Teyshi (00:17)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Kashmir Exists. My name's Teyshi and this week we have brother Ray with us. Welcome Ray.

Ray (00:27)
Thanks, Stacey. Hello, everyone. I'm really happy to be here again and can't wait to start our conversation today.

Teyshi (00:35)
Absolutely spot on for me too as well. mean, I love talking to you Maria everyone that we have on these shows We get some really great perspectives and just to remind everyone, your background is Palestinian and Syrian So we get a lot of insight from you as well Well, the thing that we're going to be talking about today is the recent developments that's happened with..I suppose he's called President Trump isn't he being elected?

And his very recent talks, joint talks with Netanyahu and his press conference to the world around his plans for Gaza, namely he called it "Our Land" and looking to re-home Gazans. what I'm going to be looking at today is, you know, this idea that a foreign entity can come in, decide the fate of indigenous people.

Ray (01:02)
Mm-hmm.

Teyshi (01:30)
And that if that does kind of take hold and come to fruition, what that really means for other indigenous people who are under occupation or under threat of occupation. let's just start with what's happening at the moment, Ray. What do you make of, you know, Trump being elected and like lightning coming in and...

Making these kind of plans and assertions about Gaza with Netanyahu. What do you make of it all?

Ray (02:01)
Well, look, you know, since he got elected and, you know, we knew that he's going to be the president, you know, it was always full of controversy since his last term, right? And honestly, before he said anything, the first thing came to my mind is, all right, what's going to happen now? What is he going to surprise us with? And, you know, he didn't really disappoint me.

He surprised us directly with his statements and course with Netanyahu's visit. Honestly, just like many others, we're just sitting and looking in anticipation and trying to figure out what is going to happen because we've seen something that happened in his previous term.

especially when it came to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries and what happened, you know, the between them and Qatar when Qatar was completely You know being left alone so Honestly again all I was looking for or like of course asking is like hmm. Okay, what's What does he gonna surprise us with and yes, there we go. You know, he spoke about you know

Canada, spoke about Greenland and he spoke about the Gulf of Mexico. And there he goes, Gaza now. So I don't know what to expect, honestly.

Teyshi (03:34)
Yeah,

Well, you're right. It has been a lot of things. And going back to his initial sort of it looked like where the press was there and he was sat at his desk in the White House signing all those stacks of executive orders. You're right. He talked about, you know, having this very aggressive attitude to placing tariffs on practically anybody.

in any country and then talked about, you know, calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of, I think he said the Gulf of America. And then obviously talking about Greenland and his ambitions for expansionism into Greenland. And then finally Gaza and whether we expected it or not, I think for me, some of the telltale signs was Netanyahu's sort of

addresses to the press leading up to it. He was smiling quite a lot. He seemed unusually buoyant and a bit smug, if I'm honest with you. So that seemed a bit menacing for me because to me, I wasn't completely ready for this, by the way. didn't think, for example, that, you know, it was, you know, he's going to come out and do all these things. But certainly when I saw Bibi's demeanor, I just kind of thought, well,

He's obviously very confident. He feels like he's got Trump in his corner. But then when the press conference was being held and I saw them sat there together and then I saw Trump kind of saying, know, words like "Our Land" and we're going to look for other countries, namely Egypt, Jordan and whoever else he might have been thinking of to take in the Gazans. And of course, Bibi again, smiling very overconfidently.

I think a lot of that definitely exceeded my expectations because I came from the place of you're American. How do you get to decide what happens to, you know, another set of people that are indigenous? You you don't have sovereignty. And so from that point, I felt like we're just entering into the twilight zone where the rules of international law are being rewritten at a drop of a hat.

So you have to wonder at that point, is he just overconfident and stupid or does he know something we don't? So yeah, I don't know what I expected. I don't think I expected what's happened. It's not a surprise that he comes in and makes grand gestures because I guess that's what he's all about is that's his signature move is grand gestures.

As somebody that has roots in Palestine and definitely thinking about other Palestinian people and Gazans, do you think that that has gone, know, the sort of people talking about them and deciding their future, how do you think it's made people feel?

Ray (06:27)
Well, look, I'm just going to go back a couple of steps prior to that. Now, when we heard what he said during the press conference and all of his statements, right? It reminded me, I don't know, if you remember, at the very beginning of October the 7th, and you can see all of those news channels,

some interviews with Israeli officials, they were actually talking since then during those interviews, they were talking about, know, Gazans can go to Egypt or can go to Jordan, right? So it seems like, it had been there, but all that Trump did, in my opinion, is that he just put it together more

quote unquote professionally, like a business plan. So that's why I was like, I've heard that before, but now it's just being put together in a more like a corporate format, if you like. So honestly, again, full of surprises, but still at the same time, not surprised because...

