Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher. I'm your host, ramses job. He is Ramsey's job. I am q Ward. You are listening to Civic Cipher and need you are. And today we're doing a bit of a follow up episode. It's a half the show follow up episode and the other half we are going to be discussing something that is very important. And today we are fortunate enough to be joined by Suzanne Oslom. She is the former Miss
arab Usa. I just found that out and my mind has been blown. I you her as the author of the book post Pardon Me. But she's going to be helping us in terms of adding some perspective to the conversation we had last episode where we were discussing the conflict between Palestine and Israel and giving us some perspective and some insight into more of what it might mean to be on the Palestinian side of things, because that's
something that we've lacked on the show. We've done our best to try to account for the various positions that people might take to be credible and fair and balanced journalists. But she's joining us today to help us answer some questions and provide some insight and hopefully help us with a space to create a little bit more empathy for all each other. So welcome to the show, Thank you
so much. In addition to that, the second part of the show, we're going to be talking about a police shooting that took place in Westminster, Colorado that really got Q and I to have a conversation that we seldom have around here, where we start to challenge our beliefs and question how deep they go. So you're definitely going to want to stick around for that and so much more. But first and foremost, we're going to do like we always do it this time, start to show off with
some ebbing excellence, shall we we shall? This time it's some sports stuff? So cute? Do you want to take that?
I love when he says some sports stuff because that's just beyond his level of comprehendon.
You could just do it better.
Yeah, right. Today's ebony excellence brought to us by Actively Black. There is greatness in our DNA. Is it actively black dot com? This story comes from Lakers Nation dot com. Wow, I just read the first sentence and it gave me pause. Set to begin his twenty first NBA season, Lebron James will turn thirty nine years old in just a few months, but the Lakers superstar remains amongst the NBA's most elite players.
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Lebron needs just one three hundred and forty eight points to become the NBA's first forty thousand point player. James also has a chance to surpass another record held by a Lakers legend, Kareem abdul Jabbar. Abdul Jabbar averaged twenty three point four points in the nineteen eighty five eighty six season, the highest ever by the NBA's oldest active player coincidentally thirty nine during that season, just as Lebron will do this year.
Listen, he is still excellent and he has been the whole time. So glad we had a chance to shout him out. So I have been doing my best to research this war. It's being dubbed the Hamas Palestine, or sorry,
the Hamas Israel war, or the Israel Hamas. Warn't forget the order, but it's being dubbed that, and I believe that what that does is that paints a picture that isn't entirely accurate in terms of the result or the outcomes, because it kind of makes me think that it's between Hamas and Israel, which I believe in theory that's what it is, but the people bearing the brunt of that ends up being the Palestinians.
I think it's very intentionally phrase that way, okay, to give those who are not who haven't done any research or who might lack information, the impression that that's what's happened.
Okay.
So and it and it points the empathy toward a very specific group in that conflict. I think intentionally, sure, it's just my opinion.
Though, no, no, no, that's that's what I was trying to say. So, Susanne, as I appreciate you being here, So before we get started, tell us a little bit about yourself and sort of you're going to give us a little bit more perspective, Uh, give us an idea of your the walk of life that you come from that allows you credible perspective for the benefit of our listeners. Thank you.
My parents are a Palestinian Christians from a suburb of Bethlehem. So they came here with my mom was pregnant with me, born in Detroit, and we've been going back ever since, back and forth. I've worked with peacekeeping organizations there. My grandparents who were still alive and still living there. I was with them in Palestine last month. They are older than the State of Israel. They remember when it was
just Palestine, and they remember the israelis coming in. So our history goes back before people even before and Israel even existed, and that was our land the entire time. So for people to think that this isn't this has been happening for thousands of years, because people think that because they've got the Bible and they hear that, oh, this has just always been happening. There's always been occupation on that land, but it's never been like this, and Israel is a new.
