Noam
Coming up on Wondering Jews…
Noam
Is there the ability to see the humanity in the other for Palestinians and Israelis?
Ahmed
I think right now where we’re at right now, it is incredibly difficult. I’m not I’m not here to sugarcoat anything.
Noam
Welcome to Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam. Today. It’s just me, Noam. And my guest, Ahmed Khatib. We’re talking about his book, Hamas And Its 2 Million Hostages. Ahmed, welcome to Wondering Jews.
Noam
We have one Jew and one Muslim. So we’re going to have a great conversation.
Ahmed
Let’s do it.
Noam
So here’s here’s where I want to start. There’s a really difficult, nuanced question to ask, which is, can Israelis and Palestinians ever actually live in peace?
Noam
I want to actually start with something that you said in your book. Here’s what you said. It was a viral post on Twitter that asked, what else can we do? We tried everything, referring to the endless protests, sit ins, encampments, congregational visits, media interviews and social media activities that aim to, quote, stop the war or save Gazans from genocide.
Noam
I know there are so many young people out there who feel this way, and I want to address some of that with you today. Can you talk more about the tweet, why you replied, and the kind of connection you were hoping for? And here was the tweet. The tweet was to be more specific.
Noam
Seriously, what do we do? We’ve protested, boycotted campaign, donated written articles, pressured our governments and institutions, were on the streets, were loud, were persistent. Nothing is working. People are dying now. What do we do? And then you responded, I promised you that a unified, consistent call out of Hamas by pro-Palestine voices will make a difference. I promise you, if Hamas senses a shift in the global public opinion among allies of Palestine, the group will realize that it has lost and must stop the war it started.
Noam
Try it. What do you think about that?
Ahmed
I don’t criminalize anyone calling for the end of the suffering of the Palestinian people. I welcome allies of the people of Gaza. I lost family members. You know, my connection to the land. I grew up there. This is something that isn’t just a political and activist or an advocacy issue. This is very personal. This is my family, my brothers and sisters and my mom and my nieces and nephews.
Ahmed
So I’ve been so frustrated by the fact that it took forever to even be able to get people to say, let’s have a cease fire. That also includes the release of hostages. It took forever to get people to understand that maybe if you apply any kind of even rhetorical, minimal pressure on Hamas, that may actually be worthwhile.
Ahmed
I was so frustrated that what could have been a simple adjustment in the message throughout the war that Hamas started, which is you, Hamas, are not the Palestinian people.
Ahmed
You, Hamas, are not legitimate resistance. You Hamas are an aberration to Palestinian and Muslim and Arab values by taking women, children, the elderly Israelis as hostages.
Ahmed
We’re recording in August of 2026. And Hamas essentially has agreed in principle to disarmament. And so that’s a form of surrender. That’s a form of given up control and power. So why was that not something that the activists called for?
Ahmed
So I will forever hold these these university students, the journalists, the academics, the protesters. I will forever hold them accountable for having failed and refused to add the simple adjustment to their narrative, which is to separate Gaza from Hamas, which is to call on Hamas to end its activities in Gaza. And finally, it is beyond any doubt that Hamas was paying close attention to the public relations dimension of the war.
Ahmed
It was paying attention to university protesters. It was paying attention to the demonstration. It was hoping that these mass protests would actually delegitimize Israel, would cause Israel to stop the war or force Israel to stop the war. And so Hamas would have actually been responsive to a global effort that delegitimize it. And instead, at best, some people ignored Hamas and just said absolutely nothing about it, like this individual in the tweet.
Ahmed
At worst, we actually saw the mainstreaming and legitimization of Hamas,
Noam
Some people would say to you that you have you overly emphasize Hamas as the barrier to peace.
Noam
Why do you exclusively focus on Hamas?
Ahmed
Because I don’t see the right word shift in Israeli history as being separable from Hamas. I don’t see the devolution of the attitude of Israeli, the shrinking of the Israeli left. I don’t see that in isolation of the suicide bombings of the second intifada, of Hamas’s horrendous experiment in Gaza over the last 20 years, of the taking of 2 million people as hostages and taking Gaza as hostage and arresting Gaza’s development and building tunnels and rockets and smuggling and carrying out the single worst day attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and thereby triggering the worst catastrophe in contemporary Palestinian history.
Ahmed
I don’t see all of that in isolation from where Israel is at right now. I don’t see Ben-Gvir as as being potentially as relevant as he is without the likes of Hamas. And this isn’t a one for one comparison per say. Some people are like, oh, don’t draw moral equivalence. That’s not what I’m trying to do. What I’m trying to say is that it is a fact that the far right, the extremists, the element, the anti Palestinian elements of Israeli politics and society need Hamas and benefited from Hamas.
Ahmed
So forget what people say, you know, I mean the those who just love calling me a Zionist and a traitor and a this and a that from a.
Noam
Pure Zionist, a is a slur in this context, right?
Ahmed
Yes.
Noam
Like not. How dare you believe that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination?
Ahmed
No one knows actually what Zionism means anymore. I mean, they just like they just say it. It’s like people come out of the womb saying like, I’m anti-Zionist. Like, what is this Zionism that you’re opposed to? But from a strategic Palestinian self-interest, a self-interest point of view, like a purely selfish point of view from the Palestinians, Hamas has been a catastrophe.
Ahmed
It has been a gift to the far right, to the to the likes of Netanyahu, that everybody loves to hate. So. So that’s number one. Number two is I’m I’ve identified a vacuum in the discourse. The vacuum is that unfortunately and tragically, like I said, there has been at best a minimization of Hamas’s role and a fundamental misunderstanding.
Ahmed
That’s why I wrote this book of Hamas history. Hamas is the criminality of this vile group and how they’ve infiltrated the Palestinian society through Islam, through the educational system, through the mosques, through the entirety of the social fabric, and thereby Islamized the highly educated secular society and took Gaza hostage. Not only did they do that, so that’s at best being ignored and overlooked, and that’s a gap in the discourse.
Ahmed
At worst, you have the mainstreaming of Hamas. 44% of American Muslims two months ago told Pew Research that they support Hamas.
