How to Realign for Peace

Orly and Abe are joined by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib and Melanie Robbins of Realign for Palestine as they discuss Ahmed's appearance on an episode of Jubilee's "Surrounded" and their short documentary, "Waging Peace."

Transcript

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Welcome to another edition of Peaced Off! This is our 5th Episode, and I want to thank those of you who have been listening over the past few weeks, but also remind folks that on the individual episode pages on our website, getpeacedoff.com, you can find embedded trailers and other videos, and links to articles that we reference in our discussions with our guests. So feel free to check out those ancillary materials before, during, or after you listen to our episodes. Today, I’m back with Orly Ravid from The Film Collaborative and very blessed to be with these two special people that I have been looking forward to having a conversation with, because of the work they’re doing. to having a conversation with, because of the work they’re doing. It’s Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib and Melanie Robbins and they are with Realign for Palestine. And of course, joining me is Orly Ravid, Founder of The Film Collaborative and who’s idea it was to do Peaced Off!, and bring people together from different sides of the spectrum to have this conversation. Welcome, Ahmed and Melanie. Thank you. So, if you would just give us a brief introduction to yourself, Ahmed first and then Melanie, and how you two met. That would be wonderful. Fabulous. Well, thank you again for having us to speak to you and your community. Really appreciate the opportunity. So my name is Ahmad. I’m based in Washington, DC. I am Palestinian-American, originally from the Gaza Strip, which I left at the age of 15, in 2005 as an exchange student to the United States. I came here to the San Francisco Bay area to be a high school student. And upon completing this program, I was enroute back to the Gaza Strip, where my immediate and extended family remained, and unfortunately was unable to go back in. Hamas had ascended to power and they went ahead in June of 2006 and abducted an Israeli soldier on the Israeli side of the border and brought him into the Gaza Strip. And that caused a mini war simultaneous with the Lebanon……the Hezbollah-Israel war. So I was stuck in Egypt, and after months, I was able to return to the United States, where I ultimately pursued political asylum. And it’s a process that ultimately led to me becoming a citizen of the United States 11 years ago. I lived with an American host family and that community, really, that took me in. I was alone without my family, here, my biological family. And so I finished high school, and the very day of my asylum interview was the very day that Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, and that made me one of the first Palestinians to receive asylum in the United States due to the group’s control of the territory. Up until October 7th, for the previous eight years before that, I had worked in international development, specifically focused on the Global South and mainly in Africa with a philanthropic organization: malaria, deworming, poverty alleviation, neglected tropical diseases. And then I shifted gears, and was somewhat reluctantly thrust into the scene, because of the tragedy that took place on October 7th and the horrendous war, that ensued in the Gaza Strip that impacted me personally, my family members, leading to the loss of dozens of my immediate and extended family members in Israeli bombardments, the destruction of my two childhood homes, but also me deciding to put myself out there to challenge Hamas, to challenge the armed resistance narrative, to challenge the destructive rhetoric that was emerging in the name of being pro-Palestine, at a time when I very much so identify as being pro-Palestine. I’m a big believer in the Palestinian people’s just and urgent aspirations for freedom and independence and liberation and self-determination and statehood. But I also am a believer that the Jewish people have a right to safety and security, and that’s not controversial. That shouldn’t be controversial in the sense that I don’t believe in violence being perpetrated on any side. I don’t believe in extremism on any side, whether it be Jewish or Palestinian. Israeli are Arab. And so, yeah, that’s part of what put me into the scene. And I connected with Israeli hostage families and survivors of October 7th. And as a way to break the vicious cycle of hatred and incitement and violence and revenge and really honor the legacy of my family members by doing something different than seeking revenge and using their memory, you know, as fuel for a different pathway forward. And it was through that effort that I met Melanie, who was consulting and working with hostage families and, they had a delegation that came to Washington, D.C.. This was before I moved to Washington. But we crossed paths and I think there was an alignment of the minds, of the hearts, and, yeah, we decided to try to work together and build something together that breaks……that is both Palestinian led, I do believe in dialogue and engagement, but I wanted to build something that is a new political home for like-minded Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims with space for engaging allies in the Jewish and Israeli community. And so that’s where I thought Melanie could be a partner in helping me build that component that engages the other side, if you will. I’m not a believer in side-isms, but let’s just call it that. And here we are almost coming up on a year. We met last July. And Melanie, if you could tell us about what brought you to the moment where you two met. Yeah. So, I was born and raised in an American-Jewish home