Green Card Honey Trap: Meditating From Captivity To Freedom

Join Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian activist and Columbia University student, as he shares his extraordinary journey from a refugee camp in the West Bank to the front lines of the fight for justice in America. In this gripping conversation, Mohsen recounts his harrowing experience of being arrested by ICE in a suspected honey trap, and how he found the strength to meditate his way through 16 days of federal detention. He offers a powerful analysis of the "two violences" facing Palestinians, and shares his vision for a future built on human connection and mutual understanding. Through stories of trauma, resilience, and the surprising power of joy, Mohsen provides a masterclass in what it means to be a superhumanizer in a world that is designed to break us.

‍Like to read? 👉🏼 Check Out these Blog Posts:

From Refugee Camp to Federal Custody: The Targeting of a Palestinian Activist

Meditation in the Margins: How a Palestinian Refugee Heals Trauma

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Welcome to Super Humanizer Podcast, where we promote empathy and understanding in polarizing viewpoints through stories told by people living them. 

Hey, wonderful super Humanizer friends. This is Dr. Hani Chaabo. Before we dive into this awesome episode, I wanted to take a moment and be real with you. So much work goes into bringing you these conversations, the research, the preparation, the production. It's a labor of love, and it's a lot of real work.

If you found value in these stories, we'd love your support. Join our Patreon for as little as $10 a month. You'll get early access to episodes, extended interviews, and even direct access to Katie and I, or you can send a one time or recurring donation through our PayPal link. Both links are in the show notes below.

You are helping us build a team to produce more content and inspire more humanity. Thank you. Now let's get into it.

[00:01:00] Katie Bogen (she_her): Okay, welcome back to Super Humanizer, the podcast where we explore the stories of people who are making our world more caring, more fair, and more human. I'm Katie and as always, I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Hani, and today we're talking to someone whose story really shows us what it means to turn pain into purpose and to have an alchemical process between trauma and hope.

[00:01:26] Dr. Hani Chaabo: We are so honored to introduce Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian activist and Columbia University student. Mohsen's journey is one that spans continents and decades from growing up as a third generation refugee in the al-Fari'ah refugee camp in the West Bank, to becoming a leading voice for peace and justice at one of America's most prestigious universities, Columbia University.

[00:01:49] Katie Bogen: makes story so powerful is not just his resilience in the face of this unimaginable trauma, but his unwavering commitment to peace and to dialogue despite losing his best friend to violence as a child, despite being shot himself at the age of 15, despite facing detention by ICE for his activism, Mohsen never wavered from his Buddhist principles of non-violence and bridge building.

[00:02:15] Dr. Hani Chaabo: In April, 2025, Mohsen was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement while attending what he suspected was a honey trap, a citizenship interview that turned into an arrest. He spent 16 days in federal custody, including time in a Vermont State prison before a federal judge ordered his release, calling the government's case against him questionable.

[00:02:38] Katie Bogen: Mohsen's legal is far from over. So just last month in September of 2025, the Trump administration appealed his release to the Federal Appeals Court arguing that his case represents a threat to immigration enforcement. The hearing raised fundamental questions about free speech, due process and whether speaking out for Palestinian rights makes someone a target for deportation.

[00:03:02] Dr. Hani Chaabo: What's remarkable about Mohsen is that even while facing the possibility of deportation from the only country he's called home for over a decade, he continues to advocate for peace, dialogue, and understanding. He's back at Columbia pursuing his master's degree, still building bridges between community, still believing that peace is possible. 

[00:03:21] Katie Bogen: today we'll have the opportunity to talk about his journey from refugee camp to Ivy League, from trauma to activism, and how he's maintained hope and humanity in the face of these systems that are designed to break both. 

[00:03:35] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Thank you so much for being here.

[00:03:38] Mohsen Mahdawi: It's such an honor to be with you listening to your introduction and say, good if I lost my memory from all of this drama that they are causing me so I can regain it most likely just you telling me about myself. So here I am. Let's start fresh. I am very touched, to be honest with you, prior to the interview about the level of careness and deep connection that, and respect that I feel in terms of a story. And I'm already now an open book. This is, I, as I was sharing with you before, something for big media to learn from, how to connect on a personal level and how to be humans like you, humanizer like you. 

[00:04:26] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Truly a pleasure and such a gift to be able to connect with you. Before this interview, we really had a beautiful conversation and every one of our guests becomes our friend and family, and certainly you are already one. Before we begin, we like to play a game with all our guests called What Brings you Joy.

Would you play it with us?

[00:04:45] Mohsen Mahdawi: Definitely. We've been playing since before the podcast, so why not.

[00:04:51] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Well now to share your joys and who you are, all the awesomeness that you are. Habibi, what brings you joy.

[00:04:58] Mohsen Mahdawi: Habibi, what brings me joy is heart.

Heart connections that happens between humans. So with you and Katie, we've never met. We never talked before, and I feel this heart connection and it is very joyful to feel it.

[00:05:19] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Indeed. Thank you.

[00:05:22] Mohsen Mahdawi: Katie, what brings you joy?

[00:05:24] Katie Bogen: Mohsen, I feel like you're reading my mind because as we were talking before hopping on the call, I had my little outline open and I wrote down like shared community because there was just something so immediately pure and like grounding about this connection. It feels similarly honestly to how I felt the first time I got on a call with Hani.

So what's bringing me joy today is that immediate sense of safety when you speak to people who you know fundamentally share your values and your orientation toward the world. And I'm just so honored that you're here. Hani, my baby, what brings you joy? 

[00:06:03] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Of course, like our hearts are aligned in so many ways. Being here with you Mohsen brings me a lot of joy. I echo Katie, like when I saw you speak for the first time after you were released. I just felt like you were a brother. You were a hero, you were an inspiration. You spoke straight from the heart.

There was so much power and purpose, like you didn't come out scared or broken. You came out purposeful and brave and warm and kind, and I have so many questions for you about that later in our interview. But having you here, on our show brings me a lot of joy. And I echo what Katie said, like the first time I saw Katie speak online after the genocide started, I knew she was my sister, and I know that you're also my brother.

So thank you so much for being here. Round two Habibi, what brings you joy? 

[00:06:52] Mohsen Mahdawi: More joy. I feel so much joy. Maybe people are now wondering, they are watching us. And gladly we have a pause. Hopefully it's an end to the war. Gladly. At least we have a pause. So what it brought me. Just the relief that they feel and there is more on it related to trauma.

So we'll talk later about this, but I felt so much joy by just seeing their reaction of feeling relieved and that they are no longer going to be under the bomb bombardment. And some seeing the joy of some returning to the remainings of their home, you know, a pile of dust, destroyed concrete, but they still are se excited to go back to what is there to be called home.

So that brings me joy. Katie, on that note, what brings you joy? 

[00:07:53] Katie Bogen: So I've been reflecting. I just spent a week hosting a writing retreat in Mexico and this we were able to raise funds to benefit 

Palestinian writers and creatives. And I had three different attendees on the trip who were Palestinian, had Palestinian heritage, and then the writer in residence was sharing her craft.

She's Palestinian and runs Interlink Publishing, which is the only Palestinian owned publishing house in the United States and I had the immense honor and privilege and responsibility of sitting with these incredible people as October 7th happened. And then the ceasefire happened. And so we had this two year anniversary of this devastating moment and trying to really hold the latitude for people to try to be in a creative space and grapple with the grief and the feelings from that day, and then the ceasefire. And, you know, watching a chef and a school administrator and like a higher ed administrator and someone who's worked in global violence prevention activism and this storyteller manage their grief and their feelings in this moment in time felt like a profound privilege to even be allowed to witness.

and to be sharing here. So joy might not be the perfect word for it, but it's a sense almost of awe of what the Palestinian community, both in Palestine and Gaza in the West Bank and in the diaspora have managed over the last, you know, two years plus the 75 prior. There's just a magnitude of resilience there that is.

Inspiring even as it is heartrending. So that is bringing me something like joy. and Hani my baby. What brings you Joy? 

[00:09:40] Dr. Hani Chaabo: So well said, as always. Of course, the ceasefire brings me relief. Maybe not specifically joy, but definitely relief. I want to feel joy. It's hard to feel like super joyful, but of course like watching the children celebrate. I saw a video of like these twins that finally found each other and they were hugging each other.

I'm sure you saw that video too. 

[00:10:06] Katie Bogen: The brothers. Oh.

[00:10:07] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Yes. And that brought me so much joy. And, you know, not to like steal Mohsen's joy, but to like build on it community. And what brought about the ceasefire brings me joy. Like the freedom flotillas, the communities, the intersectional solidarity that happened. And so today I'm wearing.

