 Hi Matt. My name is Sandy Baird and we're here with our monthly show of what's going on and we're here today with colleagues from Toward Freedom who is Robin Lloyd and from our main guest who is Wafiq Fawur who was born and raised in the Middle East specifically in Palestine and then also in Lebanon, right? Palestinian refugee in Lebanon. Okay. Wafiq was a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon So we're here today to talk about probably the most timely subject that we can be here to talk about and that is today the war in Gaza and so leading the interview with Wafiq is Robin Lloyd from Toward Freedom, a citizen activist, a peace activist, a member of Women's International League of Peace and Freedom and our own citizen activists here in Burlington, Robin. So I turn this over to Robin and Wafiq. Yeah, well Wafiq, it's great to get to know you. I just heard you speak over the last couple of weeks at different demonstrations and I I'm wondering are you you're one of very few Palestinian people living in Burlington now? Yes. Yes. I mean the Palestinian community First of all, it is a small environment in particular. It's not as big as in other cities and states Environment is small. To a lot of members of the Palestinian community maybe you didn't meet them because they are experiencing hard time now in particular with the sentiment we see it in our media against the Palestinian. Really? Are you are you feeling safe here? Safe, I mean it's a huge word, but you heard two days ago about the six-year-old kid in Chicago and in Plainfield, Chicago who got stabbed 26 times and his mother got stabbed many many times and the six-year-old got killed. So there is anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment when it comes to this subject. Many members of my community definitely they feel that fear. You know, it's it's such a tragic thing because I think Jewish people are also feeling challenged or frightened maybe. I mean there were a number of police around the pro-Israel demonstration as if there was a fear of some sort of violence, which I think actually is not likely. I mean I I can sympathize with the Israeli people, but I mean over the grief of the loss of their of their 1,000 citizens, but you know, I feel that this is such an abrupt wake-up call for the Israeli people because they have not been acknowledging the the apartheid that they have been forcing on the Palestinian people. They've sort of been living in a in a dream world that they not recognizing that they were traumatizing so many Palestinian people by the way, they they were treating them and that and and basically that the the Netanyahu government is is making a disastrous error by implementing genocide in in in Gaza right now. It's it's so disastrous to see it. I want to correct one thing. We have to differentiate between you mentioned the Jewish people inflicting one, two, three. Actually never been the struggle or the fight between the Jewish people and Palestinian people or Arab people. We reject this kind of description. The struggle between Zionism and the Palestinian people and this is the right correction. So if you have a group of people from the Jewish faith that they feel fear, I didn't hear from any attack from Arabs or Palestinians against any establishment or personal from people of a Jewish faith. I know and I have to recognize the anti-Semitism in the United States and in the West existed long before the creation of a state of Israel. As a matter of fact the basis of Zionist movement which is the ideology that created Israel, it is a Christian Zionist movement that they want to colonize that land and keep it under the Western control so they will guarantee there's navies and their shipments and their all material. So Palestine is not in you that have been occupied because of that. Now my opinion that the Jews who believed on that kind of creating a state of Israel as safe haven for the Jews after many centuries of anti-Semitism and believed Herzl, the father of the ideology of Zionism in 1896 that we will be safer on a country called Palestine, they have been fooled. Fooled on a theme that a land with no people for people with no land. And they went over there, but they discovered and we see it today more than other that the land has indigenous people, it's inhibited, they have a cultural tradition, heritage, civilization, goes hundreds of years and they will not accept occupation and they will refuse apartheid and control over their life. And this is where they struggle. And what happened on October 7, a lot of people, they take it as one incident just happened. Actually, no. What happened on October 7 is the result of 75 years of occupation. And unfortunately our media making it as if it's between two groups are equal with power and equal with background, equal with this and that, we have to be clear about that. On top of it, our involvement as United States of America and the citizen of United States of America, United States of America are responsible of what's happening over there. Mainly now when we see more than other on the middle of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people on Gaza Strip, which is a small strip, it's a 365 kilometer square on southern historical Palestine. When United States goes and feed the war by sending ships and F-35 and F-16 and all kind of military and bombs and stay silent in the front of what they see. It's genocide on screen, on TV, it's daily. After you kill hundreds of people in the hospital. You kill tons of people in the school, in the United Nations school. Israel using the American weapons. Israel survival is based on American tax money. And this is the truth. And we have to talk about it, not only with American people, with our Jewish siblings too. You know, and that's why we have more support and more support from Jewish Voice for