Omar Suleiman: Palestine, Gaza, Oct 7, Israel, Resistance, Faith & Islam | Lex Fridman Podcast #411

You always know when you live in Gaza that it's only a matter of time before the next bombs drop. You know, if you're in Gaza that you are waiting for your death. People dream about going out in the world and pursuing education. People dream about going out in the world and pursuing economic opportunity in Gaza. Your idea of opportunity is an opportunity to see the next year. That has been the case. And so when we talk about, you know, this not existing in a vacuum, if people only hear about Gaza on October 7, that is a major part of the problem and that is again, part of the problem of our ignorance and our apathy. Right. Why is it that the plight of the people of Gaza is not brought up until an attack happens on Israel?

The following is a conversation with Imam Dr. Omar Suleiman, his second time on the podcast. He is a Palestinian American, a Muslim scholar, a civil rights leader, president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, and is one of the most influential Muslims in the world. Our previous conversation was focused on Islam. This time the focus was on Gaza and Palestine. This is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Omar Suleiman. What did you think, feel and pray for in the days that followed October 7th?

I think the first feeling was that there's going to be a lot of death and destruction in Gaza as a result. Right. We always kind of see this where one Israeli casualty leads to hundreds of Palestinian casualties. Right. So it's a pretty familiar cycle in some ways where there are daily transgressions against Palestinians in the west bank and in Gaza. The checkpoints, the aggression on Masjid Al Aqsa, the settlements expanding, the stories of Palestinian death. And then you have rockets fired from Gaza and that's when the Western press catches up and starts to cover it. Israel responds with hellfire missiles, white phosphorus bombs, and the casualties are white, wildly disproportionate. And so I think that, you know, I wasn't surprised. I prayed for the people that I knew were going to bear the brunt of this outbreak. But the outbreak was predictable.

You wrote a statement on October 9th. I was hoping to read it if it's okay.

Yeah, go ahead.

Our Palestinian casualties are always your footnotes. The daily humiliation of occupation ignored, the aggression by settlers and soldiers alike on holy sites and souls. The annihilation of entire families that follows, the devastation of whatever scraps remain in the open air prison of Gaza, unsustainable and inhumane. So if you're waking up to A sudden interest in the region and want to know what's been happening. Dig a bit deeper than two weeks and try to read beyond the headlines of a media that has been dehumanizing us for decades.

Again, this was not surprising. This was very predictable. If you've been watching what's been unfolding before. October 7, 2021, Human Rights Watch puts out the report threshold reached. Israel is an apartheid state. Amnesty International, 2022, the crime of apartheid, Showing how all of the legal determinations of apartheid have been reached. The occupation is only getting more aggressive. Shereen Abu Akla, a Palestinian American journalist, is shot dead in 2022 in front of the world. The United States says initially that if it is shown that Israel was complicit or that Israel carried out the execution, then there will be consequences. Of course, once it was shown that Israel was indeed responsible for the bullet that killed Sherina Barakla, the United States did absolutely nothing. Shireen's funeral was attacked. The pal bearers were beaten. Her casket almost fell. And again, the world is watching. The aggression against worshippers in Al Aqsa is getting worse. You have the flag march, the Jerusalem flag march, where extremist settlers are let loose and wild on Palestinians by the thousands, chanting things like, muhammad is dead. We're going to murder you Arabs all with the protection of the state, with Israeli soldiers. And throughout this time, it's like something bad is going to happen. And then 2023 comes along. You had 13,000 settler units in 2023, a plan of 13,000 settler units, the most in the history of the occupation, the most racist and extremist government, Israeli government, that you have ever had. And people don't realize that in 2023 alone, over 600 Palestinians had already been killed. It just doesn't make Western headlines. And so if you wonder why the American public sees this so much differently than the rest of the world, it's because American media shows the American public something so much different than what the rest of the world has shown. And so this was a pressure cooker. This was going to explode. It is extremely predictable. You've given people absolutely no hope. And so I think that as we're watching that, it's important for us to actually interrogate the ignorance that people have of the Palestinian plight, the ignorance of the root causes of this violence, the ignorance of the occupation, and also ask yourselves, you know, why is it that Israel can violate every single international law on the books, have all these determinations, and the United States keeps on issuing these inconsequential statements, while also at the same time funding these aggressions. So it's like, stop the settler violence. The United States will issue statement after statement. Stop the settler violence. Stop the incursions on Masjid Al Aqsa. Stop violating the people in Jerusalem. Stop trying to wipe out the Palestinian people. Stop openly saying that there is no two state solution, that we will never allow a Palestinian state to be established. But at the same time, here's your $3 billion check. And if the United nations issues any sort of resolution against Israel, or if any international body tries to hold Israel accountable, the United States stands in the way of any accountability. It's important for us to ask why. And so I always tell people, read beyond the headlines. Even now, with the backdrop of a genocide, over 30,000 people have been killed. If you open the front page of most American mainstream sites, you will see stories about the hostages, the Israeli hostages. You will see stories about October 7th. But October 8th is missing. October 9th is missing. October 10th is missing. 100 days of genocide are missing. And you'll barely have a story that shows up every once in a while that is still very much so controlled by the Israeli propaganda machine. Because while Israel kills Palestinian journalists, it also makes sure that American journalists are only able to tell a certain story. They're only able to see Gaza from a certain perspective. They're only able to speak about Gaza from a certain perspective. And this is well documented that they have to review their media tapes with Israel before they can publicize them. And so this is state propaganda. At this point, the mainstream media and the United States government are in lockstep telling a very skewed story, and that is leading to a greater sense of frustration. And I think the American public has been wronged as well by not knowing what's happening.

So you mentioned settlements. So to you, this is bigger than Gaza. It is the West bank, it is the Palestinian people.

Broadly, absolutely. You can't disconnect Gaza from Palestine. You can't disconnect the west bank from Palestine. You can't disconnect Jerusalem from Palestine, and you can't disconnect the very human story from the political plight. You interviewed Mohamed Al Kurd. You met him. What did the world do when it saw the images of the Qurd household being taken over by a guy from Brooklyn or Long island who just shows up and lays claim to their home. What did the world do when American settlers suddenly decided they could walk into historic Palestinian homes and throw people out of their homes? What did the world do? And so, yes, this is Very much so connected to the broader issue of Palestinian existence. If you realize here we are erased in peace, and we are erased in war. In peace, it's the Abraham Accords, agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which is supposedly to solve the Palestinian problem. But Palestinians are absent from their own fate, from discussions about their own fate. In war, it's the Israel Hamas war. It's Israel and Gaza. Where are the Palestinian people, the millions of Palestinian people that have either been removed from their land or are being tormented on their land, where are they.

