TRIGGERnometry - Israel Killed My Family But I Want Peace - Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

Episode Date: November 24, 2024

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a Palestinian American humanitarian activist and blogger. *Follow Ahmed on social media: https://x.com/afalkhatib | Sponsor: Monetary Metals - Buy gold and earn interest on it! https://monetary-metals.com/triggernometry/ *Sponsor: Mint Mobile - To get your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to https://mintmobile.com/TRIGGER  Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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they've outlasted every crisis in history. Visit NobleGoldinvestments.com and get your free wealth protection kit today. That's NobleGoldinvestments.com for your free wealth protection kit. Discover how simple it is to protect your future. Past performance may not be indicative of future results investing in precious metals, including gold involved risks. Consult with a tax attorney or financial professional before making an investment. decision. I have 31 dead family members from three separate airstrikes and I have no idea why they're dead. Literally half of my fucking family is dead. Over time and especially now, Hamas's support is absolutely in the toilet. They're seeing how Hamas behaves. They're seeing that there's no strategy.

They're seeing that this is merely a nihilistic exercise of suicidal adventurism, that we are pawns. They most nefariously served the head. aims of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Messianic right wing in Israel, who used Hamas and allowed Hamas' political rise to fester because they could weaken the Palestinian authority. This is an opportunity to shape the next generation of Palestinian governance in Gaza. Ahmed, great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for having me. No, it's a pleasure. You're one of the voices on the pro-Palestine side, if you might frame it like

that. One of the very few actually that certainly we've seen, you know, we've had many guests on the show, several guests on the show, I should say, who are pro-Palestinian. And it, with all respect, it just, we can never get a straight answer to quite simple questions. And you are somebody that I see who's actually attempting to do that and present a coherent and rational case for what you believe. So it's a great pleasure to have you on. We're going to talk about your opinions and suggestions and proposals in a second. But you've also had a very, you know, to, to put a very mildly, interesting, personal story and situation. So tell us about who you are before we get into what you think.

Certainly. Well, thanks again for having me. I've really been a long, long time fan. I came to the United States in 2005 as part of a post-911 cultural exchange program. So I was 15 at the time. It brought me here to be in high school for a year, live with a host family, experience the United States, and hopefully take that back to my native land and native country, and build cultural bridges. It brought young Middle Eastern and Muslim students to the United States.

And I was lucky to be in the San Francisco Bay Area. I left one month before the withdrawal. I'm from the Gaza Strip. I was born in Saudi Arabia, went back and forth, as is very common for a lot of people in Gaza, doctors, teachers, nurses. You go abroad, mainly to the Gulf, you work, you build up a little nest. And then you bring that back to the Gaza Strip. Our family went back and forth, lived in Gaza, and then Saudi in the 90s back and forth. and then we moved back permanently right before the second Intifada.

And so I'd run up in the Gaza Strip mainly, some in Saudi Arabia, and then came here for a year. When I finished that year of high school exchange, I tried to go back to the Gaza Strip. I was stuck in Egypt trying to go into the Gaza's through the Rafa border crossing. Gaza doesn't have its own entry and exit points, so you have to go through Egypt. And upon attempting to do that,

unfortunately Hamas abducted Gilad Chalit, a young Israeli soldier in June of 2006 in Gaza. And this was soon followed up by the 33-day war in Lebanon with Hezbollah. So it's a very miniaturized October 7, if you will. And so I was stuck in Egypt for months unable to go back. Thanks to the support of human rights and peace activists in the United States, including even a Holocaust survivor who really helped make this happen. And I came back to the United States, applied for political asylum status. This was after Hamas had won the infamous parliamentary elections in 2006, and there was a slow-brewing

civil war in the Gaza Strip. I applied for a political asylum. The very day of my asylum interview was June 14, 2007, which is the very day that Hamas violently took over the Gaza Strip and ejected, forcefully ejected the Palestinian Authority. It was a huge boost to my case. and I ultimately got asylum. I was basically the first of a wave of Palestinians from Gaza who received asylum in the United States

because of Hamas' control of Gaza. And so became a citizen 2014. So I was 10 years ago, and I'll tell you a funny story when I became a citizen. When I had the asylum interview, the United States government formally classified me as stateless as a former country of nationality, because Gaza had just that day been taken over.

It wasn't sure if the U.S. government, first of all, the U.S. government doesn't acknowledge the state of Palestine. And even in the confines of, you know, Palestinian territories or occupied Palestinian territories, they were like, what is Gaza right now? So they just put me down a stateless. When I became a citizen, we had to basically shop around for a former country to put on the certificate. And I was like, okay, fine. I want like a fancy.

I want to be a former, like, Luxembourg citizen or whatever. But my choices came down to Saudi Arabia or Israel. I went with Saudi Arabia. But so, yeah. You like a hard life, do you? It was just like, you know. And I was never a Saudi citizen, obviously. But anyway, so that's who I am.

I worked in right before October 7 for the last eight years, up until two months ago. My day job was working in international development, mainly in the Global South and Africa with a philanthropic organization. that does global health on poverty alleviation initiatives. I also, in 2015, put myself out there on the map by building a nonprofit organization in the United States

to build an internationally run Israeli-approved airport in the Gaza Strip. And it was not just an infrastructure project, but it was meant to stabilize Gaza through a non-Egyptian and non-Israeli entry and exit point to facilitate freedom of movement for people and goods. And it was meant to slowly pull the rug from underneath Hamas by internationalizing big-ticket items in the Gaza Strip

and forcing their hand to avoid engaging in future confrontations. So the reason why I bring that up is that it very much so played a role, and we can talk about this later in where I am today. What about your family? Are they still in Gaza? So many of them remained, most of them, in front of them, fact remaining guys. None of them came with me to the United States. And so over the years, a few of them managed to get out just in pursuit. My brother's in Germany right now. He was an UNRA doctor. He ran the Beach Clinic in there. My father stayed and he passed away four years ago, but he ran

the UN Refugee and Works Agency Clinic in Jabalya, which is now sight to fierce fighting in northern Gaza. My oldest brother is currently in Gaza. He runs a major medical NGO. He's a major director in there. It's a British NGO. And my mom and other siblings stayed in there, so did it in my immediate and extended family.

And what do you hear from them? Well, unfortunately, it's been a tragedy after tragedy since October 7. And I have lost a combined 31 now, 32 of my immediate and extended family. The house that I grew up in in Gaza City in the north was destroyed by an Israeli air strike on October 13th. There were three separate airstrikes that got us to that number. There was a tomorrow actually is also the first anniversary of the second air strike that also killed my cousin my dad's youngest brother uncle Riyadh but the first two strikes on October 13th on

October 25th they killed a 12 year old niece Farah and wounded her her identical twin very badly destroyed my family home my brother and his wife and four children were inside the home when it was hit but he managed they managed to push their way out of the rubble I got his wife and four children out of the Gaza's trip one day before the invasion of Rafa through the Rafa border crossing. I got a little bit of help from the U.S. government for the children and then I had to do everybody else had to do for my sister-in-law. And then, yeah, unfortunately, we've lost contact.

And then we've lost contact with many of the surviving, my dad's two surviving brothers, Uncle Abraham and Uncle Imad who are in northern Gaza. I don't know, I mean, my immediate cousins, and these are people that I've been in contact with. I mean, I've kept in contact with Gaza throughout my time. I didn't just get a life in the United States and say, like, I'll love it here. Like, you know, forget about Gaza.

Gaza was very much so a parallel universe for me. And so I... What does your brother tell you? Because it sounds like he's on the ground dealing with, you know, what is going on there. What do you hear from him? It's difficult, painful, stressful. He sends me daily updates. We have daily check-ins multiple times a day because he's in the field. He's working with a humanitarian. He's bringing in the trucks and he's bringing in supplies with his team, obviously, and in cooperation with other NGOs and humanitarian organizations. There is the internal

problems with the breakdown of law and order. There's Hamas and looters and there's instability. There is poverty, desperation, crowded displaced zones, people fleeing multiple times. Then there's Israeli airstrikes with drones, with quadcopters that have become particularly menacing. These are, they deploy much smaller munitions, but they also do, they're very precise and they're very like, you know, menacing because you can hear them whizzing around. His home, he had another apartment. He had to basically flee probably seven to eight different times throughout this war. He's had to, they have safe houses for his organization where they work and they coordinate with IDF and give the Israeli military their coordinates.