Teyshi (07:22)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ray (07:41)
everyone knows that there is a plan for Gaza, other than what, of course, the IDF and these radio officials are saying, there is a plan. We're talking about natural gas, we're talking about so many resources there. And in their eyes, these are things that are not really being exploited very well, and someone should take care of them. And that's basically what is the...

In general, that's what the US policies, if you like, you know, they wouldn't really, they wouldn't really, they'd always have some, interests in something because, you know, they have some benefits out of it or some something to exploit or take advantage of. Now back to your question. you know, all of us, like not only the Palestinians, like

all the public in the Arabic and Muslim countries, of course, as soon as we heard those statements and those proposals so far, I would be like, okay, no, that's not really going to happen. You can see multiple videos, you can see multiple on social media, basically, you can see people saying, no, we're not going, we're not leaving, we'd live on the rubble.

but we're not leaving because we all know again, since we heard those statements earlier from the Israeli officials back in 2023, know, when they started saying it like, you know, all we need is that, you know, all the Gazans, the citizens again, quote unquote citizens need to go out to go to Egypt while we just cleanse the area from Hamas or whatever and they can go back safely. And we all know that this is not going to happen, you know, as soon as

anyone goes out, they're not coming back. It's not because they don't want to, but it's because they're not going to be let in. So no one is leaving, right? You know, they made the people suffer for 16 months now. And so the people can give up and they will just look for, you know, a breather or they would look for, let's say a safe place where they can just raise and educate their children by themselves.

some jobs but you know on the other hand they're not going to leave you know why does it have to be that complicated why does it have to be like you know the place should be destroyed and you know you people should be moved out and we will build it for you you know what just leave us alone all right just stay out of our business okay and we'll build it they have the expertise they have the manpower they have everything

there, we'll just do it ourselves. Just stay out of it. How about that? Isn't that easier?

Teyshi (10:27)
Absolutely, absolutely and of course that's the voice of the people. They want to stay in Gaza, you're right, that's their land and they don't, you know, that's where they see themselves. It's not a case of, you know, let's move somewhere else knowing that they can't return. Of course there were calls even to push them down into the Sinai, I remember, but why should you move from your homeland? It makes no sense.

for the convenience of other people and other factors, whether it's nationalism and colonialism and occupation or a good business deal. And to that end, all of us support the Palestinians. I think a lot of people are watching on in total confusion how almost efficiently people are trying to be swept up and shipped out. It's kind of confusing.

I would say to the average viewer of this situation. certainly going back to what you said of how they talked about they wanted to see the Gazans in other areas apart from their sort of place where they have so much roots, is that there was always the talk of how Gaza makes great beachfront property by Jared Kushner, who is himself a Zionist.

He's Jewish. He was talking about great real estate potential. And of course he is Trump's son-in-law as well. So that's always, you know, a sort of a kind of a coincidence as well. I think the fact that you can for the prospect of making money, whether it's from the resources, natural gas, whether it's, you know, from real estate.

whether it's even from things that they were talking about, having an alternative to the Suez Canal route and therefore, you know, taking control of the shipping routes there, whatever the very, you know, many sort of various options there are, you are talking about people at the end of the day. So I do agree with you. There's always been that talk about it in the background. Nevertheless, we've seen Palestinians are absolutely resilient, resolute and not moving.

and it does make you wonder how they could be forced to. He has mentioned something about putting troops on the ground. I don't know whether you feel like he's trying to say that he would put American troops in Gaza to forcibly remove Gazans. Did you get a sense of that at all?

Ray (13:11)
Well, honestly, I wouldn't really be surprised. Isn't that what usually happens? Put the troops again under any excuse, like democracy, like keeping security, like whatever it is, right? But of course, as soon as the troops are there, they'll just take over. And we've seen in Iraq, we've seen in...

Afghanistan, wherever those troops are, especially of course when it's a conflict area or it's an area that had been through conflict. I don't like to call it conflict because you know my opinion about the Palestinian cause itself, but anyway a destroyed area. well, as soon as the troops are there, don't think they're gonna do anything except like taking over, making sure that they take over the place.

making sure that the native or the residents of the area, they would not really like the situation and trying to move by themselves, not move by themselves, but basically to be forced to move, but at least to make the decision to move because the situation is unbearable. That's how I see it as well.

