 Good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to this event. I'm Brian Barber one of the class of new fellows at new America So on behalf of New America, I welcome you and thank you for coming Let me say at the outset that we didn't title this Very very well. So we're certainly going to be talking About more than just Gaza as you'll see The event is co-sponsored by the foundation for Middle East peace and its president Matt Duss is going to Introduce the the panel and the event Thank you, Brian, and thank you everyone for being here this morning for this conversation Knowing all three of these analysts knowing their work and and And especially just coming after what we went through this summer with the Gaza war I thought it was a great opportunity To talk with three of these people or have them talk to each other and and we could listen because their work deals with the personal Stories the personal struggles the personal impact I think when we look at the Israeli Palestinian conflict the occupation the blockade of Gaza as state-to-state problems Diplomatic issues we often lose the human stories. I think that that really make up what's going on One of the reasons that Alice's book interested me because she writes of the of the weeks leading up to the Gaza war of this summer Being in the West Bank on a solidarity visit. I was also in Israel Palestine at the time As I was just telling Alice I was in Tel Aviv the the evening that the bodies of the three hikers were found That next morning I went down to the Negev to for just a little bit of a break Basically off the grid for two days and then when I returned to Jerusalem Two days after that things had really gotten out of hand as I'd never seen them and talking to Israeli and Palestinian friends They felt the same way just roving gangs of thugs looking for for Palestinians to attack Demonstrations in Palestinian Israeli communities has had not happened in many years and are happening right now as we speak So that's what appealed to me and and Brian's work as having done years and years of research Following young Palestinians now as they become older Palestinians with children of their own Tracking the impact of the conflict tracking the impact of the occupation the daily grind the daily reality and Same or but are we who I've gotten to know just over the past few months and a really excellent journalist with 972 magazine Who was there in Gaza during the war? And who insists on calling it a war and maybe you can you can go to a little bit more about that because I think that's a very very interesting aspect of how the how the Gazans themselves actually experienced what happened this summer in Operation Protective Edge So just by way of introduction I'll start with Alice Alice Rothschild is a physician author filmmaker in a long time Activist who has worked in the health care reform and women's movements for many years and since 1997 is focused much of her energy on Understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict She's the author most recently of on the brink Israel and Palestine on the eve of the 2014 Gaza invasion a collection of blog writing The Chronicles of fact-finding and solidarity visit to the West Bank and Israel during the last three weeks of June 2014 Those books are for sale just outside the door. Please make sure to pick one up Brian Barber is the Jacobs Foundation fellow here at the new America Foundation He's writing a book narrating the lives of six men from the Gaza Strip who he has interviewed regularly for the past 20 Years since they emerged as used from the first Palestinian into Fata in 1993 He and colleagues will also be continuing to research projects funded by the Jacobs Foundation Switzerland an event history study of the current well-being of a representative sample of 1800 of the same generation of Palestinians and a study of youth who participated in the Egyptian revolutions Samur Badawi is a journalist and analyst. He writes mainly for 972 magazine Really privileged to have this panel up here today. So I'll turn it over to Samur. Thank you. Thank you Thanks Matt, and thank you all for coming this morning. I think that It's it's good to know that despite the fact that we're two months beyond the war that People are still interested in the issue because in fact the people of Gaza continue to suffer Not only under a long time siege, but also under the impact and the effects of that 51-day assault on Gaza Matt mentioned that there Can you hear me? Okay, by the way because I've been accused of speaking very softly and I want to make sure okay great Matt mentioned that There's some difference of opinion among Observers of the of the conflict in Israel Palestine as to whether what happened this summer was in fact a war and I can tell you that from personal experience having lived and worked in both Afghanistan and Iraq and Visited the Balkans on a couple of different occasions. I have never been in a situation Where I have seen that level of violence leveled against a civilian population From air from sea and from land and over the course of that 51 days It's important to remember that not only did 2100 plus people die in the Gaza Strip, but also the 501 of those people were children And so with that as context as Matt said we're very privileged to have with us today Two experts on the region and people who like me are recently returned from that part of the world What I propose is that with with your permission is that we have a conversation for about 45 minutes and then we'll open it up for questions because we have until noon today and We'll just have it as a sort of casual discussion Okay, and if there's anybody over the course of the Q&A that has a burning question Please feel free to raise your hand and we can address that directly So Alice I'll start with you and as you all know now Alice has recently published a book on her experience in the West Bank Just prior to to the beginning of the war. My understanding. Alice is that you were in the West Bank and in Israel for three weeks Just prior and then I think at the beginning of the war as well And the book that we have with us today, which if you all have not seen it It's available outside. It's called on the brink and it's on for sale outside I think for $17 if anyone is interested That's my plug. I'll only do it once But my understanding is that the book is actually a collection of your blog posts while you were there So why don't you tell us a little bit about about the book and how it fits in with with the subject at hand? So I've been involved with Co-organizing health and human rights delegations to the region annually since 2003 and We had a delegation in June so for 10 days I was co-leading this delegation Examining issues of human rights and civil rights both in Israel and the West Bank and then we did With some health care providers four days of examining the health care system and then I had a week of my own research So, you know, we traveled focusing in Israel on areas of conflict and descent We were in Tel Aviv, Yaffa, Nazareth and Lod And then we were in East Jerusalem or Mala, Calculia, Hebron, Bethlehem, Baleen as well as a number of smaller villages and refugee camps and I was blogging very extensively and I came home and the next day Helena Coban called me and said your blog should be a book. So Fast-tracked the book and two months later with some modifications and intro and whatever it came out And I'm just gonna quote a little bit from the book and then do some background and then do a reading We visited mixed cities in Israel where the implications of an inherently racist society That benefits Jews over all other citizens is flagrantly obvious if you only stop to look We visited cities and villages and refugee camps in the West Bank where decades of occupation and checkpoints and Permits and a ballooning Jewish settler population have strangled the Palestinian people And we can go into more depth during the Q&A It is painfully clear to me that the events of the last few weeks did not happen in a vacuum That the occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza the growing Jewish settlements in the West Bank the increasingly racist right-wing governments in Israel and the very idea that Jewish suffering and Jewish Exceptionalism gives us the right to eliminate or oppress and other people Created the environment for this explosion This is not about the last 10 or 20 years. This is about the very unsettling consequences of Zionism itself It is also clear to me a committed pacifist and social justice advocate that the ongoing Palestinian resistance Most thankfully nonviolent is actually something I feel compelled to support while rejecting all violence state-sponsored and otherwise I do not do this out of an undying love for Palestinians or any dislike of my fellow Jews I do this because I have learned that Jews are capable of the same racism Hatred and atrocities as anyone else. I do this because we must be held accountable for our actions and our beliefs I do this because not doing this makes us into monsters who've lost all