State, Okay, Okay. So I feel compelled to let our listener know that the reason why today's conversation is important is because again, I've had some conversations with some people who are Jewish. These are Jewish journalists, these are people who are I believe to be good people, and they can only offer so much insight and perspective in terms of this conflict. And so, in sort of regurgitating what I had learned so far, it felt like I wasn't
able to fully articulate the other side of things. And since then, a lot of the visuals, since since my initial conversation with my Jewish friends, a lot of the visuals, a lot of the videos coming out that are very, very sad, videos of death, and obviously we have to mention that we've seen the bodies of young children. We tried to talk about that last episode, and I just gave up because it's not it is beyond the scope of my abilities to articulate a mango child's body on
the radio. I'm not just not that morbid of a person. But since learning all of this, and then, of course knowing what I've known, I have not been able to fully explain the other side of it. I feel like there's a gap there that is really important that people know about. So I appreciate you coming here. Before we get started, I want us to use the thought starter in terms of our conversation. So what we're going to do is play a video from a gentleman by the
name of Ali Velshi. This is from twenty twenty one. May have twenty twenty one on MSNBC, and just listen and we'll get your initial thoughts.
One thing clear, Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. That is an indisputable fact. But so do Palestinians, and that's a fact that's often ignored. Palestinians are at best third class citizens in the nation of their birth. The idea that it's even remotely controversial to call what Israel has imposed on Palestinians a form of apartheid is laughable. One look at a current map of Israel, Gaza and the occupied territories conjures up only one other example.
Apartheid era South Africa.
The Israeli government, on an ongoing basis declares parcels of land on which Palestinians live to be either of military or archaeological importance, causing residents to be evicted. Sometimes there's a court case, and almost always the Palestinians lose. Yet months or weeks later, that same important land suddenly becomes
home to a brand new Israeli settlement. As more and more Jewish settlers take over land on which Arabs live, the occupied West Bank becomes de facto more Israeli and, in the explicit hopes of the Israeli government, more Jewish.
This is a long standing attempt, and a deliberate attempt to force Arabs, who have lived in that land, sometimes for hundreds of years, out as attempt to dilute the their presence, because to have Arabs as full participants is in the opinion of the Israeli government and their courts, diluting Israel. Just prior to the pandemic, I toured many of the contested areas and homes from which Arabs are being pushed out, both in Israel proper and in the
occupied territories. Palestinians don't control the important parts of their lives. Palestinian families are refused permits to build or renovate their homes. When they connect their homes to the municipal water supply. Israeli soldiers sometimes cut the pipes when they attempt to harness solar energy because their homes are not on the grid. Israeli soldiers literally come and remove solar panels from their homes.
I spent an hour and a half traveling alongside an elderly Palestinian woman who is being transferred between three ambulances from Gaza to the no man's land in between and then into Israel to get cancer treatment.
Three ambulances over the course.
Of one mile more than an hour to cross the border. That's how Gazans live without medical treatment because Israel prevents it. Without electricity much of the time, because Israel prevents it.
Without the ability to.
Fish in the Mediterranean Ocean, because Israel prevents it without an airport or a seaport, because Israel prevents it. Like Israelis, Palestinians also have a right to exist and to defend themselves, but there is no one willing to help them do that, not the Israeli courts and not the US government. What the US also shares with Israel is the belief that Hamas, the political party that governs Gaza, is a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel.
Hamas is supported.
By the majority of Palestinians in Gaza. Hamas may not be in the best long term interests of the Gazans, but peace hasn't really worked out for them. Based with an Israeli government which pens them into what has been called the world's largest open air prison. They have chosen a government that most of US wouldn't prefer, one that is not given to negotiation and moderation and respect for its neighbor. Israel needs a new approach to the Palestinians,
and America needs a new approach to Israel. After more than seven decades of not just being deprived of land from which they were evicted, Palestinian frustration runs deep it may be worth going deeper than what you may hear inside your bubble and understanding the depth to which the Palestinian people are subject to apartheid in their own land, deprived of basic necessities and subject to relentless civil rights violations. This is not a secret. It's out there for you
to see. You just have to look for it. One thing clear, Israel has a right to exist.