Ahmed
I will share with folks 70 to 80% of the things that they want to hear. As far as opposition to the military occupation, occupation, to the opposition to settler violence, opposition to the dehumanization of the Palestinian people, a full commitment that the Palestinian people are worthy of self-determination.
Ahmed
But just when I speak about Hamas, all of that common ground is immediately dismissed, and I’m immediately attacked physically at times or just delegitimize so.
Noam
So that’s why you focus on Hamas specifically that you you and I think it’s it’s one of the reasons that you said, is it you feel like a lot of these people are enabling Hamas, whether they realize it or don’t. And the second issue that I hear you talking about is it’s very easy for people to criticize someone across the political aisle or across the religious aisle, but what you’re doing is you’re doing something that I think all peoples should be doing, which is criticizing from within.
Noam
Because if you criticize from within, the ideal is that actually can be heard. But if I try to criticize to a group that doesn’t view me as part of it, then it becomes much harder to criticize. So if I’m saying someone, hey, like Hamas is a major problem. Well, I’m a Jewish American, you might say, well, of course a Jewish American thinks Hamas is a problem, but you’re a Palestinian who grew up in Gaza.
Noam
And I want to I want to read to you something that you said. You said that growing up.
Noam
You remember being taken out of classes on page 41 of your book. You were taken out of class and directed to burn one of Gaza’s only bars overtly selling alcohol. The pretext was that this was even more important than resisting the Israelis, because cleaning your house is the first step to liberation. I want to know what you saw growing up that made you ill at ease with Hamas.
Noam
I says it’s not coming from an external place. It’s coming from an internal place. What made you into the person who wants to fight them so passionately from the inside?
Ahmed
Part of that is that I feel like I’ve always been somewhat of you would call an old soul and a young body, but part of it is that honestly though, like it didn’t take a whole lot of critical thinking to realize that something was off about Hamas’s message and how it was being postured as this supposedly more compelling alternative to the Palestinian Authority, however, or the PA or Fatah, which at the time was associated with or gave up the armed resistance issue.
Ahmed
Where were two states, West Bank and Gaza? Hamas framed that as you surrendered 78% of historic Palestine and only accepted having a state in Gaza and the West Bank, which, you know, by today’s standards, is like you think, my goodness, like you wish you even had that. Now we don’t even have the West Bank. Who knows what will happen with Gaza.
Ahmed
So we had the airport, we had a seaport coming. We had the cell phones and the landlines, and we had this shiny new Palestinian Authority passports, and we had the IDs, and there was construction in an industrial zone. And and like we had what looked, even as a child, a rising the march towards statehood, the march towards nation building.
Ahmed
And somehow Hamas is saying, no, no, no, that’s not all. That’s not good enough. We’re going to give you much more than that. A but in order to give you much more than that, I don’t know how much more you can give us than that. We’re going to take a silly detour. You need to get out of class.
Ahmed
So be less educated and then go and burn the only bar in Gaza because alcohol and liquor is bad. It just. Do you.
Noam
Do you think people don’t know this like people? Do you think Americans or Australians or South Africans or Brits or Europeans? Do you think they know that bars are being burned down in Gaza because they sell alcohol? Like, or do you think they care? Don’t care. Like our audience listening. What do you think they they.
Ahmed
Well, I don’t think I mean, it’s hard to think of bars in Gaza, even though there was always an underground alcohol scene, even after this bar was burned. But I don’t think even upon sharing this story now, I can imagine already a lot of the pro-Palestine industrial complex coming at me with a hammer.
Noam
But you’re also pro-Palestinian.
Ahmed
I’m very pro-Palestine, right? But there’s being pro-Palestine and then there’s being part of the pro-Palestine industrial complex.
Noam
Okay. What’s the difference?
Ahmed
Nothing to do. There’s more to being pro-Palestine than simply being anti-Israel. The pro-Palestine industrial complex is like 95% about being anti-Israel. It is not actually about being pro-Palestine because opposing Palestinian terrorism and violence that Hamas carries out, that’s actually being pro-Palestine, opposing Hamas, opposing the theft of of aid, opposing the forever wars, being for two states like that’s ultimately going to preserve Palestinian lives.
Ahmed
It’s going to give options to the Palestinian people. So that so I actually I want to identify as I insist on identifying as pro-Palestine because I want to redefine what it means, and I want to be I want also not just being pro-Palestine, but I want Palestinian identity to be defined by what we stand for. Who are we as a people in a compelling fashion, rather than just what we oppose and what we’re against.
Noam
And we’ll get.
Ahmed
To that. So, so going back to this thing,
Ahmed
One of the things that Hamas started doing back then, and they actually did it many years later when they took over, is they went after hairdressers, they went after female hairdressers doing what they felt were suggestive hairstyles. So again, they went after the liquor, they went after women and how women dress up.
Noam
It started with the liquor. Then it went to the hair.
Ahmed
100% and then it went to like women not smoking hookah on on the beaches and then.
Noam
On the beach is great.
Ahmed
You know. And then they said, oh, that’s inconsistent with Palestinian culture. Are you kidding me? Like like they they just got to make up what defines how simian culture got it. So my point is the focus on Hamas is so necessary because that what you hear right now is, oh, well, we’re I don’t like Hamas, but the occupation or oh, actually we don’t support Hamas.
Ahmed
But Israel is still doing the great Israel is still the greater foe here. And it’s like, no, actually, if you take a step back, these rallies were not involved in the I mean, at times they were in some regard, but Hamas was there every single day, day after day, hour after hour, influencing education, influencing the mosques, influencing how people dressed, influencing how people spoke.
Ahmed
I want to argue that they are very much so mutation. They are inorganic to Palestinian society, and they manipulated and otherwise nationalist, secular people that had legitimate aspirations and turned their national project into part of a broader pan Islamist narrative.
Noam
I’m wondering if one of the reasons that people are supportive of Hamas is not because of Hamas. I’m wondering if it’s because they associate Hamas with the Palestinians. So to further your point, earlier, of all the age groups in the United States of America, there’s only one age group that is more supportive of Hamas and Israel. Every age group in the US is much more supportive of Israel than Hamas, except for 18 to 24 year olds, where 60% of 18 to 24 year olds are more supportive of Hamas than Israel.
