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I'll spell that to you because it's not as you
think, T -E -A -M -B -U -I -L -D -R .com. 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 for the third
time Chicago emergency physician and humanitarian,
Dr. Thayer Ahmad. Now, for those of you who listened
to this for a while, Thayer first came on on
episode 892 at the beginning of 2024. He then,
for the second time, was on at 948, and this
is the third conversation. I'm going to put my
hand on my heart and say that he is probably
the person I trust the most to give a simple
middle of the road, humanitarian compassion view
on all things Gaza. In the first conversation,
he talked about the community that he saw in
Jerusalem with Jews and Christians and Muslims
praying side by side. So this is a man who spent
his life trying to save lives here in the US
and, of course, doing the same thing in Gaza
on humanitarian trips. So in this third conversation,
we discuss a host of topics. The health care
crisis we're enduring here in the US. The impact
of lobbyists paying politicians on the health
and even mortality of the US population. the
mass starvation that is happening through the
blocking of humanitarian aid in Gaza, the 15
paramedics and firefighters that were murdered
by Israeli forces that was ultimately denied
and when video surfaced they had to acknowledge,
how the people of Israel seem to be rising up
and opposing the war, which is extremely hopeful,
and so much more. Now, before we get to this
incredible conversation, like 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
five -star rating truly does elevate this podcast,
therefore making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library of well over 1 ,000
episodes now. So all I ask in return is that
you help share these incredible men and women's
stories so I can get them to every single person
on planet Earth who needs to hear them. And one
more note, Thea talks about the search for stem
cells for a very, very sick seven -year -old
girl. If you are listening and you fit the criteria,
please, please, please go to the website and
see if you are a match. So with that being said,
I welcome back onto the show. Dr. Thea Ahmad.
Enjoy. Well, Thea, I want to start by saying...
Firstly, thank you so much for coming back on.
This will be our third conversation on the Behind
the Shield podcast today. Thank you for having
me. I always love coming on and having lively
discussions. So where on planet Earth are we
finding you this time? I'm back in Chicago in
the southwest suburbs right now. Well, staying
on domestic soil for a moment, I have just...
I'm navigating still out of this latest flu.
And from what I'm seeing, you know, for the other
people, from what I'm seeing in myself, this
one is fricking awful. And it seems to have really,
you know, have quite an impact, but I'm talking
at my, my kind of world is a lot of healthy people,
a lot of athletes. So they're bouncing back from
it, but just to kind of underline, I'm sure partly
again, it's my own immune system. I'd been traveling
quite a bit on planes. There was jet lag. So
I was probably more vulnerable, but. I had an
infection that I just could not shift. And I
took antibiotics for the first time and it's
probably been two plus decades. So talk to me
about what are you seeing as far as this way?
Because obviously, you know, a few years ago,
a variant came through and it was on every news
channel and there was a little ticker in the
corner. And then after that, obviously, there
was no discussion of making Americans healthier
and addressing the obesity crisis. But I'm wondering
again now what the impact of this, because of
all the ones you've had recently, this seems
to be a pretty brutal strain that we're dealing
with at the moment. Yeah, I mean, you're seeing
a ton of people coming through the emergency
department, people who just feel like they're
not getting better. So, you know, they're doing
everything that they're supposed to be doing
the first few days. They're trying to get better.
They're trying to stay hydrated. They're trying
to get good rest. But they're just not feeling
back to their self 100 percent. People still
spiking fevers or having chills. People can't
kick a cough. There's even people who are talking
about. you know, having GI symptoms, you know,
multiple episodes of diarrhea or not able to
keep any food or drink down or not having any
appetite and losing, you know, losing a lot of
weight. Also, you know, in my house, my daughter,
too, she's been at home for the last few days,
just, you know, high grade fevers, not feeling
well. And it's tough. I mean, we're definitely
seeing that. And it causes this huge strain in
the emergency department, too. I mean, that's
why. You know, you might show up and you sprained
your ankle or you've broken your wrist and you're
trying to just get checked out real quick or
get a quick x -ray. And that turns into a 12
hour stay in our waiting room. It's because,
you know, there's just a massive influx of people
who are trying to get checked out because they've
just got this virus from hell that they're not
able to kick. And, you know, it's it definitely
yeah, it definitely I think a lot of people were
worried about because we were most. Kids are
also going on spring break. People are traveling,
people are in the airports, people are in these
planes and stuff. And so I think, you know, it's
yeah, definitely. I think one of my friends who
owns like kind of a wellness clinic, he's was,
you know, just talking about, hey, come through
if you want to get some, you know, some IV hydration
or, you know, take some extra vitamins. You know,
it's just everybody's everybody's feeling it,
you know, and so. Definitely, it was a brutal
one for sure. What about on the mortality side
with our more vulnerable population? Are you
seeing a lot of deaths from this too? You know,
you are seeing pneumonia develop. I mean, I was
working in the ER last night and we definitely
had somebody who was actively getting chemotherapy.
They actually, you know, tested positive on our
virus panel for a virus, but then subsequently,
you know, I did develop a pneumonia, which...
You know, again, a lot of people will probably
be able to handle a good course of some antibiotics
would be all right. But once you get into these
vulnerable populations, it's a lot more serious.
I mean, the mortality does go up. These people
need to be hospitalized. They need to watch closely
that they're, you know, at least that they're,
you know, they don't need any sort of oxygen
support and doesn't turn into something a lot
more serious than just, you know, walking pneumonia.
So you definitely that's that's who you worry
about. Of course, you know, those are the people
that you start to think about and you worry about
and you want to get out there. But, you know,
I think it's it's interesting, too, because I
feel like it also hasn't gotten the kind of coverage
that we've seen in the past with respect to,
hey, there's this gnarly thing going around.
And, you know, this is what everybody's dealing
with. And it's like sweeping schools and all
this. I don't think we're seeing that as much.
I think there's a lot going on current events
wise, and that's probably the case. But again,
this has real impacts on everyday lives of people.
Everybody knows somebody who may be immunocompromised.
Everybody has somebody that they love or that
they interact with that may have had a kidney
transplant or may be on dialysis or may be getting
up there in age or is a cancer survivor. So you
always want to make sure everybody's aware and
informed. For God's sake, if you are sick, don't
go to a party. Don't go to a birthday party and,
you know, don't offer anybody any, you know,
any part of your drink or food. Have you seen
that show on HBO called The Pit? Yeah, I've seen
clips of it. Yeah, it is. I've got to say it's
an excellent, excellent show. I've seen numerous
times, you know, physicians, paramedics, etc.
They said, I've been watching it waiting, waiting
for them to screw up. And he said, and I'm still
waiting. Apart from them having to obviously
explain through the dialogue that you wouldn't
normally do the procedures they're doing. Why
are you doing an IO? Well, I'm trying to get
IV fluids into the bone. It's really well done.
But one of the things that's beautiful about
it is the hallways are packed. Triage is packed.
And that was what was such a disservice during
COVID as these journalists were saying, oh, it's
so bad that the hallways at the hospitals are
packed. And we're all going, well, wait a second.
That's like every day in a city hospital. What
are you talking about? And I'm sure now, as you
mentioned, I'm assuming your triage and your
hallways are probably full of medics and people
waiting to be seen. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's
a national crisis, James, that's gotten worse
and worse. Anybody that's kind of walked through
or interfaced in an emergency department knows
how terrible it can be where somebody's kind
of been in the hallway for 10 hours waiting for
a bed upstairs in the hospital. But right now,
it's probably the worst that we've seen in a
very long time. In fact, the American College
of Emergency Physicians at the end of this month
will be going to D .C. to lobby, you know, and
just try to figure out how we can fix this crisis.
Because at the end of the day, if there's people
stuck in your waiting room who are not being
seen, then you are going to have an increase
in mortality. People will suffer as a result
of that. And you'll have complications that shouldn't
happen. And I'll say, you know, one other thing,
too, is, you know, with respect to that is we've
got instead what we have as administrators for
big hospital systems. Guys who have never been
in the back of a rig, have never put on some
scrubs, never put an IV in a patient, never put
in and never drilled in an IO. We've got guys
who went and got their MBAs who are coming through
and see that problem. And instead of trying to
address it seriously and try to figure out what's
the best way we can serve our patients. Instead,
they're looking at how to cut hours of nurses
and physicians, how to make sure that, you know,
there is that these like you can you can really
I call it cooking the books, because what they
want to do is just say like, oh, look, my doctors
are seeing this many people per hour. But you're
not talking about the fact that you're not you're
not you don't have enough doctors or my nurses
are out here and we can they can see. You know,
we can assign them six or seven patients per
nurse, but you're not talking about how dangerous
that is for a nurse to have to deal with that
many patients. So it's a serious problem. And
I think people who don't have that knowledge
base, who aren't in the field, you know, we talk
about this in humanitarian relief. You're not
in the field, but you're making these crucial
decisions that affect everybody involved. And
so it's very frustrating, really frustrating
time in health. yeah i mean we had that even
the fire service like the last place i worked
at no one in the upper echelon the chief level
had ever done fire and ems combined and the top
two were fire prevention and dispatch in charge
of an entire fire department so i've lived it
i've seen it and it's it's insane it's funny
back to the pit they have an administrator and
they actually tell that story too and he's like
your ratings you got to improve your ratings
he's like well If you got people beds and we
wouldn't have people waiting for 10 hours and
three hours, your ratings would go up. So it's
kind of interesting because they wove that in
deliberately, which I thought was phenomenal.
Yeah. And not to not to kind of get too controversial
here, but there's something to be said when you
were basically allowing health care in this country.
uh to be kind of follow the same rules of any
other corporation or business where it's like
hey it's we've got shareholders we want to make
sure that the bottom line is being met that the
profit loss sheets look okay you know uh i can
understand that for maybe like clinics or stuff
but when you're talking about people who are
sicker i mean you've got to just we've got to
bring the human aspect of this back you know
not saying that other systems are better But,
you know, the fact that that bias or that influence
is there where it's really about making some
money and, you know, like, I mean, sometimes
they talk about, you know, how patients they'll
come into the ER and there's a length of stay.
And we want to make sure that we're turning over
quickly. Somebody's not staying in a hospital
bed too long. Somebody's not staying in the ER
bed too long. Like this is not a restaurant.
You know, it's not the Olive Garden where you
want to kind of get people in and out. And that
way you can seat more customers. I mean, but
that's, you know, that's that's who's running
the show right now. I wouldn't have the endless
breadsticks in the ER anyway, I've got to be
honest. Yes. Fried turkey sandwich. Well, it's
interesting. So talking about solutions, firstly,
what was totally predictable yet still disappointing
is one of the people that was brought on as the
election team for this current president was,
oh, let's bring in this guy talking about the
nation's health. Let's make America healthy again.
now it's i don't know i'm pretty sure he's been
in office for quite a long time now and all i've
heard is greenland and plastic straws so far
and of course let's support israel and gaza and
we'll get to that but you know where first so
where is that conversation and we talked about
this before i'm sure last time but in covid what
a beautiful captive audience what an amazing
opportunity to turn the obesity crisis around
and it was completely disregarded and you don't
have to be a genius to figure out And if the
people paying for your campaign are the fast
food companies and the drug companies, how much
effort are you really going to put into making
Americans healthy when there's no profit in dead
Americans, there's no profit in healthy Americans,
but there's a huge profit in sick Americans.
And that's what we see. Yeah. I mean, you know,
this is something that I think people really,
really should start to. start to focus on because
it's playing out and has played out not just
in this administration it's played out in every
administration like you've kind of said but special
interests will eventually harm the American public.
And if, you know, instead of having professionals
who are sort of leading this, leaders who have
been in the field, people who are not compromised
by getting a paycheck or a consulting fee from
some big corporation, regardless of what space
that they're in, you know, if instead you have
people who have dedicated their lives to this
and care about it and, you know, obviously have
the track record, you've got all of these other
individuals. it just doesn't it's just not working
the system is broken people are not getting healthier
and we do have this massive crisis i really thought
covid was going to be a pivotal point but instead
it just became this really political and polarizing
debate i thought we would for covid we talk about
how come you know we would talk about okay what
does it mean to have health care is there a right
to health care for people you know maybe that's
a You know, maybe that's universal health care.
Maybe that's making sure everybody that, you
know, is able to have access to health care.
