The Daily - Israel’s Election, Through the Eyes of a Young Palestinian

Episode Date: April 12, 2019

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has promised to assert sovereignty over dozens of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. For Palestinians there, that could mean the end of a decades-long struggle for a state of their own. We hear the perspective of one young man living on the West Bank. Guest: Fadi Quran, who grew up in a Palestinian community near an Israeli settlement. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. For Palestinians on the West Bank, Benjamin Netanyahu's promise to assert sovereignty over dozens of Jewish settlements there could mean the end of a decades-long struggle for a state of their own. Today, the perspective of one young man, Fetty Koran, living on the West Bank.

It's Friday, April 12th. So, Fetty, tell me about growing up in the West Bank. Give me a sense of your life there as a kid. Growing up in the West Bank. Give me a sense of your life there as a kid. Growing up in the West Bank is kind of a paradox because I grew up in this loving community and lived a lot of time with my grandparents. My grandmother would carry me on her shoulders and just walk around town, do shopping, do her farming and different pieces of her life. walk around town, do shopping, do her farming and different pieces of her life. And it's the type of place where literally, you know, everyone and everyone knows you.

Like, you know, the baker down the street, you know, the people who are doing the cleaning in the neighborhood, you know, the people who are producing the vegetables that you're buying. At the same time, though, on every side of my village, there was an Israeli settlement. Like many settlements, Bet El started out as a few caravans on a hilltop. The settlements are kind of like militarized suburbs where people come, you don't know from where. They come from different countries, many from the U.S. One study estimates 15 percent of the settlers in the West Bank are American, and they all believe that it is their right to be here. And then suddenly you don't have access to that area. Settlements are built on land the Palestinians hope will be part of their future state.

Now the efforts of all who have labored before us bring us to this moment. And what was happening in Palestine was there was supposed to be a priest process. The Israeli and the Palestinian peoples who fought each other for almost a century have agreed to move decisively on the path of dialogue, understanding, and cooperation. They eventually said, okay, you're going to have your own state. You can do whatever you want with it. The security of the Israeli people will be reconciled with the hopes of the Palestinian people,

and there will be more security and more hope for all. And what I remember, kind of the conversation being on the dinner table and with family and stuff stuff is everyone saying, this is another trick. Because as the peace talks were happening, we were looking outside of our window and we were seeing it being demolished, where we were supposedly supposed to get freedom and not have any more land taken from us. Everyone was kind of in the sense of, this is like, nothing's going to come out of this. We were never going to get peace. And instead, more and more of our land, more and more of what we consider to be Palestine was just going to be eaten away by these kind of settlers. They're never going to give us our freedom.

It was like, enough is enough. The future of Israeli PLO peace talks has once again been thrown into question, this time by a suicide bombing that ripped through two- This is the intifada. This is the intifada. The protests evolved from boys throwing rocks and people marching to fighters attacking Israeli soldiers and military targets.

And so you're hearing President Clinton in the U.S. say that a two-state solution is on the horizon. But you can see in your own backyard how far away that actually seems. And for young Palestinians like you, that was a turning point. Yeah. And were you drawn to the Intifada and to groups like Fatah or Hamas as a teenager while all this was happening? What happened was I started playing football and I got recruited by this team at one of the mosques. And the goal of that recruitment was eventually to be

brought into one of the Islamic parties here, Hamas. For many people, they see these parties and sometimes they romanticize them because they see them from outside and they want to get in. I had this chance of being courted by them. And so I saw them from the inside first, what they think and how they operate and their goals. And it just, I couldn't trust any of the parties. They didn't inspire me. And although I wanted to be politically active, what I saw on the inside was extremely dysfunctional, autocratic movements. That's how I felt like they were not investing in me because they wanted me to do something great. They were investing in me because they wanted to use me to achieve their

