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Shield podcast with founder Ernie Colling.
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So if you want to hear more about 511 and their origin story, go to episode 338 of Behind
the Shield podcast with their CEO, Francisco Morales.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome back
onto the show, Chicago ER physician and humanitarian, Dr. Thea Ahmad.
Now if you didn't hear the first conversation on episode 892, I strongly advise you listen
to that one first.
It was recorded on February 20th, a few short weeks after he had returned from delivering
humanitarian aid in Gaza.
Now Thea has become a trusted and centralist voice when it comes to what's happening and
in the first conversation he contrasted watching Christians and Jews and Muslims praying side
by side outside of Gaza, but then the antithesis of that as he witnessed the horrors within.
So in the second conversation we discuss a host of new topics.
From hearing the dispatch tapes from the attempted rescue of 6 year old Hind, the divisive nature
of American politics that's leading to these polarized views on Gaza, the bombings, poverty
and starvation that the Palestinian people are continuing to endure, how this conflict
will extend to other Middle Eastern countries if a ceasefire is not met and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single 5 star rating truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of almost 950 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I welcome back onto the show Dr. Thea Ahmad.
Enjoy.
Well Thea, I want to say firstly thank you so much.
We did an incredible conversation on episode 892 and anyone who hasn't heard that needs
to go and listen to that first.
And that was in February, mid February when we did that.
So you just come back from Gaza, talked about your own upbringing and working in the ERs
in Chicago and the violence you saw then.
The beautiful brother and sisterhood you witnessed in the West Bank between the Christians and
the Jews and the Muslims praying side by side there.
And then obviously we got to hear about what you witnessed as a humanitarian physician
in Gaza at that point.
So long intro but I want to welcome you back to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you for having me.
It's always great to talk to you James.
So I want to start with Hinn's dispatch tapes.
I just shared that and to me it was just horrendous as a paramedic, as a firefighter, you know,
someone who has signed on a dotted line to help other people.
And it's the same with, you know, members of the Israeli rescue services that were killed
doing their positions.
There are professions on the other side as well.
But Hinn's story was just so tragic and then hearing it actually play out through the dispatch
tapes was horrendous.
So we talked about that story before, you know, what is kind of surface and what do
you want to add to paint in that picture?
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of information that's come out.
And you know, what's really tragic is there's three hours of dispatch tape with Hinn who
was trying to flee Gaza City, which is in the north of Gaza.
And if you recall from our last conversation, everybody's kind of being pushed to the south
of Gaza.
And we'll talk a little bit about how that's sort of been flipped on its head in recent
weeks and months.
But everybody's being told, go to the south, it's safe in the south.
And so people like Hinn's family and her uncle's family decided to flee south.
So we know that there were two cars heading towards the south, Hinn and her cousin Leyanne,
who is a 15 year old girl.
Hinn is six years old, and Leyanne's mother and father and other siblings hop in one car.
And then Hinn's parents and her siblings hop in another car.
Well, in their pursuit of heading to the south towards safety, they come under fire.
And we know that the cars got separated.
And that is really when the dispatch call first starts to take place, is you have Leyanne,
who is Hinn's 15 year old cousin calling and saying, there is a tank less than 100 meters
away from us.
And then you hear on the phone call that was released by the Palestinian Red Crescent,
you hear the tank firing and you hear Leyanne shrieking.
And then the very next call, because they get disconnected, you hear Hinn's voice, who
is this six year old girl now talking to the dispatcher.
And the first thing that she says is she tells the dispatcher that Leyanne is dead and that
she's next to her.
And you're talking about this girl who's six, has no idea what's going on.
But at the time when all of this came out and that's all we had known, we were looking
for her.
I mean, at that time, her mom was in the south talking to different media saying, I just
want to be reunited with my daughter.
I want to be able to reach her.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said, we dispatched the crew to head out there and then we lost
contact with the crew.
And there's all of this blurriness and we don't know what's going on.
And we're fearing the worst has occurred.
Meanwhile, the Israelis are saying, we've got no military activity in the area there.
And whatever's going on has nothing to do with us.
You fast forward now several months later and we find that the two heroic first responders,
Yousef and Ahmed, were dispatched on the way to try to rescue Hind and they had gotten
the green light from the Israeli military.
They were told, here's the route you have to take and you can go and get Hind from the
area that you are saying that the car is at.
And on the way there, they just get hit by an airstrike or a tank shell or a drone strike.
We don't know, but both of them died in the process of trying to save Hind.
Two young paramedics.
And then we also find later on that Hind, that her body has already started to decompose
a week later when they finally reached the car and they see obviously everybody in the
car is dead.
But this girl who spent three hours on the phone with dispatchers, we see what was the
result of what took place.
And there's a documentary that was just released and I know you shared a clip from it on social
media and there's one part of it that absolutely killed me.
And I want to share it because I think it's important to really honor people like Hind
and just kind of push back on all of the dehumanizing narrative that tries to take place.
But Hind is on the phone and the dispatcher is clearly like, it was like a mental health
trained person who knows what they're doing.
And they were like, you know, I noticed you're not talking as much Hind, what's going on?
Like, talk to me a little more.
And Hind says that she doesn't want to talk because blood keeps coming out of her mouth
and she doesn't want to ruin her clothes because she doesn't want her mom to have to have to
clean her clothes.
So a really devastating situation, horrifying.
The essence of what this six year old thinking about that, she thinks she's going to make
it, she's going to survive.
She doesn't want her mom to get mad that her clothes are dirty, not knowing that she's
going to die there.
And that's where her final moments will be.
And you know, what's tough is that, you know, that story made headlines and I'm glad this
documentary came out about her.
But then you also think about, you know, how many other kids have sort of suffered similar
fates in Gaza.
And we know that the numbers is, you know, staggering.
But I also see lots of interviews of Hind's mom now and every single time she can't finish
the interview.
You know, it's just so devastating.
She's forced to relive this trauma over and over again.
And we all know, I mean, the sort of mental toll that takes to have to really talk about
this over and over again.
But I know why she's doing it.
You know, I know that she wants to make sure that this doesn't happen to anybody else,
that there's some sort of solution to what's going on, that nobody else has to deal with
this.
And it brings me to the next thing that I really wanted to share is that, you know,
May 7th, the border between Egypt and Palestine, Egypt and Gaza was stormed by the Israeli
military and shut down.
And what that means is that that was the main artery to get supplies in, to bring in emergency
medical teams through the WHO, but also to bring people out.
You know, if you were, that was your only way to escape the war.
If you're Palestinian in Gaza, you go through that and get into Egypt.
And so that shut down.
And one of the main effects of this, in addition to making the humanitarian crisis devastating,
I mean, you're talking about trucks in Egypt, the food, that after this border gets stormed
and shut down, the food is rotting on the other side of Gaza, where there's famine-like
conditions and malnutrition and starvation.
But the other thing is medical evacuations, people who can't get out, it suddenly stopped.
That was since May 7th.
And I'm not just talking about kids injured in the war.
This is the largest cohort of child amputees that we've seen since World War II.
Yeah, those kids need to get out and they need orthopedic care.
Not talking about the burn victims as well.
Of course, they need to be able to get out and get the burn care that they need before
they get infected and die.
But also there are kids who get cancer.
There are elderly people who need, you know, a cabbage.
They need to have like bypass surgery.
There are people who have tumors that they want to have removed.
All of these people, their care stops.
Even before October 7th and the war in Gaza, there was a mechanism in place to get these
people out.
It wasn't great.
It was not.
I've been to Gaza multiple times, but it existed.
Now you totally shut that down.
Since May 7th, there's only been one day and it was all kids that they allowed a dozen
or two dozen worth of pediatric cancer patients out one day.
I mean, we both know that that's, you know, that that's not doing anything and that there
are going to be a ton of people who are waiting to get out of Gaza to get medical care that
are going to die waiting.
People like Hind who are waiting for somebody to come and help them and get them to where
they need to go and get the treatment that they need that are just going to die waiting.
So, you know, that Hind situation that took place, I really hope that that's a story that
we can continue to share and highlight because it really does capture so many different things
that went wrong and so many ways that, you know, that I think there's no better way for
me to combat the dehumanization of Palestinians than just by playing Hind and Leanne's voice
and the way you did when you shared it.
I mean, you don't have to say anything after that.
We can argue with a girl saying, I'm scared, please come.
And the horror, the fear that you have when you hear a kid yelling and then you hear gunfire
or tank shelling in the background.
I mean, there's, you know, that's overwhelming for anybody.
You don't have to be a parent.
You don't have to be a vet.
You don't have to be a doctor.
You don't have to be anything.
You can empathize with that on a deep level.
And you could say that, you know, this kid should not have died alone in a car surrounded
by her dead relatives waiting for an ambulance to be able to get her.
And those people who are just trying to do their job, recover a six year old girl to
be killed like that.
I mean, we don't even, you know, who's going to remember those guys, those two heroes that
hopped in an ambulance and went to the most dangerous area they could in a super dangerous
part of the world and got in the Gaza Strip where there's F-16s and tanks everywhere.
And that was a no man's land.
And they hopped in there and they went to go try to rescue this girl and they died in
that process.
So you know, that story is so tragic and I mean, it absolutely kills me.
But you know, I hope that there's, I hope that us collect, the collective humanity can
at least recognize that story, honor their memories and be able to hope for a better
future.
You know, it's really tough.
So obviously I shared our episode, which I think, I don't really think got any real negative
even once I put it out there, I don't read comments after the first, you know, couple
of hours, but I know other things that I've shared and again, simply about the humanitarian
crisis talking about the men, women and children, not the people.
And I know there's an even deeper backstory to Hamas and all that stuff, but not even
that, not the combatants, the innocence that are being caught up in this.
And the knee jerk response for a lot of people is like, well, if they were Hamas and I'm
like, hint the six year old girl that was sitting in this blown up car bleeding to death,
you have no empathy for her because you think she was Hamas.
Like I don't understand where this disconnect is.
You can absolutely empathize with the people that were killed from the Israeli side on,
you know, on the October attacks.
That doesn't mean that you are now anti, you know, Palestinian.
And then the converse happens as well.
You can empathize with the tragedies that are happening in Gaza to the Palestinian people.
And it doesn't mean that you're all in on the Hamas, you know, message or journey, if
you like.
So what are you seeing as far as this just insane two dimensional knee jerk all into
a political side rhetoric that is so disconnected from the actual humanity that I've said on
the show many times is actually taught by the holy books that people claim to be so
invested in?
Absolutely.
I mean, I think that's well said.
I think unfortunately those voices that try to simplify it in a way where it becomes polarizing
are the ones that are dominating the conversation.
I tell you, since I've come back, I've spent my time mostly trying to advocate for like
medical evacuations, a humanitarian ceasefire, food entry.
And I'm dealing with lawmakers.
I'm dealing with anybody really that we can help organize and work on this.
And every single barrier that we have is because of people who try to change the conversation
into that, try to change it into, well, you know, this is the problem is we can't talk
about this because this group needs to be out of the picture.
Hamas needs to be eliminated.
The Israelis need to do this.
And you're like, you know, while you're having this conversation, I know that there's a nine
month old who has liver failure that needs a transplant right now.
And by the time you finish that sentence, I know the toxins have already risen in her
blood.
It sucks that these are the people who sort of are dominating this conversation.