Maybe it's talking about kids growing up, making
sure that they have the education about making
sure that, you know, what's a nutritious meal
and what's, you know, giving people that sort
of education. And instead it became a, you know,
it became, it spiraled into this really heavy
political debate and, you know, filled with conspiracy
theories, but also ignoring the actual, some
of the actual problems. Like who was at risk
during COVID? Everybody knows obesity was one
of the risk factors that meant if you got COVID
and you didn't do so well, you were probably
one, you know, there was a chance that you were
obese, but nobody's talking about that. So it's
really frustrating. And now you've got, I know
a lot of people really kind of, were singing
the praises of Robert Kennedy with respect to
what he was talking about with healthy foods.
And I think there's so many, I think at the end
of the day, look at what the guy is saying on
some things, right? Some things he was saying,
you're like, okay, hey, this kind of makes sense.
He's talking about artificial stuff in foods
and series. You're like, okay, this is all great.
But at the end of the day too, he's not somebody
who... you know he he's not somebody who has
this background that i necessarily trust when
it comes to feel like have you interacted with
human beings have you been there on the ground
trying to treat people have you lost a patient
or have you lost somebody when you were trying
to save them he didn't he that's not him and
you know instead um you know he's got all of
these things where he wants to talk you know
he's dealing it's kind of crazy he's dealing
with the measles outbreak in texas but He's got
his very controversial positions on childhood
vaccines. I saw it just right before we sat down.
I think it was maybe only a few hours ago. Apparently,
he has publicly said that he's behind the MMR
vaccine now. Yeah, exactly. He said everybody
should get it, and that's the way we're going
to get rid of this, which is, as somebody who
has seen epidemics break out globally, There's
some things that just work, regardless of what
the politics about situations may be. And for
him, I think he's starting to realize that. But
again, he's not somebody that I think is suited
for that position, but that's the position that
he got. And one of the things that he talked
about, too, was he used the roles for really
some bizarre political thing where he said, I
think, something about anti -Israel stuff. is
a public health crisis or something like that.
You're like, you know, as Americans, we've got
a ton of public health crises right now that
we need to be focusing on. And it's like, you
know, it's frustrating. And then now we've got
Dr. Oz who might be, you know, or he was confirmed
as the center for Medicaid and Medicare services.
He's going to be like heading that up. That's
going to be his job. And, you know, Dr. Oz is,
you know, was a medical doctor, but I think he
was a talk show host. I think for the last. 10
or 15 years. And when you're talking about stuff
like Medicare and Medicaid and getting people
covered and services that need to be covered,
again, he's not somebody that I want in that
role, but it sucks because it's just a continuation
of kind of what we're seeing. These are people
who I would say don't have the interests of the
American public at heart. And I would say that
you can notice that for as long as either of
us have been alive in this, when it comes to
this country, that's always been the case. It's
just not people who you want in these roles.
Well, I think what's sad is if you just look
at other countries and mine would be a good example,
but the NHS has been kind of picked apart, you
know, and half privatized and poorly supported.
But at its core, I mean, I would say that the
NHS is the best health care system on the planet
when it's supported. Because if you think about
it, if you have a tax based system. And it's
not a profit based system like we have here where
you make money from sick people. Then if you
have a tax based system, your sole goal is to
make your nation as healthy as possible. So you
don't use much of that pot of money from that
everyone's chipped in through taxes. And instead
now, sadly, we're seeing England's not too far
behind the UK, the US, excuse me, and the obesity.
Now, every time I go home, I'm shocked because
we used to be a really healthy nation. So let's
move that aside. Great philosophy, poorly executed
the last 10 years. And let's go to Scandinavia.
Why are so many of them in great shape? Portugal
actually is a good example as well. So there
are so many examples of how to do it right. It's
not like we're fumbling around. The whole world
is obese and none of us can figure it out. We
know how to fix it. We know the best healthcare
systems. But the problem is, as we pointed to,
it's never about the people. Because if it was,
there would be a nuanced conversation. Yes, some
vaccines are invaluable, but some vaccines are
predatory. Some companies are trying to ram vaccines
down your kids' throats that you don't need.
But there are certain ones that you do need.
It's a nuanced conversation. But the same with,
you know, COVID. Where was, all right, we need
to put real food back in schools. We're going
to reinstate all PE programs. We're going to
support local farmers to grow organic food. We're
going to work on pedestrianizing downtowns. You
know, I mean, there's so many you could do. I'm
an idiot. And I just came up with four off the
top of my head. So, you know. that there's it's
the fact that it's so actionable and so preventable
and yet all it is is just aversion to the topic
shows you the lack of interest and to be very
fair like this is this goes back 20 30 years
that we've been getting fatter and sicker so
that's either side of the aisle over and over
again so it was never about the american people
it was always about the money 100 i mean that's
the you know for us in the in the united states
the bottom line is special interests cannot have
the access and influence that they have over
elected officials. If you're big pharma, there
is no reason you should have a special relationship
with a congressman or a senator or be able to
spend however much money on any sort of campaign
or race. And it goes the same for so many different
groups. There's one thing that I think we should
mention. you know, capitalistic society that
can work in our favor with respect to these companies
that are competing when it comes to, you know,
research and development. Yes, when pharmaceutical
companies are competing to get a better drug
for diabetes or hypertension, it's a good thing
because they're competing with each other and
they may develop a good drug. But when you're
in the system now where suddenly you've kind
of developed that drug, that's when the evil
starts to creep in. the drug is developed now
you're trying to push it to everybody now no
matter what you want to make sure it's being
prescribed it's no longer now developing the
best product it's more about getting it out there
and making sure that in every american household
it's in the medicine cabinet and you know that's
that's why i think the nhs and you know prior
to uh kind of the dismantling that's happening
now right you remove that incentive To put it
in, you know, where you're like, hey, this is
the bottom line is the most important thing.
Let's kind of get the revenues up. Instead, like
you said, if this is all based on the country's,
you know, yours is based on taxes, you are, again,
it's really about preventative care. It's really
about that sort of primary care, making sure
everybody has that primary doctor and they're
staying on top of it. And if they've got a family
history of diabetes, they're well aware of how
to pursue life with, you know, making sure they're
exercising three times a week, 30 minutes a day
of cardio. So it's like. People have to see,
you talk about follow the money. It makes sense.
We live in a capitalistic society here. Of course,
these big pharmaceutical companies are going
to want to make a lot of money. If there's a
study being published about something and it's
sponsored by big pharma, I'm ignoring that study.
I cannot take that study seriously because they
have every single incentive to try to tell me
that their drug is good. And that I should be
prescribing it for patients. So we got to get
that, you know, we just got to get that out of
there. Things will be a lot better, but I don't
know. I don't know if that's going to happen
anytime soon. Well, I think just one example,
and there's so many, is OxyContin, which is an
FDA approved drug where there were complete lies
behind, you know, the addictive nature of it.
And that has gone through. And Richard Sackler
to this day is living in a mansion in Boca Raton,
Florida. But then the MDMA that was brought to
the FDA that's having amazing benefits along
with counseling, it's not a prescribed thing.
You do it while you go through a counseling session.
It's helping our first responders and our veterans
and other people, especially on PTSD, that was
turned down. So, you know, it's clear, so clear.
I mean, everyone involved in coxie cotton should
be behind bars. I would say the drug should be
discontinued. And, you know, and how many now
over these several years, how many millions of
Americans have we lost to OxyContin and then
the opioid crisis that followed? Absolutely.
I mean, you know, the thing is, there's no patent
that you can that any company can get on MDMA
or, you know, some of these other drugs, like
even ketamine, you know. And so, you know, what's
what's really tragic about the opioid crisis
in general? is you can see again the pervasive
nature of when you have lobbyists and you have
people who are able to influence our government.
At one point, the CMS, which is the Center for
Medicaid and Medicare Services, at one point,
the lobby groups were able to say, hey, pain
needs to be considered the fifth vital sign.
So when somebody goes to the ER, make sure your
doctor is asking them, what's your pain scale?
And if they didn't do anything about the pain
scale, then you should not be getting reimbursed
for that visit to the emergency department. Or
they were pushing it in that fashion where there
was like, people are going to be dinged about
that. And then, of course, if somebody's pain
is a nine and Tylenol didn't work or, you know,
Ibuprofen didn't work, here's this amazing drug
that you can use to help with pain. And it's,
you know. And we saw kind of what happened as
a result of that. But they really, really pushed
it. I mean, they were calling it the fifth vital
sign, the pain score, where it's like this subjective
score. And it was like this really insidious
way of getting people to prescribe this more
and getting people to be exposed to this nasty
drug. smiley face scale, as I call it. I know
it's got an official name of the people that
came up with it, but I didn't realize, I thought,
I'm not sure if it was actually created for this
or it was just used. But, but if you look at
the story of Purdue, that was the tool that they
brought to everyone. So the fact that we have
them now, you know, in, in, you know, pre -hospital
medicine really is because of that. And, you
know, is it a valuable tool kind of ish, but
I mean, let's be honest, if we look at a patient,
we can really tell what the pain scale is. You
don't need a little cartoon with, you know, smiley
or frowny faces so but yeah i mean it's so so
sad when you look at it and then how many people
that have worked for the government both sides
um on the fda side end up working for drug companies
i mean again i mean it screams you know corruption
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it's totally it's
a totally unacceptable way. I mean, I know some
people are starting to talk about this, but it's
not reached the level where it's becoming more
mainstream. Like even some elected officials
or even when it comes to owning stocks, you know,
it's like as an elected official, like, why do
you have that thing sort of corrupting the way
you're trying to advocate for your constituency?
And but we're not you know, it's not it's not
a mainstream discussion yet. No. well going to
the other side so we've got making our nation
healthier which is obviously a more long -term
goal one of the things that's that's come across
my radar recently and gmr the parent company
of amr um have got this thing called nurse navigation
the way it works they're looking at um the uh
911 system as a three -tier approach and i love
this so you've got als you've got bls and then
you've got non -emergent and so what would happen
when you integrate their system in in you know
a fire or police dispatch is you know they do
their emd um algorithm okay it's it's a low low
acuity call they then say to the caller well
hey we can send an ambulance or we can just give
you a consultation with a nurse you know would
you prefer that well yeah i'm just worried about
my sick 18 month old i'm a first -time parent
and they throw up once i think they're going
to die of dehydration and explode So they just,
you know, really want peace of mind. So then
they get sent over there. The first goal is just
to simply self -treat a home. Do you have kids
Tylenol? Okay, take the, you know, do they feel
hot? Remove the clothes from them, give them
Tylenol, you know, do ABC. If these things change,
call us back. they have the ability to make urgent
care clinic appointments dentist appointments
optician reappointments they can refer to an
actual telehealth consultation with an md that
way they can even get a prescription refill and
they can obviously get that uber to their house
as well so you look at the litany of calls non
-emergent calls that come to us first and then
end up in your doors they're able to eliminate
so many and it's a win -win -win because The
patient's bill is going to be a fraction of what
it would be walking through the ER doors. You
guys have one more bed available for a true emergency.
And that crew didn't wake up for that call. So
I think that's a beautiful, you know, taking
one good thing that came out of COVID, which
was the amplification of telehealth, weaving
it into the pre -hospital world and having that
ripple effect to have a positive effect on all
three parties of that call. Yeah. I mean, I think
that's, for me, I think that's a really incredible
way of trying to approach this. And I think that,
you know, I think one thing I think about is
we really have to make sure that all of these
providers, you know, from A to Z, from the initial
dispatcher, they need to also make sure that
they have the peace of mind that nobody's going
to come after them. If something goes wrong,
something will go wrong. That's what happens.
You know, patients don't read the book. And sometimes
there are surprise, you know, things that take
place. What seems like a normal fever ends up
becoming something more serious. So people need
to have that peace of mind that they're not going
to lose everything or that they're not going
to be sued by some law firm if that's the case.
The second our providers feel protected, they
will sort of, you know, they will have that autonomy.
And they will have that, at least that focus
of being like, okay, this seems like everything
is fitting this sort of criteria. This, I can
stratify this into a low risk category here.
I think that's the, we've got to be able to do
that. I mean, right now, if you see what's happening
is sometimes patients are calling an on -call
nurse or they are, you know, trying to talk to
somebody on the phone. They'll call the hospital,
for example. And they say, this is what's going
on at home. What should I? What should I do?
My kid basically saying their ear hurts and they
have a fever. And the response now because of
the way the system is set up is if you're worried,
go into a hospital, call 911. You know, that's
what they're telling people when, you know, we
can't give advice over the over the phone. We
need to we need to change that. That needs to
be especially with the conditions right now.
