Theology in the Raw - Son of an Israeli General Becomes an Activist for Palestinians

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Miko Peled is an Israeli-American, whose father Matti Peled was a famous Israeli general who served in the 1948 and 1967 war with the Israel Defense Force. Miko also served 3 years in the IDF. But he is now an activist advocating for Palestinian liberation and the end to the occupation. Miko is the founder and president at Palestine House of Freedom in Washington, D.C. And is the author of several books including The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. Join the Theology in the Raw community for as little as $5/month to get access to premium content.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology Draw. My guest today is Miko Pallad, who is an Israeli American whose father, Matty Pallad, was a famous general who served in the 1948 and 67 war with the Israel Defense Force. Mikko also served three years with the IDF, but he is now an activist advocating for Palestinian liberation at the end to the occupation. Mikko is a founder and president at Palestine House of Freedom in Washington, DC, and he's the author of several

books, including this one that I recently read called The General's Son Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, which was an absolutely outstanding read. I could not put it down, read it cover to cover. And that's why I'm so excited to talk to Miko on this podcast. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Miko Palen. Miko, thank you so much for being a guest on Theology and Ra. As I said offline, I read your book cover to cover, word for word, and it's one of those books that I just could not put down. word for word, and is one of those books I just could not put down. So I'm so excited to talk to you in person. Why don't we start with your father? Who was Maddie, Maddie Pallette? Well, first, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to chat with you. It's interesting that you start with that in one of the things that was written about my book when it came out, one of the reviews was written by Susan Abelhawa, who was a great Palestinian writer, lives here in the US.

And she wrote about him that he is the man that Palestinians don't know whether to love or to hate. He dedicated his life to the creation of the state of Israel, to the Zionist state, which we know today is an apartheid state. He as a young man still in high school joined the underground. What we know today was a terrorist organization called the POMACH and then served through what, again, the 1948 war,

then remained as a career officer and dedicated himself to establishing the military. He was of that generation that Israelis like to refer to as the generation of 1948 or the silver platter upon which the state was handed to the people, to the Jewish people. There were the officers of 1948 and of course the conquest of what they call the Land of Israel, which is of course Palestine. Then he was one of the commanders, one member of the Israeli High Command that planned and executed the 1967 assault where the state of Israel completed the conquest of Palestine and turned all of Palestine into Israel, basically.

And then he retired a year later. But what he did that was unique was that as soon as the 1967 war ended, and again, I say war, it was really just a brutal assault by Israel against its neighbors. But he stood up, still in uniform, at the very first meeting of the Israeli high command. And he said, well, now that we've conquered all these lands, we've defeated all these armies, we've established ourselves here on this land. It's time to make peace and we should start with the Palestinians by offering them the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a small Palestinian state, make peace with them, and that will lead us to peace with the other Arab countries and we can move on." As he was saying these words,

really the smoke was still, the cannons were still smoking. The Israeli establishment went ahead and destroyed Palestinian towns and villages, built massively for Jews only. We're talking about days after the war ended and forcibly expelled some 500,000 Palestinians just from the area of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In other words, the expansion was not something that happened later on. It happened immediately. So as he was saying these things, gradually his comrades came up to him and said, look, this is not the time to talk about this sort of thing. He retired a year later, had an academic career, and was a political commentator. He dedicated his life to this idea that we know today as the two-state solution, which

is really a Zionist construct that says the conquest of Palestine of 1948 is legitimate. The continued conquest, or what they call the finishing the job part of it, which is where they took the West Bank and East Jerusalem and so forth, is somehow not legitimate, should be compromised, and the Palestinian rights to self-determination should be respected in those areas. He parted ways from the establishment from that point on and for the rest of his life, that was his second legacy as the man who wanted to make peace with the Palestinians. And then individually also because of his connections, because later on he was a member

of the Knesset, the Israeli House of Representatives, he would help Palestinians. People would come to him. He spoke Arabic. He was in touch with Palestinians both within 1948, so the citizens of the State of Israel and in the West Bank. They would come to him to help them. The land is confiscated, their son is being deported, things like that. He would use whatever connections he had to help. He would write regularly commentary about the need to stop the expansion of what was originally the state of Israel. But of course, we know that that didn't happen.

So that was the second part of his life. Today, of course, we know that that opportunity, even if it did exist, is completely gone and the state of Israel established a single apartheid state over all of historic Palestine with exclusive rights for people like myself at the expense of Palestinians. Israel established a single apartheid state over all of historic Palestine with exclusive rights for people like myself at the expense of Palestinians. You've used a lot of phrases that might raise some eyebrows.

Why don't we start with your description of the 67 war? I grew up hearing about the war and as I got older, hearing more about it, the popular understanding of the war is that you had all these Arab countries that were about to just crush Israel and in a valiant act of self-defense, Israel fought back and actually won. The word miracle shows up a lot. Yeah. You know, they named the Six- Day War. The war ended in five days.

Six days appears in the Jewish scriptures a lot in reference to the miracle of creation, because God created the world in six days, right? So the six days in order to get people to see it as a miracle. And even secular Jews, even secular Israelis like to call it a myth, talk about it as a miracle. But what I did was, I went to the Israeli army archives because I heard a different story from my dad who was there saying there was no existential threat. The claim of an existential threat came about in two parts. First, in order to get public opinion to support the war, and then to say, well,

of course it was an existential threat, all these armies were amassed to attack us. In the archives, what I found, these early army archives were the minutes of the meetings, and I quote them verbatim in the book, in the General Sun, where the generals are talking about, and particularly my father, there's an opportunity to attack and destroy the Arab armies at that moment because they are not prepared for war. But they are years from being prepared for war, and therefore this is going to be, this is the time to attack.

So the word threat doesn't come up at all, except that this is how it should be explained to the public. I remember as I was a little boy, for the fear that the Arabs were going to come and kill us all because that was the narrative. But in their internal conversations, they knew there was no challenge there. They knew the Arab countries, the Arab armies were ill-prepared.

