Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Ashraf Nubani.
He wrote this important piece for Antiwar.com we ran the other day.
It's on the Viewpoints page there.
The Nakba demands justice.
And he is a Palestinian-American Muslim community leader in Virginia and is an immigration attorney there.
So in the Washington, D.C. area.
So welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Good.
I'm doing well.
It's great to be here with you, Scott.
Good deal.
Well, happy to have you here.
So two days ago was the anniversary of the Nakba.
That's what the Palestinians call it.
Independence Day to the Israelis.
And so you talk about your view of the Nakba, the history of the event itself and what all happened there and what's important about it.
But also, of course, what's important about it to you and your family and your life here in the U.S. and all of these things.
So go ahead.
The floor is yours to, I guess, start out and educate the people about just what we're talking about in the first place, maybe.
Right.
Well, yes, of course, introducing the Nakba is important because we have to have references to point to, and especially here in the U.S. where the whole Palestinian-Israeli conflict actually plays a big role.
But we sometimes don't see it because of its religious significance.
But basically, the Nakba is what I outlined in the article.
When you're doing such a short article, you can only do so much.
But the gist of it is that to solve one problem for a certain group of people, another people were displaced from their land.
And until that issue is resolved, there can't be a final resolution of what's called the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
So in 1948, when Israel was founded, declared its independence, it was on this ethnic cleansing of the people who happened to live in the Holy Land.
And some of them go back literally a thousand years and more when you look at their gene pool.
And they were forced out of their homes, out of their urban areas.
And they had to march into safe territory in the neighboring Arab countries, including Jordan and Lebanon.
And they went to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and so forth.
And they call it the Nakba, the catastrophe, because for that generation, they were really a hapless people.
I mean, they were at the mercy of the superpowers that had been under Ottoman rule.
And then it was the British mandate.
And they had no self-determination of their own, even though the Arabs were promised that in the Middle East.
But they never realized it.
And they expected to return, but they never did.
And that's what's caused the problem over the years.
For me as a Palestinian, I happen to have been born in Kuwait in the 60s.
And we came to the U.S. in 1970.
I was four and a half years old.
So before I started school in Kuwait, I started kindergarten here in the United States.
And I grew up knowing that I was Palestinian because my parents were first-generation immigrants.
And they were very protective over us.
And we adapted.
We assimilated very well into the country in terms of what it had to offer for our educational future and our lives here.
And, of course, it became our home.
But the diaspora of the Palestinians was always something that was lingering.
So as I grew up, you know, as a teenager witnessing literally on TV the invasion of Lebanon and Beirut and the subsequent massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila camps by Christian Falange militias with the aid of the Israelis, it really brought things to light for me.
There's a lot that's going on here.
Where do I stand?
Where does my country stand, meaning, you know, the United States?
And that's what led, you know, to me becoming a lawyer and fighting for the justice of all, because at the end of the day, you know, justice shouldn't be malleable as people think that, you know, it could be relative.
And I think that, you know, to some degree, yes, we can differ as human beings.
But justice is justice when it comes to resolving, you know, core issues and problems.
And as I said, solving the problem of one group of people by displacing another can never, you know, bring justice.
And so my career has been, you know, I guess, you know, built around that concept of justice.
And the article was written in that, you know, in that vein.
And the idea that we can coalesce together as Americans to stand up for justice, regardless of, you know, what that cause is.
But this certainly signifies, you know, a cause for justice.
Hang on just one second.
So you're constantly buying things from Amazon.com.
Well, that makes sense.
They bring it right to your house.
So what you do, though, is click through from the link in the right hand margin at ScottHorton.org.
And I'll get a little bit of a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale.
Won't cost you a thing.
Nice little way to help support the show.
Again, that's right there in the margin at ScottHorton.org.
Well, you know, there's so much to go back over here.
But, you know, first of all, I guess it's pretty easy to understand, isn't it?
I'm not saying in a moral way, but just in a descriptive way.
It's easier to understand that racism from a previous era was much more stark than it is now, really.
And the idea was essentially that even if Jews were looked down upon by racist whites in power in America, that still they're whiter than Arabs.
Who cares about them, essentially?
So if we got to do one last big colonial project in the so-called third world or what have you, right at the end of the colonial era, then really, who cares about the Arabs, essentially, one way or the other?
That was the idea then.
And really, the whole project only makes sense, you know, in those terms, right?