sense of moral compass So when we got there the big issue was that Palestinians in administrative detention were on the longest hunger strike that they'd been on and they were striking not for better food or something Like that but for the fact of ending administrative detention Which is the sort of limbo land that Palestinians get into often activists with arrested and detained without charges It can go on for months years They can get re-detained and it's a really oppressive thing and so we thought this was going to be the human rights issue of our trip And then on June 12th three Hebron settler youth were kidnapped and while there is never an excuse for kidnapping youth I think it is actually very important to remember that the Jewish settlers in Hebron are the most racist fanatical Jewish settlers on the West Bank There are the people who throw rocks into Palestinian homes and spray paint racist graffiti and have really made the center of Hebron a horrendous place for Palestinians to live and the interesting thing was that Excuse me Netanyahu immediately came out blaming Hamas Although he actually had no evidence for this and it seemed kind of odd because the West Bank is crawling with IDF soldiers It's crawling with West Bank collaborators And it was hard to believe that he was conjuring this up without any evidence And then what was unleashed really felt to me since I was in the West Bank at the time to be like a pogrom There was a massive military incursion over the course of time ten Palestinians were killed six hundred were arrested Including all of the Hamas leadership and even more disturbing. There was this vitriolic incitement coming out of the leadership in the media in Israel You know Arabs will call snakes. I mean it was really pretty horrific And then we saw Palestinians with Israeli citizenship being attacked by Jewish thugs and then leftists Jewish Israeli leftists also being attacked. It was very very disturbing And what became clear to us is that Netanyahu Wanted to stop the unity government between Hamas and Fatah and he had been looking for an excuse and he either you know Found his excuse or made his excuse. I have no idea but this was really the underlying thing that was going on and Two weeks after the initial kidnapping we found out that the IDF actually knew that the settler youth were dead One to two days after their disappearance But they kept it a secret because they needed an excuse to invade the West Bank And then the bodies were found and I don't really know when they were found and we had the abduction and burning to death of a Palestinian youth And pretty horrifically, you know, it was very clear to us that this was a revenge killing But the military police put out this rumor that he was gay and that this was an honor killing by his parents and it was an example of how the media was being manipulated and Then a Palestinian American was beaten by IDF soldiers during a protest and when he got out of the hospital He was put under house arrest for no particular Reason and then when he left to go back to the US his Palestinian family was targeted and arrested also for the crime of being His family and then we saw East Jerusalem explode as was mentioned And you know, I would like to point out that that unrest continues to today So many of my Palestinian friends are talking about a mini intifada that's focused on the ultra orthodox fundamentalists Demanding religious access to al-Aqsa in the dome of the rock temple Mount for Jews And I was in touch with I'm in touch with a number of medical students because we do human medical student exchange between Harvard and Al-Quds and one of them wrote to me just last week The situation in the West Bank has turned to hell Few hours ago another accident happened in Nablus in which one Palestinian and one Israeli were killed After that the Israeli soldiers closed the road and there's an unbelievable traffic jam for hours an hour ago Another incident happened in Hebron and now Hebron is under bad conditions a few moments ago I just saw on the news that Israeli soldiers are invading the Janine camp for no reason and still no more news is available So the West Bank has also been simmering since this whole thing erupted Then going back to the events in June Hamas launched 30 rockets on the 30th. It's the first time since 2012 You could say the militants provoked of the war that subsequently happened. You could also say they were provoked It raises all the issues of what is Palestinian resistance? How does it look when do Israelis notice it and then a week later? There was the massive attack on Gaza and I would like to point out that in a normal country if three kids were kidnapped There would be a criminal investigation that people would be found. There would be a trial. There would be charges There would be punishment. That's how normal countries function But in this region the abnormal has become normalized So when you look at the reason for war it initially started out that it was to avenge the youth being killed by Hamas Which actually had never been proven to do it then it morphed into we have to stop the rockets because Militants were sending rockets into Israel, which was obviously completely unacceptable And then it became to destroy the tunnels that existed between Gaza and Israel And first of all I get nervous when the reasons for war keep changing But the other thing is that the IDF knew about these tunnels for years and they chose not to do anything and that tunnels can be destroyed from either end and I think it's important to notice that Egypt destroyed the tunnels between Gaza and Rafa from the Egypt end They didn't have to invade Gaza to destroy the tunnels and then ultimately this war became a collective punishment on all of Gaza A destruction of the infrastructure on the Hamas militants and leadership It's the third time in less than six years only the most aggressive time And Netanyahu refers to this exercise as mowing the lawn And for me, that's a particularly horrific kind of phrase And the implication is that Palestinian men women and children have as much human value And importance to the Israeli military leadership as a blade of grass If we look at what was the consequences of this war according to the un There were 74 Israelis killed four civilians 500 injured and in Gaza as was mentioned over 2100 people killed 1500 civilians a third of them children 12,000 people were injured over 100,000 made homeless 450,000 without any water over 220 schools were damaged There are 370,000 children in need of direct psychological support for the consequences of trauma and war If we look at what the military was doing The Israeli military dropped 20 000 tons of explosives on a strip of land six by 26 miles in seven weeks And the Gaza militants shot 10 tons into Israel There were 1500 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship protesting this war that were arrested for demonstrating In Israel which you would think is a civil right and 600 of them were indicted Um, there were Israeli human rights organizations protesting the war But Selam and Yehdin tried to read the names of the Gaza dead on an Israeli radio station The radio station refused they went to the courts and the courts refused to allow them to read the names of the Gaza dead So in Gaza we now have children begging in the streets a new phenomenon A prostitution and boat people being smuggled out to reach Europe because people aren't so desperate And a leading Israeli human rights activist told me that the main growth industry in Gaza now is human smuggling Oxfam estimates that the current rate of rebuilding it will take 50 years to rebuild Gaza So I think it's important to understand both this larger context as well as the intimate details To look at what kind of society is able to rally behind this kind of level of military aggression During the war 90 to 97 percent of Jewish Israelis supported the war It's important to think about what does occupation and siege look like and to raise the whole issue of Palestinian resistance And we live in an incredible disconnect between myth and reality And i'm just going to close with a blog reading That is called what is a terror who is the terrorist? Excuse me Let's just say Bani Naim is a large muslim village of 20 000 east of the city of Hebron A region known for large stone quarries and miles of vineyards I have been visiting an extended family where most everyone is well educated teachers Businessmen doctors people with degrees in education who cannot find employment and quote jump the wall to find work in Israel Or to get visas to do graduate work in the u.s. Or do online phd programs in Islamic religion and Quranic studies Families tend to be large babies tend to be loved and plentiful It seems that everyone we meet is related Their idea of a good time is sitting on a balcony with each other at sunset Drinking Turkish coffee eating sweets talking and smoking narjila The main issue with the view besides the stone quarry is the Israeli military base in the distance And the spy balloon that hangs above the hills