There was no threat, but the word opportunity in their discussion, and this is like end of May, early June of 1967. We're talking about really close to the start of this assault. Basically what it was, really close to the start of this assault. So basically what it was, it was really an assault, once again, it wasn't the first one, an assault by this newly created state against its neighboring countries to assert themselves as the meanest

bully in the neighborhood and to gain land and to, the Gemini militarily, to say, we are the toughest, we are the strongest, no one can mess with us. They wanted to finish the job of 1948. In 1948, for internal political decisions, they decided they were going to draw these two areas in historic Palestine that were going to be left out of the Jewish state, the West Bank, which is no historical or geographical sense, it's just Zionists drew it. What we know is the Gaza Strip,

which was created as a concentration camp for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who were kicked out of their homes in southern Palestine. Then these young generals of 1967 did not like the fact that those parts of the country were left out. So this was an opportunity to take those and they did.

I mean, they did it very quickly. Like I said, in five days, all these Arab armies were destroyed. And this is an interesting number too. About 18,000 Arab soldiers were killed during those five days. Six or 700 Israeli soldiers were killed. I mean, this is not a miracle. You know what I mean? There are no miracles in these things.

The Israeli military was prepared for this assault for years. They planned it. They prepared for it. And when the opportunity came, they took it and that was it. And it was done. So that was really what the 1967 war was about. Then of course, to glorify it and justify it, they said, well, of course, all these Arab armies wanted to destroy us, wanted to throw us into the sea.

And that became very, very popular. How, wow. So there's really two very different narratives around the 67 war is how popular, how widely known is the one you're describing, which I mean, you have inside deeply inside information to dad was literally in the behind closed doors, you know, in the planning of the entire thing is what you're describing when people hear this, are they shocked? People that live in Israel, is the more popular narrative widespread? The people who paid attention.

Many of my father's comrades said the same thing. There was no threat. It's ridiculous to think that there was any kind of threat. Ariel Sharon, who was of that group, and several other of the generals said, this whole story that there was some kind of an existential threat is ridiculous. But they still justified the war, the assault, because they believed in its objectives. The narrative that you describe is, of course, very widespread. So unless somebody actually read into it and studied it or has listened to what some of these people said,

or like I did, I actually went to the Israeli Army Archives to read the minutes of the meetings. Wow. Actually, this is the meetings of, and they were available. It wasn't like I had to make a particular effort. I just had to sit there and read them. And so it depends. I mean, people, the widespread narrative is the one,

of course, that you're describing, the actual narrative. And this is true about 1948 as well. Right. Right, being, you know, all these Arab armies trying to destroy the small Jewish state where in fact it was a massive, well-planned campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing throughout all of 1948. It was a horror show executed by the newly formed state of Israel against the Palestinians who were not armed, not prepared, you know, and so forth. So both of these both of these stories are, you know, there are two versions. Which version you choose to believe would have a massive effect on how you think about

the current situation today. I mean, because these are fundamental, not very old, cataclysmic events that shape one's view of what's going on today, or at least in the last few decades. Yeah, I remember reading, I'm on my second reading now of Elon Pappé's, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. I remember reading, I'm on my second reading now of Elon Pappé's, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. And he cites extensively like Ben Gurion's diary. I think he said minutes from, he went to the archives and saw minutes from what was going on behind the scenes. And it seems, I don't, I mean, it seems clear. The interesting thing about that is that Palestinians have been saying this all along from the very beginning, it seems clear. I'll tell you what's interesting about that is that Palestinians have been saying this

all along from the very beginning and nobody listened. But when an Israeli historian with German roots like Ilan Papas says it, or if a guy like me says it, then people are paying attention. When Palestinians are saying it, they must be lying. When white guys, European guys are saying it, well, now maybe it deserves a little bit of attention. That's part of the problem here. But even if you look at what happened, the Israeli attack against Iran, if you take that and you go back 77 years, you can see that the one destabilizing factor in the region,

the one element that has been causing the violence, the assaults, the ethnic cleansing, the genocide of the Palestinian people is all the same thing. The problem has always been the destabilizing factor has always been the apartheid state or what they call the State of Israel. For reasons maybe beyond understanding, maybe some people do understand, the world is invested in the obstacle to peace and stability. In other words, peace and stability in the region is possible, but it's not possible

when you have a genocidal apartheid regime that is causing all this violence and causing all this chaos. I mean, the attacks against Iran could not be justified by any means, by any excuse, for anything, you know? But that's what the state of Israel is all about. It's a kind of a Sparta. That's what they've been doing from the very beginning. I mean, several, couple years into the establishment

of the state of Israel, they were already assaulting their neighbors irregularly, constantly, almost year after year after year. And that has been the cause of the violence and the reason there hasn't been peace in the region for all these decades. I might come back to Iran, because that's obviously fresh

in everybody's mind right now. But I want to ask you about another term you've been using, an apartheid state. I've seen people get extremely furious, like lose their minds when people describe Israel as an apartheid state. You're from there, you've lived there, you're Israeli. How can you, like, is it really an apartheid state? Like, what is that? Oh, there's two ways to answer. First, apartheid is a well-defined crime. It's not like, you

know, it's not a question of opinion. The crime of apartheid is well-defined in international law. If you go and you look up the crime of apartheid, look at the definition of the crime of apartheid. Amnesty International came out with a report about three years ago, which outlines why it's an apartheid state. It's a very, very thorough report that took him several years to put together. It demonstrates clearly. If you look at the definition of the crime and you look at the reality on the ground, there you have the answer.

There's no, it's not a question of an opinion. There's a definition and then there's the reality. Now, I grew up in Jerusalem. I never have a Palestinians. We live in entirely different neighborhoods. Our neighborhoods are well-lit, broad streets, beautiful schools, playgrounds, sidewalks, plenty of water as much as we need, electricity. I never thought twice about using water or electricity or anything like that. Even within Jerusalem, which is a single city, the Palestinian neighborhoods is a completely different reality. There are no sidewalks. There's no access to water, there's no access to the resources that we had. We go to separate schools, we speak separate languages. The same thing goes as you drive

up and down the country. You see the Palestinian towns, and I'm not even talking about the West Bank, I'm talking about the Palestinian towns- Oh, in Israel. You're saying- With what's known as 1948, or some people call it whatever. Is it a proper? You look at the difference, you look at these towns, there's no development. There's again, water, resources, sidewalks, basic things don't exist. And even now, again, it's relevant now because they have no bomb shelters.