In this discussion, what are the Palestinians in the diaspora feeling?

I think deeply frustrated. A great sense of anger, sadness. Every single Palestinian right now knows someone that's been killed. Every single Palestinian is a part of a story of displacement or destruction. Every single Palestinian has a relative that's either missing a limb or a loved one. Every single Palestinian in the world is traumatized by this. And in some ways, being outside of Palestine, being away from it all hurts even more because. Because you see your people being killed and starved and brutalized and slaughtered, and you can't do anything about it. And the people around you are justifying that slaughter. If you turn on a TV or if you open a mainstream news site, these sites are justifying your slaughter. And people are being killed over there because they look like me, because they're Palestinian, like I'm Palestinian. And so we're watching this and they diaspora with agony. We can't go. We can't. We can't heal our loved ones. We can't comfort the people that are there. I recently spoke to a doctor who's lost 75 relatives, 75 relatives in Gaza. And he's a medical doctor, and all he wants to do is get in there and just use his medical expertise to help his people, and he can't. And so we're watching it from afar, but our hearts are there. They are in the buildings that are being destroyed. They're in the hospitals that are being bombed. They are there and they are with the people.

You're somebody who's always rushed into the midst of a crisis. So what does it feel like on a personal level to not be able to do that here, to go to Gaza to help?

Yeah, it's. It's really hard. I mean, when any group of people are killed, my instinct, and I think a lot of people, is to go there to help, whether it's a natural disaster or especially after an incident of terror, wherever it is. Right. It's rush there and do the best that you can to help people get through it. So it's been extremely hard to watch this from afar and feel like I can't do anything about it. And so that's why instead, I think that most of us are driven to continue to be the voice of the voiceless. You know, I always say that if they've made them faceless, they can't make us voiceless. They have reduced our casualties in Palestine to a number. The number is hundreds a day, over 30,000 people. We're averaging 10,000 people a month. The fact that they've been turned into faceless numbers with no stories, with no humanity, makes it that much more important for us to tell their stories here and to remind the world that you've lost your humanity. If you can watch this unfold and not even have the decency to call for a ceasefire, I mean, that's the. That's where we've reached. That's how low it is right now. Calling for a ceasefire has now become radical. So we have to remind the world that if you're okay with the demolition of an entire town or a city or whatever it is that you want to call Gaza, because it wasn't always the Gaza Strip, but if you're okay with this, and you're okay with this casualty count every single day, it's not just them who are being killed. It's your hearts that are dying. And I think that when I look back to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And I mentioned this, he wrote about Vietnam. He said that if America was to succumb to its spiritual death, the autopsy would read Vietnam. I would say that it would read Gaza. Now.

Speaking of the people, the faces, the voices, one of the people you've talked about, you've posted about, you've written about is while aldh him being hospitalized, he's a Palestinian journalist and bureau chief of Al Jazeera in Gaza City. What can you tell me about this man?

If Walla Dahdukh wasn't Palestinian, he'd be on the COVID of Time magazine right now. He would be the most celebrated journalist in the world. Wael Adahduh is from Gaza. He has been in Israeli prisons. He has been under Israeli airstrikes. He has seen the worst of the occupation before. He's seen the worst of the genocide while on tv. I mean, and this is. This is insane when you think about it. We have over a hundred journalists now, right? That's more than any conflict in history that have been killed. And there is sufficient evidence by international watchdogs that this is intentional, that journalists have been killed intentionally. But then their families was reporting on TV when an airstrike hits his wife, two kids and a grandchild. He goes to the scene and he said this. You know, you never expect as a journalist to be the subject of the story. Suddenly the camera's on him, mourning over his dead wife and kids and grandkid. And he's saying, he even says it in Arabic. He says, they're taking it out on our children. They're taking it out on our children. You know, I've heard this from multiple people that have had relatives targeted, that I wish it was me instead. He gets back on camera the same day because he feels a responsibility to continue to cover the lives of the people of Gaza. He understands that his story, as devastating as it is, is not unique in regards to the people of Gaza, that there are many people whose families have been killed in airstrikes. All 2 million people have been traumatized in some way. And so he gets back on camera, tells the story again, and then he is targeted himself. His arm struck. His cameraman, Samara Abu Dhaka, dies in front of him. He bleeds out. Dwael watches him bleed out for hours. And while any aid workers try to reach them in the building that they were in, snipers would shoot all of those that were rushing to Sama. So he watches his cameraman and one of his best friends bleed out to death while goes to the hospital. His arm is wrapped up, gets treatment. He's back on camera the next day. A few weeks later, another child is killed again with his friend in a car. So this was a targeted airstrike. His son is driving, and his son and his best friend are hit in an airstrike while it leads the funeral prayer. Is back on camera again. And speaks with such dignity, with such compassion. You know, one of the things that always gets to me as, as a Palestinian, right, and as a Muslim too, is that we are portrayed to be these beasts and savages. Tell me a man that would be put through, what was put through and still stand on that, on that pulpit and in front of the world with such dignity, with such grace, continues to tell the story. Wael has become a hero to many of us, and he would be a hero in a world that wasn't anti Palestinian. And unfortunately, Wael has not only lost his family, he's not only lost much of his own existence, but Waal is part of the greater story of erasure. So even though he's telling the story of the people of Gaza, and he is the story of the people of Gaza, Most people will never learn about Walid Dahdu.

You have posted videos and written about what is happening in Gaza since October 7th. What has been happening there, the individual stories and the broader impact on the 2 million people there.

