Welcome to Home of the Brave. I'm Scott Carrier. The problem is we can't talk about it. The problem is we can't talk about it. The problem. We're not even sure which words can be used and which cannot be used.

Palestine, for instance. Is there a country called Palestine? Even asking the question prompts suspicion because the answer is no not anymore

there are still Palestinian people but now they're called Arabs. We can't talk about it, or rather I feel like I can't talk about it,

the Israeli occupation of Palestine without fear of being labeled an attack as someone who hates and fears the Jewish people,

I'm afraid of being called an anti-Semite.

So I remain silent because I'm a coward but this is the home of the brave after all

and in order to live up to that standard I decided I was going to talk about it

because I don't believe I am an anti-semite and because the only

thing to fear here is fear itself. The idea I came up with was to talk about it by going there and producing a podcast from Palestine.

I could carry everything I needed in my backpack, and I didn't have a boss to tell me no. I should explain that I'd been to Israel and Palestine, the West Bank, twice before.

Once in 2007 and again in 2014 and both times I had minor nervous breakdowns where I fell

nearly completely apart because it was so intense, such enormous tension in such a small

place and I knew nobody at least nobody I worked for was going to print or play my story because what I saw was a nightmare.

Palestine isn't a country, it's a prison, a prison with the structure of a pomegranate.

The Palestinian towns and cities are the seeds,

and they're surrounded tightly enclosed by walls, razor wire, forbidden highways, settlements

and security checkpoints.

Inside their seed pods, Palestinians have no right of free speech or assembly.

They can be arrested without charge and held indefinitely. They can be tortured. They can be

assassinated. Palestine looked to me like a prison and I could feel almost smell

hatred, smoldering, and fear, as if this place, Jerusalem, was the

source of all wars throughout history, and I saw my delusion monstrous tentacles of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism rising up from the

...