Peace. And if not now, and many Jewish organization that they are with us on this struggle. So let's be clear about that. It's not a Jewish Arab fight and wars as American and Western media like to do it. If there was a struggle for the Jews, historically existed. And if the Jews suffered historically, it suffered at the hand of the Western world. Century after century ended up with the Holocaust. I agree and we should mourn the people died on the Holocaust and for their memory. It shouldn't be repeated and never forgotten. But at the same moment, you shouldn't blame the Palestinians on the Holocaust and make your solution, the Western Guilty Party, on the expense of the Palestinian children in Gaza. It's not equivalent. It's not the same. It's it's throwing sand on the eyes of the public. Well, you know, I began to look at it as a person, as a person raised as a Protestant, as a Quaker and looked at sort of the generational trauma for both groups that the Jewish people were traumatized, rightly so, by the Holocaust, which was hideous experience during Second World War. And the Palestinians by the Nakba, how do you say that word, Nakba? And so could you define the Nakba and what happened then? The translation of the word Nakba, it means catastrophe, which is when the Zionist Jewish organization like the Haggana and Stern committed multi-massacres against the Palestinians. Thousands of people got killed in 1948, 1947, 1948, 850,000 people became refugees in surrounding country in Lebanon, on Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, and some on Iraq, as far as Iraq. I am a product of that Nakba. I born refugee in Lebanon from a father and mother. They left 17 and 16 years old to Lebanon, and they get married later. And I born as a refugee and lived as a refugee in Lebanon until I came to school here in Boston. But until this moment, my three brothers and my sister still live as a refugee over there, like thousands and thousands of people. As you mentioned, because of the Holocaust, some people that the occupation of Palestine took place or the Western support, actually the idea of creating Israel happened on the British promise to the Jews for ethnic, religious state in Palestine by Lord Belfort, the Secretary, the Foreign Secretary of the British Empire, then in 1904. Wow. So it's a long time between 1904 and what the Holocaust and the aftermath. After the Holocaust, it was the flooding of the people by the help of the Western world. And we have to remember during the Holocaust, many of our Jewish siblings run away to our shores here in the United States and get kicked out during. So the only place who took them are the Palestinians, but that doesn't mean it will give a green light or an OK that because this has happened to them, the same should happen to the Palestinians. So we can find a space for Jews or we can solve what they called before the Jewish a problem in Europe. You mentioned you are a quaker. It took a while for the quaker movement to come to our aid. Recently, they introduced the apartheid free campaign, national wise, to every community, you know, and we adopted it here in the city of Burlington. And we're going to introduce it to the citizen of Burlington in March 5th. And I hope everybody will vote for a free apartheid free community that we reject any kind of discrimination, racism and apartheid in any community here in the United States and in occupied Palestine Israel. Can I can I ask something? So one of the things that I found most eye opening when I began to study this question was the fact that antisemitism is real and active. But mainly, as you said, it's a Christian phenomenon that comes mainly from Europe, correct, has nothing to do with Arabs or Palestinians. In fact, Arabs and Jews have lived together for centuries or centuries in peace. Yeah. Right. With as you call them siblings, you both speak Semitic languages, correct. We are cousins, cousins. And therefore, this whole idea that somehow Palestinians are punished mostly for the Holocaust. Not only that. I think it's a historical misunderstanding. I don't think Americans know history very well. But it's in purpose. But yeah, but not on the. Yes, I agree with you on purpose, but not on the purpose of common ordinary people who simply are uninformed and who don't understand history. So what you say to me is really important. Jews and Arabs have always, Jews and Palestinians have always been capable of being friends. Always there was a small Jewish community in Palestine. By 1903, the Jewish community, according to the Ottoman and the Turkish records, they were a 3% of the population. But they lived and they thrived. The Jewish community from Morocco to the rest of the Middle East, Turkey, etc. Majority of them, a lot of them get expelled from Muslim Spain. Right. And in 1492, that was a long time ago. And no, but they thrives all the time and they had the positions on the government and they did business. Arabs and Jews as a one community from two different faiths. The same with the Christians who are living on the Arab world. You know, they we grow up with them on Lebanon. They existed in Syria, you know, because the history of actually the Christianity have been founded on this area. The Christian Western countries, they discriminated against both the Jewish community and the Eastern Christian communities. So the discrimination is similar to the United States. It's based on race. More than actually based on faith, you know, and we see it here. If you want to tell me that racism doesn't exist here, we are blind. Right. But you're going to talk also about the current crisis, right? About what's that? Yeah. Yeah. So. So how do you what's going on? It was going on is heartbreaking. It's it's personally some mornings. I don't like to wake up. This is on sleep last night, I'm saying. The Gazan people. The