You know what? This is a perspective that I just don't think is being platformed properly. And that is a

Jewish, Iranian, American who opposes the war. There's been a general issue, I think, with

voices in the diaspora who opposed the war being marginalized, even though the polling shows in the

United States that the overwhelming majority actually opposed the war. You wouldn't necessarily

think that based on a lot of the media coverage. So I'm really delighted to speak to brilliant

guest today. It's a Mabarak who is, as I've said, he's not defined by that. Obviously, he's

an activist in his own right,'s he's in fact he works for

the for nyak which is the national uh Iranian American Council have I got that right

yep yeah yes got that right um and you know people will know for example I interviewed

for to Parsi um frequently um on In fact, I'm interviewing him this week as well. So the big NIAC week, Nyak week. He's an organizing manager and he's someone involved in the peace movement in the United States. Well, it's great to speak to, by the way. Thank you, Ong. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Do you want to just tell me, actually, a bit about if you, you know,

about your own history, I guess, your family and how you, I guess how you got to the point you've got to, how you, how you developed your politics, you know, and how it was informed by or by your heritage maybe.

Thank you, Ron.

Yeah.

Well, I grew up extremely culturally Jewish and supportive of the state of Israel.

I grew up in South Florida from a family of Iranian Jews that left Iran in the 70s before the revolution and went to Israel and

the United States.

And that informed my perspective really for, I'd say, up until after college, I had never

met a Palestinian.

I had never met anyone from the Middle East who had been on the receiving end of

violence, aggression bombs funded by America and led by Israel. I had only ever heard the

stories of violence and trauma from other Jews. And there's no shortage of them.

You know, absolutely.

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