Gaza has been described as the world's largest open air prison. Unemployment blockaded from all directions, no airport regular, added restrictions placed even on their ability to fish. So every aspect of Gazdan life has been under occupation. I would argue that it's an injustice to even call it an open air prison because inmates are not bombed in prisons routinely by the most sophisticated weapons in the world, regular bombardment of Gaza. Every single person in Gaza has lived through multiple rounds of bombardment. It is deeply distressing. You know, I remember in 2021, there was an image that I will never forget of children having to go back to school after the bombardment of 2021. And next to them they would have the empty chairs and the posters of the child that used to sit in that chair. I think what encapsulates it most for me, an image that I grew up with, was the image of Muhammad Al Durrah, who was in his father's lap over 20 years ago and his father was begging for Israel to spare his child. And Muhammad was murdered in his lap. And you know what happened this last round? His other kids were murdered. So Muhammad's brothers were murdered and his father's been on the run. Every single person in Gaza has witnessed multiple wars, has witnessed the greatest suffocation of occupation, has even had their diets restricted and has suffered under Israel's state policy, which is called mowing the lawn. And everyone should look this up. This is what Israeli ministers refer to as routine bombardment of Gaza. Mowing the lawn, which shows you that before they called us animals, they considered us insects. And unfortunately the casualty counts get higher and higher every time and people become more and more desperate, more and more helpless, has been unfortunately the worst manifestation of anti Palestinian bigotry. It's already, I mean, 60% of the population is a refugee population. What that means, and people do need to understand this, is that people move to Gaza from other parts of occupied territory to find refuge and we're practically living on top of each other. There are people that are in the Gaza Strip that know that they had homes right beyond that apartheid wall and those homes were stolen from them and they can't even enter that territory anymore. And they know that on the other side of that wall, there's life. On the other side of that wall, there's opportunity on the other side of that wall, you have a passport, you have an airport, you have the ability to travel, you have the ability to export and import. You can dream. But behind that wall, you are to live until the next airstrike. You are to live until Israel mows the lawn again and hope that you're not part of the grass. That's what Gaza has been all of these years.

So pragmatically and psychologically, it is very difficult to flourish when you're just waiting.

For more bombardment because you know that it's around the corner. You always know when you live in Gaza that it's only a matter of time before the next bombs drop. You know if you're in Gaza that you are waiting for your death. People dream about going out in the world and pursuing education. People dream about going out in the world and pursuing economic opportunity. In Gaza, your idea of opportunity is an opportunity to see the next year. That has been the case. And so when we talk about this not existing in a vacuum, if people only hear about Gaza on October 7, that is a major part of the problem. And that is again part of the problem of our ignorance and our apathy. Right? Why is it that the plight of the people of Gaza is not brought up until an attack happens on Israel?

I've gotten a chance to witness a destroyed school in Ukraine. That's something that is really difficult to see.

You have over a hundred destroyed mosques. Every university in Gaza has been demolished. We're seeing tik tok videos of Israeli soldiers laughing and singing as they press a button. And we see the demolition of every single university in Gaza. Schools have been reduced to rubble. There's a cultural genocide as well. I want you to think about what you saw in Ukraine. Look, imagine coming back to school in Gaza and some destroyed building. You're missing legs, you're missing arms. You have white phosphorus burns. Have you ever seen what white phosphorus does to a person? There's a reason why it's a war crime. You have white phosphorus burns. Your mom's dead, your dad's dead. All of your uncles and aunts are dead. All of your siblings are dead. Somehow you got pulled out of the rubble. You know, in my own family, my father's in laws, my father remarried after my mother passed away and they're in Gaza. All of them were killed in an airstrike, except for an elderly aunt who somehow made it out of the rubble a day later. If you're a child that's been pulled out of the rubble, what are you going to grow up with. I mean, what are you supposed to feel? What are you supposed to think? And then you have, you know, racist commentators that say they could have turned that into a Singapore. You know, the Palestinians are the authors of their own destruction because if they wanted to, they could have turned this into a place of prosperity. But they keep on bringing destruction upon themselves. So at the root of this is a bigotry and again, this idea that Palestinians are savages, they're animals, and the only way to deal with them is to continuously mow the lawn while simultaneously expanding the occupation and erasing anything that was ever called Palestine and any human being that was ever called a Palestinian.

So those kids growing up in Gaza now, to you, they have almost no choice but to have hatred for Israel.

It's human. I mean, look, any child that is under that type of oppression is going to hate their oppressor. I don't care who you are, I don't care what you are. But here's my problem with how that gets brought up. You're talking about the future of the security of Israel. Even some people that speak about it, seemingly from a place of being, well, meaning, that say the only way that Israel can have its security is to stop killing Palestinians. And so the future of Israel depends upon Palestinians not hating Israel so much. And so we've got to stop tormenting these people so that they don't grow up to want to torment us. You've already decided then whose life is worth more than the other. And so instead of talking about the future of Israeli lives, why don't you talk about the present of Palestinian lives? Instead of talking about whether or not your state will be secure in the future. Talk to me about why you're killing children now. Two thirds of the 30,000 civilians are women and children. And so we can't talk about what these children are going to grow up with. We should talk about whether or not these children are going to grow up in the first place. And that should be what dominates our conscience right now and what drives our policies and what drives our emotions right now.

So when I had a conversation with Elon Musk, he suggested that what Israel should do is conspicuous acts of kindness. So do as much positive things in Gaza as possible on a basic, individual, human level and at a policy level, at every level. What do you think about that?

I mean, you don't pass out candy in a concentration camp. You end the occupation. And so there has to be a solution that is beyond merely acts of kindness. At the end of the day, if you're occupying a people, you have to remove that occupation. Apartheid is not dealt with by acts of kindness on the part of the occupying power. Apartheid is dealt with by ending apartheid. And so there has to be a level of accountability. It's not just acts of kindness. It's not just treating the people with more dignity. It's giving them the ability to pursue their own dignity. There's a reason why it's called Palestinian self determination. The United States likes to use it in all of its inconsequential statements that we, we need Palestinian self determination too. But the United States also voted against 138 states in the United nations to allow for Palestinian self determination. Self determination means I get to pursue my own course of worth. I get to pursue my own happiness. I don't have to depend on the benevolence of my occupier. And when my occupier feels like throwing me a few more crumbs, it has to end. There has to be a point now where the world says this is not sustainable. It's not just about ending the present genocide. A ceasefire is the bare minimum. I think any decent human being would be calling for a ceasefire right now. But at some point, you cease occupation, you cease apartheid. Because what led to the ability of Israel to carry out a genocide without any accountability was that the global arena has permitted it to do so, largely due to American obstruction of justice.

Is violence an effective method of resistance?