We've got to revolutionize the system. I love
this idea. I mean, I think this is something
that. needs to be supported, needs to be kind
of, we got to, at the minimum, this needs to
be piloted in just major cities as soon as possible.
You know, again, we've got a national crisis.
And so, you know, I think this is something that,
you know, this should be on a federal level.
People should be getting behind funding this
in a serious way. Absolutely. Well, you kind
of touched on the subject. When I first came
to the States, I told this story a couple of
times. So apologies, anyone who's heard it already.
I remember looking, I was in a hotel and it was
the yellow pages. And back when they were still
paper, not online. And from the side, you could
see like a quarter of the book, the pages from
the side were obviously like a certain color,
like to show a certain group of people. So again,
I'm thinking, well, it must be doctors and hospitals.
You know, that's what most people need. But it
was lawyers, literally a quarter of the yellow
pages. Now, fast forward, I've become. you know,
a firefighter EMT. And now I'm in paramedic school.
And one day this guy comes in, a human version
of a peacock starts strutting around the classroom,
bragging about how many first responders he's
testified against as an expert witness because
they didn't do this in their report or that in
their report. And I remember thinking, well,
just because I was older by this point, what
a fucking idiot. I'm just going to disregard
everything this guy says. And thank God I did,
because then I was still able to critically think
as a paramedic, do the job in the parameters
that I was given, but also think outside the
box when it came to treating the patient. But
I watched what we refer to as cookbook medics,
these guys that were so scared of litigation
that they actually had a detriment to their skills
as an EMT or a paramedic. what do you see in
your community and how can we address that because
you talked about the fear of litigation i feel
like to counter that if you do your job properly
within your scope of practice then you should
have a very strong argument if anyone brings
it to the table like no i did exactly what was
meant to happen yeah i mean it's it's horrible
when it comes to you know uh i'll talk about
physicians and being worried about um being sued
at some point. And people have horror stories.
I mean, it's less about, did you do something
wrong and were you incompetent? And more about,
can a lawyer drag this out where an insurance
company or a hospital is willing to pay a settlement?
And hospitals at this point are calculating the
difference. They're saying, okay, if we hire
a lawyer, we have to build this many hours to
defend our doctor in this scenario. Is it worth
it or can we just pay out whatever it is? All
the while, It's a really kind of devastating
moment in someone's career to be served papers
and be sued. It's very isolating. It is something
that people feel ashamed. They think that they're
bad doctors or that they're bad health care providers,
which we know is most of the time not the case.
Oftentimes what it is is nothing that somebody
did wrong or was incompetent about or malicious
about. It was just that this person, for whatever
reason, had that sort of luck in their life where...
something bad happened. Yes, are there moments
where there's some maliciousness or there is
something that is something negligent or somebody
was being discriminatory or somebody's just bad?
Yes, of course. But, you know, not nearly as
often as people are being sued. And in some of
these states where there isn't tort reform, where
there isn't sort of legislation. that kind of
prevents these ambulance chasers from going after
anybody that was involved in a case, you see
that it's a much better environment for people.
Everybody's mental health with respect to anybody
that's a healthcare provider, they don't worry
about that. And what it does is it affects every
aspect of care. It's not just this person that
can be sued and the hospital's paying out money.
But suddenly when I encounter a patient, I may
think somebody's chest pain is not related to
an MI, a heart attack or, you know, but, you
know, in the 1 % chance they're in that category
of people who present so atypically and so weirdly,
I'm suddenly doing a thousand, $10 ,000, $100
,000 workup. You know, it creates that, it creates
the, it supports this horrible broken system
that we're in. And it delays me seeing the next
patient. It also puts this person through unnecessary
testing. Their bill is through the roof and it's
all to prevent this. horrible moment. And I think,
you know, that's something that we're all, that,
you know, people have been talking about changing
it, and it's happened in some states. But it's
still not the case. I mean, it's not the case
in Illinois, that's for sure. And especially
the county that I'm in Cook County, which is
Chicago, it's really bad, the environment is
really, really bad. And so, you know, I think,
again, that's something that contributes to the
to the broken system. Yeah. And again, that's
something I'd never hear discussed. And it's
so apparent. I mean, I've told this before, but
when I first got hired in Hialeah and outside
Miami, I'll never forget. There was this traffic
accident we were called to. And I think the rescue
was ahead of us and we were on the engine then.
And this guy had been backing out of a parking
lot in a tiny little strip mall area. Someone
had just been rolling into the parking lot and
they kind of dinked. Like the two cars kissed
rather than collided. And this, the driver of
the car backing up was a lawyer. Oh, he's got
back pain. He's got neck pain. Well, this is
Miami in the summer and it's a tropical thunderstorm.
So the medics had him taped to the board outside
while they were inside the ambulance doing all
the paperwork while this guy was getting drenched.
And then obviously, you know, the, the one piece
of tape was over his eyebrows too. When they
had to finally remove that, he was going to look
even more shocked than he was lying in the first
place. But this was, you know, it's funny, but
it's just a sad reality. And then a few days
later, we had another person supposedly slip
and fall. And then they showed us a video footage
of them emptying detergent on the floor and then
lying next to it and going, ah, so, so yeah,
I mean, this is the serious issue. So you think
about that, you think about addressing the obesity
crisis, the mental health crisis. And removing
lobbyists from politicians, you know, in fast
food and drug companies. I mean, just do those
things alone and you would turn so much around.
Totally. Absolutely. I mean, I think that's one,
again, like not to kind of belabor the point,
but, you know, you've now also incentivized an
entire profession to pursue this exclusively.
Right. So lawyers who are involved in these kinds
of cases, personal injury, malpractice, you know,
they are going to be. opening up or hiring call
centers. Hey, have you had a hospital stay that
didn't go well? Or did you get hit by a car?
Or did you get an outstanding medical bill? It's
like it makes this whole industry. that's out
there and suddenly people who um would have never
even kind of spoken to somebody about something
because they thought everything was fine suddenly
they're being convinced that something wrong
happened and they're entitled to a certain uh
compensation you know retribution and um it's
yeah it's so it can get very disgusting really
quickly I had a local judge on and I was asking
him about the whole frivolous lawsuit thing.
And he said the thing that disgusts him the most
is when you drive down the freeway and there's
lawyers on billboards showing off how many millions
of dollars they made for the client, but not
mentioning that the other 50 percent went in
their pocket. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. That's
the other thing. I mean, again, it's like it's
such a, you know, it creates vultures. Absolutely.
And again, I think the U .S. and New Zealand
are the only two countries on the planet that
can advertise drugs on television. Yeah. Yeah.
There you go. That should tell you something.
Right. That's not American exceptionalism. That's
kind of, you know, people who are taking advantage
of a situation and have influence where they
shouldn't. Right. I mean, if nobody else in the
world is doing it, you know, there's you should
ask yourself, why is it a good thing? And I think
you get the answer pretty quickly. Absolutely.
All right. Well, then let's shift over to Gaza
now. The last time we spoke, if I'm not mistaken,
was around summer of last year. So through your
eyes, before I hit specific topics, can I talk
to me about the overall movement in whichever
direction that the, you know, that obviously,
I mean, we're talking Israelis as well, but the
Palestinian people obviously seem to be on the
worst side of this, you know, what you've seen
over the last few months. I mean, it's been really
this tumultuous and unmitigated disaster. We
have watched 18 months kind of go by and all
of the Gaza Strip had been really destroyed.
We're talking about nine out of 10 residential
buildings have been damaged or destroyed. And
nearly every hospital at some point had had to
interface with the Israeli military in Gaza.
And I think in December 2024, we hit this really
low point, specifically when there was a pediatrician
who was in a northern... pediatric hospital.
His name is Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya. And the reason
I mentioned him is because this is a guy that
was becoming very visible on international media.
He had written two op -eds in the New York Times
over the course of 18 months of the Gaza, of
what was happening in Gaza. He, in October, his
hospital, again, it's a pediatric hospital called
Kamal Adwan. was surrounded by the Israeli military
and under siege. And, you know, he's somebody
who is staying and sleeping at the hospital and
was showing people through his phone, the kids
in the pediatric intensive care unit saying,
we cannot evacuate this hospital. There is no
way that we can put some of these kids in the
back of an ambulance and send them to another.
They're too unstable. They're just too unstable.
And he's calling out for the world to intervene.
And then in the process, in November 2024, an
Israeli drone hits the hospital compound and
kills his son. And so you had to watch him bury
his son in the hospital compound, pray over his
son's body. And then in December, the military
raided the hospital and we watched this pediatrician
in his white coat leave the hospital and approach
an Israeli tank. I mean, this was all documented
by an Israeli drone that was kind of covering
the entire situation. And since then, he has
been in an Israeli prison with no charge. And
has been, you know, first denied any sort of
representation until two groups, one in Israel
and one in Palestine, two like human rights groups,
eventually sued to make to confirm that he was
even in these prisons, then finally had a chance
to interact with him. And he's still there. He's
still kind of languishing in these Israeli dungeons.
But then came January and right before Trump's
inauguration. He sent his Middle East envoy,
more soon to be Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff,
who's a real estate billionaire from New York.
He sent him to the Middle East and Steve had
one job. Steve Witkoff's job was get a ceasefire
done before my inauguration. And there's this
famous story that Witkoff, who is an American
Jew, shows up on Saturday to Tel Aviv first before
he goes to Qatar for negotiations. And he tells
the prime minister's office, he tells Netanyahu.
We need to meet. The president has an urgent
message for you. And the prime minister's office
says, well, it's the Sabbath. We can't meet on
the Sabbath. And Witkoff says, well, I don't
give a damn. We have to meet. And he meets with
him and then he goes to Doha. And then we have
a ceasefire deal two days later, a temporary
ceasefire deal. So January 19th, we have a ceasefire
deal. Trump gets an inauguration already kind
of, you know, doing his pitch to get the Nobel
Peace Prize, which is. What he was going after,
he really wanted to get the Nobel Peace Prize
ending the war in Ukraine and then ending the
war in Gaza and kind of bringing in that peace.
But this ceasefire was supposed to be three phases.
So the first phase is 50 days, 5 -0, where we're
bringing in 600 trucks a day of food, water,
and some medical supplies, but mostly really
flooding the Gaza Strip with food that it had
been deprived of for... You know, the previous
18 months, you know, Oxfam said starvation is
being used as a weapon of war. So, you know,
you're starting to see the UN and UNRWA really
mobilizing. They were kind of bringing in 600
trucks. The other thing was we're going to allow
the people who are on the medical evacuation
list, 10 ,000 people. We're going to allow 50
every single day with three companions out into
Egypt from Gaza into Egypt. And every single
day you'll get 50 people who can go out and start
getting medical treatment. This was a huge difference
compared to during the war when this was, you
know, maybe one or two. You know, they would
only do like evacuations once in a blue moon
where you'd have 20 cases get evacuated. Then
six weeks later, you might get 18 cases. Now
we're saying 50 cases with three family members
will be evacuated out every day. The other thing
was there would be every single week. Israeli
hostages that were going to be released and that
they would be received by the Red Cross. And
the Red Cross would take them back into Israel.
And then finally, the Israeli military, which
had acquired positions within the Gaza Strip,
would withdraw their forces to the perimeter
of the Gaza Strip as opposed to all throughout
the Gaza Strip. And so that was happening. And
I tell you, you should have seen all the people
that I was talking to on the ground during those
50 days. It was like... wow, it's done. Let's
get to rebuilding. So many people had had to
leave the north and go to the south because of
evacuation orders, and they could not get back
to the north. 18 months, 16 months, 14 months.
And on foot, we saw 800 ,000 Palestinians walk
10, 15 miles back to the north to where their
homes once were, back to rubble. But the thought
was, we've got to go back. And we've got to rebuild
our lives. And there was this hope. There was
this thought like, hey, we lost so much. And
there was so many things that have gone wrong.
But now there's a light at the end of the tunnel
here. We're ready to kind of move forward. And
then you saw it break down March 2nd, where...