over the fanatically racist jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba The houses i visit are beautiful meandering white stone arab homes Surrounded by patches of olive almond lemon fig and apple trees Gardens with water starved flowers and aromatic bushes like lavender that burst with perfume when the sun sets The love of the land and its bounty is palpable Far from the center of town. There is a larger field with a greenhouse Where I see rows of happy mula ria that gets concocted into this great green soup with rice And then there's a field of wheat much has been passed down through the generations The living rooms of these houses have big screen tv's and often some totally discordant American cowboy movie with arabic subtitles Over or an overly dramatic soap opera from Saudi Arabia playing in the background It is stunningly hot and periodically someone talks about the four feet of snow that fell last week and paralyzed the village The land is hilly with single homes here and there throwing some goat herds and minarets And you keep looking you can see the dead sea and the purple hills of Jordan It is all pretty spectacular This is the kind of family that warmly welcomes me into their home The mother has prepared a ginormous meal of extraordinarily good food Which is made of rice and chicken and stuffed grape leaves and stuffed zucchini and yogurt and spices to die for Everyone is behaving is if I have not eaten in days So we talk and then my host suggests that the family watched my documentary on the nakba Voices across the divide it has Hebrew and Arabic subtitles and I wonder how will that play A documentary produced by a jewish secular woman For a u.s. audience sharing the palestinian story in a room full of devout muslims Is this chutzpah or foolishness? And so we talk and talk and I say they have to be honest with me Everyone wants to see it and so they invite over even more relatives and soon everyone is glued to the tv And we're not watching bonanza I'm a bit freaked out since they keep talking and I can't tell if this is good or bad But it turns out this is a totally talkative and meshed family and they're just having a big group experience When the documentary ends I hold my breath And then the father speaks and says the film is an excellent portrayal of the palestinian experience And then everyone chimes in and we have this amazing discussion about all of their stories and the making of the film And the american jewish community and zionism and islam As you may imagine, this is a pretty stunning cross-cultural experience And I'm so relieved. I feel embraced and welcomed despite my clear differentness Perhaps I need more tea and how about some nuts? So why am I telling you this story? When you hear a news report these are the they the muslim other the palestinian militants near hebron The faceless families that are being terrorized by israeli soldiers every night Since the three boys or settlers or soldiers or who knows what or all of the above disappeared The day after the disappearance the islamic center and school for boys next door Was ransacked by the israeli soldiers and the imam was detained for a few hours and then released After our movie night and the sunset over kirjat arba as we prepare for bed I am informed that the israeli defense forces have attacked the town They are at all the entries and have started going house to house The village has a facebook page, which is suddenly the focus of everyone's attention Someone reports that three to four buses of fully armed soldiers are walking through the town Some take control of one house and put a sniper on the roof TV news is talking about an idea of attack on rafa the southern border of gaza The electricity flickers on and off why the family is anxiously awake until the middle of the night Tracking the soldiers on facebook and a local radio program The father finally goes to the mosque to pray when the muslim calls at 4 a.m And then he comes home and goes to sleep I learned that like many palestinian men He has been arrested twice and was in administrative detention for two months and released without any charges He has obvious reasons to be anxious He is a palestinian male while muslim which is an arrest category in itself No arrests are made here during the night, but everyone's nerves are a bit shattered and no one sleeps well The youngest son is curled across his mattress and is in a deep stupor I wonder how does this all impact him and his sense of safety his belief in his parents ability to protect him The press is reporting hundreds of arrests many more injured and a steady number of killings Hamas members including legislators are clearly targeted Earlier we passed one of the big bring boy back our boys signs It hits me this is supposed to resonate with the violent kidnapping of girls in nigeria I try to imagine a society where that slogan would mean all of our boys Not only the three snatched last week, but the thousands of mostly boys and young men Lost in israeli detention centers Without parents or lawyers or the legal and human rights protections of any decent society And then there are all those boys who have lost their humanity Breaking into houses night after night terrorizing families Turning into frightened dehumanized monsters and I realize we need to bring them back as well Thank you very much, Alice. I almost feel like a round of applause Thank you so It's a little wonder that Alice is here with us today actually and thank you so much for painting such a Vivid portrait of what you saw there and offering the context Both factual and sort of emotional of what happened in Gaza over the course of the summer And we'll have a chance to get back to you actually in a little bit to to dig a little bit deeper on some of these issues But I want to turn to brian now for just a second and and ask you brian now that you've listened to some of the very Sort of personal portraits that alice has painted of individuals in the west bank um You have as I understand it more than two decades of experience working with With gossams in particular palestinians in Gaza and more specifically with youth there um And so you've had the opportunity to interact with them As these violent episodes have taken place and of course over the course of the occupation and the siege um Having recently returned after the 51 day assault Can you describe to us what you saw there this time and how it differs from some of the previous experiences you had? sure First let me say this is the first time i've met alice and it's a real Honor to be with you alice. She did not ask me to say this but The book is really good I would highly recommend it. It's really very revealing and totally authentic in terms of my experience I just kept nodding and marking the margin and putting exclamation marks Um, it's good also to be with you samar samar is a palestinian in In many ways. He's the expert on this panel and we hope that he will Share his insights as well. Let's just ask questions So i'm going to speak with some authority About palestinians And gaussans and I want to make clear at the outset that I that I know the limits of that authority I'm not a gaussan. I'm not a palestinian. I'm not an arab. I'm not a muslim. I'm not a jew. I'm not an israeli I'm none of those things. I'm a upper middle class wasp from los angeles who through Uh serendipity has had extraordinary access into the lives of palestinians throughout the territories, but predominantly gaza That started 20 years ago when when I started living With families and refugee camps out of a desire to appreciate to learn the culture before I could sit on a stage like this and say something about them and um So You know, it's that longevity and it's that exposure that that gives me the confidence to say something about how things are going um for them I'm concerned mostly that um That palestinians in general and gaussans in particular are just terribly misunderstood or ununderstood Let me give one anecdote just a week ago. I was here in dc. I'm new to dc by the way And it's just amazing how many events are going on and I was at a really good event last week and a very Very experienced senior dc official with lots of expertise I closed the session summarized the session in a way that just Really upset me And he ironically he was making the he was trying to make the point that The ferocity of this recent war Was Extreme and that therefore One could understand why gaussans might be Then he said full of hatred and violence And I I raised my hand quickly, but the time was up But I wanted to tell him that What he just said was not true Gaussans are not full of hatred And they're not full of violence I know that from personal experience. So I I hope to be able to kind of humanize gaussans in this case and Because I guess I hope not too naively If one if we can establish some human connections Between palestinians between gaussans and the powerful people for example who run this city Maybe some policy changes might occur We all know the three of us and most of you in the audience know that this is not a problem