Noam
I’m wondering if the language in that question is wrong, though, and maybe the language itself pit Hamas against Israel, assuming that the identity of Hamas equals Palestinian. And what people are really answering is that they are more supportive of Palestinians than they are Hamas. So I would ask you, as before, we get to moving towards the future and how you could see peace actually happening.
Noam
I want to understand, is there a distinction between not ideology? I know that there is. But are there many, many, many, many, many Palestinians who are opposed to Hamas and know that they’re opposed to Hamas and want to fight Hamas and have a society that is independent of Hamas.
Ahmed
Without a doubt, yes.
Noam
How do you know that?
Ahmed
Because I speak to them either in Gaza.
Noam
I don’t people people don’t hear from them, though.
Ahmed
So I’m speaking about specifically Gaza cause Hamas is much more popular in the West Bank. Although I want to clarify that in the West Bank, even people who support Hamas, people love Hamas until they need their Palestinian Authority paycheck at the beginning of the month, or they need health services or educational services that the PA infrastructure provides, which the PA, the bad PA, the coordinates with Israel to prevent Hamas and prevent terror attacks.
Ahmed
So I’m saying there’s just a lot of cognitive dissonance, even amongst those who promote Hamas and Hamas narratives within Palestinian society, in the West Bank, because they haven’t had to live the consequences of life under Hamas. You can buy liquor in the West Bank relatively easy. There used to be like like nightclubs and Ramallah. There is a whole elite class.
Ahmed
There’s a whole there’s a G wagon, Mercedes G wagon, meetup club in Ramallah and in Hebron, and they meet together and they go and like take drives around the West Bank. So I’m just saying that that will not persist if you support Hamas. So let’s go back to Gaza. And your question, the premise of your question. I’m loud, I’m outspoken.
Ahmed
I have crocodile skin. I don’t care about people coming after me. I don’t care about people threatening my life. There are people 50 times more courageous than myself. Inside Gaza on Palestinian social media from right after October 7th.
Noam
Naming one.
Ahmed
People that you you and I don’t know. And they’re not they’re not necessarily prominent figures. They’re not influencers, but they’re average people. They’re average citizens, their average human beings, their friends of mine on Facebook, there are people that I send them money. There are people that I have spoken about in the dozens and dozens that I know personally, that I am in weekly contact with who have protested against Hamas,
Ahmed
People that are ubiquitous on Facebook people. And this is where I wish either Israelis and American Jews can learn Arabic or deploy the power of AI and just go on Facebook. All of Gaza is on Facebook and just play with some queries. And I promise you, you going to find in posts, in commentary all over the place. Yeah, you’ll find some Gazans that support Hamas, but you will find an abundance of posts that are mocking Hamas, that are actually cheering on when there are airstrikes that are killing Hamas.
Ahmed
That’s how angry and furious people are in Gaza, in the tens of thousands people that are that are peeing and defecating in buckets and tents, that are living with rats, that are living in conditions that are horrendous. They’re not looking to Columbia students or to Harvard and Yale students to do the resistance talk and to where their cafe is and talk about the intifada.
Ahmed
They’re looking for anybody, including the Palestinian Authority, including the Board of Peace, including anybody at this point to actually end Hamas’s rule. Because not only is it about this is very important to highlight not just the consequences of October 7th, some people are like, okay, well, they supported Hamas in the beginning. And then when Hamas lost, now they’re against Hamas.
Ahmed
That is a part of the population. But no, that is not it. There’s an there’s a population that is opposed Hamas well before October 7th that opposes the ideology of Hamas, that opposes the totality of 20 years of Hamas rule. You have Gaza’s population almost doubled under Hamas’s rule. You have almost two thirds of Gaza’s population that are under the age of 30, even those who weren’t born when Hamas took over their conscious life, they’re aware years were all under Hamas, experiencing only eight hours of electricity a day and only the blockade.
Ahmed
70% of Gazans have never left the Gaza Strip. They only know Jews and Israelis and the outside world through their phones or through the TV. And so we’re talking about a population that both is a product of its environment, and that’s the radicalized population. But in terms of the anti Hamas population, which I argue and believe is the majority of Gazans, they have, they see what life could be like outside of Gaza.
Ahmed
They see that Hamas has been nothing but devastation. So there is no possible way in which I could be just this desert and the rose, this anomalous, singular voice. But this.
Noam
Might be the rose in the desert, right?
Ahmed
Yeah. The rose. I’m sorry. There’s no way that I could be this this rose in the desert. And this is my brother. This is the crux of the problem. This is why I’m not only passionate about. This is why I wrote this book. This is why I’m willing to deal with the abuse and people attacking me and dealing and having the FBI in my life and dealing with the security risks and whatever, because it is so insane that in a diaspora American context where we do have freedom of speech here, where we do have the luxury of a democratic tradition and openness, I am kind of one of the few voices in the vast Arab
Ahmed
and Muslim and Palestinian-American community.
Noam
But, well, one of the reasons is nuance is very hard to scale, right? You’re a nuanced thinker. This is the way I see you. You’re nuanced thinker. You’re able to say, you’re able to say things, and I don’t always agree with them. But that’s okay. You say you call you. I don’t want to be overly specific, but you’re you’re quite critical of Israeli policy.
Noam
You’re quite, quite critical of much of what the Jewish world and Israel is doing. And you’re also calling out the behavior of Hamas. And that is a third approach. People go into their tribes very quickly. But you, I think, were the one who got me onto the Substack of Allah. Radwan, do you know, maybe you didn’t Allah one, maybe someone else did.
Noam
Okay, so Allah rod one is lives in Gaza is very antagonistic towards Israel. Very very very in a way that makes me uncomfortable. But she’s still a voice that I listen to. I like listening to voices that I radically disagree with. One of the things that she wrote is but God forbid I ask, God forbid, a Palestinian question, the price Palestinians have been forced to pay.
Noam
The moment we ask what this war achieved, we are branded traitors as though loving Palestine means remaining silent while Palestinians themselves are destroyed.