The ceasefire phase one expired. We didn't move
into phase two, which was the permanent ceasefire
negotiations. It was talking about reconstruction
with international support, talking about releasing
the rest of the Israelis, as well as Palestinians
who were abducted over the course of the 18 months
and that were just in Israeli prison without
any charges. Instead, you saw for one week, March
2nd, where the Israelis cut everything off from
electricity. food, water. They cut everything
off. And then one week later, they began what
we call, you know, what we say, the escalation
of hostilities, where you just saw airstrikes
all throughout the Gaza Strip. And we have now
exceeded, I believe, 1 ,200 people since March
2nd. 1 ,200 people have been killed. You know,
we're at the 500 mark in terms of kids that have
been killed since the ceasefire broke down, over
50 ,000 total. And there was, there's... A few
incidents, I know we'll get into this, but I
just want to highlight them briefly. The first
is a UN safe house, a guest house in central
Gaza was struck by the Israeli military, killing
one international UN worker, injuring six, two
of whom lost limbs, two of whom lost limbs. And
the reason that's significant is because this
UN guest house didn't pop up out of nowhere.
This guest house, the coordinates are shared
with the Israelis. Every single movement of one
of those UN workers is coordinated directly with
the Israeli military. Hey, we're leaving at 7
a .m. We're heading to this location. Here are
the coordinates of where we're leaving from.
Here's where we're going. Here's the route that
we're going to take. Here are the people in the
vehicle. Here's the marked vehicle. Here's the
color of it. Here are the national documents
of everybody in that vehicle. Here are the national
documents of everybody in that house. For that
guest house to be hit like that is a... flagrant
violation of international humanitarian law but
it's super up like this is unacceptable right
somebody to lose their lives like that there's
this system of deconfliction that should be upheld
by all warring parties and that was not the case
that happened number two nassar hospital which
is now the largest hospital in gaza shifa was
the largest hospital but has now been destroyed
over the last 18 months nassar hospital And it's
where all these international nonprofits and
humanitarian organizations, you know, they have
staff there. It's the biggest hospital, has multiple
operating rooms. It is really now the medical
hub of Gaza. There was an assassination attempt
by the Israelis on a patient there who they say
belonged to Hamas's political wing and a 17 -year
-old who was recovering from surgery, who had
an ostomy bag. And so they did this targeted
precision strike. Knocking out the surgical ward
of that hospital and killing those two people,
injuring a few others. Again, you know, this
is like not only is this a flagrant violation
of international humanitarian law, this word
is going to kind of be repeated multiple times.
But what are you doing? I mean, how are you hitting
a surgical unit? Like if you know that somebody
is there and let's say you think that this person
is a Hamas member who you are going to do an
assassination attempt on. Why? And you already
know their movements. Why are you hitting the
hospital? Why aren't you waiting for this person
to be discharged? Why aren't you waiting until
there are no civilians around? And I don't even
like, you know, that's me being really generous
talking about this, because, again, you have
to at some point you have to ask yourself, like,
are they hitting these targets and are these
targets really, you know, what who they say they
are? But again, what does that do for the international
organization that have staff there? They didn't
know about this. There was no evacuation order.
Nobody knew that the Israelis were going to hit
the hospital. And they took out this hospital.
Can I ethically, as a head of an organization
that's sending staff in there, can I suddenly
say, hey, we'll protect you. We can protect you.
We can make sure you're safe and secure. Go do
your job. You can't do that. And then again,
another incident that took place is we saw 15
first responders, seven paramedics in the Palestinian
Red Crescent. Six first responders from the fire
service and the civil defense and one UN worker
respond to a call in the south of Gaza. And the
Palestinian Red Crescent then tells us that they
lost communication with them and that they have
been trying to reach out to the Israelis for
one week, asking if they could access the area
that they were last seen at. And the Israelis
first would not respond to any of the requests.
And then finally. There was a mass grave that
was found with 15 of them found dead, found killed
and buried in the mass grave. Some with shots
to the chest and the head and their ambulance
and their fire truck riddled with bullets. And
if it wasn't for that video that was released
a few days ago by the New York Times, we would
have never understood what happened. But what
we saw was, again, first responders responding
to people in crisis who were injured. showing
up to the scene, getting out of their vehicles,
and then you hear this onslaught of bullets towards
them. And one person did survive and was arrested
and recently released. So they were able, you
know, to get an account of just how, you know,
things unfolded. But this is, again, a disastrous
and disgusting display of how this war has been
prosecuted. I mean, that is a quintessential
example. This is not the exception. This is the
rule. If you are a health care worker or if you're
a humanitarian, you were not just targeted by
the Israeli military, but your killing was normalized.
And that is, you know, this is kind of where
we're at right now. And, you know, we had the
prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, visit yesterday
and was in the White House. And there's two things
that I think were really. important about that
meeting. Of course, he was talking about tariffs.
The Israelis don't want to have tariffs slapped
on them by the United States. But there's two
other things. First, that they wanted to talk
about Iran and a potential deal. And again, this
gives you an inclination towards the psyche of
Netanyahu. Netanyahu is a politician from Israel
who over his entire political life has been desperate
to send American servicemen to fight his wars.
I mean, he is desperate to have U .S. troops
go and fight his wars in Iran, in Iraq, in Syria,
in Lebanon. He wants to use our military, the
United States military, for what he views should
be how the Middle East works. And this guy testified
in Congress in 2002 after 9 -11. And he said,
He testified as an expert in the region. He literally
said, I still remember this testimony. He said,
if you go into Iraq and you invade Iraq and you
get rid of Saddam Hussein, he goes, there will
be a domino effect of democracy in the Middle
East. As if all you have to do is send our troops,
our servicemen to go into a country, fight a
war that was based on false pretenses. But that's
a whole nother story. But fight a war. And then
suddenly everybody else is going to be very in
favor of what it is you're trying to sell to
them, whether it's democracy or whatever it is.
Since 2002, he's been guaranteeing that if you
go and do this, if you take your soldiers and
you go fight in this foreign country, then everything
will get better and peace will spread, as if
that's ever been the case. But that's who we're
talking about here. This is somebody who loves
the idea of war, not because it solves anything,
but he knows that when there is war and chaos,
people tend to not want to. destabilize the country
politically. They're not going to want to get
rid of the leader. They're not going to want
to get rid of the government. And that's what
kind of, you know, that's who you're dealing
with. And I think on top of that, you know, that's
one thing from the meeting. The second part was
the way he was talking about Gaza. He was pretending
like he was removed from the situation, like
he is not the head of state who inflicted all
of this damage and insisted on killing so many
people in Gaza. He said, oh, Gaza, the people
there are trapped, not because of us. But they're
trapped somehow. Or it's become this wasteland.
Who did that? Who made it a wasteland? You did.
You're the one who kept pushing this. So that
was, I think, an interesting part of the meeting
yesterday. Because it also, there's no signs
of like, can we get to a point where we can stop
some of the suffering that's going on? And since
March 2nd, there has not been a single. parcel
of food that has entered into Gaza Strip. There's
not been a single bottle of water. There has
been no electricity for the desalination plants
so that the water can be consumable. And the
factories have shut down. So again, starvation
is being used as a weapon of war. And you're
seeing the longest period where not a single
amount of aid has entered. After October 7th,
it happened for three weeks. October 7th to the
22nd, nothing got in. Now we're talking about
well over a month. And this is a place that's
dealing with a decent amount of food insecurity,
malnutrition. And, you know, we already saw famine
break out there once. And for context, it's a
place that we used to get 500 trucks a day before
any conflict, before any war was inflicted on
it. So, you know, it's a desperate situation
there now. And the morale is so low because,
James, you gave people some hope. You had a chance.
People were thinking, okay, we had 50 days of
being able to walk freely in the streets and
get out of these tents and try to find people
who were still trapped beneath the rubble and
try to figure out what the next steps were. And
then you just unleashed hell on them in a really
intense way, just as if all of that was undone.
And I've not seen people with... Their morale
this low, the hopelessness so pervasive. And,
you know, that's something that's really that's
tough to that's tough to hear day in and day
out. Going back to the paramedics, talk to me
about the denial from Israel originally until
that cell phone footage came out. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, this is, you know, again, every these
the movements of every single paramedic in Gaza
is coordinated with the Israeli military. And
this is not the first incident. where they've
come into the line of fire just for doing their
job. So the thought, you know, if you look at
the Palestinian Red Crescent's posts on social
media, they're updating twice a day saying, you
know, we have this many people. For them, it
was seven members of the Palestinian Red Crescent,
right? And the civil defense is another, you
know, eight members. But they said, this is what
time they left. And this is where they were.
And this is when we were communicating, you know,
with them. And what you saw was. there was first
the palestinian red crescent was being ignored
by the israeli military the first few days they
were just not getting any responses then it was
total denial like we don't know what you're talking
about we didn't see any movement here there was
no coordination nothing happened and then it
was you know like okay finally after one week
and there's this outrage people are starting
to realize what happened to these what happened
to these people and there was local people there
witnesses who saw kind of what took place and
were like We think these guys were executed.
What we saw, we think there's a mass grave here.
And again, the Israelis are essentially saying,
oh, these guys are liars. You know, they're saying
this is a total lie. It's an absolute lie. This
is all propaganda. And then when they finally
found, you know, they finally had access to this.
And by the way, there were multiple people who
were trying to get close to the scene where these
paramedics were. And they would still be coming
under fire by the Israeli military. So people
who could see in the distance, this is where
they're supposed to be. They're coming under
fire and they're not able to get access. There's
actually a really intense scene by a UN worker.
And the dispatcher is telling him, well, do you
want to approach it? Because he's saying they're
about. a hundred, you know, meters away, 150
meters away. And this, do you want to approach?
And he's like, negative, we're not doing that.
I mean, there's, there's, there's actual, like
we're coming under fire here. So we're not going
to move towards there. And then you were seeing
people who were in the area get hit and are dragging
themselves away who, you know, were shot in the
leg or shot in the back. So, you know, this was
a really, you know, devastating sort of situation.
But I want to say like, you know, finally, when
they were able to access and they found the bodies.
they said oh what we did is we killed a bunch
of terrorists we said eight of those guys that
you're saying for out of the 15 that were killed
we know eight of them were terrorists this was
the first you could look this is the first response
by the israeli military then the video came out
and you're seeing guys who are wearing their
uniforms and you're seeing the cars that they're
in and we're getting all of their names and we're
posting their pictures and suddenly it's like
we're going to review the incident We're going
to investigate ourselves about what happened.
Really, you're going to investigate yourselves?
I wonder how that investigation is going to turn
out. Because, again, we've gotten to the point
where this has become a pattern of behavior by
the Israeli military. This is not an exception
to the rule. This was not some weird mistake.
It was not a rogue soldier. It is exactly how
they prosecuted the war. And I will go back to
the famous story of the six -year -old girl,
Hind Rajab. who was fleeing from Gaza City to
the south of Gaza in a car with her uncle, aunt,
15 -year -old cousin, Leyan, who come under fire
from an Israeli tank. And they were told to evacuate
and go to the south. Their car comes under fire.
Her parents are in a separate car. They make
it to the south. Suddenly, you get a call to
the dispatcher, to 911, to the operator from
a 15 -year -old girl who's saying, help us. We're
in a car here. My parents are dead. I'm with
my cousin. Please help us. And then you hear
gunfire. And then you hear a six -year -old girl,
Hind, pick up the phone and talk to the operator.
And now she's saying, my 15 -year -old cousin
is dead. The tank is 50 meters away from us.
There are people there. I'm scared. Somebody
come and save me. She's talking to the Palestinian
Red Crescent operator. And they get two guys
to hop in an ambulance, Ahmed and Yusuf. Two
guys to hop. in an ambulance two paramedics they
got cleared by the israeli military they were
told hey here are the two guys one is named ahmed
here's his palestinian id number here's his face
one guy's name yusef here's his id number this
is their car this is how it's marked this is
where they're leaving from this is when they'll
be leaving this is where they are right now they're
approaching both of those guys get hit with a
missile the ambulance gets gets destroyed both
of those heroes get killed and hen's body Slowly,
she bleeds to death and is found one week later,
her corpse along with the corpse of the rest
of her family. And so it's like, you know, this
is what we're seeing. The Palestinian Red Crescent
said 26 of their paramedics have been killed
in this conflict. Why are 26 paramedics being
killed if they're coordinating with the Israeli
military? How could that happen? But it's become
normalized. Over 1 ,000 healthcare workers, doctors,
nurses, paramedics, first responders have been
killed. They've been targeted. They're purposely
being targeted. This is, you know, this has gone
beyond, oh, this is indiscriminate bombing. This
is now we're going to bring the health care system
to its knees because that's how you get people
to leave is once the ambulance can't get to you
and bring you to the place where you can get
the treatment that you need, you're going to
be more and more inclined to leave the area.