So the framework that I would propose is that Dr. King mentioned that peace is not the absence of violence, it's the presence of justice. And so occupation and apartheid are violent even in their most benevolent manifestations. The default of occupation is that it is unjustified. The default of apartheid is that it is unjustified and it must be dealt with. The default of resistance to occupation and apartheid is that it is justified. But there can be transgressions even in resisting occupation and apartheid. Right? And I come to this from an Islamic perspective. My moral framework is Islam. The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was outraged when he saw a woman or a child that was dead from the other side, the side of his persecutors. And so, yes, you know, we have a saying as Muslims that they are not our teachers, our oppressors are not our teachers. But the concept of resistance to occupation, it is morally justified. It is justified by international law. Any occupied people have the right to defend themselves. We talk about Israel's right to defend itself. Israel is the occupier. Any occupied people by international law have the right to defend themselves and any occupation is unjustified and illegal. And so that's where I start from. That's the point that I come to this with. I think that the problem is, is that the Palestinians are told find better ways to resist, and then they are demonized when they try to find any other way to resist. You know, if you go back a few years ago, you had the Great Return March. People in Gaza marched to the wall in what was one of the most inspiring protests or demonstrations that I had ever seen. March to the wall, nonviolent protest, and snipers took out their legs. AP actually documented that Israeli snipers had knee counts where you had an Israeli soldier that would say, I took out 45 knees. They actually had a register, a scroll of knee counts. And so you have all these kids in Gaza walking around without legs now because they were targeted by snipers when they marched to the wall. We're told to find methods of nonviolent resistance. But when we boycott, when we launch boycotts around the world in response to this transgression, in response to this ongoing oppression that the world powers have shown either the inability or the unwillingness to rein in, we're told that that's anti Semitic, even though it is based on the South African method of bringing an end to the apartheid regime there. So don't respond with violence, don't respond nonviolently, don't protest, don't try to use people power in the face of global impotence at the political level. Instead, let's just keep talking about the two state solution. And while talking about the two state solution, if you were to look at a map, under every single Israeli regime, conservative or liberal, whatever it is, the settlements have expanded. More Palestinian land has disappeared, more Palestinians have been dispossessed, more Palestinians have been killed. And so we have these little pieces of land that keep on shrinking and Jerusalem keeps disappearing. And there's aggression whether Palestinians are resisting or not. But then we're told, why can't you people just pursue peace? Why can't you just believe in a better way? All along we're hearing Israeli ministers become far more radical and open about their intentions to wipe us off the face of the earth. And that is actually their policy. It's not just slogans, it's not fringe elements, actual Israeli ministers, starting from the Prime Minister himself, who has executed a policy of the removal of all Palestinian lands and Palestinian lives. And then we're told, peace, peace, peace, peace. And it is awfully ugly when you use the language of Peace to suffocate the work of justice. You know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. One of his early sermons was something along the lines of when peace is obnoxious. When peace is obnoxious. It was in the 1950s, around the Montgomery bus boycott. And he talked about how this obsession with the language of peace is usually used to try to keep people in status quo and make them complacent with their miserable situation. That has been the story of the Palestinian people, that they've been told that if you do things differently, then you will find peace. But everything the Palestinians have tried, inside and outside, has been met with repression, the most violent forms of it there in Gaza and beyond. And so, look, I start from the place of wanting to see peace. I want to see a situation in which no innocent people lose their lives. But we have to analyze the situation with some justice, with some fairness. What would any group of people do in this situation? That doesn't mean that you hope for hell. That means that you analyze the existing circumstances of hell, which was life in Gaza even before October 7th.

That said, you did talk about wild akdaktuq and dignity, and you mentioned transgressions. So there is places where violence can go too far.

Absolutely. So violence, again, the point is, is that you, you ask yourself why we've been silent about the violence all of this time. And you know what? When people say, well, what about this? What about that? My response is this. What I would love to see is effective international bodies of justice being able to rein in any party that has committed an act of aggression or committed an act of injustice and hold them accountable. Any reasonable human being would say, yeah, you know what, there should be effective international bodies that can reign in, parties that can't be reined in domestically, that could stop the violence, that could assign blame properly, and then have methods of accountability. The problem is, is that Israel has been made invincible in the international arena because of the United States. And then we wonder why there's such a rise in global anti American sentiment. It's not because of American freedom. It's because America is directly participating, the United States government is directly participating in the worst genocide that we have ever seen in our lives, right, playing out on screen, you know, on social media, and we can't do anything about it. So I think that the point is, is that we need those international bodies. We need methods of effective accountability. And I would love to see blame properly assigned. And anyone that kills any innocent human being, take into account anyone that is guilty of a war crime, take into Account, we have to ask ourselves, why is it that Israel has violated over 63 United nations resolutions, has expanded its occupation, has killed over 600 Palestinians before October 7? Why is it that Israel cannot be held accountable? And so when you talk about, you know, words that get thrown around, you know, that are used to justify violence against more innocent people, you know, when I'm asked about terrorism, is it only terrorism if it's a non state actor? If someone's sitting inside a room, you know of suits and can press a button and terrorize thousands of people and murder innocent people with no consequences, how is that not terrorism? So if terrorism is only to be assigned to non state actors, then it's a word without function. In fact, it's a word that justifies more terror that is then rained upon innocent populations. We have to have moral consistency. Children should not be killed. Non combatants should not be targeted. We can all agree upon that. Why aren't there proper investigative bodies and then proper international bodies of accountability then that can execute their findings in a way that makes the world a better place, in a way that actually brings about more peace? And so I think this is where we're at right now and this is the frustration and this is the place that the Palestinians have been left to you.

Violence becomes terrorism when women and children, non combatants, are killed, no matter who is doing the killing.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

In America, for you, for other Palestinians, other Muslims in your community. What has all of this been like?

It feels like there's a, a return to some of the days after 9, 11, the dehumanization, the feeling of complete disregard for our humanity at the level of government, at the level of media, feeling of an increase in surveillance, the feeling in an increase in bigotry. People are losing their jobs and people are being berated on campuses, in grocery stores and people are being killed. You know, I went to the funeral of a six year old boy who was killed directly due to anti Palestinian propaganda. And so I think that a lot of us are feeling a return to that. But we also refuse to be cornered into a position where we are told to perpetually condemn acts of violence and not speak about the violence that's committed against us here abroad.