While all around them on land that used to belong to them are thriving beautiful new Israeli settlements, Israeli towns and cities that the Palestinians have no access to. And so, again, going back to the Zirandas, because it's so relevant, these rockets are falling, these missiles are falling, Israelis are running to shelters, the Palestinians who live across the street, and again, most of these beautiful Israeli towns were built on their land, have no shelters, have no access to these shelters. They're completely different.

It's so obvious. Maybe the one thing that maybe hits home more than anything else is water. When you drive through the country, and you've probably seen this, the Israeli settlements, Israeli towns are beautiful and green and wide roads and everything. The Palestinians look backward and dusty and just underdeveloped. What I grew up learning and what I'm sure you've heard and people hear all the time is, well,

the Jews came and they developed the land and the Arabs, look at them, they're so backwards because they're Arabs, right? That's exactly what I, that's exactly what I, the impression I got when I lived there in 1999 is whenever we go to an Arab city, and again, I can't, I can't remember exact quotes, but I can tell you vividly thinking, oh yeah, see, they're kind of dirty, they don't care about their stuff. Look at the Jews, they're well-kept and they value their property and everything. But that dirty city, like, yeah, those people, hmm, like not sure about.

What isn't told people is the Palestinians, you know, all the water is controlled by the Israeli agency called Mecorot. The Palestinians throughout the entire country, who make up the majority of the population, by the way, are allocated 3% of the water. 3% of the water to the majority of the population. So if you think about it, and sometimes the towns are across the street from each other, quite literally. Sometimes it's just two different neighborhoods, not even two different towns. So one side gets all the water they need and more. And the other side gets maybe seven, eight, 10 hours of running water per week. So think about what are you gonna use the water for?

You have to cook, you have to drink, you have to wash, you know what I mean? If you have some land, you need to water your crops and so on. That in itself, that is probably the most damning thing. Now, that's why you see the differences. If Palestinians were at access to the same resources, water, for example, then it would look very, very different. But that's not something that's told.

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That's timeline.com forward slash theology gummies. Your sales will thank you. So you, you grew up in a military household, obviously. And, and, uh, you also served in the IDF. Is that correct? Yeah, I, sir, I did my three years mandatory service. Yes. What was, what was that like? I, you know, we're told the IDF is the most moral army in the, in the world. Is there some, is there some truth to that? Well, no, there isn't. Of course, there is. There's no such thing as a moral army and certainly not the IDF. The IDF was built on the brutality of the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the horrific massacres, countless, countless massacres

of Palestinians that were conducted by what were at first militia, then in 1948 became the official army, became the IDF. So that was the founding moment of the IDF. And then they committed massacres throughout all the years. Now, when I went in to serve, of course, I believed that it was a moral army. I believed that we had to have an army and all that kind of stuff. I went in, it was the end of 1980. I described this in my book. I was never in combat or anything like that, but we would have to go and patrol Palestinian towns and that sort of thing.

And I would think, I remember I mentioned this in the book, we were young soldiers and we're supposed to patrol a Palestinian city and the commander is telling us that we should go about march up and down the streets and if anybody so much as looked at us, we should break every bone in their body. And they gave us batons and handcuffs. I'm thinking, we're an infantry unit, why are we carrying batons and handcuffs? If we walk through a city dressed like fully armed soldiers,

everybody's going to look at us because how do you not look at it? It's a weird sight, so what are we supposed to exactly do? Then later on, the last year was the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which made it very, very clear that which was first supposed to be just a short incursion, 40 kilometers. But we knew right away, while the Israeli government were saying it's a 40 kilometer incursion, they were already outskirts of Beirut and there was the branch of Tila and there were massacres. And-kilometer incursion. They were already outskirts of Beirut, and there was Sabran Shatila, and there were massacres. The whole idea of a moral army, the whole idea was completely obliterated. Even my father at the time, because there were already protests against the war, stood up and told soldiers to refuse to enter Lebanon and serve

in Lebanon and to refuse to serve in the West Bank because of that. So that was the atmosphere. From that point on, I knew that this whole thing was an absolute lie. You tell a story in your book about some other IDF members who would target Palestinian fishing boats fishing boats with, with no kind of independent threat. Can you talk about that? I just, I read that over and over and over and just thought that this, this, this cannot be true. I'm like, Nico, you have to

be making that like this. I cannot believe that this actually happened because it was just, my heart was just, just saying. But then you heard it from several other independent people in the military. Can you describe what them? Yeah. Yeah. The story you're talking about, there was a guy who was an officer in the Israeli Naval Commando, which are considered like, you know, the most elite and so on. And we were just sitting around and he was describing patrolling along the coast of Gaza.

Then they would come across a fishing boat. They would ask the fishermen to jump in the water, they blow up the boat, and then they'd watch them and tell them to count to a 100 and then again until they all drowned. And he was telling the story very casually. I mean, he wasn't telling it from a place of guilt or shame or shock. He was just telling it like, you know, ha ha ha, that's what we do to these Arabs. And we know, of course, now, you know, almost two years into the genocide in Gaza, we know that that's, I mean, but that was,

you know, and there's a really well-known, wonderful reporter, Charles Glass, who after I published that, wrote to me and he said he remembers seeing that as well in Lebanon. He remembers the Israeli commandos doing that to the Lebanese fishermen as well, that sort of thing. But this, I think it's important to understand where this comes from. It comes from a deeply rooted ideology,

which is called Zionism, which is supremacist ideology. It is a racist, violent, supremacist ideology. It was hard for me to say words like that in the beginning, because Zionism to me was something we discussed, and talked about, and admired my entire life. I mean, every night at the dinner table, Zionism to me was something we discussed and talked about and admired my entire life. Every night at the dinner table, we talked about Zionism and the state and contributing

to the state and how Zionism is important for the Jewish people. I didn't learn about Zionism from a textbook. This was every single day. Family gatherings, I had a great uncle who was a president and another uncle who was a this. The extended family gatherings were like the who's who of the founding fathers. But then meeting Palestinians and becoming engaged and understanding, really stepping out of this very safe and clean sphere sphere of the oppressor, of the supremacist reality into where Palestinians actually live,

realizing that there is a reality that we are not told. Obviously, the Palestinians are dangerous, that they're dirty, that they're liars, that they want to kill us all. And then I remember driving, and I'd scrubbed that in the book too, driving into Palestinian towns like Nazareth or Umar Fahim, which are within, you know, these are Israeli citizens. I was terrified. And then nobody wanted to kill me. And people were very kind. And if I asked for directions, they went out of their way to show me. And if we went to a restaurant, everything was fine. And I met people there. And then the first trip I took by myself into a town in the West Bank, I was terrified. I was alone in a car with an Israeli license plate. I mean, anybody could tell I was an Israeli.