That's going to go away and 50 years of experience tells us that the Current modus operandi is not working. So something has to change And so let me just try to answer your question samar Um by given the the schizophrenic answer which a gaussan would would certainly want me to give You were there during the war reported from it. So samar Knows from the ground what it was like to have the war descend I got there a week or so after it ended And um look The devastation on the eastern side of the strip is it's just horrific It's just there aren't words to describe it The eastern strip of the strip is of course closest to the border and You know as you drive from from the center of the strip either wherever you are north or south Towards the east you see progressive evidence of the of the war and It's really quite sobering because before you get far this east you you see that the the precision That military technology has so you would drive and you would see one house totally flattened But all of its neighboring houses completely untouched For me it was really very sobering to to know that That there are weapons that can be that precise And then you move farther to the east and the devast then it's several houses on a street Then it's an entire street then it's an entire neighborhood and the reason for that I learned is because that's where the real fighting took place It's not just because where the tunnels were because some parts are too distant even for tunnels to have been Doug but it's where there was resistance in fighting and and then the heavy the heavy artillery was used to just level Things that that's different, you know, I there aren't words to describe that you've seen pictures. I've taken hundreds of pictures But but those and and we know that we know the counts. We know the casualty counts But those are numbers those aren't people and so Let me give a couple of anecdotes of just spontaneous conversations that I've had Um, maybe I'll even start in the early days, but then I'll focus on conversations. I had just a few weeks ago To give you a sense of what gauzans think about what they talk about what they care about in the midst of this situation So my first memory of talking in gaza, for example if If the intent is to communicate what a gauzin personality might be Uh A young boy at the back of a school room that I had been talking to this just got to be 1996 or something And I was new in gaza pretty much and and I talked something I'd forget what it was about the research we're doing and you know, the students are very polite and and gauzans Are especially humble Quiet Different And he raised his hand at the end and he clearly needed to say something And so he just made a plea he said to me please go home and tell americans that we aren't all terrorists That was a plea of his 20 years ago and gives the first I think feel of the personality of of a sense A very profound sense of being marginalized of being stigmatized Of knowing that the world has this view of us gauzans as hostile angry evil people And this boy wanted just to say no Just like I wanted to say no last week to the very honorable official who I think misspoke Catastrophically so in my view Later maybe a few years later. I was talking to a group of College students at a junior college gaza has many universities and colleges now many more than even then And I forget the nature of the my my lecture, but Six times in the course of that presentation a pair of questions came verbatim As if my answer to them wasn't heard or just couldn't be accepted first of the pair of questions was Do you like gaza? To which I said yes, I love gaza The second question would be would you ever come back? six times Which made me think how profound and how deep this insecurity is That someone would even Think were cool or nice and someone would even want to come back That's gaza. I think in a profound way and that has not changed over the years Last week or last month when I was there This was just a few weeks after the war ended or there were in ceasefire in the main ceasefire Um Ahmed a 34 year old young man who I've known closely for years Uh came to visit me on my first day. This is this is another clue to the culture when you arrive And and your friends know either coming Their duty felt Duty is to come greet you that day not Next day not later in the week, but that day and so Ahmed Uh got my phone call that I arrived so he he made his way from the middle camp area of the strip Which these days is not an easy journey. Um, and it's not cheap. He's got to take a taxi and it costs a couple shekels, but That's a lot of money in gaza these days. So he made it and I Listen, you know, I was curious to see what he would say what he would talk about and and I was prepared in part for a deluge of anguish Um, Ahmed wanted to talk about his sister newer Uh, he Ahmed is the oldest of nine children newer is the youngest He was so excited to tell me that newer had Not only passed the taujihi, which is that awful College qualifying exam that Arabs have to go through Uh Not only had she passed it, but she passed with a 93 Now we know here that a 93 is a stupendous achievement for anyone Um, I asked Ahmed if he remembered what his score was And he go far then and and he said I had a 51 And he passed. I mean Indicating, you know, that's what a passing. That's what success is 50 51 And then he went through the list of all of his siblings and gave their scores In in in order He was so happy to tell me of her achievement Um, and how proud he was of his youngest sister Um, and then came The context and he said it happened during the war And that meant We couldn't celebrate for newer We couldn't give her the party that she wanted We couldn't even have candies to pass out to her That's how Ahmed was suffering Not able to celebrate his sister's Incredible achievement on her exam When I left Jerusalem a day before a good friend, um Gave me some money to They asked me just to distribute it to whomever I've Decided would need it And I gave it to Ahmed He himself, um Needs it. His family needs it refugee camp family nine kids now Brothers married lots of extended family He told me the next day how he used that money He went directly from seeing me at the hotel and bought newer a cell phone Because she didn't have one and all of her friends had one and he was Unhappy that he couldn't afford the samsung galaxy what she wanted But at least he was able to give her a cell phone a couple of days later I spent half of this week by the way in in a Common hotel that we stay at on the beach And the other half in a family home I was still in this First half and who sam came to visit me He apologized um on the phone the day before saying that He really couldn't come on day one Um, which he's never not done before on all of these years. He's always It's the phone call. Okay. I'll be there Uh, he apologized the reason he couldn't come the day before Was because it was the start of the semester And he now is an assistant dean of actually the same junior college that I Had the six six repeated question pair at And he said I I just I'm just so busy. We have 1700 new students And I've got to make you know a day for them and And because sam is an extremely accomplished, um a young man. He's now 40 So I first met him when he was Just out of the first intifada 20 or so He has a phd. Um, and that's an interesting story too But he he's really competent and so he's Experiencing what many of you experience perhaps That is your competence is uh utilized and you're asked to do a lot and he he he's starting to Indicate that he's really over burden and this is too much for him That's why he couldn't come He was busy getting school started when he did come the next day We sat on the veranda of the dirah and He told me he was he was all about the school day all about the new students all about the demands and So forth to meet their needs remembering For us here that the war was very still very fresh in their history And um he You know another clue into gaussan personality is Gaussans don't naturally talk about their suffering. You know, it's not something that they wear on their sleeve This is I think palestinian in general but gaussan in particular and for years I would I would have to really probe in my interviews with them to To learn just just how they were treated in prison or whatever This is not something that flows forth naturally They're too humble to do that Who sam however did need to talk about that so Uncharacteristically He talked about how awful it was for him his father Got the phone call early one morning from the idea of officer He asked his father ferris, uh is is your door open? ferris thought well Strange question. No, it's not open. His instruction was to open and to leave In five minutes take his family out because this his house is going to be bombed Every one of my Contacts received that call either by phone by text message But who sam needed to talk that through a little bit He is the father of four children. He's the oldest son of a family of eight And he has therefore kind of management