Friday, May 8, 2026 - This week's Radio Intifada we preview KPFK’s Saturday, May 9th Sumud event being held under the banner, Sumud: A celebration of Palestinian Culture, Resistance, and Solidarity. In remembrance of the 78th year of the Palestinian Nakba, KPFK is convening journalists, labor leaders, entertainment organizers, educators, filmmakers, and faith communities for an afternoon and evening in the Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles.

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1. Hello and welcome. This is Radio Encefada coming to you from Los Angeles on KPFK,
2. a production of Suwanna Region Radio, a weekly review of politics and culture from
3. Culcata to Casablanca. I'm Rana Sharif. Radio Encefada will temporarily be moved to a KPFK
4. podcast, but we will soon return to KPFK's airwaves. Until then, be sure to check out
5. our weekly shows at kpfk.org. Today on Radio Encefada, we are previewing KPFK's Saturday,
6. May 9th Sumud event held under the banner Sumud, a celebration of Palestinian culture,
7. resistance and solidarity. In remembrance of the 78th year of the Palestinian Nakba,
8. KPFK is convening journalists, labor leaders, entertainment organizers, educators, filmmakers
9. and faith communities for an afternoon and evening in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles.
10. Today's show, we will hear from Rula Selbek, a Palestinian filmmaker dropped by her agency for
11. speaking on Palestine. Then, Nidal Rafizi, vice president of Teamsters Local 1932, who pushed his
12. 14,000-member local to publicly call for a ceasefire and halt to U.S. military aid. But first,
13. we speak with the event's keynote, Dr. Ramzi Baroud, editor of Palestine Chronicle, author of
14. Before the Flood, and one of the most widely read Palestinian journalists alive. My co-host today is
15. David Lloyd. Dr. Baroud is a Palestinian author, historian, and founding editor of the Palestine
16. Chronicle, which he has led since 1999. He holds a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of
17. Exeter and is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Islam
18. Mulzim University. His eight books include My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, The Last Earth,
19. and his latest book, Before the Flood, a Ghaznav family memoir, comes out of Seven Stories Press.
20. Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Baroud.
21. So our listeners know your book, Before the Flood, is a deeply personal, multi-generational memoir chronicling the history of the Badr Asawi family, tracing their journey from the era of British mandate colonial rule in Palestine through decades of displacement, occupation and war that culminates in the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
22. Through lived experience and historical testimony, Dr. Baroud situates the Badr Asawi family's story within the broader Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism, dispossession, and erasure.
23. So, Dr. Baroud, let's start with your family history.
24. Was your family historically a Gazan family, or are they refugees from elsewhere in Palestine who were forced to take refuge there after the Israeli ethnic cleansing during the night?
25. Right. First of all, thank you very much for having me. And I'm very much looking forward to our event on May 9th. That's not a difficult question, but it's only made difficult by the fact that we also take a great deal of pride being from Gaza.
26. But like the majority of Gazans in Gaza today, they are really, they are not from Gaza.
27. We are from southern Palestine, mostly, but from other parts of Palestine.
28. We come from the countrysides, if you will.
29. We are mostly Fallaheen, I would say.
30. At least 80% of Gaza's population today are either refugees or descendants of refugees
31. who are still refugees per UN definitions.
32. so I am a refugee, I am a fallah, meaning I'm a peasant, even though that just remains
33. a cultural signifier, it's not that we are, we have land and we practice, you know, farming
34. or animal husbandry or anything of that nature it just for us it a cultural identifier and it a very important cultural identifier because as long as we remain rooted in our identity as peasants
35. as refugees, as people who belong to somewhere else, not in Gaza, it fuels our struggle,
36. our political aspirations and our quest for returning to Palestine someday. So that's a
37. very important thing, which is, you know, you're not going to have a lot of people around the world
38. very proud to say, I am a peasant. But we say it, even though some of us, you know, my family are
39. mostly in academia and medicine, for whatever reason. We chose these two fields. So there are
40. doctors, they are professors, they are all of that. But the first identifier, we are peasants
41. because we are from southern Palestine, we are refugees, and we take a great deal of being part
42. of the struggle in Gaza itself. Despite the 20-year-long and illegal Israeli siege of the
43. quote, strip, Gaza is a place that residents are deeply in love with in a very sensuous
44. manner of its landscapes, seascapes, its environment, as well as for its community.
45. Is that what you remember?
46. Can you tell us a little bit about what you remember from Gaza?
47. Oh, my gosh.
48. I mean, if I would just describe to you just a single scene of going to the beach in Gaza.
49. I mean, going to the beach for us as children wasn't just an ordinary event.
50. I mean, we lived by the beach.
51. Why not go to the beach?
52. We were literally about two kilometers away from the beach.
53. anybody say in California if you are two kilometers away from the beach it it simply means you know
54. you live there you are camping there you are surfing you are doing but for us it wasn't because
55. we were under and remain under Israeli occupation and the Israeli military would be at the beach
56. the Israeli checkpoints the Israeli but whenever we are allowed to go to the beach because the
57. Israelis would give us, for example, the curfew at the beach would start at 6 p.m. So you have
58. a period from, let's say, 10 until 6 to go. And that's when my father, let's say,
59. decided to take the risk. We would actually not rent a car. We would rent a donkey cart.
60. And we would all pile up on top of the donkey cart, all our swim shorts and our snacks. And
61. mom would make her specialty makloubi you know the famous palestinian uh dish and we will all be and
62. it will be like to keep it warm it will stuff you know like covered with all these blankets and
63. and and just the process of getting there the joy of just trying to make it to the beach and then
64. there's this kind of final hill that kind of goes up and then down and then you see the water and we
65. will all scream in utter joy that we, you know, we are going to see, you know, that we made it,
66. and we would just run, and we would eat, and we have fun until, of course, the Israeli army
67. comes and decides to kind of end that joy, and we'll all start scrambling for cover or take our
68. blankets and run back to the road and try to hide from the Israelis. So I feel like the way to
69. describe Gaza for Gaza children, and you see it on social media now, you see all these children
70. always finding, stealing moments of joy, even during the displacement, even if they are in
71. displacement camp, even during the genocide itself. It totally reminded me of my childhood
72. in Gaza It this constant navigation of trying to steal few moments of joy to practice your humanity and because there are very few and far in between you practice your humanity to the absolute maximum you dance in
73. utter joy you play football in utter joy you go to the beach in utter joy because you don't know
74. when that moment is going to be back and how soon
75. that's it's really amazing to hear that dr varud and i have to ask you a difficult question that's
76. probably even harder for you to answer um but i think it's important as we're talking about the
77. genocide that israel continues to commit i mean let's let's not make any bones about that they
78. are continuing that genocide and so i'm wondering how your family has come through the israeli
79. genocide so far? And as I say, that's a difficult question, I know, but.