If they're bringing in shipments, like they coordinate closely with the IDF. but that still didn't prevent their safe house, unfortunately, from being hit a couple of times. And they share resources with Doctors Without Borders and the International Rescue Committee's with medical aid for Palestinians. That's his organization. So they've pulled resources. And so it's a horrendous situation from Israeli bombardment, internal, just a society in turmoil that's like completely broken down in terms of the cohesion. And the prices of everything, my goodness, the prices he tells me and I, they use shekels there and US dollars, shichols of Israeli currency. It is, I mean, horrendous.

Like now a pack of cigarette costs $1,000. Like the war economy, yes, like soap can cost $100. Basically, like, Kleenex. I mean, the price of goods has gone 10, 20, 30, 100 X. He once had like he once had a he's a smoker. He had like a box of cigarettes. And he got an offer for like $10,000 for that box of cigarettes. I mean, it is that insane.

There's no cash coming in. So there's a circular economy with just the cash, the dollars and the shekels. There's only a single, a single, there was only a single ATM that was functioning. that was the Bank of Palestine and Rafah. I believe there's another single ATM in Kahn Yunus, or no, I think it's in Derr-Belach now. And there are looters everywhere. He described to me, for example,

how 100, for example, of 100 trucks that recently came in, humanitarian aid trucks, 73 of them were looted and stolen by organized criminals. He did say... Did you mean Hamas or someone else? So that's the interesting thing. some of them are Hamas or remnants of Hamas, but he actually said that it's become more and more clear.

These are simply organized criminals that are, I mean, remember Gaza had like any of society has a, you know, a class of criminals who were released from jails and also when a lot of the clans and the families fled northern Gaza to the south, they fled with their guns and weaponry with them. We're talking like AKs and small firearms. But that enables them to engage in thuggery, engage in organized crime. And there are hundreds of thousands of dollars to be made off a war economy.

So Hamas did, in fact, intercept many of the trucks that are coming in. But we got to also remember, we're not talking about a cohesive Hamas that's like this pyramid structure with, you know, Hamas from the top, issues, orders to steal. we're talking about disparate cells that are operating that I mean we're basically talking about a hundred different Hamas in the sense of even the guys that are holding the Israeli hostages they're not this cohesive unified structure there's some communication left in between the Hamas in north Hamas and raffa where sinwar was killed hamas and kan yunis or in der el balah in the central part of the Gaza strip but they're not like coordinating their activities so remnants of Hamas, for example, from my brother and also a whole host of other contexts. I don't just talk to my brother.

When I did the Gaza airport, I developed a large network of people in Gaza who, I mean, that's how, I don't know if you saw my piece in Newsweek. I talked to Sunwar in 2017, and I described that. I didn't call him directly. I used intermediaries to work with the sanctions. But basically, let's pretend we have 20, let's use the number 20, of remnants of Hamas, whether it be high, Hamas's police, Hamas's internal security mechanism, Hamas's authoritative guys with guns, or even the Qasam guys, the Hamas, the militant wing people. We haven't been paid.

We have no direct instructions on what to do. We listen to Al Jazeera. We listen to statements made on Facebook and social media and Twitter to understand what Hamas writ large is saying. We'll get together and we have access to AKs, we have access to rounds, we have access to supplies that can enable us to exercise force and authority. Some of these people will, the good ones on the police, for example, they'll take over a little area and they'll be like, we're going to make sure there's law and order. We're going to, if we catch a thief, we'll shoot them and beat them up and deter people or whatever.

Others, they're like, screw this. Like, let's basically be thugs and go ahead and take over trucks. Or even better, let's now create this informal set of security companies that are like on the fly. They're not like real companies, but like let's offer our security services to humanitarian organizations, to young organizations, to international organizations to say, okay, so you're bringing in a truck through the Karam Shalom or before it through the Rafat border crossing, you're going to bring in 10 trucks. We'd like to have two trucks, please. Or you're bringing in one truck.

What are you going to give me out of this truck for me? And then they either barter things with whatever they gain from these trucks, or they'll go ahead and actually sell it and make money that way. then they'll so that now there's actually this whole informal economy where any organization that wants to bring in supplies in the Gaza Strip humanitarian NGOs and non-profits you pretty much have to coordinate with thugs with clans or with remnants of Hamas and I'm not to be clear I'm not saying like organizations are sitting there and talking to Hamas and saying like I'm just saying it's like a lot more loose than that but otherwise you're you're your supplies are going to get looted and stolen.

So you have guys with AKs that take care of securing your supplies. You have clans now, the powerful clans that unfortunately Prime Minister Netanyahu thought somehow are going to replace Hamas. They are running the routes. They have hundreds of their guys. In full view, by the way, of Israeli intelligence and surveillance assets with guns, with the sole purpose of commandeering incoming humanitarian aid. This is why I've been a proponent of the AirDrops idea and I've worked really hard. It's inefficient. It's dangerous. It's got problems. But at least you're spreading the supplies as best as you can to minimize the chance of looters or Hamas.

So go back to just your question. It is convenient for some in the pro-Israel camp to say, oh, well, Hamas is just stealing everything. Hamas has and does steal some of the aid. indeed, but it is actually far more complicated than simple hamas because you have a lot of organized criminals and people haven't worked for a year. There's nothing to earn money. So this is, this is the only source of income for many people. And it's not just the desperate people. I'm not talking about the desperate people, which form probably, according to some estimate, maybe like 15% of the looters. The other, you know, 85% of the looters are mainly organized. criminals and to a certain perhaps lesser extent remnants of Hamas.

The picture your painting, Ahmed, is obviously awful. Do Hamas still have widespread support within Gaza or have they lost the average Palestinian? Absolutely. And this is something that is essentially my raison d'etre in putting myself out there since October 7 is that despite what we saw initially of the few thousand people who either went in to Israel when the wall went down or celebrated it. We're talking still about what, five, 10,000 people that may have celebrated this overtly endorsed Hamas out of a population of 2.3 million people, half of whom weren't born when Hamas was elected in 2006. Over time,

and especially now, Hamas's support is absolutely in the toilet. And I'll tell you why. Imagine yourself I mean, forget the, like, big picture conflict. Forget all the, like, let's just bring it down to, like, your day-to-day life. If you're standing in a dirty, disgusting line to use a bathroom with 500 other people, if your kid has a cold and you can't get them a Tylenol or you can't get them a painkiller, if you're having to pay $1,000 for a pack of cigarettes that you don't have, if and if and if you've been displaced, you're really not going to sit there and say, wow, October 7th was, there's a solid.

Like Hamas is great. Like San Juan really had a strategy. When you're seeing Hamas and taking care of their people, because there are Hamas members, and we'll talk about, you know, the tiers of support for Hamas as well as the tiers of opposition for Hamas. But Hamas does the aid that they siphon, for example. They ensure that they get their members and their families' supplies

before everybody else does. There are tents, for example, in a tent city, and people will infer who are affiliated with Hamas by the tents that get more aid than others. So it's a very unequal and unjust distribution system. We've seen video after video, after video, after posts, in Arabic, mainly of Palestinians, of women and children and elderly people.

decrying Hamas's behavior, saying why is Hamas hiding amongst us? Why is Hamas keeping this war? Turn over the hostages. We've seen protests. We've seen small efforts of the people of Gaza crying out loud and saying, we don't want Hamas, we don't want this war. We don't want Sinwar. We don't want this.

But they're helpless to stop Hamas because at the end of the day, they're the guys with the guns. They're stuck on the one hand between a ruthless terror. organization that cares nothing for their well-being. By the way, one of the things that really began the demise of Hamas's popularity in Gaza is that for the first, I would say, six months of the war, Hamas's mouthpieces and leaders would brag about how we built these tunnels to enable us to fight on forever. We've amassed enough supplies to keep us going for multiple years to fight the Israelis. Even if we lose control, administrative control, our, you know,

our preparations over the years have gotten us to a place where we can carry out an insurgency. And they would say this as if to get people in Gaza to say like, yeah, Hamas. And it had the opposite effect. People in Gaza were like, oh yeah, so you stacked all these supplies and you didn't think to build one bomb shelter for us. You didn't think to put one strategic reserve of critical materials and items and food to prevent the famine-like conditions. So the degradation of Hamas, the levels of support for Hamas, has been not only steady, but it has been worsened by Hamas's own statements and behavior to try to stop that degradation.

The other thing, there's the issue of the infamous polls, which the IDF alleges to have found documents showing that Hamas doctored. and significantly manipulated and skewed the results of these polls to show support in Gaza. I'm talking about Gaza. The West Bank is a whole different other story, and we can talk about it separately and later. I didn't need the IDF to allege to have found these documents to tell me that people in Gaza have been turning in mass against the terror group for destroying their lives, for squandering opportunity after opportunity to bring this war to an end, for squandering billions of dollars into this tunnel resistance enterprise.