Teyshi (14:28)
Absolutely, no, I totally agree with that summation as well. I think a lot of, know, when this was happening, I mean, look, we're only into a few weeks. I don't know how long he's been president, but it hasn't been long. I feel like it was January the 19th from recollection. Either way, you know, he hasn't been in presidency long. We've got another four years ahead of us. Of course, this doesn't just affect America as we've seen. This affects foreign policy as far as...

you know, the USA is concerned. And so for me, watching this, watching occupied people try to be ethnically cleansed try to be displaced, I couldn't help but think about how India is perceiving this situation. And of course, other, any other sorts of countries that do occupy other areas as well. So I couldn't, my mind couldn't help but jump to that. And I thought,

India must be absolutely loving this right now because Israel is just a gift that keeps on giving for them. They constantly provide for them these kind of, you know, templates to work from, these workbooks or playbooks or whatever you want to call them, where the road ahead and the plans are already marked up all, for example, you know, a country like India in respect to Kashmir Valley.

would have to do was just listen and learn or watch and learn and just take notes. Where did it work? What could have been done better? And then as we've seen India doing is executing their plan with even more finesse than Israel because they've learned from Israel's mistakes, I guess you could say.

And so what am I really talking about there? I suppose I'm talking about what must be in some Kashmiris mind. And of course, other areas of the world, we can talk about that. But certainly, you know, in the minds of Kashmiris, it will be that India's looking at this and thinking that by, you know, 2035, which is 'Plan Kashmir 2035', where they flood more and more Indian, you know, in other words, outsiders, non-indigenous Indian Hindus into the region.

then it will seek to make the indigenous Kashmiris a minority in their own homeland. We're bound to see conflict. It's not a case of we just have a lot of new neighbours. There's bound to be some sort of, know, conflict between the two sets of people that will be living in that land. And nobody likes to see that kind of bullying tactic

of people being forced into your land and you being edged out, displaced, potentially also locked out of jobs from that region. So a whole host of strategic, economic, punitive things to come in place, more aggression and violence from the army. And at some point it would force Kashmiris to defend themselves and their land against the occupier. And that's where I draw the

parallels. And if I then go to where we're looking now when we talk about Gaza and what the intent of the occupier and their allies is, it's really this idea that: "Look you're having such a terrible time in the Valley you know, it's now become majority Hindu. You really belong in neighboring Pakistan" So then talks, you know, from India to say, we're asking Pakistan to take the people of Kashmir Valley in, you know,

Pakistan is a majority Muslim country. The majority of the people in Kashmir Valley are Muslim. They can go, they can be taken in by Pakistan. So you almost see it unfolding like that. I'm not to say that Pakistan would just acquiesce. Pakistan would it depends who the leader of Pakistan is at the time and whether they've got a puppet leader installed. depending on those factors, you've got the scenario of

Pakistan may be saying: "No! We're not going to help to ethnically cleanse Kashmiris from their land. I so that's a lot that I've said there, Ray, but what do you think about that kind of analysis for the future of Kashmir when we look at what's happening to Gaza?

Ray (18:50)
look, absolutely, from what I've seen in my region where I came from, I want to add to what you said, know, like India is just sitting there and taking notes. To be honest with you, I'm not sure if they are taking notes or they have just received the booklet already, you know, ready-made booklet, what to do next, because, you know, think about it this way, right? We're talking about, you know, the colonization itself, right? And then, you know,

creating an area of conflict where people, the residents or the natives of this area would try, at least they would get, I don't know if I say it, just get fed up and they just want to live a normal life. And then of course, like you said, letting more people who are not native to the land to come in and then add to that, to the recipe, add to that, of course, the belief.

or the sectarian side of things, is of course, know, Hindus, Muslims. And then, of course, you know, that's not really going to be just a normal, it could be a normal combination, but of course, someone would be igniting more issues there, or let's say, more issues between those two groups, let's say the Hindus and Muslims, or the two sides of two beliefs, right? To the point where

Again, a similar suggestion which I heard it I think, I heard it somewhere that you know what, why doesn't Pakistan just take the Kashmiris, you know they're all Muslims at the end of the day, right? And you know, does that ring a bell? Isn't that what was told to the Ghazans as well? Like you know, go to Egypt or something? It's the same, I'm telling you, the booklet is there, the recipe is there, right? And you know, it's just waiting for someone to start working on it.

Teyshi (20:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

No, I agree. I I wondered, do you see this affecting other areas of the world? I mean, how could this affect, I don't know, other areas such as Syria? you know, Syria's in difficult situation right now. We know that we don't know any, you know, there's no certainties at the moment. It's in a kind of developmental phase. But when we're seeing the manipulation of people, how, if any, do you think that...

could affect Syria and its future in any way, these sorts of playing chess with, indigenous people's lives, how do you see it affecting Syria or even the West Bank really, what do you see about that?

Ray (21:16)
Well, we can see the... Look, to start with, since we're talking about Palestine still, the West Bank, we can see what is going on there, right? So, you know, with the ceasefire in Gaza, some focus is made more or is put more on the West Bank. And we see the demolition work that is happening there, the destruction work that is happening there in Jenin and in other areas, hundreds of houses are being demolished.

tens and hundreds of families are just being left homeless or at least asked to evacuate and leave, not asked in fact forced, right? So we can see this already happening in the West Bank and that doesn't really look good. But to jump onto the other side about Syria. Now, Syria itself, we could see since

let's say since the fall of the regime, Assad regime, we can see how the manipulation of the people in general, either in Syria or the people who are watching even, right? So the manipulation is something like, look at that, you know, as soon as the regime or let's say these groups took over, Israel progressed.