There's no way I was gonna come out alive. And then I get there and that's not the experience at all. So the fear and the fear against the other, the sense of supremacy against the other is nothing new. I mean, the Zionists didn't invent it. But it's very powerful and we see it expressed every single day or the last almost eight decades in Palestine.

And that's why Palestinians are being killed. And that's why I think by extension, the Western world doesn't care because when white people kill brown people, people usually don't care. The world doesn't care because when white people kill brown people, people usually don't care. The world doesn't really pay attention. You do see a strong racist thread woven throughout this whole thing. Absolutely, without any question. You couldn't do this.

This couldn't happen without racism. This could not happen without racism. There's no way a group of settlers can come into a country that belongs to somebody else and commit these horrendous crimes for almost a hundred years unless there was deeply deeply seeded racism. Deeply deeply seeded racism. Did you have you experienced like explicit racist comments from fellow Israelis growing up there? I mean, is that, is it explicit or is it just kind of lying beneath the surface and implicit?

Oh, no. It was always explicit. Today it's like, today it's official policy, but whereas before in the official kind of state realm, it was a little more subdued. But in discourse among friends and among people, it's explicit's completely explicit. Arabs are dirty. There's a term Arab labor, which is really interesting. Arab labor is considered poor, crappy labor. The most beautiful homes in Palestine, many of whom are now taken by Israelis and Israelis live in them, the most beautiful homes are called Arab homes or Palestinian homes, particularly in West Jerusalem. The most beautiful homes were built by Palestinians. But still there's this, oh yeah, the racism is in everything. It's in the school books, it's in the discourse, it's in everything.

Do you see it on the other side? Because I'm often told that if you grow up in Gaza or the West Bank, you're being trained from an early age to be anti-Semitic, to have an intrinsic hatred towards Jewish people. Do you see it on both sides? I mean, you could probably only speak primarily to your experience as an Israeli. No, no. Both, because I've read about it and I've researched it and I know about it. So Israel has done everything it possibly could to make Palestinians hate

Israelis, not Jews. Israelis, the occupiers. And every kid, any kid, four-year-old to old men, and women, 94 years old, will have the same story, have the same kind of mantra that they repeat over and over again. We always lived in peace with Jews. We had good relations with Jews. Our neighbors were Jews. We have no problem with Jews, which is historically true. But how could we not hate the Israelis? How can we not hate this occupation? How could we not hate the state of Israel? Look what they did to us. And even when we try to live with them in peace, look what happens. It doesn't work. So there's two different things. It has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. It has to do with hatred of the occupier, hatred of the oppressor, which is completely natural. Now as to the school books, so Israeli school, and I have a sister who is an educator and

she wrote a book about the Israeli textbooks, Israeli school books, and how they are systemically, it's an academic piece, I mean she's an academic, and how they are systemically, it's an academic piece, I mean she's academic, and now they are systemically racist. But there's also work that she did with others looking at the Palestinian textbooks. Now, the Palestinian textbooks in the West Bank and Gaza and so on, they had to get approval by the Israeli authorities, by the Europeans, by a whole bunch of different groups before they are presented, before Palestinians were allowed to use them. And in the city of Jerusalem schools, there's even another layer of censorship. So if you open a textbook, like a school book, sometimes you'll see it all blackened because

there are certain terms, certain narratives, certain poems that they're not allowed to learn. So while these Israeli textbooks don't go through any kind of scrutiny, the Palestinian textbooks go through a great deal of scrutiny. But it's not about the textbooks. I mean, if you lived under these conditions, you would hate the other side. I mean, who wouldn't? There are people today, Jews today, who still won't go to Germany. There are Americans who hate, you know, who, I mean, it's kind of the way it is.

I mean, how do you not hate them? It's not about anti-Semitism, because historically, Jews lived in Palestine, lived in Iraq, lived in other countries very, very well, and, you know, for millennia. You know, we actually left out a key part of your story. Your niece who was killed by a suicide bomber. That was two years before I moved to Israel for a short period of time. I remember hearing about a bombing on Benyahuda Street and I think that might have been your niece because I remember going to Benyahuda Street and people I think that might've been your niece, because I remember going

to Ben Yehuda street and people were a little skittish. Like, I don't know, this is where that bombing was. That might've been the same one. But can you tell us? Yeah. So September the 4th, 1997, and three Palestinians blew themselves up and killed a bunch of Israelis and wounded many. And my niece who was 13 years old was killed. And so I was already living here in the US, but it was huge. It was very big news because the granddaughter, my father had already passed away, but she's the granddaughter, first of all, of a famous general, but also of a man who always called for peace of the Palestinians.

And now look what happened. So, you know, I flew in immediately. My funeral was a couple of days later, and it was on the front pages of all the newspapers. It was, you know, my sister's apartment was packed with journalists from all over the world to come to cover this thing. And she was asked, you know, that's the question that people would ask about revenge, retaliation, and so on.

And the first thing that my sister said was no real mother would want to see this happen to any other mother. Don't talk to me about killing more people when a child was killed. That's not the response. And number two, she said, we hold the Israeli government responsible for this because when you oppress people, then when you kill people, then when you kill their children, and when you arrest their parents, and when you treat Palestinians the way we've been treating Palestinians, this is what happens. This happens. We may like it, we may not like it, we may condemn

it, we may not condemn it, but this is a reality that was created by us, by Israel. And it was interesting because Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister at the time as well. That was his first term as prime minister. And they were, used to be friends. They went to school together. So they knew each other well. We knew him and his family very well.