And that's kind of what the that's what the end
goal is. So it's been it's really been. Truly
horrifying, because we can talk about how many
hospitals have been raided and destroyed. We
can talk about how many doctors have been killed.
We can talk about how all of these health care
workers are also being abducted if they're found
by the Israeli military and then sent to Israeli
prisons without charge, being tortured, being
abused. We can talk about that. But, you know,
the truth is there's been no accountability whatsoever.
And, you know, even if the U .N. Secretary General
Antonio Gutierrez comes out and says our response
to this guest house bombing. is we're going to
decrease our footprint in Gaza. We're going to
decrease the amount of UN workers that are in
Gaza. There's a reason he's saying that. It's
because the Israelis are not playing by anybody's
rules and they are not going to afford anybody
any sort of protections. And the people who are
obviously in the crosshairs and who have suffered
the most are these Palestinian humanitarians
and healthcare workers and first responders.
What maddens me, and we've had this discussion
for 18 months now, Is every time there's any
sort of discussion giving the Palestinian people
a voice, it's always, oh, yeah, but Hamas. So
just to reiterate, remind the people listening
how many children to date have been killed so
far in Gaza in this last 18 months. Yeah, we're
talking about over 20 ,000. I mean, you should
see the Palestinian health ministry released
a list. of every single person that's been killed
and it's in chronological order of age and the
over the forced 40 pages are people who are under
the age of one you know these pages and pages
i looked at a devast you know and this is something
it gets that one thing that really kind of irks
me out and tells you like when that many kids
are dead how does the world sit idly by you know
it's more than any other conflict combined over
the last 10 years. Ukraine had a tragic amount
of kids being killed, and it pales in comparison
to Gaza. And it gets at, when you dehumanize
someone, when Palestinians are so pervasively
dehumanized in mainstream media and in all of
these, how these governments refer to them, like
you just said, so easily dismissed by just using
the word Hamas, you can suddenly rationalize
how it's okay for this many people to be killed.
Save the Children came out and said, there are
800 kids that were born and killed in these 18
months. They never saw their first birthday.
They were born and then they were killed. And
I just can't imagine being a parent, you know,
and having somebody born in this and not being
able to protect them, not being able to find
a safe place for them and for them to lose their
lives. And that's just scratching the surface
because it's the largest cohort of kids who've
lost limbs. Kids walking around without a leg
or walking around without an arm. UNICEF yesterday
said, we have a crisis of also kids under six
months who are not getting fed enough. They need
formula. They need supplemental formula because,
of course, their moms are malnourished because
they haven't had food. So we need to support
them. There's 10 ,000 of them. And right now
we only have enough formula for 400 of them.
I mean, we're parents, man. Like, can you imagine
not being able to get your kid is hungry? You
know, not being able to give them something to
eat. I mean, it's, you know, this is it's just
such a devastating situation. The Al Jazeera
did this report and it really got to me. I mean,
I still it haunts me now. And it was talking
about the most common names of kids that were
being killed. You know, like, you know, that
there were over 200 layans, such a popular name
in Gaza that were killed, you know. And so for
these girls and I'm like, you know, this is I
mean, I think everybody understands this, but
like losing a kid, nobody recovers from that
ever. And you've gotten to the point where you're
literally seeing guys and say, if one of us goes,
we just hope the whole family goes together.
We don't want to live without each other. You
know, we've lost everything. We've lost our homes.
Our kids can't go to school. We're so dependent
on some foreign organization to come and give
us a food parcel. If, God forbid, we get hit
by a missile strike, we hope, and this is like
a genuine, like, prayer they're making. It's
like, we hope we all stay together and we all
go together. Like, that's how devastating it's
gotten. And I'll say one last thing about this,
too. It's, you know, the other part of this is,
and this is, it can get graphic, but the... The
thing is, in Palestinian culture, it's really
important, like when you have people who die,
it's really important for them to have a dignified
burial, a dignified funeral, mark the grave so
you can visit the grave, you can pray for them.
You want to maintain that connection with that
loved one. And even that's been deprived in the
Gaza Strip. I mean, whether it's these mass graves
that are being uncovered or people who are trapped
beneath the rubble or people whose body parts
or people who have been people who have been,
you know, these two ton bombs that get dropped
and you've just got flesh and bones everywhere.
You don't know who's who. You know, you're putting
in at one point when a shelter got hit, people
were putting what they could find into plastic
bags and then trying to go and bury their loved
one. You know, and so even that the whole process
has just absolutely been. this horrifying, apocalyptic
kind of scenario. And to me, we can talk about
the immediate effects of what happens when a
bomb hits a school, but the story doesn't stop
there for the people who are affected. That follows
them forever, for eternity. So when I was young,
there was some incredible television for children
in the UK. There was one called John Craven's
Newsround. This was back when the BBC was...
Still very impartial and just delivered the news.
And John Kramer's news round was like a children's
version. And they would show things. I mean,
one of the big things when I was young was the
famine in Ethiopia. And there was another TV
show called Blue Peter. And it would encourage
all of us to make sandwiches and sell them at
school and have jumble sales, kind of like a
yard sale. And we collectively as a nation of
children. would raise money and send it to in
this case ethiopia and i can see the face of
the starving african children at that point you
know with the flies everywhere and the ribs visible
and then when i saw some of the starvation in
in gaza it reminded me of that the difference
is though when i was young kindness and altruism
and compassion were front and center now here
we are and the nation that i'm you know a citizen
of now is arming the very people that we're talking
about. And its soldiers were held to a very high
standard of rules of engagement. And I've had
numerous warfighters on here that are heartbroken
at that one time, a single civilian got caught
in a crossfire. And then they're taking them
to our physicians to try and save their lives.
And many of them were, you know, and he lost
limbs and they got prosthetics and some of them
were brought to the US. And the kindness and
compassion from most of our warfighters. And
the isolated incidents of horrendous actions
like some of the villages in Vietnam were brought
front and center. Like this is an embarrassment.
This is an atrocity by the U .S. military. And
so our own people are held at such a high standard.
And yet we just turn our heads, not even turn
our head. We turn our heads, grab a checkbook
and then write a check so they can get more weapons
of destruction and massacre more civilians. Because,
of course, yes, amongst that. There are Hamas
fighters and there are Israeli soldiers actually
combating each other. But when you're talking
about 20 ,000 children, name another conflict
outside of Auschwitz concentration camps where
there's ever been that kind of body count in
such a small amount of time of innocence. And
that's just the children. We're not talking about
all the men and women that were completely detached
from any forms of... you know terrorism or extremism
within that country against israel so this is
what nauseates me and i saw it even in the uk
they weren't jumping on the bank the irish were
the only ones that actually had the guts to say
this is wrong but my people didn't at the beginning
i think they're starting to come around now even
though every time i see a bbc article it says
from hamas -led media and then it tells the story
but this country God forbid you actually speak
up about, hey, maybe what was happening in Palestine
is wrong or to the Palestinian peoples is wrong.
Then, you know, you're a Hamas lover. And, you
know, and the problem is, and then we have some
of this ridiculous protesting where these people
are pissing people off. And it's losing power
then for the voice of actually just speaking
for the for the Palestinian people and God and
the Israelis. I mean, there are Israeli victims
as well. October 7th is a good example. it's
not an absolute if you are are advocating for
one oppressed group doesn't mean that you're
against the other it just say and i think we
said this last time it's like you and i get into
a fist fight well let me start you come over
and you punch me in the face but i end up being
you know a skilled martial artist and i end up
beating you to the ground and then i stop curb
stomping you at some point you're like whoa now
you've gone too far exactly that's the point
it doesn't mean that I shouldn't retaliate from
getting punched in the face, but there's a point
where it's not retaliation anymore. Now, now,
now I've curb stomped you. Now I go to your house
and I start doing the same thing to your family.
At what point do you say, whoa, whoa, no, that's
too much. We hit too much a year ago, you know,
14 months ago. That's the problem. So this is
what I have an issue with is the cowardice. Of
the people in these countries where I'm from
originally and where I've served for 14 years
here, wearing an American flag on my fucking
shoulder, the cowardice that I see for actually
standing up for the weak and the oppressed, even
though that's supposed to be what we do in uniform
in this country. And now 15 of my brothers in
arms in Palestine have been killed. And don't
get me wrong. There's my brothers in arms on
the Israeli side that have died in attacks, too,
from rockets. This is a human issue. It's not
a religious issue. It's not a specific nation
on a map. It's the good and the evil. And right
now there's a jarring, disgusting irony that
some of these people are from a lineage of some
of the most repressed people that we had in the
40s, that the men and women of this country and
the country I'm from went and risked their lives
to liberate from the Nazis. And now some of those
people. have become the oppressor. Hurt people
hurt people. So it takes courage to stand up
and say, hey, these two things can exist simultaneously.
The victims of October 7th, the real ones, not
the ones that were described that never happened,
but the actual real victims, that was an atrocity
for those people. The people that were losing
continuously in Gaza from both sides, but let's
be honest, it's like 95 % the Palestinians. is
also wrong. And I don't understand why people
don't have the courage to stand up and say that
because it's not black and white. It's a nuanced
gray conversation. Yeah. I mean, I think you,
you kind of, one thing that you kind of get at
is At what point, when are we going to be values
-based? When are our principles going to matter
here? And that's not been the case. I mean, this
has been the litmus test. You can't talk to me
about Ukraine and the Russian aggression and
then be silent when it comes to Gaza. I mean,
why, when it comes to Gaza, suddenly they aren't
afforded the same sort of protections that people
in Ukraine are? And I think there's a couple
of things, too, that really are really, really
concerning. So, you know, one thing is what people
should be calling for is accountability. At the
end of the day, everybody should be held accountable.
If you want to hold the Palestinians accountable,
absolutely go for it. But you have to be holding
the Israelis accountable. You cannot sit here
and say, we're going to label this organization
a terrorist organization. We're going to sanction
these people. The way they're terrorizing civilians
is wrong. And then at the other side, be totally
OK with. paramedics trying to respond to a case
and then being executed and buried into a mass
grave you can't say one side is committing war
crimes and then ignore the sophisticated advanced
military that's supported by the you know the
the western world and say and just be like just
turn a blind eye there then you're a hypocrite
then i have to start rethinking everything that
you're declaring i can't take you at face value
and one thing that pissed me off was the spokesperson
for the State Department. I forgot her last name.
Her name is Tammy. But they're trying to ask
her a question. You talk about nuance. They're
trying to ask about this incident with the hospital
that got hit at Nasser or the UN and then even
the Palestinian Red Crescent. And she only has
one line response, one sentence that she keeps
repeating. She goes, everything that's happening
in Gaza is Hamas's fault. Everything that's happening
in Gaza, it's just on repeat. You're like, is
this person a robot? everything. This is not
how the world works at all. You want to talk
about October 7th and the reckoning as a result
of what happened on October 7th, for sure. But
you cannot ignore October 8th, 9th, 10th, all
the way through. If you want to talk about October
7th, absolutely. You want to talk about accountability,
international law, international humanitarian
law, great. But you better have also been talking
about October 6th and 5th and October 8th and
9th. There's something about moral consistency
here. And the reason that it's so important is
because You know, at the end of the day, if you
don't have that, then everything that you say
is, you know, is there's like this there's this
bias that's attached to it. And this country,
I don't think, realizes, you know, the I'm sure
they realize, but they choose to ignore because
we just had senators try to at least do some
sort of arms embargo on Israel saying, OK, maybe
we maybe we should not give them these two ton
bombs. Maybe we should not restock. all of the
ammunition that they fired onto the Gaza Strip.
And instead, you had 15 senators who said, all
right, maybe it's enough is enough. But you had
83 that said, let the weapons flow, keep it going,
let the bodies hit the floor. And to me, it's
like, does anybody think about the consequences
of that? Like, do you really think your hands
are clean? When we talk about him, the six year
old, or we talk about Yusuf, the curly haired
boy, or we talk about the soul of my soul, the
grandfather and the granddaughter who were killed
one year apart. We had to watch him like kind
of bury her. And then he was only to be killed
one year later. You don't think about these people.
It goes back to obviously Palestinians and are
dehumanized. And that's what you do when you
want to create an enemy. You dehumanize them.