own means. And that just meant that I left all of them disenchanted by them. And I started to with my friends, and I think a lot of Palestinians of my generation at that time, a lot of Palestinians of my generation at that time, we began to want to create our own types of movements. Yes, we, you know, we really wanted to be part of the Tifada, but at least in my case, it wasn't through the political parties. It was separate from them. Were there aspects of life as a teenager that felt normal, that didn't feel defined by this conflict and by this geopolitical situation? Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, we'd go to the movies, like we had a very small theater, looks more like a university classroom, you know, a few, like maybe 20 seats and a

projector. You know, if you had the girlfriend, that was like the place to take her. And, you know, in that setting, while you're watching the movie, eating popcorn, like everything happening in the world around you disappears. And you're just a young teenager. Did you have a favorite movie as a teenager? Yeah, actually, in terms of American movies, my favorite movie was A Beautiful Mind. Mathematicians won the war.

Mathematicians broke the Japanese codes and built the A-bomb. Mathematicians, like you. After I watched A Beautiful Mind, I just became infatuated with math and physics. Now, who among you will be the next Morse? The next Einstein? Who among you will be the vanguard of democracy, freedom, and discovery? I began, like, downloading math books and physics books,

you know, off of the internet or going to the library and getting them and, like, you know, answering all these equations. And that was the way, I think, you know, answering all these equations. And that was the way I think, you know, that I ran away from it. You know, one of the ways that people would leave the difficult reality that we were in was also just books. Like, you know, one of the first books I read was Hawking's A Brief History of Time. And I just became enchanted with theoretical physics. And one day, we had this college counselor who was a volunteer from the US who had flown to Palestine. And he said, you enjoy physics a lot. I think you should apply to this university in the US called Stanford,

because they're really good at physics. And I was like, sure, you know, let's do it. And so he showed me how to do it. And I applied, I got in, and that ended up taking me 9,000 miles away to Stanford in Silicon Valley in California. Stanford in Silicon Valley in California. And I have to imagine that it was a huge adjustment going from the West Bank to Palo Alto, California. It was a huge adjustment. But at the same time, I was in this place where I could meet new people, including, you know, me, Jews, people, including, you know, me, Jews, in a situation where my whole life, the only Jewish people I had known were either soldiers with guns or settlers with guns. And so I'm in this new place and I'm so curious. And one of the first ideas that comes to my mind is I'm going to figure out the secret community and how they function. Of Jews.

Of Jews, yeah. On U.S. campuses, there's the community center Hillel, basically the Jewish community center. So I didn't go to the one at Stanford because the students would know me. But I went to another Hillel at a university nearby. I create a fake identity. And I basically said, Hi, my name is Sami bin Ami. I'm an Iraqi Jew, and my family, and I just fled Iraq. But while we were there, we could never learn about what Judaism means. And we could never learn about Israel, because we were under this horrible dictatorship called Saddam. And can you please kind of take me in and teach me everything? And, you know, I had this kind of like James Bond type of personality. It's like, I'm going to

understand them from the inside. I'm going to understand how this works from within. And what do you think was motivating you here to do this? Did you want to know the enemy, or at least the enemy as you knew them in the West Bank? Or did you want to better understand Judaism? Or what exactly? this community and figure out like how do they function and why are they doing what they're doing to us and what's the ideology behind what they're doing to us and part of it was just like I've always been like curious about learning new things it's something that I enjoy so here I am coming in trying to like infiltrate and learn about this thing. And I find the community that's similar to the community that I grew up in, you know, full of love and connection and care for one another that took me in completely. And they were like, hey, okay, so you have Shabbat,

you need to come. And like, I'd have dinners with them every week and like learn about the religion and learn about, and just make friends, you know, like eventually you begin to connect to the people. But the crazy thing was that one day they told me the Israeli consulate is doing a training for like Jewish American freshmen on how to defend Israel. And they were like, Sami, do you want to go? And I was like, of course, sign me up. And here, you know, I think jackpot, like now I'm