And also, I will say, unfortunately, there are people who may have supported Hamas in the past or soon after October 7, but it's all coming full picture, not just because of the consequences of Hamas's actions, not just because they lost their homes, they lost their families, but they're seeing how Hamas behaves. They're seeing that there's no strategy.

They're seeing that this is merely annihilation, realistic exercise of suicidal adventurism. They're seeing how Hamas is basically as part of this access of resistance on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran and working with the Houthis and Hezbollah, that we are pawns. And this is, you know, it's coming together to where I actually think, unlike anything I've ever seen, there is actually delegitimization of the idea of resistance. So you have people that supported Hamas. Hamas who hated Islamism.

They hated Hamas itself, but they liked the idea, broad idea of resistance. That idea has been propagated since 1948, essentially. And, you know, the PLO engaged in resistance. The PFLP engaged in resistance. The pan-Arabism of Nasser was a form of resistance to the Zionist entity. And Hamas, then now the Islamism. So, like, different ideologies, but essentially carrying the same narrative of resistance. I actually think now, and this is my own personal assessment,

there's a gradual delegitimization in a Gaza context, again, not the West Bank. Gaza and the West Bank are so different culturally, politically, in a variety of ways. Like this idea that you're going to have a centralized Palestinian government that runs both is nonsense at this point. I do believe Gaza and the West Bank should be a part of a unified Palestinian structure. We'll talk about that later. The idea of resistance itself, people are asking questions about it. And I'm seeing people saying, so resistance for the sake of resistance, what does that get us other than death and destruction? Or resistance for the sake of simply keeping this conflict alive, which is what Hamas thinks is basically, now is their strategies, maximize Palestinian casualties to delegitimize Israel, keep the conflict alive as long as you can,

Because, oh, we have protesters in the West, which is ironic. At a time when people in Gaza are turning against Hamas en masse in mass, you have imbeciles in Western capitals and here in New York and in B.C. Flying Hamas and Hezbollah flags, cheering on the armed resistance narrative. Out in the open, legitimizing, celebrating, and supporting a terror organization. And I'm not just talking about a terror organization just principally. I'm not about an organization. that has literally triggered the most deadly destructive chapter

in Palestinian contemporary history, worse than the Nakba of 1948. And so the people of Gaza, unfortunately, there's a disconnect. And that goes back to what I said earlier, like my raison d'etre for putting myself out there is to actually demonstrate the folly of the Israel and Palestine discourse in a diaspora context

versus how the people who are impacted by the most on the ground her paying the ultimate price are there's a complete disconnect and breakdown all of this is also not to excuse or to say the people in gaza aren't furious at israel and aren't furious at the conduct of the war and they're not exactly thinking of israel as a liberator even though i will tell you and i'm i will put the entirety of my reputation on the line here and i will say confidently there were numerous people in Gaza early on, the very early stages on the war, who were privately, like, maybe Israel will do us a favor and kind of get rid of Hamas.

And that very quickly, unfortunately, when the scale of the death and destruction and this like clear and leave strategy and then Hamas would respawn or come back and then Israel would come back in and then Hamas would leave. Like when it became this vicious cycle of death and destruction, people are like, we thought Israel, like, actually had a strategy. And it seems like they're the, the Israeli strategy, in a sense, is the other equivalent. Hamas wants to prolong this war for as long as possible to keep the protests going and delegitimize Israel and turn this, like, the whole region on fire. They feel that Israel now is the Israeli government in particular and the government of prime. Minister Netanyahu are prolonging the war so that he can have his coalition of far-right extremists sticking around until the next election so that he can stay out of jail. So they genuinely feel stuck between those two powers.

But what gives me hope is that they, I don't think, the reason why I think this is going to be Gaza's last war is that I don't think Hamas will ever again be able to manipulate people in Gaza into it. accepting a scenario in which Hamas runs them, in which Hamas basically oppresses the Palestinian people there in the name of resistance to Israel. I think there's a fundamental once-in-a-generation shift as a result of not just the consequences of October 7. That's a really important distinction. Because a lot of the pro-Israel people, they're like, well, the people that are turning on Hamas, they're only doing so because now there's a deadly war and only because of

the consequences. It's not just that. It's how Hamas has behaved on the ground in the field, how the leadership has behaved, the hotel leadership, how Hamas is so clearly uninterested in the suffering of the Palestinian people. Khaled Mishal, the group's leader in Qatar, a senior group leader. There have been memes about him over the last three weeks because he gave on the October 7th anniversary. He said that, He infamously said, our losses are tactical. Israel's losses are strategic. And that literally inflamed the Palestinian people in Gaza, the diaspora.

How dare you call my niece and nephew and uncle and tactical losses? How dare you say that the annihilation of Gaza is, oh, it's just a tactical thing. And it's no big deal. But Israel, which has the Iron Dome, which has billions of, more in dollars in funding, which still has the economy is still functioning, is fighting a multi-front war, it seems to me that Israel is kind of doing just fine in the sense that their society has not had the death and destruction that we've had. So that, I think, just the totality of those threats that I just shared, and much more, confirmed to me that the people in Gaza

in mass have turned against Hamas. It doesn't mean they're loving Israel. and saying we love Israel, but this is an opportunity to shape the next generation of Palestinian governance in Gaza. war against Hamas has been proportionate. The IDF have done everything that they possibly can to limit civilian casualties. Where do you stand on that? So, on the one hand, I mean, multiple things are true at once.

Do I think there's a breakdown between what orders are given up top versus how a field commanders exercise them? 100%. The Israelis themselves have said that. And there have been times of Israel pieces, Yadroat, Ahranaut, and all these other mainline headlines that say how field commanders are sloppy, they're lax, they're indifferent, they're exhausted, and they just give their sergeants and their officers permission to get sloppy in how they apply firepower. Obviously, a lot of Israeli soldiers are afraid and scared, and I think they're going to lean more towards being overly cautious by applying exceive. excessive, suppressive fire to a certain area.

There's two types of targeting that result in the casualties. So there's like the airstrikes or the artillery strikes, and that's where you do have this cycle of Intel, target selection, target approval, selection of the munitions and the firepower, and then the actual execution of the strike. And then there is the targeting that happens in the field, the tactical, that like we have a squad and we're going through from house to house with tanks here and with the drones overhead and whatever. And then we get a couple of bullets fired our way. There's an entirely different structure to how you respond to this incoming fire. And it's not the cycle that is precise and uses intelligence and uses mitigation strategies.

It's like, we have fire from here, like, let's, the tank starts firing and the quadcopter start firing and the soldiers start spraying. And sometimes that happens when civilians are in the area. Sometimes you apply a ring of fire beyond just the immediate area where you're in. So I think there have been absolutely careless cases on mass scale. I mean. But that thing you're talking about, I'm sorry to interrupt, but that thing you're talking about is true of all war.

always has been, right? If you're walking through a neighborhood and people start shooting at you, you're going to do everything you possibly can to neutralize that threat. And if civilians are there, they shouldn't have been there in the first place, as you've mentioned, right? But if they're there, they're going to be collateral damage in that situation. That was true of World War II. It's true of the war in Iraq. It's true of every war in human history, really. But then why go out of your way to say that the IDF and have people like John Spencer acting as effective mouthpieces for the IDF and say that there's never been a war this clean and this moral and this amazing, like then say that and accept that as an inevitability.

But that, but those two things aren't in contradiction, surely. I think, you could say that this is, and I don't know, I've heard a lot of people make that argument that you're making or that you're claiming other people make, but something could be the most humane way to wage a war in which civilians still inevitably and tragically get killed. Those two things could happen at once, right? They could, potentially, but when we see time after time after time, civilians and children in times of Israel and the Washington Post just corroborated this video

from Jabali in which a 13-year-old child was hit and they got their name. Israeli press, a quadcopter hit this child. He's killed. People come to try to rescue him. They're bombed and in attacks. I saw that. But what I'm saying is something different. This is not to negate the significance of that,

the tragedy of civilians being killed. I'm just saying it's an empirical question, right? I believe, by the way. So I guess what I'm, I don't know much about it. That's why you're here because you know and I don't. But if you're uncomfortable with the framing of this being a war that is fought as cleanly as possible, I guess the question is,

what conflict in recent history would you put forward as a, more humane one. Certainly. But I think there's so, first of all, those civilians that are there, sometimes civilians are there because they have no choice. Sometimes Hamas has gotten in the way and they basically want civilians to stick around so that to cause Matt casualties. I have sent proposal after proposal to several Israeli officials for what do we do now

that Egypt closed its border and Egypt is never going to open its border to allowing civilians to be in Sinai. We have these safe zones that also get struck and get attacked. We have the lack of security, the lack of places for the civilians to go. I've called for and some Israelis supported me

in this for camps for women and children on the Israeli side of the border of Gaza temporarily until the war is over. Unfortunately, you can't I don't believe that the official Israeli policy is to cause

maximum civilian casualties. I personally don't believe that. However, there are numerous Israeli commanders and individual soldiers who are vengeful, who are traumatized by what happened on October 7 and who quite honestly

like, that's what I mean. Like, they will take pot shots at Palestinian kids that we saw that story in the New York Times and I shared the x-rays and people were losing their mind. That has been debunked, you know, by firearms experts. And the New York Times stood by those x-rays.