You pretend like all of them are these bloodthirsty.
extremists, and no one wants to talk about nuance
at the end of the day. I mean, one thing that
Witkoff said on a podcast with Tucker Carlson
that stunned me, because I'm like, okay, this
guy is not clearly established. He's not a good
guy by any means, I think. But I don't think
he knows what he's doing. But he's new to the
game. And so I was like, wow, you can see some
truth in what he's saying. But he's saying Hamas
at the end of the day, too, has pressure on it
from the Palestinian people to get this over
with. to find a way to get to a ceasefire deal,
to deal something with the negotiations. They
are, at the end of the day, the local authorities,
the local government. And just like we have a
government here that we demand things from, that
we need things from, they have to deliver. And
so nobody talks about that. Instead, what you
want to do is you want to imagine them as just
these aliens from outer space that are hell -bent
on killing as many people as possible. I'm not
a defender of Hamas by any means. I don't belong
to this organization. I have no interaction with
them. But I know at the end of the day, there
was a ceasefire deal for 50 days where people
were able to come and say, why can't we get back
there? I don't care about any of these political
parties. I don't care about Netanyahu. I just
do not care about him. What I care about is the
suffering that's going on that I witnessed firsthand.
I can't deal with watching these... guys show
up and the guy on the video with his camera,
you see the fire truck in front of him and he's
getting down. He's saying, oh, we see the people.
They're over there. They're over there. Getting
down, thinking that he's going to help somebody
and try to transport them to the nearest healthcare
facility. And instead, you know that those are
his last moments. And as he's bleeding to death,
he's speaking in Arabic and he's telling his
mom, forgive me. This is the field that I chose
and I'm losing my life as a result of that. And
he's just saying, just please forgive me. Please
forgive me. Like saying his... You know, those
are his last breaths. Like, why is that? Why
has that been normalized? Why is that OK? You
know, and I mean, the last thing I'll say about
this, too, that just, you know, I think it's
important for people to understand is, you know,
they really want, you know, at the end of the
day, it's like, think about what you know, what's
going on here. And if you're very clear where
it's like if you're saying things like, oh, this
is warfare and this is what happens in war. Like
you said, this is cruel and unusual what's happening
in Gaza. Very densely populated area. In every
other kind of war that we've seen, there's been
porous borders. In Afghanistan, a lot of people
from Afghanistan, Afghanis, who went into Pakistan
and fleed. In Syria, they went to Europe. They
went to Turkey. They went to Lebanon. In Sudan,
they went to Egypt. What you did in Gaza, which
made it so horrifying, in Ukraine, you were able
to go to the rest of Europe. You went to Poland,
and then you were able to resettle in Europe.
In Gaza, they sealed the borders shut. And it's
a densely populated area, more densely populated
than Tokyo, Gaza City is. And then they let the
fighter jets scramble. And you were dropping
bombs everywhere. So it's like, you know, for
people to kind of come out here and just pretend
like it's norm, this is kind of what war is.
That's not true. That's not true. In Afghanistan,
the United States military hit a MSF hospital,
Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz. They hit the
hospital. There were casualties there. As a result
of that, they had to redo their entire deconfliction
system. where they had to look at, they did this
whole analysis, what happened, where did things
go wrong, and they had to figure out where they
did not repeat that mistake again. It was, I
would say, a serious endeavor by the United States
military at that moment. That has never been
the case right now with the Israeli military
over the last 18 months. All of these incidents
have not changed how they prosecuted the war,
and they've not been held accountable for any
of them. for 18 months, whether it's a hospital,
an ambulance, a water engineer from Oxfam trying
to fix a water infrastructure, or children that
are running around at a shelter. And when you
don't have that accountability, it's not just
going to affect Gazans today. Tomorrow, it'll
be somewhere else because they'll see what the
Israelis did and how they got away with it. And
they will copy that. And they will do the same
thing. You know, everybody's going to create
a boogeyman to justify, you know, what they're
going to do militarily. Everyone will create
that boogeyman. At some point, We need people
to have that moral clarity, that leadership to
step up. And it's not here in this country. It's
too few and far in between. Instead, it's business
as usual, status quo and making excuses for a
foreign country that, yeah, OK, it's your closest
ally. But God damn, like how much are you willing
to cover for your for your friend here? You know,
so it's just not seeing instead you've got, you
know, dumb people. I hate to kind of but that's
that's how I feel. Like you got Marco Rubio,
Mike Walls, all these people who are just. happy
to make excuses that are just shills for special
interest groups and you know it's it's funny
like full circle on the conversation well we
all know and it's been again more and more of
a prevalent conversation about the industrial
military complex let's say that again the industrial
military complex and if your friends are getting
rich while we're at war or we're selling weapons
then you're going to keep conflicts going and
it's interesting we talk about not being able
to sleep at night I've had some realizations
recently. If you are in charge of a weapons manufacturer,
if you are in charge of a tobacco company, if
you are in charge of Purdue Pharma, and you know
that millions of people around the planet are
dying from your product and you can sleep at
night, then you're a sociopath. There are some
serious mental health issues going on. And these
are the people at the tip of the spear in these
areas. I think I talked about this before. I'll
just throw this parallel in again. When I was
young, I grew up on a farm and it was next to
an MOD based military defense. And this was during
the 70s, 80s, where the IRA were blowing up men,
women and children on the mainland UK. Now, again,
if you roll the clock back enough, you understand
where. hatred towards the british came if you
look at the potato famine and all that stuff
because there's always an origin of every story
if you go back far enough you know the somali
pirates the overfishing of their oceans is what
caused poverty and now we had them so i've always
said this all right now for example they blow
up one of the many shopping centers that they
did kill men women and children in the uk And
now the UK goes and says, we're going to destroy
the entire city of Belfast, men, women, children,
every hospital, every church, every daycare center,
every school. We're going to flatten the entire
thing. How would the world respond to that? It's
no different. Are there bad people on the Irish
side? Abso -fucking -lutely. Are there bad people
on the English side, the British side? Absolutely.
But of the other 99 point whatever percent just
innocent men, women and children trying to go
about their day or people in uniform that are
there simply to try and deescalate or be a barrier
between the violence between the Protestants
and Catholics or the loyalists or the, you know,
whatever it is. Yes. So, yes, you have this,
you know, first you need to roll back and say,
well, how did this start and how can we just
kind of put a punctuation on this generational
fight that we've had with each other? But then
also. This isn't between Hamas and IDF. It's
the slaughter of all the people. It's not collateral
damage. It's collateral focus. So if we, the
UK, destroyed the entire city of Belfast, the
world would be outraged. And there would be all
kinds of soldiers from all over the world in
my hometown occupying until we stopped doing
what we were doing. And more importantly, in
the Irish side. So it's no different. And this
is the thing. But because you've also got, let's
be completely fucking obvious, this very Islamophobe
rhetoric that's going on as well. That's another
layer to this where it's like, you know, we'll
turn our heads. But God, can you imagine if it
was white Christians? Oh, my goodness. The whole
world would mobilize to go rescue them. But we
have to call a spade a spade. It is what it is
until we stop turning our head. And the people
I was just talking about, the Irish. They're
the ones that have stood up and said, this is
horrendous. The South Africans have stood up
and said, this is horrendous. That's two historically
oppressed nations that said, we see the same
thing going on there now. So this is why, again,
we're calling it out because it's not a conflict.
These, as you said, thousands of infants were
not running around with AKs, with the Hamas flag
tied to their waist, chasing down IDF soldiers.
So when are we going to stop telling ourselves
a fairy tale? And when are we going to say, no,
as a nation, we should not be adding ammunition,
bombs and support to this. We should actually
be standing outraged with these other nations
who have literally put a lawsuit out, you know,
citing genocide and saying enough is enough and
using our political power for diplomacy, not
warmongering. You know, and there's another there's
another part of this that's getting really concerning.
And it's kind of tied to academic freedoms. You
see kind of what's happening to some of these
folks who are on green cards, who are at university.
There's that girl at Tufts who was on a who was
here on a student visa who got picked up by ICE
and deported because she wrote an op ed in the
Boston Globe. You know, she wrote an op -ed.
She's not vandalizing schools. She's not terrorizing
other students. She literally wrote an op -ed.
And so she gets deported. Mahmoud Khalil is a
green card holder. He was the mediator between
students at Columbia and the administration that
got them to end the encampments at these campuses.
And he's in the process of being deported. His
wife is a U .S. citizen, eight months pregnant.
And it's like this weird layer. So there's one
thing that I would that to me, it's like really
like. clear that there's a lot of institutions
and organizations and businesses that are totally
compromised. But the American Historical Association
had a national meeting. So these are all the
historians in America, all of these academics,
and they voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution
that said what's happening in Gaza is scholasticide.
It's a genocide and scholastic side. Even the
academic world is being targeted by the Israeli
military. The universities are being blown up.
The teachers and professors are being killed
or arrested. What's happened in Gaza is a scholastic
side. And it was out of, you know, 500 plus votes,
426 voted in favor of this resolution. And then
the board, after one week later, decided to kill
the resolution. They didn't want to adopt it
for this national meeting. Why? Wasn't that a
popular mandate? The same thing with all of these
other professional societies. The people are
very clear. It's not just people who are seeing
these images and are moved by it emotionally.
It's like academics and people who know what
they're talking about. Amnesty International
released the report when they said this is a
genocide. And you know who they had on their
panel explaining why it was a genocide? They
had a professor who is a genocide study scholar
at, I believe, Brown University. whose expertise
was in the Holocaust. When that guy talks about
genocide, you need to listen to what he has to
say. He's not a Palestinian father who's mourning
his child. He's a genocide study. This is what
he does scientifically. That's what his field
is. And these are the voices that are being censored
in favor of what? Like you said, this military
industrial complex. Tony Blinken, again, this
is a Democratic administration. Tony Blinken,
Lloyd Austin. Lloyd Austin is the defense secretary.
Tony Blinken is secretary of state. These guys
have a firm that works closely with weapons manufacturers.
They're getting them contract deals. They are
the ones, that's what they're doing now to make
money. Same thing with Brett McGurk, one of the...
colossal scumbags of our lifetime. This guy who's
been in successive Republican and Democratic
administrations, warmonger. Why? I mean, he's
independently wealthy. Why is that? He's leading
a fund right now where he's going to get Saudi
investment and other investors. This guy always
perpetuated war. Why? Because it was a money
-making game for them. It was nothing about who
the kids on the ground were. It was nothing about
Iraqis or Palestinian kids. It was never about
sending American troops into a foreign land,
into this whole country, and just letting them
have to figure it out, basically help them make
money, and these guys come back and they don't
get a piece of the pie. They're not the ones
who are being taken care of. They don't have
pensions that are going to make sure that they
don't have to work again after serving their
country. So it's like... Again, it's like these
guys who are making some of these decisions,
first of all, are grade A cowards. They will
never be in the field. They will never go into
Gaza right now and visit any of the hospitals
or see any of the kids or the families. Most
of them would never be in the red zone in Iraq.
They'll never visit these areas. But they will
gladly puff their chests out and say, this is
what we've got to do. We've got to give more
weapons. I mean, it's just, you've got... literally
grade A cowards who are making these decisions.
And whenever that's the case, you can't expect
them to make the right call or the right decision.
No, they'll happily send the sons and daughters
of other people to war. They'll happily supply
as many different, you know, rifles and ammunitions
and fighter jets and yeah, keep it coming. But
they'll never actually, you'll never ever see
these people as being the moral compass of a
nation. They'll never be sitting there unless
it means that they'll make more money and they'll
profiteer off of this. And then the last thing,
again, you kind of bring this point up about,
you know, it depends on who the victim is. And
I hate to use the word victim as a Palestinian
American. We're very proud people. We don't want
people to, you know, have sympathy over us. We
just we want people to be in solidarity. But,
you know, when you look, you know, you think
about who this victim is and you're not the image
that's being conjured up by the media is not
one that you can relate to as a fellow human
being. You know, you're hearing things from the
Israelis like there could only be peace when
they love their kids more than they hate us.
Are you kidding me? Like I've seen the grieving
parents in Gaza. I've seen even the parents,
you know, even before there was anything like
this. I mean, it's an intense love just like
anybody else. But even that we have to explain,
we have to say it out loud. I hate that I have
to say that out loud, you know, like that they're
that they're fathers and mothers and teachers
and doctors and nurses and paramedics. Like,
you know, that's not. But again, it's it's a
deliberate effort to make them look other, to
make them look different. You're not the same,
you know, and that's why, you know, the you know,
there's a there's a Bethlehem. priest. He's a
Palestinian guy named Mumbar Isaac. I think he
does a great job of trying to drive it home to
the greater American audience. He was on this
tour where he was going to all these different
churches. And he was basically saying, look,
I'm telling you, this image that's being fed
to you is not the case. It is not these bloodthirsty,
extreme people who love when other people are
killed. They're not celebrating for the next
dead person. It's like people who are trying
to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and from
Bethlehem would love to visit Jerusalem, but
they can't because there's a wall in place. Or
in Gaza, they're sheltering in a church and the
church gets hit. And the Pope is calling every
day to check in on this group of people in Gaza
who have been there for a thousand years, this
ancient Christian group. It's like you don't
even get to see the diversity of Palestinians.