80. Yeah, not very good, but the same thing for pretty much every Gaza family. I don't think
81. anyone in Gaza, be it Muslim or Christian, being poor or rich, being a refugee or a non-refugee,
82. being from a big family or a small family, in a sense, the Israeli genocide has really kind of
83. further demonstrated my point that the struggle for Palestine is a collective struggle, especially
84. in Gaza, where we are all in this together, and we are all one big family, we fight together,
85. we resist together, but also when we are victimized by Israeli war crimes, we are also victimized
86. together. I must tell you that in the beginning, I honestly thought they must be targeting specific
87. families because of the family itself. Because in one single day, there were like three Baruch
88. families that were completely just destroyed and killed, along with their children, men, women,
89. everybody, in three different parts of Gaza, in Jebalia in the north, in Nusayrat in the center,
90. and then Khan Yunis in the south, to the point that my brothers and I, some of us are outside
91. of Palestine began thinking maybe they are targeting the Baruch specifically
92. because they are Baruch but then when I started looking at the other numbers
93. coming from Gaza it turned out that that couldn't be the case because some
94. families lost hundreds of their members in my case our family and extended
95. family lost 110 members by mid-2024. After that, we couldn't keep count. We didn't want to keep
96. count anymore. Many are still missing. Many are buried, you know, under their homes, especially
97. in the northern region. And with time, it got very close. You kind of go to the immediate cousins.
98. And then my brother-in-law, who was a professor at the Islamic University, or rather at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, was assassinated deliberately, followed by my sister, who was assassinated in October 2024.
99. So it's really, I mean, you know, we speak about genocide and we argue, you know, especially mainstream media, you know, is this, does this really meet the criteria of genocide or not?
100. well, did Israel have the intent to commit genocide?
101. And then everybody speaks for, in fact, the International Court of Justice
102. is going to take maybe years just to discuss the word intent here
103. and to see if it applies or doesn't apply.
104. But for those of us who lost you know hundreds of members of our families Many were left maimed mutilated wounded incapable of walking anymore
105. I mean, it's going to take a generation or more
106. just to heal from that singular event.
107. Again, it's an event that affected every single Gazan.
108. It's nothing unique to my family.
109. We are just nothing but a representation
110. of the collective grief of all of Gaza.
111. Thank you for that, Dr. Baroud. And of course, what you've just said really raises the question
112. as to whether genocide even covers what has happened in Palestine for the last 75 plus years.
113. I know the scholar Samara Esmir is now using the language of obliteration rather than genocide. And
114. I wonder how you think about that and how you think about the complete failure of international law
115. and humanitarian treaties and so forth to actually protect Palestinians.
116. Absolutely. I honestly think that, you know, this conversation is overdue about the term genocide just because we fall into the legal trap of certain language.
117. And to the point that we, but I am not an international law expert.
118. And it shouldn't matter to me whether, you know, how lawyers are going to incorporate or interpret the term intent or not.
119. because at the end of the day there is no accountability anyway, so why can't we just be honest about things and just say it as it is,
120. for the sake of historical accuracy at least.
121. If Israel was already committing genocide, I mean, what happened during the Nakba, 1947-1948?
122. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the killing and wounding of tens of thousands of Palestinians,
123. the destruction of over 500 villages, the ethnic cleansing of nearly anywhere between 800,000 to a million,
124. which is the vast majority of the population of historic Palestine.
125. And then the erasure of numerous villages, the massacres everywhere in Palestine.
126. There, Yassin is but one of many, many massacres, and Tantura and all of that.
127. that was genocide not only because it was genocide because Israel also had the intent
128. every I mean the Zionist discourse itself is rife with informations and declarations we must kick
129. the Arabs out and take their homes we must do this we must do that and the dehumanizing language
130. the cockroaches the beasts and so there was no question that the Nakba was genocide now if the
131. Nakba was genocide.
132. So what is happening in Gaza now?
133. Because this is a whole different level of destruction
134. and obliteration.
135. 92% of the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, 92%.
136. We are still unable to even count our dead.
137. Two and a half years since the start
138. of the ongoing genocide,
139. because it is an ongoing genocide.
140. We don't know who is, I mean, imagine this.
141. you have thousands and thousands of people who are still missing.
142. We know they are dead.
143. But not everybody is known to be dead.
144. Some people might actually be in prison and might not.
145. They have been detained by the Israeli army.
146. We don't even know the number of the people who have been imprisoned.
147. We know that at least in thousands, but it could be more, right?
148. We don't know how many of them were executed or killed or they don't exist anymore.
149. So as a result, I know because family members do the same thing, my family.
150. Every time there is a patch of prisoners who are released into some hospital through the
151. Red Cross, in Khan Younes, in Nasser Hospital, in Shifa, in the Baptist Hospital, all of Gaza
152. goes to the news, or many of them actually go to the hospital to look if one of their
153. missing loved ones is part of the eight or seven or 15, because they are still holding on that
154. possibility that maybe one of their numerous victims who went missing is actually still alive,
155. Right. So so to argue to kind of continue to engage with legal arguments that, you know, is this genocide and is there intent?
156. I think as historians and as activists and as scholars and people who care about the truth,
157. not how geopolitical balances affect our understanding of the truth through international legal organizations.
158. organizations, no, that doesn't matter to us. Let the lawyers take care of that. What matters to us
159. as historians and people of conscience is that we need to know the truth. Yes, this is beyond
160. genocide. This had the intent of destroying a group in whole, not in part, per the very definition
161. of genocide. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dr. Baroud, for sharing. And
162. Thank you for sharing about your family
163. As David mentioned
164. the current moment is not only
165. a culmination
166. of not only a series of Israeli assaults
167. on Gaza from 2008 to
168. 2021 including
169. 2008-2009, 2012
170. 2014, 2018
171. 2021
172. but also a continuation as you said
173. of the Nakbem 1948 that
174. displaced so many Palestinians into what became
175. and you opened up with your own family's story.
176. You also mentioned accountability.
177. So what does that look like?
178. What needs to be done to expose this intention?
179. And in your view, what role do we play in the shaitan
180. to uphold that accountability?
181. So I'm going to be very realistic here
182. because as Palestinians, we know we have been through this
183. time and time again.
184. We have been talking about accountability
185. with no accountability in sight.
186. And we have had this conversation,
187. earlier generations of Palestinians
188. have had this conversation
189. after Sabra and Shatila,
190. they have it after the, you know,
191. numerous other massacres after every war
192. in Gaza in particular,
193. 8, 9, 12, 14, 21 and so forth and so on.