with values of social justice that had led me to lots of different issues throughout life. And, in high school, I had gone to Israel for the first time, and that’s really where my journey had begun. And, I had a lot of cognitive dissonances that over time I broke down and really sought to learn from multiple perspectives and understand the history of the conflict through various points of views. And that eventually led me to study the issue write on the issue and then moved to the region. I lived in the land between 2011 and 2016, where I worked at a variety of different levels, both at a very grassroots peacebuilding educational level, but also at a political level, working for an organization called Peace Now, which is an Israeli peace organization focused on policy more than anything. And in that time, I also began to bring students, particularly young American Jews, who were visiting the region, who wanted to experience and understand what was happening in the West Bank, but didn’t know how to get there. And so that, for me, was the first time I had the opportunity to sort of share my process with others by just getting them to question and tangibly experience what the conflict looked like on the ground. I eventually went and got my Master’s in Security and Diplomacy, and moved back to the States, where I started working in a variety of different Jewish communal organizations, first at the Anti-Defamation League and later on at a Jewish communal organization focused on, you know, programs actually with Israel. And throughout that time, I continued to engage in a really, like, interfaith model. So I really believed strongly that the only way we were going to get to a better place, either here or there, was working together with allies. And so a lot of my resolve, etc., had been like to work together as an ally to others and to help build capacity and strength for different, you know, needs and movements, especially on the Israel-Palestine issue. And so when October 7th happened, I was of course, distraught. And I also realized that I had, if you will, a moral duty to sort of be part of my community at that time when so many people were hurting and didn’t know what to do with all of that emotion and all of that agita, if you will. And so I struggled for some time to figure out what the right place for me was. I did a lot of work locally, just sort of at an emotional level in my local community. And then with time began working with hostage families, particularly those who were pro- a ceasefire hostage deal and in particular trying to help them translate what was happening on the streets of Israel into the American-Jewish community so that people could understand and find, hopefully, more solidarity between what the Israeli people were saying and doing and what was actually happening in the discourse in the United States. And that is, as Ahmed mentioned, where we met. He joined a delegation of some of these families to DC, where we met with policymakers from across the spectrum, from Lindsey Graham’s office to Ilhan Omar’s office, and really modeled for the first time, especially in Congress, a Jewish-Israeli hostage family and a Palestinian from Gaza who’s lost dozens of family members sitting in the room having a shared message. Whether they had agreed on everything or not didn’t really matter, but it was this modeling of what this kind of allyship and solidarity could do that really sparked us thinking about what more could be done. And so, as Ahmed mentioned we just kind of kept brainstorming and thinking about how to build something that, as he said, would be Palestinian-led because there isn’t space for the Palestinian community to really advocate in a productive way, the way that we have in the Jewish community, right? In our community, you have from the extreme left, if you will, the JVPs [Jewish Voice For Peace] to to AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], and so forth, and a whole range of different organizations in between. And so we really wanted to help create a space to open up a political movement and home for this kind of advocacy that would lead to a pragmatic solution and kind of break out of the entrenched narratives that we see in both of these diaspora communities. So my question would be, how do you explain realignment of these two entrenched, different opinions? What is your experience when you’re trying to broach this conversation? Well, what I would say is that there’s, I mean, there’s a very visibly entrenched, you know, like, pro-Palestine camp or narrative, or pro-Israel camp or narrative. And, you know, there’s pro-Palestine and then there’s “pro-Palestine,” and similarly with the Jewish community or with the pro-Israel community. But what I mean by the “quote” community is what I call them, are those who suck up the oxygen out of the room, who use incendiary rhetoric and language, who use divisive, sloganeering as a way to somehow gain attention and supposedly call out the injustices that the Palestinian people are facing, but inadvertently end up actually… that ends up backfiring and ends up making the issue radioactive. It ends up pushing away prospective allies and they will stubbornly tell you that we don’t want to pretty up or moderate our message to attract others, and we don’t want to talk to Zionists, and we don’t want to talk to any Jewish person who believes in Israel. And it’s as if……at a moment when there’s unprecedented global awareness and solidarity with the Palestinian people, like to build a massive tent and to really drum up support for the Palestinian cause and issue instead of doing just that, they’re retreating to more radicalism, more extremism, more isolationism, more self-destructive narratives that are completely lunatic and just extraordinarily self-harming of the Palestinian people. There’s a