My necklace from my friend Lisa, who I call the Doctor of Love because she makes all this beautiful jewelry that's hearts and love related, and she's actually Jewish, and this necklace is the Black Lives Matter necklace. Michelle Obama has also worn this necklace. And for me, this necklace doesn't just represent, you know, the BLM movement, which of course is part of the intersectional solidarity for us, like black people, our brothers and sisters, who helped us like come towards the ceasefire that was so important.

But the intersectional solidarity that comes from all communities who understand oppression, who understand fascism, who are under the boot of fascism and are able to scream out loud that Palestinian freedom is also their freedom, and their freedom is Palestinian freedom and how it's all aligned.

That really brings me joy. And when we wear things that send that message to each other, that also brings me joy. When I walk past somebody wearing a keffiyeh, you know, or somebody raising a Palestinian flag, the other day I was in Burning Man and I was shocked to see the amount of representation on the Playa for Palestinians.

There were people waving the Palestinian flag on their bikes. There were camps that had the Palestinian flag and even the man himself, which is an art installation that's put on by the Burning Man people themselves. There was a piece of art in there that says Free Palestine in Arabic with a picture of a Palestinian grandmother.

So all that intersectional solidarity and all the ways it expresses itself brings me a lot of joy Mohsen, final round. What brings you joy. 

[00:12:04] Mohsen Mahdawi: There are so many things listening to what you have shared because, joy by its nature, it is exchanged and get amplified very quickly.

And that's the hope that we have for humanity, is that we are able to heal our pain because that's the first phase. So we can feel our joys and we can amplify the joy because the more of us feel it, the more joyful it becomes.

This is the power of joy. So my joy now what brings me joy meditation every day just when I meditate, I relax my body. No tension, right? If there is any tension, I breathe into it. I breathe in love, and I breathe out love to let go of tension. And that would allow for the space of, for healing. Allows the space for any healing to take place for any connection with other humans to take place.

For simple joys. They may not be lasting, you know, but simple joys that's living in the present. We have to feel it and we have to credit it to say it is a joy when we feel it. So what brings me joy is being present. Present with you, present with my feelings, present with my joy, and present with my breath.

When I do the meditation every day, we all can be connected the same way through our breath. We are already connected.

[00:13:46] Katie Bogen: Beautiful. 

[00:13:48] Mohsen Mahdawi: Katie, what brings you joy? 

[00:13:51] Katie Bogen: I so love that answer. That's such a stunning response. And really like the idea of the breath as spirit, like as long as we are embodying breath as spirit than all of us are connected just through the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. It's one of the miraculous parts of having a body. I think something that is bringing me joy is being home with my dad and my stepmother who has early onset Alzheimer's.

She's eight years into her diagnosis and very symptomatic. We're trying to find these moments of humor and silliness in the absurdity of her symptoms because that sort of decline can be surreal to watch. And the other night we were having a conversation. On the couch and we were, you know, she tries to speak and has very limited vocabulary and she told me very seriously in that conversation, my father is a couch.

And it was such like a surprising combination of words that I wrote it down. I was like, okay, this is a sentence I would've heard in no other context. My father is a couch and then earlier today we were at breakfast together my dad and I were talking and I think she felt sort of ignored and she was like, well, you all just do this and take care of me so that I can have fun. And it was so real to the moment, sort of without her knowing it, of like, we do this and we take care of her so that her life can have some ease as it is ending. Seeing the like frank absurdity in this is bringing me some kind of joy and feels very profound as I like watch the end of someone's life.

So, Hani my love, what is bringing you joy?

[00:15:27] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Wow. You know, as a doctor, I, I treat a lot of patients with dementia and Alzheimer's, I know that for the people taking care of them, that's one of the hardest things a human can endure. So I'm really glad you shared your experience. That brings me joy and humor is such a powerful way for us to deal with all the stuff that we go through, all the spectrum of humanity. And will echo Mohsen's joy also about meditation. It's so funny that you said that 'cause literally that's what I had on my list. I actually lost my meditation practice. Yeah. Literally telepathy. And when I saw you meditating through your detention, which I'm gonna ask you about later, it inspired me to go back to my practice because I had lost it from the beginning of the genocide. I had meditated religiously for 10 years, and then the genocide began and I lost it. And then I saw you meditating in talking about how that took you through your detention. And it brought me back to my practice as a place to find refuge as well as joy. And this morning when I was meditating, there was a hummingbird that decided to keep going around my head.

And so it was really beautiful to just be present with that sound of its wings and its flitting around my head. And knowing that in a few hours from that moment, I was going to be in your presence, both of you, especially you Mohsen because of your meditation practice. And that brought me a Yay. Thank you for that game. So much fun.

[00:17:00] Mohsen Mahdawi: What a joy. What a joy. And thank you for sharing this element of the story about your meditation. It means so much to me and it makes me feel validated, seen, and heard. I have to tell you a quick story. When I was in detention, people would send me letters.

when they get through, you know, they have to go through a whole process.

It shouldn't be that way. But anyways, when they finally make their way to me. I would read them early in the morning after I do meditation or before bed. So it happened that before I went to bed, I read one of the letters that were sent to me by a Jewish girl who attends a Unitarian Universalist church in Vermont.

So we both have the connection of the eu, which we are, I am part of, but I am a Palestinian, she's Jewish and she's telling me about her experience and she's writing in curiosity and she's saying I learned that you are doing meditation. I'm so curious to learn about meditation and how does that impact you and how is the Buddhist beliefs impact you?

So you see many layers of meanings. The meaning that a young girl. In Vermont who is, who plays a piano, is sending me a letter. She's, I think 13 to 14 years old, sending me a letter while I am in jail. I'm reading it and she's telling me I need to learn about meditation because I've seen you going through all of this, and I learned that meditation is part of your practice and here we are.

You're connecting me also for another part of the story, how the meditation has came back, surfaced back again into your life. So this is joy. Joy over joy. 

[00:18:59] Katie Bogen: That is so beautiful. 

Thank you so much for playing our Game of Joy and allowing us to get to know what makes you happy, what brings you some relief. We're gonna dive into questions. So Mohsen, you are a third generation Palestinian refugee. You carry the stories of your grandparents who were forced to flee their village of Umm Khalid in 1948.

You've said that growing up in al-Fari'ah refugee camp, you really felt the weight of that history, that displacement, that loss of a homeland. Can you tell us about your family's history and journey and really how that shaped your understanding of what it means to fight for justice?

[00:19:39] Mohsen Mahdawi: Thank you for that invitation. You know, it always feels heavy to talk about each generation carried their own pain, their own trauma, their own hope. And will I give it justice? Will I speak to their pain or will I speak to their trauma, or will I speak to their healing or will I speak to their hope?

So it's, it's always a difficult responsibility to narrate the story. And I will do my best now, sharing with you what I have, what is the story and how it has impacted me. You open your eyes. You don't need to be told a story. You open your eyes when you are born and raised in a refugee camp. On the experience, the experience itself is a story. and the experience itself is an experience that no human should be treated this way. When the Israeli occupation, the apartheid forces, how they treated us, how they created, serious systematic issues in their treatment of us traumatizing children.

The bombing in the middle of the night, the shootings of bullets around your head, the stories of loss that you see, your neighbor or your neighbor, your friend, your family member, and you start thinking, when is it my turn? So that is, that doesn't need a story. It's an experience. You live, you breathe and you have to be resilient with your community and you have to share with them their joy when there are weddings and when there are a new births and their sorrow when people get killed and when people die naturally. And to maintain, the story of resilience that we are facing this together despite of everything that the Israeli army and occupation makes us go through. We stay resilient and we refuse to just not exist because that's what they wanted us to not exist. So the story itself, my story is about existence.

That we will continue to exist and we will continue to resist the erasure of our existence. And we will continue to hold the memory to say there is something that is called justice. And we are asking for justice. We are not asking for harm for other people. We're not asking for revenge for other people.

We are not asking for exceptions and, you know, to kick people out, we're asking for our rights. 

So this is the more recent part of my story and it is connected to 77 years where my family, my great-grandfather was born in Em Khaled. It's a town that is not much far from the Mediterranean Sea. Just like, five kilometers away, you can just take a hike, a walk to it, and you are on the sea and you smell the breeze of the sea and you walk your toes in the beauty of that, you know, of the sand, that the moment your foot lands it smooshes and you feel that freedom, whether if it's on moon nights like nowadays, I believe it was a full moon night, two days ago. You can see the reflection of it, which I never seen in Palestine by the way. I experienced that in American to see the sunrise and build joy, which also reminds humans of the possibilities, seeing the horizon, seeing the light, and so on.