It sucks that these are the people also that when I'm going to visit different congressmen
and senators or national security council or the state department, that these people
are there.
You know, there was, I had a conversation recently where somebody, you know, the bottom
line is that border crossing shuts down.
And now I'm very concerned about food getting in.
And the person tells me, he goes, you know, the Israelis are claiming that they're asking
there, they want the UN and the World Health Organization to pick up all of these supplies,
but they won't do it.
And in my head, I'm like, oh, okay, that's, that's bizarre.
And they're like, you talk to the UN and the World Health Organization, they're like, it's
not safe.
We need it to be safer.
We need there the bombs to stop dropping.
It's such a drop in the bucket, the stuff that's entering that a lot of these trucks get looted.
I said, that's the story that's right there.
It's there's not enough aid entering.
Don't talk to me that don't tell me don't have the Israeli side trying to blame the
UN and then the UN trying to blame, you know, whatever Palestinian group it is.
The bottom line is there's not enough food entering to get this hungry population.
If you are able to consistently get them food, none of this will be a problem.
If you're able to reliably deliver flour to families, you're not going to have any issues.
And then, you know, you start to you start to realize, oh, this conversation is getting
derailed.
I'm forgetting about the 14,000 people that are on a medical evacuation list.
I'm forgetting about the girl I mentioned, her name is Sadie, the one with the liver
cancer, the liver failure that she needs a transplant.
I'm sitting here trying to remind people to focus on the human beings that are suffering
that are starving, that are hungry.
And anybody that tries to say, well, you know what the problem is?
It's Hamas.
That's the problem.
They've got to be removed as power.
Me and you both know that, you know, you somebody comes into an emergency department, somebody
you go in the field, you're trying to bring somebody to an area.
You're not going to sit there and start talking about the administrative failures of being
able to reach that person and transport them there.
The highest priority is we've got to get the person the treatment and the care that they
need.
We've got to stabilize.
We've got to make sure the person stops bleeding.
We've got to make sure that the ABCs are taken care of.
And right now you have people in power in high places that don't understand that notion
at all, that think that just because they want to make some sort of political point
and advance some sort of political agenda that we can pause people suffering, we can
pause sickness, we can pause trauma.
But it doesn't work like that.
And for me, I've come to the conclusion after speaking to so many people and spending so
much time on this.
We need new personnel, man.
We need new personnel in D.C.
We need them all over.
We need people who can truly live by certain ethics, who can prioritize human life, the
sacred aspect of human beings, who can understand that kids, regardless of where they're born
and how they look, deserve a chance at the future.
And that's just not the case right now.
It's insane to me how bureaucratic and bogged down things get.
I can tell you this now for sure because I feel like I'm an expert on it when it comes
to advocacy efforts to help people.
It's insane.
It's a lack of political will.
And the political will needs to be based in true humanitarian values.
And it's not there.
The values and the ethics are not there.
It's such a hypocritical world that we live in.
And I think Gaza exposed that.
But I'm sure that there will be so many more devastating situations that will also expose
that again and again and again.
And so that's what I try to do.
I mean, I remember one senator point blank told me when I said, you know, we really need
a ceasefire.
She goes, well, you know, ceasefire is a different word to you than it is to me.
For me, ceasefire is like a military political term.
I know you mean ceasefire.
I'm like, I don't care what you call it.
Call it whatever you want.
Call it a pause, a truce, whatever it is.
I'm just telling you, stop the bombs from dropping so that trucks of food and water
and medicine and supplies can get in and people can come out.
I mean, you know, like I don't that's how that's how derailed the conversation can get.
You want to argue semantics with me.
I'm you know, I work in the emergency department.
I don't care about semantics, right?
Like if a blood pressure is low, I want to see it stabilize or come back up or improve,
say whatever words you want.
You know, so I that to me has really been very, very frustrating.
And you know, unfortunately, the things have gotten so exponentially bad that, you know,
it's hard.
You know, you get you get to a really dark place sometimes, you know, and as somebody
who was in a hospital in Gaza that was ultimately raided, destroyed to hear about this happening
to multiple, multiple hospitals and then to come back to what I just told you about the
border is shut down.
There's no way for people to get out.
Now not enough aid is getting in.
It's this 360 just like assault on life.
You know, like it's really feels like it's so hard to be alive in Gaza from any direction
you look at it.
When you talked about the just the environment in general, that kind of selfishness versus
altruism element.
When I was young, I talked about this quite a lot.
The TV in England, there was a show called Blue Peter, and it was like a kids show and
they'd feature, you know, someone beyond there doing karate and breaking blocks and, you
know, they'd show stories from around the world.
But like when I was young, it was when we had the crisis in Ethiopia and they would
rally all these children to do jumble sales and sell sandwiches and, you know, do whatever
you could to raise money and collectively, you know, the UK when there was kind of this
rah rah movement, we would collect money and you think about live aid and you think about
comic relief.
There are some people suffering in another part of the world and we are going to help
and a lot of those came from tribal disputes and genocide.
Look at Rwanda, for example, but people were still helping.
But then you look at the debate and you look at the kind of human being and I've been very
open about my feelings towards both sides.
The kind of human being that has put at the pinnacle of this country.
I asked you when's the last time you heard about kindness and compassion and community
and bringing the country together.
So this anti Gaza rhetoric is coming from the same mouth as this toxic cancerous kind
of shitty human being that we keep putting in office at the moment.
Absolutely.
I mean, you know, from the debate, one of the moments I think for at least my community
that was really taken aback and we kind of something we suspected, but it's just out
in plain sight is, you know, Trump referred to Biden as a Palestinian and he mentioned
and he referred to him as in a derogatory way.
Like look at this.
He's basically a Palestinian.
And then, you know, you have Biden, it pans to Biden and he's like shaking his head like
that's ridiculous that, you know, that somebody would call him such a thing.
And you're like, what's going on here?
What does that even mean?
The fact, you know, you're going to use Palestinian as some sort of derogatory term now.
Like it's like this is it's so horrible to be Palestinian.
And again, it goes back to this, the lack of recognizing that, you know, other people
are as human as you are.
And I think, I mean, to me, you're absolutely spot on when it comes to, you know, it's this
is the highest office in the land.
It's supposed to be the best of us.
Right.
Like that's who we should be seeing on stage, the best of us.
And that's just not the case.
It's really not the case at all.
It's filled with, you know, ego.
And it's just, you know, the way that things are spewed and, you know, given to the American
public, one thing that tells it, you know, the one thing that really is, you know, definitely
was for me, especially coming away from the debate and this whole election cycle, there
isn't a lot of respect for the intellect, for the American public, the way things are
are just thrown at them.
And, you know, it's like, oh, they'll like if I'm look strong and I insult this other
person or I'll lie about this thing and I will, you know, it'll make me look good or
I'll pretend like it's doomsday if you go one way or the other.
And it's like, you know, it's just this it's just like the fact that the American public
is viewed in this very dismissive way.
Like, oh, you can just kind of sway them any way you want.
And I think and I hope that I think people are turned off by that.
I think people are coming away recognizing like, you know, this should be we should be
better than this.
We should be better than this nonsense.
This this election that's taking place is, you know, it really it's like almost holding
up a mirror to the worst parts of our society.
Like this is the worst of us of, you know, this is kind of how things look.
And I think people are I think people recoil at that.
I think when it comes to when it comes to Gaza and Palestine, too, one thing I've noticed
is there's a tremendous amount of everyday people who have no connection whatsoever,
who are able to recognize how horrible the situation has gotten, how sad it is.
And I'll share this story with you.
There is a five year old girl who was in Egypt when I had tried to go back to Gaza in May.
But again, the border was stormed by the Israeli military shutdown.
So we were turned away.
We weren't able to enter Gaza.
And so on my way figuring out I'm going to come back to the states, there's this girl.
She's got this really bad fracture, probably needs an amputation who was accepted to come
to the United States.
She was going to go to a hospital, be treated there.
All costs were going to be covered.
And she really she just needed a escort with her, like a medical escort.
So I was like, you know, my plans just got my plans just got totally thrown out the window.
So I figured that I would basically escort her back.
So I get to meet this family.
It's a five year old named Maya and as well as her mom and her sister.
And they're going to come to the United States.
So you know, we hop on a plane, we come back and we first land in Newark before we kind
of go to our final destination.
And the TSA worker realized, oh, they didn't speak English.
I just kind of stepped in and she saw that this girl had this external fixator on her
leg that was keeping her leg in place, was in a wheelchair.
And so I was just saying, oh, yeah, OK, you know, I was telling them she's asking you
to remove this stuff in Arabic.
And she goes, where are they from?
And I said, they're Palestinian.
They're from Gaza.
And she's like, oh, wow, they're coming here to get to get treatment and care.
I said, yeah, the hospital here is going to take care of them, is going to try to kind
of give this treatment.
She's like, as we should.
That's exactly what we should be doing.
Tell them I'm praying for them.
Tell them I'm hoping that everything goes well for them.
And then she's like smiling at them.
A TSA agent in Newark, literally no connection whatsoever, just kind of being able to look
at a child for what it was.
And I'm like, wow, this is this is crazy.
I mean, even the place that I work at, people kind of walking around and randomly coming
up to me.
I would never expect to be paying attention just seeing like, you know, we know what's
going on.
We know that you've been there and stuff.
There's anything we can do to support you.
We're just we're there.
So I do feel like with all of this nonsense when it comes to government and bureaucracies
and corporations, there's the people are like kind of recognizing, hey, I'm seeing what's
in front of me and I don't like it.
I don't like what's happening to other people.
And I hope that it can stop.
And I believe there's real power in that.
I really do.
I mean, I just think that there's, you know, I hope that that, you know, that that power
can be translated into something that changes on the ground soon.
But that's something that that's like one of the main things that I come away from that
at least gives me some comfort and hope.
It's just being able to interact with other human beings who empathize, man.
And they feel they feel like something is like something terrible is going on and they
want to say something about it.
And that's that's that's a silver lining for sure from all of this chaos.
Well, I think this is what's so angering is there's this projection and you watch that
debate and we literally are living in idiocracy if you if you allow yourself to be drawn into
the screens.
But I'm disgusted with the fact that they project this is who America is.
And I have people from overseas all the time like, oh, my God, you know, you're going to
have civil war.
Then I might know you go outside your door of my community right now.
And I've got people from Asia and Africa and all over the country.
I'm assuming probably, you know, many different sexual orientations, certainly many different
religions.
And you know what happens?
They ride their bikes.
Our kids play together.
We say hi when we walk our dogs because we're fucking normal people.
But you get this projection of all America's divided in this and that.
And it's like, no, the two extremes are divided, the 10 percent on each side.
But the 80 percent of us in the middle, yeah, it might be pulled a little bit, but they're
the normal people.
And I've heard that America is one of the most generous countries when it actually comes
to donating and trying to help other people.
But this demonization, you know, which I mean, let's be honest, absolutely mirrors what the
Nazis did with the Jews back in the early 30s, you know, kind of giving them names and
saying they're subhuman and, you know, taking away literature and all these kind of things.
And now, you know, you're literally creating an enemy.
And so how fucking disgusting that our greatest generation, as we called it, fought for people
who were suffering.
And yet now, two generations over, we're allowing people to tell us to turn our backs on the
very same type of suffering that our forefathers fought for in the 40s.
Yeah, I mean, it's it really is bizarre.