You don't get to see that they're Muslim and
Christian and that some of them go back to the
Canaanites and some of them came from other areas.
Like you don't even get to you don't even get
to hear about the rich history because, no, it's
a monolith. It's crazy, extreme people that we've
got to get. We've got to wipe out. One more area
on, you know, some of the things that we need
to pull out. And then I want to go to the bow
marrow that you've been talking about. You mentioned
that the person that we sent over to do that
meeting was a realtor. a millionaire realtor
and the moment the moment yeah so the moment
that you know our current orange president gets
elected um it's good that we've got a president
of color again though um he's immediately talking
about the real estate in gaza Now, our first
conversation, if you remember, you were talking
about the systematic bulldozing of blocks as
these Israelis were bombing and forcing the Palestinian
men, women and children further and further one
direction. Now we've got our president saying
we are looking at real estate in Gaza and the
person that we send over is a real estate developer.
So, again, humans versus greed. Talk to me about.
what you're seeing through your eyes as far as
these people ultimately being moved out for beachside
property yeah you know the the president of the
united states has very minimal knowledge about
palestine and israel i mean it's very clear by
the way that he speaks and the people around
him are not willing to correct him and whitcoff
also is not well informed about the region and
so what you're seeing is Instead of the Secretary
of State, who's Marco Rubio, who's not any better,
or the National Security Advisor, Mike Walls,
again, who's not any better, you do have a real
estate developer who's going to high -level meetings
with the mediators for a ceasefire negotiation.
So that's the Egyptian Intelligence Service.
That's the Qatari foreign... ministry and you
are having the israeli masad there and hamas
so among all of these kind of groups that are
trying to negotiate a deal you've got this real
estate billionaire who has no experience in international
studies in diplomacy who has got no background
in that and what you have to realize is he is
trying to secure the interests of an individual
the financial interests of one person He's not
trying to secure the interests and security of
the American people or of the Western world or
of an ally. He's trying to secure the interests
of President Trump. And what Trump sees is that
he sees that there's this massive devastation
that's taken place in Gaza. And instead of saying
that this is the worst humanitarian crisis since
World War II, he's pitching it as an opportunity
because he knows there will be a reconstructive
effort. He knows that international resources
and money need to be driven in. And what he wants
to make sure is that it funnels back to companies
and organizations that he's tied to so he can
make money off of it at the end of the day. And
that is... Of course, it's a really despicable
way to understand what's happening in Gaza, but
that's the only lens that he sees it in. So it's
not about how many bodies are increasing in terms
of the casualties coming out of Gaza. It's not
about this crazy prime minister from Israel who's
under corruption charges, who is now leading
an extremist coalition in Israel. It's about,
at some point... Gaza, there's going to be a
ceasefire. At some point, he believes there's
going to be an end to this war, whether that
means, you know, that the Israelis come to an
agreement or they've reoccupied all of the Gaza
Strip. But at some point, this is going to be
over. How do I make money off of this? And that's
the rhetoric that you're seeing. So when you're
hearing them say there's two million people there,
they're going to leave. And we're going to send
them to countries that don't want to take them
in because they know that if Palestinians come
to Egypt or Jordan, that the Israeli military
will follow them there. And that's, again, anybody
who's studied the history of the region knows
that that is a real possibility. Instead of saying
that, he's saying, oh, yeah, they'll take them.
We'll force them to take them. We'll force these
people to leave. That's not how you're going
to fix any of this. I mean, it's not going to
be the case. Forcibly displacing people, ethnically
cleansing Gaza after a genocide. It's not going
to suddenly make it a very peaceful area where
you can build a skyscraper and a casino and then
drill the natural gas that's in the Mediterranean
Sea off of the coast of Gaza. It's all being
spoken about in business terms. And if that's
the case, if that's the mentality you're bringing
to the table, everybody there realizes that.
The Mossad realizes, oh, they care more about...
how the pie is divvied up than they do about
the humanitarian crisis or the people that are
on the ground. So then they bring that back to
Netanyahu, who then says, okay, once the ceasefire
deal is over, it's not like they're going to
sit there and stop us. We'll unleash hell since
March 2nd. So you're literally seeing consequences
of our rhetoric play out on the ground in Gaza.
When Trump is saying that... Oh, you know, they
were going to they're going to be forcibly displaced.
Other people will take them. Suddenly you see
the Israeli military put 65 percent of the Gaza
Strip under evacuation orders. So it's like,
where are those Palestinians going to go? They're
going to swim in the Mediterranean Sea to Cyprus.
And that's you know, that's you directly see
it influence the behavior. And that's people
around them are just not giving it. You know,
the people around them are not competent. They
are cowards. They are also, you know, if they're
not cowards, they're warmongers who want to see
war spread. And they're like all of these hawks.
And so you just see it directly affect what happens
on the ground. And so I think somebody at some
point has to just, you know, somebody has to
have some actual knowledge where they're not
compromised. And we haven't seen that. We didn't
see that in the Biden administration. And we're
not seeing it in the Trump administration. Yeah,
it's completely, I mean, it's both sides. And
I've talked about this for years. You know, it's
not, am I poking fun at the current one? Yeah.
I mean, he's a, you know, a clown literally with
the makeup. And I say that because everyone who's
offended at this moment, take a step back. If
you could choose anyone in the United States
to be the leader of this country, would that
guy have even made your top 1000? Of course not.
Neither would Biden. Obama at least could string
a sentence together. But did he have the clout
to actually enact anything? No. So let's go back
further. Now we're in the Bush administration.
You know what I mean? And so you've got to go
back decades to find good, good leaders that
actually had a backbone, you know, weren't taking
money from lobbyists. And to clarify, the total
body count now is over 50 ,000 in Gaza. Is that
right? In 18 months? So the health ministry is
reporting, yeah, 50 ,000. But we know that that's
that numbers. astronomically higher so we lose
a hundred thousand just to the opioid crisis
every year hundreds of thousands if not scraping
a million to the diseases related to obesity
probably i forget it is it's hundreds of thousands
to related to tobacco so if you have leadership
i'm using massive air quotes now that shrug their
shoulders at millions of americans dying on our
home soil so their friends can get rich yeah
Why would you question that this was an ulterior
motive in Gaza as well? And it's the same. I
mean, you ask most Iraq veterans that reflect
now on the lies that were told that got them
there. That doesn't sit well with a lot of our
men and women that came back with the trauma
in their mind, missing limbs and missing friends
that didn't make it back. For what? I remember
that when it first happened. You know, 9 -11
happened. They were going to Iraq. I'm like,
question, isn't that a different country than
where this guy is hiding? There's a great two
documentary series called Turning Point. One
is on 9 -11 and one is on the Cold War. Slightly
slanted to the left a little bit. So you've got
to take that into account. But you see, you reverse
engineer, reverse engineer. And my, you know,
the UK. what we have done over the last few hundred
years and how that's impacted things today which
in a positive thing is why my country is so beautifully
diverse but now you're seeing a lot of you know
islamophobia going on there are the muslims are
trying to take over you know the uk No. There
are some extremists that I wonder how the hell
they weren't thrown out the country years ago.
Those are the ones you got to stamp out and you
can tell them to go back, you know, wherever
they want to be, because those are the ones that
are dangerous to us. The other ones are the fabric
of our society. The same as kind of how many
people, you know, that come from Mexico are the
absolute backbone of the US. And now you've got
guys in balaclavas running around and, you know,
yeah, I hope that they're finding the bad people
because they need to go back to Mexico. But it
seems like that's not just the case. And again,
we've got a very anti -Mexican rhetoric going
on now. So the superpower of a citizen of a country
is to question what you are being told. And if
you analyze it and it makes sense, you're like,
okay, good. But let's remind us of only two or
three years ago, you were left to your own devices
as a frontline worker while everyone else hid
in their house wearing plastic bubble wrap. not
hugging their grandmother. And then within a
heartbeat, now those same first responders and
frontline workers were murderers if they didn't
take a vaccine, because a vaccine is 100 % effective.
And if you take it, you're going to stop this
disease. Now, fast forward, no conversation of
the morbid obesity and all the things that we
talked about earlier. We also realize that, let's
be honest, that vaccine was a 50 -50 at best.
No discussion now. And there's still, LA is still...
pursuing terminating first responders that didn't
take the vaccine in 2025. So again, I challenge
people listening, based on all the things that
we've talked about, how much truth is there to
what we're being told as far as everyone in Gaza
that's Palestinian is Hamas, and this is all
justified retaliation of October 7th. At what
point are you going to actually step back and
critically think? The same as with COVID and
go, you know what? I don't think that's right.
And I'm going to do my deep dive and have my
own opinion. And if everyone did that and disconnected
and actually thought about it and had dove into
a few nuanced conversations like this, they're
going to go, you know what? This is wrong. I'm
kind of late to the party, but I'm going to say
I did the best of what I have back then. But
today I'm drawing the line. This is wrong. We
need to put a stop to this as a nation. Yeah,
there's, you know, one thing that I kind of,
you know, share with folks, and you kind of reminded
me of it, it's like all of these veterans who
came back after the war on terror, where were
the people who were so eager to send them? Were
they there to support them? Because, you know,
just because you've come back and you're done
with your service, it's not like what happened
over there leaves you. It's not like you're suddenly
back to normal life. Where were all of these
people who were so eager to send everybody, were
so eager to declare war on Iraq? Were they around?
Were they supportive? Were they kind of happy
with what's happened? And everybody now is like,
oh, yeah, you know, the war in Iraq was. was
a mistake or like, yeah, there's false pretenses
or there wasn't weapons of mass destruction or
it was kind of a failure or whatever it is. You
notice that there's a lot of people now who pretended
like they were all along really were critical
thinkers, like you said. But the truth is, that
was a ostracized community of people who are
saying, wait, why are we going into this country?
What are we doing? Why are we sending our men
and women there? What's the deal? Why are we
being forced into this situation? And so, I think
That's something that I think about will happen
with Gaza is I think 20 years from now, everybody
will have been sort of against it. We'll say,
oh, I was against it at the time where I was
uncomfortable with what was happening. But the
truth is, we've got to change sort of how things
are discussed. You've got to be able to have
discussions. Me and you are not going to agree
on a million things. But we have to be able to
have a back and forth where I can try to come
up with my best arguments. You try to come up
with yours. And we're not just speaking. I'm
not just waiting for you to stop talking so I
can speak. I'm actually listening to what you're
saying and I'm taking it in. And if something
doesn't sit right or I don't think doesn't understand,
I ask a question or I critically challenge you
on something. It's not happening. It's definitely
not happening with Gaza. It's not happening on
CNN, on Fox, on MSNBC, on CBS. It's not happening.
There was a 60 Minutes report on Gaza recently
where they interviewed a doctor from Chicago.
He's a surgeon. And they talked about kids that
were coming here. Never once did they zoom out.
and talk about well what's happening or why was
why did this american doctor have to go there
it was just like oh this is a war somewhere and
you're like this is that's not the full picture
you're 60 minutes is supposed to be like a better
news program they did a shitty job and it's like
that's that's where we're at now we just can't
rely on the corporate media to give us the information
that we need instead everything is black and
white everything is you know right down the middle
of the line you're either on this side or you're
on that side Nobody can have a discussion anymore.
And if you're trying to log on to social media,
you know, you're either going to be in one echo
chamber or the other. You know, and I you know,
it's it really it's it's so tragic because we
should you know, I don't want the number to keep
climbing and it's going to keep climbing. I feel
like all of those people deserve for us to talk
about them, the people that are lost, you know,
people who have been affected by this and who
are not going to get a chance to go to college
or high school or kind of do what they want to
do with the rest of their lives. You know, I
don't want to forget them. You know, I want to
honor their memories for their families. And
it's like that you can't even get to that point
in the conversation. You can't just even talk
about the human aspect of all of this. You know,
you mentioned it, too, with what's happening
in our country and the people who are actually
struggling on the ground. It's just that's not
the conversations that are happening right now.