Ahmed
That is a very much so. I mean, Palestinians are basically props for a lot of these activists. Sadly and unfortunately, although I, I don’t question the sincerity of some activists, I think for some others, I went on this jubilee show where I was, I saw one.
Noam
Person, I saw I.
Ahmed
Saw by 20 and one of these activists to my face, it’s on camera, said, she said that, well, basically, I mean, said something to the effect of, well, we need those bloody images of Palestinians because it helps our activism and it makes it easier. And if that’s the price that like, they’re going to die anyway, they might as well die in a way that we can use to delegitimize Israel.
Ahmed
And so she just might have been the less intelligent type to actually say that out loud. But that’s very much so. The sentiment, the role of the Palestinians. And by the way, this is true. And a lot of like very left Jewish spaces here that I go and speak to, they don’t like I mean, there are very, extremely anti Netanyahu and anti far right elements in Israel in the Jewish spaces.
Ahmed
And I go and speak to them and some of them they’re like, okay, well we want you to like tell us how awful Netanyahu is. And I’m like, you already know that. You already have that covered. You don’t need me to to to do that for you. It’s like there are some either in the activist, pro-Palestine industrial complex space or even in just the broader world.
Noam
Why? Why are Jews and Israelis more willing? Sounds to me to criticize their their government, like you’re saying, then you’re saying from the Palestinian.
Ahmed
World, because I think there is a tradition of a democratic tradition. There’s political life in Israel. There’s there’s there’s there’s give and take. There’s been multiple governments. Palestinian society is not free. It’s not democratic. It’s very tribal. It’s like we had this one election 20 years ago, and it backfired horribly and it never went anywhere. And unfortunately, the alternative to Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, while I would take them any day over Hamas, they’re not exactly the paragons of freedom and liberty either.
Ahmed
They’re both corrupt. And there there’s no Palestinian politics in the West Bank. There’s palace politics, there’s Abu Mazen, who’s in his like millionth year and a four, five year, five year term. And then there’s just like this, this need to also hush, hush hush. Let’s let’s keep the focus on Israel. There’s enforced conformity in the Palestinian society. There’s in the Muslim and Arab world in general and in the diaspora here, this forced cohesion, the same people also in activist spaces that tell us that you should be fluid with your identity and your sexuality and your who you are and whatever.
Ahmed
Those same people are immediately adopting very binary pro Palestine or anti-Israel or like, like pro black and white positions and so but but the earlier point that I was saying is that the role of the Palestinians is to be victims for a lot of people. And unfortunately, that has been internalized by large elements of the Palestinian society. And that’s part of my desire is to highlight that we have agency and accountability and responsibility, if there’s any hope to actually change the course of our, of our, of our reality and of our of our history, of our trajectory within the imbalance of power dynamics.
Ahmed
This was a central theme of my book, is that, yes, there’s an imbalance between Israel and the Palestinian people, but within that imbalance, there exists plenty of space for that account.
Noam
So that’s what I wanted to ask you. Let’s go to the present. First of all, I’m going to skip over this part. But one of the things I found fascinating in your book that I did not know you did not meet Jews or Israelis until you moved to the United States of America. And considering the proximity of Gaza to Israel, I mean, that is a remarkable statistic, but people should check that out in the book.
Ahmed
But so I want to say that one of the things I did mention in the book, still in the 1990s and certainly before, but in the 90s, so many Gazans were working in Israel, went back and forth, they went back and forth. And so, like, even though we didn’t have very close and direct contact with Israelis, there was this Hebrew used to be taught actually in Gaza, believe it or not.
Ahmed
And we used to have much more regular contact with Israelis before Oslo and before the Second Intifada. So like it was a contradiction of growing up hearing all my uncles and friends and people and neighbors who worked in Israel describe Israelis in super detail.
Noam
Positive or negative.
Ahmed
Like, I would argue, overwhelmingly positive.
Noam
Really overwhelming. But what about your textbooks in the school? Were that so?
Ahmed
The textbook I think there’s a there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the textbooks. The issue is not I never I learned the Palestinian textbooks. There was nothing that ever explicitly said carry out jihad and killing.
Noam
Oh, you didn’t hear.
Ahmed
That killing. It was funded by the Europeans and by the international community. There are a few instances where here and there where you could identify tweaks and minor adjustments, etc. and I say this to this day, the main issue is the editorializing that happens in classrooms.
Noam
So there’s the curriculum and the curriculum, and the communicator.
Ahmed
Actually communicates and says, so the teacher will come and give you a totally different like we’re learning history and history class. And then the teacher will launch about how his grandfather was a revolutionary for the PLO. And they try to do one, two, three, four. And and then there were teachers who were actually very secular and very incredible.
Ahmed
But I just I want to clarify, like like I lived I’m all about multiple truths and the reality of narratives. We both lived, especially during the second Intifada and the violence and after the near-death experience that I had in Gaza. Like.
Noam
What’s a near-death experience here in.
Ahmed
Gaza in 2001, when I survived an Israeli bombing that killed two of my friends and rendered me mostly deaf in my left here. That’s why I’m always loud. Seems like I’m always yelling. I mean, that’s being Arab, but it’s I can’t hear myself. Okay, so I’ve asymmetric hearing loss on one side, but this is horrible. Horrible. But but but in a so there’s that on one side and all the, the hatred and the the incitement that that brings and the violence and the push, whatever.
Ahmed
But then on the other end, I again remember growing up with people and I wrote about some of those stories. I mean, of people speaking fondly of their they worked in textile, they worked in factories, they worked in real estate and property management. They worked in construction. They worked in agriculture. They worked in restaurants. They worked in, like every Israeli sector you can imagine.
Ahmed
And these weren’t just like, I come here, do your job, and then boom, boom, here’s your mind. It’s like they would they were like having food with the Israelis. My my uncle brought back a TV that his Israeli boss gave to him. And we watched like, movies on this like TV, right. That his Israeli like construction boss just gave it to him.
Ahmed
He was like, oh yeah, I’ll take it. Right? Like, I remember we were at a checkpoint in Gaza when Gaza still had settlements. And like, I remember it was an all day checkpoint. Wait. And I remember this guy we were and they were just they were, they were. The older men were like, chain smoking. But the guy was like, telling me a story about this Israeli woman who hired him at this factory to be like the foreman and how he, he, he was speaking with such pride that he was her confidant.