Can you tell the story of this boy, Wadiya Al Fayom? He's a 6 year old Palestinian American boy who was stabbed 26 times in his home in Plainfield Township, Illinois. It was found to be a hate crime motivated by Islamophobia. And the attacker said, you Muslims must die.

So before Wadir was killed, Wadir was Killed on a Saturday. It was the immediate Saturday after October 7th. I remember on Friday, media starts to reach out to every imam in the country, every Muslim leader in the country and say, what are you going to do about this global day of jihad? What are you going to do about the global day of jihad? It's like, what are you talking about? It's like, well, Hamas has called for a global day of jihad, so how are you going to stop Muslims from attacking people? Right? So it's Friday and I'm like, well this is the first I'm hearing from you. And I remember responding to a local reporter. Most people I just ignored. I responded to a local reporter. I said, I've got people in my community that have already lost 10, 15 relatives at that point. Now it's 2030 and you haven't said a word. And now you're reaching out to me about the potential violence of Muslims in America. This is great. This is just like 9 11, right? What are you going to do to restrain you angry Muslims from responding to what's happening overseas and responding to the call of a global day of jihad. Guess what? That night this man takes out a military knife and attacks a six year old boy, a six year old Palestinian boy, by the way. It gets worse the more details that you know. And I recently had a chance to go and speak to his mom because she was in the hospital when I was there for the funeral. So I had a chance to visit her not too long ago and she was attacked also. She was attacked first. It was actually their landlord. So Hanan, the mother was at home with Wadir, six year old boy, landlord comes in and with absolutely no emotion, just charges at her, starts with her. She was able to fight him off. Stabbed her initially seven or eight times with a military grade knife. She fought him off, escaped to call 911. And while she's calling 911, she hears Wadir. Wadir ran up to the man, calling him Uncle Joe. Because the landlord prior to that had been kind to them, used to give Wadir toys. Wadir had an infectious beautiful smile. Every picture you see of that kid, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful smile. And so Wadir runs up to him, says uncle Joe. He runs up to him to give him a hug even though he's carrying a military grade knife with blood on it. Because Wadir doesn't believe that harm can come to him from that man. And Hanan didn't think that he would do anything to her kid, even in that fit of rage. The last thing that she says she heard was oh no. You know, Wadiyar says, oh no. And then he starts to stab him 26 times, says, you Muslims must die. Usually in a scene like that, police are hesitant to classify something as a hate crime. It was classified as a hate crime the very same day. The thing is that who's complicit in that hate crime? What filled that man's head for him to believe that he was doing an act of good by murdering a 6 year old Palestinian boy. And in reality, Uncle Joe was motivated by President Joe Biden who repeated a debunked report that there were 40 beheaded Israeli babies. And he said, I saw 40 beheaded Israeli babies. The White House walked it back afterwards in a statement that no one reads because it was factually false. But Uncle Joe heard it and had been binge watching media about these violent Palestinians and suddenly the propaganda overcame his own humanity and what he knew of that family. And he went in and ruined their lives. And you know, now, you know, just like any, any mom, you know, she hasn't moved the thing. His bike is still in the same place it was. Toys are still in the same place. She's left with this great void, this great emptiness. If that was the only crime, it would be enough to wake this country up and say, oh no, this is not where we need to go. Oh no. Right. The last thing she heard him say was, oh no, if that was it. And I got the news, by the way, when I was ironically at a protest, we were protesting on Saturday, downtown Dallas, and I started getting all these texts about what happened in Chicago. Oh no, right. Like no Muslims attacked anyone. The media was in a frenzy over the global day of jihad. I got called by national news outlets and local news outlets. What are you going to do about Muslims that are going to turn into monsters and start killing people in the streets? Next thing we know, we have a dead 6 year old Palestinian boy went to his funeral. And that's kind of speaks to the proximity part of things. Yeah, it felt like stepping into Gaza, right. For a moment it didn't feel like America. Didn't feel like America felt like stepping into Gaza. His casket was wrapped in a Palestinian flag. There was not just sadness at his funeral, but a deep sense of anger at the funeral. Some of his family members shouted out, Joe Biden, you did this. Joe Biden, you did this. And you know, I remember the next day, it was right after the funeral, looking at the front page of CNN and the story of Wadir was buried in the last, in the last section and it was right over all these meaningless ads. And I thought to myself, that's it. Like, if this was. If this was an Arab man, let's be real, let's be honest here. If this was a Palestinian landlord that stabbed a six year old Jewish boy to death, this would have gotten more attention. It would have been the front page of the news, and rightfully so. People would have grieved over the insanity of stabbing a six year old boy 26 times. Wadiya became an afterthought the very next day. And so it's an extension of the bigotry, an extension of the racism. And there's so much that happens after that. There's the terrible stabbing of Detroit synagogue president Samantha Wall. And it's horrible. She was stabbed in her driveway. Immediately, front page of all the news outlets. Immediately. It's the main news story. And immediately the implications are there go the Muslims. The Palestinians have lost their minds. The Muslims have. They are who we thought they were. Right? That's what it is. They are who we thought they were. They went and they stabbed a synagogue president. It turned out it wasn't a hate crime. Although it was an awful crime. It turned out it wasn't a hate crime. Wadir is an afterthought. I had people reach out to me afterwards expressing condolences. And I responded to them. Those who have justified the genocide in Gaza, but that were somehow offering condolences for Wadiya privately, of course. You know, by the way, if a Muslim would have committed that crime, every single Muslim leader would have had press in front of their door to condemn that crime. We would have all been made complicit. Had people reach out to me, say, I'm sorry about what happened with Wadir. It's terrible. You know, I saw you at the funeral, praying for you. My response was, what's the difference between Wadir and a boy in Gaza? What's the difference between me and Wadir? I'm a Palestinian child. My parents made it out of Palestine. I was born in this country. If I didn't have the opportunity to grow up here and to become the person that I became, you would have been justifying my murder right now. You would have been okay with my genocide. You would have been giving the talking points to the press to erase me. But you feel sorry because Wadir was killed. And I think this is. When we say that anti Palestinian bigotry is an extension of Islamophobia. If a mosque gets targeted here, people rightfully rush to protect that mosque and say, this is horrible. And it shouldn't happen. But when you have an Israeli soldier bombing a mosque and laughing like a maniac on video and it's going viral on TikTok, and there is no way to rein that in, and you don't have a word of condemnation about it, in fact, you are standing in the way of a ceasefire, then you're a hypocrite. There's no way around it. You are a hypocrite. What's the difference between a mosque here and a mosque there? What's the difference between a Palestinian life here and a Palestinian life there? If you're okay with me being murdered there, don't say that you care about my life here. And so that hypocrisy has been laid bare, we have said multiple times, masks are falling. Masks are falling. People that we thought were decent people somehow have found it in themselves to justify a genocide. There is no shortage at this point of videos. And again, when you, you know, I could have made the excuse for you maybe in the first few weeks, you know, that you hadn't seen enough. But with all social media suppression across all platforms, there isn't a single platform that hasn't suppressed Palestinian voices with all that suppression. There are enough videos at this point of children whose heads have been blown off, of children walking around without limbs, of parents carrying their kids in bags, not body bags, I mean grocery bags, because they don't even have body bags. And screaming out and saying, why are you doing this to me? Make it stop. And you come back and you tell that person, it's Hamas's fault. Where is your humanity? Where is your sense of decency? Isn't that the logic of the so called terrorism that you condemn? Yeah, you can wipe out entire populations. You should have talked to Hamas. It's Hamas's fault. All the kids in the west bank, where does this end? So what are your moral boundaries here? So if that's the logic that you're okay with, then in that case, when there's a mass shooter in a school in the United States, just bomb the whole school. In fact, bomb the whole town. If you can't find the mass shooter, where does this end for you? And so when I say people have lost their humanity, they're killing us overseas, but their hearts are dying. People have lost their humanity, they've lost any sense of morality and their moral boundaries and being there and I mean, participating in his funeral, it was anger. I'm not used to that. I'm not used to that. You know, I'm an imam I pastor to people. I went to Christchurch and that was the worst I'd ever seen before, where 50 Muslims were killed by a white supremacist, and he murdered them with such callousness. And I remember being at those funerals, and, yeah, I mean, there was anger, but it was just profound sadness because at least the rest of the world could all come out in one voice and say, that's wrong. Now, most of the world sees what's happening in Gaza and says, this is disgusting. Most of the world sees this and says, this is a genocide. But we happen to live in this bubble here where we're constantly being told we did this to ourselves. And that's the same logic that led to our initial expulsion. 1948. What was the crime of those 700,000 Palestinians that were driven out of their home in 1948? What did they do? They did not commit the Holocaust. They didn't have a mass murder of Jews at their hands. What did they do? What crime were they paying for? And so it's been the consistent theme, this is the story of our people. Not since October 7th. This is the story of our people for the last 75 years.