And you know, it's funny because I mentioned this recently when I was talking to somebody
about people in Gaza.
They have a word for like, you know, the whole Western world is supposed to be, you know,
you know, obviously advancing democratic values.
There's human rights.
This is where we got humanitarian law, where we got the Geneva Conventions.
It came from the Western world and Western states.
And you know, I think for a long time, especially in the Middle East, that was something that
people looked at and was like, we want to we want to have those kinds of institutions
as well as we kind of in this post World War Two era, we want to, you know, you're talking
about an area that would look at that and say, wow, you know, that's that really is
commendable.
And now they refer to the Western world as just the hypocritical world.
I mean, literally, that's what they say.
They're like, they these laws don't apply to everybody.
This idea of the sanctity of human life are not applicable to all.
I remember just any time I'm speaking to different health care workers, they're perplexed at
they they're always asking me, they said, how do you guys, you know, when you hear about
what's happening here in America, for example, how do you guys understand it?
You know, they they they they're not sure they they think is there what is the cognitive
dissonance at play here where you're like, you can hear this and then just kind of justify
it somehow.
And I have to tell them I have to remind them that actually what happens is if you look
at corporate media, they're not really sharing these stories.
You're not going to hear Hind is not on any it's not on CNN.
It's not going to be on MSNBC.
It's not going to be on Fox News.
They're not going to talk about the six year old.
They're not going to show her picture how beautiful she was.
They're not going to show any of that.
I can show her crying mother.
You know, it's it's always just like, hey, fighter jet, drop the bomb.
You know, 10 people killed.
Well, you know, at some point when we've gotten to the point where we're at, where we're exceeding
40,000 people, if you include those who are trapped beneath the rubble, that number is
not it's not tangible to understand.
I can't conceptualize what 40,000 killed people are.
But I can absolutely tell you, a six year old, I can feel that pain.
I can feel what it means when she's on the phone terrified.
And I can I can I can relate to that in a way that makes me want to do something.
I want to do something about that.
I want to change it.
So for them, they you know, they they the people in Gaza have always anytime I visited
even before, they're always curious, what do people think of us?
Like what do they imagine we look like?
I remember doctors and nurses would be like, do you think that we're ever going to ask
who somebody is if they come in here and they need to be resuscitated if they come into
the emergency department and they're sick?
Do you think we're going to sit there and be like, hey, what are what religion are you
or where you come from?
Like you're going to do your job.
You're going to do your job.
I mean, it only makes sense.
Like, why would you withhold that from another human being?
And so to hear on the flip side here in a in kind of like a way of saying like, no,
you know, some people always some people I've heard say, you know, in Gaza, they actually
voted for this government back in 2006.
And I'm like, what?
We have an election every four years for president.
We have an election for Congress every two years.
We have senators every six years.
You know, how could you talk about what happened in 2006 if you know that half of the population
is children?
So half of the people weren't even born at that point in 2006.
And then how many of them couldn't have even voted?
You're going to just collectively punish everybody because of a way that they voted, you know,
almost 20 years ago.
I mean, let's be real.
Just think about it.
Think about would you hold yourself to that standard?
You know, who do I guarantee if you ask somebody, are you happy with your vote from 2020?
What they would be like, I regret ever doing that.
They wouldn't they would be mortified if I said, I'm going to I'm going to punish you
for the way you voted in 2020 or in 2016.
I'm going to make sure you pay for that.
You're like, hey, I didn't know that this was going to happen.
You know, like I'm so it's just it's tough.
You know, you just you got to just look at them in a way where you're like, these are
people like me, man.
They're getting up every day.
They're going to work.
Some of them hate their jobs.
Some of them have kids that they're worried about how they're going to pay for school.
Some of them want to leave and travel the world.
And if you're not doing that, then you're you know, for me, it's like that's the first
step is just look at them like you would look at yourself or at your close friends or the
people around you.
Just look through that lens and think really hard about what kind of blinders do I got
on here?
What kind of blinders?
You know, you said something before like I love that you said this.
We were talking about like the word debate and just having this idea of a debate.
If we just get away from that for one second and stop trying to say, I'm going to prove
my point is right at any expense.
I want to make sure that I'm vindicated in the end.
If you get away from that sort of framework and just start looking at the world as, hey,
we're all trying to navigate through it.
We're all trying to maybe learn something or or not, whatever it is.
But we're all just trying to make it to a certain point.
I think that's the way to go about it as opposed to saying I'm on this side and my side is
right and I'll do anything and I'll say anything to make that the reality.
I think that's kind of that's where a lot of this stuff arises from.
It's just like, you know, this identity politics where it's like me and mine and that's it.
Forget everybody else.
That's supposed to be an interesting the last eight years with the show, because I mean,
as you can imagine, a thousand people I've had, you know, diversity and religion and,
you know, again, sexual orientation and gender and race and you name it, all the things.
And there's people that lean very far one way.
People leave very far the opposite.
But what I realize is you just start in the middle.
You know, do you have kids?
Do you want them to be educated?
You want them to be safe?
Do you want them to be fed?
All right, let's start there.
And then you start kind of pushing out.
What I've seen, though, recently and again, this spans both sides of the aisle because
it's the same shitty factory churning out these people.
It's just, oh, this year we're going to give you a blue tie for years.
All right, you get a red tie now.
But is, you know, it's it's pointing everyone going, but you're different, you know, and
ignoring the 80 percent, 90 percent of commonality that binds us together.
And I think what's really interesting about this conversation to the a lot of people listening
is they served and they understand that not only are we going to treat anyone hands down,
but also with the person who's dying at that point doesn't care who we are and what color
we are and who we pray to and who we sleep with.
You know, and if they do, they can already chance of survival.
But but, you know, the point being, the people listening just care about people.
And so if we can see through this deliberate attempt to pigeonhole and divide because that
weakens the nation and that's clearly what they want to happen.
So the moment we have this awakening firstly within our own nation, but then to realize
that we were not Team America, World Police, we're Team America, World Altruists in a way.
If we saw our own shit, imagine the great things that we could do around the world.
And as someone said to me, we are the poster child for democracy.
And if we're not putting work in in our own country, people on the outside looking in
going, wait, your children are being murdered in schools and you've got 70 percent of the
population is overweight or obese and you're consuming two thirds of sorry, three quarters
of the world's opioids and 20 percent of the world's prison population.
You know, so we've got to look in the mirror and realize how fucked up we are, fix our
own stuff and question this extremism that has actually dragged our own country into
the ground as well, because Americans are beautiful people.
But we have on our own country robbed from us right beneath our nose.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, that's you reminded me actually of of a there's a combat medic who went to Gaza
in April.
Dr. Adam Hamawi.
So this guy served in the Gulf War.
He actually and this is why his voice is so powerful.
So there was Senator Tammy Duckworth got injured in the Gulf War.
She's the senator from Illinois.
And her helicopter got hit her and went down and she ended up actually losing both of her
legs as a result of this.
And he was the one who took care of her.
And he was saying and he was he went to Gaza.
And one of the things one of the he did an interview while he was in Gaza.
And he said, you know, if I was you know, if me and the senator were in this situation
in Iraq during the Gulf War, he goes, she would not have survived that injury if she
was in Gaza.
She would not have survived that injury.
Then the border gets stormed when I'm trying to go in.
So I can't get in.
But Adam can't get out.
Dr. Adam stuck inside of Gaza because the border has now shut down.
And they're starting to evacuate some teams through like some special ways.
You know, the U.S. is involved, the WHO.
And he refuses to leave because he said there's other people here and they're not being told
that they can evacuate.
They don't have safe passage.
I'm not going to leave until I can guarantee that they can safely get out.
So he does he's no no man left behind, really kind of takes his stance.
And then he finally kind of gets out.
And he's been on a rampage since then, really just kind of trying to communicate like, hey,
you know, here's here's kind of what happened to me.
And his voice is so powerful because he doesn't he's not going to sit there and say, like,
oh, you know, here's the agenda that I'm pushing.
He's a guy that said I served my country and I really enjoy the opportunity to be able
to help people out in a desperate situation.
I went to Gaza and this is what I saw.
And people have to listen to that.
A guy who served in the Gulf War, a guy that's not sitting there telling you I'm red, I'm
blue, a guy is not running for office.
He's not starting his own organization, not trying to get donations.
He's literally just up there saying, hey, take care for what it's worth.
Like this is my experience.
And what I love about the fact that he's willing to use his voice to speak up is, you know,
no one's going to try to sit there and discredit this guy.
This vet, this guy who's seen so much, also somebody who a politician can also dismiss
and say, like, oh, forget him.
He's a whack job.
No, he saved one of your colleagues life.
You know, he's he stepped up and he got you know, he was he was on it.
So you know, that's I think the more you have those those kinds of voices out there that
are able to see the issues for what they are like, you know, hey, I'm a patriot.
I love America.
But here are the problems.
Here's what's threatening the country that I love, as opposed to, you know, this weird
reality now where it's like, it's perfect.
Shut the hell up.
It's great.
Everything about it is awesome.
And I'm going to make sure that it's awesome.
Or now it's really bad.
But if you elect me and my folks, it's going to be great.
Or hey, don't don't bring that guy.
He's going to destroy this country.
No, I mean, that's the truth is we've got these problems, just like you said.
I mean, we've got a horrifying opioid pandemic that we see firsthand up and close.
That's right. That's destroying different communities.
Right. And so if anybody is going to try to cover that up, I mean, you're just going to
allow this problem to continue to escalate and become horrifying.
But I think that's why you need voices of these.
Like you said, starting in the middle, somebody who just can come in there and be like, ABCD
is what's wrong.
I need to try to fix it.
You know, one thing that also bothers me about politicians is and this is the case even right
now with this conflict, too, is you have people in power, especially this the prime minister,
Netanyahu guy, who every single person from in Israel, in America, who's like this guy
has every incentive to keep the war perpetuated because his political career relies on it.
It's not a values thing.
It's not like this is a mission thing.
It's purely selfish.
I stay in power as long as there are bombs dropping.
Right.
And it's weird because he also he's sitting there and he's motivated by this fact to say,
oh, we tried something and I want to say that it worked.
Nobody's willing to say here's the mistakes that were made.
Here's how we're going to grow from the mistakes.
Here's the accountability that I'm going to bear as a leader.
And I'm going to tell you that, yes, I need to face the consequences.
But this is my plan to rectify that.
That's like a no go zone now, especially in America.
Right.
Right now, Fauci is making the rounds and everybody's like, hey, that was the disaster.
Right now, he's got to sit there.
It's like if you make a mistake somehow and there's no redemption from it, you need to
be pulverized.
And it creates these monsters who are like, I'm right.
Everything we did was right.
Actually, this is what it is.
And it incentivize them to lie, to misconstrue the facts, to spread false information.
We've got to change that.
I mean, we've got to change that aspect of it.
The other thing I'll say too, I don't want to dig into how American electoral politics
need to be rectified.
But one thing too that's true is if a race in the United States can be bought with millions
of dollars, then that to me is a threat to our ability to make sure that the cream of
the crop is rising to the top of the electoral politics, to the top of these offices.
If we can't do it based on people who have experience, expertise, intelligence, and it's
more about say what we want you to say, here's a blank check.
I mean, we're in trouble there.
I think I see that's kind of what's happening here is like you've got these people who are
willing to throw X amount of dollars just to keep things going.