So my family gets, they get kicked out of there, expelled 1948 and they thought it's gonna be two weeks. Two weeks passed by, two months passed by, two years passed by, 20 years passed by. 77 years, and we are still waiting to go back home in a refugee camp that was rented by the United Nations for 99 years in 1948. And it started there.

The story, it started from tents. Then it's not sustainable, you know, you develop it, you put metal sheets, then it's not sustainable. You make mud houses and I lived between mud houses and concrete houses. The transition intense life in the refugee camp. It is 63 acres. I know the calculation because I bought some land in Vermont and I said, wait a minute, how large is this land?

And I'm like, this is one third of the refugee camp and only myself with my dog running around and of course other wild animals. At the same point, when you look at it, it's one third of the refugee camp that has 10,000 people in it. It's so dense, just like thinking about it. 63 acres.

10,000 people. You don't have space to grow a garden. You don't have space to get sun tanned, you know, except if you're working under the sun, you don't have space to really know nature. It's very tight space and you don't have actually space. If somebody gets hurt inside the house, you have to put them on a stretcher.

And sometimes, because the houses are so close to each other, the walls are close to each other and there are so many alleys between them. You have to break with a sledgehammer a space of a window from one, one wall to another to get somebody who's hurt on literally what do you call the thing that you carry them on?

You're the doctor, Hani. A stretcher. So to get them on a stretcher to the street so you can get them to a place where they can receive medical support. And speaking of that, Hani. I'll share with you, we had one doctor who would see more than a hundred patients a day under the UNRWA, the refugee staff.

They're very basic to start with, and they cut them after that. So they leave nothing really for refugees to receive any help, but one doctor would see on average a hundred patient a day. It's insane.

[00:27:14] Dr. Hani Chaabo: That's insane.

[00:27:15] Mohsen Mahdawi: Yeah. So this is the reality of the refuge where my, the stories of my family. Having their own vineyards and the beauty of nature, the connection, like my great grandfather has planted a tree there and my grandfather was caring for that tree to the point that I have no tree to care for and no land to care for.

And actually my survival now is on the stake. And you go from a place where you walk to see this magnificent nature and feel freedom of the sea. To a place where I didn't know what the heck is a sea about. I drew it, I sang for it, but I didn't know what the sea is about until I came to America. That's when I actually really experienced what being in nature and the close to the sea or the ocean would feel like.

But this is experience of millions of Palestinians. Children. I'm talking about almost everybody in the West Bank don't know. And we're talking, the number of Palestinians, about 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank. The children don't know what the sea would look like. What is an experience of the sea?

So this is the journey back and forth. I took you back and forth of the journey of being. What does it mean to tell the story of three generations? It's really difficult. Will I give it justice?

[00:28:51] Katie Bogen: It's an impossible question. I mean, to narrativize that suffering, it's an impossible question that we're asking. And there's also something so stunning about what you say about, you know, imagining things that you've never seen before, right? Like we're asking a generation of Palestinian children to imagine something that they've never been offered.

That's a phenomenon that would require a miracle. Right? Which is why the process of narrativization, like what you're doing here, is so vital. It's like miracle building for these children who have never been offered the kind of freedom that your ancestors had, your great-great-great-great grandfather with his tree had, and you are embodying this like holy role of making that real for people to whom it is currently intangible like that is, I can imagine an awesome and, terrifying responsibility to hold. 

[00:29:49] Mohsen Mahdawi: Thank you. I feel seen and when you think about it, it's multidimensional. It's one is preventing people from accessing something and the second one, creating serious conditions for them to not access it. I'm not sure if I'm sharing it very clearly. There is one thing about preventing access to something and a different dimension in creating misery for people.

And what my commitment to alleviate the pain and the suffering for the children comes from knowing how painful and how traumatizing was my life. I had to live through it so I can become passionate about alleviating that and not allowing any children, whether if they are Israelis or Palestinians to go through it.

This is a human nature to be able to care for children, and I can tell you that the trauma that the Israeli occupation has created is insane. It makes us lose part of our memories. It took me years of healing here in the United States. Trauma, trauma therapy. It took me a whole year of trauma therapy during the pandemic meeting with my therapist twice a week to deal with the terror and the horror of the childhood that the Israeli occupation has imposed on us.

And this is another dimension because it's something for me to not experience the sea, but it's something much harder to process the pain and the injustice and the trauma of losing loved ones. And how would I justify, how would I tell a child who lost his best friend as a child in the front of his eyes or her eyes, unjustly.

Who were killed by a soldier. I don't want to say it's an Israeli soldier or anything else, just a child who lives a difficult life already and see their best friend getting shot and killed in the front of their eyes. What would I tell them? Seriously? This is just life. No, I tell them that justice is coming and no child should live in a similar way, and the cause of justice should not be causing other children to pain the same way that you have felt pain.

This is the human connection. I want healing for myself and for the other children and for the world.

[00:32:50] Katie Bogen: And you speak of two different violences too, the like the passive violence of denial where that is violence enough, right? Like not getting to experience the joy is violence enough and the act of violence of harm and violation and brutalization and traumatization and these things, you know, they're different dimensions of violence, but they reinforce one another.

It would be enough just to not have access to the things one should have access to. Right. That would be enough in justice. But to add the brutality to the denial is the type of injustice that requires things like the resourcing of a year of trauma therapy and the space and distance from it to have room to heal.

 And this acreage literally where you can, you know, reconnect to nature and the capacity to learn skills of meditation, like undoing those two levels of violence requires a resourcing that now the people who have caused the harm owe back. Like that is restorative reparative that is part of the justice process.

Is what, not only what is the harm that we have done, but what resourcing do we then have to put forward to start to detangle or undo some of that pattern of violation.

[00:34:05] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Yes, and I love what you said about, one just has to witness, to experience, like we can tell stories for 100 years, and one just has to go and witness and to put things into perspective. For the average family doctor in the US about 20 to 30 patients a day. And when you reach closer to 30 patients a day, that's when doctors get a high level of burnout. 

Actually being a doctor is one of the highest rates of suicide of any profession in the US. And we're talking about 30 patients a day. So put on top of that, you know, 70 patients, a hundred patients total, and on top of the trauma and on top of the ongoing trauma that never stops. You know, it's not post-traumatic It's ongoing stress. And so that justice of being able to stand back and heal from that, you know, that's happening on some level for you, Mohsen, but on another level. There's so much injustice still happening for you right now. And you mentioned some of the trauma that you went through a child.

Your best friend was killed, and later your uncle was murdered. Then at 15 you were shot yourself. These are the kinds of experiences that could easily turn someone towards hatred and revenge, but instead you found Buddhism and chose the path of nonviolence. Can you take us back to the moment you made that choice and what led you to peace instead of very justifiable anger and hate.

[00:35:35] Mohsen Mahdawi: Yeah. Thank you. The series of pain is not only that what you have shared, but add to that two cousins in the Second Intifada. Four cousins since October 7th in the West Bank. And many other losses of people who you just know you're connected with.

So, how do you come outta that, the grief and the pain that one might have to center yourself in non-violence and in not only non-violence compassion, right, because I don't wish for my, the people who caused me harm to go through the same harm that they have caused me. This is, uh, something that I learned over time, you know, recently, just over the past seven, eight years when I started being exposed to the human dimension.

So let me just step back for a second. There are two narratives there. There is a political one, and there is the human one. The political one you have to resist and you have to resist by all means necessary. It goes on a spectrum, right? I will resist directly with arms or I would resist by just my existence and telling you, not with words and words in between and other things in between.

This is the resistance level and that is the intellectual part, but there is the human part, which I am more interested in. How do you prevent this from happening in a collective healing way? How do I get justice for myself and for my people and healing while not taking away from others or allowing others to experience the same?

And that is a question that is not that complicated to answer really. But it would require a level of understanding on a very deep level of our emotions and feelings. Because what Buddhism has taught me, it has taught me how to regulate my emotions and feelings. And if my emotions and feelings are regulated, I ensure that I am coming out to the world from a loving place, not from a reactive place.

and how I see it, I hear that recently shared by one of my friends actually who you might be interested in interviewing. And he shared with me, or I heard him speaking to the media and this is what I heard him saying. And he said I just did not want to be enslaved to my feelings and emotion.