194. We talk about accountability,
195. but there is no accountability.
196. There are two ways in which Israelis
197. can be held accountable.
198. well, when by the Palestinians themselves, those who are doing the resisting and they are resisting,
199. you know, honestly, sometimes I just feel like how sad it is because we are limited in what we can
200. say and cannot say in not just in Western media, but even in independent alternative media that we
201. kind of, you know, there's this elephant in the room and we just don't want to see it. Nobody
202. wants to see it. But if it's not for the Palestinians themselves, this would not even be a
203. story because it would have been a done deal. We would have been obliterated and moved on as just
204. another forgotten nation. The fact that we are still having this conversation is not because
205. of me and not because of any individual or organization or a group or a collective. It's
206. because of the Palestinian people resisting and with no qualification to the word resistance.
207. They choose the method the timing the nature of that resistance It their business because they are the ones who are being obliterated as we have established The second medium of accountability is what can we do from the outside
208. And I think, you know, any conversation about solutions is moot as long as Zionism exists.
209. That's the truth of it.
210. There is Zionism.
211. Zionism is a racist, genocidal ideology that is based on racial supremacy and it's willing to obliterate, thank you David, an entire nation to subsist and to exist and to carry on.
212. and we need to defeat Zionism. So I think all of our efforts should go into exposing
213. Zionism, educating people, initiating boycotts, changing the numbers, because Israel has always
214. won through deceit, lies, and all of that. They do the harm, and then they blame the Palestinians
215. for it. They present themselves as this civilized democratic nations, and the Palestinian people are
216. the obstacles in the path of civilization. People are beginning to know the truth. I want to be
217. optimistic. When I look at numbers and I see for the first time in history, 41 plus percent of all
218. Americans, all Americans sympathize with Palestine while 36 percent sympathize with Israel. None of
219. us thought that that's going to be possible one day. This happened because of you, because of the
220. collective grassroots efforts that happened everywhere. That conversation you had with that
221. stranger on the bus, that encampment you had at your university, that independent radio station,
222. it is the collective efforts that made the difference. It's not the New York Times,
223. it's not the Washington Post, it's none of this. Not mainstream media, they were the enemy and
224. they've always been the enemy. We made the difference because of the work that we do.
225. Now we need to capitalize on the changing demographics. So in order for us to hold Israel accountable in every possible way, at international institutions, at a governmental level, at a city council level, at a media level, in every possible way, until we finally make Israel realize it has become a pariah state and cannot be sustained as such.
226. Thank you, Dr. Baroud. That's one very positive note, which does speak to the extraordinary change in the public opinion around Palestine, around ISKCON.
227. I wanted to go to another positive note to end because you talked early in our conversation about Gazan joy.
228. And Gazans, in a way, are the North Star in their insistence on not accepting displacement from the land
229. or to put it in a positive way, their commitment to staying on the land in the environment and the ecology that they cherish
230. and which Zionists clearly are intent on destroying not only in Rezka but everywhere.
231. and what do you think motivates and holds this persistence, steadfastness or sumud,
232. which is, of course, you know, what our event is all about?
233. Right, David, I think you're trying to get to the gist of my book, you know,
234. but that's really what the book is all about.
235. In the book, I try to actually uncover, I call it the social code,
236. what makes the Palestinians, I don't want to say different,
237. I don't believe that there is any superior anything to anybody,
238. No one is superior to anyone, but there are certain kind of collective
239. experiences that makes us different in a sense. And there is something that
240. Palestinians went through, there is an experience, especially those in Gaza,
241. where you kind of live in an environment where all the social strata has been removed it almost non we are all the vast majority of us refugees coming from so many villages and we inherited a history of pride a history of resistance that
242. goes back hundreds of years ago. We know that Zionism is nothing but an obstruction to the
243. flow of history that's been going on in Palestine for thousands of years. We hold that inside all
244. of us and we have that realization and the determination that this is nothing but a setback
245. and we will go back. Now, we are behaving as a group with that understanding in mind.
246. And we found ourselves in a situation where we can only survive together. So we practice mutual
247. aid in a way that you don't need an academic paper to explain it to you. It just comes natural to you.
248. And, you know, I know time is running out for the interview, so I will speak more and more about this when I see you on the 9th.
249. But definitely there is a social code that makes Gazans unique and different.
250. And where other nations would actually crumble and collapse under this kind of pressure, they didn't.
251. And the reason of why they didn't is because what makes them unique as Palestinians
252. and as a group of people who withstood all sorts of oppressions, military occupations,
253. colonialism for such a long time.
254. And every single time they emerged even stronger than before.
255. Thank you so much, Dr. Ramzi Baroud, for joining us here on Radio Insafaza.
256. Of course, we encourage our listeners to go out and get his most recent book,
257. Before the Flood, a Gaza Family Memoir, and that's out of Seven Stories Press.
258. And of course, to join KPFK on Saturday for Samud, a celebration of Palestinian culture, resistance and solidarity.
259. Of course, you can find more information about the event at kpfk.org backslash Samud, S-U-M-U-D.
260. Thank you.
261. Coming up, we continue Radio Antifada's preview of KPFK's Saturday, May 9th event, Samud, a celebration of Palestinian culture, resistance and solidarity with Rula Salbak.
262. Rula is a Palestinian filmmaker dropped by her agency for speaking up on Palestine.
263. For more information and to purchase your tickets for Saturday's event, please see kpfk.org backslash samud.
264. Our guest today is Lola Selbeck, a Palestinian-American filmmaker, podcaster, and storyteller who was dropped by her agency for speaking on Palestine.
265. Lola Selbeck is a Sundance alumna and Palestinian-American writer, director with past projects and development at 20th Century Fox and Sony.
266. After making Choke, which came out in 2018, she was dropped by creative arts agency CAA in March of 2025, after, of course, speaking publicly on the genocide in Gaza.
267. In true Palestinian form, Rula remains committed to her artwork in spite of attempts to silence her, and has since been making her next feature, The Visitor, a Palestinian folk horror film.
268. For this project, she has partnered with Watermelon Pictures, a Palestinian-owned label focused on amplifying underrepresented voices, particularly for Palestine and marginalized communities.
269. Rola has also founded the Safina Filmmaker Project, a free mentorship initiative for Palestinian Arab filmmakers.
270. Welcome to Radio Antifa, Rola.
271. Hello, hello. Thank you for having me.
272. Thank you.
273. So let's begin with Samud. As we approach the 78th year of the Zionist entity's ongoing Nakba against our Palestinian people, what does Samud mean to you and how does it animate the work you do and who Rola is?