They're already inside Syria. They already, you know, bombarded the military bases. They already neutralized the military power. So, of course, the people who took over, that's one of the narratives, by the way, the people who took over now, they are direct agents for Israel. While, of course, some people like me, for example, would say like, whoever is going to take over, whoever is going to be really

in the power there is going to be a danger for Israel and the first thing that Israel is going to do is going to destroy the military power or the military ability, whatever it is. again, trying to create, it's not only a conflict on the ground, it's even conflict within people's minds and the way they think.

and of course they feed on the differences between people, they feed on the levels of understanding and analysis that each of us has, right? And this is one of the ingredients of the recipe, right? To create or to destabilize even further. It is not enough only to use the

military power. It's also using the manipulation so that people can bump onto each other and can conflict with each other and hate each other just because of the differences of thoughts that everyone has. We can disagree on something, we may have different ideas or different opinions.

But why does it have to be that aggressive? That's what they're feeding on. That's what they are trying to even enforce further. I don't know if you agree with me. And I'm sure that you've seen similar thing, whether it's in Kashmir or any other parts of the world.

Teyshi (24:36)
Yes, exactly. There is this kind of divisionism that goes on. It's used to destabilise, to weaken for kind of future objectives of moving in. And I don't know whether you want to call it taking over the land or other kind of whatever the aspirations happen to be. But I guess, you know, we've had a really good discussion about what's happening in Israel.

what's happening in Gaza, what's happening in the West Bank, and looking at other colonial sort of projects around the world as well with Kashmir and even touching on Syria. In conclusion though, mean realistically, what do you think, you know, do you think, so here's the question I'm going to ask to be specific. Can Trump do what he is threatening to do in summary and in closing?

Ray (25:30)
You know, I'm scared to say yes, he can just because I've seen what happened in 2017 within the Arabic Gulf countries, right? As soon as he just stepped in there, you know, the Arabic countries, there's the Gulf Cooperation Council, which is basically they are all pretty much, you know, cooperating together for years. They are like one country. are like

Not one country, but at least, you know, they are in very good operating under very good system, let's call it this way. And as soon as he stepped in, you know, they went into division. And as soon as he stepped out, they went back into normal. So I'm afraid and I'm worried that because of the responses that he got from the journalists during that press conference when he was asked that,

Do think that Egypt or Jordan or any of the countries would accept the proposal? He said, yes, they will. That's my worry here. My worry is the governments of those countries, the countries I'm talking about, know, Egypt, Jordan, or any other country, those governments, honestly speaking, they are being controlled themselves. They don't really have their own. They don't make their own decision. And this is what worries me. I hope I'm wrong. I'll pray that I'm wrong, but

I'm just sitting here watching in anticipation and worried.

Teyshi (26:56)
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that, you know, we're in a time where literally anything can happen. You know, inshallah it doesn't and, you know, common sense prevails. Ghazans stay where they are. You know, people in the West Bank also don't suffer disproportionately.

Ray (27:16)
Yeah, to me, look, I spoke about, you know, like, my statement was about, you know, like how I see it, you know, from political or let's say from from government's level, but from the people's level, people are not going anywhere. Honestly, people aren't going anywhere. They're not leaving their land. You know, this is not going to happen again.

Teyshi (27:37)
Total agreement with you closing now what we've seen that generally the Palestinians are very very strong people they you know are very determined to stay where they are so yes it's one thing for him to say that it's one thing thing for him to try and do various things but

The people themselves definitely aren't going anywhere. But listen Ray, this has been great and I really have loved having this conversation. It's a lot to think about. You've given me a lot to think about. I'll be going away now and just trying to ponder the various things and, you know, apply this on a world status because like I said, we do have four more years of Trump. So, you know, a lot of it for me is going to be thinking about what could be the potentials. But I really appreciate your time.

Thank you so much.

Ray (28:27)
Thanks, thanks, Teyshi. I really appreciate having this conversation with you. And of course, I always enjoy having conversations with you, Teyshi. I always learn from you. And yeah, can't wait for our next session.

Teyshi (28:40)
Absolutely, and yeah, we all look forward to that. So by the way, everyone, our next session might be debunking some of the Hindutva myths, which is the talking points about why Kashmir Valley belongs to India. So that could be our next session. So please do tune in for that. But as ever, thank you so much for listening and see you next time. Bye bye.

Ray (29:01)
Bye.