And I've seen, I don't, again, if even if this particular x-ray, which was, by the way, a 2D x-ray, like, there's, if this particular x-ray doesn't stand, I still know personally of people in the medical field who saw first and. Well, no one would deny that innocent civilians have been shot. But that particular story has been pretty thoroughly debunked by people who say, that's not what a gun shot. looks like, and that's not what a bullet looks like after it's hinted the human head. I don't want to focus on these details. I guess I'm not even challenging what you're saying, because I'm not knowledgeable enough to challenge it. I'm just asking the question.

Your point seems to be that there are civilian casualties, which no one denies, and I think it's tragic that there are. But if you're disputing the claim that some people make, which is what Francis asked you about originally, that's why, that's all I'm trying to get to, if you're disputing the idea that Israel is prosecuting this war more humanely than other conflicts, I guess it's then on you to say, well, you know, the war in Vietnam or the war in Afghanistan or the war in there or the war in here has been prosecuted more humanely. But is that so? Yes. Is that I don't, I don't. Because everything is a matter of comparison, right? We can only be the most humane. We can't have a war in which no

civilians get killed. Because the practical reality of fighting urban warfare is, you know, is, particularly as you say yourself, when Hamas wants to maximize civilian casualties, is very tragically, people are going to be killed. So then we have to compare, right? What I'm mainly pushing for, and I want those Israeli claims that we're doing everything we can to minimize civilian casualties to be backed up by actual realities on the ground and actual actions. When you're targeting a 13-year-old boy and people come in, to save him and you target those people. And we've seen that time and again,

the child hint that was killed and the ambulances. We've seen hundreds of examples that are well documented that show otherwise. So that's what I'm asking for. It's good. Israel, like, let's match your... I'm not disagreeing with that. Look, genuinely, you mentioned before you came on the show

that you love our show because of the intellectual curiosity. And that's all I'm doing here, genuinely. For sure, for sure. And I don't have that answer on what... war is fought cleanly. I don't have that answer. Well, right. And that's kind of the issue here because what, forgive me for laying it out like this, but what often happens when you pose that question to people is they go to the example, the single example. And they say, well, did you see that video? Yes, I did see that video. I also have never seen a war in which that sort of thing

hasn't happened. It's happening right now to my family in Ukraine. And it's just as tragic as when it happens to your family in Gaza. These are the same terrible things. But that's what war is. That's why war is terrible, right? So when Francis asked you about the fact that some pro-Israel guests have claimed on our show that Israel is doing everything it can, that's not the same as them saying Israel is behaving impeccably.

It's saying that within the context of violent military conflict in which complex explosive weapons and all sorts of other firearms and weapons are used, they are doing the most of any army in history to limit civilian casualties. And that could be true at the same time as innocent children being blown up by bombs. Those two things are not incompatible tragically. Do you know what I'm saying? Certainly, certainly. But I've, basically, I've already agreed with you by saying that I don't believe it is official Israeli policy to deliberately cause maximum civilian casualties. But at the end of the day,

I have 31 dead family members from three separate airstrikes, and I have no idea why they're dead. I have no idea. And I can't sit here, and this is maybe where I do lose my objectivity, and I'm fine with that. I mean, the New York Times,

when the really deadly airstrike that killed 29 people happened on December 14th in Rafa, when it was a safe zone, an Amnesty International, I did a whole report on it and the New York Times did a whole report on what happened to my family.

They reached out to the IDF and they said, why are there 14 children dead? Children, three and four months old babies shredded to bits and pieces. Like at least the IDF can tell us what did you target in there? What was in that strife that you felt outweighs

the death of all of these civilians? And I know them all by name. And from my aunts and uncles, all of my aunts and uncles on my mom's side perished in that strike that were in the house. The least the IDF could do is be like, well, there was a particular target because it was a designated safe zone. And people in northern Gaza, family members from the north, they fled from the north. They hated the idea of warnings and they headed south to a safe zone only to be killed in the safe zone. So that is a lot more nefarious than just, oh, bad. Like, that is deliberate.

That was a deliberate air strike. And I think the only way in which you can make it fit in this broader context of, we're minimizing civilian casualties, but it's deadly, is show me, show me that, like, what did you, what did you kill? Well, like, who was the, who was important enough for you to kill 14 children and all these family members, the elderly people? So like, but that's, you take that and you multiply it by hundreds, if not thousands of cases. So that's where I can just like, even think we're disagreeing.

I think we agree, actually. I just think understandably you feel very strongly about those things, as I do too. So with a little bit more distance, I can sort of go, that's awful and terrible. And yet when you have war, that is what happened. I mean, look at what happened in Mosul, in Iraq. Look at how these Egyptian military. The military fought in northern Sinai. I mean, they wiped out Egyptian Rafa.

They moved literally, the whole town of Egyptian Rafa was eliminated. And so can I tell you a little something? Yes, sure. I was talking to a pro-Palaisan individual yesterday, who's very prominent in the Arab and Muslim community, to try to build bridges and build partnerships. And they subjected me to a see, just to even have the conversation,

they subjected me to a series of litmus tests. And it was really bizarre And I was like, okay, fine, I'll play along. The first one was like, do you believe that what Israel's doing in Gaza is genocide? And I said, no, I do not believe it is genocide. I think there are numerous war crimes that have been committed. I think there have been horrendous events that Israeli leaders should be held accountable for. But I do not believe that Israel's official policy in Gaza is genocide.

I think there are genocidal members of the Israel. government. Absolutely. But they don't have the power, nor are they directly, at least, and explicitly, and from a legal point of view, setting the policy of genocide in Gaza, rather, a policy of genocide. So multiple, and they, and they were just shell shot. They just looked at me. They were like, wait, but you lost, like Israel killed all of these family members, and you've written passionately about this, and you've spoken so, and I said, it is precise. precisely that point. I think the whole genocide, this or genocide, that has become a distraction. And it's become this obsession with, like, when I learned English and I was in Gaza, I had a great British teacher who said to me, show, don't tell.

Like, show the facts, describe them, kind of paint the picture and then let people kind of don't prescriptively say, I think it's genocide. I think it's this. I think it's that. for me it's like no there's the suffering here's the facts here's how Hamas fights here's what the Israelis do here's the horror that happened to my family members it's like it's really difficult to exercise when people are so emotional about this issue but what I'm trying to model is I have the most skin in the game in this is that literally half of my fucking family is dead and yet I am saying this shuts down doors that don't need to be shut this raises the temperature this becomes a distraction into like a separate, if somebody wants to adjudicate genocide or not, like, that's fine, that's separately.

But like, let's not have the conversation dictated by the need to say that Israel is intentionally killing every single child in Gaza when I don't believe that that is the policy, even though they have killed a lot of children in Gaza. Look, I'm completely in agreement with you. And as somebody who's family in Lebanon, I get very angry and very, very far. frustrated with the way I see certain activists on the left who, like you said, don't really have skin in the game talking about this war. What do you think about those types, those commentators, the Tarnahisi Coates, the Basimus,

etc. And, you know, basically this is my second raison d'etre for why I've put myself out there since October 7, is that I'm tired of other people. telling our story. I'm tired of our allies. I think unfortunately I I liken it to if you're really drunk and you're about to get in your car, a good friend and an ally would take your keys away. I liken what a lot of the folks on the left and within the pro-Palestine community are doing, is they're pouring more alcohol as you're about to turn on your car. instead of helping the Palestinian people understand the folly of supporting Hamas and the armed resistance,

explain to them how in the broader context, this is not serving us. This is deadly. This is harmful. Show us, help us understand, do an assessment. We've been victims in the sense that we've not had a chance to look back at our history and learn from our mistakes. when people are living in Gaza or in the West Bank under the realities of either the war or life under Hamas or under the realities of the military occupation and the settlements and the settler violence in the West Bank, they can't maybe they're too viscerally connected to this issue and they can't think clearly about Hamas or next steps or this or that.