That my whole thing of existing is based on the narrative that somebody caused me pain and injustice and oppression. And he said, there is so much power to reclaim in between. By stepping back from that me, I am the oppressed. To, there is a different way to look at this. Yes, we can see systems of oppressions, but I myself, the moment I start seeing where I am part of this whole fabric, then I am no longer an oppressed.

I think in a different way, and I did not want to be I think well not, did not want to. I think that Buddhism has provided me with that narrative and that ability and that capacity to be able to hold my pain and my truth and to say this is real, and still share my pain and my truth in a loving, compassionate way with those who are my oppressors and what I'm doing.

By that, I'm not shouting at them. It taught me to say, I want you to feel my pain. I want you to come and touch it. That's fine, and it's hurtful and it's painful, and I'm not gonna react to you because you are not the one who's causing it to me, somebody else. That is part of the system that you are in has caused this to me.

And this is where you see the magic. The magic starts taking place between Palestinians and Israelis because more and more Israelis starts seeing and feeling it, and they can't deny it. So the system itself creates boundaries and they create illusions, and they create segregations because they know the power of the human connection is way stronger than any system.

So they try to disconnect us from each other. And the moment an Israeli feels your pain and sits with it, they have to struggle with the reality that they would have to reconstruct their identity and do something about it. And that is the power. And that's what helped me to be in this position, serious trauma in my life.

And I had serious anger before. And rightfully so as any child would go through what I went through. But it helped me to be able to come from a compassionate, loving place and to say, I'm inviting you to look at me. I'm not reacting to you. I'm not blaming you, but I'm telling you this is my pain. Are you okay with it?

And magic things start changing.

[00:41:37] Dr. Hani Chaabo: So profound. You can go to a place of hate and anger when you've been under so much trauma. You can, and it's justifiable and nobody can say you're wrong for doing that. You're absolutely right, but you're also right when you come from a place of love because on one hand, a place of hate doesn't really have a future. It's just perpetuating the same cycle over and over again.

And a place of love is what will always have a future and every tragedy that's happened in history it was the peacemakers, the people who could touch each other's pain, like you said, are the people who brought peace and brought life and justice and the righting of the wrongs of history. Those are the people that brought it. I'm really grateful for you and what you were able to do in that because choosing the path of love, whether it's Buddhism or just being a peacemaker, just being a human really, at the end of the day, it's that simple. Just being a human. I love what you said about like the political and the human aspect is choosing that human aspect is what's going to help us past this.

What's gonna allow space for everybody, on both sides to finally have healing from the trauma and especially the Palestinians who need to not just move on in freedom, but also in a place where they have their own country and their own space to be able to say, okay, now it's behind us, and that's only gonna happen from a place of love. Thank you so much for sharing that.

[00:43:14] Mohsen Mahdawi: You know why people are also more hesitant in Palestinian circles to do what you're sharing with Hani. Like why are we unable to dive deeper into this? Because there is so much power there. I think there is fear of normalization and normalization is to accept the status quo. We all love each other and keep the systems as they are.

So there is inherent mistrust of the system that the system will continue to be what it is. And therefore, for me as a Palestinian to go on a stage with an Israeli talking about the human connection is dangerous because. That might mean exactly. It might mean literally me giving up the principles of my existence for some people.

But this is how I can hold both very firmly by saying, no, we know what al-thawabit and part of the thawabit, which is the fundamentals for Palestinians, is the right of return for their refugees. And the right to resist is a second, and self-determination is a third, and Jerusalem is a fourth.

Those are thawabits for every Palestinian. Hold the thawabit and go and connect with Israelis in different ways. If you want to connect with them in a debate like it's been established with the BDS, fine. If you want to connect with them as human beings and hold the thawabits. That's fine. And if you want to connect with them as oppressors and to point them, that's fine, but there has to be the thawabits there and people have to have also the freedom to connect heart to heart because you denying that is denying a humanity to be honest with you.

[00:45:13] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Wow. Well 

said 

[00:45:14] Katie Bogen: And what you're talking about has so much, it allows so much agency too to the people who are suffering. Like you talk about freedom from having to be reactionary. Like that is a liberation in and of itself, of just being agentic over your emotional experience such that you can hold all of these principles of the thawabit and be committed to them and still show up in conversation as a super humanizer, as someone who is like demonstrating pain, seeing other people's pain, you talked briefly about, I'm not blaming you, but this system that you are a part of, the system that you benefit from is what did this violence to me?

And I need you to recognize that. That is, I think. 

[00:45:58] Mohsen Mahdawi: You have agency. And you have agency. 

[00:46:00] Katie Bogen: Yes. And you have agency too. 

[00:46:01] Mohsen Mahdawi: Yeah. Like eventually you have agency. What are you gonna do about it?

[00:46:05] Katie Bogen: And you spoke too of this cognitive dissonance, then that begins in the Israelis that you're speaking to of, oh, I am part of this system that has a legacy of inexcusable brutalization. I have to understand the legacy of this system in order to work against it or begin to contradict it. And that can only happen when they begin to see Palestinian pain, which requires, unfortunately, Palestinian people to be willing to show their pain to Israelis, which is a very power unequal dynamic.

And so you putting yourself in that context so that you can humanize the Palestinian cost to Israelis is something you shouldn't have to do. That in and of itself is an injustice. It's something that you are very emotionally brave to do. It is a sacrifice. And I hope that while people are, talking about normalization, they're also holding that you are doing something incredibly vulnerable for the good of your people in the long term, even as it might be painful and incredibly emotionally challenging in the moment that you were doing it. And I wanna bring us back to this conversation about freedom and liberation and really how that works for you both in the emotional context that you've shared and in more of a representative context. You've spoken before at length about how the sea represents freedom to you, something that Palestinians under occupation rarely experience or get to access.

You've said things like, I have never felt free in my life until I came to the Can you help us to understand what freedom, like the tangibles of freedom mean to someone who has lived under occupation? And for you, how did coming to America change your relationship with that concept?

[00:47:51] Mohsen Mahdawi: There are different dimensions I can take to share with you my understanding of it, but I have to step back for a second and share that also. The Palestinian Liberation is an Israeli liberation too because the Israelis are oppressed on different level and different nature from Palestinians, but their system has gaslighted them, miseducated them, fed them different narratives and capitalized on the pain and the trauma of the Jewish people and what they went through during the Holocaust and in Europe.

So it continued this narrative that you are the oppressed, even when you are the oppressor in the case of Israel, and that the rest of the world hates you even when this, there is nothing to do with Judaism when people are reacting to you as Israelis, but you can see how somebody can get trapped.

So the freedom and the healing for the Palestinians and the freedom and the healing for the Israelis are intertwined and there has to be a cognitive level of knowing that. So this is just on conceptual framework when we think about it and on a personal level. Yeah, it is um, so surreal that I knew.

Freedom by knowing the opposite of freedom. I've never experienced freedom in Palestine. I protested for freedom, wrote poems about it. Was willing, to do whatever it costs to have our freedom. But I did not, the freedom was the opposite. It was the in to end, and the freedom was not something that we knew and we experienced, but we knew the opposite of it, which is oppression, which is dehumanization, which is control.

So I continue living in this concept of freedom until I was 24 years old, like literally 24 years old. And I come to America. And for the first time I feel safe and I feel the freedom that I can travel. And actually I take a trip all the way from California to Colorado, across the country, to Vermont, and I was shocked, like my consciousness could not handle that there is a freedom like this in this world.

It was insane. And to be able to go to the sea, which I mentioned before, or to the ocean and to know this is what the ocean feels like, it smells certain ways. The breeze feels certain ways, the sounds of the waves. You can't capture them easily in any recording. You have to experience them. And the feeling of your toes in the sand, that's a freedom.

The freedom to be able to walk in nature, literally, and to be able to observe and see beautiful animals, you know, this is a freedom without the fear of having somebody else taking it away from you. For example, when we were in the West Bank, we wouldn't have the freedom to go out because settlers are all over the place and they can come and shoot you.

There was serious level of restraint. Similarly, we didn't know what the sea is, and similarly, you can't travel between two cities without having checkpoints in between and being subjugated at any moment to show your green card to the Israeli armed soldier who's 18 years old, would be like pointing a rifle at you and giving you orders and de humiliating you just because you are Palestinian.

That's it. And it happened just that this is my color, this is my language, the way I speak Arabic. This is the background that I have. Just because of this set of things, you can be de humiliated and treated in a horrible way and discriminated against. So this is the comparison between freedom and no freedom.

And I didn't know what it means to be treated equally until I came to America, to be honest with you. And I did not know what freedom is until I came to America. But what I hold, it's not for myself. I can continue living this. I want others to have the same access to it because that is where the beauty unfolds.