274. Samud means to me I think the base level of I think human instinct of what we should do and what we do do in our hearts and on our work and even on our physicality when we are oppressed and when we are colonized We stay steadfast We stay the course
275. And it's much easier said than done, of course, because, you know, others' instincts might be to either run away or even worse to, you know, be like, well, this is how it is, you know, if we can't be them, join them type of a thing.
276. And so I think Samud really, really does signify not just, you know, you know, Palestinian steadfastness, but I think also Samud all around the world.
277. We're seeing so many communities and people really feeling this kind of encroachment on the, you know, from this one world order.
278. And I feel like the Samud spirit is spreading around the world.
279. And Alhamdulillah for that.
280. And inshallah, we will be victorious.
281. Thank you, Rala.
282. Of course, you know, Sumud is really about resisting repression, isn't it?
283. And you have yourself faced considerable repression as a result of speaking up about Palestine
284. and in particular the genocide that's ongoing there.
285. And we should emphasize it is ongoing and not, you know, finished because of a fake
286. ceasefire.
287. But you spoke up in the face of an unrelenting industry, the film industry.
288. and yet of course being dropped by CAA didn't stop your own creative work.
289. So tell us how you think about the relationship
290. between institutional censorship and artistic creativity
291. given that so many artists now do seem to fear speaking out
292. and have feared that for quite a long time,
293. even about something now that one would think to be self-evident
294. like a genocide taking place on their doorstep and with their complicity.
295. I have a lot to say about that. I love that question because it's so multifaceted. I don't know which part to dig into first, for sure. I think maybe I'll start with, you know, industry in general. I think change is definitely needed. And I think there are people who, you know, can and are trying to affect change within the industry, as you mentioned, because there is such a culture of fear in the industry.
296. And there's such this kind of mentality of scarcity that everyone just wants to, you know, whenever they're in the club, they're like, oh, I can't leave. I can't leave my place in the club because it's really much more psychologically, much more than just I'm afraid of my, you know, losing my livelihood.
297. You see tons of celebrities that literally will be just fine if they never worked another day in their life. So it's not about livelihood. And in fact, it's the people like Entertainment Labor for Palestine, the labor union entertainment, it's people who are, you know, the crew who are, you know, working, you know, sometimes even, you know, minimum union wage, who are the ones putting their, their livelihoods on the line.
298. And they literally are working paycheck to paycheck. So it has nothing to do with livelihood. I don't buy that for a second. And I think it has everything to do with this culture of fear and the scarcity in Hollywood. In fact, I say this a lot, which is this culture of fear, by the way, is not just about Falastin.
299. If we ask ourselves, how was Weinstein, and he's just one, by the way, there's many, many Weinsteins that are still, you know, in the industry. How was Weinstein able to terrorize all these women for decades? How? And it's because of the culture of fear. No one wanted to say anything, because if you piss off Weinstein or his crew or whatever, you know, you're going to get out of the club.
300. And so my point is already there's a culture of fear already with such a toxic industry. So shame, I really feel shame.
301. on any artist in the industry right now that is not speaking up absolute shame you know maybe when
302. the genocide first started you could maybe fault someone for oh you don't you know you don't know
303. what to say or you don't this is enough like this is like how much more do you want you know
304. yeah you know as you were speaking you're kind of thinking about like shame right so can you
305. actually talked a little bit about what it's been like to interface with those folks and see them
306. so what does it mean to still you know you are someone that is a creative who's doing work what
307. has it been like three years into an ongoing genocide 78 years into an ongoing deck bit where
308. silence is um i mean a culture of silence of fear but the what dish until when yeah yeah
309. people respond to that. Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, I take their silence as violence. I take
310. it as an aggression. That being silenced is not neutral. It's not a neutral thing. You are being
311. violent against me against my people. So I give them absolutely no reverence. I have absolutely
312. no intention of working with anyone inside the industry, who a does not recognize this as a
313. genocide and B is not speaking up. I have no intention. I don't care what you think you're
314. doing behind the scenes or not behind the scenes, or you think you're a good person or not a good
315. person. I don't care. If you have a platform and you are not using it right now in an industry,
316. you know, supposed to be an artistic industry that really speaks truth to power, you know,
317. you see it, you see it even in, I forget what was the, what was the recent, one of the recent
318. like industry kind of events. Okay. And you saw people wearing ice pins. Okay. This is very
319. interesting to me. Because you know, oh, and they're asked about the red carpet about ice,
320. yes, you know, anti ice, which, of course, I mean, that's like base level, of course,
321. we're anti ice, what human could not be right at this point. I mean, there are many, but
322. but my point is, they were very comfortable saying that, right. And they knew that was a
323. comfortable stance to take. So even when you think of LGBT rights, right, even when you think
324. we're noticing that this really has nothing to do with going against power, against challenging
325. power. And this has everything to do with virtue signaling, all of it, all of it. So my point isn't
326. that we shouldn't say anti-ice or we shouldn't say ice, but there's a lot of big things happening
327. in the world. And when you say, you know, chinga la migra, which we should all say,
328. but you don't also say, fuck the genocide or something like that.
329. I don't believe you. I actually don't believe you. I don't.
330. Can I also just ask a little rider to this question, which is artists often talk about
331. how constraint helps them to create. And I'm wondering whether you think of, I won't say the
332. repression itself, but your resistance to the repression is actually a constraint that makes
333. you more creative rather than less. Because I think a lot of people think, oh, I won't be able
334. to work psychically as well as, you know, just in terms of financial support and things. But how do
335. you think about the relationship between censorship and creativity? Yeah, I mean, I, yes, would I
336. rather, you know, have people throw, you know, money at me to make my films. Yes, of course.
337. That always nice But two things One we know that money absolutely more money absolutely does not make a creative piece better Okay we see that with Hollywood films right now There are billions of dollars spent on movies that bomb every freaking week
338. OK, so that more money does not necessarily equate to more beautiful art, more meaningful art, more profound art.
339. That's that's a side.
340. I absolutely do think that I am finding joy in the resistance.
341. I'm finding joy.
342. I'm finding joy in the fact that I was dropped and I am still making my film.
343. I'm finding joy in the fact that it is more important.
344. I say this.
345. It's more important to be resourceful than have resources.
346. And in order to be resourceful, what do you need?
347. You need people.
348. And if I tell you the amount of people that have joined onto this project, they're like,
349. you know, literally star level, DPs, production designers, artists, actors, if I tell you,
350. they are literally exceptional at the craft. And they're like, we want to make this film with you,
351. we will, you know, volunteer our time, we will, you know, consult, we will come on board as allies,
352. we will help you, you know, find locations, so on and so forth. So now it's been such a joy,
353. to be honest and I'd much rather be making a film with people who I who I really revere as human
354. beings first and then creatives than making a film in an industry that is inherently toxic and inhumane
355. thank you yeah no that it's brilliant because it's honestly you're also pointing to this
356. reshifting of the terms of engagement in the industry so and let's lean into that joy a little
357. bit more related. So 2018, you released Choke. And Choke tells the story of a successful MMA
358. champion who hides her refugee identity from her small American town and the world. Her name is
359. Sara. And Sara and her family are Muslim refugees who escaped the vicious war in Syria and have
360. fled to the United States. The film Choke allows us to see her contentions with her identity as a
361. refugee, gender norms, sexuality, aging parents, caretaking.