disconnect, for example, I’ve talked to…my family is in Gaza, or what remains of them, I have a lot of folks in Gaza, and people in Gaza are not monolithic. People in Gaza are just like any other community. There’s people that believe different things about, you know, the occupation, Hamas, Israel, the October 7th, etc.. America. The United States and the region, etc.. But what is present throughout Gaza, that is not captured by the “pro-Palestine” community, and deliberately so, at this point……at the beginning, I was like,“Okay, maybe they don’t know, maybe there’s some ignorance,” but right now Hamas enjoys far more support in the Western“pro-Palestine” world than it does in Gaza. Most people in Gaza are livid and furious at Hamas. It doesn’t mean they’re pro-Israel or they love the Israeli government in Gaza. They’re furious for what Israel has done to them, but they are 50 times even, I would argue, more furious at the fact that Hamas handed them on a silver platter to the most far right, and arguably fascistic government in Israel’s history. They are livid at Hamas’ behavior; hiding in hospitals and schools and embedding itself in all aspects of civilian lives so as to elicit Israeli retaliatory airstrikes that regularly kill civilians. And that’s a complicated subject, because on the one hand, of course, I’m not excusing Israeli behavior. On the other hand, Hamas has been a complete disaster. Like there’s this idea that international humanitarian law people regularly…people have no business talking about international law or like, “well, international law says you can’t do this.” International law removes protection from hospitals if they are used for military purposes. If Hamas goes and takes over entire wards, which Hamas does, Hamas takes over. Hamas is under hospitals, Hamas is in hospitals. And by the way, sometimes that’s like there’s truth in those claims, but then sometimes the Israeli military will use those and exaggerate some of those claims. So, like, multiple things are true, but nevertheless, people in Gaza are not stupid. People in Gaza, they’re not the“pro-Palestine” folks in Europe and in the U.S. They see Hamas, they experience the consequences of Hamas. They’ve lived with Hamas for two decades. It’s an ISIS, fascist organization that is extraordinarily against civil rights, against freedoms, against liberty, against anything that leftists and liberals and progressives and the intersectionality left believe in. And so there’s a disconnect between the people in Gaza and what they want, which is Hamas to stop the war, give up the hostages, get out of our lives. People in Gaza will tell you to your face,“I don’t care about Jerusalem. I don’t care about the West Bank. At this point, right this very moment. I don’t care about Palestinian prisoners. I want to not be blown up with my children. I want to survive. I want to feed my hungry self and family and mom and children. I want a drink of water.” Like we’ve been reduced to the most rudimentary of the human needs. Meanwhile, people in luxurious lives in the West in America are pontificating about,“This didn’t begin on October 7th and Hamas is a just organic form of resistance,” and lalalalalalala and all this garbage that is utterly disconnected. And that brings me back to, I want to ask Melanie about, which is that Orly and I are very, interested in about the language that is being used, that not only since October 7th but words like “genocide,” and… how do we break these chains when the language is just so extreme? And, Orly, anything else you want to add, specifically bout the language? Well, I mean, I want to hear Melanie speak to that, and then I do want to follow up on some things you said, Ahmed, which I thought were so fabulous. But, yeah, so my p.s. to what Abe just said is there’s a lot of loaded terms,a and speaking of people not knowing international law, people are throwing around words like “occupation” and “apartheid,” and “genocide,” and I don’t know that they could define them, and I don’t know that they could illustrate how you know that that’s what is the right label, and I’m curious to hear your perspective on that. Yeah, definitely. So, one of the things that we’ve tried to do is really introduce almost a new vernacular to have this conversation with, because everything that has been said up until now is so toxic and is so entrenched and just not helpful, like, we could argue here, until the cows come home about whether it’s genocide or apartheid and all of these things. But the reality is that’s not actually changing anything for any person on the ground. And so, that’s kind of our approach in looking at the multiple truths of what’s happening, right? There are multiple things that can be true at any given time. And unfortunately, that’s really hard for people to hold, right? Like one of the most I think it’s like an Aristotle quote, right? Like to be able to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time that seemingly aren’t in agreement is a sign of intelligence. And unfortunately, we’ve lost that ability to hold that kind of nuance when having conversations on this. And so rather than taking on this conversation: “it is a genocide,”“it isn’t genocide,”“it is apartheid,” “it isn’t apartheid,” we focus on the humanization of what is actually happening for people and humanizing the each to each other. So, on the one hand, obviously, there was a lot of dehumanization that happened of Palestinians, of Gazans, within the Israeli discourse. And so, showing the humanity and the experience of what an average Gazan is going through, right, was a huge part of trying to change the narrative in a sort of public relations way. And on the other side, understanding that Israelis also had valid concerns that October 7th was a heinous atrocity that really also fulfilled a lot of the fears