point out Gaza. The people living on Gaza, which is, as I said before, three hundred sixty five kilometers square is a small strip with two point three million people. More than 60 percent of the people living on Gaza, they are under 18 years old. They are young and they have been suffering under a complete complete closure for the last 16 years. The Israeli closed every way possible to come and to leave it from Gaza for the last almost 16, 17 years. And this war in Gaza is the fifth war. On the last 16 years, the fifth war against Gaza. Isn't it rather than in Gaza? It's against Gaza against Gaza. But I say in Gaza because the Israeli goal in Gaza is to empty Gaza is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. And that's why we see in this war after bombardment against hospitals that over five hundred people got killed there just yesterday, the day before and attacking schools where many Palestinian Gazans took refuge in. They attacked them. They want 22 hospital to vacate and they ordered people to go south. And Secretary Blinken, to help Israel, he's going to the Arab countries trying to convince them to take the Palestinian from Gaza as refugee. He called it temporarily until we got rid of the militant. And the resistance on Gaza. Well, could I ask you a question about that? Because Netanyahu says every Hamas member is a is a dead man. Now, how many of the people of Gaza are if they're not members of Hamas are sympathetic with them? I mean, this is it's is it a card carrying membership type thing? Or my impression is most of the people of Gaza are in sympathy with Hamas. There is a four thousand people until this afternoon almost get killed on another thousand people under the rebels. At least over one thousand people get identified as a children and more one more than a thousand three hundred as woman. If Netanyahu and Blinken and the supporter of Israel consider those children and those women are Hamas identification, carrying members of Hamas. Good luck to them, you know, all the Palestinian people get attacked on Gaza. It is the biggest kind of lie that the war. And I see it on the media as Israel Hamas war. It is not Israel Hamas war. It's Israel Palestine war. What's happening? And they are not killing only Hamas members. They are killing any Palestinians because if I say and I am a Palestinian. Israeli consider it dangerous to them. You know why? Because they never recognize there is a Palestine or there was a Palestine. They are in denial where they are living. Israel Hamas members. Let's talk about it more seriously, too. Where are they from? They coming from Mars are foreigner to that land. And when they see their children getting killed and their mothers getting killed, their sister getting killed. Do they have a right to resist? Do you do they have a right to resist? Here the Americans are priding themselves of the history of the American and George Washington liberating them from the British colony. What's the difference? What is the difference? Why the double standard? I'll go further closer to this moment. Why the people against Russia attacking Ukraine or occupying as they call it, you know? And every American feels sympathy toward the people of Ukraine. What's the difference? Why the double standard? When people talking about peace and justice and all these slogans, why the Palestinians don't deserve that? Why you believe your media that if you say Arab or Palestinian, it's a terrorist. But Israeli is civilians. As if all the 1400 Israeli, all of them civilians. Let me tell you something about Israel. If you are male at 18 years old, you have to serve with three years on the army. If you are female, you have to serve two years. In the army? On the army. It's not country has an army. It's an army has a country. This is what Israel. Wow. Okay, what about answering the question that is constantly asked and answered in our media? That is that this attack on Israel by Hamas was both unprovoked and extreme. Was it unprovoked? Would you consider killing Palestinian in the West Bank or any place on occupied Palestine or the assassination inside occupied Palestine and outside provocation or not? I'm asking the question for you to answer. Nobody talks about there are three Palestinians that get killed in West Bank just the day before October 7th. In October 6th, three Palestinians. We're talking about Gaza today, but on the last 11 days in the West Bank, 62 Palestinians get killed. Wow. 62 Palestinians, nobody talks about them. There is invasion of refugee camps in West Bank every single day. They are breaking the doors and arresting people every single day. They were almost only 6,000 prisoners, Palestinian prisoners on the hand of Israel. All of them political prisoners or activists as resistance. Today, there are almost 10,000. In jail? Yeah, because they are arresting, they're going village by village, city by city in Nablus, in Tulkarem and Ramallah. Those are in the West Bank. So those are like hostages that Israel is holding? If you, I will agree on the word hostages, but they are on the hand, they are in Israeli prisons. And I know what's the reason because Israel had many Israeli prisoners on the hand of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. And one day or another, there will be a negotiation to release those prisoners and to release all the Palestinian prisoners. So they won't have more. Okay, to be, maybe I think it's important to recognize that many Americans don't know what the West Bank is, what Gaza is. Could you just tell our audience, we both know, the difference between the two. Gaza is a huge strip of land that basically has been blockaded also by Israel. So all these people are trapped there, right? Yes, I mean. And Gaza is separated from the other Palestinians who live on the West Bank. All Palestinian communities. Gaza is an open air