That's where we can explore ourselves as a human beings. What? What the hell are we here to do on earth? You know, to just fight each other. No, there is much more than that to figure out justice. Yes, it's part of it. There is much more than that. 

[00:53:18] Katie Bogen: I love your, your understanding of freedom as not necessarily socially contagious, but something that our liberation work can gift to other people, like wanting freedom for the self, certainly, but wanting freedom beyond the self. Like it's not about you at this point, it's for you about the expansion of your access to freedom.

I think that's, that's the truth for so many people who end up in liberation movements who are able to stay. It's not just, okay, I've achieved some form of liberation for myself and my labor's done now. Like, thanks, Cheerio. It's like, oh, I experienced this for myself. And the sense of injustice is starker for me now because I have an understanding of what other people are being denied.

And that is what's going to keep me here. So thank you so much for sharing

[00:54:09] Mohsen Mahdawi: And you know, this narrative, it does not come with a narrative of a winner and a loser because you can't have winner winner if both people are hit. That's literally it. Because the narrative, you know, the anti, colonial, settler project is there is winners and there are losers.

I think this does not fully apply because you get a mixture of things, and this is the transformation of our understanding as human beings. Because what we can show here, it would be the lesson to teach for so many generations. And what we need to teach is that my pain is not separate from your pain and your pain is not separate from my pain and our healing is our healing.

Together. And I think the narrative or the anti-colonial narrative, which is a political narrative, and that is powerful and it's important because it has actually went against the colonial projects and colonial settler projects. I think decolonization, and you can read about this reading actually, professor Mahmood Mamdani, the father of Zohran Mamdani and his book that he called I believe Neither Settler nor Native.

So, and he talks about what does it mean and we have to do decolonization and decolonization also to decolonize the idea that we are winners or losers because that's a colonialist mentality. Losers vs. Win winner. We have to figure out a different way. We have a just society. We are bringing justice, right?

This is the win. It's for society, it's for humanity at this point, because we are in a place that is very dangerous.

[00:56:08] Dr. Hani Chaabo: You know, you're talking about freedom and protesting for freedom and losing when we lose freedom but winning when we win freedom. That brings to mind the Columbia 

experience. The encampments, the protests that you were a key leader of which got you into some good trouble. gonna talk about the trouble that you're in, unfortunately. We're talking about freedom while you, Mohsen, your freedom is actively threatened right now. It's such a, it's cognitive dissonance. Like you're talking about this freedom that you've achieved and experienced that's so fragile and we have to fight for, and at the same time, your fight for it is why we are in this situation right now with your freedom being threatened, and we have questions for you about that.

But before we go into that, obviously your experience and the fragility, knowing the fragility of freedom is what led you to become one of the leaders in the encampments, but also knowing that your freedom, like you said, is everybody's freedom. Like your fight is all our fight and what you're fighting for, essentially, when you were in the encampments, we were fighting for free speech, not just for Palestinians, but for all of us.

And that is being threatened right now as you are being threatened, it threatens all of us. So before we dive into some more of the like beautiful things you did and the encampments, can you tell us about your experience in the encampments and how you became a leader, a Buddhist leader in the encampments.

[00:57:40] Mohsen Mahdawi: You know, I have to clarify some stuff. I was not a leader during the encampment. I took a step back just weeks before it, but I built up all the way to the encampment. We have built the largest coalition in the history of Columbia University. More than 120 organizations signed on it.

It was a very sophisticated coalition. We were able to bring so many people together it was a movement also of resistance. Resistance against who, against the oppression that the university itself was actually applying on the students on the Palestine and the pro-Palestine. Systematic discrimination in America.

Systematic discrimination, denial of like grief, denial of equal rights for the Palestinian students here. Denial of safety for the Palestinian students, denial of us to be able to speak and schedule speakers and to hold our evidence and our protests. And there was like systematic discrimination within Columbia University and that systematic discrimination along with the systematic discrimination that was going on in Palestine, which we saw early on, that is going to be become a genocide and we were protesting against.

So both of them worked together somehow to bring more and more and more people to oppose the injustice in Palestine and the injustice at Columbia University. And we continued to build and we built based on unity and based on a vision. And I helped with, planning the encampment for four months prior to that time. Meetings and so on, and planning a lot of planning, but I was a big voice.

I was an image of or a face for the movement here at Columbia. And what happened is a few weeks before the encampment took place, I took a step back from that, but I did not take a step back for anything to do with antisemitism. There was not anything to do with antisemitism with this reason why I took a step back, but I took a step back because of different visions that we had and I have a different vision.

That's it. 

[01:00:15] Katie Bogen: So one of the questions that we had was in the context of the encampments, but I think we can zoom out and talk more about this remarkable effort you've made over the course of your organizing career to reach out to Jewish and Israeli students and activists, organized dialogue sessions, and try to build understanding across what so many people see as this unbridgeable divide.

You've said before that you've never met, you had never met an Israeli as a civilian. Before coming to America. You had only met soldiers. What was it like to then have these conversations with Israelis here? Are there any conversations that really stood out to you, and what lessons did you take from those conversations about the possibility of peace that can really only be facilitated through dialogue?

[01:01:03] Mohsen Mahdawi: This is something I also did not experience before because I saw Israelis and I dealt with Israelis as literally they were my oppressors. They were in Army uniform in the IDF and I never had the chance to speak with them as human beings. This is, this how they separated us and what I have learned here in America that my experience as a Palestinian and my pain as a Palestinian.

It's not being shared with the Israelis. They don't understand the nuances of it, and they don't actually know the narration of it. So one of the earlier things that I do early on, I connect with people heart to heart, and then I recommend to them. Most recently, Ilan Pappé, I was always referring Ilan Pappé, Ilan Pappé since 2014, since I came to America and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, it was already established 2014 and now we see it full orchestration.

So I recommend to many Israelis to read the 10 Myths About Israel written by Ilan Pappé.

[01:02:19] Dr. Hani Chaabo: We actually just interviewed him. 

[01:02:20] Katie Bogen: We got to interview him a few months ago. Yeah, he was phenomenal.

[01:02:24] Mohsen Mahdawi: Fantastic. Yeah, he's an amazing guy. And he shares the truth, the reality of, what's going on as a very objective, clear hearted, open-hearted historian. He doesn't put affiliation, of religion or ethnicity or anything above his career. This is what it means to be objective. And also he feels a sense of responsibility now since he see the injustice in the narrative, in the history of it, to share what's the truth.

So anyways, early on when I connect with Israelis, I realized that they don't, and I know that they don't have much access to my story and to my pain. They don't, many even don't know of anything about our nakba, which is 1948, which is like duh for Palestinians. The whole world knows about the nakba except the Israelis.

But we have to be, I have to be compassionate with them because they don't know. If they don't know, I have to teach them. And if it's difficult for me and it's taking energy, it's gonna take energy, you know? I recommend usually for them to read Ilan Pappé, and I do other recommendations as well.

And they see the magic happening, you know, over time at the beginning they come out with doubt. This is like shocked, you know, in a big shock. And then now we have movies too. Good, to make it easier for them. Even movies are more difficult to believe nowadays too, but they start seeing new dimension and that would change something in the dynamics and it makes them more responsible actually towards the Palestinians than being on the defense or the offense. Two stories that are very interesting. I took a Hebrew class when I went to Lehigh University with a professor, amazing professor who never had a Palestinian in her class.

And she's an Israeli, and she asked me the first class, what are you doing here? I said, I'm here because I want an Oseh Shalom and I want peace. And she's like, you want peace? Uh, yes. And she said, where are you from? I said, well, I am from the most unexpected place on earth to this class.

And literally there was denial at the beginning of figuring out where I was from. Okay. Well, the professor was impressed already. I'm the only, the first Palestinian to come to her class the next day or the next class. She comes with the Hebrew book and she has drew with a pencil on it, some stuff like, what the heck is happening here?

And she said, uh, you know, we have to start by the class by recognizing our neighbors. And this book is a political statement that did not recognize our neighbors in the West Bank and in Gaza. And now we make that recognition. I felt so seen, I felt so touched, and I was moved to the core of my heart by a simple act, just showing up to her class, making her to rethink and redraw things.

This is what interactions do to us. So that is from 2019. Okay, now another one very recent. This is gonna be insane. So there is an Israeli student here who had connections even with the intelligence. Okay? I get the chance to speak with her as a human one-on-one, back and forth. And I gave recommendations as well along the way.