that Israelis had. And so sort of this psyche was reinforced, and that made it even more difficult to have these sort of conversations. So rather than try to, continue this sort of like, “you’re right, I’m right” kind of dialogue, we’re really trying to rethink how we have these conversations and just sometimes acknowledge that things are not in zero sum positions, that both Israelis and Palestinians and Gazans are hurting in different ways and different means and levels and all of that you can argue. But within that imbalance, there is still a shared humanity. And so, that’s one of the elements that we focus on. And an example of that would be talking about a two nation solution. So we we use this term a lot rather than the two state solution. Because at this point we could, again, argue all of the specifics,“this line here and that plan that happened at this point.” But the reality is we’re not even all on the same page that there are two nations of people with a right to self-determination. And so we’re trying to at least get a conversation back to that place where we can acknowledge that shared humanity and that shared right of existence, just peacefully in the land. And once we have some of that shared language, we can have more complicated conversations. We can dive into some more those details. And the other piece of that is also not getting bogged down in the history. Not to say that history is irrelevant, but that we have to look in a progressive manner and look forward from where we go from here. And not just“you did this wrong and you did that wrong, and now everything is wrong.” Like we have to kind of move past this somewhat childish dialogue that we see in a lot of cases. But, I have to just say, a few things here real quick about specifics about the language. And I’ve been very transparent about this. I mean, look, things like “genocide,” which I feel has been thrown around just like the word “Zionist.” I mean, people say the word “Zionist,” but it’s like it means different things to different people. I’ve invested a lot of time in trying to understand what does Zionism mean to the Jewish community well before October 7th, and I understand that it literally means different things to different people, from the basic right of Jewish people to just live in safety, to having self-determination, to having a state, to having it being their ancestral homeland. But to many Zionists or self-identifying Zionists, there is no linear connection to... Therefore, because of the aforementioned, I have to occupy Palestinians, I have to kill Palestinians, I have to dispossess Palestinians like because there’s different strains of Zionists. Like, I think that’s important to understand. You don’t have to like Zionism. You have to have to identify with it. But just to throw the term around“genocide”… do I believe…I mean, I’ve talked to so many people across the spectrum, I’m not a lawyer. Do I think what is happening in Gaza is a textbook definition of genocide? My personal opinion is, no, I don’t think so. Do I think there are elements of genocide? Maybe. Could it evolve or devolve into a genocide? Maybe. Do I think there are people in the Israeli government or on the Israeli far right who would like to commit genocide? 100% But is it the current policy of the state of Israel to carry out genocide in the classical manner? No, I don’t believe that to be the case. And I’ve heard……and you can argue either way, but I think the genocide argument has become a distraction rather than a form of a purity test. It’s like when I speak to some Palestinians who are interested in this messaging, but they’re like on the fence. Some of them will engage in this like purity test. It’s literally it’s like, “okay, all right, genocide: True or false?

Zionism: 24:21

True or false.” You know, things like “occupation.” I have been on a mission to say specifically, whenever I speak, the “military occupation,” because the word“occupation” also like “Zionism” means different things to different people. For some people, they think the entirety of Israel is an occupation because Israel dispossessed the Palestinians in 1948 and declared itself as a state, and therefore Israel in its entirety is an occupation. For me personally, as I’m not only a radical pragmatist, but as someone who understands that, like Israel exists. It is an internationally recognized entity. Palestine to me, the occupation is of the 1967 boundaries that the Palestinians themselves have agreed to as the kind of bedrock of the two state solution. I say the “military occupation,” because it delineates that there is a mainland Israel that is internationally recognized and there is Palestinian territories, West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, that are internationally recognized as occupied. So similarly with Gaza, it’s like the whole “per international law.” They say Gaza was occupied before October 7th. And I get that that, in a legal sense, might be the case because Israel controlled the airspace, the waters, etc., that what goes in and out. But it wasn’t a direct occupation. And part of the blockade was in response to a terrorist Islamist organization saying,“we exist to destroy you. We’re going to turn Gaza into a terrorist base,” basically, “we’re going to build tunnels, we’re going to build rockets, we’re going to smuggle weapons through Sinai.” Whether it was Israel or any other nation, I think there would have been consequences to that. I’m not saying this to justify what Israel did with a blockade. I’m simply saying I want to understand what happened in Gaza after the 2005 withdrawal of the settlements, so that we understand those mistakes and understand what happened so that we don’t repeat them. So that’s ways in which “Zionism,” “genocide,”“occupation,”“apartheid”… one last thing, “apartheid.” Do I think