responsibilities as well. They live in the classic arab home with Each floor is a new gender is a different son And it's his family They had to make decisions. Do we go? What do we take with us? Where do we go? They live in new serrat camp, which is one of the cluster of four middle camps So in the middle of the strip His decision who sam's decision was to go take his family and he decided to go to his in-laws home And they left and the the rest of the family also left Well, the in-laws home is near the power plant Gaza has one power plant and it's It's always a primary target of israeli air force when there's a conflict and Within days they didn't feel safe enough even to stay there because it's clearly this is before the plant was bombed so they left And they went to the next logical place in their mind And it was a family relative But unfortunately that home was next to the mosque New serrat is is famous for its resistance in the first intifada and the mosque in new serrat Is was a classic landmark place and so it's a it's target also So there they didn't feel safe. So he had to talk this through and they went back home He took his family back home because his home hadn't been destroyed yet and He didn't feel safe anywhere else and it was friday and he needed to pray and He needed in his mind needed to be in the mosque praying and but he wanted to be with his family And he didn't know how to handle this and so he decided he'd take his family back And he put them in the stairwell of of the main family home because that's the safest place and then he Then he wanted to go back to the mosque and pray and his wife pleaded don't go and his kids pleaded don't go and he went because husam and this is one of the fascinating things when you follow people a long time and and see how they deal with Making life work who sam was the leader of the communist pflp in his camp in the first intifada. He was not a religious man in those days He never talked about religion in those days But over the course of his life He's made sense out of the failure of his struggle to find freedom And dignity by turning to religion. So he's a very religious guy now and it was essential for him To be in the mosque on that friday praying and this was just kind of the internal struggle that That was wrenching at a very personal level and he needed to get it out After sometime during that conversation he jumped in his chair And this is also uncharacteristic. So sam is a very steady in control guy And he could see that I didn't Understand why he jumped and he said did you hear that chair? Someone at the other end of the Terrorists had just gotten up and the chair Scratched the floor and it made a screeching sound and he said you see You see this is the effect on us now. We are still so sensitive to these noises because Of the recent Violence that they experienced before long though who sam was off that topic And he was talking about His phd. He was talking about school. He was talking about making life work And if you had joined us at that part of the conversation, you would have said Hey, it's a great young man's got ambition dreams and you would not have known Anything about what he'd just lived through or what his Legacy has been That describes gauza honorable competent well intended Funny humorous Smiling people Who make life work? In conditions, which we would think would destroy them I'm worried about them More than I've ever been even despite all of that hardiness or that goodness because they are Injured more. I mean who sam Doesn't normally talk like that So, you know, this is this has been a big blow But you know Ashwin then tell me what you know, what else can we do? And they'll they're moving forward. So I have more anecdotes, but that's probably you know, I think I think that's a Thank you very much for that. I Speaking from personal experience is very difficult to Try to represent What you see in gauza and I mean I can again from personal experience. I can say it's been two months out And I Still don't quite feel normal Having having lived through only two weeks of what the people of gauza have have lived their entire lives under So with that, I mean I'd like to open it up to questions because we're right about at 10 30 But I wanted to pose a very quick question to both of you that perhaps you could take just a minute or two to answer And I'll ground it in this when When I actually when I left gauza and went to the west bank I found that When I told people in ramallah, for example, ramallah, which is a very sort of urbane kind of hong kong-esque City in the sense that there's a lot going on all the time and it doesn't feel like anywhere else quite in the west bank um The first time somebody asked me where I'd come from because apparently I looked really haggard and sort of disheveled and hadn't shaved in a while which I guess is a pattern for me And I said gauza they looked at me like I had come from another planet And I think it's important to to sort of contextualize for everyone in this room when you talk about Gauza in the west bank you're talking about places that are roughly the distance of Washington D.C. and baltimore apart from each other um Very simple. I mean obviously we're all palestinians and we all speak the same language, but because of the the also peace process and the permit system um, and the closures of both gauza and the west bank um Anybody in gauza who is under the age of I would say 23 now because the permit system began in 91 Has probably never seen the west bank and vice versa So you're talking about a single nation um that is very divided in that way and I wanted to ask um In particular alice when you when you Interact with people in the west bank over the course of the war and heard them talk about gauza What was your impression of how they viewed things? And also just really quickly brian if you can give uh an anecdote or two about the way Gazans viewed the west bank Well, I was actually there before the war war started. Okay. Um, but I mean the thing that you're mentioning I think is very striking that part of israeli policy is to keep um Palestinians very divided So they're the west bank palestinians. There are the palestinians living in israel, which are a whole another category They're the gauza palestinians and then there is the diaspora and everybody is very very separate But everybody's related. So it's just it's um, I think it's a very destructive strategy for the community But clearly, uh, if the you know, whatever resolution happens in the future, that's not a viable solution to have You know, the israelis have sort of made the gauzans as the bad palestinians and the west bankers as the good palestinians in some way Um, and so I saw that sort of very clearly in how things were but I wasn't physically there when the bombs will fall in gauza. So Um, yeah, I don't have a okay a good sense of that. Yeah brian It's really an important point that you raised. I mean we we don't appreciate this on the outside, but um quite literally Well, even back 20 years ago the one of the most uncomfortable things for me was going from gauza to jewsland the west bank and having Jerusalemites and west bankers eagerly pump me for information on gauza Which is really very strange, especially in the early days when I didn't think I had any expertise And that's just gotten more extreme so So no young gauzin has been and virtually Very few current adult Jerusalemites or west bankers have ever been to gauza or haven't been in a decade or more So there is a physical separation Which also carries with it automatically a kind of a psychological separation because there isn't the kind of Union that you would have on a daily basis and so forth And with all things palestinian there are several layers of Of the narrative But we we are all palestinians that they would say at one level and so There is no distinction between west bankers and gauzins another level there is and um I think it's fair to say that that gauzins feel sometimes Um On the lower end of the stick relative to their brothers and sisters in the west bank and neglected If you want to talk about the pna and then they feel really betrayed and et cetera by That whole crazy political setup But you also see that separation between east jerusalemite Palestinians and west I mean people in the west bank would say to me well Tell me what jerusalem feels like because they haven't been able to go to jerusalem Which is right next door. