Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. As we continue to get a variety of views on the Israel-Hamas war and the larger Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with us now is Palestinian-American journalist and activist Hebh Jamal, born and raised here, a graduate of City College. She was the salutatorian at CCNY's Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, the largest school within City College. While she was a student, she won a Comptroller Scott Stringer Award for Education Activism in 2017 when Stringer was the city comptroller and Hebh worked for the education reform group IntegrateNYC.

She currently lives in Germany and writes a Substack newsletter and freelance journalism and opinion pieces for various publications. Hebh Jamal also has family in Gaza and personally knew the poet and professor of English literature, Refaat Alareer, who was recently among the many thousands killed there and got some news coverage. Just before Alareer's killing, Hebh Jamal had interviewed and quoted him in an article on the war that she wrote in the publication, The New Arab. Hebh, thank you very much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Hebh Jamal: Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Can you share a little bit about yourself to start out in addition to what I said there in the intro? If you went to City College, I'm guessing you grew up in New York City.

Hebh Jamal: Yes, I grew up in the Bronx actually. I've been there my whole life. I've recently moved to Germany only three years ago. I've been in New York City my whole life.

Brian Lehrer: You graduated City College just a couple of years ago, and I'm guessing you won that Comptroller Scott Stringer Award for Education Activism when he was comptroller. What kind of work led to that award?

Hebh Jamal: Before, I really spoke about being Palestinian and trying to fight for the liberation of my people. One thing that really motivated me was tackling school segregation within New York City. I went to a very segregated high school in Manhattan. It was called The Beacon School and it was extremely stark difference for me.

The concept of going to a predominantly white school after living in the Bronx and seeing the diversity that was around me in middle school, it really pushed me to work towards education reform, work towards tackling school segregation. That activism, how I consider and how I tie it into what I do and what I write now, is the concept of I'm against the othering of people, whether it's within New York City public schools or in Gaza and Palestine.

Brian Lehrer: I understand you were also active on Palestinian issues in college, the topic as something on campus is obviously in the news now. What was going on at CCNY in those recent years on the Israel-Palestine issue?

Hebh Jamal: The university context has always been very charged. As a student activist, we have always felt that it was very much against the administration. We never felt supported. I can tell you, me personally, I have been harassed and attacked by pro-Israeli students. One time, I was simply tabling for pro-Palestinian efforts. An adjunct professor from NYU, who just gave a speech at the Students Supporting Israel club, he came up to me and said that, "Palestinians and Gaza," and this is a quote, "deserve what's coming to them because of similarly to how Germans and Nazi Germany deserve to be raped and attacked by Soviet soldiers."

This is, again, a direct quote. I never received any sort of support from City College's administration at the time. What's happening now is, of course, an escalation of that, but it has always been charged. It has always been something that is entirely student-run. They have never received any sort of support, received any sort of dialogue and conversation to critically engage with this topic. There was no need to listen to the students at the time.

Brian Lehrer: I gather your family roots are more in the West Bank, but you know people, including family members in Gaza. Would you tell us a little bit about your connections to both areas?

Hebh Jamal: Actually, a majority of my personal family were exiled in 1948 in the village of Jimzu with Operation Danny. They were ethnically cleansed and a lot of them became refugees within the West Bank, but then in '67 had to also leave because of the war. A lot of them moved to Germany. A lot moved to Brazil. A lot moved to the United States and New York in particular, which is why I'm also there.

That is my personal story with Palestine. I married my husband, who's a pediatrician here in Germany, and his entire family is in Gaza. I had the privilege of visiting Gaza just last year. To see it all destroyed, to see the people I love face death every single day has been incredibly, incredibly difficult and has been incredibly more real as this war has persisted.

Brian Lehrer: Have you lost people you knew personally, both in the West Bank and Gaza, these last few months?