That was so well well done, so well spoken, and everything that he said conjured up images of things that I've seen. First of all, when they say they have the right to defend themselves, that line really frustrates me because that's a propaganda line. And it's also the question is from whom? From the people that they are occupying, from the victims of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. That's who
they're defending themselves from. So that line is really really frustrating, and it's not it's in ellipses, and we need to finish that sentence that we need to really talk about who they're defending themselves from. They are third class citizens. My family doesn't have a right. So we're in Bethlehem in Jerusalem is next door, and they are not allowed to go into Jerusalem and visit their holy sites there unless they have a permit. These permits are very hard
to get. And when they go through the checkpoint in Bethlehem, there's two checkpoints, one for foreigners and one for Palestinians. The lines are long. People are trying to get into work into Jerusalem if they if they do work in in Jerusalem or in Israel proper, they're subjected to. The indignity that they're subjected to at checkpoints is nobody should be subjected to it. They make you stand there such
long lines. I've seen soldiers spit and throw water, like just a water bottle that they were drinking, and then just throw the rest of it in the faces of people at checkpoints who are actually in their own city trying to go to a mosque, but there's a checkpoint between the city and the mosque's It's just it's constant, constant military rule, military rule. This is a military ruled country.
When I appreciate being on here because the equivalent that I would like to share is that talking about this and allowing for the Palestinian perspective is talking about South African apartheid and allowing for the black perspective, and we're not always doing that. We're Can you imagine only talking to white people in South Africa about South African apartheid. It doesn't make sense. They're not the ones experiencing the apartheid. So we're trying to get our voices out there for
this reason, because we're the ones experiencing this. We in this case. I don't like to be a victim, but we are. We're the victim here the evictions that occur. I met a man whose house was demolished five times. He's trying to build on his own land, but they say, you're not allowed to build without a permit. You're going to ask for a permit from the Israeli government. They don't want to give you a permit, So you build anyway. What are you going to do. You've got more kids,
you've got families, you're growing. And then they go, oh, you built without a permit, so we're going to demolish your home. So they demolish the home. Sometimes they're actually able to get them completely off of the land. When they do that, they'll try as hard as they can to get back on that land. But if they can't get back on that land, for three years. The government says, oh, you haven't tended to that land for three years, so
now it's ours. And so there's this tactic between the military and the government where the military sweeps you off your land as much as they possibly can, and then you can't get back there for three years, and then next thing, you know, the government's like, well, you didn't use it, so it's ours.
Now.
This is systemic. They are doing this. They know exactly what they're doing. I mean, they're they're not They're brilliant.
So let's talk about the conflict, because to be fair, that video that we saw was from twenty twenty one, right, so let's talk about the recent conflict that started on October seventh, seventh, right, So, I guess dude, because he mentioned that the Hamas has a lot of support from the Palestinians, which makes sense according to what it is that you know, you're saying that they're living under and what he was saying too, it's just kind of like, well,
peace doesn't work, so this is probably the only way that we can change our day to day reality. Before the day of the attack, how did the people of Palestine regard Hamas?
Okay, so I need to explain that Hamas only governs Gaza. They don't govern the West Bank or my family lives. Their political organization, they were elected. Why were they elected? They were elected because these are people who are under so much suffering and they are desperate, and Hamas who don't. I don't support them. I don't like their ideology, but they were actually doing something and palsing and people were like, you know what, somebody's fighting for us, so fine, go ahead.