362. How much of this film do you consider to be autobiographical,
363. which is a temptation critics always find useful in order to categorize original work?
364. How much of it is a reflection of a moment?
365. How much of it is also doing exactly what you just said,
366. is telling the stories because they are important to be told?
367. And how does that then gravitate people to those stories?
368. You know, that's a lot of things to consider.
369. No, no, no. I love that.
370. I think, you know, I think any artist who makes a piece of art, they always have pieces of them in the art.
371. That's what makes their art, you know, different from other.
372. And that's what makes their art meaningful to, you know, in a different way than if someone else were making the art.
373. Right. So and so the question comes up.
374. Your question is like, hey, how much of it was autobiographical?
375. to be honest with you not very much other than the fact that I love MMA and I'm gay as well but
376. that's really that's really it what really what I was trying to do was really express this kind of
377. anti-identity story which is what parts of yourself do you hide when you can hide it and
378. should you hide it and so you know to her parents she's hiding that she's gay to the MMA world right
379. American, you know, small town American, she's hiding that she's Muslim and that she's a
380. refugee because she can pass. She's white passing. And then to really kind of culminate
381. all that and to show someone literally fighting for who they are in a cage And that kind of representation I think was important for me because I think you know not just not just because I Palestinian I can you know that that push
382. and pull is definitely within me and within a lot of us in the diaspora, certainly. But I thought
383. that it's something that a lot of communities and people could kind of connect with, you know,
384. this idea of like, who am I and literally fighting for who you are. The other thing is, last thing
385. I'm going to say is because I'm a big martial arts fan. I really love this idea of seeing like
386. a woman. By the way, she's played by Jessica Damouni, who's Palestinian Lebanese. She's
387. amazing. It was just something about seeing a Palestinian like out of it, like, kicking ass
388. on screen. I don't know. I just thought it was super, super cool. So yeah.
389. Well, that's lovely. In an interview you've already done and shared, you say folks who have multiple very strong identities that are not normalized identities within a society, they're always the other, the other, the other.
390. So when you're part of multiple others, you end up being so otherized. Do you think of this process of otherization as a hindrance or actually as a stimulus to your work? How do you feel about that?
391. I don't know man this otherization thing honest to god like I just I feel like this system is
392. one thing I actually don't like about the American system but I understand the necessity for it
393. and society is this kind of boxing everyone in these identities I absolutely cannot stand it
394. because I think then you start chopping people up into little pieces and then you start talking
395. about things like coexistence, right, or tolerance, these words to me are kind of manufacturing
396. something that should be instead, which is connection. That's more important to me. So when
397. you look at the Falestini movement, by the way, that's the most beautiful thing about it. It's
398. like you recognize, you know, that you might be from different places. You recognize, yes, I'm
399. from here. I'm from there. I speak this language. I speak that language. I'm this, I'm that. But in
400. the end, you are connecting. And that is way more important than sitting there and checking identity
401. boxes left and right. Lovely, thank you. So then how does the non-identity work?
402. How do you think this sense of non-identity, as opposed to rather like really overemphasizing
403. some sort of identity as a basis for political organizing, opens up new possibilities, both
404. creatively, but also political activism. Yeah, like I said, I think that, again, it's not,
405. I'm not saying not to have identities, right? Of course, we are who we are, right? And we have
406. beautiful sub communities and different communities that intersect and don't intersect. Like it's a
407. beautiful thing that I speak Arabic, someone else doesn't. I'm Palestinian, someone else isn't,
408. You know, I love that. All I'm saying is, in America, I've never seen another country where I'm sitting there filling out a form, and I'm literally checking boxes about who I am. What are we doing? What, even just the gender, even just the gender box itself, which I know is worldwide, but even just that, who cares? What is this? You know what I mean?
409. And so I'm not saying to not recognize that I am a woman, to not recognize that I'm
410. Palestinian, to not recognize that I'm Muslim on my mom's side, Christian on my dad's
411. side My whole world is quote identities But all I saying is we really should do I think what the Palestinian movement is doing right now
412. which is build together, connect together instead of just kind of, you know, having these pockets of isolated, you know, groups that kind of come together every so often and call it, you know, coexistence or tolerance or whatever.
413. I'm looking for like a big world family
414. I don't want
415. I don't like this chopping up who we are
416. like when Palestine is free I always say this
417. inshallah ya rab we will be victorious
418. when Palestine is free like I
419. all these people who have been
420. fighting with us fighting alongside us
421. like literally risking
422. putting their bodies on the line
423. they will come with us
424. you know what I mean like that's
425. that's my mentality this is how I feel
426. this is really truly how I feel
427. thank you for that well uh um i'm gonna quote you again i hope you don't mind us quoting you
428. and you've said that excuse me when someone asked me so where's home where's your home
429. you say just thinking about home i've absolutely no clue it's a very hard thing to empathize with
430. unless you've experienced it yourself literally having no sense of where your home is and instead
431. having what I call multiple lifetimes within a life that you can refer to as this was the lifetime
432. when that happened, this is the lifetime I was here, but no sense of this is the lifetime I'm
433. from. I'm wondering then, how do you think about the relationship between home or returning home,
434. which is often thought to be the core Palestinian aspiration politically, and the sense of being
435. unhomed that you could argue is in its own way a source of cultural creativity or self-invention
436. maybe another question about constraint and how it produces creativity
437. look i never ever um underestimate uh philistine creativity look what we've done like for decades
438. and decades of literally being refuged and killed and massacred and imprisoned imprisonment
439. Bassem Khaddafi won like the best Arabic novelist like award in why he was in prison last year. And it's not. And so I am not. I never underestimate our ability to overcome. I really don't. But when it comes to home, I want to admit something that I'm very ashamed about, which is I haven't visited Palestine yet.