going to be really deep into this system. And I go. And the first thing they do is they teach you about the Holocaust. And I was in tears. Everyone there was in tears. We watched like this long documentary. And then the second day, you know, after you're in that sense of like sorrow, you're told, but out of the ashes, the new state of Israel arose. And now the state is responsible for our security and it will keep us safe from now until forever so for me of course as like a secret palestinian i was like oh so this is what they're told about you know what israel means and so forth but for everyone else in that group they were like yeah you know this is amazing i want to go and be part of the idf people felt the sense of like pride and security and then the final bit of the training is they say

we are still under threat you should still be afraid because there are evil people everywhere that still want to destroy us and And then they put an image of someone who looks kind of like me, Middle Eastern, wearing the kufiya, you know, that white and black scarf, like Yasser Arafat wore on his head. And they say, even on your campuses, you're going to find students. And these students are going to say things like the settlements are bad and they take people's land. How exactly are you feeling in this moment? Because it sounds like you found yourself in a very complicated position

where you've come to care about these Jewish students, but you're seeing photos in which they are now being presented with someone like you as a threat. As basically like the enemy. And of course, if they feel like people like me are the enemy, and if they feel like they're under threat, especially given the huge trauma that they and their families have been through because of anti-Semitism. Well, of course, this is the reason they act this way. And it kind of created so much more nuance in my

head because growing up, it was just like, these people are bad. I should be aware and afraid of them because look at what they're doing to me without understanding why they were doing it. So suddenly you're seeing why the other side, the Jewish side, feels this same intense sense of need as you do for a state of their own. Yeah. I mean, I see why they believe that this is so necessary. Doesn't mean that it made me feel like it was justified. I just finally understood where it was coming from. It wasn't coming from a black hole. So after college, do you eventually go back home to the West Bank?

Yeah. So what happened was I had decided to go to law school right after college in the U.S. I had decided to go to law school right after college in the U.S. And I come back home just for the summer break. And I'm at home with my family. A plumber and his son come to our house to do some plumbing. And, you know, it's a young kid. But I'm like, why aren't you in school? And he's like, well,

we live in this village and it's very hard to get to my school. And my father said, given that it's so hard for me to get to school and I'm missing too many classes, he's just going to teach me how to be a plumber like him. And so I said, well, I'm sorry, but, you know, do you want me to give you some classes, given that you're going to be working here for the next couple of days? Once you're done, I can give you some classes. But like, what's your favorite subject? And he was like, math. The only books I had were, you know, like three, four years more advanced than his age. But I gave him classes and gave him the books that I had.

He's gone for a few weeks, but then he comes back and he's like, here's your book back. And I answered all of the questions and I go through the book and I'll be like, I'm like amazed, I'm like, you're a genius. Like, do you understand? You know, I called his father. I was like, you don't understand.

Like your son needs to go back to school. He's really smart. But that moment made me reconsider. I realized I had been very lucky to have gone to Stanford and been in Silicon Valley. But I had been away too long from Palestine. And where my passion really was, was I never wanted any other kid like this young kid, Muhammad, to go through life with so much potential and not even know it. And I just wanted to come back and make sure that that didn't happen to anyone. So you decided to stay.

I decided to stay, yep. And what is your life like today in the West Bank? So I live in the same neighborhood that I grew up in. And today, when I wake up and I step outside the house to go for my morning run, I see that the settlement literally doubled in size. And I see soldiers, you know, standing at the entrance of the checkpoint. This time they're standing and they don't seem as worried. They seem like everything's under control. They're watching the construction continue and they just seem bored. And I see protests just like the protests that I participated in as a young child. And people are still protesting, but they're much lesser numbers.

Now as I walk into our city, it's been corrupted by not just Israeli occupation, but Palestinian political leadership who have become a dictatorship and they believe more in continuing to live the cushy life that they live today. And so people feel this sense of, I'd say, hopelessness. You grow up your whole life and when you look around you, everywhere you go, it's worse. You don't even have the sense of community that once existed because it's gotten so bad that there's this sense of scarcity and individualism, that it's everyone for themselves. So, Fadi, I want to ask you about what happened this week. Israel has, as you know, voted to