The things that Hamas did that was so awful on the seventh and the eighth. What frustrated me about that is Israel's been doing that for seventy five years. So if you're going to be all up in flames about what Hemas did, fine good. What they did was not okay, But then you have to also not be okay with what Israel's been doing because it's the exact same thing and worse for seventy five years. So they are there
ruling in Gaza. They're a political organization. Fun fact, they're a political organization that only came about in I think nineteen eighty seven if I remember correctly, and the State
of Israel's been around since nineteen forty eight. So they've been doing this since before Hamas existed, and they helped support the founding of Hemas because in other places, especially in the West Bank, we were looking for more secular, liberal organizations, political organizations to rule, and that doesn't bode well for the State of Israel. They need extremism because now we have a we have an enemy, Now we can fight a Look, they're so there's so violence.
That's what I was going to say. Is it the case that it certainly seems this way, But would you say that Hamas gives Israel an excuse to affect the people, the Palestinian people. Does it give them license to now say, okay, well let's bomb all this stuff? Because how about this? So what I was told is that Hamas is a terrorist organization. I was told that Hamas uses hospitals and schools and so forth as basis of operation, and that Israel has no choice but to attack these places strategically
to root out the Hamas threat. And you know, what we're talking about is seeing all these images of these body parts of children. Yeah, you know, and and they've they've admitted like, hey, you know, we can't get everybody. There's some people can't evacuate. You know, that's just this kind of part and parcel to the war. But we're specifically targeting Hamas. Do you feel like perhaps Israel is using Hamas as an excuse to.
So? I figured so, first of all, they've been doing this for a long time, Like they didn't start bombing yesterday. This They've been bombing Gaza for the last seventeen years. They love this, they love that. Now Hamas is such a great excuse. I'm telling you, this is a terrorist organization. They're coward to hide behind civilians. We have to go
and we have to bomb everything. They completely like just if you think about it, just from a perspective of geography, they've completely decimated all of northern Gaza, that's the closest part to them, and they're slowly just going to move further and further south and just ethnically cleanse via genocide that entire region because they want that land, they want that entire region, and this is the easiest way for them to do it. In Gaza, it's an open air prison.
The UN deemed it uninhabitable. They don't have clean water, they haven't had clean water in years. Then they try they don't have electricity without the permission of Israel. They can cut it off whenever they want. They use collective punishment to do that. This is just a land grab, the most violent land grab.
So we have about two minutes left. I want to get your thoughts on Joe Biden's stance supporting Israels and effectively distancing himself from the people of Palestine. How did that hit you or is there been a reaction from you know, family friends.
Yeah, my family's appalled, but not shocked that. No American I mean, Jimmy Carter is probably the only one that's ever really been supportive. But no, they don't they He's a puppet. He's an absolute puppet. And the president before him was a puppet, and the president before him was
a puppet. Their puppets for the state of Israel. And how can they sit there and ask for peace and then give Israel thirty eight billion dollars which they Obama actually said, We're going to give you thirty eight billion dollars over the next ten years. How in what world are the Americans actually trying to negotiate peace between the two groups.
Yeah, I was.
Actually going to say the US government, I don't think that's unique to Joe Biden. No, our politicians in mass have stood in support and solidarity with Israel blindly, Republicans and Democrats. Yeah, and this attack, as you said, license to morally support in that way, right, we all have to support, you know, a response, an aggressive response to this terrorist act. So let's kill everybody.
Well, obviously this is a much longer conversation. I feel like you haven't even begun to scratch the service of everything that needs to be articulated. Are you on social media? I know you have your book. I'm going to make sure that you plug your book, But are on social media anything like that you're following to so please share with you.
I am. I'm pretty active on Instagram. I've been sharing a lot, and I have had the opportunity to educate so many people who are saying, oh my god, I had no idea. Thank you and it's susy team awesome, s u z y A t I m A s l A M.
Okay, all right, well complicated. Hopefully you'll stick around for the next part of the show. I appreciate you giving us this insight because this is something that we definitely needed. We needed an original, fresh voice and you provided that.
So thank you for thank you for the opportun tunity I