is driven by a belief among all Palestinians that we need to keep fighting for our liberation. Most Palestinians believe in nonviolent resistance, and that's been the default position for us. For Palestinians to remain in the West Bank and not leave, for example, is an active resistance. When Israel has been trying to erase us, for Palestinians to write like myself and to

advocate and to speak on podcasts. This is me fighting for my liberation and that of my people. And we can talk about how arts and education and beautiful, what is called beautiful resistance or creative resistance that most Palestinians are active in. So we all do that, and there are some Palestinians who believe no. The most dignifying and honoring thing as Palestinians is to carry arms. There's a Palestinian analogy, a statement that is made frequently, that we would rather die standing than on our knees. And Palestinians have been pushed down on their knees for 76 years, and some of them are saying, no, I'm going to stand up, and this is how I'm going to stand up.

I stand up in a different way. You stand up in a different way. But for Palestinians, they want to die as the olive trees standing up, you know, and Israel has been trying to press their boots on the Palestinian necks, and Palestinians are refusing to be on the ground under the boot. But yeah, we need to be critical of what Hamas did, and we should. But we cannot be critical of Hamas in isolation of the context, and that's what I really want to keep pushing here. We need to understand what leads to Hamas. And to answer the question, what is the way forward? Actually, before I answer that question, we need to talk about Zionism. Zionism as an inherently

racist ideology that has brutalized Palestinians and dehumanized them. I've learned so much from Jewish allies and friends who are anti-Zionist because of their Judaism. And for them, Zionism is inherently violent because it only says that you can be a Jew only if you live in the land, only if you follow into the system of brutalization and segregation and dispossession. And they refuse to do that. And they draw on their own Jewish traditions. They draw on to the prophets who command Jews to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly. That's not Zionism, you know. And these Jews are saying it is the violence they feel, you know, that their Judaism is not okay, is not complete unless it's a Zionist Judaism, you know, until it's landed a militaristic Zionist ideology in Palestine.

Judaism, you know, until it's landed and militaristic Zionist ideology in Palestine. And they're saying this doesn't apply to us. This is actually an aberration and an abuse of our Jewish tradition. And Zionism is fundamentally anti-Semitic. It makes every Jew complicit in oppression. And we need to move beyond that ideology that says it is okay for us to oppress people. And that's the only way for us to be proper Jews, which I think is Zionism. And I carry on my body the scars of Zionism, the brutalization of Zionism on my body and the body of all Palestinians, right? And I think Jews have to do the work. We have to realize that Zionism is not what traditional historic Judaism has believed in. It was actually rejected by the majority of Jews initially as a secular movement and as an idolatry and a rejection of the Messiah and of the Torah. Like, there's some work to be done there. But sadly, you know, Zionism has won the day today. But thank God for the anti-Zionists and the non-Zionist Jews who help us, someone like me, to understand the complexity of Judaism and the beauty of Judaism. wrote to Christians in the West. We were quoting the Hebrew scriptures the whole time, like drawing

on Jewish traditions to assert our freedom and our desire for justice. So I think we have to have that conversation about Zionism. And you mentioned, Isaac, that you believe in the Israeli project. I have a problem with believing in a project that is fundamentally based on a racist ideology. And the only future for Israel that has to exist is a future that is cleansed from that ideology that is fundamentally supremacist and racist and restore a beautiful, complex, diverse Judaism that has thrived in the Middle East.

And we can pursue that. But Zionism, I think, remains to be the problem. And its flip side, in this case, is also very harmful, destructive, exclusionary ideologies among Palestinians in the case of Hamas. But Zionism thrives on Hamas, and Hamas thrives on Zionism. And both ideologies of extremism and violence have to be dismantled. And that's what I would love to see for my people and for Israelis. And I strongly believe in a one-state solution where everyone would live in dignity and humanity and liberty, and the land can take both people, but only when justice is established. No reconciliation can happen without peace, and no peace without justice. And another point you made about Hamas and elections and so on, yeah, yeah, I mean, and that's the thing, if you humanize Palestinians, and by God, if you know Palestinians, we are, this is maybe biased, but Palestinians are very powerful and intelligent and wonderful people. And they know how to, they have their own agency.