Instead, it's you've got a vice president who's
using X to just be like, oh, yeah, we've you
know, we're doing an amazing job. The last four
years were so garbage and we're killing it on
every level. And then the other guys are sitting
there doing a 24 hour session in Congress speaking
about nothing. Like spending 24 hours up there,
Cory Booker, Senator from New Jersey, Democrat.
What are you doing the 24 hours for? Are you
blocking some racist legislation? No, not doing
any of that. Instead, you went up there for 24
hours to say you were up there for 24 hours.
And then I got two text messages on my phone
asking me to donate to your office. This is what
we're dealing with. We're dealing with clowns.
And we're dealing with people who are not serious,
who don't want to have discussions. They want
soundbites. and they want you know to to you
know do the to you know to bang the drums of
war whether it's you know the political class
or it's you know overseas and you know you go
it goes back to what you're saying you know who
would you pick to lead this country in this time
right now and it's not not the people that you're
seeing on tv no and even what's sad with the
vice president is he had that book that he wrote
hillbilly ology or elegy whatever it is about
addiction not a peep in a country that has a
mental health and addiction crisis and not to
mention alcohol so again you use that you know
as your little kind of platform and then oh don't
need that anymore now i'm vice president you
know right so it's disgusting all right and it's
not politics this is the thing people say oh
we don't want to talk politics no we're talking
about the well -being and safety of the american
people talking about school safety is not pro
or anti -gun it's breaking down all the contributing
factors that our children are having to rehearse
their own murder where you and i only used to
have to rehearse the fire drill that's what we're
talking about that's not politics obesity addiction
you know the industrial military complex are
factors that are detrimental to the american
people that is not politics i want to hit one
thing quickly and then we'll talk about bone
marrow that i forgot to slide in before One voice,
and I'm super disappointed about this. I've always
said there's probably 95 % of Russian people
that do not want to be invading Ukraine. They
just want to get on with their day, raise their
kids, tend to their farms, work their jobs, get
on their fire engine every third day. And instead,
through a tyrannical leader, they're being forced
to fight and they're dying for probably a cause
they don't believe in. I'm sure there's a huge
amount of Israelis that also just want to go
about their day and have no skin in the game
of what's going on in Gaza, not to mention probably
a lot of them are disgusted what's happening
with their flag on these people's shoulders.
When I did a little research, I saw recently
there was 100 ,000 Israelis protesting the war.
And one of the interesting things was if it was
ever about the hostages, you would have negotiated
a long time ago because the moment there was
a ceasefire, what came out the blue? hostages
from both sides so talk to me about the opposition
from the israeli side because it's like radio
silence out there from what i can tell totally
yeah i mean i think that you know you it's important
to note that before october 7th uh the netanyahu
was having these there were massive protests
against him weekly in israel and it was because
they felt like he was undermining their institutions,
the Supreme Court, like them as a government
or as a democracy, they felt like Israelis were
coming out in the streets in droves. And then
I think what they've realized too with this is
if you are somebody who... cares about the Israeli
hostages, like you said, you would not be behaving
the way that you're behaving in terms of as a
military. You would not be, the rhetoric would
not be the rhetoric that you're sort of using
in terms of the leadership there. And so Israelis
are noticing that. They're not serious about
what they're saying. This is not really about
reestablishing security in Israel. This is not
really about getting the people who are in Gaza,
the Israelis who are in Gaza, the hostages that
are there. It's not about getting them out. And
it's not about moving towards some harmonious
future. And I think they're starting to realize
that. in bigger numbers but they that's a that's
a serious significant portion of the population
that's there and i think it's important to also
mention that the west bank is getting rocked
right now by the Israeli military as well. I
mean, they are, we are talking about different
refugee camps in the West Bank that are being
destroyed. You're seeing a lot of an American,
he was 16 or 17, was killed two days ago by the
Israeli military in a West Bank town. And you're
seeing an incredible amount of violence that's
there. The reason I mentioned that is I feel
that the Israeli government is now is being held
hostage by these extremist voices. And what they
did is they formed a coalition of a bunch of
extremists. And I think the Israeli public is
waking up to that. They're seeing that these
people have their own agendas, whether they are,
you know, whatever extremism strand that they're
coming from, they have their own agendas. And
it's not about getting to some degree of stability,
which is like you said, what people... in any
area ultimately want when they are ordinary regular
people they are the ones who prioritize stability
security their future they're not the ones who
are sitting in these meetings just trying to
figure out how long they can stay in power or
how they can extract um or how they can inflict
maximum damage and try to get leverage in certain
scenarios they don't think rationally everything
about the way that the israeli government is
behaving is irrational right now And it's because
it's dominated by this coalition of extremists.
And you're seeing that the military is reflecting
that leadership right now. And I think that the
pressure to get to a ceasefire deal will not
come from the United States. It will not come
from the UK. It will not come from France or
the surrounding Arab nations. I think it will
come from within Israel. I think that there's
going to be a serious amount of reckoning. This
guy's on corruption trial. Netanyahu is being
charged with corruption. He's trying to destroy
the Supreme Court. He's trying to dismiss the
head of their security service. There is so many
different kind of, there's so much chaos. that
I think that the pressure on them to get to a
ceasefire deal will come from within. At least
I hope so. Otherwise, what you'll see is this
conflict will leave its mark on all of these
societies, so on Palestinian society and on Israeli
society, and it won't be good. I want to hit
one more area and then we'll close out. I've
seen you talking about, is it stem cells? Yeah.
Yeah. So let's talk about that. Is it still timely?
I'm going to put this out on. What are we now?
Tuesday. So Thursday, it will be out. So almost
straight away. Would that be timely to talk about
this still? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think,
you know, the more people that we can just sort
of pay attention to to this specific case. And
we've got a seven year old girl who we were able
to get out of Gaza. And she was in Egypt for
a while and we were able to bring her to the
United States. And she's here trying to get treatment
for this really rare blood disorder. I mean,
it's like a blood cancer that basically caused
bone marrow failure. And so, you know, she initially
had a match for a bone marrow transplant. That's
not the case anymore. In the national registry
that we have, there are over 50 million people
here in the United States. We could not find
a match for her. And it's really because Middle
Easterners were not really well represented in
this. And we said, let's see if we can get different
people to come out, anybody, like really anybody
that's willing to get their cheek swab and see
if they could potentially be a match. And we
had this massive turnout of folks over the last
week. I mean, I think there were over 160 events.
in 12 states of people showing up, swabbing their
cheeks. Over 5 ,000 people tried to see if they
would be a match for this girl. And stem cell
transplant too, just for folks just to know,
it's not anything super invasive, really. It's
like you're donating blood. You get a couple
of these beforehand, a couple of days beforehand,
you get a couple of shots to make sure that you
have a bunch of stem cells that you, so when
you donate blood, there's a bunch of stem cells
in there. And that's it. I mean, normal routine.
You don't got to take off of work, you know,
nothing kind of crazy. And I think once people
got a wind of, hey, there's this seven year old.
And if she doesn't get treatment, the life expectancy
for this is nine years of age. And right now
she's in critical condition. And the doctors
are like, we've got to move forward with this
with the best possible match, regardless of where
we're at in a couple of weeks. I think people
stepped up. You saw that humanity that, you know,
we were talking about is missing from leadership.
Everyday people. I mean, I had people messaging
me who were like, oh, yeah, we saw that it's
18 to 40 who can donate. I'm 50. But please,
can I can I do it? Or was somebody saying, I'm
not I'm not Middle Eastern, but can I still donate?
Please, like people desperate to just help people
desperate to do the right thing. And that was
really overwhelming and emotional because we
just talked about what's happened over the last
month. and how disturbing that was. You saw people
who were so motivated to help. I mean, I had
a guy at an event we did at the mosque come up
to me. He grabbed me like by the shoulders and
he was just like, I feel it. I really feel like
I could be a match. I really hope I'm a match.
I really hope I'm, you're like, all right, you
know, like, wow, this guy, he's super sincere.
He just wants to, he wants to do something, you
know? And you, I saw that all across every, I
mean, it was not, it wasn't just Palestinians
who cared. I thought it would just be like, I'll
get the Palestinian diaspora in the United States,
you know, at least in Chicago, because we have
a ton of them. It was everybody. It was everybody.
And I mean, you know, hopefully we were able
to find the match. But, you know, if people can
still sort of pay attention, this is going to
the national registry. So it'll be if there's
any match down the line, there's a there's a
chance you could save a life. And it's super
easy. And I think this case did a great job of
highlighting how easy the process is. And it's
again, like. You know, if anybody's if anybody
wants to just sort of follow along, it's, you
know, be the match dot org slash swab for Palestine
and four is the number four. So, you know, I
hope that I'm going to be able to kind of post
about, you know, a really a good update. And,
you know, we we hope things we hope things work
out for her. Absolutely. Beautiful. Well, again,
thank you so much. We talked for another two
hours. I always sit down and go, no, I've just
got a few things to talk about. I know that,
you know, because this is, you mentioned, I think
this is a beautiful way to round it off. The
shared humanity, going back to that little English
boy, that is what we are. I truly believe that.
And if you look statistically, Americans are
some of the most generous when it comes to donations
and on the planet. You know, we really are a
beautiful people, but if you have enough toxic
environment, I mean, I'll give you a perfect
example. If you work for a toxic culture and
a fire service, you're going to see a lot of
very unhappy people. Those same people adored
the calling on day one. It was the environment
that broke them apart. It's the same with this.
When you have a very altruistic. you know environment
norway is a good example you're going to see
healthy people you're going to see happy people
and you're going to see very proactive altruistic
programs if you have a self -service self -serving
profit -based system you're going to see what
we see here and if you really take a note and
think about most of us are you know kind compassionate
caring human beings and we let a different kind
of person be at the helm of some of these organizations,
I really genuinely in my heart feel like there's
about to be a revolution of kindness and compassion.
I think the good people or the goodness in people
is starting to rise up and realizing and seeing
for these people for what they are. Because if
there's one good thing about social media, and
we talked about earlier, when you stand in the
middle and try and bring solutions to problems,
Instagram shuts your account down. I learned
that from experience. But anyway. If you try
and do that, that's a beautiful thing. But if
it's self -serving, it's a horrific thing. So
I believe that the true evolution of man is not
technology. It's not the wheel, then the industrial
revolution, then the computer, and then AI. It's
kindness and compassion. Look at Old Testament
humans. We were kind of brutal back then. So
these people are trying to send us back into
the dark ages. If we really want to progress
as a species, we have to the kindness and compassion
side. You know, you have to have courage because
it really takes courage to be kind. Don't don't
mistake my kindness for weakness. So I want to
see a revolution of kindness and compassion.
And that can be putting yourself on the stem
cell registry. And it can also be simply one
more voice saying what is happening there is
wrong. And we collectively need to stand up and
say that. Totally. I mean, that's one thing that
I do tell people when they say, what can we do?
At the end of the day, I think seeing all of
these failed sort of these sellouts and cowards
who are in these sort of leadership positions
that don't disengage. What we need is more people.
It's going to come from the people. You need
to take a step forward. You need to replace them
with people like yourself. I mean, these people
are not reflective of American society. They
don't represent the American public by any means.
They may try to manipulate folks into feeling
like it's an us versus them. But at the end of
the day, they are not the people that we need
in these positions. We need everyday people.
And that's my... That's really when people say,
what can we do? Keep pushing forward. Keep getting
different narratives out there. Keep humanizing
other people and make sure that these leaders
who have failed us don't continue to be in these
leadership positions. They shouldn't be rewarded
by our apathy. That's a reward for them. We got
to double down, like you said. It's a revolution
of kindness. I love that phrasing. Absolutely.
Well, for people listening, if they want to reach
out to you, where are the best places online?
Definitely. Instagram is probably the best place.
I'm not great at it, but I do try to check messages
and get back to everybody. So you can definitely
find me on Instagram. It's my name, Farah Ahmad.
And, you know, I'm trying to build the blue sky.
profile here but it's hard to it's hard to maintain
but definitely try to at least now my account
hasn't been restricted yet by by meta but i think
everybody's at risk all right well i want to
thank you again third conversation another two
hour you know education and the reason i say
that is because you know you've got this background
already working emergency medicine in a you know
busy, busy city in Chicago. You've been boots
in the ground, seen this happening, and you've
become really one of the statesmen when it comes
to the middle of the road storytelling of what's
actually going on apolitically. So once again,
I thank you so, so much for being so generous
with your time and coming on Behind the Shield
podcast today. Always a pleasure. Thank you,
James.