And she is surprised, but still while she connected with me on a deep level, I did not expect for her to come to the public and show support. And when I get out of my court hearing last week or the week before, that was on the 30th of September, I see her and I see a number of other Israelis who I never imagined to see protesting for me in front of a court standing there.

And this is moving, this is telling you that there is something happening. When you look at the amicus brief of 23 Israelis who wrote to the court talking about me not being anti-Semitic and not being a danger to anyone. Israelis, professors and students. So we have hope and it matters, where are we going to focus our energy?

Do we want to show the world that there is more hope, or do we want to show the world that there is more despair? So this is the, this is my experience of it. Two sharings.

[01:07:59] Katie Bogen: You're walking this beautiful line of, you know, organizing resistance and simultaneously extending a hand in friendship and educating people like slowly bringing them along and assuming, you know, people are not being cruel necessarily out of hatred. Some are, but some have simply never been informed.

They, their state has actively suppressed information. They have been subjugated by propaganda. They have been, eaten by this Hasbara machine. And here you are like a seed for them. And now you have 23 people, signing this amicus brief and waiting outside of court for you. It's a, it's profound.

and we heard at the beginning of our call, you recently received, oh, sorry.

[01:08:39] Mohsen Mahdawi: And thousands and, and sorry, and thousands of Israelis in New York who have signed in my, on the statements for my support. But this is very technical what happened with the Amicus brief.

[01:08:52] Katie Bogen: And I'm not surprised to hear that thousands signed in, in support of your freedom. Also heard at the start of the call that you just received an award nomination. Please tell us more about this award nomination.

[01:09:06] Mohsen Mahdawi: this award nomination means so much to me for the fact that the United States government coming after me and other students accusing us of antisemitism and being a threat to foreign policy. And here you see a Jewish foundation, it's after the legacy of a rabbi. Beerman. Leonard Beerman. It's after the legacy of this rabbi, a foundation for justice and peace comes to recognize me as a Palestinian refugee, as an activist with all of the work that I have been doing from a Jewish foundation that is built on the legacy of a rabbi.

This is not a joke, but it's a big message. It's a big message to America and to the world. If the Jews are telling you, and I know there is not certain definition of what Judaism is, but if you get that legacy of a rabbi who's so established and you can read so much about his wonderful work and commitment to justice and peace, because he tried to actually go and fight in Israel and he said, this is not for me.

Even not with anybody. He tried to go and fight with the most vicious militia, the Haganah that has massacred so many Palestinians. Deir Yassin happened under the Haganah and this guy stepping back and saying, I will never go back to fighting, and I will continue to speak up about justice and peace because this is not the path.

And for them to recognize me now 77 years later, you know, it's big. 

[01:11:17] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Congratulations, habibi, so well deserved.

[01:11:17] Mohsen Mahdawi: Thank you.

[01:11:19] Dr. Hani Chaabo: such a poetic coming back to Justice with that award and who is giving it to you and the legacy of the rabbi. Leading up today, the Haganah was one of the orchestrators of the nakba and we talk about like the narratives and all these things. One thing we learned from Ilan Pappé is the parallel facts. You know like, the Nakba for us is the Independence Day for the Israelis and for this award to be given to you is really like that poetic justice of writing the narratives and helping people understand the true narratives of the pain on the other side of what you were told, the parallel fact that you were told.

When you're on that stage receiving that award, it's going to be sending that truthful narrative to so many people probably in that crowd that may have never heard of the truthful narrative that you now represent. And you've paid such a heavy price for being who you are and representing the truth of what happened there.

And recently on April 14th, 2025, you went to what you thought was a routine citizenship interview in Vermont. You've said you suspected it might be a honey trap, but you went anyway because you believed in the system. That we all believe in. Instead of becoming an American citizen after all this time, you were arrested by ICE and spent 16 days in federal custody.

Can you take us through what that experience was like and how did it feel to have your trust in the system betrayed in that way.

[01:12:58] Mohsen Mahdawi: let's start by talking about America as a beacon of democracy. Many people would have difficulty holding this, but I came to trust because this is the only place that I experienced freedom in. And I looked at the principles of this country, the foundation of this country, the principles of the Constitution. I looked at what democracy means, the separational power, allowing people to express their thoughts, to practice their votes, to decide where to put their money.

It all seemed very good to me. And I read about the founders of this country. I read about Alexander Hamilton and I read about George Washington and I read about many other people and. Knowing the thoughts behind, even though it was not fully applied because there was systems of discrimination in this country.

But knowing the ideals of this promise democracy is something very moving. And that's actually what MLK has fought for. He said he believed in the promise of what America can deliver, right? And it was not delivering it to the African American people, nor to the native people in this country.

So I believed in the principles themselves, and I know what it meant to be an American to have a sense of freedom and dignity. So living here for 10, 11 years in America. Going to not only attending the business schools of this country, but working here and paying taxes as well, not committing any crime.

I thought it's about time to become a citizen of this country, especially that I feel so connected to so many communities. Like Vermont is a home for me, and Vermont is like my people. You know what I mean? Like the people who I cried to, the people who I healed with, the people who I connected with, the people who I take hikes with, the people who I helped building with their houses, and they helped me building my tiny cabin.

So, it makes sense that I would apply to become a citizen of America and on my day. Well, let's just share with you what happened in between. I applied to the citizenship in 2024, early 2024. That's after October 7th. And my interview did not come out until I was sheltering in place before my detention by roughly a month.

Okay. And there was a question about why did they send it to me at this time? I was waiting for it for more than a year, and by that time they have already detained Mahmoud Khalil, who you know his story. And he ended up being thrown in prison for three months, missing the birth of his first child. And now he's still battling a whole, like a legal battle, similar to my situation.

But I saw him when he was picked up and I was very careful to not be in public spaces. And I think that they wanted to catch me, but they couldn't find me. I am thinking, right. This is what it looked to me, that it was a trap. When I received my note or my notice to appear, which is for my citizenship interview, the first feeling I had, is this real?

Or this is a trap to basically imprison me and take this opportunity away from me. And how awkward and bizarre to feel this way in America, that the system, it's, you can't trust the system itself. Where else this happened, it happened with fascist regimes. It happened in regimes that they don't have the due process and they don't have clarity about, who are they targeting and why.

And I literally held that thought and prepared for it as such that this might be the end of my freedom. But also at the same time, it may be the sense of where I will have rights. I might come out of this with either full rights or I would come out of it handcuffed with no rights and the second one happened.

Literally, this is what they've done with me. They set up the appointment they knew I was there. they planned to come to arrest me. They planned and both purchased a flight ticket to put me on a flight and send me to Louisiana. Everything was orchestrated and communicated. So they make me go through my interview, and by the end of it, they asked me a question, by the way, would you be willing to take the pledge of allegiance for this country?

And said, of course. This is why I'm applying to become a citizen. And moments after that, they come into, the office where I am being interviewed, DHS, and they have the handcuffs with them, and they literally walk me out, chained. After they asked me if I'm willing to accept the pledge of allegiance of this country to protect the constitution of this country.

I did not suffer as much as other students. Every other student suffered more than me. Just by the nature, I was the last to be detained, the first to be freed. Luckily for everybody that I was in Vermont and I, they kept me, basically, I stayed in Vermont. I was not transferred to Louisiana.

And then all of the students came out after me because we set a precedent. Now as you know, the government, this is not over because the government is arguing not only against me if they win with this case with me, they win against every other student and potentially non-citizen of this country, that they will not have the right to habeas corpus, which is you can't be detained unjustly, right?

So they are trying to suspend this, right. The unjust detention for me to put me back in detention. But if they succeed, it'll affect every other student who is being persecuted and every non-citizen of this country. And eventually, I hear Steve Miller talking about it, and Trump. They will suspend the habeas corpus, which is one of the most fundamental things in America, to not allow the government to detain somebody if they are not a flight risk.

This is one. And if they are not a danger to the community,

[01:20:44] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Wow, absolutely terrifying, like you're talking and I just feel sick in my stomach and I'm like feeling my panic in my nervous system and it's

[01:20:55] Mohsen Mahdawi: Breathe, habibi. 

[01:20:56] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Huh? Breathe.

[01:20:58] Mohsen Mahdawi: Breathe, habibi. Yeah. 

[01:21:01] Dr. Hani Chaabo: I wasn't even taking a while you were talking. You're so right. Yup.

[01:21:04] Mohsen Mahdawi: Yeah. Yeah. I see. We need to breathe. You know, because the system is so brutal that it makes us get in a defense mood that we forget to how to breathe because the more everything is connected to the breath, right.