And they're not interested in the benefit of the American people of this country kind
of progressing and having a path in the future.
They don't care about that.
They care about this interest or this specific thing that they want to promote.
You could say that about a million different things, but that's what we've allowed to kind
of pollute a little bit of what our country, where we're headed.
It's just you're allowing these random small groups to come in here and just dominate what
our country is about.
And everybody gets lost in the shuffle as a result of that.
The question I always ask people is with this 330 million Americans and you're telling me
those are the best.
And then if they're like, oh yeah, but already would you let them date your daughter?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
I know phenomenal human beings, men and women that I would be honored to date my son or
daughter if they were age appropriate.
You know what I mean?
Incredible leaders, courageous, altruistic.
And you look at these two freaking ding-dongs that we just watched do the clown show nationally
for the world to laugh at yet again.
And then they ask again, 330 million people.
It's not democracy.
It should be as demistocracy.
It's the game that the rich get to play and all the good leaders get flushed down the
toilet basically.
So until we realize that we're being completely duped and demand a new system, every four
years we're going to get another one.
Absolutely.
I mean, you wouldn't trust these people to fill gas in your car without watching them.
So a crazier question is what would you allow them to do?
And I guarantee that list will be short.
That list will be short.
You know, it reminds me of when the first responders from 9-11 were dealing with health
problems directly as a result of their willingness to really go to ground zero and try to do
something about the horrible thing that happened.
And then watching lawmakers sort of try to cut those benefits off or try to add it on
to some other thing.
So then it becomes this political debate.
Are you kidding me?
These guys that we asked to show up, no questions asked, were there.
And you're telling me now that you don't want to pay for their health insurance?
Like this country, like you said, it's 330 million people.
We've got trillions of dollars.
We're spending all of this money on foreign aid.
We give billions of dollars here, literally writing checks that we can't cash.
You're not willing to pay for somebody's cancer therapy from mesothelioma that they got because
they were on ground zero pulling people from the rubble.
So I mean, like that should be for me, like when I saw that was taking place and that's
this conversation keeps coming up, right?
Like, I mean, the funding expires and then it's another battle.
It's like, to me, that's just a that's a testament to like, all right, the people that are there
now, we've got to get rid of them.
There's got to be real, like sensible human beings that are decent people in these positions.
And I can't say that, right?
I can't say the majority of people are decent who make some of these decisions.
And I don't know them personally.
I've never spoken to them.
But the actions are what I'm worried about.
Like in Gaza, when you're hearing that there is going to be that there is children who
are starving to death because there are famine conditions in the north and you instead want
to tell me, well, it's because of this or that.
And you're not trying to tell me how do we save those kids?
How do we make sure it's not going to be 29 or 30 or 31?
I think there's a problem with who you are as a person if you're going to respond to
me that way.
You know, so I mean, that's really what bothers me.
The other thing that not to keep not to keep kind of totally shitting on, you know, the
us as you know, like our leaders.
But you know, they built this pier off of Gaza.
So you know, Biden does his State of the Union address and he says we're going to construct
a humanitarian pier off of the coast of Gaza to deliver aid because the people are suffering.
And I'm like, well, all right.
You know, every every single person who's been in Gaza is like, why go through all that
trouble when you can just open the border and just let you know, that's no pier is going
to replace their shipping and all that.
And I'm like, that's crazy.
And then you hear that it's three hundred million dollars for three months.
The Army Corps of Engineers has to construct it.
It's going to cost three hundred million.
It's going to be they got to figure out from Cyprus how you're going to ship containers
of stuff, who's going to deliver it.
They don't know any of these details.
And I had meetings with USAID, the highest levels of USAID, and they didn't they could
not tell me the logistics of how this pier was going to work.
So this pier is being constructed and they don't even know how they're going to receive
and then distribute the humanitarian aid.
I'm like, is this a joke?
Like what is going on here is there are there are five land borders that you can open up
and they can do 10 times the amount of work that this pier is going to do.
But instead, we're mobilizing this all of these resources and stuff.
And you're just like, this is so bizarre to me.
I'm like, this this is a whole this is a bad decision.
It's just bad.
And now you hear every time the pier makes the news, it's not because it's doing incredible
work and distributing food.
It's because the the waves are so rocky that keeps washing the pier away.
And so they have to they have to like reassemble and assemble it.
And it's costing millions and millions and millions more dollars.
Like right now, I can't imagine what they haven't disclosed this.
But I'm going to be watching very closely how much money has been spent on this pier
that has not done that has barely distributed any humanitarian aid yet into Gaza.
So you know, like that's to me, it's like, all right, there seems to be these people
who are trying to play games.
That's why I said there's no respect for like the intelligence of the everyday American
person.
It's just like these people are making these random decisions.
As long as I can do some bells and whistles, I think it'll get through.
But you know, you're 100 percent right.
Like if there isn't some sort of, you know, awakening, if people aren't, you know, you
know, if we're not able to kind of bring attention to this and replace these people with people
who should be in these roles, who, you know, at least have the you know, that those leadership
qualities, then it's just going to be a cycle.
It's going to it's a never end of sight.
After these two bozos are gone, it's going to be another two bozos.
I promise you, like, you know, we're not going to it's not just going to fix itself.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to get on to, you know, your meeting with the president before we do.
We talked about 9-11.
There was such a great opportunity to see who Americans actually are and the conversations
I've had with that period and the incredible community that was born out of 9-12.
You know, and we're talking mosques and synagogues and temples and, you know, churches and, you
know, all these different places of worship and the congregation and obviously the religious
leaders are there in droves trying to help.
And it was the same with the Grenfell fire.
I mean, just beautiful watching all these denominations working side by side.
That's who Americans are.
You know, so this is the thing again is and I'll move on from this point, but this projection
of who we are is doing such a disservice of who we are.
And if you want to be reminded of what America is really about, go to 9-12.
If you want to be reminded of who England is, go to the day after Grenfell or the day
after 7-7.
You know, that is when you saw your real humanity.
Now yes, we can deviate from it quite quickly, as you mentioned in New York with the politics
and the money.
But if we remember that that's who we were when the country needed us the most, then
look at these people debating.
You can see the chasm between and that's what we've got to fix.
Yeah.
And I think it's just too quickly on this is it's about making sure that we amplify
those voices that represent the best of us, you know, and so that's I think that's what
everybody can do coming away from, you know, any of these really horrifying moments in
our history or when we start to realize how bad things have gotten.
It's looking to the people who are the true leaders, amplifying those voices, the people
who bring people together, you know, especially in those moments of difficulty and tragedy.
You know, these people come up, they respond to those calls and it sucks because they're
usually not the ones who are willing to self promote themselves and try to make it to these
positions.
But that's why I think it's great to kind of continue to amplify those voices, share
those stories, because yeah, that's the key.
That's the key to victory for sure.
Well, you've definitely become one of the kind of most trusted voices on this whole
thing.
I mean, again, being an American, being an E.R. physician, you know, working in a very,
you know, high up tempo part of the country when it comes to violence and trauma.
And then, you know, you're obviously out in Gaza.
And as we discussed, you know, you were talking about the parts of the West Bank where you
saw how it should be.
People just worshiping side by side, humans working with other humans.
What was it that took you to the White House?
And then talk to me about why you walked out.
Yeah.
So again, since I came back, it's been nonstop just trying to communicate with State Department,
USAID, National Security Council, just about kind of what we think needs to happen in Gaza,
especially just about the humanitarian crisis.
Here's where there are some things that are happening that need to be changed.
You know, and so from those meetings, you know, the White House decides that they want
to engage as a result of that.
And I get a call actually from someone who is in charge of like he's a liaison to the
Muslim community.
And what I find out pretty quickly is that they really desperately need a Palestinian,
Palestinian Muslim person to kind of come and engage at the White House because many
people have been rejecting those invitations.
And the reason they've been rejecting is because they felt that the policies in this country
in the last, at that time, six months, seven months, were fueling the fire to this war.
And it was not really being constructive to bringing an end to it or highlighting, you
know, kind of the devastation that had taken place.
One thing that keeps echoing in these circles in these communities is President Biden kind
of dismissing the death toll.
And I think that was a bad, that was a bad leadership move.
Why are you getting caught up in how many people have died in Gaza and trying to cast
shade on that, even if it's 10 percent off, 20 percent off?
That's not how you approach the situation.
You say, we acknowledge there's been a tremendous loss of life.
It doesn't matter if it's five thousand, ten thousand, fifteen thousand, if it's innocent
people, if it's kids, if it's pregnant women, then it's horrifying.
So you know, the community was really, really upset with how that was taking place.
And this was on the heels, this invitation was on the heels of the Democratic primary
vote in Michigan, where there were 10 percent of this battleground state that voted uncommitted
on the Democratic primary ballot.
That was a devastating blow to Biden's reelection campaign.
I mean, they recognize there is a group of voters here who are not happy with the policy
decisions of the president, especially when it came to Gaza.
And they wanted to see a difference there.
So that's really where the invitation was born out of.
It was this sort of this guise of like, hey, it's Ramadan, Muslims are fasting.
We know that you guys as a community are hurting.
So we want to acknowledge your hurt and we want to bring you to the table.
Usually these Ramadan events are massive.
I mean, they're talking about 400, 500 guests.
The president shows up, gives a little bit of a speech, shakes some hands and walks out.
They said this was going to be an intimate one on one conversation.
Basically there would only be me and like four or five other people.
It would be the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, the ambassador
to the United Nations, members from different security, the National Security Council and
other members.
Like this was high level admin officials.
And they're like, the way it was pitched to me is like, this is your chance to influence
policy.
And I was like, it didn't make sense to me.
I didn't, that didn't make sense.
Like no way.
Six months into this and I'm the first Palestinian American the president has met with.
I'm the first person that has been on the ground in Gaza that he's met with in six months.
Why now?
And why is it on the heels of this Michigan uncommitted vote that he's really worried
about?
So I had my suspicions and in my head I'm like, I'm like, keep an open mind.
You never know what could happen.
Just show up and say what you got to say.
Talk about the different, talk about what you've seen, experienced and what the solutions
are because we all know what the solution needs to be.
But the days leading up to it, his administration approves $18 billion F-16 fighter jet sail
to the Israeli military.
These are the F-16s that were flying overhead when I was there.
I could hear them fly over the hospital that I was sleeping in.
They approved all of these weapons, 2000 palm bombs that I watched level neighborhoods.
And then they had also the World Central Kitchen massacre happened where seven international
aid workers in Gaza delivering hot meals to people were killed in two cars by an Israeli
strike.
Two British, one American, one Palestinian, one Polish.
I can't remember the other, but seven people who had no ties were there just delivering
hot meals killed while they were working there.
So to me, in my mind, I was like, all right, this is not real.
This is not an actual invitation.
This is not genuine.
Unless there's something crazy that happens, I'm going to get up and protest and walk out
on the president.
We show up and I'm getting a lot of heat because somehow my name gets revealed as people who
get invited.
So I've got a lot of people from my community, people who I've never even met before telling
me like, no, don't go meet with the president.
He's done this, this and that.
And my response to them is like, just basically I have to do right by the people that I saw
and that I left back in Gaza.
They have a story.
I need to share their story.
That's the bottom line.
I need to say what I need to say.