That there was lip service given to the rights of the Palestinians at the time.
But in Britain and in the United States, they didn't really care about them at all.
So that's kind of what has led to this situation that's so irreconcilable now, is that if they'd been given anything like a fair shake in the first place, you'd have had a situation that would be a lot more sustainable instead of always a permanent crisis.
Well, yeah, I agree.
I mean, agreed, definitely.
And people think that this is, you know, a protracted, complicated issue.
And to some degree, it is.
But on another level, it's not if it's viewed in the way that you just described, that this is kind of, you know, the last colonial attempt, you know, successful attempt at that.
But at the end of the day, it can be resolved if, you know, the rights of the Palestinians was to be restored.
And I think that that's, you know, that's what we're fighting for.
But we've lived together for so long.
The issue is not between Palestinians and Jews or Arabs and Jews or Muslims and Jews.
It's over this, you know, this colonial state of Israel, which now has, you know, gone beyond seven decades.
And there has to be, you know, there has to be some sort of resolution based on justice in order for, you know, for the Palestinians to gain their rights.
Well, so I want to get back to that in a minute.
But on your story, I wanted to go ahead and give you a chance to clarify.
I mean, I understand exactly what you mean, but I want to make sure that the audience understands exactly what you mean.
You're not Kuwaiti.
The reason you were born in Kuwait is because you were born in an actual refugee camp or you were from a refugee camp in Kuwait, essentially.
Just like when you talk about Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon, that wasn't a massacre of Lebanese.
That was a massacre of Palestinian refugees in a camp in Lebanon.
Yes.
I guess I should.
Yeah.
So clarify.
So, yes, I'm Palestinian-American.
I'm Palestinian on both sides of my family.
And, of course, during that period, while there were people who were direct refugees, we were not refugees because my family left the West Bank at the time in 1965.
So it was two years before, you know, before the 1967 Six-Day War.
I was born in 1966.
But it was a direct result of the situation in Palestine.
I mean, even in the, you know, even in 1965, there was no Palestine.
There was no, you know, they weren't willing to give the Palestinians who were living there, whether it was Israel proper or outside of Israel and the surrounding territory, their rights.
But they had been, your family had been from the West Bank before the Nakba even, so they weren't necessarily even refugees.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
We were from the West Bank.
And then they were allowed to emigrate to Kuwait.
And then so y'all didn't have to live in a camp there.
You just lived in town.
Exactly.
My father was looking for better economic opportunities, as, you know, many families do all over the world throughout history.
And we ended up in the United States.
But, yes, and then when I was a teenager.
By the way, and this is why I got that wrong, I guess, or assumed too much about that was because there were Palestinian refugees living in camps in Kuwait.
And I don't even know about that because I learned that when Arafat sided with Saddam Hussein in 1990, that the Kuwaitis, and as revenge later on, kicked all the Palestinians out of Kuwait.
And they were scattered to the wind and to Syrian camps and wherever else after that.
Right, right.
You know, exactly.
All of the neighboring Arab countries, you know, to differing degrees.
And in 1982, I mean, it was the invasion of Lebanon.
I was probably about, you know, 16 years old, I think, at the time.
And Sabra and Shatila happened actually in September.
And that's why in the article, you know, I say that it's in identity politics.
This would be the Palestinians' 9-11 because it actually happened in September.
And while they differ on the number of human beings slaughtered in those camps, they run anywhere from 7,000, I'm sorry, 750 to 3,500.
So it was, I mean, this was men, women, and children, you know, were killed in almost like, you know, in, you know, it wasn't like throwing a bomb and you killed 10.
No, they went through the camps literally killing people and disposing of their bodies and so forth.
And the investigations afterward were kind of difficult to, you know, to decipher as to really how many people were killed.
And because of the lawlessness in Lebanon at the time, because of the civil war and the different, you know, sectarian conflicts and so forth.
So, yeah, it was, you know, that was a really, you know, interesting time.
And that's the, you know, I was watching this as an American and yet a Palestinian.
And that's kind of what, you know, got me into this mode of where do we stand on this?
And if it didn't matter to us, then that's fine.
But it matters because there are so many Christians in the world.
And this is the holy land for Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
And while we call it, well, you know, we're a secular nation, technically this is a Christian nation where, you know, religion drives some of the policy.
And we've aligned ourselves with Israel, as you mentioned.
And that's what needs to be dismantled in a way that would eventually bring, you know, justice.