And. Eventually to make us forget and lose track how to be strategic. You become imprisoned by putting you under defense over and over, and making you not conscious to the point that you're breath can be retracted and you are not breathing deeply. 

[01:21:41] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Yeah, thank you for that reminder. Because the trauma of you going through that is like retraumatization of everything you've been through. Like you're at the precipice of supposedly finally this cemented freedom in citizenship and then you're kidnapped from your interview and you go through this and now you're this representation of free speech and habeas corpus and all the things that you told us about that would,

potentially, if taken away would mean the end of freedom for so many of us citizens and non-citizens which is so terrifying. But you mentioned in one of your you came out that you meditated your way through detention in your 7 by 14 foot cell that you were isolated and left in uncertainty. Seeing you released and the first statement you made you are strong, sane, purposeful, powerful, which to me was reminiscent of how Nelson Mandela and Mahata Ma Gandhi, and even Dr. Vitor Frankl, who practiced mindfulness throughout being in a Holocaust death camp, endured their unjust detention. You reminded me to breathe, but can you tell us how you use meditation to stay sane and purposeful throughout that experience.

[01:22:56] Mohsen Mahdawi: I am really honored to hear about what you thought as a reminder of other people, because I actually, when I was meditating in the prison, and by I have to correct something, it's 7 by 12. It wasn't by 14, but it's not a big deal. I'm just joking about it. But I thought, who else was in a prison like this?

And my mind went backwards starting from Nelson Mandela to Martin Luther King, to Maha Ma Gandhi, all the way to Jesus.

[01:23:35] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Yeah.

[01:23:36] Mohsen Mahdawi: You know? This is the resilience that I felt that I am part of a lineage and this is my lineage. And now I am being initiated by being in a prison, in a cell.

So yeah, this is, this was the situation. And there were many other memories that I would think of, you know, my father and grandfather who were imprisoned, my uncles my cousins. Some of them no longer alive and my uncles were killed as well. Or they, some of them are no longer alive. And I continued throughout the memories and the thinking of intensity.

I just continued sitting in meditation and breathing and relaxing at the moment. You take breath in and breath out, breath in and breath out, and when there is tension, you release it. So you practice non-attachment to a certain level and you have more clarity. So I was able to see the joy between inmates or prisoners.

I was able to see the joy when I saw Vermonters coming and protesting outside the prison and see that joy also in the prison is cheering up and saying, Mahdawi, you know, freedom, who were actually convicted of crimes. Most of them. So. Yeah, the experience in detention, it did not feel to me like it was a prison.

Not to undermine the experience for many other students who were detained, but mine felt like it literally was a retreat somehow because I saw some injustice there for sure. And I would breathe in and out, breathe in and out, breathe in and out, and be clear from that suffering and pain. And I came outta that prison carrying with me a mission because, for example, the prison system is not a just system in Vermont or anywhere else in the United States.

Prisoners should be treated as human beings should be provided a good place to sleep. Good food to eat and good mental health care because otherwise you are creating more suffering and more damage. And that was not provided there. They gave us like a meal in prison that you had 20 minutes to finish your meal and very limited times early in the morning.

The last meal is by 4:00 PM something like that. And you can't have really a conversation with somebody over a meal. It's inhumane. And when you ask for what is mental health, like the way how they treat prisoners, it's inhumane as well. And the way how much prisoners are exposed to nature.

Like you get a yard time, which is for an hour or two hours maximum during the day, and that's it. When there is rain, you don't go out on a yard, and that might be a week, might be two weeks, might be three weeks. It's insane. So you see all of that and you hold the injustices that you see between Palestine and between the prison system and the system in America, and all what you need to do.

What I had to do is to breathe in love and breathe out love and trust in the inevitability of justice. So all what matters is to stay clear in my head and to not allow myself to get lost in this pain and injustice, which is a very difficult thing to do.

[01:27:22] Katie Bogen: Absolutely. 

[01:27:25] Dr. Hani Chaabo: You know, Mohsen, when I think of you, there is this like big Buddha statue behind me with a keffiyeh on his head, and to me, that's what you represent. There's so many powerful people in this movement, but I've never met anybody that can speak to the pain and anguish and the way to go through it from a meditative perspective, from a place of love from a true path of peace and humanity like you, it's truly profound what you were able to do in your time in the detention and what you're still doing. And I just, I'm, as you're speaking, I'm filled with awe and gratitude for who you are and how you chose to show up. In all those spaces, whether it's in your prison cell or in the encampments and even today.

[01:28:12] Mohsen Mahdawi: I'm very grateful for you and grateful for this space of connecting and healing the place of joy and a place of vision for the future as well. The future of our humanity. I believe we are at the most critical moment in the history of humanity, just because the interconnectedness of all of our conscious beings nowadays with the technology.

 if we don't correct it very soon, it, my, my fear is we will slip into full domination where our freedoms. Will no longer mean anything to anybody because the domination would be so strong, so severe and possibly, you know, serious, serious, atrocities much more than the genocide that we have seen in Gaza.

If there is a nuclear war, we will see like hundreds of millions of people who will be killed. And one, one nuclear bomb will trigger another one and so on. So we will destroy the earth. And that's why I believe that non-violence is so important. And that would follow also with serious levels of control with weapon manufacturing and so on.

' Cause, you know, the military industrial complex is big part of why the genocide is happening to Palestinians and a big part of the politics of this country. And now if you think about it, there is a possibility. I think that the term, which is techno feudalism, we are so close to it. And it's so dangerous.

But I'm so grateful for you, so grateful for your hearts. And as I mentioned with you before, I was already impressed. I came to this, no cover whatsoever, and no, no shields, no armors. And I think big media, they have big lessons to learn from you because they are really small on the human connection that you have shown me here.

And your thoughtfulness about, traumatizing events and how to approach it rather than being so opportunistic, it's very meaningful. 

[01:30:39] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Habibi, thank you so much.

[01:30:41] Katie Bogen: So you've spoken with so much grief and thoughtfulness about the past and now so much urgency as well. And these premonitions for the future. And despite everything you know, the detention, your ongoing legal battle, uncertainty about your future in this country, you're currently back at Columbia pursuing your master's degree at the School of International and Public Affairs.

So you graduated in May to a standing ovation just weeks after you're release from detention. What do you wanna do with your education if you are able to stay in this country. And what is your message to the other students and activists who want to speak up, but who are afraid now because of what they saw happen to you?

[01:31:24] Mohsen Mahdawi: It is definitely something that many people on different levels of the spectrum, react to it differently. Me coming back to Columbia University. The standing ovation, by the way, it meant so much to me because this is what the school represents to me, it represents the possibility for justice and the community that is actually very clear with their moral stand.

And the community, which is professors and students, have made it very clear where they stand. Which is acknowledging that there is serious level of pain and that the genocide is happening and the apartheid is taking place and the Palestinians deserve freedom. So why I come back to Columbia University and what do I see in the future? My whole mission, my whole like heart mission is to alleviate suffering specifically between Palestinians and Israelis. So my dream, if I die tomorrow and I see that there is peace there, I would be dying at peace. I don't want to experience anything else. In my life, if I die tomorrow and there is peace, that's it.

Mission done for me. So, when I come back to Columbia, I come back to Columbia because I realize how big is the stage here. It's not only about Palestine, it's about a humanity, literally about humanity. And funny enough that this university, this elite university in the richest city on earth has this much of impact because, it impacts the way how other students think all over the country and how people start thinking as well.

And the government is targeting this university as a threat. Well, this is communicating to you that there is something wrong with democracy and there is something wrong with the direction that this system wants to take for humanity. So coming back to Columbia is continuing to be part of this fight, the fight for justice and the fight for freedom and the fight for peace.

And the work that I am studying with within my program is how to actually resolve conflict and how to bring peace and how to understand the different components within international law to bring policy change. I am acting. I'm walking the walk as I am trying to talk the talk and to study.

What I want to become in terms on the larger vision of resolving, literally resolving this what is called quote unquote, a conflict, a complicated conflict. It's not that complicated. What's complicated is that they want to make us think it's complicated so they can continue benefiting from the system for what it is and what we're doing.

It's a movement that I am part of many intellectuals here, and you can probably tap into Jeffrey Sachs and think how he has been thinking and seeing the world. It's a movement that peace is possible, and if in order to have peace, you must restore international law and order and then reform it because you have fucked up.

Big powers and vetos, you have made a miss to the world, to the rest of humanity, to mistrust you and to doubt everything that we call justice and international law and human rights, and our whole purpose. It's not only for Palestine and Israel at this moment, it's for humanity to restore and reform international law so we can actually bring justice without the use of force and without harming people with the use of diplomacy and money.