So we get to the meeting and it's just a table that we're all sitting around and the president
walks in and he says a couple of words about like, hey, we're working on this and we hope
you guys can understand, but we want to hear from you guys.
And I just felt right there.
And I'm like, this is not, this is just, this is, this is going to be read out in a White
House statement tomorrow that the president engaged with member leaders from the this
Palestinian American, Muslim American, blah, blah, blah, America.
I'm like, this is just, this doesn't mean it.
So I was like, this is the right decision.
I should get up and protest.
And I had a letter from an orphan who was in Rafa, the border town between Egypt and
Gaza and I had her picture and I handed him the picture and I told him, I said, you know,
me and you disagree.
I mean, you agree on one thing and it's about this death toll not being accurate, but I
know having been there and been on the ground that the numbers astronomically higher, there
are people trapped beneath the rubble that we've never rescued yet.
And that the fact that we're sitting here now, seven months later, I'm the first person
who's been on the ground that you've spoken to out of respect for my community.
I need to walk away from this table.
I need to walk away on the heels of a decision to give more fighter jets, more bombs to this
war.
And there were, you know, there's all these different members of the admin there.
And I mentioned three things before I left.
I said a temporary ceasefire is cruel because you have to have a permanent ceasefire.
It's not just about temporary ceasefire, allow food to get in, feed the hungry Palestinians
and then resume the bombing.
I mean, that's just cruel.
That should not be on the table.
The second thing is when you see all of these countries that are sort of recognizing how
horrible it is, we should be leading these countries, not sitting there when there's
a UN Security Council resolution saying return the hostages and have an immediate ceasefire,
allow aid to enter, stop the war sort of thing.
We shouldn't be sitting there announcing the next day, you know, a UN resolution is non-binding.
Like that's what we were doing as the U.S., the most powerful country in the world was
saying, yeah, this international institution, their resolutions in the Security Council
are not binding.
So there's no consequence to it.
And then I was telling the National Security Advisor that I know that the Israelis, for
example, are telling you this and that about the situation on the ground.
But I'm telling you as somebody who doesn't have any interest in kind of from any organization
or any group that any sort of invasion in Tarafah, because that was what was in the
news at the time, is going to be catastrophic.
It's going to be a bloodbath.
You can't do it.
You're not going to be, the Israelis will not be able to do it in a sophisticated fashion.
I've been on the ground there, I know, and I got up and walked out and I didn't think
it was going to go viral.
But there was a protest being staged at the White House to this event.
So there was already media there.
And there was people who had recognized me as like people, somebody who's being invited
and noticing that I had left 10 minutes after the meeting had started.
And so they were like, what happened?
And it kind of it went it went ballistic from there.
It really went insane.
But you know, I would say one thing that I say that really kind of it's it's it sucks
to say this, but you know, what we said ended up being true, what everybody was worried
about about like a Rafa invasion where you're displacing a million Palestinian displaced
people who went to the south.
Now you're telling them go to the middle, go to the north.
It was horrifying.
I mean, you know, the malnutrition rates went up.
There was a tent massacre where all of these makeshift tents, there was a bomb that had
hit in the area and then all set on fire and 30 plus people died.
You know, the hospital that's there is being evacuated.
You know that there are 200 dialysis patients that are not going to get their dialysis.
So it you know, we were we were proven correctly in the worst possible way, in the worst possible
way.
You know, and that's that's what sucks.
You know, and that's what really and it kind of solidified that I should have walked away
from the meeting because it was not a serious meeting.
But that's why I did it, not because I'm going to be voting for the other guy in November,
not because I'm a Democrat or a Republican, not because I care about any of it.
It's purely because I didn't want to be used for that thing.
I don't want to be used for this campaign.
I don't want to be, you know, like this token Palestinian who engage, you know, so the president
can say I met with a Palestinian, I met with somebody who went to Gaza.
I'm not interested in that.
But and I said this to afterwards and I've when I've because I've continued to advocate
I was in I was in the Capitol last week talking about a medical evacuation.
I'll meet with any senator, any congressman.
I'll meet with any any any division of government if it's a serious conversation just about
solutions.
I don't want to be heard.
You know how many times, James, that we sit in some of these meetings and I know that
they're bullshitting me and they're just like, we hear you and we feel you're like we understand
what you're saying and we just want you to know that you're heard and you're like, that's
not what I'm looking for here.
I'm looking for solutions.
I want people who I can work with.
We can come to we can get to a point where we can do something about this.
And so that's, you know, you know, that's that's kind of what's that's literally what
it's been looking like since since the White House thing.
I'm still willing to go out there and talk to people and try to try to bring some some
reprieve for the tremendous amount of suffering that's taken place.
But it's been tough.
It's been tough.
Well, I want to get to, you know, what has occurred since we last spoke in February as
far as the the refugees being moved in different areas and the states at the hospitals and
the systematic demolition of blocks that we discussed before.
But just before that, again, I am way outside the circle trying to look in and offer a kind
of altruistic, compassionate lens to this whole thing.
One thing that I feel like is hurting and it's funny, I was talking to Mohammed about
this are the protests themselves.
When people are just kind of getting together, some seemingly not even understanding what
they're protesting in the first place.
And then that's kind of shown.
So which which of the protests are being effective and is there a danger of them actually doing
the polar opposite of what they're trying to do?
Yeah, of course.
I mean, you want to be as you want to be as intentional as possible about what your what
sort of action you're taking now, whether that's writing to a congressperson or you
know, or you're engaging with some sort of administration official or you're contributing
dollars to a humanitarian organization.
You want to be intentional, you want to be thorough, you want to make sure that the messaging
is clear.
And so, you know, I think, you know, one thing that I will say is, you know, there is, I
think when you've looked at some of these campus protests, what I found that has been
extremely effective is there there's a deliberate ask that they have, and they are asking for
their universities, for example, to make sure that they are not funding companies, that
they are not investing in companies that produce weapons.
I mean, to me, like that is straightforward.
You know, the ask is there, you have you have you have a goal there.
One thing that I think we you cannot allow to happen because you're there's there's a
really two negative effects, because like you said, one, you can misconstrue the message
that you were trying to deliver in the first place, and it can blow back.
But two, you have to think about people who are engaged in this.
And if you're just sort of not organizing in a way where there is a clear aim, there's
goals, there's a message that's in place, you're bringing together coalitions, there's
a potential for fatigue on this as well, where the people you're you know, all of the people
you want to engage, they're not engaging anymore because they don't know what the what the
message is or what the goal is.
And so that's why I think it's you know, it is it's a delicate balance.
And you can, you know, I think I understand the frustration I really do, because there
are people who are like, nothing that we're doing is working.
Nothing that you know, the way that you're supposed to bring about change and the way
that you're supposed to approach the situation, nothing is working.
So some of this is actually just sort of like a like a lashing out or you know, kind of
like a nothing, you know, like screaming at the top of your lungs, because you feel like
nobody's listening to you.
But I think that right now, we're at we're at eight months.
And it's it's proven to be a very lengthy process.
And I know that there are a lot of people who are very gung ho or like, I want to do
everything that they're burnt out at this point.
And they're not really engaging anymore.
So, you know, like for me, one of the things that I want to you know, when I'm thinking
about, OK, who do I want to sort of when we're talking about a protest or we're trying to
hold somebody accountable, I think about like the American Medical Association, they had
a delegate meeting for all of their delegates in June.
I want them to I want to be outside of there asking them to introduce a resolution saying
that all 40,000 members here are behind the ceasefire.
We want to get a ceasefire.
We want hospitals to be protected.
We don't want doctors to be killed.
So like those are you know, you want to have tangible goals that are in place where the
person that you're trying to deliver the message to can actually respond and do something about
that.
It's just like when you go to meet your congressperson, you have to have asks.
My ask for you is to help with medical evacuations.
Call the call the Israeli embassy and ask them to open the border like there needs to
be deliberate things.
If you're just going out there waving a flag, sort of just yelling in place, you're not
you're you're you're also not capitalizing that energy in a way where we can bring in
some results.
We want to measure, you know, what's working, what's not working.
We want to be able to build on that.
We want to organize in a way that's effective.
And so I think, you know, I think, you know, when it when it came to Gaza, I don't think
anybody anticipated was going to take this long to end the fighting, to end the war.
And that's been really devastating for people.
And I think along the way, instead of sort of kind of like trying to make sure that we
that there are these actions in place where we can measure some outcomes, I think instead
it was like, get louder or, you know, get, you know, do whatever.
And I think that's, you know, that's something I worry long term in terms of like, hey, we
want to be able to accomplish some real things that change the situation on the ground.
I really want the people there, any action that we take here for them to for that to
be able to affect them.
I don't want to just, you know, like get together for the sake of getting together and have
large numbers just to say I have large numbers or to do this.
That's that's that's really important.
That goes back to organizing and it goes back to, you know, just kind of like community
engagement.
It's like we need, you know, one thing one thing I'll say is another realization, which,
you know, we really want to start to think about and be intentional and be thorough about
how we respond and what actions we take is we realize how little of a voice we have when
it came to this conflict.
I would say that there are the public opinion was very much in favor of like, like, hey,
there should be a ceasefire in place.
There was like a poll that, you know, two thirds of Americans wanted a ceasefire like
four months ago.
So what it told me is that there were there wasn't that sort of the infrastructure or
that structure that was in place where the voice of the people is being communicated
to the people who are making these decisions, the policymakers and the decision makers.
Where are we're you know, we didn't have those that community engagement piece.
We didn't have that organizing piece in a way that allowed all of us to build coalitions,
raise our voices in a way that people can hear us and make a difference.
That's a lesson that's that we're still learning.
It's a lesson that's been painful because, you know, again, it's always sucks to feel
like you're not your voice is being dismissed, but it's an important lesson that had to
be learned.
And so it's really just about empowering yourself and then kind of reaching tangible goals,
having those asks in place.
And when they're not being met, how do you hold that person accountable, whether it's
a professional society, a corporation, a congressperson or, you know, you're you know, whatever it
is.
But that's yeah, I think you bring up an interesting point.
That's something that I don't think is going to actually I think it's going to I think
the war has to stop.
And I and you know, this is I learned this from the people of Gaza.
Honestly, they were like, there's going to be a war after the war.
And what they mean is that, you know, we're going to process everything that we've lost.
We're going to take a look at the vulnerabilities that were in place that kind of really made
things worse for us as a community, as a people.
That's going to happen here, too.
I mean, we're going to have to once this is over, we have to process everything that took
place and where things went wrong and how it got as bad as it did.
And what what did we do wrong?
And then what can we do better?
Because you know, don't just just because something bad happened doesn't mean it's never
again.
It's you've got to make sure that it's never again.
You know, that's that's on you.
I mean, I think the covid the way covid was handled was the perfect example.
And I've talked about this.
We've probably touched on this last time, I'm assuming.
But I was driving home today and I was thinking, imagine a pandemic where we did everything
opposite than we did last time, where you weren't allowed to go into your home, where
you had to go and find community and spend time with people.
You had to exercise, you had to eat good food, you had to abstain from alcohol and put your
screens down.
What a beautiful environment that would be.
But that's not what happened.
Everyone was told to stay in their home, shut the hell up, we'll get fast food and alcohol
delivered to your house, the beaches and parks and gyms are all closed.
You know, and then, you know, when we tell you to, you will, I repeat, will have this
vaccine.