And he asked to come and pay condolences. And he was told by my sister not to come. We didn't want to see him there. That to me was the drive to start, like the subtitle of the book, A Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, because what we don't do enough is stop and let the information sink in. We move from one tragedy to another. The tragedy here,

three young men took their own lives and killed a whole bunch of other people. Wait a minute, what kind of reality was created in order for something like this so terrible to happen? Of course, this happened so many more deaths and so many more tragedies took place since then, but if we just take one and take a minute, take a pause and think about it. When I came back to the US, I was living in the US already at the time, I began to explore the possibility of meeting Palestinians. I'd never met Palestinians. Like I said, I grew up in Jerusalem, but you see Palestinians in the frame. They're going out of your frame, but you never meet Palestinians. And I began to engage in different meetings and dialogues and so

forth. And eventually that began, that was my, that was the kind of the first steps into my, into my journey. That was when you're in San Diego, right? You talk about this in a book, when you went to a joint Israeli Palestinian kind of gathering in San Diego. Israeli-Palestinian kind of gathering in San Diego. You had to move to San Diego to meet Palestinians. I've heard this from other Israelis that you can live for decades in the land and never really have a conversation with the Palestinian. I just don't understand how that's possible. Well, talk about apartheid. That's apartheid. The segregation, even though the country is small, as you know, the segregation is extremely effective. You know, we don't go- kids don't have any activities together.

They never go to schools together. They have live in completely different environments. Our cities are beautiful and well lit and, you know, modern. There's our, like you said earlier, the segregation is absolute. When you first started to rethink maybe your Zionist background, maybe not background, but say upbringing, can you take us back to that moment in your life? Like your emotions, your thinking, like were you like, was it a slow kind of rethinking of your position and was there some resistance? What were your own kind of pushbacks to what were you hearing maybe for the first time from Palestinians like in that gathering in San Diego?

So I'll give you two, I'll describe it in two ways. It's like taking a saw and cutting off your own head out, anesthesia. Golly. It's like taking a saw and cutting off your own head out, anesthesia. Yeah, really. Because it's not just that I was an Israeli. I came from this family where we were proud of who we were and every other person was an important person and they could treat us. So that's the first sensation. The second one was, and I have to attribute this to the generosity of the Palestinians

who are now still my good friends all these years later, the Palestinian community who allowed me to go through this very painful process. It's kind of like a baby letting go of something and then taking the first few steps before they hold on to the next thing. You've got to be very patient. And they were, the patience and the generosity and how welcoming they were is what allowed me to go through that process. Nobody ever accused me.

There was never any finger pointing. Nobody ever made me feel uncomfortable or bad about my background, my Zionist roots and so on. And it's that generosity and welcoming of the Palestinians. It's not just the Palestinian friends of mine in San Diego. I experienced it in Palestine itself, in my countless countless visits and encounters and participating in protests and everything. That's what allowed me to take those baby steps where I had to let go of something that I knew or I thought I knew and not just go but then reject it and find something else because

wait a minute, so who am I? My identity is suddenly in limbo, right? I mean, I've got to figure out who I am, what I believe in, what does all this mean, you know, that kind of thing. And how do I do to, it's not about redemption so much, but what do I do to fix all these terrible things that happen? What can I do to remedy this? How do I participate? Then I learned after my book came out, I learned that because of my background, I have a voice.

I began speaking and writing because of my background, people listened and there was an audience and so I used my voice and my writing to do that. Have you so yeah you you you're very vocal about your your perspective um which could be dangerous right I mean I I've how has your perspective been received in a time when if you say anything negative about Israel, you're accused of being a Hamas supporter or an anti-Semite or in your case, I guess, a self-hating Jew? How has your activism gone over the last couple decades?

Well, I mean, maybe I lost some friends. There'll be some serious tensions within my family, but I've gained more friends than I've lost, that's for sure. The community, the Palestine solidarity community around the world are some of the most gracious, wonderful people. I have friends, brothers and sisters in Palestine, Palestinians throughout all of Palestine, Palestinians throughout all of Palestine, who I know and love and respect, and I would follow them into fire. We work together very closely. In fact, we can talk about this organization that I'm running right now here in Washington, DC. I mean, that would not be possible without their voice, without their support. And so, yes, people, it doesn't bother me, to be quite honest.

It really doesn't bother me when people say these things. If someone wants to engage in a serious conversation, then of course I'm happy to do that. If somebody wants to say that I'm a self-hating this, a self-hating that, and you know what that means. I mean, I don't hate myself. Jews, I've got many friends and activist friends who are Jews or Israelis.

I mean, Ilan Pappé, to name one. So I mean, it's ridiculous when that's... But it's true that the vitriol is insane. I mean, the hatred and the desire to silence the voices of reason, the voices, which I believe are the voices of reason, is so intense. And it's getting worse and worse and worse. There's no question. Now everything is anti-Semitic. Saying free Palestine is anti-Semitic. Saying justice is anti-Semitic. Saying river to the seas is anti-Semitic. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Anti-Semitism used to mean racism directed at Jewish people, but it's not racism of a higher order. It's the same. It's racism is bad against everybody. It's not like being a racist against Jews is worse than being racist in general. Most people are racist across the board. But now adding this thing where if you reject Zionism in the state of Israel, and like I said earlier, Zionism is an inherently racist supremacist ideology that established a genocidal apartheid state. And I know these words will drive people crazy, but I don't say these words lightly.

If you look at the definition of these crimes and you compare them to what is happening, you'll see that it fits. So to say that criticizing a racist ideology like Zionism is somehow anti-Semitic. I mean, people have to, well, they lost their minds. I mean, it makes absolutely no sense. I mean, it makes absolutely no freaking sense. Racism is racism. We should reject all forms of racism. They are all equally, you know, should be rejected.