There is a deep geopolitical connection between the United States and that part of the world. What is the role of US Politicians in all of this?

You know, James Baldwin wrote about how Israel was created as an extension of United States policy to be a colonial entity at the gates of the Middle east and to function essentially as a military base out there and as a means of. Of extending its policy, you know, throughout the Middle east, and it has functioned as such. The United States is not an honest peace broker. It never has been an honest peace broker. The United States has never shown any meaningful inclination towards peace, has guarded and protected Israel from international accountability, has made Israel invincible. The United States is not just responsible at the governmental level for the genocide, it's responsible for letting it get to this point in the first place. We have funded that arsenal. We've given them the most sophisticated weapons in the world to test on the most desperate population in the world. We've given them the weapons. It's been bipartisan. We have issued, at most, inconsequential statements of condemnation, but at the same time stopped any international body of law from actually holding it accountable. So the United States, at this point, unfortunately, has rightfully lost all credibility. It should remove itself from this because it is not an honest peace broker. I think Americans are probably sick of us paying for wars in general. I think Americans are probably sick of Our tax dollars going to funding a genocide, while we have a rise of homelessness and income disparity here in the United States. I think that Americans probably don't like that we're making ourselves so deeply unpopular in the world because of Israel's actions. So in the immediate moment, make the stop. The United States could have had a ceasefire a long time ago. The United States could have ended this genocide right away. The reason why this is continuing is because of U.S. foreign policy. And in the process of Joe Biden talking about managing this crisis and talking about making things better, there have only been more bills that have come out of Congress. In fact, he's bypassed Congress to fund the arsenal, to keep replenishing the arsenal. Stop paying for weapons, stop paying for someone else's war crimes, stop protecting another country as it commits these war crimes. And if you can't be an honest peace broker, get out of the process.

So there's money that you just mentioned and bills, and then there's rhetoric, which you also criticized, that he spoke about the beheaded babies and things of that nature. So where has Joe Biden fallen short?

We need another podcast that's going to take a few hours to talk about where Joe Biden has failed for one. The first time he seemed to find the word Palestinian in his vocabulary was when he accused the Palestinians of lying about the death toll in Gaza. And then that turned out to also be false. In fact, the numbers that were coming out of the Gaza Health Ministry, according to multiple international bodies, have been under reporting Palestinian casualty counts. Israeli intelligence has said that the civilian count or the death toll is actually higher than what's been coming out of the Gaza Health Ministry. So he's failed on that front. He has failed to speak to Palestinian humanity. He has spoken with deep passion and concern, as has Anthony Blinken, about the devastation in Israel and the way that people are feeling in Israel and has shown nothing of that sort towards Palestinians. We don't want the rhetoric. We really don't want the rhetoric when people say, call for a ceasefire. The United States has had an opportunity and has an opportunity to really walk back and reflect on its entire policy towards Israel, Palestine. This is a moment of reflection. This is a moment of restoration, if you want it to be, and to think about what we've enabled in the first place. He's shown absolutely no real empathy. And I think that he is under great delusion and thinking that the Muslim community or people of conscience are going to forgive this, are going to forget this come November. You can't tell us that, well, @ least I don't have the Trump Muslim ban, while also carrying out a genocide primarily against Muslims, and think that the Muslims are still going to vote for you. And so we will make him hear us at the polls. And any politician for Congress or otherwise that has not called for a ceasefire that has been a part of this dehumanization, we will make sure that we see support for them in any way as a community. It's only.

Right. So Biden has lost or is losing the hearts and the support of the Muslim Palestinian people and the Muslim people in.