That would make me happy as an American and as a Palestinian and as a human being.
Well, you know, it's interesting, too, the way that dynamic plays out.
You know, we all know about the dispensationalism and the trying to trick Jesus into coming back sooner than he planned or whatever kind of thing they're playing here with the Christian Zionism.
But the actual Christians are Palestinians.
And they're what, I guess, one fifth of the population of the Palestinians there.
But that's a lot.
And they get persecuted right along with the Muslims and dehumanized right along with Muslim Arab Palestinians.
But it seems like, you know, the way I always put it in my horrible cynical fashion is like, well, if a Palestinian Arab is a Christian, does that make him at least half a person to you or something?
Like, I understand the religious mandate to support the Jewish state of Israel as cockamamie as all that is.
But what about just solidarity with your co-religionists, which seems to matter a lot of the time in a lot of other places?
In fact, that was why some of the right got Syria right and said, why are we backing these jihadists against Assad when Assad's secular dictator that he is protects the Christian communities there?
Right.
Well, but that's the absurdity of the policy.
And yes, if any denomination of Christianity, and there are quite a few, of course, in the Holy Land, in Jerusalem particularly, that if they don't toe the sort of, you know, born again, we're bringing about Armageddon brand of Christianity, then, yeah, they're suffering just like the rest of the Palestinians.
And their view here, I've asked, you know, people, these kinds of folks here, and they basically said, you know, that it's God's will.
Yes, they're Christian, at least some of them.
And as you know, with the Protestant strain, they don't consider Catholics necessarily Christian and, you know, the Orthodox and the other denominations, which are older churches, of course, and they originate in the Middle East where Jesus came from.
And yet this small group, at least worldwide in the Christian community, is a small group because, first of all, they're Protestants and the majority are Catholics.
And second of all, they're a minority within the Protestant strain because not all Protestants believe that, you know, Israel has to exist in this way, especially as a secular state.
You know, if it was a religious state and doing what David was doing, you know, that would be another issue.
But it's a secular state and does everything that's antithetical to, you know, Christian morals and values, and yet they support it.
And Methodists don't support it necessarily or Presbyterians or Episcopalians or, you know, it's just this like strain.
But they're the ones who are running policy, at least to a certain degree.
And it's really absurd.
And that's why, you know, I'm actually a believer, and this is like, you know, my American identity that Israel is not going to be around for a long time.
I know people don't believe that or they don't see it because we are so pragmatic.
We see the, you know, the power that's in front of us now.
But the seeds for, you know, really their own, you know, I want to say destruction is in their own hands because of these absurdities.
And it just, you know, it can't go on.
I mean, the settlers have swimming pools while the Palestinians in the West Bank, where the water is being taken from their, you know, underneath the aquifers in the West Bank in their areas, is they're drinking polluted water, the Palestinians.
So, you know, they can pick up themselves one day and live next to you, you know, in California or me here in D.C., and we'd welcome them in.
That is the Israeli settlers.
So the issue is, you know, it's going to be very delicate in the future, and especially as America as I see is actually divided more than I've ever seen.
And as a historian, I have a master's in history, and I, you know, read up on current affairs and look at history as a sort of, you know, as a teacher.
And we're going to be focused on so many things here that won't allow us to give the same attention and focus that we've been given to Israel.
And because of that, they will be, you know, they will be functioning in a sort of different atmosphere in the future.
And along with the demographic issue of the Palestinians, the 2 million in Gaza, the 2 million in the West Bank and inside Israel proper, and the Palestinians in Jordan, which is next door.
I mean, you know, it's just, it's not going to be, it's not going to be easy.
And also the Arab Spring is a factor in the sense that, yes, it was shut down, you know, at this point, but it's coming back up again.
Because at the end of the day, and there was a previous article on, you know, on the Muslim Brotherhood, whenever they're, you know, Muslims are given an opportunity to have fair and free elections in the Middle East, at least, they do vote for these Islamic parties.
And when they're not allowed to rule, then people want what, you know, they have no, they haven't been given an opportunity.
And, you know, so Hamas could have been elected in 2006, and they let them rule, you know, they let them rule, serve the people, clean up the streets, provide the things that government provide.
And if they had failed, people would have voted them out.
But no, we said we're not going to let the Palestinians even, you know, vote for Hamas.
We're going to punish Gaza, and we're going to punish the Palestinian leadership, and so forth.