And that's what's so problematic to me. Like I was listening to Thomas Friedman the other day, and there's just like a very, I don't want to use harsh words here, but this supremacist Western ideology, like we know what the path forward for. He was saying, yeah, we need to have the NATO control the borders of Gaza. So you want to include more imperialism into the Middle East? That's the solution. Palestinians have no say, no history, no agency. But that's the thing. If Palestinians are given the chance to live in dignity and in justice,

Hamas would not have any power, any justification, because Palestinians know what's best for them, and they know that Hamas, what it stands for, is not good for the Palestinians. But in the context of oppression, Hamas makes sense to many Palestinians, hence what we have right now. And Palestinians can make that choice, just like Americans can make the choice who they want to lead them. Palestinians are denied democracy. They cannot vote. Why can't they vote? Because Israel is denying them the right to vote and freedom in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and denying Palestinians in East Jerusalem the right to vote. And Palestinians are refusing to have elections that excludes Gaza and excludes East Jerusalem. And that's kind of what the Palestinian Authority is saying here, that the only way we can have elections is when all Palestinians are granted

the right to self-determination and to vote for their elected powers. And like you said, Isaac, Israel needs Hamas, and they bomb people, like you said, to empower Hamas and extremism and violence among Palestinians. And that works for Israel. But you cannot bomb your way into freedom and security. And that's kind of your point, and I completely agree with you. Therefore, the way forward to answer the question is to pursue justice for the Palestinians, to end the occupation, to dismantle any ideology of supremacy that exists in the land, fundamentally Zionism, because all of Palestinian resistance is resistance to Zionism, and fight today, speak up, and fight for the Palestinian rights, for Palestinian rights and for freedom and for liberation. And whenever we pursue justice for the Palestinians, Israelis are going to have security and Palestinians are going to have security. But that's the only way forward for us.

And I dream for a future where my kid, who I named Micah, by the way, as a prayer, Micah 6-8, to do justice and to love mercy. And I would love for Micah to grow up with Jewish friends. But how can I put the oppressed with the oppressor? How can I put the occupied person with a soldier who serves in the military and watches over checkpoints? That cannot happen. And I don't want that for him until we can guarantee freedom and justice. But that's my dream for him to grow up with Jewish friends. But that could not happen until Palestinians are free, all Palestinians are free. There's work that politicians have to do, which I cannot do.

All I can do is use my voice. That's my only weapon. We need people like you, Isaac and Ari, to speak up for the Palestinians and to push the Jewish community to speak up against Israeli policies and against apartheid and pursue this together. It's a grassroots work that eventually can make the difference today. And hopefully we can today. And hopefully we can have, we can imagine a beautiful reality, a better tomorrow for both people.

And hopefully that hope is what is driving our work today. And we have a lot of work cut out for us. But we cannot be silent, Isaac. We have to speak up. People who are just getting involved right now, listen,

educate yourself, follow the, getting involved right now, you know, listen, educate yourself, you know, follow, you know, the work that is being done, but then fundamentally, you have to speak up, and we need you to speak up. In some ways, I feel like our conversation's just starting. And so I don't, you know, I don't want to end it. But I'm cognizant of the fact that we're nearly two hours into this. And I know Ari and I are going to do a little talk about some breaking news related to Joe Biden that came on just before we got on the air. So I do feel like I need to try and tie this up somehow. And I think like something I would say just to respond to everything you just said is, I would say just to respond to everything you just said is, you know, the complexity around Zionism and the friction that exists between the political movement and Judaism as a religion and