That's where the role of the elites or the diaspora community or the political class or the allies. like those on the left comes in to help us understand. Empower our people with information to save and protect lives, with ideas and recommendations and partnerships and joint action to get things done to achieve Palestinian statehood. And instead, what we have is basically saying,

yes, the Palestinians are perpetual victims. They have no agency. October 7th, whether an inevitability, it's a form of resistance. the complete opposite, which is undermining the Palestinian people, normalizing a terror organization like Hamas, that is so inherently anti-Palestinian by virtue of, like, what has Hamas done? They've Islamized the society. They sabotaged the fragile yet viable Oslo peace process

that could have led to a Palestinian state. Rabin and Barat could have absolutely allowed for the establishment of a Palestinian state through a meaningful compromise. They militarized the Second Intifada with all of their crazy suicide bombings that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians. They squandered an opportunity to turn the 2005 withdrawal.

We can talk about the intentions of Ariel Sharon, how imperfect it was, the real intentions behind it. Nevertheless, it was an opportunity to demonstrate what effective Palestinian self-governance looks like. It was an opportunity to show what an occupation-free West Bank would look like, and that we as a Palestinian people and nation are just as capable of self-governance, of building institutions, of nation-building.

They abused the 2006 electoral process to, that could have been the beginning of Palestinian political life through elections, through democratic governance, and basically entered a political process that was based upon nonviolence. It was that political process was based upon renunciation of violence and accepting that Israel's existence and right to exist. And they sabotaged that. And by so doing, they've killed Palestinian political life. They took over the Gaza Strip violently in 2007 and began a vicious cycle of wars, reconstruction, squandering resources, and wasted basically two decades of the Palestinian people's time in the God's. They most nefariously served the aims of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Messianic right wing in Israel, who used Hamas and allowed Hamas's political rise to fester because they could weaken the Palestinian Authority.

They could expand settlements in the West Bank. So you look at the totality of that. How could you as a leftist who's pro-LGB, who's pro-women's rights, who's pro-immigration, whose pro, all of these supposed progressive policies, not see Hamas as the enemy of the Palestinian people, not see Hamas as a nefarious, narrow-minded Islamist organization that in 2020 started saying women can't leave Gaza without their male guardians sign off.

Before that, they started saying, oh, well, women can't have Shisha or Huka on the beach because that's not, you know, who would use that, they had their version of morality police that would go to coffee shops in Gaza. And if women, like young couples or people were together, they would go and ask them, are you married? Are you engaged? Are you this and that?

Hamas is such a deadly menace to the Palestinian people that it turned me off. It upset me to no end that after October 7, there was celebration of the taking of women and children as hostages. There was, we saw the upside-down triangles and the paragliders and all that symbolism. Look, I agree with all of you on this. We're also missing a major part of this entire situation in that,

and let's be brutally honest about this. My family in Lebanon, your family in Palestine, they are pawns for what Iran wants. This is all Iran. These are proxy wars that are being funded by Iran. And not enough people are saying this. So I guess my question to you, Ahmed, is, what do we do about this? Because until we sort this problem out of Iran, until this will continue to

happen because they're the ones funding it, they're the ones manipulating it, and they're the ones who are putting all our families in danger. Well, I certainly agree. And we delegitimize. We have we have to win the narrative. We have to change the narrative. We have to engage. There's an element of this, you know, the three modalities that I usually oscillate in between is engage, convince, confronts. And I do a lot of confronting because unfortunately, this resistance narrative, and this is what terrifies me, genuinely, before October 7, it was the norm for people to be like, well, I don't like Hamas, but the occupation. Or, well, I'm really not a fan of Hamas, but Israel's imposing a blockade and et cetera, et cetera, never mind the fact that the blockade

is the direct result of Hamas's stated policies and intentions. After October 7th, some of the fundamentally shifted and changed, like never before. This overt, like, wow, Hamas is amazing. Wow, like the armed resistance. And I don't, like, I attribute that to multiple components. I think there is foreign manipulation into Western societies, whether it be by Russian misdiscid misinformation or by agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I don't want to overstate that because I just don't have the intel or the information.

and I'm not suggesting that every single person who's engaged in pro-Palestine or pro-resistant is there's just a lot of ill-informed and quite frankly unintelligent people who are just engaged in this discourse. But I think something fundamentally changed to where people were genuinely, maybe it's that they saw that Hamas won a tactical victory on October 7 with a success. And somehow to some people that beyond just like all of the oppressors, The oppressors, the oppressed are fighting their oppressors and they're winning and Che Guevar and the like this the romanticizing of revolution. Maybe they saw that Hamas's armed resistance temporarily won and therefore there's a potential for undermining Israel militarily in the same way that others have propagated the narrative of, well, we hate the Taliban, but they've emerged victorious after 20 years of U.S. occupation. the U.S. Empire or in Iraq. So it could, like, I've tried to explain to myself just to understand what is it that got these masses of people to go along with the Iranian propaganda,

to go along with, and it went from Gaza. And now you have people cheering on the slave-owning Houthis in Yemen or Hezbollah in the north or Iran. And that's where I absolutely agree that it is about the Islam. Islamic Republic of Iran. However, I don't necessarily, I've heard this like until Iran is dealt with, this won't go away. I don't know that that's necessarily the case and that I think I don't see Iran fundamentally changing any time. So I see signs of them crumbling from within and who knows what the Israeli air strikes can potentially trigger in terms of degrading the Islamic Republic's capabilities. I think we start by educating young college students in the Western world. We start

by exposing the folly of the armed resistance and the access of resistance narrative. There are tactical, operational, and even somewhat strategic components of confronting this that should begin immediately, that should initiate. And I think that's anchored in them showcasing the death and destruction. What kind of resistance causes this money? Resistance is supposed to protect people. In this case in Gaza and in Lebanon, resistance is killing people and is destroying them. And we're seeing the Lebanese people, like some neighborhoods in Lebanon, I've seen it in Arabic social media, where they're telling Hezbollah guys, get out of our neighborhood. Don't come here. Don't put your rocket launchers near us. So the whole resistance concept as formulated by the

the Islamic Republic and its proxies, is based upon using the civilian populations as pawns. So we need to delegitimize that because that is evil. That is deadly. That is my mom and siblings losing their life so that the mullahs can basically have their geopolitical chess game with Israel. And we shouldn't, as Arab, Muslim, Palestinian people, have any part in that. We shouldn't as allies in the Western world, academia and media, comedians, all of these characters, we shouldn't inadvertently enable that narrative and enable that the nefarious use of our people as tools and pawns.

But my worry is, and if we come back to the question, Ahmed, and I agree with what you're saying. The problem is Iran is funding a lot of these people. They're training them. They're helping to organize them. Hezbollah would not exist without Iran. Hamas would not exist without Iran. My concern is that it doesn't matter how many of these psychopaths you wipe out. If you don't deal with the flow of money, if you don't deal with the extremist training,

you're only going to solve the problem for a short amount of time before they regenerate, before they regroup. And as somebody who has talked to a lot of people from both sides, I really do think that the only way you're going to deal with this, if you want to solve this problem once and forever, is to deal with Iran. Certainly. Otherwise, you're never, it's always, it's going to come back again and again. It's like dealing with cancer, but not cutting out the tumor. Certainly. I fundamentally agree.

The concern that I have is I would very much so. hate for this to escalate into a full on, I mean, we're, we already have a low-intensity regional war. Yeah. My biggest concern, though, and I talk to friends and Arab officials in the Gulf, I mean, our allies, our troops, our partners, every, like, everybody's vulnerable to the consequences of dealing with Iran. What does dealing with Iran, there's the, is it, do we go after Iran, military,

and risk a really apocalyptic situation. Do we starve Iran? Do we undermine the break that Iran gets from Russia and China, for example? Like, what that looks like remains to be seen. We also, I will say, unfortunately, after Iraq and Afghanistan and those experiences there, I think in U.S. foreign policy circles, there's a serious reluctance to confront Iran head on. out of concern for the consequences. And U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has failed to radically, including Libya, for example, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. So what happens in Iran, a big country

that has a deeply seated sense of nationalism? Do you inadvertently empower the regime by attacking it head on because Iranians are going to rally around it? I don't have enough information as to what does it look like to go after Iran. However, I think from a like tactical point of view in Lebanon and in Gaza, I think there are steps that can be taken to make sure that Iran can't come back in there, financially, politically and militarily. It may not permanently solve this. It may take a while to really cut off Iran's access to it. And I think there are enough people in, I mean, Lebanon is such a diverse nation that there are, and that's what it actually makes. it easier in a way to collect intel on Hezbollah and to go after them because there are so many

adversaries and Leminau's a lot more open than Gaza. Gaza's smaller. There's just that it's a very homogenous population religiously and culturally. But I think the people of Gaza now, going back to what we said about Hamas and about that that conversation, I genuinely think that there's an opportunity, a unique opportunity when and if this war stopped. to fundamentally shift things around where the people of Gaza don't want to be pawns for Hamas or Iran, they don't believe in the armed resistance anymore because they see what it does. They also know that Gaza's borders are static. Like no amount of armed resistance is going to change Gaza's borders.