And I think that, you know, these absurdities, again, is what's going to cause, you know, a sort of backlash.
It's like, you know, blowback in CIA terms.
And I think that we've created these absurdities, and what is going to happen, you know, other than, you know, sort of a confrontation that's, you know, really unavoidable, whether we want it or not.
And I think it's important that we educate the American public, because it matters to us.
It matters about our boys going off, you know, dying for in a war that, you know, we didn't have to fight.
And it involves us because we're spiritual, and as Christians, the Holy Land is important.
But, you know, Muslims recognize Jesus, albeit not as God.
They recognize him as one of the greatest prophets.
And they also recognize the Jewish prophets.
And the Christians recognize the Jewish prophets, but the Jews, they don't recognize Muhammad or Jesus.
And so, you know, the incentive to keep that place a place of worship and open access is, you know, certainly shouldn't be in the hands of, you know, of this current state of Israel.
And I think that, you know, this is going to be an issue going down the line.
No, that's an interesting point about the incentive there that Christians and Muslims have to preserve any Jewish sites or artifacts or what have you, where the Israeli-Jewish side has much less incentive since they kind of look at Christianity and Islam as, you know, kind of fun but incorrect break-offs of their own belief, that kind of thing.
Invalid deviations from their religion.
So you can see why, yeah, they don't care nearly as much.
They're perfectly happy.
At some point, there is a real danger, it seems like, of their destruction of the Temple Mount or, you know, their attempt to create the third temple there by some right-wing religious, whichever sect it is of Jews that are pushing some of that stuff.
Right, definitely.
There's enough, yeah, there's enough people that want it to happen.
And, you know, they have money and they have power and they have access.
So, yeah, that's a real possibility.
And you know what?
It's true what you say, too, about the absurdities.
In other words, things are so far out of whack that the snapback that's coming will be that severe.
So part of that, as you say, is the demographic threat where you take all the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and, you know, East Jerusalem, of course, really part of the West Bank, but also in all the refugee camps around the world and all of that, too.
Now we're talking about a majority under the rule of the minority.
But you can see how that just solidifies the Israeli position even more, that if they have one state, they're worried that it won't be one state with equal rights for everybody.
It will be one state that's now ruled by the Arab majority, which will then use the government at their expense, just the way they've lorded it over the Palestinians this whole time, which is plausible, right?
Since, you know, it's not like the PLO and Hamas are based essentially on America's principles of the Declaration of Independence and the individual natural rights of man or anything like that.
It's my group versus your group on both sides.
Right.
You know, definitely there is a lot of that.
But I think there's also some, you know, misconceptions about that, especially with, you know, especially with Palestine being the Holy Land and the fact that Palestinians, and again, when you look at the gene pool, yes, there are people who have been there for thousands of years, but there are always newcomers.
And it's, you know, there's always people coming in and out of Palestine.
So it's actually been very cosmopolitan, meaning that it wasn't an area that was ruled like dictators ruled the other areas.
Iraq traditionally, no matter who ruled it, it was always a place where you needed a strong man to keep things in, you know, to keep things in check.
But in Palestine, that's not the case.
And, you know, down deep inside, I think many Jews know that, but they're afraid just for the reasons that you stated.
They've been in power, and they're afraid that, you know, something bad is going to happen.
But nothing bad is actually going to happen, especially when rights are returned.
And an example of that is when the city was conquered by the Arabs in the 7th century, the key was given to a Muslim family, two Muslim families, which they still have the key to this day.
They opened the church.
And this is a fact.
And the reason is because there were other warring sects, and they didn't want, you know, one or the other to have the upper hand.
So they gave it to a third neutral party, and that was the Muslims.
But that kind of – but that's actually, you know, the situation.
And again, you know, people say, you know, the Muslims and the Arabs have been fighting the Jews for – and this is not true.
They lived side by side.
The issue is can you, you know, can you live there at the expense of the people living there?
In other words, if you want to be a usurper, you're going to be a Spartan state as Israel is.
But if you want to live from the Euphrates to the Nile with the majority, then, of course, you can.
And, yes, I mean, there are – and I'm not saying that there aren't identity politics involved and so forth.
But Palestine really is unique as a cosmopolitan area and the holy land where so many people have come, you know, over the millennium through that place.
After all, the Israelis could have let the Palestinians go and have the West Bank and Gaza and not colonize – and not made that now completely impossible.