Israel, in its entirety, is it an apartheid state? Absolutely not. No. Israel has, the de jure, legal equality for all of its citizens. Are there some instances of discrimination within Israel? Sure. Against the Bedouins, against this, against that? Nevertheless, Israel, you have over a million Palestinians or Arabs or Muslims that live in Israel and they have citizenship and they’re part of the parliament and they’re doctors and they exercise. Do you have parts of the military occupied territories that have an apartheid-like regime or system or something that resembles, resembles apartheid, in which there is a separation between the Palestinian population and the Jewish Israeli population? Yes, yes you do. And some of that is deeply horrific and deeply problematic. But that’s theoretically outside of Israel. Now, if Israel were to annex the West Bank, then you would in fact have Israel be a de jure apartheid state. But so, again, those distinctions are very important to draw. And people just throw them out without not only understanding the issues and understanding the complexities, but without the interest to understand it. It is a crime. It is like an insult. When I say it’s complex or there is nuance, it’s for our own good as Palestinians or as advocates of the Palestinian cause, we must understand this nuance. People are like, “how dare you? You sound like an apologist to the Zionists.” And that’s what I’m trying to challenge. And that’s where Realign for Palestine, and Melanie and I and the voices and the allies and the writing and the community that we’re trying to build, are trying to normalize this new discourse in which we don’t just lightly throw words around. Even if somebody wants to believe something about apartheid or about about genocide, and you want to be like… It has to be based on a very specific and honest understanding, rather than a regurgitated, you know, propagandistic, sloganeering-based statement, that you heard from somebody else and you’re just repeating. Well, I’m really glad we let you chime in there because you’re really speaking my language. I just want to really affirm what you’ve said in terms of, well, just about everything, really. But we also really don’t believe in side-ism, and we don’t want to sort of engage in that. We’ve seen the radical polarization that’s resulted since October 7th. And then I think and, you know, I tried to have a roundtable in the film community and the“pro-Palestinian” side would not engage if I had a “Zionist,” if I had, Yariv Mozer, who made “We Will Dance Again.” I understand he might not be everyone’s favroite, but I found that I couldn’t get either “extreme” of the sides to engage with the other and to have a dialogue, and to sort of get at truth, and that people are weaponizing language. And I like that you’re normalizing more responsible and complete discourse. I want to acknowledge… and I also definitely buy into holding two or more truths at the same time. I’m very obsessed……this whole podcast effort is obsessed with a little bit going back in time, not on this episode, but I do want to talk sometimes about, you know, what’s called the Nakba on the Palestinian side, at some point, and what is used as justification for terrorism only because I feel like if we don’t go there, people, whether they say it out loud or in the back of their minds, keep holding it. And it was sort of like this trauma that we kind of do want to deal with fully. But I also completely understand what you’re getting at, which is right now we just have to focus on humanity and common ground and finding a peaceful solution. Because, you know, I know after October 7th, someone who’s considers herself progressive left, very pro-Palestinian, though she’s Israeli but living outside of Israel, said,“You know, the most left-wing people in Israel now became less so, many of them.” Right?–Uh-huh, absolutely– And then the folks who are on the so-called right, we’re like, “see, we told you so? You were stupid to think you could have a two state,” you know? And so that kind of radicalizing on all the sides is really harmful. I also want to share with you that I did fantasize about a reality show that could be the peace process, and that it would be monetized to bring equal sums of money to both “sides.” I have to use “sides,” in this case both communities. But that’s just a fantasy. I want, Ahmed, I mean, that, “Surrounded” thing that you’ve participated in that, like… Jubilee. Yeah, Jubilee. That’s an example to me of people who just want to only hear what they want to hear and don’t give space……but good for you for submitting yourself to that. But, if you don’t mind, just touching in on that. And then, of course, we want to talk to Melanie again too. Certainly, and very briefly, I mean, to be clear, I’m fascinated by the history, but as you saw, to tie it back to to Jubilee, I started the claim, the first claim in Jubilee, and I’ll tell you in a second about why I did it, etc., October 7th was an abhorrent decision and it was a disaster for the Palestinian people. And this gentleman, with all due respect, who’s not Palestinian, started lecturing me about the Nakba in 1948. Like, the history also has become a tool of ignorance, a tool of rejection-ism, a tool of shutting down the current conversation. I’m not going to talk about Hamas being an ISIS-like, despicable organization that is doing medieval style torturing of Gazans, throwing bricks at people right now to break their bones and shooting them in and cutting with knives, cutting their little fingers, Taliban style. We’re not going to talk about that because,“Let me, well, what about the Nakba? What about 1948? What about this?” What? Like, no! Those are the instances in which I will almost refuse to talk about history. I’m like, “No, we will talk about the Nakba in a second, but