You know, so and then after the fact, there was no willingness to go, you know what, we
didn't do that properly.
We had a two year captive audience, so we could have made a massive dent on the opioid
epidemic, on the obesity crisis.
We could have put PE programs back in schools, take out the processed shit and cook real
food like we used to in schools, bolster local farmers to create organic food and get rid
of that massive bottleneck that we saw.
But they didn't.
And this is the point is that, you know, again, you allow the wrong people in these positions.
And I'm assuming there's a lot of Israeli people that are absolutely opposed to what's
going on in Gaza.
But where's their 125,000 people in Tel Aviv yesterday protested for a ceasefire.
Yeah, but they're they're not being represented by their quote unquote leader.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
You know, the other thing about the pandemic is there's going to be another one and there's
going to be another one.
I mean, this is just the world that we live in.
And so how horrifying is it to think of, you know, maybe not learning from the mistakes
of the past and sort of repeating it?
I mean, that would be that would be, you know, that would be devastating if you're making
if you're repeating the same mistakes.
I mean, this is the definition of insanity.
And it's you know, the thing is, I think I really think that it's you know, that's why
that's something that it's on every single person to sort of figure out a way what their
role is and how do you contribute?
How do you kind of make sure that you're a part of it?
And like, you know, you talk about like, you know, a glue to the screen stuck inside of
your house, not doing like that's the opposite of what we're talking about in order to make
a better future for yourself and for the people around you.
It's about making sure that you're aware.
It's about making sure that you whatever it is that you think you can contribute to society
and to people and to humanity, you do it.
You give that piece of it.
And you know, I'm a firm believer that that is something that, you know, that's not something
that you're losing.
You're not losing the time that you're giving towards that you're not losing the energy
that you're giving towards it.
It's something that comes back.
And so, you know, I hate to speak in sort of like the in like abstracts, but I truly
believe that, you know, every single person plays a specific role that is unique to them.
But if they're not going to play that role and they're sort of withdrawing, it's a loss
for everybody.
You know, and that's something I hope people can at least take away.
It's like there's something that you're offering, whether it's, you know, for whatever for in
whatever aspect, there's something that you can offer.
And there's something that you bring to the table.
And it's like, if you're not doing that, it's that's where the loss comes in.
That's where, you know, everybody loses from that.
So, you know, I when I saw that there was this report of, you know, one hundred and
twenty five thousand people in the streets of Tel Aviv calling for a ceasefire.
You're like, OK, I mean, like there is, you know, there is this there's like this this
this chance where we can sort of seize the opportunity.
Everybody's aligned.
Everybody understands this is what's needed right now.
And then you start to realize who's getting in the way of that.
And I think that's just as important as anything else is like you start to realize who's standing
up against that, who does not want that to be in place.
And so, you know, I I hope that that's I hope that that's something that we're going to realize pretty soon.
Absolutely. Yeah, I've said this many, many times.
You think most Russians are on board with invading the Ukraine, you know, the people that are
just getting on with their life and the kids are going to school and they're going to work and
growing vegetables or whatever it is they're doing in that area.
Someone says, oh, we're going to invade Ukraine.
You're like, no, we're not. I don't want any part of that.
You know, but they did it anyway.
Under the again, the extremist tyranny of the few ruin it for for, you know, hundreds of thousands of people.
Absolutely. That's that's that's that's that's really I think we're at such an important historical moment
because you have sort of access to all of this information that's not being filtered by people that want to feed you a message.
You're able to kind of see right now you can hop on Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook and you can see what's happened.
You can literally watch all of the people that are evacuating different parts of Gaza right now.
And you can see them on the back of, you know, the these on these these donkeys that are pulling carriages.
You see them, you see they've got everything that they've you know, that they have all of their worldly possessions are in their arms.
Right. They've got like a pot and they've got, you know, some bookbag or something.
You can see that live. And I think we're in this critical moment now where you can sort of look for the truth yourself
and find it in a way that's not being filtered by some sort of executive producer on some show somewhere
that's trying to make sure prime time gets enough views for their advertisers.
So that's this a special moment right now where we really can sort of see what's going on.
And that's why I think we're in this there's a I really I truly believe there's like there's a few moments in history that you'll always look back at.
And I know that Gaza is one of those moments. I just know that we're going to be looking back at this and starting to ask ourselves,
you know, how did we respond to this humanitarian disaster and crisis?
And then how did all of these quote unquote leaders respond to it?
How did the world stand idly by? And then what were the people doing?
And so that's why you keep coming back to, you know, just how I know that there are so many people who can who sympathize with what's happening,
who really find feel a certain way about it.
And I think that that's something that we'll we'll see in the future in terms of, you know,
there were people who were against this happening to other human beings.
And, you know, I it's it sucks that it reached this point.
But you just hope that, again, that there's enough energy and momentum behind it where we can make a change.
I do think that there's a special moment now that we can do that.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the last time we spoke was February 20th.
And at that point, I think people were going to Rafa, if I remember rightly.
And then you'd witness that truly, as we said before, the bulldozing of, you know,
blocks of houses over and over, not just houses, businesses and hospitals and all these things.
So walk me through, you know, the next few months. What's happened since?
I think I think if I remember as well, just for the children alone, I think the death toll was at twelve or thirteen thousand by that point.
So kind of walk me walk me through the next few months that takes us up to today.
So at that time, Khan Yunus, which was also in the south, was being people had to flee at Khan Yunus because that's literally where I mean,
neighborhood by neighborhood was just absolutely being devastated.
And they were all piling into Rafa, which is the southernmost part of Gaza.
It's the border between Egypt and Palestine.
And you had people in every inch and corner of Rafa.
And that's why as March we started to enter into March, we were hearing that the Israeli military was
planning an invasion of Rafa and everybody was in panic mode.
I mean, they were like, it can't happen.
One point seven, one point eight million displaced people in makeshift tents cannot be moved and heard it around like sheep.
Simultaneously, while this was taking place, there was this, you know, this horrible famine that was taking place in the north of Gaza.
And then some people would be like, well, it wasn't technically a famine.
Whatever. Again, I'm not going to argue semantics, but there were children.
The malnutrition rates were exceedingly high.
There was 20 some cases of children who had starved to death.
And just to be clear, these were children who had, you know, there were some kids who had cerebral palsy,
some kids who had juvenile diabetes, some kids who had cancer.
But the point of the matter is that's the canary in the coal mine is that if you have the sicker kids at first,
now they're dying from the malnutrition, then your healthy kids are their malnutrition rates are very high.
And God forbid if there's cholera, if there's, you know, flu that starts to spread around, there's some sort of diarrheal illness.
Those kids are in a very, very life threatening situation.
I mean, their mortality rates skyrocket.
So we're in that moment where you're in March and in your year in April where you're just like, OK, this is not stopping.
The bombing is not stopping. We're seeing the death toll start to rise.
In fact, so much so that the UN said the health care system has been so devastated that we can't tell you what the breakdown of numbers are in terms of how, you know, is this a kid?
Is this a woman? Is this whatever it is? That's that's we're still in this moment now.
So hospital by hospitals getting raided, rendered defunct.
And the health care system is not on its feet.
The only numbers that we're getting is from the government media office that's just telling you how many people have been were buried in the last 24 hours.
And so this death toll is rapidly approaching 30 plus thousand, thirty five thousand in April.
Now you're almost at forty thousand. So, you know, things are getting much worse from a perspective of like this war is getting really, really intense and it's not letting up.
And there's all these people that are stuck in the south in the southern tip of Gaza.
You fast forward now and the Israeli military green lights operation and they order that, you know, the people in the south have to go to the middle of Gaza.
And so you you watch in the span of about two and a half weeks, nine hundred thousand people get up and try to flood the streets in the middle area.
In the meantime, people who did not leave are right there in the air strikes are intensifying and the tanks are rolling and now there's a ground invasion.
Then the border gets seized, the border between Egypt and Gaza.
And now all of those trucks of humanitarian aid are not able to enter the medical teams that the WHO was sending in are not able to enter.
And the medical evacuations and people who are who are trying to get out of Gaza are not able to get out.
That was May 7th since May 7th until today.
Right now, that border is still shut down.
There has been only one day where they allowed medical evacuations out, and that was basically through a border crossing called Karam Shalom or Karam Abu Sanam.
And that basically is Gaza into Israel.
And there were about 20 some patients who were medically evacuated.
Most were pediatric cancer patients.
That was one day from May 7th until now.
There is an estimated 14,000 people who are on the immediate evacuation list published by the World Health Organization waiting.
These are urgent evacuations.
These are people who need all sorts of different care.
They are waiting on this list.
And the expected the expectation is that there will be a few thousand of them who will die waiting to be evacuated.
I mean, that's just the numbers game, unfortunately.
Now you have a lot of people who are in the middle area.
The hospital system was essentially reduced to 12 partially functioning hospitals.
Of them, only two have CT capabilities.
Only two of them can you get a CT scan at.
Al Aqsa, which is in the middle, and the European Gaza Hospital, which is in the south.
It's on the border of Rafah and Khayn-Yuris.
Today, the European Gaza Hospital got evacuation orders.
So the 400 patients that were in there had to be evacuated out and all of the health care workers have to leave.
And that hospital will be shut down by tomorrow.
So you lose one of that main hospitals funded by the EU, funded by different international partners.
So now we're in this area where we don't have really any good hospital.
I got a text message yesterday about this kid who has an incarcerated hernia.
He's 18 months.
And there's no place for him to get the hernia reduced, no place for him to get the hernia repaired, no surgery that he can get.
And I'm just frantically scattering around.
And there might be a hospital called Nasser Hospital where I was in January that's starting to build up their services.
But what's so just like really, really like you get so burnt out from this is every day there's a new crisis.
So he might be able to go to Nasser Hospital, but now we're hearing from the hospitals that there's no fuel entering to power the generators,
to keep the lights on so that we can get things moving.
It's like one thing after another.
Literally, I keep asking myself, how can it get any worse?
And then something worse happens.
I mean, it's it's just unbelievable.
And I'm here. I'm in the United States now.
I have phone. I can pick up the phone.
I've got reliable telecommunications.
I've got I can call the State Department.
I'm calling anybody that I can.
I'm talking to my buddies who are there, the health care workers, the nurses and the docs.
And they are just exhausted.
I mean, they don't know the temperatures are above 100.
I mean, it's scorching hot there right now.
There is barely any supplies.
One of the doctors I know who's from who's from California, who's there now with International Medical Corps, he's in a field hospital.
He's like, we're literally scavenging all parts of different areas looking for medical supplies.
I mean, we're looking for gauze and we're looking for we're just looking for things because we keep getting people who have wounds from airstrikes months ago.
And now you're starting to notice some infection develop in these rooms.
And it's like, what do we expect to happen?
What do you think was going to happen when we're not allowing medical supplies in, you're not allowing water in, you're not allowing any of this stuff in?
And then while you're doing that, you're you're making sure these hospitals just get wrecked.
And so, you know, we're at a really, really horrible, horrible moment in Gaza right now in terms of the humanitarian situation.
But we're also at the lowest point of coverage on it.
Like with respect to Western media, we're not it's not getting the same attention that it was getting back in February, back in March.
So it's really concerning because, you know, you're like, what where do we go from here?
And now we have to rely on those on those same pollutes politicians in terms of getting to a deal, just getting something in place.