And they could have had that or at least, you know, they could have had that excuse that, OK, yeah, we took most of it, but you can have that 22 percent.
But now, no, they can't even have the 22 percent.
So, like you said, now we're faced with this absurdity where they're just supposed to live rights-free from now on.
But, you know, it's funny because I'm always reminded of Thomas Jefferson, which I don't want to flog that too much, but it's just a famous quote.
And he's talking about slavery where he says, you know, we have the wolf by the ears and we can neither safely hold him nor let him go.
But then, of course, the joke is, right, that these people are not wolves.
They're people, and you don't have the right to grab them by the ears in the first place.
And so you have to let them go.
And what a stupid analogy.
And if you get your face bit, well, that's still your fault.
You know what I mean?
What are we talking about here?
It's crazy.
And, of course, he's also the same guy who – I don't know if he was – I guess he wasn't referring to his own slaves, but everybody else.
He said there's nothing more written in the Book of Faith than that these people are determined to be free.
They must be free.
In other words, again, it's too absurd that this is the current situation and there is a reckoning coming, and there's no way to stop that.
Right.
No, no.
That's a very good point, and that's the – look, that's the moral crisis that I see as an American in America here.
Because if you look at history, you know that every empire has a beginning, it has a climax, and it has an end.
And we're a modern-day empire no matter how you look at it.
And my question to my fellow Americans is do we dismantle it ourselves or do we let it be dismantled in spite of us?
And I don't want to be a victim in that.
I don't want to be a victim in that.
In other words, I know exactly what's at stake, and I know that it takes moral courage, and that's the problem.
We live in a society where the idea of – at least the way capitalism is practiced – that it's just based on greed.
And at the end of the day, people are quiet because our so-called leaders are able to provide us with the best economic situation that anyone probably has in the world.
The Europeans look at us and they see these big streets, and a teenager out of high school has an SUV and a girl on his left-hand side and a girl on his right, and they wonder, how can you maintain that?
After World War II, they decided, look, we can't live the way that we live.
You're a doctor in Europe.
You make good money, but it's not like here.
And if we don't take control of the economy, we don't take control of our civil liberties, we don't practice intervention, non-intervention, it's all going to come back and haunt us.
And that's exactly – Ron Paul, I voted for Ron Paul.
He took my family.
There were four voters in the household, and we voted for him in the primary because he was staunch on those issues.
If we don't care about ourselves, what about our children and our grandchildren?
If we don't take control of these things, then they're going to come back to bite the people that we love, and it may be sooner than we think.
And so, yeah, that analogy with Thomas Jefferson is exactly right.
It may be difficult for them to see it at the time, maybe, but I think that enough people see it that we need to do something about it.
And that's my American jihad is that we bring sensibility to this, and we need strong people who have that moral fiber to lead us.
That's another thing that I never liked about the way that politics and the president – the elections are run here.
Out of a country of 350 million, if all we can produce is the likes of Hillary Clinton or a Trump and people who came after and, God forbid, those who will come in the future, I mean, is that what the – you would do a better job running the state than these people would without the experience.
But you have your head straight on what America needs in order to get out of the situation that we're in.
After all, I mean, yeah, of course, and this is not to – the libertarians, of course, we're the best at it, but this is supposed to be the creed of all Americans, obviously not government employees, but the rest of us human beings out here, is that our country at least should be or our system of government should be based around the principles of liberty and justice.
That's what we all say in the slogan all the time is that got nothing to do with what we're doing here.
And if that is what we're about, then again, how can these absurdities continue?
How can America continue to be the benefactor of Israel with all this money and all these weapons and all this diplomatic cover for all this injustice?
It's completely out of control and just like Jim Crow in Mississippi, it cannot last.
Something's got to give.
Right, right.
And Texas too.
I'll take responsibility.
It was before I was born.
But still, I shouldn't just blame Mississippi.
There's Jim Crow as hell in my state too, but yeah.
Right, and that's why I ended the article on the Nakba saying what it means for Palestinians and it should mean the same thing for Americans.
We built a nation here, our predecessors did, and it was supposed to be based on justice and the notion of fairness and freedom, specifically this idea of freedom.
And where there's freedom, you won't have the problems of dictatorship.
And so we're really fighting for the same thing.
And that's my hope that America adopts that.
Even if it's a pipe dream, that's what we should be fighting for.
And that's what will help the generations to come.
They know who stood where on which issues.
Hang on just one sec for me.