talk to me about right now, what is going on right now. My brother who’s in Gaza, my family members who are still surviving and struggling to survive because they are powerless to stop a war that they didn’t start. Talk to me about that. Don’t talk to me about Nakba and British colonialism and blah blah blah.” So I just want to clarify that that’s how I often am very forward looking, and I despise talking about history as a way to avoid. And there’s this very, like, mental gymnastics game to try to excuse Hamas and excuse Palestinian mistakes and Palestinian terrorism, and to say Palestinians have no agency, no responsibility, should have no accountability, because let’s talk about all this history. So as far as Jubilee, And just one last thing on that, I very much so do believe that there is an imbalance of power dynamics between Palestinians and Israelis, with Israel being the overwhelming victor in that analysis. Nevertheless, within said imbalance of power dynamics, there exists plenty of space for Palestinian agency and responsibility and accountability. And that is not blaming the victims. That is not self-hatred or self-loathing, in my strong opinion, it is actually the first step to empowering the Palestinian people. Empowering them. Give them some sense of control over their destiny, over their fate. Instead of this bigotry and racism, of low expectations that you’re just perpetual victims, that you’re going to act as savages forever, because the Israelis turned you into human animals. So, Jubilee is an interesting one in the sense that the young people consume Jubilee a lot. And I would not have on my own, honestly, thought about it as as my first choice for a medium. But over time, I discussed it with a couple of friends of mine who really thought that if we want to reach a younger audience, to plant seeds for this new school of thinking, for this new approach, for this calm, rational way of “let’s hold multiple truths” and hearing it from someone who is from there, who has skin in the game, who has lost family members, who carries the literal battle scars from the war in the Second Intifada, from being in Gaza. This may resonate in ways that might lead to some seeds of transformation in some of those younger people. And so the format was very challenging and unusual. It’s like once you start getting in the zone and then you have these flags and you get interrupted and you stop and people jump up, and it was a very, if I may be very transparent, it was an extraordinarily hostile space, like, and not just verbally, but, borderline physically. No one tried to physically hit me or assault me, But like, it felt very close to that. The body language, the hostility, the arrogance, the pompous attitude of some of the participants. No one was there to really listen. of some of the participants. No one was there to really listen. Everybody was there to pontificate, to out- you know, especially the non-Palestinians were there to out-Palestinian an actual Palestinian. And I try to be respectful, I try to be approachable with a good… you know, be a good faith actor. And so I’ve been pleasantly surprised that there has been a lot of good feedback from it. I was stressed out doing it, to be honest. I can’t imagine how you wouldn’t be. I mean, it looks like you’re just surrounded by an enemy line. It was very much so, like an execution pit. And so like, there were like, and one of my biggest things that I’m like, there were several things that I really wanted to say and respond to, but I didn’t get a chance to because, again, like, I was deeply stressed out and people were cutting me off and like it was just- It would end the conversation. Like, before you get to make a point, they ended it. They move to the next one. Precisely, precisely that. So it was… Since Melanie was in the room, isn’t this all part of the way, the way he was attacked is like, it’s an extension of misinformation. Because even if, you know, Ahmed is trying to tell the truth about……or two truths at the same time, it all becomes squashed. So the truth doesn’t really matter to those people. And there’s just three bullies in the schoolyard. So what was it like being in the room and watching your associate being kind of confronted like that? Yeah, it was it was metaphorically like the online discourse coming offline in real life, like all the trolls that you can imagine, you find in social media were like in their real persons. And it was, on the one hand, not shocking because we do see so much of this rhetoric online. What I think was the most shocking was how, like, removed people could find themselves emotionally. So there’s this young woman who basically told Ahmed that your “family was going to die anyways. They might as well die on social media so that we can use it to delegitimize Israel.” And she had no qualms about saying that to his face. I mean, it’s one thing if you want to think that and, hold that as a personal opinion, but to have the audacity to literally tell another person,“your family deserves to die for my idea of activism” was truly shocking. Like I had never seen such a cold hearted interaction in real life. It’s one thing, again, when you see that on Twitter, okay, it’s Twitter, but when you see that in real life and this girl was thoroughly convinced of what she was saying, she absolutely felt righteous about it. And that to me… That ties back into what you started talking about, that you’re both trying to find the humanity, and it seems like it is a really uphill battle. And this is part of the journey that Orly and I are on to be trying to find voices doing what you’re doing through film and other media. And that is the goal to just try to find a little, you know, peace of mind anywhere. People like that? No peace of mind involved. Yes. And what was also fascinating were some of the folks