Hebh Jamal: Yes, I have, and more so my husband, of course, more than me. His Facebook page has essentially become an obituary page. It has his neighbors, his friends, everyone he knows. He tells me every single day that either a neighbor has been killed or his friend has been killed or his friend's sons have been killed. It's pretty consistent. It doesn't seem like it's stopping.

At some point, we just had to shut off our social media pages just because it definitely became too much. I could just tell you personally, I'm not sure if you know about the grid system that is real. During the ceasefire, United States came to Israel and told them, "Hey, you can't just indiscriminately kill people. You have to have some sort of system in place for evacuation." They came up with this dystopian block system where there's thousands of-- It's like a grid map.

Every town within Gaza has a specific number assigned. When Israel announces they're going to bomb a specific number on the map, the people in that area need to evacuate. It's entirely complex on its own, but we actually tried as my family to see how it works and try to inform our family of which block number they are and where they should evacuate, especially in the north. We did so.

We looked almost an hour and a half on the internet trying to figure out which block our family lives in. We told them to evacuate and they tried to. The roads actually that connected north and south were bombed that very same day. They were unable to evacuate. They had to return home and are essentially locked in their houses because it is incredibly dangerous to leave. Not to mention that there is barely any internet access. Even if they tried to access these grid maps, they absolutely cannot.

Brian Lehrer: It's certainly been well-documented in the American press that there's been a lot of bombing in areas where people were told to evacuate. I just want to make sure that everybody's understanding you. You're saying the name of the place. The way that I guess people from there actually say it, kind of like "Haza," and that's what we Americanized speakers call "Gaza." Just making sure that people understand when you say that, that's where you're referring to.

You interviewed the poet and English literature professor, Refaat Alareer, from the Islamic University in Gaza City shortly before he was killed for an article you published on November 30th. At that time, you reported the university had already been destroyed, but Refaat had decided to stay in northern Gaza rather than evacuate to the south as many other people were doing. Why did he decide to stay?

Hebh Jamal: Just similar to my husband's family and similar to Refaat's case, there is actually no place to go. You go to a school, they bomb a school. You go to hospitals, they have bombed the hospitals. Just three days ago, the Kamal Adwan Hospital was completely razed by a bulldozer. People were buried underneath in the actual compound. They were buried alive. They were killed and buried alive.

This was not an air strike. This was actually an Israeli bulldozer coming in and actively murdering people that are there. This was well-documented and has multiple witnesses that has received zero condemnation from the media and the international community. Similarly, it was a stand. You cannot just demand that Palestinians become refugees because of a campaign that cannot be won.

Tackling and trying to defeat Hamas is not going to happen. It's practically impossible and materially impossible. What they're doing is creating the biggest humanitarian catastrophe and they're pretty open and public about this. They're creating a humanitarian catastrophe within Gaza to push as many people as they can to the Sinai. I'm not sure if they're able to do that politically, but that's definitely the proven intention.

Brian Lehrer: Your Substack newsletter have also described killings of family members by settlers in the West Bank. If you want to talk about it, who did you lose there and how?

Hebh Jamal: I don't believe that I have personal family members that were killed by settlers in the West Bank, but--

Brian Lehrer: Well, maybe I misunderstood something I read. Go ahead.

Hebh Jamal: No, no problem. Again, this war is not just with Gaza. People are being killed every single day in the West Bank, either by Israeli extremist settlers or by the state itself. What's interesting is I don't know if you've been really following Israeli propaganda where they show Palestinians with guns and these photo shoots, handing them over to Israeli soldiers. What's interesting is that in the West Bank, every settler is armed. Every settler has a gun. Everyone has an AK-47 walking and are able to use that at their own discretion, right? It shows just the dichotomy of how the world views Palestinian life and the complete dehumanization of that process.

Brian Lehrer: You say Israeli propaganda. I'm sure there is propaganda on both sides in this war, but you wrote a newsletter piece called A Letter to my Palestinian Gazan Son. He's not quite two years old. 21 months when you wrote it. One of the lines was, "To be from Gaza means seeing the number of thousands of Palestinian children dead and growing numb to it since we don't hear their stories, know their names, or see their photo collages on our screens." It's one of the reasons we invited you on. We have, as I say, frequently, many points of view on the show about the conflict.