Ahmed
He was her go to man. And if she had any issue with any of the laborers from Gaza, she went to him to fix those issues. And he just there wasn’t anything about the Zionist woman or the colonizer, the occupier. It was humanity. And I just so I remember living.
Noam
So. Wow. So I want to ask you exactly about that, about the humanity. Do Israelis and Palestinians actually have enough in common to see each other’s humanity? And the reason I’m like even zoning in on that, because from what your story just told me, it seems like at least at a point in time in history, there was seeing the humanity of the other, at least as you tell it.
Noam
But right now, according to Pew, 75% of respondents, Israeli and Palestinian, identify mutual mistrust as a major obstacle to peace. 70% cite the status of Jerusalem, 52% cite West Bank settlements. The same Pew survey found only 21% of Israelis believe peaceful coexistence with a Palestinian state is achievable at all, and 16% among Jewish Israelis specifically, versus 40% among Arab Israelis.
Noam
So.
Noam
Is it possible? Is there the ability to see the humanity in the other for Palestinians and Israelis?
Ahmed
I think right now where we’re at right now, it is incredibly difficult. I’m not I’m not here to sugarcoat anything. I’m not here to to sell you snake oil. After the tragedy over the last three years, starting with October 7th, something that basically Israelis have long been paranoid, perhaps someone would say, rightly so, that a terrible incident and an attack was going to come their way from the Palestinian people.
Ahmed
And that was proven right. And in Israel, that’s why I had the blockade on Gaza for 20 years. And Hamas proved right the point of the blockade. Tragically, then you have the mass killings in Gaza of so many families and communities and entire you know, when you have a mom and a dad and a bunch of siblings and a bunch of grandchildren or like you, you have like basically three generations of one family die in a single airstrike that happened, like with my family, with my folks, the strike, the Israeli airstrike that destroyed both of my childhood home and killed 34 of my immediate and extended family members, like like the strike and Rafah in
Ahmed
southern Gaza that killed basically all of my mom’s family members on. It was on December 14th, 2023. And in that strike, you have the grand parents, the elderly, people over, people in their 60s and 70s. You have the children, people anywhere from their late 20s all the way to their early and mid 40s, or the parents. And then you have 14 children who are under the age of nine.
Ahmed
that’s three generations of a family killed in a single airstrike. That’s going to be really difficult. And that happened hundreds of times in the Gaza Strip, in the Gaza Strip, and miniaturized, sorry, and miniaturized versions of it happen. So the trauma and the deep sense of pain is very omnipresent for both peoples.
Ahmed
and again, the pro-Palestine industrial complex are going to hear my words and they’re going to say there’s no equivalency. The Palestinian losses are greater. This is not a competition, okay? This like I understand the scale of the devastation and the loss of life is horrendous. But those dead Israelis, the kidnaped Israelis, the burnt Israelis, the mutilated Israelis that happened on October 7th, they matter to to the Israelis and they’re part of the collective trauma.
Ahmed
So like enough for this comparison. So so I get it, I get it. It’s very hard. And then that triggered a worldwide response that to many in the Jewish community and many Israelis, compounded the anger and the sense that we’re being dehumanized and we’re being dismissed and we’re being seen as lesser than. And for the Palestinian people, at least in Gaza and partly promoted by this mass global solidarity movement, and partly because of the just the sheer suffering in Gaza, there’s a feeling that we were just being killed left and right, and Arabs left us and Hamas left us and these rallies.
Ahmed
So, like even those who are anti Hamas, a lot of them still have grievances towards Israel. But I also hear other Palestinians saying that, like, and these are faint voices, but when you speak one on one with Palestinians privately, they might not share it in public. But when you speak, the individual is smart, the collective and the group are dumb or are afraid.
Ahmed
They’re either dumb or they’re afraid. But I promise you that at an individual level, there are many people that are like, we want to work in Israel, we want to get treatment in Israel. We want to actually be part of the Israelis. They’re seeing the Israeli economy roaring despite three years of war. And they’re like, this is a resilient country that can actually uplift us.
Ahmed
So I would not underestimate the power of trauma and pain and loss and suffering to, in very unexpected and unpredictable way, to actually plant new seeds for something that I believe could lead to the reunion of Israelis. And similarly, I am very heartened by the fact that a lot of Israelis that I’ve communicated with, though understandably skeptical, though understandably hesitant about their, might be willing to engage with me.
Ahmed
But they’re wondering about the rest of the Gaza Strip. They need to see more there. This is what they’re seeing on Israeli TV. It’s hard to find those Palestinian voices, but I also believe that people’s attitudes are elastic. They’re not set in stone, and they’re very adjustable based on changes to realities on the ground.
Noam
Meaning if the behavior changes, if the reality changes, then you could see a world in which peace could happen. And really, this whole episode is centered around this one question, which is not should Israelis and Palestinians make peace? But will Israelis and Palestinians make peace? And what is absolutely necessary for that to happen is this intractable conflict. Is this is this an intractable conflict?
Noam
Is this something that will always exist in the future? When you tell me your story about how you lost half of your hearing because of an Israeli airstrike, and you tell me stories of your families, of your family who you’ve lost over 30 people in your own extended family when there are tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who have been killed, when there are checkpoints that you wait all day for.
Noam
And then on the Israeli side of things, when they deeply, deeply, deeply or scarred not just by the 7th of October, I think that’s almost a distraction by years of suicide bombings, by years of saying, no, you’re not a real people.
Noam
So the Jewish people and the Israeli people, I think they’re saying, hey, there’s so much trauma an our side of not being accepted into this region of seeing places in New York City saying, you know, we’re not we’re not accepting Zionist Israelis, only people that renounce and denounce Zionism.
Noam
But except the Jewish religion, but as a people, then Israelis are like, it’s us against the world. And Palestinians who have suffered so much trauma from this whole experience death, destruction. Then they also how is this not intractable conflict? What will happen? Will there be peace in your lifetime, your 35, 36 years old? Will there be peace? And what will it take for that to happen?