presence. They're completely locked by the Israeli. The Gaza tried many times to go in a peaceful marches to what they call the border of Gaza. Months after months, here and after years and hundreds of Palestinians got shot on the border by the Israeli and they were civilian, unarmed civilian. And they are trying frankly to go back to open this presence. And those, the settlements and the cities, the Israeli and Southern Israel as they call, like, those are the original cities and towns that belongs to the Palestinians before 1948. Those refugees in Gaza, they look at the other side, it's home, not foreign. On another hand, you have a West Bank. It's not far away, but it's locked by itself, you know, not on the way Gaza. They are apartheid walls have been built on many areas. The Palestinians cannot travel from one area to another. They are around 425 checkpoints. Students cannot go to school. Farmers cannot go to the fields. It's up to the Israeli army personnel on the checkpoints to allow you or not. A sick person cannot go to the hospital and they can do closure to refugee camps or cities from one city to another, you know? The same in Jerusalem where the Palestinian community are suffering a different kind of suffering. There is ethnic cleansing over there, taking over lands and houses, you know, on Sheikh Jarrah and Peter and other neighborhood of Jerusalem to expand the Jewish existence, to make the city a Jewish city. So to get rid of the Palestinian, Muslim and Christian from Jerusalem and to make it a completely pure Jewish city. And all that is apartheid. All that is racism and discrimination, you know? And to ask why the Palestinian resisting? The question is why it shouldn't be allowed. Anybody will live under these conditions. Or to live like me in a refugee camp, most of their lives and my brothers in Lebanon and they are dreaming of return back to that land to be called terrorist because you're asking to go home, to go back. Is that fair? So what does it look like that is going to happen in the West Bank and or on the Northern border where Hezbollah is on the other side? And who is Hezbollah? On the West Bank is an explosive, very, since all the time has been, but now accelerating because there is many army intrusions to the Palestinian big cities like Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarem and others, many refugee camps. So the Israeli plan, no difference in West Bank, no difference than the Gaza, which is to push the Palestinian from Gaza toward Egypt and to empty the area, to do the same thing from West Bank toward Jordan and to empty the area because the biggest danger to what's so called or they did it by law, the Jewish state of Israel is the demographic change that the Palestinians, we are becoming majority between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Hezbollah, it's Lebanese resistance movement became reality after 1982 Israeli invasion to Lebanon. And after that, they fought the Israeli in South Lebanon and they kicked them out completely in Lebanon in around 2000 and they succeeded to stop Israeli invasion in 2006. They consider Shabbat farm is still a Lebanese occupied land and they fighting for it. Okay, I guess we don't have a whole lot of time left. One of the things I find very disturbing is that all we hear about is the American press. All we hear about is the reaction of Americans. I very rarely see what's going on in the rest of the world. And if you look at it when I see anything about the rest of the world, it seems like there's a split between the white Western European powers. They seem to support Israel, but the rest of the world, Latin America, Africa, many parts of Asia, appear to be supporting the Palestinians in this. Is that true? And why don't we hear that? You don't hear it on the Western press. That's what I'm talking about. You don't hear it in New York Times and USA Today and I'm Fox News. But actually- You don't see it on CNN either. No. The reason why there is no coverage because most of your coverage, most of you, the American politicians are pro-Israel. Our members of our leader here in Vermont, they are in a full support of Israel and they wanna send weapons and aid. And why? Which is it is disturbing and dangerous that you will be on the middle of the genocide and you call yourself progressive and you will say okay to send weapons over there. Why the world south, the people of colors, Africa, Latin America and the rest are in support of the Palestinians? Because themselves they experienced the same suffering the Palestinians suffered. So it was easy for them to make a decision like the decision they did. Because we feel toward their struggle and they feel toward our struggle. We are one on this struggle. Could I bring up, since we're running short now of time, a proposal for the United Nations? This is by Jeffrey Sachs. Do you know him? Abel Amir. He has put out a number of very interesting podcasts and thoughtful because he's had a long experience himself as a diplomat over time. Saving Israel and Palestine through the United Nations. If Israel continues to commit massive war crimes in Gaza in the face of global calls for restraint, Israel puts its fundamental national security at risk. I mean, I think that Israel has not really absorbed what the ramifications of continuing this genocide and extending the war, if they're going to do that on the Northern border and the impact that will have. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has spoken clearly, persuasively and eloquently about the need for a ceasefire, the release of hostages, the protection of the civilians of Gaza, support for Israel's security and the decisive move to a Palestinian state in line with previous UN agreements. I mean, that's another thing I think most Americans don't realize that when the issue of Palestine is discussed in the United Nations, it's almost, it's 90 to one. I mean, there's only a few countries, the United States. In fact, the United States just blocked something in the Security Council, which was a proposal for a ceasefire. For a ceasefire and send aid to the people under bombardment. And can you believe it? So our representative there, I think her name is Linda Green, African-American woman, had to vote against a ceasefire in the Security Council. Yeah, because this is the American policy. American policy is to stand with Israel. Both are colonialist country and both they are same in history. The Israeli and the American politics. Well, America used to be a revolutionary country at one point. Maybe at one point. Right, that's what I mean. What we see now is supporting occupation and supporting apartheid and continue to block every resolution. There are tens of resolutions from two for two that to withdrawal from a land occupied 1967 to 1991, the division of the country, 1994, the return of the refugees. None of any of these United Nations resolution have been respected by Israel. Or the United States. Or the U.S. Or the U.S. And the U.S. vetoed every resolution in support of the Palestinians. Well, this, Jeffrey Sachs has the idea that actually the P5, which are on the Security Council, which includes Russia, China, United States, France, and England, I guess, that there should be no geopolitical divide amongst the major powers with regard to this crisis. That Russia has very strong ties with Israel and the other countries have many economic and historical ties and they also, they don't want to alienate the Arab and Muslim worlds. Many of them have Arab or Muslim populations so that he's arguing that the P5 should work together towards a UN Security Council resolution and Russia is reportedly on the verge of submitting a peace resolution. I mean, do you think we could overcome our hatred of Russia right now? No, no, no, no, no. The Russian submitted one this week and have been rejected. I don't know why you are optimistic. Why you are optimistic. Another one is unfortunate. I don't believe those countries were serious for 75 years to bring a resolution that they can act and they can put some kind of a change of the atmosphere over there from war toward peace and our settlements. This is only talks. I mean, for us, the Palestinians, we are not optimistic that the solution will come from the hallways of United Nations or from the European countries because those European countries and America are the one who created the crisis over there. Without them, Israel wouldn't be existed. That problem wouldn't be existed. And for the American public, let's stop this kind of denial not to take responsibility what your country have committed. The thing that to me also, I would really like to speak to the American people on this subject and many subjects. Is it in America's interest to continue these wars really everywhere? But let's specifically focus on our support of Israel. As you pointed out, Wafi, many, many times, these wars, particularly the war against Gaza, against the Palestinian people would not be possible without U.S. taxpayer money. And that's what gets me every single time. It's in my name that this stuff is happening. It's with my taxpayers' money that the people of Palestine are being decimated. It is. And that's what every American should ask themselves as we face this crisis. What is our government doing? As American public, they should ask this question to themselves. Yes. They should ask it to their representative who are voting again and again for sending our money. They're gonna vote tomorrow, aren't they? They're going to try to create a Congress and leader of a Congress just for that vote only. Just for that vote only without... Yeah, they're gonna have all of a sudden a speaker of the house. Yeah, but I mean they're going to pass that resolution of sending billions of dollars of arms to Israel without a major thoughtful discussion. But there is something happening today that, what's his name? Josh Paul, he's from Biden administration. He resigned his position because he thought it is unjust to send arm now. Who is he? Josh Paul. I know, but... He is the head of the relationship between United States and foreign country on arms and policy. And this is a new development. And we want voices from representative here in Vermont from Berlin to take a stand and not to send us answers, generic answers, when we ask her where you stand and to stop telling us to state solution and she support this and that and not to go with the trips with APAC without visiting Palestinian community over there. We ask Senator Sanders that it is not enough to threaten Israel of stopping the AIDS. It's more actually to vote against it. For Senator Walsh, he told me personally that he went, visited over there and he saw what's happening in El Khalil Hebrew and he knows what's going on and he thinks it's apartheid. The major thing you have to understand, Israel politics is not because they have a leader called Netanyahu. Some people taking that excuse. Us the Palestinian, we live that when Begin was the prime minister, when Shamir was the prime minister, when Sharon was prime minister, when Golda Meyer was prime minister. And when we had all of our presidents too. And all the American president from both sides. So for the American public, please educate yourself and take a stronger stand with justice this time. I think we're out of time and on that note, please USA citizens wake up to our own government, please. And that Becca Ballant is right now possibly voting for or against a ceasefire proposal in the house. So call her, I called her earlier. I wrote her a letter. All right, well thank you very much and this is not the end of this subject I would think. Thank everybody for listening and we'll be back soon. Thank you.