America. I don't know if you ever had the hearts of the Muslim community, to be honest with you. I mean, I personally was never a Joe Biden fan. I think a lot of people felt the same. You know, this country, unfortunately, leads to the. The way that our political system is built is that you're always voting for the lesser of the two evils. That's always the way that it is. It's analyzing which evil is lesser. Right. And when people say, if you vote for Donald Trump, and I'm not planning to vote for Donald Trump either, but if you don't vote for Joe Biden. Right. If you don't vote for Joe Biden. Right. Then you are destroying democracy. I'm like, a democracy that's given us a choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is already a failed democracy. And so he never had the hearts and minds of the Muslim community. People always saw past his rhetoric. He always has had a terrible disposition towards Palestine. He's always had a terrible disposition towards the Muslim world. You know, his segregationist past comes out sometimes when he starts talking about the Muslim world and you can hear the racism in his voice and you can hear the way that he talks about Palestinian life in such devalued fashion. So he lost us a long time ago, but he's definitely not getting us back after this in any way. And I can't speak for all Muslims, but I think that come November, he and all of those politicians, especially in swing states, that have turned their backs on the Muslim community. And not just the Muslim community, By the way, 67% of this country wants a ceasefire. Three fourths of democratic voters want a ceasefire. Half of Republican voters want a ceasefire. Right. It's not just the Muslim community. This is not some radical opinion to call for a ceasefire. And every single politician that has refused to hear us is going to pay a price at the polls, as they should. That doesn't mean that we're under any illusion that the other side promises us anything better. In fact, it feels like Republicans have simply rushed to out racist the Democrats to outpace them in terms of talking about how they're going to be more unapologetic in supporting Israel unconditionally. Right. Like it's been pathetic. But something has to change. And I think that Americans of conscience have to look at how this failed political system has hurt people here and abroad and talk about how to transcend that with just more humanity again. When you have 67% of the American public that wants a ceasefire, but only a handful of congressmen out of over 500 can muster up the courage in the face of these super PACs to say that we should stop the genocide, what are you asking for here? You're asking for the genocide to stop. You're asking for Israeli hostages to be brought home. You're asking for Palestinian prisoners to be released. You're asking for peace and to start carving the path out to end this once and for all. Right, in the most ambiguous way possible, by the way, because there aren't many radical American politicians, all right? It's the way that the system is. In the most ambiguous bare way possible. And you can't even bring yourself to do that. This is already a failed democracy. Then all the while again. You know, it always boggles my mind. If you're from the America first crew, what's America first about? Funneling billions and billions and billions of dollars to Israel while it's carries out this genocide, while people are starving here. And if you're part of the human rights crew and progressive crew, they have a term called progressive except Palestine, Pep. Progressive except Palestine. Where are all your notions of social justice? You talk about policing here, but you don't talk about who trains our police departments in many major cities and the type of brutality that's being carried out there. You talk about human rights at the border here, but you don't talk about the assault on people at the border there. You talk about all of these things here, but you somehow use the exact same framings against the people there. So it's exposed, I think, the moral bankruptcy of both political polar opposites that exist in this country right now and hopefully evoked a greater societal sentiment to say this is ridiculous. One of the things that is happening is that more people are getting their news outside of legacy media outlets. You can't hide that many dead babies anymore. You just can't. More people have woken up to the Palestinian plight now than ever before. More people are outraged that this has been our American foreign policy all throughout, you know, Democratic and Republican administrations. This is what we've been paying for. This is what we've been excusing. And Israeli leaders literally spit in the faces of whoever the American president is and says, yeah, we don't care what they tell us to do. You know, American leadership says we're pushing Israel to minimize the casualties, to get less indiscriminate with its bombing, to manage the crisis, get a few more humanitarian corridors in to make sure that Gaza is not evacuated and not ethnically cleansed, to make sure Palestinians can come back. And Netanyahu comes on TV and says, from the river to the sea. How ironic is that? From the river to the sea. And that is his policy. We're going to make sure that Israel controls From the river to the sea, and we're going to push Palestinians into Sinai, and Muslim countries need to take them in. You have Israeli ministers, national defense ministers saying, you know, things openly, right? Like, we want to thin out the population. I ethnic cleansing. We want to remove people, and the Muslim world needs to step up and take in these refugees. Right. And the American administration, you know, or the American president says, and American Secretary of State says, you know, we're talking to them and we're making sure that that's not going to happen. And if one of their ministers says something, Blinken maybe tweets out something about how that's not going to happen, but then it happens anyway, and then we still write them the checks. So I think most of the American public is probably going to get sick of this at some point. Just people of decency and people of conscience are going to say, yeah, this is not something we want to be a part of.

Anymore. Do you think there's something that Donald Trump can do to help move this in the right.

Direction? Trump's first words were about how he's going to be worse on this. Right? So he talked about how he's going to deport people, revoke visas of, you know, students that are part of these pro Palestinian.

Rallies. Also, the focus was on the rallies versus what's going on.

Abroad. Yeah, but look, we had a Donald Trump presidency. He moved the embassy to Jerusalem. He was not better on this. Unfortunately, this is a bipartisan problem. And so, again, we're under no illusion here. Like, we're not looking to Donald Trump as a savior here, but we are going to penalize Joe Biden. And that's, you know, I can't speak for everybody, but I think that that's where a lot of our Minds are at right.

Now. You spoke at the Nov. 4 demonstration in Washington called the Free Palestine March. It had a lot of people, several hundred thousand people there. What do you remember from that.

Experience? Well, the first thing I remember is that there was no news coverage of it. So 400,000 people march on D.C. one of the largest marches in history. It was nowhere to be found in mainstream media coverage. Whereas when the Stand with Israel rally happened, between the 300,000 strong Palestine rally and the 400,000 strong Palestine rally, there was a Stand with Israel rally where Congress men were bussed from Congress to speak at that rally, Democrats and Republicans and high profile celebrities and it was, you know, live streamed across multiple places. I mean, I have to say this, the icj, if that wasn't the greatest display of media bias in the domain of United States mainstream media, then I don't know what is. They live streamed the Israeli Defense on multiple news outlets defending itself against the case for genocide and completely omitted the South African presentation of the crimes of Israel the day before. So what I remember first and foremost about the protests is that they were nowhere to be found on mainstream media, which was expected. But what I also remember from the actual day of and from all of the pro Palestine rallies is that I have never seen a more multifaith, more diverse group of people consistently coming out for Palestine against the genocide in Gaza that I have this time around. And I think that has been the experience all around. There has been a pronounced Jewish presence, Jewish voice for Peace, if not now, other anti Zionist Jewish groups, groups that are against the genocide, against the occupation, former Israeli soldiers, even you know, that have been showing up at these protests. There's been a pronounced presence from Native American groups, indigenous groups, all across the board, right? Christians, Jews, Muslims. I've never seen more diversity at these rallies than I've seen this time around, which I think is a sign that of where things are going. And if you look at the under 35 opinion polls, it's very clear that there's a generational gap here, that the country is moving into a more coherent direction and understanding what has been happening over there and people from all backgrounds are standing up to.