You know, and again, you know, there's people who people think like, you know, the fact that maybe I'm talking a lot about Gaza,
that I don't care about anything else or that anybody else that might be suffering.
But we're talking about just any sort of solution to this issue to bring peace to everybody in that area, everybody in that region.
I mean, it's enough. You know, time is we've got to got to stop this.
And one thing I'll end with is, you know, last week, this guy, this prime minister,
Netanyahu jumps on a video and he records this video and he publishes publishes on his Twitter.
And he's basically going after Biden because he's saying there's been delays in the 2000
bomb bombs and 500 pound bombs that we that we bought that we want them.
And you're like, what? This guy wants the weapons to be delivered so that he can use them like he that's what he's complaining about right now.
So to me, I was scared, obviously, when I first saw the video.
But now I'm pissed off because I'm like, the guy wants to the guy wants to keep things going.
And he wants to keep things moving. And you're starting to hear about the conflict spilling over into the region, into Lebanon.
I mean, you're already you already had this little back and forth with Iran and Israel.
Nobody wants that. I mean, nobody wants this to happen.
I mean, I don't I just this these sort of escalations that only kind of serves the interests of a few.
And it's like everybody else just has to eat shit in the meantime.
I mean, that's what that's what's concerning me. It's like, you know, I mean, I don't know, man.
I really I can't imagine this going on until November.
But I know I know that there are many people who are involved in this who want to wait for an American election and like see who what the outcome is,
like who wins that election and then start to think about how can we continue the war based on that.
They maybe think that one candidate might help them get the war more escalated versus another.
I don't know. But I know that that's kind of that's the chatter that we're hearing, at least in the NGO space about,
you know, what's the prospects of the day after?
When can we get to the day after so we can start rebuilding and reconstructing?
And that's what we're hearing is like, there's some there's these are kind of the kinds of discussions that are in play here.
So, you know, not not a great update. It's really gotten significantly worse there.
But, you know, I think right now it's like, you know, what right now you've got people who are trapped, who don't have any food, don't have any water.
The hospitals don't have any supplies and they don't have any fuel for their generators.
And then there's more doctors, nurses, first responders, paramedics, people who you call civil defense, who have been killed in the last couple of months.
Over one hundred and sixty two aid workers have been killed at this point.
And then over one hundred journalists have been killed.
So it's like, you know, you're just every aspect of this is in a bad situation.
Anything that could somehow help the people, whether it's media coverage or whether it's fuel for a hospital, it's all obstructed.
It's all not not working well.
I've had so many members of the military on the show that, you know, lost friends, for example,
because of the stringent rules of engagement that tied their hands.
You know, we've had the border boarding and all these things brought out into the forefront, you know, that was seen as these horrendous atrocities.
But then you look at what's going on in Gaza.
Talk to me about the the abuse of the Geneva Convention.
You know, how far are they straying?
Because to me, just the fact that you're not allowing humanitarian aid in itself seems like a blatant spit in the face of the international community.
Absolutely. I mean, that's really what we've been these are the talking points that we're using when we're talking to policymakers, decision makers, whether it's at the UN or in capital.
For example, aid can starvation cannot be used as a weapon.
It is against international humanitarian law. It's against the Geneva Convention.
You cannot starve a population's as a means to punish them.
And so when you are saying that there is food on these trucks that you're not allowing to enter and then as a direct consequence of that,
malnutrition, severe acute malnutrition is rising in a very heavy and in a very aggressive way.
That's that's something that has to be changed. That's something that has to be rectified.
If you don't hold parties accountable for those types of actions, you are setting a precedent that is going to be that the word regret is is an understatement here.
I mean, you don't want you want to make sure that people are held accountable for these reasons.
Number two, there's something called the under international humanitarian law. You cannot convert hospitals into targets.
Health care workers need to be able to practice in these hospitals.
You cannot wipe out this many civilians to get one combatant, for example.
And I'll tell you, in conversations that I've had with senior high level people, they're telling me, well, there is a there is like this international law reasoning where you can say,
hey, there's one bad guy here so we can kill one hundred and fifty because the potential of that one bad guy, he could have killed hundreds.
You're like, that's bullshit. Nobody is buying that.
I mean, come on, man. Like, what are you talking about?
You just wipe out an entire apartment building full of one hundred and fifty people because you've got one bad guy that could have done bad things.
Come on. That's not that's not reasonable.
Like, you're not going to argue that in international law because you're saying the civilians cannot deliberately be targeted,
you cannot indiscriminately attack civilian infrastructure.
And we're not just talking about civilian infrastructure.
We're talking about hospitals, talking about clinics.
Like, you're you're not considering the devastating effect that it has on the population.
If you take out the maternity hospital, what happens to the pregnant fifty thousand pregnant women that are there?
We already know that some of them, a handful of them, have had to have C-sections without anesthesia, without general anesthesia, only local.
I mean, that is horrifying. And then you're telling me that two hours after you there's a C-section,
you're telling the mom that she's got to get up and go back to her tent with her baby because there's another mom there because it's the only field hospital that can handle maternity patients.
All right. Is that OK?
You're saying that that doesn't directly violate international humanitarian law.
But that's the reason that that's in place is because there was a violation against the hospital in the first place that shut it down, that destroyed it.
So, you know, there are several different things that are in play here when you when we start talking about international humanitarian law.
But I think that there has to be the will to hold people accountable.
There has to be where you say, all right, this hospital was hit by a missile and this 12 year old girl was killed as a result of that.
And then you shut down the maternity services and you didn't allow water to enter clean water to enter.
So these are violations in play and we need to hold you accountable.
How you do that is up to you guys, but if you don't do it at all, you're establishing horrifying precedent in something that right now we're growing towards more and more global conflicts.
You can't also say in one second Russians cannot target Ukrainian hospitals and then just be quiet if hospitals in Gaza are being targeted where you have to have moral consistency.
You have to have a principled approach. Yes.
Is it your best friend that maybe is doing? I understand that's that can be tough.
But you have to be morally consistent and it will be good for all parties.
I promise that as long as we're holding people accountable, it's good all around.
You know, so I think that that's something that is something we've tried to raise.
The one thing I do want to mention to you is there's this notion of de-confliction in these war zones.
And anybody that's been in the military understands like humanitarian services and delivery of health care is going to take place and needs to take place, especially in wartime.
That's really when those principles get challenged.
And so there is going to be coordination between international organizations, health care institutions with both militaries saying we're going to be moving in this space.
We're going to be bringing in this amount of medicine. We're going to be at this location. Here's our safe house.
You know, that's something that needs to be upheld and it usually is upheld.
And in Gaza, that has proven to have failed every step of the way.
And that's how those world central kitchen aid workers got killed.
That was an approved route. That was a de-conflicted route.
They had given their coordinates. They had told the Israeli military, we are leaving from this location at this time.
We are taking this road. We are going to this target location.
We were carrying this amount of stuff. And these are the amount of people with us.
These are their identification numbers. Here are their passport numbers.
Here are, you know, here's the cars they'll be in. Here's the marked car. Here's the license plate.
They still were triple hit. It was a triple tap. Three different missiles that killed those seven people.
And it's because de-confliction broke down and it has consistently broken down in Gaza every day for the last eight months.
Does that happen in war? It does. But I'll give you one example.
In Afghanistan, the United States military accidentally hit a Doctors Without Borders hospital.
It was a huge incident. It was called the Kunduz hospital hit. Huge incident.
The entire United States military revamped their de-confliction methods because of that.
And that's what you're supposed to do. And if you ask Doctors Without Borders, MSF,
about how did de-confliction work after that horrible, terrifying incident, they said it upheld.
It was reasonable. It worked out well. Even Israel, even Israel has a de-confliction system that works.
And it's proven in southern Lebanon in 2006, there was a de-confliction system that worked.
And that's how you minimize the civilian casualties. That's how you minimize devastating damage where you're going to get a lot of suffering.
And to me, it's broken down in Gaza in a really disgusting, terrible way.
And every single NGO that you've heard of has kind of come out against this.
There was a letter written by Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, Project HOPE, World Central Kitchen,
ANERA, and one other organization, the International IRC, the International Refugee Council, or Relief Council.
I can't remember their name. But they wrote a letter, incidents where de-confliction broke down
and that they were suffered, whether it was somebody who was killed or a house that was hit or an operation that was disrupted.
And these are huge players. These are recognizable names. Oxfam, when Oxfam is telling you that starvation is being used as a weapon, you listen.
I mean, Oxfam has no financial interests in Gaza. It's a position that they have said loud and clear.
We should be listening to that. I mean, that's important to say where they're saying this is contravening international laws.
This is going against international humanitarian law, something to consider.
And then the last thing I'll say, I'm not a legal expert, so I want to, that's the disclaimer.
But the International Court of Justice is hearing a case when it comes to the situation that's taking place in Gaza.
And that case was brought by the South Africans in December.
All right. The other thing is you have the International Criminal Court, who's right now trying to pass arrest warrants for political leaders involved in this conflict because of war crimes.
And then the other thing is you have three UN special rapporteurs, independent investigators, that have found war crimes have been committed in this conflict.
And so we've got a mountain of evidence here that really bad shit has happened in Gaza.
Really horrifying stuff that has happened and it's happened because of human beings that made the decision, they made the call.
If we don't make sure that this that there is some sort of consequences to these sorts of actions or behaviors,
we are going to set the stage for a horrible, horrible future, immediate future, not just in this region, but globally.
You think that people who are adversarial towards America aren't watching this?
Putin is not paying attention to what's taking place here or even Zelensky.
I mean, I'm not saying you know, I don't want to pretend like I like I'm sitting here and like I understand the Russian-Ukrainian conflict to a T.
But they're seeing what's taking place over there.
The Russians have already had very had had allegations of war crimes levied against them because of their behavior in the Ukraine.
Do you think they're not watching what's taking place in Gaza or the Chinese are not paying attention to what's going on in Gaza?
When they have their own conflicts with the Uyghurs and and even when you're talking about Hong Kong or semi-autonomous regions, everybody's paying attention.
Everybody's paying attention because the Americans are involved.
We're involved in this. We are the we are the global leader.
We're the superpower. Everybody's watching how we respond to this and what we're going to do about it.
It's going to set the stage for generations to come.
And we have the opportunity to do the right thing.
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, I want to hit one more area and then just we'll quickly visit Lebanon.
But when we spoke last, UNRWA was about to have the funding pulled and that was a huge financial crutch, for lack of a better word, for the people of Gaza.
So what happened with that?
So UNRWA is a quasi-government.
That's the bottom line.
Largest employer in Gaza, largest health care provider, largest educator in Gaza,
you know, the largest aid distribution and food security person.
UNRWA was the backbone of the Gaza Strip.
They do everything. They are a quasi-government.
And they were obviously they're funded by by they're funded by several international countries.
But there are like 10 big honchos.
The U.S. and the UK are the top two donors to UNRWA.
And when the allegations came out that there were 12 employees that participated in the attacks on October 7th, everybody paused their funding.
An independent investigation took place.
Then the story came out that the number has been reduced from 12 to 6.
And then the report by the United Nations came out and said, you know, the allegations are unsubstantiated.
There's no evidence there.
So every country resumed funding except the United States and the United Kingdom, the only two countries that have still not resumed
their funding. This is a big deal because the United States gives around 300 million dollars to UNRWA's budget.