Jews all over the world who I think have fundamentally different views about Israel Israel and Zionism as a political movement, it's really real. And it's so complex, even in this, you know, relatively small world of Judaism. And it becomes even more complex when Christianity gets involved and Americans get involved and Palestinians get involved and Islam gets involved. And one of the things that I think, you know, I've been thinking about is the success of the Zionist movement is, you know, driven in large part by the events of the Holocaust, by the sympathy that existed globally for the Zionist movement then because we just watched this. And it's hard for people to conceptualize. You know, I think you imagine there's 25,000, 30,000 Palestinians who have been killed in this war. Imagining the scale of that to, God willing, it ends tomorrow,

that to, God willing, it ends tomorrow, inshallah, you know? But, like, imagining that happening for years and getting to a number like millions, six million, and then thinking about the kind of global sympathy that would exist and the sense, the feeling that, like, something must be done was so critical to the establishment of Israel. And I think, you know, I wasn't alive then, but I imagine I would have thought that there was something right about this. There was something, you know, that something was so broken about society that we need to do something as radical as like create this new singular state where jews could go live and and and rule you know whatever however you want to frame it um and i guess like my my hope and my prayer is that regardless of any feelings about zionism or our our political differences or whatever, is that this latest spate of violence has

been so deeply traumatic for the world that it becomes unacceptable to continue forward on the path that we're on. And that's something I personally wish for. I, you know, showing my cards, I pretty much abhor this iteration of the Israeli government. I've been open about my feelings about Benjamin Netanyahu. And, you know, like I said, I think the path that we're on right now is not just fundamentally bad for Palestinians, which again is self-evident, but I think it's also, despite many people framing this conflict as Israelis coming from a position of strength and Israelis coming from a position of strength

and Jews coming from a position of strength, which I think they certainly are militarily and politically, I think their position has been severely weakened by the path that they're on and made much more dangerous. And that's why I am so strongly opposed to so many of the things that we're seeing right now and witnessing. So, you know, in everything else aside, I think here, sitting here, I can say that I hope that what we've had to live through the last four months for both sides has been so eye-opening and so traumatic and so awful that we start actually thinking about something that's novel and new and different. And we don't just keep doing the same things over and over again that have existed for the last 75, 76 years and hundreds, centuries before that in some contexts, you know? I mean, this has been a

region and a conflict that I think has had different iterations and worn different skin over time. And, um, it's, it's horrible to be sitting here in 2024 as like thinking of ourselves as this high-minded advanced society, and we're just slaughtering each other still. Um, and so that's my prayer. That's my hope. I, I, again, I feel like this conversation in many ways is just starting, but I'm so grateful for you coming on Daniel for sharing your perspective. Uh, frankly, I hope we can do it again sometime in the future and maybe pull it some more specific threads. If people want to keep up with you and read your work and stay in touch, how's the best way for them to do that? Before I do that, I just want to affirm you and thank you for what you're saying. I think we can continue to disagree, but I think hopefully, or in some ways, I think we agree a lot more than we want to admit, perhaps. But yeah, I think I need to emphasize that

fundamentally we have to have the creativity and the love justice is love in public I think the statement that I heard recently so pursue that active public love that seeks what's good for everyone. And hopefully, like, love would be our ethic. I don't want to be too corny here, but just kind of see what it means to love my neighbor as myself and to love my enemy as myself.

You know what that does to you as a person, especially if you can put yourself in the shoes of your enemy. How can that transform you to be a better person? And I think Zionism as Hamas, both ideologies are inherently born out of violence. Zionism became legitimate because of the violence of Christians in Europe. And Hamas became legitimate because of violence over 75 years. But these are lazy binaries and ideologies of exclusion fundamentally by definition lack the creativity and the love for the other. And then we have to move away from the binary of it's, you know, we're the good guys or the bad guys, therefore we can do whatever they want,

whatever we want to them. We can bomb Syria and Iraq and Yemen, but we're the good guys here. You know, we can destroy all of Gaza. We're the good guys here. But that is fundamentally that lazy, I think, unethical way of thinking about the other person. And if people of faith want to draw on their traditions, they have plenty in their traditions to draw on.