No amount of armed resistance in Gaza is going to liberate the West Bank or reverse settlement activities or open up East Jerusalem to the Palestinian people. So in a sense, what I predict will happen after the war is that there will be a separation, if you will, of Gaza from the broader Israel and Palestine conflict in that there will be an interest in turning Gaza into a successful self-sustaining entity. That's what I'm also interested in, honestly. I can't solve the West Bank and East Jerusalem. I've never set foot in the West Bank. I can tell you all about Gaza, but I don't, the West Bank is fundamentally more complicated. I strongly believe that solving Gaza is actually relatively easy.

And especially because of the way in which people are rejecting Hamas, ironically, as morons in the West are supporting Hamas. I think the reconstruction, what is needed in Gaza isn't just reconstruction. The reconstruction has to be a part of a broader renaissance and a transform. of Gaza. And that transformation begins from within. That transformation is we are no longer pawns. We are not a threat to Egypt or Israel militarily. We will only have the type of arms that we need to run civil affairs and local police. But this will be a demilitarized territory. Gaza is not just going to be reconstructed. It's going to become the crown jewel of a Palestinian people and nation. It's going to be the pride and joy of Palestinians in Gaza, in the diaspora.

That's why I'm through the Atlantic Council and others coming up with different proposals. For example, one of the things that I want to do is I want to take all the rubble from Gaza, and I have not shared this publicly. I'm going to share it here. I want to put together a proposal to take all the rubble from Gaza and build an artificial peninsula in the middle off of Gaza's coast and the central Gaza Strip and have that peninsula. houses an airfield and a seaport, humanitarian zones, and have it basically be a peninsula of stability amidst a sea of instability and war. Because I think, unfortunately, the war is not going to stop anytime soon. We need to start localizing solutions. I want to

open Gaza up to the rest of the world. This is not going to be the Dubai International Airport. It's going to be a small airfield that allows for a non-Egyptian and a non-Israeli. with full coordination with the IDF and the Israeli military to prevent the facility from smuggling, but also to actually prevent Hamas from coming into the facility. Those who come into the peninsula will be vetted, will bring in the Arabs, will bring in private security, will bring in the European Union.

I want this to be the nucleus for Gaza's future prosperity and progress. And again, an airport and a seaport, strategic infrastructure that stabilizes Gaza and most importantly opens it up so that it's not a North Korea-like entity. I think solving Gaza is pretty straightforward, once the war ends. Well, I think, first of all, it sounds incredible, and I hope that is what happens,

because it sounds like the way out. The problem is, and you've alluded to several times, and I think you're absolutely right, the issue is the narrative of the people you describe as morons chant repeatedly, which is oppressed people have a right. to resist, right? Armed resistance, armed resistance, armed resistance. And what they really mean when they say armed resistance is Israel shouldn't exist, because that's what they mean.

Certainly. Right? Am I wrong about that? No, I agree. Unfortunately, I mean. So if you have a neighbor who thinks your house shouldn't exist, no matter what your intentions are, no matter how you want to build them a special garden where they can grow their own fruit and all the all the rest of it, that is going to be the perennial obstacle in the way. So I guess the question I have for you is, how do we get to a point where the people of Gaza in particular, but also perhaps more broadly, you know, there are countries in the Middle East that support this around, obviously being one of them, but in other places too. How do you get to a point where, you know, everybody kind of accepts that, you know, I don't

even know, just I'm not maybe that educated. I don't even know if the creation of the state of Israel was perfect in every way. I also don't think the creation of the United States was perfect in every way, as I think people would concede, right? So at some point, in history, people have to kind of go, we care more about our children than about history, right? How do you get that region to that point?

And I'm going to share something with you that may surprise you in some ways because unfortunately we do have a few sound bites and clips and these content creators that go to the territories or go to the West Bank and show extreme Palestinians saying extreme things about Israel doesn't exist, etc. Believe it or not, Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank are far more pragmatic than Palestinians in the diaspora or the pro-Palestine community in the diaspora. When you were in Gaza before October 7, half of the population, their biggest aspiration

was to get a work permit to go work in Israel or to get a medical permit to go receive treatment in Israel. My friend who worked in the international humanitarian world in 2019, he quit working and he was a major director in the humanitarian community. He quit that and went and became a day laborer in Israel. And he built a house, he paid off his debts, he got married, he helped his brother get married

and established a successful mini, tiny little business. Palestinians understand that Israel is here to state. Palestinians after October 7 really understand that Israel is here to stay. Palestinians in the West Bank will tell you that our official representative, despite the delegitimization of Abbas, who's not popular and he's not liked, but the Palestinian Authority runs Area A and parts of Area B. They've accepted Israel's existence and right to exist. they've prevented

hundreds of terror attacks against Israel, even in the settlements, by coordinating with the IDF. The Palestinians will tell you that unfortunately they have accepted, I mean, this is part of the narrative, they've accepted Israel's existence and right to exist

and agreed to the two-state solution and instead they got sprawling settlements. Now, I have regularly said that Hamas and the right wing within Israel, the far right, have had a symbiotic, albeit an indirect relationship and that they needed each other. Bank Vier and Smotrich wouldn't be where they're at now

without Hamas's suicide bombings and the second Intifada that shrank the peace camp in Israel. So though the Palestinians have grievances with the state of Israel's historic establishment, with the policies of settlements in the West Bank or the current conduct of the war in Gaza, I think honestly, if you really take away the noise, and especially if you meet people in private,

not in public because it's not a democratic society, there's safety concerns, there's social pressure, but if you meet people at an individual level, the vast majority, and I stand by this claim, the vast majority of Palestinians, acknowledge that Israel is here to stay. And I think what is needed now more than ever is to enable this narrative shift that you discussed,

to show pragmatists and moderates, I hate the term moderates, but it's in the absence of anything else. Let's call it moderates and pragmatists, like myself, or like elements of the Palestinian Authority, that moderation and acknowledging Israel's right to exist pays off. That it actually, to empower the moderates with wins. I'm going to be honest with you. I'm an American.

I love being in the United States. I view myself as an American, even though obviously being a Palestinian from Gaza is a foundational component of my identity. But I feel that the entirety of my lived experience on life have been leading me to a place where I think it's inevitable that I play a role in Gaza's future, in Palestine's future. What that exactly looks like remains to be seen. But that's where by this proposal, it's not just a humanitarian endeavor to. help the people with the airport and seaport. But I want to do things on the ground for the people in Gaza to say, look, I did this because I acknowledged Israel's...

I was successful because I acknowledge Israel's existence on right to safety and security. I coordinated with the Israelis. We're done with wars. We're done with being pawns. We are going to engage a nation building to build our nation to be the best... to make the best state of Palestine. What kind like the one of the things that I think is lacking is an internal Palestinian dialogue not between Hamas and Fethe But us as a people there's been no space for us to talk about what does it mean to be Palestinian? Who are we as a people? What kind of a nation do we want? Do we want? Okay, fine like of course we want the military occupation to end

But what were places the occupation? Is it is Islamist theocracy? Is it a democratic state? Are we eventually going to have? have like truly, you know, a law-based society where women and men are equal, where we don't have elements of the tribal kind of thinking, government, like, are we going to be a progressive society? Are we going to be, are we going to make it possible for women to wear short skirts and not be harassed? Like, all of those things, like as an identity, we lack that as Palestinians. And I want, I see that the moderate narrative, the pragmatic narrative, as being an enabler in that transformation and that renaissance. Well, that sounds incredible. The only thing I would say is, I hope in the doing that, you're very careful because my fear is understanding the history of the region as little as I do is anyone who's tried to pursue that path gets blown up or thrown off a building.