essentially re-elect Benjamin Netanyahu as their prime minister once again. And as part of his promise in campaigning for re-election, he said he would annex Israeli settlements and make them officially part of Israel. And a lot of people are saying that basically that spells the end of any kind of real two-state solution, and the idea that the Palestinians will get the West Bank and their own state. And I wonder what you think about that. You know, Michael, we've been living this creeping annexation every day. So actually when Netanyahu said they're going to do it,

to me, it was like, thank God someone's finally saying it directly. What do you mean? You're not so troubled by it in the sense that you think it's him just saying what's already happening. Yeah, he's saying what's already happening. And, you know, this concept of gaslighting where people are doing something, but they keep telling you that something else is happening and they kind of make you lose your mind. This is what for years now we've been going through.

you lose your mind. This is what for years now we've been going through. We've known that Israel's plan has been to annex the land, take the settlements, kick us out even if possible. But the fact that Netanyahu can now feel so comfortable to actually come out and say, you know what world, we're just going to tell you the truth. This is our plan. This is what we want to do. Makes us actually say, thank you. We know this is the truth. And hopefully everyone watching the international news will now see the reality. I guess I'm surprised that you see an opportunity in this moment when Israel is saying that it plans to annex West Bank settlements, and they're basically finding a supportive ear in President Trump in the United States. What would you draw any hope from, given that situation? I mean, you're completely right. Where's the hope? It's hard to see any hope.

Where's the hope? It's hard to see any hope. But if you actually look at the United States right now and the political atmosphere there, even with Trump as president, you have American Jews who feel completely disconnected to the large part from the policies that Netanyahu is pushing, that many of them see as fascist and contrary to Jewish beliefs. And you have some of the most watched congresswomen, whether it's Ilhan Omar.

And we mask it with a conversation that's about a two-state solution, when you have policies that clearly prioritize one over the other. And so I am aggravated. Or AOC. What people are starting to see, at least in the occupation of Palestine, is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition. Or Rashida Tlaib.

Everybody there deserves to thrive, deserves to feel safe, deserves respect and the fact that they don't need to look the other way and all of a sudden be a victim of violent attacks on villages and people that are innocent. Are beginning to speak about this conflict in a different way and introducing a whole new type of narrative where they can easily say, we believe that Palestinians should be free. Even Bernie Sanders, you know, you have the majority of Democratic presidential candidates skipping AIPAC when just years ago, they would all go to AIPAC as if it was their high school prom.

Beneath the surface of what the Trump administration represents, there's something new rising. So I see hope in that. It's interesting to me that you see the Democratic Party in the United States as being part of what may change this dynamic, because whether it's Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar, they have come under a tremendous amount of fire from their own party and from the Republican Party. And what they are saying is considered controversial. Does that worry you?

The fact that they continue to speak and, you know, they're still there. It shows you that something is changing. Fetty, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. And I hope we get to speak again soon. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. It's been a pleasure. On Thursday, the New York Post ran a cover story criticizing Representative Ilhan Omar for remarks she had made seeming to minimize the September 11th terror attacks by describing them as, quote, some people did something. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was among the Democrats who came to Omar's defense

on Thursday, saying, quote, they take our words out of context because they're afraid, because we speak truth. We speak truth to power. We'll be right back. On Thursday, seven years after taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, was evicted by the Ecuadorian government, arrested by the British police, and charged by the U.S. with conspiring to hack into a government computer. In a video message, Ecuador's president said that Assange had exhausted his country's patience by, among other things, tampering with embassy security cameras and mistreating embassy guards. Today, I announce that the disrespectful and aggressive behavior of Mr. Julian Assange... The U.S. charge is connected to the 2010 publication by WikiLeaks of tens of thousands of secret government documents

and carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. And the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, was overthrown and taken into custody by his nation's military. Al-Bashir, who ruled modern Sudan longer than any other leader, was ousted after nearly four months of mass protests over corruption in his government and poor economic conditions. During his 30-year reign, al-Bashir became known for brutal military tactics, including a murderous campaign to put down a rebellion in Darfur, which killed tens of thousands of civilians. The Daily is made by

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