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And it's funny because this is the theme all day today on the show, whether we're talking about Venezuela or Iran or Palestine.
Independence first.
Individual liberty has got to be guaranteed from the bottom up by people who first and foremost are free of foreign domination.
Then let them get their own act together.
It's got to go in that order.
There's no doubt about it.
By the way, from a religious perspective, at least from my perspective as a Muslim, God gave man the ability or the choice to believe or not believe.
And that very fact shows the egalitarian nature of Islam, that at the end of the day, you have the right to believe what you want.
And that's the beginning.
And people don't understand that.
They think that it's based on religion and people can believe whatever they want.
But if you try to upset – it's like being a traitor in a state where the penalty for that is death.
There's no apostasy in the Qur'an.
You don't get killed for disbelieving.
There's nothing in the Qur'an like that.
But they viewed it as you're against the state, and that's where the apostasy law was introduced.
And this is important to understand because people will tell you that Islam is a theocracy, especially with the Sunnis, which are a majority, unlike the mullahs in Iran.
There's a clergy and they run the government as a theocracy.
In Sunni Islam, it's not like that.
I mean most of these groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, other groups, they're engineers, doctors, businessmen, and yet they want to lead civil society.
So there isn't that formality of a clergy.
And even the Shiites are usually – I mean the religious leadership typically I think are kind of known as quietists, and the Iranian revolution is really kind of abnormal.
The 1979, it was really mostly just in reaction to the American-backed dictator they were overthrowing.
Otherwise, they might not have had a ruling clique of mullahs in the first place there.
Right, right, to a certain extent.
And it was actually – Khomeini was instrumental in that because prior to that, the Shiites were not even involved in government.
He reinstituted things that weren't around before him, like even praying the Jum'ah prayer, which is the Friday prayer, wasn't done in Iran before he came in.
And yet, based on his version of walayat al-faqih, which is that he's speaking for God and so forth, he was able to implement these things.
And it became more political than it had been previously, and that's because of the history of Shiites being a minority.
But yeah, it's misunderstood.
I think at the end of the day, it's the way people decide to run their lives.
And having lived in the West, specifically in America, I realized that if this was so great, I would have accepted it wholeheartedly.
What I found is that the East has something to offer, the West has something to offer.
And I think it's arrogant to say that our brand of democracy or our brand of running our lives is better than anyone else's.
And that's – it's just not true because we've seen it.
Seriously, I mean, you look at Iran, for example.
I mean, never mind the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the Sultanate of Oman or whatever, but the Republic of Iran is flawed as can be.
But look who's talking about flawed republics.
Seriously, you know?
Yeah, like Churchill said that democracy is very bad, but it's sort of the best of the worst.
And that may be true for the West, and I think that that applies to other people.
Yeah, look, the point is as a Palestinian and as an American, what I'm saying is that we – in order for us to win over people, we have to have strong moral fiber.
We have to be willing to just – to participate, not just to critique.
And that's one of the things that I don't like about the left is they're able to critique the right, but when it comes time to doing something that you believe in, they're not effectual.
And we need good leadership, and that's the only way that we can avert the sort of the self-fulfilling prophecy that things are going to fall apart.
But when you have a lack of freedom, that's going to be the result at some point.
Just like the economy, we can't continue to spend trillions.
Something is going to break.
It's the same thing when you take away the liberty of people.
It's the same thing when you intervene in the rest of the world in an empire that we can no longer justify either economically or morally.
And as a Palestinian, I feel like, my God, doesn't everyone want to be on that side?
And this then – there would be no barrier between Palestinians and Jews because my issue is – and most – actually, all Palestinians I should, except if it was individuals.
But there's no issue between Jews and Palestinians.
It's the issue of this oppressive situation that we're in.
Beyond that, there wouldn't be a reason to fight and to kill one another because of someone's identity.
That's just absurd.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, man.
I'm sorry I'm so late.
I got to go.
But thank you for writing this article for antiwar.com, and thank you for coming on the show to talk about this.
It's very important and unfortunately, I think, virtually unknown issue in this country, the Palestinian side of the story here, especially going back to the 1940s like this and all that.
So I really do appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
It was a pleasure.
Thank you.
Okay, guys.
That is Ashraf Nubani, and he wrote this piece for antiwar.com called The Nakba Demands Justice, and he's a lawyer in Washington, D.C.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Thanks, Ashraf.
Thank you.
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