I was talking to a friend last night and I mean, again, am I wrong about this? No, you're right. You're absolutely right. So this is the problem is it's not a battle of narratives. It's about a battle of people who've got guns. And the people who are prepared to be more extreme, who are better armed, who are prepared to kill their political opponents, they're the ones that repeatedly end up in charge of portions of land around Israel. And they want armed resistance because it keeps them important. It keeps them rich. It keeps them in charge. Can I take a little detour and just I can't not say this because this is also. something that both the Palestinian people and the Israeli people

are paying the price of. But can we acknowledge that as much as I agree completely, Hamas wouldn't be where it's out without Iran and Qatar. Hamas, in part and directly and indirectly, would also not be

here without Netanyahu and his deliberate policy since 2009 when he was deliberately seeking to empower the group in pursuit of the delegitimization of the Palestinian authority, in pursuit of keeping the Palestinians divided. I'm saying very sadly,

and I'm a proponent of Palestinian agency, I'm a proponent of there's an imbalance of power, clearly with Israel having overwhelming power on numerous levels. That said, I am a believer that we have responsibilities and agency, and we have to have accountability. October 7 was a choice, not an inevitability. So even with all of that said, it is absolutely an indisputable fact. Mainline headlines in Israel will tell you that Hamas would not be.

Ehud Barak, former leader, Olmert, whom I met personally and talked to several times, will tell you Hamas would not be where it's at right now, not just in terms of their ability to carry out October 7th more disturbingly, and that they've had this long runway to spread the armed resistance narrative, to radicalize the education and the narrative, to radicalize Palestinian society, to chop off the legs and the heads of the Palestinians who want to promote a different narrative.

That was, like, where we're at in terms of the radicalization is inseparable from Israeli political choices. Well, cycles of violence always work like this, right? It's never one side's fault only. I guess what I'm just saying is in your efforts, I wish you all the luck in the world. I just hope you're very careful. Oh, believe me, I don't have, I mean, I'm, to be clear,

I survived, you know, a bombing. I'm largely, part of why I'm loud is I'm largely, mainly deaf in my left ear from an idea of bombing that killed two of my friends and almost killed me. I've been in direct war in Gaza and the Gush Katif settlement checkpoint. where we've been shot at. Like, I've experienced war

and I'm actually grateful to be alive. Like, I don't believe in martyrdom. I want to undermine the martyrdom narrative. So I care about living, believe it or not. And I don't want to be a martyr, but I very much so accept and embrace that what I'm doing right now, even here in the United States,

the amount of threats that I receive is unreal. I mean, I've had to get body armor and firearms and protect myself. And these are not just like online trolls, These are highly specialized people who go out of their way to be extremely descriptive in the type of threats. And we're going to rape your children and behead your wife. I don't have children or a wife. But people that just like go in sadistic terms and trying to terrify me.

And I was talking to a friend of mine last night. And I said, I embrace that my life expectancy may not be the highest as a result of this work that I'm doing. But I also genuinely think the number of. Arabs and Muslims and Palestinians who regularly cheer me on often in private. They tell me, you're saying what we know is true, but we can't say so publicly. Thank God someone else is saying it. The way that I've structured my life is I'm not like I have a lot of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim friends, but like everybody's my community.

I don't live my day-to-day life as part of that community here in the United States or anywhere else. So it doesn't matter if I get attacked. It doesn't matter if I get maligned by a man. if I get excommunicated from my community. Other people, unfortunately, they're at the mosque and they're the hookabar and they're the family gatherings. And so many people tell me in Palestine, in Gaza, in the United States, dude, I start to like say

things about Hamas, but my family have gone crazy. I start to challenge what's happening or like October 7 or to humanize Israeli hostages. But my family immediately jumped to like, well, what about our prisoners? What about this? What about that? So, like, I genuinely believe there are enough Ahmad's. Like, I speak for myself. I don't speak for anyone else. There are enough Ahmad's out there, whom, if given the space, the protection, the pathway,

the runway would absolutely come forward in significant enough numbers to change the narrative. But most importantly, the narrative shift cannot stand on its own. There have to be changes on the ground to improve the lives of people. people. And that's where, again, I want to do humanitarian projects in Gaza to be able to show my people that my positions, my shift in narrative is backed up by progress on the ground, meaning this is the way forward. This is how we de-radicalize. The other thing, too, is I want to do de-radicalization without, but I've been struggling until I come up with an alternative work to de-radicalization. I studied counterterrorism and security.

D-radicalization and encounters terrorism context alone is not going to cut it for the Palestinian story, particularly because of how, you know, like, this is a long conflict. This is not just, you know, we're, you know, so, and also de-radicalization inherently starts from a imbalance of, like, you're here, you're down here, oh, you're dirty, radical ones, let me clean you up and let me de-radicalize you. I want to do de-radicalization as a form of empowerment. That de-radicalization pays off. De-radicalization is progress for your life, for your family.

De-radicalization is part of that renaissance and that transformation. And I genuinely think there's hunger for that in the palace. Because did you know that the Palestinian people have the lowest illiteracy rates in the entirety of the Middle East? We don't lack an education. By the way, the other thing about the... Can I just stop you? Can I just stop you there?

And again, I'm loving the passion and what you're saying. But I look at the individuals that get radicalized in the UK. A lot of them are very educated. A lot of them are very intelligent. A lot of them went to university. This isn't necessarily about education. We're talking about something very different here, Ahmed, which is the power of ideology. Precisely.

And to me, education, okay, it may be part of it, but it's not the whole of it. like I said, there's lots of people, unfortunately, highly educated, highly intelligent, who fall for this toxic death cult. I couldn't agree more, brother. I mean, unfortunately, a lot of Hamas guys, they have PhDs. The issue, however, is that there hasn't been the moderate equivalent of ideology. Like, there isn't a moderate ideology. moderation and pragmatism are a set of ideas and tactical beliefs that we have to work with what the cards were dealt.

A, B, C, D, it's very like matter of fact. This is how to get results done. Moderation is not as sexy as radical ideas. It's not as appealing as connecting Palestine to the struggle against the Jews and the Zionist entity or connecting it to the broader, if you're a lot. leftists or anonymous, the broader decolonization and, you know, intersectionality. That's why you have the, you know, Queers for Palestine and somehow Queers Rights and, you know, BLM and Black Lives Matter issues are connected to the struggle of Palestinians in Gaza. There's an attempt to map out a lot of leftist and social justice discourse to the Israel and Palestine issue. And it's simply

not that. Palestine, Israel is not going to disappear per the South Africa model. There is this unfortunate belief among many that Israel is a temporary project that is passing. And this is not just an Islamist idea. This is part of the whole decolonizing left. And so that's the part that I struggle with because I'm, what I'm inspiring, what I go to Palestinians and I talk to them, what inspires them is I like the thought of having an airport that I can use to get in and out. I love the idea of a seaport.

I love the idea of like my home being rebuilt. Like I don't want any more war. I don't want any violence. I don't want any. But I haven't gone a step further. I haven't yet gone a step further in providing this counter ideology. But I struggle with that because I also think all ideologies in a sense are a form of fascism. Because you're just like with your team all the way and you can't have any nuance.

So I struggle with and I'd love to hear it like from you. Like, what could moderate ideology look like? Because people in today's fragmented world, in today's polarized world, they need something more than the Maslow hierarchy of needs. And ideology kind of sits at the top. And I don't know what replaces that beyond what I've been dabbling with and I've been talking to other Palestinians is to actually think about this. Like I said to a friend of mine, I want to be like the Theodore Herzl of the Palestinian people.

I want to create the Palestinian equivalent of the Zionist movement in the sense of what is our idea? Who are we as a people? What does it mean to be Palestinian? How do you express Palestinianism and Palestinian identity? Is it a set of beliefs? Is it tied to the land? Is it our connection to the Arab and Muslim world? And then once we figure out this identity, like how do we inspire?

Like in the same way that birthright brings all these young. Jewish kids who know nothing about Israel are not really in touch with their with their with their with Israel or with their Jewish heritage and identity They go to Israel and they get inspired and it's maybe not as exactly an ideology But there's this inspirational connection to Israel So similarly I want to do an inspirational connection to peace and coexistence as a courageous evolution that is necessary to to preserve the Palestinian people and to allow the further prosperity and the renaissance of the Palestinian people.

Because again, we've been victims, yes, of Israeli policies and occupation, but we've also been victims of horrendous leadership. I said earlier, we had the pan-Arabism of Nassar in the 50s and 60s. We have the PLOs secularism and the PFLPs, Marxism, and Hamas' Islamism now.

Different ideologies, but unfortunately the same destructive outcome. So to me, it's about working with religious leaders. It's about working with religious leaders having a better, more tolerant version of Islam, and not this extremist strand, which is radicalizing. Because until you deal with the extreme mullahs, to me, looking at Lebanon and like, I don't know what I'm really talking about here. But you look at what's happening in the UK,

a lot of these kids get radicalized in mosques. They get radicalized by extremist mullers. You need to deal with that in the same way that the UAE have come down and really cracked down. Because until you deal with those types of individuals, those groups, that rhetoric, nothing is going to be allowed to flourish. Nothing can flourish in extremism, apart for more extremism, death, destruction, misery. And that's why I think your big hope comes in because you would hope that after everything that has happened, there's a hunger for stability and peace in Gaza. I'm sure there are a lot of very angry people there too. Absolutely.