If people are motivated by secular ideas of human rights and international law and on humanism, draw on that. It's simple. The temptation for us is to be tribal, to be exclusionary, to be biased. And I think we have to do the hard work of moving beyond that and pursue, you know, the law of love and how that law of love can influence the way that we can think creatively about Palestine and Israel. Palestine and Israel. And that's kind of the way I think for us forward is to have that radical, creative love for the world and for the enemy and for the neighbor insofar as that can help us transform the world into a better place. Maybe this is too idealistic, but I think we can think practically of how do we do this, you know, in a specific, concrete, slow, small ways, and I think we can do it. So to conclude, yeah, thank you, Isaac, for this. If people want to follow with me, they can see me on Instagram and Twitter,

Daniel Bonnoura, just my name. Ultimate Palestine, we have ultimatepalestine.com. We have some merch, and we have some donation pages as well they can look into if they want to support the work we're doing. We're trying to raise funds now for Gaza to send to our coaches. We just got an incredibly generous donation from a lot of people in the US. And so if you want to keep helping the work we're doing, consider donating to us. You can follow us on Instagram as well at Ultimate Palestine. We have also some merch. You can check out Frisbees and otherwise. If you want to support the work we're doing and rep Ultimate Palestine, please do so. Yeah, and my plea to everyone is to keep the work, educating yourselves, and activating and

advocating for truth and for justice in Palestine and in Israel. Daniel Benora, thank you so much for the time. For those of you who made it this far, if you have any energy left, you stick around for 10 minutes, you can hear me and Ari talk about this classified documents stuff going on with President Biden. Thank you guys we'll be right back after this quick commercial break all right well god man i really do feel like that we were just scratching the surface i don't know how it feels that way after two hours, but I feel that way. I think there are a bunch of things that I wanted to respond to. First and foremost, actually, is the experience of being a religious minority in a country that we never really got to

as a Christian in Palestine and then as Jews growing up in the US. I think that's a, it's something that there's a lot of conversation and bond over. I think we should have him back and just talk about defining Zionism, maybe, because I think that's a key term that means something very specific to him that probably means something different to a lot of people, including yourself, I'd imagine. I think there's a lot of differences between my relationship to Judaism and yours, and I feel like the three of us could probably be on a retreat for a week and I, well, I, I just have so much love for that dude. I'm such a likable person, empathetic and thoughtful and like shamelessly himself and forward and direct and no bullshit, no beating around the bush. I'm like, I wish more conversations were like that with people. Like I just, you know, just a total understanding that we disagree on some things, we agree on others.

We're gonna try to focus on some of the agreement and we're gonna speak to each other in like really direct and honest terms. And yeah, he made it super easy to, to talk about this issue. And so I'm really grateful to Daniel for, for coming on crazy that like, you know, I, I don't know really how to make this pivot. So I'm just going to do the hard pivot. Cause you know, I think we're, we're talking about something that's's really deep and tragic and difficult. And now we have some national political news that's a little bit, I don't want to say lighthearted.

This is also really serious stuff, but it's different in kind, I think, than the conversation we were just having, which is that we were about to sign on to the podcast and like literally minutes before we signed on, this special counsel report on President Biden's handling of classified documents came out. This is going to be what we cover tomorrow. You guys will be hearing this podcast on Sunday. We're going to have to talk about it tomorrow on Monday. Special counsel says President Biden came across to investigators as a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory, was how the special counsel described him, said that he

willfully disclosed classified materials as a private citizen, but no criminal charges were warranted. And part of the reason that no criminal charges were warranted in the special counsel's view was basically that he didn't think he could prosecute Biden. This was not the core reason, but it was one of the reasons. I want to read from this just for a second, because it's politically, this is a gift to Trump, an order of magnitude that's hard to emphasize. I know we're nine or 10 months out from the election, but if you're the Trump campaign, this is like the best thing that could have ever happened to you. Not the classified document stuff, because that sort of is just going to come out in the wash. But things like this, the special counsel wrote, we have also considered that at trial,

Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him, by then a former president well into his 80s of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness. I mean, basically just saying that he didn't have the mental capacity to understand what the criminal acts were that he was performing, and that's why they couldn't prosecute him, or one of the reasons they would run into trouble trying to prosecute him. I mean, this is like Biden's number one thing going into this election is his age stuff

and the mental capacity stuff. And this is just like a bullseye for anybody campaigning against him in terms of material you need. I'm going to read one other little excerpt and then I'll let you respond to it. Another part of this said, in his interview with our office, Mr. Biden's memory was worse. They're saying worse than, well, actually, I'll read the whole thing. Mr. Biden's memory also appeared to have significant limitations, both at the time he spoke to Zwanitzer in 2017, as evidenced by their recorded conversations, and today, as evidenced by his recorded interview, and today as evidenced by his recorded interview with our office. Mr. Biden's recorded conversations with Zwanitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own

notebook entries. In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden's memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended. Quote, if it was 2013, when did I stop being vice president? Question mark. And forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began. Quote, in 2009, am I still vice president? Question mark. He did not remember even within several years when his son Beau died, and his memory appeared to be hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said that he had a real difference of opinion with