There should be zero tolerance to all forms of racism, period. But they've created this nonsense where, you know, you could be accused of racism for forms of racism, period. But they've created this nonsense where you could be accused of racism or anti-Semitism for interviewing me. It's absurd. It's absolutely absurd. It really is the dumbest thing in the world. It's like if I criticize the American government, which I do, does that make me have a hatred towards all Americans? It just doesn't make any sense. We criticize governments all over the place.

We should. I think we should absolutely be critical of governments when there's evidence to be critical. But that has nothing intrinsic to do with the ethnic makeup of the certain individuals at the top of the government or those who are supporting a certain ideology that is problematic. What are some of the common critiques who are kind of supporting a certain ideology that is problematic. What are some of the common critiques you get when you're speaking?

Do people think like, oh, you're just believing Hamas propaganda or what about this? What are some of the common things that come up over and over and over that you find yourself having to respond to? Would you share your perspective? Yeah. The question is, yeah, what about Hamas? Or what about they lost the wars and so too bad? I don't know. Usually the questions that are covered on the side are so ridiculous.

I mean, what about Hamas? I mean, I don't know what to say about that. It's one organization of many that Palestinians voted for. It's a resistance organization that is resisting, and it was only created because of the occupation of the Palestinian people and the killing and the oppression of the Palestinian people. If that reality didn't exist, there would be no Hamas. Why do resistance organizations come up in resistance to oppression, in resistance to the killing of the people?

So if we don't like Hamas and we don't like the resistance and we don't like armed resistance and we don't like this, that, and the other, let's solve the problem. Let's end the occupation. Let's create a real democracy with equal rights on all of historic Palestine. Let's allow the refugees to go back to their homes and then there will be no problem. You know, the problem, the problem is not the response to the problem, not the response is the problem. The problem is that there exists a, an inherently racist genocide regime that has taken over Palestine.

That is the problem. And that's why you have resistance. That's why you have Hamas and this, that, and all these other organizations. Do you, so you use, okay, so one more word, genocide. Do you, yeah, do you believe that what is going on now is a genocide? Obviously you do, you said the word. How- It's not a question of belief.

I mean, genocide was a lot, was a crime that was defined after World War II by Raphael Lemkin and it was accepted, right? 1949, I believe. It was accepted as a crime that was defined after World War II by Raphael Lemkin, and it was accepted, right? 1949, I believe. It was accepted as a crime. The definition of the crime of genocide is very clear. All you have to do is you take that definition and you compare it to what is taking place in Palestine over the last 77 years, and particularly in Gaza over the last almost three years, and you see for yourself. In fact, what's happening in Gaza now exceeds, I don't think the people, the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity.

These were crimes that were defined after World War II, after the Holocaust when the world felt that we needed to define these crimes, that we needed to hold governments accountable for crimes that were so horrific. And so I don't think they envisioned anything as horrifying as what is taking place in Gaza now. The starvation, the people dying of dehydration, children dying of simple infections because there's no soap. Soap is not allowed to enter.

While a minute away by car out of this death camp that is called the Gaza Strip, resources are abundant. Palestine is a rich country. There's water, there's food, there's medicine, there's hospitals. But Palestinians in this concentration camp are prohibited from accessing these resources. So people talk about, yeah, well, they should allow more trucks. They're not allowing trucks. They don't need trucks. After World War II, Jews in concentration camps, Jews and others in concentration camps, didn't need aid. I mean, they needed aid too, but they need to be liberated, right? Palestinians need to be liberated. The Gaza concentration camp has to be liberated so that the people can have access to the rest of the country, to the abundance that exists there. But there's no question that if you

look at the definition of the crime of genocide, and again, these are not words that should be thrown without thinking, you should read Raphael Lemkin, read the crime, their own statute, read the definition of the crime, see what is happening there. And there's no question that there's a genocide going on. And there's no question that there's intent. Because for the cryogenocide to stick, then you have to show intent, which is very tricky. Well, you bomb a building once and you kill a few citizens. OK, maybe there's no intent.

You do it over and over and over and over and over for years. I think intent is pretty clear. Plus, the rhetoric. If you listen to the, you know, I read the Hebrew news, I listen to the TV shows, I listen to the interviews with politicians and people in the streets and the talking heads and so on. The intent for genocide is blatantly clear.

They're not even trying to hide it. And so there's no question that there's a genocide. There's no question that there's an intent for genocide. I remember reading the South Africa report that was submitted, the 90 page report. I want to say January, 2024. It was a few months after October 7th. And I was really nervous. I mean, people throw around genocide. I'm like, I don't know. Like it's bad. It's horrible. It's probably crimes against humanity. War crimes is a genocide though. But after reading that report and it had, it was exactly what you said. Um, extensive, I mean, I want to say 10 pages of explicit documentation of either genocidal type statements from Israeli leaders or flat out just that's a genocide statement, you know.

So you have the intent well documented and then you have the results, obviously well documented. I think what people get hung up on is they think genocide means that a nation or government or military will use as much power as possible to kill as many people as possible. So they might say, well, they haven't just, sure, even if we say the death polls, you know, 80,000, that's bad, but there's 2 million people there is, is Israel capable of killing all of them? Probably they could just drive them. They have nuclear weapons, right? I mean, um, they haven't used as much, they haven't killed as many people as they possibly could. Therefore it's not a genocide.

That's what I think a lot of people think, but that is not the definition of genocide. It's not kill as many people as quickly as you can with as much power as you can. In fact, I think they're very strategic. If they go too far, farther than they already have, then you have a lot more international pressure. But they've... The estimates, you say something like 80,000, the numbers that are counted are usually the ones that are shot.

People are dying of dehydration. Children are dying of dehydration. Children are dying. And there's testimonies by, you know, doctors against genocide and other groups that have gone there. I've met so many of them. What do they say? The doctors, what kind of testimonies are coming out from the doctors that

are in Gaza? Well, you know, first of all, they have no equipment. They're not allowed to bring any equipment with them. They're not even allowed to bring in hand soap. Now, imagine a doctor conducting surgery without hand soap. That's going to create an infection. So you can treat the wound. The patient is going to die of infection, and that happens all the time. Children are dying of simple infections. There's a wonderful nurse, Lana, who speaks, she's all over the place. She describes her first time going in.