We're trying to give voice to the grievances and aspirations of people on all sides of this, but one of the reasons for you today is to personalize the death toll in Gaza when, usually, all we hear are the numbers. I feel like in the West, we hear personal stories of the Israeli hostages, which I support. They're important to tell, but not so much of individual Gazans. Do you think more personal stories would change the urgency with which Americans ask the government here to press the Israeli government for at least more restraint?

Hebh Jamal: No, I don't think so. The reason I say this is because there has been enough personal stories. The Palestinians from Gaza are taking it upon themselves to speak in English, to publish in English, to show the world either through Telegram channels or through their own social media. The little internet they have, they take the time to publish graphic and traumatic photos and show these people when they were alive and are commemorating them.

They are telling the world they are not numbers. We don't have to do that. They are already doing that and the world is not responding. I am not sure how many news segments. I have to see fathers carrying their dead children for people to actually say, "This is inhumane. This is unjust and we need a ceasefire now." Now, this is not to say the American people are not demanding a ceasefire. As I understand it, the last poll that was taken, over 60% of Americans support a ceasefire on Gaza.

That is not because of mainstream media. That is not because of the political discourse in Washington. That's because of people on the ground, because of activists, because the protests that you see on the streets that are showing your neighbors, showing the world that they will not stand for this regardless of what the establishment thinks. No, I don't believe that showing these individual stories will do much because they're already doing it and no one's listening.

Brian Lehrer: Then as a follow-up to what you just said, do you think the current protest movement is having an impact? I know one of the issues for Palestinians is that the world generally ignores their plight. Everybody's at least talking about it now.

Hebh Jamal: Right. I definitely think protests are, of course, changing public opinion. Of course, I'm in a very unique situation where it's even hard to have protests to be able to demonstrate to say, "Stop the genocide." I live in Germany. In Berlin, police are literally arresting people that have signs that say, "Stop the genocide." This is the extent of the discourse that we're talking about.

The weaponization of anti-Semitism across the world, specifically in Germany, is that it has taken a point where to be able to protest is seen as an extreme privilege for us Palestinians. I remember registering a vigil, not even protesting, just to hold space for people mourning their loved ones. That was banned by the Heidelberg Police Department because they said that Palestinians and pro-Palestinians are too emotionally charged.

It could lead to anti-Semitic incitement. This is a direct quote from the banned letter that we were given by police. The reason why these protests are banned, of course, is because it could change public opinion. In Germany, questioning Israel's right to exist and, of course, Israel's national security is Germany's reason of state is seen as something incredibly important. Even having these displays of pro-Palestinian solidarity is seen as a threat.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to talk later in the week about Germany in particular with The New Yorker magazine writer, Masha Gessen, who had a Hannah Arendt Prize for political expression ceremony canceled because she compared conditions in Gaza to a Jewish ghetto during the Nazi era. Briefly, Germany, because of its history, does have unique rules about expression that can be seen as anti-Jewish. We will take that more up with Masha Gessen when they come on Friday.

My guest right now is Palestinian-American journalist and activist, Hebh Jamal, who graduated City College just a few years ago, now lives in Germany. I want to put you in dialogue with a few people who are calling up with other points of view as we do here. One of the things that you said early in our discussion that's generated some pushback on the phones and in our text messages has to do with a way that you compared the Israeli defense forces to Soviets in their army, I believe, during World War II. Robert in Manhattan is calling about that. You're on WNYC, Robert. Hello.

Robert: Hi. It's a documented fact that 10,000 German women were raped by the Russian forces that came in, but you glibly said that the IDF is raping women in Gaza. You have facts about that?

Hebh Jamal: I didn't say that actually. I said this was a direct quote from someone who said this to me. This was a direct quote from a pro-Israeli adjunct NYU professor who tried to intimidate me as an 18-year-old college student. No, I didn't make this accusation. It was him who made that accusation.