440. why is that again i'm very ashamed about this um i i can't i can't imagine
441. walking on the stones of my tita's village and then seeing a terrorist soldier
442. with a rifle aimed at a kid i i can't i can't see it i don't want to hear the language
443. i don't want to see the letters on villages that used to be arabi villages
444. I don't want to hear them laughing
445. on the graves and the blood
446. that was spilled
447. I can't
448. bring myself to do it and the reason why I'm ashamed
449. is because a lot of our family and friends
450. are still in Palestine and they
451. experience this every single day
452. and that is Samud, speaking of Samud
453. that is Samud, just being able to
454. walk around and hear the language
455. that's used to actually kill you and imprison you
456. that's Samud, so that's why I'm ashamed
457. but that's
458. That's why it's not home yet.
459. And therefore I am, homeless is the wrong word
460. because I found, like I mentioned,
461. like I found home in a lot of different,
462. spaces and with a lot of different people. But it almost doesn't matter what my home is. Honestly,
463. I don't, I'm not going to sit here and cry. And I don't care. I don't care. I am so, I do
464. selfishly want to see Palestine free in my lifetime, in my lifetime. Inshallah, it's a
465. selfish thing. I know it will be free, but I am selfishly wanting to witness it. I want to see it,
466. even if the rule is, Rula cannot go back home,
467. but Falestine will be free.
468. I will not touch Falestine again.
469. It's more important for me that Falestine is free
470. than for me to have a home.
471. That's the most important thing.
472. Inshallah, Falestine will be free within our lifetime.
473. Thank you so much.
474. I was extremely moved by your admission of shame and guilt.
475. And it's something that, you know,
476. us being Pishatat and having witnessed and experienced,
477. And just as you were speaking about not wanting to witness certain violences and harms, it unlocked a memory, a very specific memory I had with my, she's 16 now, but she was four at the time.
478. And just having to witness, you know, the settler state and the violence of that through the eyes of this little person that was there with me during research.
479. And so it just unlocked that memory and it's enraging.
480. but as you said it's a
481. Samud of our people that
482. we know it's not
483. it's a promise and it will
484. we will
485. experience a free Palestine
486. and so as we
487. close out Rula maybe you can speak a little
488. bit on art and the
489. contribution art makes to revolution and liberation
490. and the commitment to Samud
491. and this return and our
492. liberation
493. I think art is
494. the most revolutionary act someone can make.
495. I really do.
496. Expressing what you have inside and challenging the power structures.
497. If we look at Banksy, what he just revealed in London, one of his most profound works,
498. I think, right?
499. The Statue of the Apostle.
500. There's a reason why it's resonating with us all, okay?
501. If someone's like, oh, I'm an artist, I don't know what else to do.
502. I'm just an artist.
503. that is the most profound thing you can do.
504. We need artists right now.
505. We need art right now.
506. We need art that's challenging.
507. We need art that's outside industries.
508. And I think it is a revolutionary act
509. to express something that so many other people are feeling.
510. We look to art for us to understand who we are
511. and understand the world.
512. And so when all we're seeing is industry art,
513. that's literally called propaganda.
514. That's propaganda.
515. That is not art. That is, you know, that is manufactured art. What we need right now is real art coming from real people. And I urge everyone and anyone who has any abilities to go out there and create and to keep and to keep us moving and to keep us in Samut because we need artists more than ever right now.
516. So just quickly, Rala, is there anywhere people can see Choke? Is it available online anywhere?
517. yeah yeah choke and my other film finjan and yeah a few other things if you just go to um
518. rollasellback.com all one word um there should be links and stuff there thank you so much
519. thank you for taking time to be with us today all right free palestine and we look forward
520. to seeing you at sumud at the event itself inshallah absolutely next on this week's special
521. of radio and safada covering sumud a celebration of palestinian culture resistance and solidarity We turn to Nidal Rafidi Joining us now is Nidal Rafidi Vice President of Teamsters Local 1932 who pushed his 14
522. member local to publicly call for ceasefire and a halt to U.S. military aid. Congratulations,
523. Nidal. Nidal Rafidi is a Palestinian American labor leader, VP, as I've said, of Teamsters
524. Local 1932, but also the director of respiratory care at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in
525. San Bernardino County's Level 1 Trauma Center and Public Hospital. Local 1932 represents more than
526. 14,000 public sector workers across the Inland Empire, and in October 2024 became one of the
527. first U.S. Teamsters locals to publicly call for an immediate ceasefire and a halt to U.S. military
528. aid fueling the assault on Gaza. Welcome to the show, Nidal.
529. Thank you.
530. Before we begin speaking about the role of unions, which I very much want to hear you talk about,
531. let's just begin with Sumud that gives its name to the event you're going to be at.
532. And as we approach the 78th year of the Zionist entity's ongoing knack by against the Palestinian
533. people, what does that word Sumud mean to you? And how does it animate the work you do?
534. and indeed who you think you are?
535. How does it frame your identity and your sense of your being in the world?
536. It's a great question.
537. Thank you for having me on the program.
538. It's very, very dear to me when I hear the word samud
539. because that's translated in the common terms of tied down, focused,
540. to the roots of the society.
541. And ironically, my name in Arabic, Nadal, is to struggle.
542. And so from a perspective of trying to liberate our country, Palestine,
543. the words Samud and Nadal are intertwined.
544. And so I'm honored to be able to be at the event
545. so that we can open up more and more people's eyes to the ideas of being Samid or Sumud
546. in order for us to get to the point of a true liberated Palestine.
547. Thank you, Nidal. I didn't know about that connection between your name and Sumud, but that's wonderful.
548. But let's get on to the question about the role that unions do play and can play and have played, in fact, in justice struggles. And I'm old enough to remember the anti-apartheid movement against South Africa in the 1980s and where I was in the Bay Area.
549. Of course, the longshoremen played an enormously important role in moving the anti-apartheid struggle on.
550. So I'm wondering how you think yourself, since you've been so important an organizer in this, how unions can best participate in Palestine liberation and, of course, in other social justice struggles.
551. Yes, I think in general, unions in America are created and formed because of the injustices to labor.
552. And what needs to happen is that that focus of the injustice to an employee, a worker,
553. be elevated to the reason of the injustices that are happening around the world but specifically to Palestine So when the civil rights movement formed in America there was always connections to labor
554. and labor was the one who stood out to say
555. that freedom of speech needs to be aware and we need to have it.
556. And lo and behold, in this last three years,
557. the handcuffs, if you would, have come off
558. that allowed the freedom of speech to support the Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian
559. struggles. Now, the unions in America are always being attacked by corporate power and laws
560. against them. And so you don't see as big as an influence in labor compared to, like you said,
561. in the European areas where many of the dock workers, Italy and other areas like Spain,
562. have made more progress. Not to say that we have not here in America. Many, many actions,
563. many kinds of activities throughout the United States has actually changed the dynamics of America
564. and how unions are involved in it.