General Carl Eikenberry when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally with whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama. And I get to respond to that. Yeah, it's not something that I would want anybody in the Biden camp to have to respond to because it's just landmine after landmine. This is an exonerating statement. That's a good thing to remember is this is a statement that is explaining why he's being exonerated from a crime. And I can't imagine anything that's more reputationally damaging. It would probably be worse if he was presented as somebody who was malicious. I think it sounds that bad. And we are talking all week with people for an Undecided Voter podcast that we're going to be doing. We have an interview that by the time this podcast is out, we would have just published in a

Friday newsletter with Bill O'Reilly and all of these conversations, the subject of presidential popularity and age is coming up. And as much as we want to say it's about both candidates, one of them's the incumbent, and it's always going to be worse for the incumbent. I don't know a way to talk myself into this seeming better for Biden than it is, especially the way you frame it, other than to say it's not going to be a felony case for him. That's the silver lining. February 2024. So, you know, between now and November, we're going to get a million different stories. But also between now and November, he's going to be, you know, seven, eight months older. And the issues that are being discussed that he has that are very real, I think, and people need to stop pretending like they're not real. They're very real. There are going to be more and more stories like this that come out. Now, I want to be fair to the president because he's responded in some part to this story already. He said, you know, this was an exhaustive investigation.

It went back literally more than 40 years. I went forward with a five-hour in-person interview on October 8th and 9th last year. I was in the middle of handling an international crisis. All this stuff is true. And, you know, there's a world where like you frame this, like, look at this guy's 80 years old, what he's doing is incredible. You know, he's navigating the days after Hamas's attack in Israel. And he's, this is, And this is the thing that gets dropped in his lap is this interview. You know, I get it. Fine. The language that exists in this report, and again, this is from an independent special counsel, somebody appointed by President Biden's Justice Department to investigate this. This is not political. This is not some hit job from Fox News. This is a very serious person giving a very serious report on the record after extensively interviewing the president and essentially framing him as being too feeble and his memory being too addled for him to take the stand and defend himself or,

you know, for him to even really navigate the interviews that they were trying to push forward. So I think this is catastrophic, at least in the short term for Biden. I think the next couple of weeks are going to be awful for him. He's going to answer nonstop questions about this. It's going to go through the conservative media echo chamber and any independent right-leaning voter is going to see this. A lot of liberal Democratic voters will see it, though I think the media on that side will probably downplay it in a lot of ways. I'm excited to write about it because I'm very curious to hear how both sides sort of flesh this argument out. But this is not good. I mean, you mentioned Bill O'Reilly thing. People are going to see this in this interview that we did with him. He said in our

interview that he thinks Biden has Alzheimer's. I don't think Bill O'Reilly should be diagnosing President Biden. And in some you know, in some ways, I feel like he's almost being performative when he says that. But he's telling his audience that who are people who are not just Republicans, he has audience that are people that are conservatives that are in the middle that are right of center that are independent. And he's not a crazy radical either. I mean, Bill O'Reilly, somebody who I think is, you know, he says he's not an ideologue. I think he's a little, I think he's clearly a conservative, but like, you know, he's telling his audience, the president has Alzheimer's for weeks. And then a

report like this comes out, like this kind of stuff is going to have a really big, meaningful impact. And, uh, yeah, I don't want to overstate it and like be reactionary. And this is why I love sleeping on stuff with Tangle. But I think this is bad. where we will have one news story about how Biden is misidentifying Nikki Haley as Nancy Pelosi. And then the next week we'll have a story about how, no, it's actually Joe Biden who's too old. And then next week we'll have some story about Trump. These people haven't been in debates for a reason. And eventually they're going to have to debate each other. And don't you kind of think that we get so many emails from people that say this is the campaign that nobody wants or the matchup that nobody wants. Nobody wants a Trump-Biden rematch, but people are voting for it. So I guess some people do. And I'm wondering if this is what they want. They want to just sit back and watch