That's it.

[01:36:02] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Well, first of all, I can't wait to read your book 'cause I know that there's something that's gonna come out of this that's spectacular. A book or a movement or whatever it is. Second of all, I know that one day we're gonna sit back in this space and you're gonna teach us about the mechanisms and the ingredients that are going to be necessary, not just for peace, but for sustaining that peace and making sure that those mechanisms remain alive and well so that these things never happen again, truly, to anyone because of your the studies. So I can't wait to read your books, sit back with you again, truly walking the walk, the image of you walking across that graduation stage after everything you've been through. That's such a powerful symbol of resilience and the refusal to let injustice win. So justice and freedom can prevail for all of us from the Middle East to the US Are you show?

What are you showing us? Yay. 

[01:37:00] Katie Bogen: That's so beautiful.

[01:37:01] Mohsen Mahdawi: That is the cap.

[01:37:02] Dr. Hani Chaabo: That's so beautiful. 

[01:37:03] Mohsen Mahdawi: And you see what's drawn on it?

What I drew on it is a scale of justice, and said what we need is we need justice, not revenge. Not to cause harm to anybody. And in the scale itself, one has handala, which is the refugee, and the other one has a dove flying away. And the idea how it was designed too, it has many different elements of it, but it was built and designed on shared humanity and it has many symbolism in it.

A friend of mine helped me drawing stuff. I'm not that good with drawing. I'm good with thinking.

[01:37:48] Dr. Hani Chaabo: So beautiful. 

[01:37:49] Katie Bogen: That's such a lovely symbol. 

[01:37:52] Dr. Hani Chaabo: yes. I feel like that is a heart share in its own, and I, you must send us a picture of that so we can attach it to the reels and the content we're going to create..

[01:38:00] Mohsen Mahdawi: Send you a picture. Yes. I walked out on the stage and actually instead of having the cap on my head, I lifted it out and I held it out like this, thinking that the rest of the world will be able to understand and to see my message. That is I am here for justice. And to see that justice and peace go together, because what was balancing the scale on the top is a peace sign. I'll send you the picture to see.

[01:38:33] Katie Bogen: Yes, I would love to see it. That's so beautiful and I mean, it is something of a heart share, but Mohsen, we always end our interviews with a formal heart share, so a chance for you to share something that's on your heart, something that you want our listeners to really sit with. Sometimes people share a story or a piece of writing or a personal practice.

What would you like to share with us today?

[01:38:55] Mohsen Mahdawi: I'd like to share with you one of the most moving pieces of Mahmoud Darwish that I have recited when I was a kid and I felt connected with as a child. It talks about the journey of a refugee. So it goes, and I'm gonna read it in Arabic because this is what is most connected to my heart.

 (inshalla God willing) 

[01:40:31] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Thank you, habibi, thank you. 

[01:40:32] Mohsen Mahdawi: And you have the translation of it. 

[01:40:33] Dr. Hani Chaabo: Katie, would you read that translation for us. 

[01:40:36] Katie Bogen: Yes, absolutely. So this is a translation that people can read on Poem Hunter. It's Mahmoud Darwish's "On Man". They gagged his mouth, bound his hands to the Rock of the Dead and said, murderer. They took his food, clothes, and banners, cast him into the condemned cell and said, thief. They drove him away from every port.

Took his young sweetheart then said, refugee. Oh you with bloodshot eyes and bloody hands, night is short-lived. The detention room lasts not forever nor yet the links of chains. Nero died. Rome did not. With her very eyes, she fights and seeds from a withered ear with wheat shall fill the valley.

[01:41:35] Mohsen Mahdawi: This is a great translation. I couldn't find it earlier. Maybe you can share it with me.

[01:41:40] Katie Bogen: I would love to. Yes, absolutely. And we'll share the link as well in the show notes for our listeners so they can find the translation.

[01:41:47] Mohsen Mahdawi: Thank you.

[01:41:49] Dr. Hani Chaabo: I will add that, Mohsen, add it in Arabic at the end of this. And may we see freedom soon.

[01:41:55] Katie Bogen: Thank you so much for sharing. I mean, what a gorgeous and heartrending and optimistic and fiercely determined poem as well.

It's a story of determination. Hani, do you have a heart share after this conversation?

[01:42:10] Dr. Hani Chaabo: I do. This whole conversation has been a heart share. Probably one of the most profound we've ever had on our show, so thank you for that. And when I think of you Mohsen, i think of Buddha, I think of Mahatma Gandhi, of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, and you mentioned Jesus. So this one comes from Jesus.

It's called the Beatitudes. And or sorry, the Beatitudes, that's because I've never heard of it before until yesterday. I usually like wait for the universe to send me a share for each one of these episodes and yesterday I stumbled on a video on instagram of a young white lady 

who exited fundamental Christianity and she had this amazing viral video about how Jesus is the opposite of everything Christian nationalism and all the injustice we're seeing today, and especially what's happening to the Palestinians. And she talked about the beatitudes, which I had been aware of but never really read or seen in their entirety. And this comes from one of Jesus' sermons on the Mount when he's speaking to a crowd and describing the values of God's kingdom. And it says blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons and children of God. Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And blessed are you when people insult, persecute and slander you because of he says me, but I think of love. Rejoice for your reward is great in heaven, and I'm sure your reward is so much greater than any kind of reward that can be given in the universe Mohsen, I hope that we see that reward in this lifetime with your freedom and you being granted citizenship.

And of course, that reward is also all of our reward as well in seeing the right thing of history and justice for all. Katie, my dear.

[01:44:31] Mohsen Mahdawi: Thank you. 

[01:44:31] Dr. Hani Chaabo: What's your heart share?

[01:44:33] Katie Bogen: So my heart shares a story that was written by my new friend, Izzeldin Bukhari. He's a chef in the old city of Jerusalem. And he wrote this beautiful story that was published in the Maersk and I believe has also been written into a book. It's called The Ballad of Lulu and Amina from Jerusalem Gaza. And it's the story of him trying to bring his sister Amina, her cat Lulu through two checkpoints to get to her wedding.

It's a beautiful story. I will link it in the show notes. I hope people will go and read it. And we were speaking earlier about the absurdity of injustice and sort of the everyday foibles that we witness when something outside of our control is like happening before our eyes. And there's just, there's only so much that we can do.

And electing still to do what we are able, even in these contexts that make that labor sometimes feel absurd. And I think this story speaks beautifully to that decision to act even when action in the context of oppression can feel absurd. So thank you so, so much, Mohsen, for being with us today, for sharing your story, for sharing your grace and your wisdom, and your determination and your resilience. And the nuance, like the parts of this that are crackly and gray and still feel uncomfortable, I think, that will resonate very much with our readers and our listeners as well.

[01:45:57] Mohsen Mahdawi: It's a great honor. Thank you, Dr. Hani. Thank you, Katie for, allowing for this space. This has been fun and meaningful and impactful on me personally, so I'm very grateful.

[01:46:14] Katie Bogen: Thank you so much, and you can find Mohsen on Instagram at Mohsen.of.Palestine and on his website freemohsen.org.

[01:46:24] Mohsen Mahdawi: Dr. Hani is in touch with me on Instagram. 

[01:46:27] Dr. Hani Chaabo: This conversation has been a powerful reminder that peace isn't just the absence of conflict, it's an active choice we make every day, even in the face of injustice. Mohsen's story shows us that it's possible to fight for justice without losing your soul and to maintain hope even when the odds seem impossible.

[01:46:45] Katie Bogen: To all of our wonderful Super Humanizer friends, thank you for joining us for another episode. If this conversation moved you, please share it and leave us a review and consider supporting us on Patreon as well in the link in the episode description, your grassroots support and engagement are what keep us going and allow us to continue making these videos and interviewing such brilliant people like Mohsen.

And until next time, keep working to make our world more human. We will end as we always do with our closing prayer. May all beings everywhere thrive in peace and dignity.

[01:47:19] Dr. Hani Chaabo: And may we see true peace in the Middle East for all in our lifetime. Amen. 

[01:47:30] Katie Bogen: Hey, Super Humanizer, it's Katie Bogen here. Before you go, I have a quick ask. If today's conversation moved you, would you please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Both links are in the show notes and your reviews really help us to reach more people who need to hear these stories. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a friend, a loved one, or anyone who you think would benefit from it.

Your reviews and sharing help us inspire more humanity in our world. Thank you for being a friend of Super Humanizer. See you next episode.