in the room who you wouldn’t have expected to have any change of heart or mind by the end, did have a little bit. Right? Like some of that personal engagement, and with what Ahmed could get through the beeps and the flags and all of that. Like there was, another young man from Gaza who made a really hateful remark about how, you know, the Jews should just go back to Poland or wherever they came from. And Ahmed really called him out strongly on that. And you could see that it actually gave him pause. It actually made him pause for a moment to say, “Oh, maybe that was really not a good thing for me to say.” And he’s been trying to engage with us since. Yeah. And I’m sorry for interjecting, but I also noticed one fact that, a lot of folks like to ignore is all the Jews that were kicked out of surrounding Arab countries that are in Israel, right? The people that look like they’re Arabs because they’re from Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan. Well, not really Jordan, but okay. Syria. Lebanon, right? Yeah. No, absolutely. And that’s, you know, Ahmed’s response was kind of twofold. One is the number of Mizrahi Jews that actually make up the Israeli society today, and two, that there’s multiple generations now of Jewish Israelis who all they’ve known is the country of Israel. That is their home. They don’t know a Poland, they don’t know, even, Egypt at this point, that is their home. And to say that you should just go back to where you came from is an incredibly hateful sort of remark, an unthoughtful remark to make. And so, while there… That sounds so American. Yes. Well, he’s been here. This guy had been here, what, since he was four, I think. So it was like he had certainly been implicated in an American perspective on some of these things. But, it was shocking to see how, even within the diaspora, so the Palestinians who were in the room ended up having a little bit more humanity by the end. Including that young woman, tell them about the young woman. So there was another young woman who had been like a student leader of her encampment at UCSD, at the University of San Diego, and she was adamant that everything they had done was right. There was nothing wrong with the encampments or their rhetoric, and October 7th was fine, and then, at the end, Ahmed really laid out, from a moral position, October 7th doesn’t represent the morality and people that I come from, like, this is not, this is not reflective of our values as Palestinians, as Muslims. And afterwards, again, this woman wore hijabs, so a religious, you know, Muslim girl. And she finally recognized, she was like,“You know, maybe you’re right. October 7th was actually not such a good thing. Like, we probably should denounce it.” Now, the fact that it took her almost two years to get to the point in which she’s finally acknowledging that October 7th was a heinous terrorist attack is one thing. But on the other hand, it proved that having these hard and painful but meaningful conversations can move the needle. When you really push people beyond their comfort zone and beyond their own echo chambers, there is an opportunity to open up a new line of thinking and to even just get people to take a step back and acknowledge that they don’t know everything and that they have had bigoted views or, you know, question what they’ve been taught or told. And so, on the one hand, it was really depressing and scary, honestly. It was like a really intense space to be in. And it did… it felt like he was in the middle of a firing squad. But I noticed that it was really those who are not, let’s say, Palestinian or Muslim, or necessarily even Jewish that had the most radical views. It was those of other backgrounds that were in the room as “allies” who were taking the most extreme positions and had the least willingness to show respect or courtesy to the actual lived experience that Ahmed had. Folks who wouldn’t shake his hand, who, you know, took ad hominem attacks on him. So it was also kind of telling of the imbalance in who’s speaking for who, right? Like, in this case, there was all of these people proclaiming to speak on behalf of Palestinians as they try to out Palestinian, an actual Gazan who’s literally got skin in the game. So, it was a fascinating, I guess you could say, social experiment, in some ways. That taught us a lot also about how we need to be having more of these conversations with this particular younger audience. Right? This is also a very specific Gen Z type, group of folks. And so it’s a different conversation we’re having there than we might be necessarily having in policy spaces, for example. And tell us about your film that you have that just came out. Ahmed, do you want to take that? Sure. So the film is an attempt to capture some of my attempts and efforts at threading Realign for Palestine together and trying to kind of build the scaffolding, the foundation, the base upon which hopefully this new approach to pro-Palestine activism and advocacy can take place and thrive at the Atlantic Council as a vehicle to just host this initiative. But also it follows some of my own kind of journey, talking to allies, talking to some of my family members. It shows me going to… I speak to universities, university campuses, on university campuses to students and in the film, I go to one particular campus and there’s just a small example of the current discourse that we face of somebody, basically, attacking me on a college campus and trying to scream at me that I am a traitor and “free Palestine” and yelling and screaming at me.