565. And so I'm very, very happy and interested and intrigued
566. on pushing labor to do more in America
567. so that we can assist my brothers and sisters in Palestine.
568. Yeah.
569. Thank you so much, Nadal.
570. Ahla wa sahla fiqh.
571. And we can see the Nadal come through
572. and all the work that you do in the organizing
573. with Teamsters Local 1932.
574. So how did you get Teamsters Local 1932
575. to publicly call for ceasefire and to halt to U.S. military aid.
576. And as David mentioned, and you spoke to briefly,
577. U.S. unions, and in particular the Teamsters,
578. have often been quite reactionary in relation to anti-imperial
579. or anti-racist politics.
580. And here we're thinking about the Teamsters' role in fighting UFW,
581. for example, or unions in relation to the Vietnam War.
582. So how did you actually get folks to move to where you needed them to be?
583. It was actually a lot of work, to tell you the truth. At my individual local union, I started off actually by having an hour and a half PowerPoint introduction and education on Palestine and what Palestine was and what are the issues and the concerns,
584. so that it is not just a reaction to what happened on October 7th,
585. but more of a foundational education for my immediate local
586. so that they're aware of what was going on.
587. Once I established that and planted, if you would,
588. the seeds of the foundation of Palestine,
589. it was then to go through the normal processes of a local union
590. and how to get that through.
591. and at first it was deferred to the joint council which was trying to make it a grander stance
592. rather than a local stance it took some time but then got deferred to the national and then at the
593. national it got deferred again and there's a lot of politics why that gets happened why it happens
594. but at the end of the day it was brought back to us and I never let it go.
595. I made sure that these discussions continued.
596. I made sure why we needed to make a statement and to move the action.
597. And I very proud to say that the immediate board that formed Local 1932 was very very supportive There a very strong Hispanic caucus
598. There's a TMBC caucus.
599. And all those groups were able to get together and make the actual affirmative decision to say,
600. we need to not only put out a statement for ceasefire at that time, but also to stop the military aid.
601. And so this was months in the making. It was not something that happened in one day. But the work of myself and others to keep that in the forefront and the idea that, again, the injustices that are happening to employees was exactly the injustice that was happening in Gaza.
602. And so once people understood the foundation and saw what was going on, it was a good move forward.
603. And I'm happy to say that from the minute of that signing till today, I've gotten nothing but positive feedback and more and more unions and Teamsters themselves reaching out to me and saying, what more can we do?
604. And so we have to start somewhere. And we will start with that. And we will continue because we're sounding. That's why we're going to keep going.
605. That was a tremendously instructive as well as an interesting story because it really teaches us a lot about how to organize and how to move people, how to be patient and so forth.
606. And we've mentioned already that one union that was really supportive in the anti-apartheid movement back in the day and now in relation to international liberation struggles was the Longshoremen.
607. And they've also been boycotting Israeli shipments more recently, particularly in the Bay Area.
608. And then we know the electricians union and now, of course, Teamsters 1932 have shown an example for what, in fact, unions can and should be doing.
609. I'm wondering how you feel about how to get other unions to follow suit.
610. Can you move beyond Teamsters Local 1932 to reach out to other unions that have been more sluggish about this, like the UAW, for example, that has yet to come out strongly in demanding the ending of weapon sales?
611. And of course, they represent people who are constructing Caterpillar.
612. So it will be very, very important for them to do that.
613. How do you think you can translate from your experience in the Teamsters to other unions?
614. Yeah, it's a very good question and fortunate for all of us. We are involved in other areas like AFL-CIO meetings where I bring up these discussions.
615. And also my career as a respiratory therapist, I have a lot of unions that are within the medical, SEIU, CNA, these other entities that have actually reached out and said, what is it that we can do?
616. And so rather than just always being statements, it's that grassroots work of educating them and mobilizing them to go to their individual locals and find out areas.
617. An example that we gave at one of the most recent get togethers that was sponsored by the PYM organization was really, really interesting because I explained to them that a
618. many, many of these pensions that are amongst the unions have economic ties, and that economic ties
619. needs to be deferred. We're fortunate in America that we can decide where our money goes and what
620. we do with our money. And so why should we be supporting the Lockheeds and the others
621. economically. And so there's many pathways. And fortunately, people are receptive because they
622. see those injustices and they feel the economic pressure. I think right now in America, we can
623. see the economy is so, so bad that people are asking questions where it's being spent.
624. And that's the voices. That's where the unions need to step in and say, if I'm going to, for example, 1932, negotiate for 14,000 people, and they keep getting told I can't support the dollars to help out the local hospital that's a county hospital, well, there's millions on the table in war, and you need to pull that in.
625. so there's many ways there's many ways i do appreciate the fact that you know seiu
626. reached out to me and i went and spoke at the billionaire's tax um where i got a lot of you
627. know hits and people asking you to get involved because you can see when you cut medicare medical
628. and it impacts your society you ask where's that money and lo and behold it all goes and ties back
629. in to that Israeli war machine and the genocide that it's created in Gaza. So it's kind of easy
630. to tie things in. You just got to be a little active about it. Can I just ask you, have there
631. been any specific kinds of feedback or knowledge that people might take for granted within the
632. Palestine liberation movement and solidarity movement, but that has emerged out of your
633. grassroots efforts to educate people and other specific things that you've learned about how to
634. go about this that the rest of us could learn from from your experience i i i think technology
635. is a double-edged sword right and so for the majority of the activities um in-person contact
636. works the best just like labor uses in-person discussion to recruit and and get more members
637. on board, so is ours. But what benefits us is we have multiple, multiple organizations that are
638. non-profit, that are cultural activities, focusing on the history and the language and
639. just who we are as Palestinians. And that's really where we've grown. We've been able to tap into
640. a lot of the organizations in the United States, whether they are Hispanic, Jewish, it doesn't
641. really matter to us, because there's a common goal and a common thread that genocide is genocide.
642. And so I really think that the more we're out, the more, you know, we're in protests,
643. the more we in cultural events I very fortunate that I have three kids that are involved in that cultural activities of doing DIPCA and speaking out and doing this thing and we in the spotlight and they become in the spotlight and their friends trust them my
644. friends trust me so it's really in-person networking that is the best way to galvanize
645. and move things forward thank you for that and we'll get back to a question on thought and like
646. co-strugglers and solidarity orgs in just a second and those kind of coalitions that you've been
647. organically building in just a second. But before we do that, Nadal, we wanted to shift and ask
648. about the history of U.S. union support for the Israeli labor union. Why has that been an
649. influential element in U.S. labor history? And why does it now seem to be breaking down?