the most sadistic debate they've ever seen between two people who each side is painting as mentally addled and unable to compete anymore. I think they're both overstated. I think we're cherry-picking from people that are being televised a lot to find the worst moments they could possibly have. But we're going to have a lot more moments to cherry-pick from, and the game of paper football is only going to get weirder. moments to cherry pick from. And the game of football is only going to get weirder. In a non-serious, I'm saying this a little bit in jest, but I'm sort of not like, I'm pumped for the Biden Trump debate. It is going to be electric, dude. I mean, I like, I literally have no idea what is going to happen. It will be all time, like pick your job off the floor,

television, entertainment, and we should not, everybody, please. For the leader of our country, right? I know. Well, I just want to say like, I, I really want to be, I'm a serious, I try and be really serious about this stuff. And if you guys know, I think I, I feel in a safe space. People have been reading and listening to Tango long enough to know, know that I don't, I take this stuff very seriously, but it's just so nuts. And like, and I just have to say that there will be a part of me that everything aside and how ridiculous and seriously not great, this whole situation we found ourselves in, is when that debate happens,

if that debate happens, there will be a big part of me that is just excited to watch it, like I feel about watching the Super Bowl this weekend. It's going to be exhilarating. I will be nervous the whole time because I won't know what's going to happen. I think I don't want to get too angry, so I'll try to join you a little bit in the lightheartedness.

We have for decades been propagating a political race or system that elevates theater above substantive argument. The debates have only been getting more and more theatrical, and this is what we get. The analogy that comes to mind for me is, just to end on something that's as divorced from reality and silly as I can to help wash it down, is a couple years ago in the Winter Olympics, Team Canada drew in their pool China's team. And I remember when that happened because I follow hockey and I was reading some message boards about that. And people were so pumped for that. There were legitimate hockey analysts who were saying the final score of this

game is going to be 17 to nothing. And we're not exaggerating. A lot of the players for this team cannot skate backwards and they're playing the best hockey Like a lot of the players for this team cannot skate backwards and they're playing the best hockey team that's ever existed maybe. And we cannot wait to see this. Of course, things change. Like China was able to repatriate some people and pump their team up,

but they'll run up to that. It feels like what we're expecting now is watching that team China play against team China like in an inner squad scrimmage and for the fate of the free world yeah for the fate of the free world all right this is uh obscenely long podcast now at this point i'm not a joe ro i i like joe rogan's podcast he interviews a lot of interesting people but i do do not like that Joe Rogan's podcast is like three hours long. And I know he's the, he's the king of podcasting right now, but I'm a firm believer, like nothing should be this long. So we should wrap. I just, we had to say

something. Also, I'll just note briefly that the Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Putin interview just dropped. So we're going to have to cover that next week too. So it just literally never ends. I can't believe this is like such an insane day. This is why I don't sleep and work 12 hours a day, six days a week. But you know what? At least I'm having some fun along the way. We are going to try and keep our tradition of our grievances,

our airing of the grievances to end every podcast that we do together. Today was obviously a very serious and deep conversation and now this biden stuff that i have trouble being more serious about but uh we're gonna end with a little bit of levity the airing of grievances you're not the only one improving yourself. I worked out with a dumbbell yesterday.

Do you want to go first or second? I'm going to go first because I'm going to change up what I'm talking about. Because I've got a larger grievance that I can expound on for a while, and I'll just shove that away for next week. I'll still be aggrieved next week, I'm sure. All right, yeah, that sounds good. And I'll join you in some complaint about travel. So a couple weeks ago, I switched out the razor that I use. I would love to say the brand, but I'm trying to get

them to sponsor us, so I'll withhold it. And I've been using those multi-blade razors that are disposable that are made to suck and they suck. And I switched out to a really nice single blade handheld razor that it just works like a dream. I've been so happy with my choice and I took it with me and I traveled and was confiscated from the airport at like five in the morning when I was barely awake. And just the conversation that I had with the TSA agent, I was 50% online. And he said, we can't allow you to bring detachable blade razors with you. And I said, I can't detach that. It requires a tool in order to get that blade out of the razor handle that I don't have with me. So I can't detach it. And he said, well, it is still detachable. So we'll have to confiscate it or you can leave it and go back through. It's like, there's no way for me to leave this.

