147: Wartime Diaries - Amira Mohammed and Ibrahim Abu Ahmad

Israel Story

Religion & Spirituality, Palestine, Jewish, Stories, Judaism, Israel

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2024

⏱️ 24 minutes

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Summary

Arab-Israelis, or Palestinian Citizens of Israel, or Palestinian-Israelis - all these definitions are obviously complicated and personal and have hefty connotations - found themselves in a very difficult place following the attacks of October 7th. There was a lot of confusion, a lot of suspicion and mainly - a lot of fear. Any statement, any post, any tweet came under extreme scrutiny. Most people chose, therefore, to remain silent. They figured that the benefits of speaking up seemed to be dwarfed by the possible outcomes - being fired, arrested, accused of treason or support of terrorism.

But Ibrahim Abu Ahmad and Amira Mohammed are not most people. They’re both peace activists who live in between the two societies: They’re Muslim and proud Palestinians, on the one hand, but they are also Israeli citizens, speak Hebrew, have many Jewish friends and either live or work in predominantly Jewish cities in the center of Israel.

So when many people around them retreated into a self-imposed post-October 7th silence, they did the exact opposite: They started a podcast called “Unapologetic: The Third Narrative.” On the show they explore their complex identities, and talk to a wide range of guests - Jews, Arabs, Gazans, Israelis. The podcast has taken off, and Amira and Ibrahim have come to model a different kind of discourse, one that challenges the binary and dichotomous definitions we’re so accustomed to hearing.

The end song is Bahlawan ("Acrobat") by Mira Awad.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	If I think of the word Gaza alone, I will have a twitch in my heart, yes.
0:06.6	And I think part of that is also because we are part of that peoplehood as a whole.
0:12.2	And also, like me, for my own family knowing that we do have extended far family members who, in 48, you know, my family went to one place and they became Israeli citizens
0:23.5	for that decision, not knowing the meaning of that decisions, while others went to other places,
0:28.5	including Gaza. So I do know that, you know, I could have been born there if the reality
0:36.5	was different in 48. If my grandparents just went on the
0:39.7	other side, instead of marching north, they marched south? Who knows? And what about you, Amira?
0:46.8	Do you also feel that kind of close connection to people in Gaza? I think what unites us is a known Palestinian suffering.
0:56.7	It's like the more you suffer, the more Palestinian you are at this point.
1:00.8	And that's not just internally, it's also externally.
1:04.3	Like people, even in the West that are protesting for Palestinians, aren't used to seeing
1:08.9	Palestinians, like, thriving and happy. They're used to the
1:12.6	picture of Palestinians, unfortunately, under the rubble and dead children. And that's not what a
1:18.8	Palestinian is. We can laugh. We can joke. We can dance. We can party. We love celebrating. We love
1:24.8	life and we love joy. And sometimes people like even tell us that we're not Palestinian enough because we don't suffer enough that we're not in Gaza. Why do we have the right to talk?
1:36.2	For the Jewish people, the term becoming from bin Israel to the Jewish people was not when the state of Israel was established. It was in the
1:49.1	desert marching. Once you create the aspiration for a statehood, for an independent living,
1:55.8	that's when you're already a peoplehood. And no one can take that away from you. Sometimes in Israel, there is an attempt to
2:02.9	equivalent other peoplehoods to Jewish peoplehood without recognizing that Jewish
2:10.7	peoplehood is a very special peoplehood, very different than other peoplehoods out there. And if we're
2:17.3	going to put all the peoplehoods in the
2:19.0	world under Jewish criteria, there might be three, four peoplehoods in the entire universe.
	...

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