Ahmed
I absolutely think there will be something that resembles peace in my lifetime. I think one of the most necessary steps to implementing something that resembles peace is the stopping, foreign and outside interference. The pro-Palestine industrial complex. Yeah. Here in the United States or in the Western world is, is a is a major force of interference. They were I mean, I, I don’t like to use the word day, but like this element that is only partially Palestinian but is largely led by non Palestinian.
Ahmed
Right. This is the I would say this is a form of neocolonialism. It’s a form of academic and intellectual neocolonialism. And right now everything is anti-Zionism. I mean, and by the way, like on the one hand, I’m not like it’s funny, I go back and forth like I say, that I’m not a Zionist.
Ahmed
And then all my Jewish and Israeli friends say, well, the fact that you agree that the Jewish people have a right to live in safety and whatever, that inherently makes you a Zionist. But regardless, like, I’m not going to go out of my way to say I am a Zionist. Like, that’s not my because my project is not my thing.
Ahmed
Right? Still.
Noam
But you’re tolerant of it.
Ahmed
100%.
Noam
That’s the difference. You’re respectful of it, respectful.
Ahmed
And I actually like.
Noam
It’s not going to be your cause.
Ahmed
It’s not going to be my cause. And I actually, I, I argue with some of my Jewish friends, I think we should become like post Zionist because Israel exists, like Israel is a fait accompli. Like you achieve the dream.
Noam
I’m going to give you. I’m gonna give you a five part series on what Zionism is actually about, because people misuse it all the time. But so. But I’m with you. I get your point.
Ahmed
What I’m trying to say is empty. So. So why do I bring that up? Tell me. Because.
Noam
Because I asked you, will there be peace? And now you gave me a history class.
Ahmed
But do you see this? That you over. We’re not here to do overly reduction.
Noam
No. So tell me.
Ahmed
Like, I actually think that anti-Zionism, as it’s practiced and promoted today, is one of the biggest hindrances and obstacles to peace guiding Palestinians and Israelis. Now, again, to your warning, pro-Palestine industrial complex. They’re going to be like, oh, we told you he’s a Zionist sellout. Israel is paying him $30 million a year. You know, like like like, right.
Ahmed
Okay, take a deep breath, folks. Okay. I’m talking about the devolution from hey, we agree that Israel is here to stay. Hey, we know that 7 million Israeli Jews are not going anywhere. Hey, like, even even before Theodor Herzl and the modern Zionist political movement that some of its roots are actually like, they were like Jewish, like atheists, almost like it wasn’t even that religious.
Ahmed
This is about Jewish peoplehood. This is like the Jewish people hood concept of belonging to the land is something that has been around for as long as there has been Judaism. Like, it’s not just that Theodor Herzl and a bunch of like like, yes, modern Zionism started as a European project, I get it. But there’s been iterations of Zionism that far preceded these guys sitting in Basel, Switzerland, and saying, we want to establish a Jewish homeland and that to reduce Jewish belonging to just this 100 year old project is is not only inaccurate, but you’re setting yourself up for this forever war recipe for of denialism.
Ahmed
And you’re just you’re not going anywhere. Like and also one other thing, and I say this to some of my Palestinian friends who are actually, like, still uncomfortable with the idea of that. I’m like, there may have been a place for anti-Zionism early on in the discourse, like very, very early on, but right now we are so past the days of anti-Zionism because not only is Israel here and it’s powerful and it’s it’s it’s a nuclear power and it’s here to stay and it’s not going anywhere.
Ahmed
But you actually also have at least something like three generations for generations of Israelis for whom this is their home. There is no, you know, Russia or Poland or.
Noam
I know, I know. So is this step to peace? Is it? Are you making the argument that the step two piece is recognition of the other, seeing the other.
Ahmed
Seeing the other, rejecting the idea that Israel is ever going to be erased or destroyed, rejecting anti-Zionism from minimum or minimum. A radically pragmatic framework that understands how futile this exercise is and how we need to actually go back to like just where we were like ten, 20 years ago, which is two states for two people, regardless of the boundaries.
Ahmed
I know that the boundaries and the settlements and we can have. That’s why I say, I don’t say two states. I say the two nation solution. For me, it takes a step back from the kind of the impotence of the two state talk right now, and it just says two separate nations in which two different people can express two unique national identities, irrespective of where we where the border is lie, we will negotiate that we will get there.
Ahmed
But I think to build trust that can lead to peace, that can lead to stability, that can lead to actual coexistence. You’re going to actually need to have these, these, these critical steps of seizing or stopping outside interference and dispensing with anti-Zionism.
Noam
Got it. Will Hassan Piker bring peace to the Middle East?
Ahmed
He not only will not do that, he is a major saboteur because he is part of the moving of the Overton Window to a more radical place from which he might be able to help some rising politicians. He might be able to.
Noam
He’s fighting for Palestinians, though.
Ahmed
He really is not. He is. He has celebrated Hamas. He has celebrated the Houthis right openly, his own remarks. He did his own statements. He is somebody that is he is incited against me. His own fans have come after me big time. He has come. He has tried to to to really harass me and push me out of existence.
Ahmed
But also he is a low information activist who engages basically who should remember his lane, which is gaming and streaming. With all due respect, he might care about the Palestinian people. He would do well to actually engage in maybe some humanitarian projects here and there. But political campaigning and commenting on the complex Palestinian issues is not really.
Noam
The reason I just said that is because there are many names like Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Hassan Piker who are out there with their content, who are saying that they are there. They are pro-Palestinian, but really what they are is in your language is is anti-Israel. And those are two very different things.
100% like Tucker Carlson not that long ago. I mean, like in like a year and a half ago, I entertained the thought of going on his show to speak to to some of his audiences. But I listened to some of his clips every day now and then, here and there. And the way he speaks about Hamas, he is so incredibly.
Ahmed
I mean, he he doesn’t even speak about Hamas, but he speaks in a very patronizing, dismissive way about Hamas. He’s like, we’re supposed to fight Israel’s wars because of Hamas, because of Hamas. And he says it and it’s like joking, man.
Noam
As though they’re not.