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think that's a really important point by way of background so As brian mentioned, I actually was there during the war. I'm happy to add Any any detail or answer any questions anybody might have for me, but I'm more interested in hearing your questions to Alice and brian Given what you just heard. So let's begin with you sir, please We do have a mic. Yeah coming right here Thank you. Thank you very much. I've been to many meetings here. My name is tom getman I'm an NGO executive and lived and worked in the west bank and gauza for five years And was on skype almost daily with my friends there and heard all the noises of as they say the voices of the bombs And even while that was going on they were telling me The scores of their kids um Most of what I did has been destroyed by the idf Five to eight million dollars a year a id money a lot of it How did you get in and what if you can say With the live stream or we can talk about it later later, but for those of us that want to go and be of support and Walk with our friends again makes more than just on skype. How do we do it? How do you do it through andra? Well, again, that's a revealing question In in the old days We as americans would show our passport at a very rudimentary checkpoint and get into gauza that way Progressively over the years. It's gotten tighter. The the current situation is The only way for anyone to get into gauza from the israeli side You know, there are two sides to kind of main Pedestrian entry points one on the israeli side and one on the egyptian side. The egyptian side is now Either fully closed or so so risky that I would never recommend that you try to go through the egyptian side So you have the choice of going through the arids terminal in the north and now the procedure is pretty straightforward You must have a permit from the israeli defense force Which permit is granted Not to you directly but on behalf To an institution on your behalf. So you have to have an institution in gauza That is credited by the idf that institution in my case is the world health organization Applies to the idf and says we want barbara to come and here are the reasons why The idf will grant that or not and if they do Uh, it's a six month multiple entry visa And it's all done electronically By the institution and the idf and then you get an email Saying they turned you down or they accepted it and And then for the last couple of years. Hamas is trying trying to act like a government so they also require an entry permit so Either that same institution or another one has to apply to a hamas government on your behalf same situation But their permit is permit is is good for a year multiple entry and then when you show up at the various stages of the iris terminal you have to You're either in the israeli computer and so you don't have any document you need to show them And progressively your your hamas has you in the computer although the last time I went in a few weeks ago They're not surprisingly the power was out and their computers were down and so It was a little bit delayed, but That's the only way to get in with those two permits and You have to be lucky enough to be connected with an organization and Gaza which you are with dozens But that's the process and it takes On paper it takes five weeks To process that sometimes it comes quicker sometimes it doesn't It's understandable it really is I'll just add to what bryan said that there is one other way to get in and that's as a as a journalist obviously And the reason i'll mention it is because it's quite striking that It's not an automatic process right you actually have to get You've tried twice right so you have to apply through the government press office and in west Jerusalem And you may or may not get in depending on the mood and the politics of that on that given day The other thing to mention very quickly is that if you are not a foreign passport holder in other words If you're a palestinian from the west bank or east Jerusalem You don't stand a chance in hell of getting into Gaza no matter what process you go through or jewish-israeli or jewish-israeli for that matter And then also bryan i should mention that hamas was non-existent when i went they Literally like the i mean the building had been bombed at the border and so there was nobody there We just walked right in But it's a very good point and and as a humanitarian worker I think that it must be that much more frustrating for you to be able to to not be able to get in easily What other questions do we have? anyone else yes, sir I Agree whatever you know you said in terms of a tragedy But there's zero zero point zero zero percent empathy toward the israeli position Or to the huge mistakes that the citizens of gaza made In voting for hamas, which i'd like to remind you for example They have tv shows Where they talk about the beauty of killing israelis What a marvelous jewish-israelis of course So there's two sides to the argument now the main issue here isn't whose writer is wrong The main issue here is what do we do and by having zero empathy toward the israelis You're not contributing to a solution to the problem. You're making it worse So what i'm trying to say is let's see both sides And let's see what we can do to help the situation Which unfortunately more for least in this conversation. You are not contributing anything positive Thank you for your question. I think i'll give that one to alas Go ahead. I have a thing or two to say but i'll let you start go ahead. Um So, um, where to start so I think that You know we were asked today to talk about what was going on in the west bank in gaza and It's very easy to blame the victim And so my comments are trying to humanize what's happening to palestinians But also this whole thing happens in a context I mean when you talk about the fact that palestinians voted for hamas If you look at the polls that were done about why they did that They did not vote for hamas to drive the israelis into the sea They did not vote for hamas because they supported suicide bombing It was actually a vote against fatah, which was having issues around corruption And also had been totally unsuccessful at reaching some kind of peace accord And in a world where democratic process is respected A election that is verified by jimmy carter yada yada yada would have been respected And then hamas would have had to have the opportunity to try to govern And as we know there are terrorist organizations and I will go back to you know the yaguna and the stirring gang That turn people into prime ministers when they get a state So we have no idea what hamas would have done had it had the chance to govern It's also an organization that is not monolithic It's an organization that has built schools and hospitals and done a tremendous amount of social service work for the population that is largely forgotten And so the context is that this is election and then gaza's put under this horrific siege And I think you know you can say hamas has done all these horrible things and all the stuff But the point is that this is all happening in a context of a siege which is brutal Which has destroyed the economy That you know people talk about it as an open air prison, which I think is actually the wrong metaphor Because in a prison the guards are actually responsible for feeding the prisoners And in gaza the guards are not responsible for anything. So israel gets all the control without the responsibility So I do think it's important of course israelis cannot tolerate rockets raining down on their heads But I do think it's a very important to remember the context in which this is happening Um, and that would be my two cents to this conversation. Sure. Do you think? Yeah, I I think that um First of all, I should mention that I write for an israeli magazine and my colleagues are almost without exception Israeli jews who are born and raised in israel And one of them comes to mind immediately because he served in the idea for four years Um, and then was a conscientious objector and spent consequently two years in prison for doing so for refusing to serve in the west bank And one of his frustrations upon coming to america and trying to speak to americans and in particular american jews about the issue Is that there seems to be a kind of black and white? I would call it almost fanaticism here About what israelis think or don't think And I think what as a palestinian my experience has been that when you speak to israeli jews who actually live on the land That there's a far more nuanced understanding of what's possible in terms of peace and in terms of conflict resolution um, and frankly the most glaring example of that is the fact that benjamin netanyahu himself Is negotiating with hamas despite the fact that there is this grandiose rhetoric about wanting to You know crush them and And and basically put an end to this reign of terror and gaza It is he benjamin netanyahu who has chosen to negotiate with hamas on every occasion that he has bombed them And so that says something to you about what is actually happening behind the scenes And I think it's important to distinguish between the rhetoric and the reality And as I say, it's israeli jews themselves who are perhaps the best barometer of that I would urge you please to go to our magazine. It's called 972 And and read some of the voices on there because they're really quite intelligent and and I think forward thinking We just we just need to take questions. I apologize. I'd be happy to talk to you after it I'm sure our panelists would as well. Please. Yes, ma'am Hi, i'm delinda handling from the washington report and um, I Our gaza correspondent says he can hear egyptian bulldozers