“free Palestine.” Like, what does that even mean to yell “free Palestine” at someone like myself? It captures my failed attempt to go to Israel, earlier this year. And how, you know, this is for all who want to label me as “bought and paid for by the Zionists and the Jews and the Israelis own you, and they’re paying you $30 million and you’re just a total Zionist spy shill,” whatever. It’s like the Israelis were like,“Oh, yeah, even though you’ve been in the United States, the Israeli system, the mechanisms like, even though you’ve been in the United States for all this time, to us, you’re still a Gazan. So you’re you’re not allowed to come in.” Even though we had organized my entry into the country through the Israeli Embassy and like, a high level… and even they couldn’t even overcome some of the issues, proving that this isn’t easy work, because I was going to go and meet with Israeli hostage families and survivors and try to build bridges, and try to really act upon this ethos of healing and reconciliation. And that was stopped by mechanisms of, call it occupation, call it an indifference, call it whatever you want to call it. It was like, “Oh yeah, oh, no, sorry. You’re a Gazan. We don’t care how much… how pro-peace you are.” It follows my conversations with some allies. It shows me as as trying to, you know, to bring this together. And the goal is to inspire the thousands of Ahmeds out there whom I know exist because I talk to them all the time, but they are afraid of facing the kind of backlash that I faced. They are afraid of being ostracized from their communities, from their mosques, from their friends circles from their… you know, I’ve had people tell me that they started speaking out against Hamas and then they can’t get playdates for their daughters. They can’t get, you know, social gatherings and get togethers, or people start attacking them, or saying,“What’s wrong with you?” And “You’re being weak” or this or that. So, I’m trying to say that it… if enough of us can do this, then we become enough of a critical mass that we can be each other’s community. We don’t need to be silenced into enforced conformity and forced cohesion forever. Beautifully said. And, you know, hopefully there’s enough of us so we have a critical mass. So we really start to become the more popular perspective of this very responsible and humane, and ethical and intellectually honest, and rigorous process that you guys have put forward. And, Melanie, you know, speaking of language, you used the word “progressive” earlier and I think you meant forward looking progress, right? I think you weren’t looking to align with the label. Not that you were looking to reject it, either… I’m not, I’m just being precise. Yeah. She’s a lawyer. Hello? Yeah, I can’t help myself. But, you know, Ahmed and Melanie, this is a… I’m so thrilled that Abe found you and brought you here. You guys have been incredible. Your work is incredible. We want to platform this, obviously, this whole episode. We want to platform your film. We will, you know, be in touch with you. Abe, do you have… anyone have anything that you haven’t said on screen yet that you want to say before we close? Any of you? I would just like to say that I am surprisingly moved in these past few months working on this project, which was a kind of, wasn’t where I was coming from. But I’m glad I’m here now because I feel like the best thing to have is hope. Whether it’s for the safety of people in Israel and in Palestine and in all the other zones in the world right now where no one is paying attention to but... Yeah, this is a good mindset for me to be in. And thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. And thank you for having us, really. And thank you, Melanie, for making this happen. Melanie is an amazing, right hand ally and partner in this. She really makes a lot of these things happen because I’m constantly talking, I’m traveling, I’m this, I’m that. So I really appreciate the opportunity. But what I will just, I want to just close once again by reiterating and doubling down on the thing I said the last, about the thousand Ahmeds out there, is that I might be particularly loud or an animated voice, or stubbornly unwilling to back down, but I am far from alone. And there are many Palestinians in Gaza, many Palestinians in the West Bank, in the diaspora who share my frustration with the current discourse, who share my desire to see something other than what we have gone on, who strongly believe in my core ethos that peace and coexistence are necessary. Courageous, courageous, not cowardly, courageous evolutions that will absolutely help the Palestinian people thrive and engage in nation building, and that there’s plenty of space for allyship with Israelis and Jewish Israelis, and that we need to talk to Zionists. We need to engage with the “other side.” And so, I’m far from alone. And I feel strongly about everybody thinking that, because sometimes people mistake me for a unicorn and that I am, as some try to say it in a compliment to me, but I actually take it as a derogatory remark、 when someone says, like,“You’re a desert… you’re a rose in the desert,” and that is not what I am. There are many, many, many people like me. So thank you for having us. Thank you so much. And I you know, one thing I didn’t say yet, and thank you for everything is I didn’t say I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened to your family. I just want you to know that. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you everyone, be well. Bye Melanie, bye Ahmed. Bye Orly. Bye. This has been Episode 5 of Peaced Off!, a curated film and conversation series presented by the Film Collaborative with our guests Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib and Melanie Robbins from Realign for Palestine. Peaced Off is Curated and Executive Produced by Orly Ravid. It is Produced by Abe Gurko. Both Orly Ravid and Abe Gurko serve as Moderators for this episode. Our Head of Audio and Video Production is David Averbach who also serves as series Art Director. You can find more about this podcast at getpeacedoff.com.