Ahmed
As though, like, not only Hamas is not a real threat that Israel, but also as though Hamas is not the enemy of the Palestinian people and has like elicited destruction. And if he because he’s all into like the conspiratorial thing. Yeah. Like ironically, I haven’t seen him use the conspiracy that Hamas is like a God sent to the far right in Israel and the Netanyahu’s of the world.
Ahmed
And that and how it was receiving billions of dollars in Qatari aid. So basically, it tells me that he’s he’s not really interested in exposing Hamas and others. But I’ll just close by saying somebody like, like I look at somebody like like Mehdi Hasan, who I think is this very smart and but unfortunately, because he’s so into the anti-Zionist framework, he could be so helpful and influential, but instead he chooses to engage in this radically anti-Israel agenda that instead of that intellect and that ability to go back and forth, he has chosen a camp and he’s preaching to acquire.
Ahmed
And they’re all part of this industry now, the anti-Israel industry. And I thought it hilarious when when even Norman Finkelstein, I mean, Norman Finkelstein recently was trying to say that it’s not really people think it’s courageous to come out and speak out against Israel. And even Finkelstein was like, it’s really not that courageous. Everybody’s speaking out against Israel.
Ahmed
And he was saying like, we need to like, calm down a little bit. Like he said that. He absolutely said that. I mean, ironic, right? Because he’s promoted some of them, I think, wackiest ideas out there about Israel and about just the whole discourse. And I’m saying this not in defense of Israel just because I’m like, Guy, like, what are you doing?
Ahmed
So like even he was like, hey, guys, like, we need to calm things down a little bit. We need to still have reasoning, he said. We need to be evidence based and we need to.
Noam
Like, a good idea.
Ahmed
Yeah, yeah, it.
Noam
Would help. Yeah. So tell me, young people are hungry to make a difference. Like they really are. Young people have an energy that people who are over a certain age don’t have the same amount of energy.
Noam
How could we activate young people? Or how should do you think young people should be activated to make a positive difference? Speak like they need to be. They are. They’re hungry, they’re energetic. They want it. And they see a cause. And they want to go for that cause. But what should they be doing? How should you activate them?
Ahmed
What I would plead with young people to consider is that it’s much more important to want to make a difference, rather than making a point. The majority of folks out there are trying to make a point about their opposition to Israel, about their opposition to the United States.
Ahmed
All of this language of posturing of the global South. And we care about the people of color and and settler colonialism and apartheid and genocide and occupation and this and that, like they throw all of these terms and words out there, and sometimes it’s word salad, sometimes it’s not very cohesive. But at the end of the day, none of that discourse, like people are like, we need to educate Americans in the world what’s happening in Palestine or in Israel or in Gaza.
Ahmed
There’s an abundance of information right now. Right now, we have an overwhelming oversupply of new entrance to the scene, whom after October 7th, after the devastation in Gaza in the tens of millions, I would argue, in the hundreds of millions around the world, became active with this issue and started paying attention to it. And unfortunately, a lot of them don’t have the history, don’t have the details, don’t have they have surface level information.
Ahmed
And so, like the issue now is not that not enough people are paying attention to Israel and Palestine. Actually, I would argue that now is too many people. The wrong kind of people are paying attention to Israel and Palestine. The issue now is how do we harness that into tangible actions on the ground that actually effectuate policy, that make a difference in the lives of Palestinians on a day to day basis?
Ahmed
And some of that is very unsavory work. Some of that isn’t as flashy as standing before the Israeli embassy and yelling and screaming. Some of that isn’t making very incendiary posts on social media that go mega viral. And you get, you know, pats on the back from your pro-Palestine friends, and you go to your classmates and say, look at me and how amazing I am.
Ahmed
Some of that is actually saying things that might put you at opposition and at odds, rather with the ideological, ideologically maximalist folks like saying that Israel is here to stay, and that you understand that Israel has the right to to live in safety and security.
Noam
So they should get on the streets and do what? Say what should their chance be? Help! Help young people out. Like what is it?
Ahmed
From the river to the sea. Only peace will set us free. From the river to the sea is 7 million Palestinians and 7 million Jewish Israelis. And they’re both going to be here. And peace is not like I find it so cringe and hurtful as a muslim that like nowadays, there’s this, this, this trendy thing, this so trendy and cool and hip to say peace is a white man’s word.
Ahmed
Oh, really? Not our it’s not our word. Liberation is our word. And I’m like, salam. I’m like, excuse me. Have you ever prayed five times a day? Have you ever said Saddam like like you can count. We can actually count how many times in the suras and the prayers and the greetings. How many times you say peace, peace, peace on a daily basis as a as a muslim, it’s like it’s very cringe to now they’re doing what Hamas did.
Ahmed
This is what we’re talking about. Hamas literally made the word peace. Saddam in Arabic, grown up in Gaza. They they made it synonymous linguistically with weakness, treachery with yucky. Oh, yuck. Oh, but it’s like a lion. It’s like you say it with like a comma. Comma.
Noam
Salam was a resistance.
Ahmed
Call. My resistance. Yeah.
Noam
We say in prayer, we say three times a day. Seems shalom. Put prayer put, put peace out into the world three times a day. We, we. That’s part of our prayers.
Ahmed
Okay, so. So now I want to be clear about something. There are those who have very artificial notions of what peace means. There are those who think, I mean, I’ve talked to a lot of Israelis and like, let’s call them the pro-Israel community. And unfortunately to some, yeah.
Noam
What’s your message to the pro-Israel community? That’s what I wanted.
Ahmed
To peace is not acquiescence to your narrative, because there are some who are like, when I criticize Hamas, they’re like, oh, I met you deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. We love you. You are the future of the Palestinian people. Okay. Thank you. And then I’m like, oh yeah, look at this policy choice. It’s not questioning Israel’s right to exist.
Ahmed
It’s not. I’m like, why is the IDF like, why are we not moving civilians out of into the yellow zone that the Israeli military controls? Why are the settlers doing this? Why is Ben-Gvir being such a fascist? Why is this happening? Why why why why? Ahmed, I thought you were a real peace activist. You’re very. You’re misguided. You’re.
Ahmed
Oh, you’re just practicing here. So, like.