650. And so what are we learning? What is happening? What is unlearning? What is shifting and changing
651. in terms of that relationship as well? It's actually the growth of the membership
652. that are involved in these unions that have that diversification to understand, right?
653. When you had the formation of the beginning of unions,
654. this was all after World War I and II,
655. where it was more of an economic issue and concern
656. and not really informed on world politics.
657. But what you have nowadays is such a young, diverse group. And obviously this technology side, which is crazy and unique to me, but social media has created an environment, even within the unions, that this younger generation is not accepting of what the old groups of leaderships in unions have been doing in America.
658. And so you see, for me, an example, right? Just to be involved as a trustee and then eventually as the vice president, I have been able to influence, whereas before, no one was in there speaking about Palestine.
659. And so it's that diversification and that global movement that's inspired a lot of these individuals to step up in their board meetings and step up in there to change.
660. Is it a struggle? Is it going to take time? Of course.
661. but let's go back three four years ago and what was labor doing or acting like when it came to
662. the palestinian discussion it was not there and now you see a change you see this morphine
663. morphine morphosis of coming up and so you know i'm really happy i'm really happy yeah i think
664. that's that's a really important reminder that you know all the work that palestine solidarity
665. organized has been doing for the last 15 years is actually paying off and is building a kind of
666. understanding in the population at large for Palestine that didn't exist, you know, back in
667. the day when Palestine was what they call the third rail. And now, in fact, it's really the
668. main rail in a certain way. That's correct. You mentioned the Palestinian youth movement,
669. which, of course, has been doing a lot of that educational work. And explain to us how Palestine
670. and solidarity organize like yourself have done and can work with unions on campaigns.
671. And I I wondering whether you have more that you like to say about the links that specifically people working in solidarity movements need to know about how to approach unions
672. I remember back in the day in the anti-apartheid movement in the 80s, we had to reach out to the longshoremen, engage in discussion with them and so forth.
673. But with the new formation of unions that you just mentioned, that sort of diversification, internationalization, are there new ways?
674. And do you think that people can reach out to union membership, union leaders and so forth that would help those of us in the solidarity movement to be more savvy about how to do this coalitional work?
675. Yeah, I'm very fortunate to be involved in multiple of those organizations.
676. And when they hear and they see the idea of what unions are, right?
677. Because a lot of these people that we interact with have no idea of what a union is.
678. And so now all of a sudden, there's two needs, right?
679. There's an employee who needs a union, and then there's a Palestinian who needs the union.
680. And so now you're kind of taking the both sides and combining them together to make them understand that a benefit of being in a union or communicating with a union opens up a lot of areas.
681. So another example that I'm working on is to create an international day at the union.
682. And so when you create an international day culturally, right, you're opening up to music, to singing, to the idea of why do other countries even have unions and how that ties in internationally.
683. And there's a lot of growth there.
684. There's a lot of growth.
685. So, again, going and meeting with people.
686. You have to pull in the needs of what the other organizations are looking for.
687. You know, Code Pink, for example, for me, is completely out of the blue.
688. But you see it.
689. You see the activity when they're sitting inside of Congress halls, going after the Congress.
690. in the past it was perceived as you know these are areas you did not want to tap into the
691. Palestinian struggle but now lo and behold you're shoulder to shoulder with these kind of groups
692. and they're tying in with union groups and it's become even more powerful in advancing
693. the issues and concerns and that's why you see the change that's why you see economic changes
694. You see the media changes.
695. You see the city and local levels making changes in rules that are impacting it.
696. And I always tell my friends and family, our cause is a marathon.
697. It's not a sprint, right?
698. So we had a little bit of an extensive strip right now or a sprint, but I'm in it for the marathon.
699. and the marathon will get those groups together and last longer.
700. So it's a good question.
701. Thank you, Nidal.
702. And we know that that marathon will lead us undoubtedly to the liberation of our people And Nidal in the time that we have left we want to ask you a question As you are the director of respiratory care so you going to be talking about the liberation of our people And Nidal in the time that we have left we want to ask you a question As you are the director of respiratory care so you are a healthcare worker
703. And obviously we have seen and witnessed
704. over the last several years,
705. there has been an alarming degree of oppression
706. and professional neglect in the healthcare sector
707. and numerous attacks on healthcare workers
708. in Palestine and Lebanon.
709. And of course, hospital and research centers in Iran,
710. as well as censorship and ostracism of healthcare workers here
711. who have shown solidarity with Palestine.
712. So if you could reflect in the time that we have left,
713. what is the meaning of this all-out assault on healthcare
714. as a clear tactic of Israeli warfare
715. and a Zionist targeting of U.S. healthcare workers?
716. That's the goal.
717. The goal is to ethnically cleanse us.
718. And it comes from physically bombing people's livelihoods,
719. to destroying education to going after health care um to the point of where i wanted to go back
720. and help but i was not allowed into gaza because i am a palestinian american like just think of
721. that if you're a humanitarian and you're in the field of health care going to help others that
722. need it from a healthcare perspective and you get denied like that that is just the most injustice
723. that you can think of of the world and it's a targeted specific reason why Israel does it
724. they just do not want whether it is now in South Lebanon or in Iran or in Gaza they have a specific
725. goal and that goal is to eradicate the Palestinian people.
726. What they don't realize is that the Samud, the Nadal cannot be stopped and cannot be
727. prevented from being quiet and falling off.
728. We are not that.
729. We are the opposite.
730. And so the struggle will continue.
731. We're not done at all.
732. Nidal, thank you for your inspiration
733. and your example
734. so much, thank you for being on Radio
735. Intifada
736. no problem at all, thank you for hosting me
737. we wish you guys
738. good success in the future
739. and always know we will have
740. at some point a free Palestine
741. inshallah, thank you so much
742. thank you for being with us
743. thank you
744. you have been listening to Radio Intifada coming to you
745. from Los Angeles on KPFK
746. a production of Swana Region Radio, with a special preview of KPFK's Samud event taking
747. place on Saturday, May 9th under the banner Samud, a celebration of Palestinian culture,
748. resistance, and solidarity. In remembrance of the 78th year of the Palestinian Nakba,
749. KPFK is convening journalists, labor leaders, entertainment organizers, educators, filmmakers,
750. and faith communities for an afternoon and evening in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles.
751. to learn more and purchase tickets please visit us at kpfk.org backslash smooth i'm rana sharif
752. as a reminder all radio and safada shows are available to download for 60 days at kpfk.org
753. and can be found as podcasts on pod chaser podcast addict and podbean you can also stay in the know
754. on all things radio and safada by following us on at radio and safada on instagram thank you for
755. listening