So she's treating a patient. And then after, before the patient leave, before the discharge, she says, you go home, drink plenty of water, clean the wound, change the band-aids. And then as she's saying this, she's realizing there is no home. There is no water. There is no soap. There is no band-aids. There's nothing. This patient that she just treated is probably going to die either of dehydration or infection because there's no way to treat the infection. That's what happens.

We're talking about tens of thousands of people who are dying every single day just from that, just from simple infections. What makes it worse again is that five minutes away on the other side of this concentration camp, on the other side of the fence, you have everything. I mean, there's an abundance. Open the fence, let people get, but it's cheaper to let people die of infection. It's cheaper to let people die of dehydration, of starvation, than just shoot them.

So it is strategic. It's horrifyingly cruel and it's strategic. Yeah, they're bombing and killing and bombing and killing non-stop. Now they're killing people in these food collection areas, like again, like fish in a barrel, 100, 150 a day. But it is very, very strategic. It is very well calculated. And this doesn't count people that are being killed in the West Bank. Palestinians are being killed inside 1948.

I mean, the death toll of Palestinians per day is beyond belief. Now, you multiply that by all these years, and it's insane. There's no question that there's a genocide going on. It's horrifying. And like I said, I don't know that the people who define the crime of genocide imagined a cruelty so horrific, even though this was, they were, they wrote this based on the experience of the Holocaust. What do you think is going to happen? Where, where does this end? I mean, again, that the international pressure continues to mount.

I mean, if you just go outside of America, um, and maybe a couple, you know, uh, the UK to some extent, although it's much more mixed there, maybe Germany. I mean, the international community is horrified at what's going on. Where do you think, I mean, in six months, year, two years, at some point there has to be some kind of end, I guess, to the situation in Gaza in particular, not all the stuff going on in the land as a whole, but do you think that there will be trials of war crimes? And do you think Netanyahu will be held accountable for his actions? What are your thoughts? I don't think the world is horrified enough because there's no actions, we don't see sanctions. Until there's severe sanctions, an arms embargo, until Israel is boycotted and Israeli diplomatic missions

are closed down and the ambassadors are sent home, until the missions in Tel Aviv are closed down and people in all countries call their ambassador in, until that happens, nothing's going to change. And nothing is going to change as long as the world is invested in the problem, which is the apartheid state, the state of Israel. As long as people say, I believe in Israel's right to exist, then they're saying, I am allowing this to continue, this horrific genocide, this cruelty, and it's not going to stop.

There is no other Israel. There is no other option. What we stand for here at Palestine House of Freedom, and we're an educational nonprofit, but the message that we're educating for is that the peace and stability and democracy and human rights that we're seeking is glaring at us. It's looking right at us, but it's beyond the apartheid state. The apartheid state has to be dismantled. There have to be severe sanctions. Israel has to be boycotted.

They have to be kicked out of the Olympics and FIFA. And the same thing that was done with apartheid South Africa back in the day. That's what brings it down. And they have to be brought to their knees. And the apartheid state has to be replaced with a free democratic Palestine on all of the historic Palestine with equal rights.

There is no magic trick. The world has to stand up and do this. And until we as constituents demand of our governments to do this, it's not going to happen. It doesn't come top down, it comes bottom up. And we're not there yet. We're not even close to being there yet. Even though there's millions in the streets and people are protesting and writing against it and calling it genocide. We're nowhere near the end.

And as long as we don't stand up, again, I'll say this again, as constituents, not only as constituents, but also as consumers of media, of corporate mainstream media, unless we demand, honestly from the media, unless we demand that our governments act and impose immediate the most severe sanctions, the most severe boycott, an arms embargo, a no-fly zone over Gaza, that is the only thing that's going to bring an end to this. And then a peaceful transition from apartheid to a real democracy with equal rights. They're releasing all the Palestinian prisoners. Most of 90% of Palestinian prisoners are political prisoners. This is the elite of the elite of Palestinian society. These are

the leaders. These are the people who can and will lead this future democracy with equal rights. That's the only thing that's gonna do it. There is no magic trick. There is no other solution. It's either the apartheid state is allowed to continue until it implodes somehow because the apartheid state itself is in a state of chaos, or we fight and struggle with the Palestinian people for them to gain the rights that they deserve and guarantee the safety and security of Palestinians. There's no guarantee to the safety and security of Palestinians. There's no guarantee to the safety and security of Palestinians. The Palestinian can be shot, killed, starved, die of dehydration, and there are no consequences. There's no recourse.

There's nowhere for Palestinians to go. There's nobody that listens to Palestinians and will come and protect them. They have no protection. There's no law. There's no country. There's no entity that protects them. Until such time, like I said earlier, the apartheid state collapses and replaced by a real democracy with equal rights, none of this is going to happen.

Can you explain, you're in DC, why is there such widespread support of the state of Israel among the American elite? I mean, I think all but maybe one Republican congressman is unconditionally in support of Israel. You have some on the Democratic side that are more critical. I think Thomas Massie is the only Republican that has been outspoken. But why is there such control? Why was there such seemingly control over the American elite in this? Well, there's several.

I think, first of all, the American education system is the Zionist education system. So you ask anybody on the street about Palestine, most of the time, they'll confuse it with Pakistan. They've never heard of Palestine. And if they have, they heard something casual on the news, maybe about terrorism or war or something like that. You don't learn about Palestine in school.

You learn about Israel in school. You learn about the Bible stories in school as though they're history. You learn about the Holocaust in school. You learn about the state of Israel in school. My kids went through public school. There's no Palestine. They never hear of Palestine. Israelis are our ally.

They know Israelis are the descendants of the old Hebrews and all this. Of course, all that is questionable historically, but that's what Americans learn. Now, on top of that, so anyway, Americans are already pro-Israel just from that. Now, on top of that, you look at culture, look at media, you look at any aspects of American life. Israel is present very, very heavily, very, very heavily.