and um bulldozing along the border rafa border and gazans really think israel is coming back to finish the job now and Egypt is clearing a buffer zone to make it easier. Would you comment on that? brian, would you like to know? I'll say what say what I can and um, I don't I don't know, you know that the day-to-day details of that but I can't say from from a perspective of gazans that the behavior of the egyptian government towards them in the last year or two has been enormously Disappointing and frustrating. So I was there december Last It was during that awful storm which also flooded much of the region but cc had closed the tunnels already then and uh already there were power outages on the order of eight to twelve hours a day And that from the gaza perspective is the fault of egypt and so Whatever is happening. They certainly feel abandoned And uh, there's every reason it's obvious to everyone that The egyptian and israeli government are are quite of one mind on on gaza and the gazans are very clear about knowing that Yeah, um, also if you look at the pattern of the behavior of the israeli government They talk about you're putting the gazans on a diet, but not starving them mentality or That the solution is a contained conflict solution So, you know, again, I don't know what the israeli government's thinking about But their trend has been to just keep things at a particular level And I think that they may be aware that completely wiping out every gaza might not be good for their reputation Not that what's happening is good for their reputation, but that's my sort of impression of the trend To Linda I was I was on the phone Just yesterday with my colleague with whom I stayed actually when I was there And it was just after someone had lobbed apparently a mortar across the border attempted to right? I think it was that happened a couple of days ago Um, and his sense was that more of that is going to happen And it's likely to elicit You know the kind of horrific violence that we saw last summer I don't think anyone is expecting this to be a long-term truce And his characterization of it was that in in 2012 and in 2008 2009 after cast lead There was at least a sense that there was some rebuilding taking place If not two months after then at least, you know within a reasonable amount of time Um, and given the destruction that brian described, which essentially I mean we have to we have to remember We're talking about more than a hundred thousand people displaced in a territory that as you pointed out Alice is 25 miles long and six miles at its girth So these people have nowhere to go and the the sense of despair now in addition to the rains and addition to the cold Is likely to lead to more frustration and possibly more of the kind of Lobbying of mortars and rockets that that we saw a couple of days ago What other questions comments reactions? Yes, sir. Mr. Sumpka Hi, thank you. I'm Howard Sumpka It's hard to ask a question when When you hear the stories about the people who are caught in this kind of awful warfare because what is what is there to ask? I mean, we we know how awful the stories are so i'm gonna I'm gonna talk for two minutes about my experience. I was the director of usa From 2006 to 2010 The usa's responsibility is west bank and gaza. We were based in israel for security reasons um And maybe after I talk for a minute or two, I'll think of a question or maybe you'll think of a response During the period from 2006 2007 We had a half a dozen staff in gaza local staff not not internationals who were monitoring and running our programs there in 2007 when The war between hamas and fata took I don't know you want to call it a war the The romula palestinians call it the coup. They I don't know. I don't know what hamas refers to it as Five of those six staff chose to leave gaza Three of them had dual passports and ones in canada and once in california one works for the world bank Uh and and Another we were able to get to others. We were able to get into the west bank permits And if you work for the u.s. Government and you have good connections to the israeli government You can't in fact get gossons between gaza and the west bank Um that period was awful for them and this I mean at least the immediate actions had nothing to do with israel They had to do with hamas and fata and we all remember how awful that brief but intense engagement was In 2008 we still had one staff person left in gaza a woman Who was very committed to trying to make things better for gossons who was very committed to the usa agenda Who had five six children? One of whom had actually been killed in the conflict some years back And she remained committed in 2008 during operation cast lead Her neighborhood came under attack and we were literally on the phone with the idf Monitoring her movements trying to get her into an area her and her family Into an area that was not going to come under shelling And we managed and she survived that Um but not long after that sometime around 2010 just after I left She began to get intensive abuse from hamas And from people affiliated with hamas or sympathetic to hamas to the point that no matter how committed she remained She couldn't she couldn't stay anymore. And she and another gosson Are living in the west bank now and still working for usa and still Going into gaza from time to time So, you know the lives of gossons have just from Years back been subjected to this kind of of of terror that that comes with with the conflict And it's not just the israelis, but it is mostly the israelis clearly And I'm and I'm not sure when you understand all of that what you do with I think the most important thing to do with it Is to take it not to audiences like this where probably everybody in this room is sympathetic with what you're saying But to take it out into the mainstream american jewish community and to try to make that message clear to them I was had to privilege a week ago to be on a panel with gershon baskin in a mainstream jewish community in massachusetts And what he said and what I said was was really eye-opening To to this audience and I think we need to find more ways To open their eyes and to make it point clear But what this gentleman said I think is absolutely true. You can't Deliver that message and be heard If the message you're delivering is israel is all bad and palestinians for 60 years have been nothing but innocent victims I mean we know neither of those things is true. And so the question is how do you craft that message? So I have a question. How would you propose to go out to the mainstream jewish community and deliver that message In a way that it can be heard. Thank you Thank you. Howard. So I I should point out the last time I saw alice was actually in charlotte north carolina Is that what we were at a at a baptist convention speaking about gaza? And so I I completely agree with you on that point There are several that I disagree with you on but let me let alice speak to the to the question of How we reached the mainstream especially the jewish community. Yeah, so I do spend a lot of energy trying to Reach the jewish community, which I feel sort of personally responsible for being jewish And there are a lot of really painful things about my attempts What's happened in the jewish community over the last couple of decades is that And this I think started when the anti defamation league defined the new anti semitism as any critical statements about Israel which happened in 1974 Is that people who express criticism of israeli policy Are labeled as self-hating jews. I mean we're sort of cast out of the tribe and so The net result of that is that people like me are not welcome in the mainstream jewish community and there are actually I don't know if people are familiar with the right institute a route institute reut. It's a think tank in tel aviv That has issued. You know, it's had all these strategy meetings with us and israeli pr firms and all sorts of government agencies And the goal is to craft a message about how wonderful israel is to give a good israeli brand And then to go after people who have any criticism So my experience of being able to speak in the jewish community is that there's this increasing level of what feels to me Sort of macarthur-esque kind of tactics To shut people like me up. So, you know, I was just speaking at a college where Some folks from the hillel had a big Curfluffle about my coming to the campus and actually Complained that my presence on campus made jewish students feel unsafe Which gives you a level of a sense of the level of lack of tolerance for any discourse on this And they actually, you know went all the way to the head of the department who said, you know, we actually have free speech in this campus So she's going to speak anyway And I was just at another campus where some alumnae said that if I was allowed to do a book reading that they would never give Another donation to the campus. So and if you look at people who actually get their livings from academia, which I fortunately don't You know people are being monitored by their students with