But ultimately, as we talked about, the way this ends is people have to accept on both sides the reality that's on the ground. You can, you can, Israel has nuclear weapons for God's sake. I mean, you can keep attacking it, but ultimately, this isn't going to work. And more and more children are going to die. However, this is where the religious dimension comes in. Because if you think your children are going to heaven because they blue, themselves up on a bus somewhere, then you've got a problem. But may I also bring in another critical component?

I talk to Israelis across the political spectrum. In the same way, and I understand someone would say that there might be more of an issue on one side over the other, we're also going to need to do de-radicalization in Israel, unfortunately, because Israel has been so significantly radicalized from a religious point of view and politically. They're not just fringe parties. They are the government. They are the main representative. And there are Israelis, including diehard Zionists that I talk to, who are internally genuinely terrified of the direction in which the country, and the smart, you know, secular, big business people, a lot of them are leaving and they're going to Europe or they're going

to the United States. So here's the difference, Ahmed, I think, again, correct me if I'm wrong. Israel is a democracy. If the people of Israel felt secure, felt that they were not vulnerable to more attacks, that they have a peaceful neighbor about which they don't need to worry, they wouldn't vote in people like Benjamin Netanyahu. That's the difference. So in a democracy, as people feel more comfortable, they will not vote in people who are that aggressive

or who they feel they need on a wartime basis, right? Now, I agree to a large extent in that the right wing in Israel would not be where they're at had it not been for Hamas and other forms of Palestinian extremism. Nevertheless, again, looking back at the West Bank, even though there are instances of violence here and there, for most of the last 15 years, if you will, you have the Palestinian Authority with U.S. funding and support and training, coordinating with Israel, keeping Hamas out. Yes, some armed guys and Janine and Nablis and in the northern parts of the West Bank they're there every now and then

every now and then you'll get a shooting here and there but what I'm saying is there was no particular threat from the West Bank and yet the wall in there, the separation wall, the barrier, the security wall. And yet there was further radicalization

within Israeli society that resulted in the worsening of the settlements. I'm not dismissing what you're saying. I'm saying that there's a strain of radicalism within Israel that, quite frankly, no longer believes it's necessary to have peace with the Palestinians. They view the conflict in purely security mindset that you can manage the occupation.

Yeah, totally. I think that's true. I think after October 7th is hard to see why they wouldn't feel that way, right? And so that's why I think that's why I think. I think what you're saying is very important that as there is less violence, the hope is that both sides can move towards an appreciation of the fact that that's actually better than what they have now. And going back to what you said earlier about the religious component. I mean, I'm fascinated by some of the deradicalization attempts or efforts that are more top down and that they are quickly implemented. They tend to work in the short term. There are questions about when the person up top is gone,

when the policies no longer top down, will it actually last in a grassroots sense? That's one. And then I talked to an Indonesian major religious figure, and he said that we have aspirations as a government as Muslim organizations in Indonesia to engage in de-radicalization and to normalize relations with Israel. But because we're a democracy, unlike parts of the Arab world and the Gulf,

we can't do the top-down approach. We're elected, and our constituencies are susceptible to these radicalization when it comes to the Israel issue and when it comes to normalizing Indonesian relations with Israel. So the other thing is that I talked to just three days ago, a very senior Egyptian official who described to me the de-radicalization of Egypt after the 2013 overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood and how people in Egypt unfortunately, unfortunately rather, turned against the Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood. They turned against the instability that that came with it. And part of the de-radicalization in Egypt wasn't just prosperity and progress, but it was about the Egyptian nation and nationalism and progress and protecting the Egyptian state.

He said, unfortunately, a lot of that has been reversed since October 7. He said the death and destruction in Gaza and the Egyptian state and its security apparatus and its political and diplomatic apparatuses are struggling to contain the boiling within Egyptian society. whereby years worth of using al-Azhar and the religious institutions in part organically in part top down you make progress but it gets undone by political events or by the horrors that are happening in Gaza I've talked to Jewish partners and friends here in New York who engaged in a whole host of interfaith communication and dialogue with the Muslim community and they felt utterly betrayed and disillusion when October 7 happened

and not one of the Muslim leaders within New York City came out and said anything to acknowledge the humanity of Israeli hostages or Israeli victims of October 7 and they were questioning like I've spent years of my life working on this interfaith work and October 7 in a sense shattered it and so that's like this this conflict, the massacre on October 7 and the horrendous war that followed afterwards, is presenting never seen before trends of radicalization, of the tensions rising and the temperatures rising in between different communities, of nation states having a hard time quelling internal dissent.

The Jordanians are struggling just like the Egyptians with containing their populations right on the borders. and I don't know what the long-term answer is to that. Beyond, of course, agreeing that there needs to be de-radicalization, but that will only work if it is coupled with progress on the ground to show that basically de-radicalization gives you better life. It's a positive transformation. And more importantly, it has to be matched with a broader renaissance

that transforms the mindset of the Palestinian. people in Gaza to think we're going to invest all of our time and resources into turning this into the pride and joy of the Palestinian people. And I want to be a part of that. There are numerous people that are 50 times smarter than me who want to be a part of that. Unfortunately, in the short term, it is hopeless in the sense that I don't know how long this war is going to go on. Hamas is a deadly menace and it's going to fight on to the last Gaza. And that's where I don't think some of those improvements, I think we need to start acting now and not wait for this end of the war, which might go on for another year, particularly if the results of the U.S.

elections sway one direction or another. That could very much have a serious impact on the war in Gaza, could also open up opportunities for some to do more of the direct confrontation with Iran. and that may prove advantageous, it may be a disaster, but I don't think we should wait until the end of the war to start improving the realities on the ground for people in Gaza to have these safe zones, to have these clusters, because then the community can formally feel safe and protected from Hamas. Then they can potentially give intelligence and information

if they know anything about the remaining hostages. Then we can see the emergence of organic leadership in these clusters. that could prevent Hamas from coming into their neighborhoods, that could prevent Hamas from reconstituting as a government, and that could protect guys like me. I mean, you think, I don't think, some people are like, oh, you're so courageous, you're so, this and that. It's like, dude, I'm in the United States, okay?

Like, I have the ability to speak my mind. Imagine being an Ahmed in Gaza right now, and there are many, many, many Ahmads that message me on a regular basis. So, while it's depressing on one hand that my mind, my life expectancy might not be that high because of the work that I'm doing. It is also inspiring that there are enough of me and with enough of a critical mass, they'll take me out, they'll take 10 other guys out, but there'll still be enough of a base there that moves the needle on this issue

in favor of a prosperous Gaza. Ahmed, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We wish you all the very best with your endeavors and fight the good fight. Before we move on to Substack, where our supporters get to ask their questions to you, we always end on the final question, which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? I think we're not talking enough about the moderate Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims

that exist. We see so much of the radical elements. We see so many of the loud voices. We're not talking about the fact that just statistically, it's impossible that all Arabs or all Palestinians or all Muslims or all pro-Palestine people are radical. There are others out there like me who unfortunately, like when I talk to big major media outlets, I mean, I've been published in a lot of them, but I'm not very sexy. Like if I said I'm like healing and reconciliation and I lost my family members. I'm pissed at Israel, but I don't want to

annihilate Israel. I believe in Israel's right to exist. I want to make peace with Israelis. For some people that's inspiring, but if I were like, Israel killed my family and I will seek revenge and they will never know peace in my life. Like, I'm willing to bet you that the New York Times would run that op-ed of mine. But when I submit an op-ed saying, Israel killed my family and I want peace and coexistence, that's not going to click, you know. There are many like me here in America and our Jewish allies and brothers and sisters, our non-Jewish friends, policy makers, media Like we should seek them out. We should empower them.

We're not talking enough about them because we're so like, oh, they're flying Hamas flag. Oh, this is so repulsive. We're focused on talking about the radicals, but forgetting that just statistically, they might not be outspoken, but there are plenty of moderate voices. And those are the ones that we need to elevate. Make it sexy to be moderate.

Make it appealing and attractive to be a moderate. Made moderate's great again. Exactly. Well, that's why we wanted to have you on this, been a real pleasure. Head on over to Substack to hear Ahmed answer your questions. How dangerous is it to exist as a Palestinian in Gaza while harboring anti-Hamas views? And, and this is the important bit, what is your best guest as to the percentage of the population that is in that camp?