It. Now what do you think about the protests on campus against.

Israel? Every protest I've been to has had the exact same tenor, has had the exact same messaging. But you always have that idiot or two that shows up with a sign and no one knows who that idiot is, ironically never comes with anybody else, always shows up somehow in the middle of the protest and puts up a sign that says something completely contrary to the messaging of the protest. Then all the cameras shift towards that guy. I see it every single time. But the overwhelming tenor of all of these protests has been consistent. It's been calling for freedom, it's been calling for liberation. It's been calling for an end to the genocide, a ceasefire, an end to the occupation, and end to the apartheid. I will tell you what many people are not seeing. Columbia University, two IDF soldiers, former IDF soldiers, spraying Palestinian protesters with skunk water, which is what the IDF uses on Palestinian protesters and sometimes on worshipers on their way to Masjid Al Aqsa, which has multiple health repercussions. And so I was reading about how one of the students that was sprayed on campus at Columbia, Palestinian student, you know, has showered at this point of us doing this podcast, 11 times. Cannot get the smell out of her. Has suffered all sorts of health issues as a result of being sprayed. Again, people are not seeing the other side here. People are not seeing what we've had to deal with at these protests. Right? The open bigotry. And I want you to think about this, by the way, people go and serve in the IDF and then come back to the United States or the United Kingdom, and they're not stigmatized for participating in apartheid policies or participating in a genocide. How am I supposed to feel as a Palestinian knowing that this guy right next to me participated in murdering my relatives in Gaza and has open reign to say what he wants to say or do what he wants to do? And so we haven't seen the other side of that as well. But I'd recommend to anyone that's talking about pro Palestine protests to actually go see one. If you go to the protests, you listen to what's being said, and you don't just capture. I mean, you got 400,000 people. Don't just go try to find. You're going to find four stupid people at a protest of 400,000 people. Right? Because the protest scene is always messy. But I think that this is a sign of the outrage and the anger and the frustration that many students have about being silenced again in the media, in academic settings. Professors are losing their jobs, students are having their faces put on trucks, being doxed. These shady watch lists that get put out. I'm on a few of them as well, and I just don't care anymore. Right? But you got these shady watch lists. People are losing their. Their jobs at law firms, they're losing all of their future opportunities, young Palestinian students, because of something that they tweeted that's being taken out of context. 10 years ago, right? When they were 17 years old. It's ridiculous. And so I think that we have to listen to the overwhelming majority of voices of people that are demonstrating for justice, not demonstrating against anyone, but demonstrating for people. Again, there's a large, pronounced Jewish presence at every single pro Palestine march. In fact, if you look at the organizations, the groups that have taken over Capitol Hill and train stations, it's been, if not now, not in our name, never again means for anyone, right? It's been Jewish groups, many Jewish anti occupation groups that have been at the forefront. And I think that that's where we have to pay attention to the beauty of how diverse this movement for Free Palestine has actually.

Been. So the average sentiment is anti occupation, not anti.

Semitic. It's incredibly lazy, incredibly lazy to say that anti Zionism or that anti occupation is anti Semitic. First and foremost, the Palestinians are a Semitic people. That's number one. Number two, look, I'm proud of my community. My community has stood against anti Semitism in this country. The Muslim community has been at the forefront of condemning anti Semitism. We have stood in front of synagogues. We have stood with the Jewish community when the Jewish community is attacked. This is about occupation. This is a story of a colonial entity that has driven us out of our homes and has done so in such a way that has forced us to try to be the voice of a people that are being exterminated overseas right now. This is not an anti Semitic movement. This is a pro freedom.

Movement. Do you think the protests ever go too.

Far? The protest scene is a messy scene. And so again, you're going to have sometimes that odd speaker or people get carried away in their emotions. And yes, sometimes people chant things or do things that are contrary to the protests. It's pretty unfair when you judge the entire protest movement by some of these incidents that have happened at protests and you don't pay attention to what they're protesting about in the first place, which is a genocide right now. Everything is secondary to ending a genocide that is ongoing in the course of this discussion. It's not an exaggeration to say that at least 30, 40 people would have been killed just over the last few hours because we're averaging 135 to 150 a day. So everything else is secondary to that. This is where we all need to be right now as people of conscience. How do we stop this? Because every single day is deeply.

Costly. Do you think there has been a rise of anti Semitism and Anti Muslim hate in the U.S. yeah, I think that's.

Factual. Look, anti Semitism is always to be condemned. It's wrong. It's something that as a Muslim community and as people of conscience, we have always taken a stand against. Jewish people should not be attacked for being Jewish people here or anywhere else. Synagogues should be protected. And if a person is attacked for being Jewish, we will be the first to go and to stand with them and to reject that attack on them. The course of this discussion. It's not an exaggeration to say that at least 30, 40 people would have been killed just over the last few hours because we're averaging 135 to 150 a day. So everything else is secondary to that. This is where we all need to be right now as people of conscience. How do we stop this? Because every single day is deeply costly. And there has been, as I said, an inspiring, pronounced Jewish.

Presence. Do you think there has been a rise of anti Semitism and anti Muslim hate in the U.S. yeah, I think that's.

Factual. Look, anti Semitism is always to be condemned. It's wrong. It's something that as a Muslim community and as people of conscience, we have always taken a stand against. Jewish people should not be attacked for being Jewish people here or anywhere else. Synagogues should be protected. And if a person is attacked for being Jewish, we will be the first to go and to stand with them and to reject that attack on them. And there has been, as I said, an inspiring, pronounced Jewish presence.