UNRWA works in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Syria and in Jordan.
So they work everywhere. There are Palestinian refugees and they have 30,000 employees.
Now, other countries have tried to increase their funding.
And I spoke to the director of UNRWA.
I was at a conference recently and I heard them basically say that they do believe that they'll be able to kind of somehow get some
operations going, get some things off the ground in a reduced way.
But all I can think is when we're talking about the day after, it's going to require everybody increasing capacity.
I mean, if you're saying 70 percent of houses and businesses have been destroyed in Gaza and you're talking about 2 million people now
and 60 percent of them need places to stay and they're going to need jobs and everybody's going to need health care and
everybody's going to need schooling to resume, it's going to need, you're not going to go, you can't go back to the operations that were in
place on October 6th. It needs to be above and beyond that.
And so already they're going to be in a limited capacity.
And I know that people in Gaza are going to suffer as a result of that.
So UNRWA, the United States passed our Congress in all of its infinite wisdom, decided to pass and codify into law that you are not
able to fund UNRWA for fiscal year 2025.
So our government, who gives 300 million usually to UNRWA, is not going to be giving them any money through 2025.
And so they're not going to they're going to have to come up with that money from somewhere else.
There was recently last Thursday, there was a bunch of votes in the Capitol.
Somebody had tried to bring up UNRWA Restoration Act.
Basically, let's refund UNRWA.
Let's kind of go back to everything that's happened.
And that was quickly withdrawn.
Nobody voted on it. It was not going to pass.
So the money's got to come from somewhere.
I don't know what's going to happen.
The other thing is it's important to I mean, just to leave it all out in the open.
Why is UNRWA being attacked?
Why is the funding not going to be there?
Why is why are the why?
Why is everybody's sights set on kind of UNRWA collapsing?
It's because of what it sort of represents.
UNRWA was created by the United Nations, and essentially it was to address the Palestine refugee problem.
So as long as there is an institution that's being supported by all of these countries that is geared towards Palestinian refugees until there aren't any Palestinian refugees,
that problem is going to persist for people who want that problem to go away.
And so really, that's that if you look at the history of UNRWA, it's been attacked over the last two decades.
And so that's that's what's at play here.
I hope that something changes with respect to them.
And, you know, I think that's probably I think that's probably I don't know if there's been any other development other than the fact that they've lost UNRWA being a UN agency.
And since World War Two, there's been over 150 UNRWA employees killed in Gaza.
It's been the most ever for any UN agency since its inception.
So it's also a deadly job in Gaza to be to work for UNRWA.
Well, you mentioned Lebanon before, just to close off this conversation, I know you were just there.
Obviously, now there's tension at that border as well.
Talk to me about the Lebanese people's fears, having seen what's going on in Gaza at the moment.
And absolutely. And they experience they experience what war looks like in southern Lebanon.
In 2006, there was a war that took place there and a lot of it was devastated.
And there's been skirmishes back and forth between southern Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel.
I mean, they have been really kind of going back and forth on a smaller scale.
An idea of a full blown war breaking out reached its reached like the height of fears last week.
So much so that Canada encouraged any dual citizens to flee the country.
They told any Canadian citizen in Lebanon, get out while you can, is what the messaging was from Canada's foreign ministry.
So there have been lots of villages that have been evacuated in southern Lebanon and have been destroyed.
The pictures are rough.
But the idea that this could break out into something that looked like 2006, everybody's nervous.
Everybody's panicking. The airports have a lot of a lot of people who are fleeing the country.
And in the streets of Beirut, I mean, there's people who are just like pretty nervous and saying,
we really don't want to see a war come to this country.
And I think my understanding is if you talk to anybody involved, is that if there is a ceasefire in Gaza, we're good.
There will be no war in Lebanon. There will be no war between Iran and Israel.
The Houthis in Yemen will not attack any cargo ships that are passing through the Red Sea.
Everything will kind of stabilize. And so I think that's why it's so important to kind of keep,
make sure that we're still pushing for a ceasefire, making sure that we just stop this war that's going on and prevent it from becoming this whole regional war that will absolutely pull in other global players.
And America has come out and said plainly, the US said we have to get involved if there is some sort of Lebanon-Israel war between Hezbollah and Israel.
So, you know, that's this is it's the real deal. It's the real deal.
Now is the time to act and make sure that we prevent anything from happening.
Yeah. And that makes it more real for the Americans that will understand their children will be sent to fight those wars.
You know, and again, you talked about, you know, people gaining power and wealth from war.
Well, we're fully aware of the military industrial complex here.
You know, and there's so many people have on the show, especially in the special forces branches, that when it comes to Afghanistan, for example, they all kind of say the same thing.
We should have been in for like 18 months, you know, taken out the key targets, taken out the training camps and then left again.
And it was 20 years with the world's worst withdrawal that broke the hearts of so many people who served.
And now we're going to send our children off again to watch more, you know, American, British, Canadian caskets come back covered in the national flag.
So this should be a giant wake up call for us.
Like the driving nucleus of this is it's the right thing to do because it's an absolute atrocity.
But even if you're more worried about your own bubble, this is going to bleed into our military, too.
And James, you bring up an important point.
There is this figure that's coming out of Gaza six over, you know, up until this point, the Israelis have gotten 60 billion dollars worth of arms from the United States in these eight months.
Who is benefiting from that amount of money of weapons being sent to the Israelis?
Right. And it's that it's again, there's people who are going to make lots of money.
A war with Lebanon and Hezbollah would surely mean a surge in that.
I mean, you're talking double or triple that amount of weapons needed and being purchased.
So, you know, that's important to keep in mind.
It's like, you know, there's, you know, there's all sorts of reasons to be against this.
And like you said, kind of the backbone of this is really want to avoid bloodshed.
Really want to make sure that that doesn't happen.
But also, I mean, these you don't want these people's showing up influencing decisions that are made in wartime, people who are going to be lining their pockets with money.
And that's, you know, that that that only spells bad news for the people involved, for the everyday people who, for example, will have will either be serving or have people they love who will be serving in these conflicts.
Absolutely. Well, we have gone, you know, not even all over the place.
We've taken a deep dive. I think what's interesting about the second conversation is we've looked in the mirror in the States.
Like, what can we do? And I love that phrase.
If you want to change the world, start at home.
Like you said, every single one of us has an opportunity to make a difference in this conversation.
And if we stand side by side like we should do, then we can demand a change before I let you go.
Is there anything else you want to kind of impart?
You know, I probably would just say again for me, I do think this is a pivotal moment.
The last thing I want to tell you is just to kind of give everybody a glimpse of what it would take to kind of get in now that the border has sort of shut down there.
Now you have to go to Jordan, go into Israel and then get to Gaza.
But we are hearing communication that the Israelis say anybody with Palestinian roots, even if they have Palestinian grandparents, will be denied entry into the Gaza Strip.
And that before when I took seven bags of medical supplies with me and a group of five of us took 30 bags of medical supplies.
Now, one per person, you can only take one bag less than 50 pounds, less than 23 kilograms, and it can only have personal belongings.
And I was bringing in ET tubes. I was bringing in a portable ultrasound device.
I was bringing in Band-Aids. I was bringing in gauze.
Those are the things that I brought in. I stuffed my bags with when I went in January.
Now you're telling me, me as a Palestinian, I can't go in, but you who's going to go in there, James, if you're going to decide to go to Gaza and help out,
you can only bring in your boxers and briefs and you can only bring in personal items.
You can't bring in stuff that you know that you need to use.
And now before it was minimum two weeks. All right.
A rotation of two weeks of humanitarian actors, doctors, nurses, first responders, whatever in and out.
Now it's minimum of four weeks and expect delays.
James, I don't know a single subspecialist in the United States who can take four weeks off of work to go and help in Gaza.
I don't know anybody that I don't know an orthopedic surgeon that can do that. I don't know a trauma surgeon.
I know that two weeks they can do it. They can make it happen.
But now they're telling us four weeks.
So the idea that, you know, that there is going to be like, oh, some sort of opportunity to continue the war and then allow the humanitarian situation to get better.
With how it is right now, as of today, it's impossible.
And this this new process of getting people in who want to help in Gaza, making it so brutal and difficult and restrictive, it's only going to result in people suffering.
So I hope that anybody that's listening to this can just sort of know some of those details, because I think people like those like to hear details like that.
They like to hear like, OK, if somebody wanted to go and help, I'm a doctor, I'm a nurse, I'm a you know, I'm a paramedic.
I want to go and help. I want to do what I can.
I know how to deal with trauma. This is what this is what you would be put through.
This is the ringer that you'd be put through.
Don't even think about, you know, you can bring in one stethoscope if there's two, it's getting confiscated.
You can bring in one electronic device. You try to bring in one of those cool portable ultrasounds.
Forget about it. I mean, that's that's the that's the stuff that's going on right now.
And so I think that's something that I just wanted to kind of put out there just to see just how hard it is to kind of do good work,
just how hard it is to bring in relief into Gaza right now.
So that's just one layer. I know we've talked a lot about this.
Obviously, I appreciate the opportunity. It's always great talking to you.
And it's nice to kind of put things in perspective.
I think that, you know, that helps me and I hope it helps people who are listening.
I'm sure it does. So we mentioned before about MedGlobal, obviously the humanitarian group that you're a part of.
Where can people find MedGlobal so they can be more educated or maybe donate and try and be part of the solution?
And then where are the best places to find you online?
Absolutely. I mean, you can definitely follow me on Instagram. That's the only social media that I'm on.
And it's just my name. If you search my name, Thayer Ahmad, you'll find me.
And then MedGlobal, too, they're on social media, MedGlobal.org.
There are a lot of great organizations working in Gaza right now.
The Palestinian American Medical Association, the International Medical Corps, they've all got teams on the ground.
And there's they're always pulling out, you know, they're just trying to show the reality of what's taking place on the ground.
So anybody that's really kind of wants to do a deeper dive, you know, obviously, feel free to also contact me with any questions or anything.
You can definitely find me on Instagram. And then also with any of these organizations,
one thing I always caution people with, especially because if they want to be generous and they want to donate financially to some of these humanitarian relief organizations,
make sure you're looking at organizations that were already on the ground in Gaza before everything broke out.
They've got the infrastructure. They've got people in the field. They've already got the know how.
You know, there's there's a really sad thing. And I hate to end with this,
but there's a really sad thing when conflict happens and you get a rush of all these different groups and organizations.
Unfortunately, that can not result in the maximum benefit.
So always keep in mind, you know, that there are organizations that have been on the ground support those organizations.
You can always go to Charity Watch or Charity Navigator and double check, making sure that the organizations you do contribute to are legit.
They're rated well, that they are audited.
And then finally, you know, anything that you feel like is important, you want to share, you want to collaborate with,
you can reach out to people like me or people who have been there.
We're always happy to continue the conversation and always happy to answer any questions.
Beautiful. Sorry, I'm excited.
Well, I just want to say thank you. I mean, this is obviously a second conversation now,
but it is so important for us to hear that centrist voice.
And, you know, it doesn't matter what I'm talking about.
The normal people always live in the middle, standing in the middle.
And with you being a respected physician here in the U.S.
and with you having actually spent time in Gaza, you know, obviously before it got immensely worse.
This is such an important perspective.
So I want to thank you yet again for being so generous with your time and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast.
Thank you. Love the podcast. Always so happy to be on it.