Can I claim it later? And he said, no. And I said, so my options are to throw it out or for you to take it. And he said, or you could go back through. And I said, but I'm not doing that. So you have to take it. He said, yes. I said, okay. And he took that expensive $50 razor that now I'm going to have to rebuy. And it just felt like to me what we're reinforcing is this structure of travel with terrible razors and buy disposable shit and throw it away. And it doesn't matter. And that's better than investing in quality. And we'll go through this performance where it's safe for everybody

to take this thing that if I was able to do any damage with this item, I wouldn't, would not be a safe person to travel. Like you should confiscate me if this is a problem for the rest of the passengers. And there's so much to be frustrated about with travel that I feel like maybe we should just start the whole process over and dream up a new system and go from scratch. Yeah, I know a lot of people who are pro abolishing the TSA and I find their arguments emotionally very convincing. You just remind me of a great story I can tell really quickly. I have like a very vivid memory in, I don't know, maybe 2004, 2005. I was probably 13 or 14 years old. I was traveling with my parents and, you know, first five years after like 9-11. So it's

like the early days of TSA still. And my father had like a tooth, like a tube of toothpaste taken from him. And he was so enraged by this situation that like the T and anybody who knows my dad will know that he, uh, he can run a little hot when he feels like there's an injustice being done. Let's just put it that way. And there's something as his son, when I see something small like this in the grand scheme of things happen, and I watch it build and I know that he's not going to be able to let it go. It's like unbelievably funny for me because I recognize these certain moments in life that like, oh, there's no way Bailey's going to let this go. Like this is, this is going to be a dog fight. And it was like this TSA agent taking his tube of toothpaste. And I was just like, all right, we're going to be here for like the next five hours. Uh, and instead that he, he has this whole argument. It turns this blow up. The TSA agent

throws it out. My dad runs his bag through and then takes his bag off the thing and goes around the back of the, like where the little thing is and plucks his toothpaste out of the trash can and puts it back into his book bag and walk, goes in the airport and gets away with it. Like nobody said anything to him. It was just like this era where they, you know, they came over on the other side and they just dumped the thing he wasn't allowed to have. And he was like, no, nobody's taking my goddamn toothpaste, you know? And just like, and I have this like such a vivid memory of him doing that. Yeah. So anyway, I understand the frustration of the TSA. That story made me think of that as I, I'll never forget that. That is funny. And I also don't want to overstate my frustration.

Like, it was kind of a funny thing. And I thought, yeah, this might as well happen, you know. And I moved on pretty quickly. But it's just one of those, if traveling, air travel is a well-oiled machine, every gear is clogged with grains of sand it feels like and it's just nice i think maybe to hear that other people experience it too that's what airing of the grievances is for it's for the uh the mundane life inconveniences that we are privileged enough to have so i'm gonna give my my my grievance of the week is uh's package thieves in South Philly. Not an original

thing, but I wanted to bring it up because I have a solution. I have a radical solution. So just to be clear, what's happening right now in my life is that I can't send an Amazon delivery package or a package of any kind. I can't be shipped something without basically a 50-50 chance of it being stolen off my front porch. And what used to happen, especially with Amazon, was like, you could order something, it would get stolen, you report it stolen, and they just refund you and send it back to you because they have so much money, they don't care. And that was one of the things that was great about Amazon. Now, Amazon delivery people have this new system where they take a picture of the things that was great about Amazon. Now, Amazon delivery people have

this new system where they take a picture of the package delivered and post it sort of like in your Amazon. So it's evidence that the package was delivered. And then if it gets stolen, they're like, you know, you're beat. You have to go through like a much deeper system. So it's not as easy anymore. So it's way more inconvenient than just telling Amazon I got stolen and getting it back. And I didn't really care about them. And that was the thing. But now like my wife's ordering stuff. It's not just from Amazon. So we get something from a mom and pop shop. It shows up. We've been waiting for it for a week. It gets stolen. The other day, Phoebe was home and she ordered something. She got a notification. It was delivered. She didn't see it for like 15 minutes. She, then she ordered something. She got a notification it was delivered. She didn't