organizations like campus watch and david project and camera And people are losing their jobs and not getting tenure And so there is this incredible sort of squelching of intelligent discourse and critical discourse on the israel-palestine conflict And I think this is enormously troublesome and enormously bad for the jewish community For me the most sort of optimistic thing that's happening is That a group of students who are involved with hillel Which is a jewish campus based organization that has centers for jewish life in campuses all across north america It did start out as a non-zionist organization, but it evolved into being a sort of Israel promoting organization and they actually have you know rules of discourse You're not allowed to have speakers that have the following x y z opinions Which is again very intolerant and mccarty-esque and so students being students and being smart and reading Whatever they want to read have finally said wait a minute. We're not going to follow these rules. This is ridiculous It's also very un jewish. I mean jews are supposed to argue with each other We have a talmudic tradition where we argue until we're blue, you know And so to suddenly be told you're not allowed to argue about these particular topics Doesn't feel right. So students in swathmore Vassar and wesleyen launched an open hillel movement where they said we're not going to abide by the rules of the hillel international And about a month ago. They had their first national conference in boston to harvard I was there as one of the speakers and it was fabulous. There were 350 students You know, they weren't all politically the same But they wanted to have the right to have these conversations And so for me things like that are the most Optimistic things going on in the jewish community But it's a real struggle and I think honing the message is also difficult because I mean I'll say things and people will accuse me of supporting suicide bombing You know, it's like I have to say, you know, israel does good things. I don't support this suicide bombing I have to go through my whole sort of bowing down to all the things that are obviously true To be able to say anything critical And so that's sort of the tone of discourse in the jewish community And I'm talking mainstream jewish community and it is very difficult and troubling but more people are struggling against it And there are also groups like jewish voice for peace Which tripled in size during the gaza war and so every time there's something Troublesome that happens in that region Organizations like jewish voice for peace get more and more people joining And I'll just close with this the director of jewish voice for peace said there in the last gaza war She got an email from a rabbi that just said enough sign me up And I think that's sort of a trend that's going on. I mean, it's not mainstream, but it is a trend Yeah, absolutely I would urge everyone to check out jewish voice for peace, by the way Brian, I wanted to give you a chance to talk speak to that, but we also have other questions Would you mind if I don't please it? Okay Yes, ma'am over there Sorry, would the dark right there? Yeah, exactly Hi, my name is allison glick and I am a member of jewish voice for peace and I would just say a couple things first of all to The gentleman howard was that his name from usaid First of all, I think we have to speak honestly about what happened in gaza Back after hamas was elected. I would be for everyone here to the april 2008 article in vanity fair by david rose about us government involvement in Supporting a military Push by feta against hamas. So once again, we see american government hand In a kind of I think david rose described it as a bay of pigs operation in gaza So let's talk Honestly and with the facts first of all and I would just Second what alice said about the jewish community. I think the other thing to point out is The best way to reach American people and the jewish community is to talk about the facts on the ground and miss Presenting talking about the reality in gaza is Somehow being one-sided is only adding to the obfuscation and the Misguided us policy that we've seen for the past many decades so I would just I would just support what alice says And reiterate also that within the jewish community not only are things changing But if you look at the demographics and you look at what's happening for example with open hillel young jews, especially are leaving The traditional jewish organizations in this country in droves And I think that that needs to be a wake-up call to the mainstream jewish community to these traditional organizations because Clearly the future is not with them as they if they continue to pursue These policies and to use these McCarthy like Tactics to try to silence those of us who want to see what's really going on So I think you know there are polls that show that If you look at for instance jews like me here are over 65 There's almost a hundred percent stand with israel right or wrong and as you go down the age level You get more and more dissent. So when you hit 35 and under more than 50 percent of jewish americans do not Really care about what happens to israel and many are also sympathetic to palestinian issues So you see that in polls as well So I I'm so I we're going to have to wrap up the questions now and if you have any other Conversation points you'd like to bring up with the panelists you can do so after um, but brian I want to give you the last word because You and I you teach at the university of tennessee and that happens to be my alma mater And so I know quite well that um in in tennessee There's a very different conversation going on From the one that we're having up here and in many ways It offers more opportunity. I think for the kind of outreach that the that you were speaking about howard um So I recall that during I think it was actually during the war you had written an op-ed And we were trying to place it and I think one of the places like instead of going to the new york times With the washington post. I think you've thought about going to the tennessee and Well post turn us down the post are all the post turn us down as well. Yeah, but but talk to us a little bit about I mean, what's it like trying to bring the message back home? I understand you're from la but you know given what you know about tennessee and other places like it It's really a Our most difficult task as I see it is how to communicate about What at some level seem to be very complex issues At another level though as I kind of grow up in this enterprise of trying to make sense out of this it it becomes more simple for me, maybe that's because I've reached the limits of my capacity to contemplate this foot you know Just you can sum up the the pain of gaussans Again, it applies to all palestinians, but I I'll speak for gaussans. You can summon up quite simply It isn't about bombs and it isn't about Home destructions necessarily it's about Dignity It's about feeling violated It's about not having the freedom to call yourself A people to express yourself to move to whatever it may be, but it's really about honor and dignity and And it I'm grateful for the comment or question earlier in part because Gaussans are sensitive to those issues regardless of who is The person controlling those things so there's a lot of anger and there's a lot of fear against hamas for example within gaussan hamas isn't It's not a gentle Government in many ways. I think they're getting a little bit wiser, but They have violated the rights of their own people, which is doubly insulting And so if if I think if we want to understand the the gut level of this That's the level that we have to talk about so my effort is going to try to be to humanize that level of Experience and suffering. This is about basic Things that every one of us in this room Would demand if we didn't have them And these are people who are demanding them and that would apply whether you're a palestinian a gaussan israeli It doesn't matter if if those rights if those fundamental basic freedoms are being denied then we need to talk about them everywhere Really really quickly So I also think this is not a conflict that's over there. It's something that's affecting us So if you look at it if we're spending three billion dollars in military aid, that's money That's not being used in our own country for schools Built roads, whatever. Okay. Um our police are being trained in israel on how to do effective crowd control So you see ferguson to palestine. There's this sort of militarization of our police departments Our prison system is increasingly a privatized system g4s bills our prisons They build israeli prisons. They've been accused of torture in israeli prisons The wall between mexico and the us is partly built by israeli companies. I mean these are not theoretical Issues that are happening in some far off crazy place. They have really come home And I think you know, it's important to remember that as well. That's some point and on that note. Thank you all for coming I really appreciate it. Thank you