Noam
What does that tell people?
Ahmed
Like, I’ve never. I mean, I only learned about it.
Noam
Like, you didn’t know.
Ahmed
What it was. It’s in parts of Islam and.
Noam
Right. It means.
Ahmed
Like, mainly Shia.
Noam
Yeah. Don’t tell anyone.
Ahmed
Yeah. Don’t quote me. Like, it means basically like like being deceptive, right.
Noam
Acquiescing for a certain time period. Basically.
Ahmed
Precisely, precisely. But so understand that I don’t dispense or I don’t, I don’t reject or eject the imbalance of power dynamics. I maintain that Israel as the ultimately the superior powerful party just by default. It has a lot more, I think, responsibility, because it’s the supreme party that controls a lot of the reality on the ground. That is not at all to dismiss Palestinian terrorism or Palestinian agency and responsibility.
Ahmed
It is nevertheless to say that peace is going to require Israeli actions and Israeli reining in of the settler violence and stopping the settler settler expansionism. And I’m sorry, I know you call it Judea and Samaria, and I know it’s the heartland of the Jewish people. But just because the absence of peace does not automatically just mean then, that you expand your territory, knowing that this is going to set up for an endless war.
Ahmed
We don’t want, in the same way that anti-Zionism is a recipe for a forever war. This knowing that there are millions of Palestinians who are going nowhere unless you want to actually ethnically cleanse them or push them out, and then going in the heartland of the Palestinian territories and expanding your settlements and saying, well, this is biblical land, Judea and Samaria, that I respect the biblical claim.
Ahmed
That’s fine. But that, too is also a recipe for a forever.
Noam
War, because there are millions of Palestinians there.
Ahmed
One last thing to to make something compelling for young people. Yeah, I’m.
Noam
Going to activate them.
Ahmed
Yeah, I want to I also want to activate young people by like challenge. Like what happened to be in rebellious, be just being pro-Palestine, just to to rebel against your Zionist parents or to revel against the establishment that in and of itself is inadequate. Be rebellious against even some of the narratives within the Palestinian context. Be rebellious against a terrorist, jihadi fascist organization like Hamas.
Ahmed
Listen to inconvenient Palestinian voices were very, very inconvenient for and ignored and overlooked by Western activists and Western voices when they criticize Hamas. Palestinians are amazing. When they’re victims, when they’re anti-Israel, Mashallah, they everybody loves them. But when Palestinians are actually challenging the internal dynamics, and there’s something also that’s really ironic and twisted. The pro-Palestine industrial complex is perfectly fine.
Ahmed
Criticizing the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, criticizing the collaborationist nature of the Palestinian Authority because they coordinate with the Israeli military and they don’t want an anti Fatah or chaos or Hamas in the West Bank. So there is willingness to criticize the P and the Palestinian corruption in the West Bank. But when it comes to Hamas, at best, it’s a surface level I’m not down with.
Ahmed
I don’t care about Hamas. They’ll spend like literally a nanosecond dismissing Hamas, just like a check the box. But Israel this or that, whereas they’ll spend a whole like half an hour telling you why the Palestinian Authority or subcontractors for the Israeli occupation.
Noam
It’s it’s almost like you feel as though the world isn’t respectful enough of Hamas, meaning not respectful enough of the reality that Hamas is a major player in this whole story. Stop just dismissing them and moving on to the rest of the narrative. They are a big part of the narrative, and your argument is that is a problem because what the world, what you are all doing is you’re actually enabling, enabling their behavior.
Noam
So what I love about about schmoozing with you. Ahmed, you used a lot of Arabic words. I’ll use a Yiddish word. What I love about schmoozing with you is you complicate things. I think for everyone, you’re complicating the narrative for the pro-Israel world, for the world that is very supportive of Israel. And you’re complicating things for what’s described as the Palestinian world, which you describe as the pro-Palestine industrial complex.
Noam
You’re complicating things for both people. And I think that’s really good for everyone to hear, because I think people listening sometimes they’ll be like, you know, when people listen to podcasts like like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they hear something. That’s everything that I always say. That’s something that I believe. And then you start saying things that complicate their narratives like, wait, wait wait wait, no, no.
Noam
What happened to the other thing? And you’re like, no, I’m actually going to complicate it for everyone. That’s what I’m going to do. And Ahmed, that’s why I love you. That’s why you’re my brother and that’s why I love learning from you. And that’s why I think everyone should be reading this book. Hamas and Its 2 Million Hostages by Ahmed al-Khatib.
Noam
Because he’s going to make us think. And you’re going to complicate things for all of us, inshallah.
Ahmed
And like, I’ll just add to what you said, that I mean, this is the whole point of multiple truths. This is the whole point of radical pragmatism. This is the like the reductionist, overly simplistic narrative you’re supposed to be able to weave in and out of. I can be pro-Palestine, but like, I’m going to weave in to the humanity of Israelis, to the fact that Israelis have been on the receiving end of Palestinian rejection ism of Palestinian and on one party and on one side.
Ahmed
And then I’m also going to go back in here and I’m going to say, at the same time, you also have had a deliberate Israeli policy in the last several years that supported Hamas directly or indirectly through the Qatari funding, and that there was an effort by elements within Israeli society to use Hamas as a as a cudgel against the Palestinian national project, against the idea of two states, the Palestinian Authority, however corrupt and incompetent they they have been arresting a lot of Hamas operatives.
Ahmed
They have been this is not the Yasser Arafat Palestinian Authority. These are radically different people. And you can say the pay to slay, you can talk about some of those things. Some of that is accurate, some of that is exaggerated, some of that is being worked on, etc. but like you, you cannot be rigid in your. The world is far too complicated today.
Ahmed
Even if you’re robustly pro-Palestine or pro-Israel, you have to weave in and out of your narrative if you actually genuinely want to understand the issues. Otherwise, if you just want to be a jingoistic individual, if you just want to go for those simple likes and shares on social media, then maybe I’m not the one for you, Ahmed.
Noam
You’re the one for me. So thank you so much for joining me here in South Florida.
Ahmed
Thank you brother. Thanks.
Noam
Peace out.