Philanthropy, some of the most generous donors for schools. I remember being in San Diego, the Jacobs family saved the San Diego Symphony. These are all wonderful, generous people. They're all Zionists. So if they support Zionism in Israel and they're so generous, who's going to tell them that Israel is an apartheid state? Now people are saying, wait a minute, what's going on here? And so you've got that as a foundation. Now on top of that, you've got a very, very powerful Israeli lobbies, Zionist lobbies, stretched throughout the entire country. Every state has a,

whatever, Virginia- Israel, something, something committee. The Texas Israel, something, something committee. And they look at textbooks. They look at, you know, I mean social studies textbooks. I mean, they really review them. And they provide curricula for teachers who teach social studies that teach the right thing. I mean, they're everywhere. And then you've got AIPAC here in Washington DC, and AIPAC's not the only one. There's a whole host of Zionist lobbies that practically live here on Capitol Hill. They should be paying rent. They're there so much.

They're like the furniture. And they make sure that everything is done by their book, and they're very compelling. And then they also have the power to affect elections. We've seen that. We've seen people who ran for office who did not follow the Zionist line and lost their jobs. So that's why they're so powerful. I mean, they've been doing a very good job for over a hundred years. My grandfather was part of this core of diplomats who traveled around the world and spread the word of Zionism back in the day. And then they were in New York before the state of Israel as part of the delegation

to the UN and so on. These people have invested heavily in planning and strategizing and raising money to get their point across, and they're very successful. That's why we have this massive support. I read John Mersheimer's book, The Israel Lobby, a while back. It was one of the most disturbing books I've read in the last five years, I think. Extremely well documented, and he got, of course,

massively attacked for writing it. But one more question, Miko, and then I'll let you go. I thank you for the generosity of your time. You're not a religious person, right? Or at least you're not like a Christian. I'm not a religious person. I would love to know your outsider's perspective on the massive evangelical Christian support of Zionism.

How do you feel about that? RG It's terrible. I think it's an aberration of Christianity. It's an aberration of faith. I don't understand it. I can't understand it. When somebody can say to me that what is happening in Gaza is somehow there's a God out there that thinks it's okay, that supporting apartheid and racism is somehow okay, that God promised people the land and that's a reason for creating an apartheid state. None of it makes sense to me. And I don't even know how it makes sense to people of faith.

I know people of faith, of deep faith, of all faiths, Jews and Christians and Muslims and others who are deeply, deeply religious people who find this abhorrent, who find this just completely inexplicable and inexcusable that to use faith in order to allow this horror to continue. But I also say it's not the first time that faith was used for people to do terrible things. So I can't understand it, I can't explain it. I think it's based largely on a lot of lies. I think a lot of the claim is made by people like that, including Zionists. In other words, Christian and Jewish Zionists are lies, you know, and I can't understand it one bit. And I wouldn't even know how to argue with it. If somebody believes that this is okay because

God somehow sanctions it, I wouldn't even know what to say. If you believe there's a God that sanctions this, I don't know know what to say. If you believe there's a God that sanctions this, I don't know how to argue with you. It was the air I breathe for most of my life. I would say, after I got theologically educated, I began to see like, oh, theologically, this doesn't really work. You can't draw a straight line from God's promises to Abraham to even like Israel in the first century. Like it just theologically doesn't work. But in my evangelical Zionist kind of broadly speaking upbringing, I think there's kind of more two, I would say three forms. One, there's a sophisticated theological argument that I think

is just wrong, but at least it's like they're wrestling with it theologically. Then there's the kind of more passive, like people just reading, I see Israel in the Bible, it's God's people. They look at the map, there's Israel there. And they just kind of like make a connection without thinking deeply about it. And then you have Christians who might even, might not even be theological. It's almost like more of a political Zionism. They may not even care or argue theologically. They're like, maybe it's the same Israel, maybe it's not. I don't know. All I know is this is our one democratic ally in the Middle East, and if we don't support Israel, then the entire world of terrorism is going to come rushing

after America, all these narratives that are not, I mean, just not true. But yeah, so I think there's, I think there's three forms of it. Either way, it's, it is compelling. It's very compelling. And if you speak out against it, you get a lot of backlash. So which we're going to receive on this episode. Israelis enjoy it. Of course, they enjoy the better. the benefit, but they make fun of them. Yeah, they do? Like a bunch of fools. Yeah, of course. I mean, they come and they volunteer and they work on military bases and they send all this money, but Israelis think these guys are fools. And you know, when Christians go to the Holy Land, I mean, they get spat on, they get treated terribly.

Is it holy places? I mean, never mind Palestinian Christians, what's happening to the Palestinian Christians. But many evangelicals believe that the Palestinian Christians are not real Christians or something, so they try to evangelize and proselytize them. But all these, the contempt with Zionist street others, Muslims and Christians, is, I mean, if you speak the language and you hear the conversations internally, you know, it's, it's, they don't even respect this, this, this support. They'll take it, but they have no respect for it. Wow.

Miko, thank you so much for your time. Hi, many blessings on you. Could you say a quick word about your organization? Actually, I forgot to mention. Oh, of course. What is it? Yeah. So a year ago, we established Palestine House of Freedom here your organization, actually. I forgot to mention. Oh, of course. What is it? Yeah. So a year ago, we established Palestine House of Freedom here in Washington, D.C.

We're on Capitol Hill on Pennsylvania Avenue. We wanted to establish a high-profile place and a high-profile location in Washington, D.C. with a Palestinian flag and the name Palestine. Our mission is to educate, and we're about to launch a really ambitious curriculum that will help people understand the point that I was making, which is that peace and stability and human rights are absolutely possible in the region, provided we get rid of the... We stopped investing in the problem, in the obstacle, which is the apartheid state. And there's a huge body of knowledge of the Palestinian experience for over a hundred years that is never reaching the surface.

And so we're digging into it. It's called, in Arabic we call it tarakum, which means accumulation, the accumulation of decades of writing and, and, and, uh, political expression and artistic expression and so on, that it just never reaches the surface. So we're digging into that and we're translating that into a curriculum to show people what Palestine was and what Palestine can be and what is the obstacle to peace and stability that we all want to see so badly.

So that's what we're about. We have a website here all the time. Palestinehouseoffreedom.org is the website. We're on social media. Please follow us. And if you're in D.C., come visit. Thank you, Miko. Blessings to you. Thank you so much. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.