see it for like 15 minutes. Then she saw it. She was like, oh, runs downstairs to get it. It's already gone in 15 minutes. And the reason it's gone in 15 minutes is because these people who are stealing from Amazon trucks and the USPS, they follow the trucks around, they follow them on their route, and then they get out of their car or they wait for them and they watch them go down the block and they watch them drop off the packages and then they hit the whole block right after they get done. And people can't do anything. You're like totally hopeless. It's ridiculous that we live like this. My grievance is it's absurd that we've accepted this. I see people post pictures of the thieves on their front doors and whatever. We should unify and come together and

fight back non-violently, creatively. My solution is police escorts for delivery trucks. That sounds a lot like locking up the stuff in Walgreens, you know? This is better. This is better. A cop car. That's cool because we have a lot of police resources to add. A cop car. This is what I'm saying. You kill multiple birds with one stone. The cop literally just follows a USPS or Amazon truck around. So they're there. And while they're doing that, they're doing their rounds in the neighborhood. They're doing the same thing they do anyway. I know cops. I have friends who are cops. A huge part of the job is just driving around and waiting for a call to come in, keeping an eye on the neighborhood, doing your quote-unquote

community policing. They could do that, drive around the neighborhoods, do their little routes and also do something that like everybody would love them for. This is like a cop PR project to getting stuff stolen. Delivery stolen is not just some like wealthy white suburban issue. It's like all my neighbors on my block. I live in a very diverse area, economically, racially, everything. Everybody is at their wits end. It's insane the lengths people are going to, like some people sit outside and wait for hours for something to get delivered so it doesn't get stolen. The cops have to drive around anyway, just follow the delivery trucks who are doing their rounds in the neighborhood. Stop this insanity from people getting their stuff stolen.

And then if you get a call and you have to bounce for something more important than like petty theft of Isaac's Amazon packages, go do that, obviously. But like, you know, the truck stops, you stop, you get out, you chat with a neighbor, you do a little community interaction. I think I'm on to something. I think this is a great solution that could kill multiple birds with one stone and do something that would be like, it's like a populist issue. Stop people from stealing my shit. I see one small issue here with this. I see a couple, but here's the biggest one. So the packages get stolen because there's a little bit of gap, even if it's 10 minutes between when they're delivered and when you go to pick them up. Yeah. I see where you're going with this. Yeah. Yeah. That means you'd have to have a cop there on your street for a half hour or so to do a

little bit of patrolling to make sure that that gap is secured. Because it's not the truck and the drop-off that gets secured. It's after. Maybe the cop does a 10-minute delayed route. Then it feels a little like entrapping. I'm in. I'm in. I changed my position. I'm pro-entrapment. Yeah. I've been anti-entrapment. I'm now pro-entrapment. My position has changed. What's wrong with a couple little well-placed things every once in a while, right? What about like corner boxes or something where the delivered route drivers have a code and they can put the code in?

This already exists. Some people on my street, they buy these expensive boxes that they have a code and they come and there's like a thing you fill out and they come, they open like a thing you put fill out and they come, they open the thing. Insane. That is a concession to the people stealing stuff. I'm not buying a $300 giant safe that has to live on my front porch because we've all decided that we're going to accept the fact everything gets stolen. I think that's totally insane. Also,

I don't want to do a shared box because I don't want to get stuff delivered that somebody else could take or that like everybody has to root around in my stuff. It's like, it's a federal crime to go in and take somebody's mail. And yet we've accepted that like packages are just going to get stolen and that's how it is. I think it's totally ridiculous. What if we invented some kind of like less, not every block, but neighborhood-ish, like depending on per capita, like a building where you could go and deliver packages and that could be safe. Shut up. Shut up. Federally regulated.

All right. We're getting out of here. Thank you guys for listening. We're not going to invent the post office in real time. I think we did, though. Yeah. I'll see you in hell, Ari. I'll be waiting. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall.

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. 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

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