Brian Lehrer: Robert, thank you very much. Lisa in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. I'm going to use Lisa to represent the most frequent question we're getting as pushback questions from listeners via text and on the phones. We'll take one of those callers to represent, and that is Lisa in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hello, Lisa.

Lisa: Hi. I just want to ask, do you feel that Israel has any right to defend itself or that the attacks on October 7th were so barbaric and horrifying? It takes my breath away. I also want to say I feel incredibly horrible for the Palestinians for what's going on. I feel that there's a lot of exaggeration and propaganda also coming from the Palestinian community. The pictures are enough.

We can see it. It's really bad. We are supportive, but I'm also supportive of the Israelis. This didn't come out of nowhere. The other question I have is, why can't there be a two-state solution when there has always been, in that part of the world, Jews and Christians and Arabs? They all come from that part of the world and I don't understand why that can't be a two-state solution.

Brian Lehrer: Lisa, thank you. Let me hold the two-state solution question and address the first part of what she said. Do you blame Hamas at all for the civilian death toll for embedding among civilians the way they do? Not every fighting force uses civilians that way arguably. We hear this a lot from commentators in the US, that's a selfish and cynical and involuntary deployment of civilians into harm's way.

Hebh Jamal: Do you guys know how big Gaza is? I just want people to realize. I've been to Gaza--

Brian Lehrer: You mean how small it is, right?

Hebh Jamal: Right, right, yes, how small it is in reality. Let's put a thought experience. Let's say Hamas does, in fact, use civilians as human shields just as Israel states. Does that still justify the murder of 20,000 people and thousands more under the rubble? The caller said that, "Oh, yes, the stuff that is coming out of Gaza is clearly exaggerated." It is absolutely not exaggerated.

I spoke to my cousin-in-law just yesterday. He was gathering the phones of the family to go to a hospital in order to charge them. He, and I quote, said, "I was walking down the street and saw two bodies with their heads blown off and I had to keep walking." That's the reality. The reality is people don't have any sort of method of-- there's no supermarkets available. There's no stores available.

Of course, you could say that this is all Hamas' fault, but this did not start on October 7th. The blockade on Palestinians did not start on October 7th. There has been 75 years of apartheid and occupation and the actual suffering and suffocation of the Palestinians that live in Gaza. What happened on October 7th, you can say, is horrific. What happened before was also horrific. In 2021, there was an assault on Gaza, which did not receive worldwide condemnation, by the way.

Again, my first cousin-in-law has a mental illness. He was off his medication and wandered into the streets. He was shot by Israeli soldiers by the border fence where he was strolling along. They had to leave his body there for two weeks after the Israeli aggression has ended. There was, again, no condemnation. No one came to an Israeli official and said, "Do you condemn the barbarity of the Israeli army against the Palestinian people in Gaza?"

This politics of condemnation, I truly feel, has dehumanized Palestinians to an extent that is unbearable. There is no such thing as proportionality. There's no such thing as international law. Israel can say that they want to commit a genocide against the Palestinian people. They can call them human animals. They can show a map from the river to the sea as all Israel.

Of course, it is students on campus who are posing a real threat to Israel's right to exist. I find the proportionality of that ridiculous. I also think that after everything that has gone on in Gaza over the past two months to also sit there and just say, "Isn't this Hamas' fault when it is Israeli airstrikes and missiles and tanks and guns that are killing the Palestinian people?"

Brian Lehrer: I think people would say both sides' fault. It sounds like your answer was that Hamas fighters, because Gaza is so small, have no choice but to embed among civilians. A lot of people would say that's not true. Certainly, not in the way that they do purposely placing themselves near very specific civilian institutions or residential buildings.

Hebh Jamal: I cannot tell you about where Hamas is embedded. I don't even think Israel knows where Hamas is embedded. Again, this is not my point. I just think this is used as a justification by Israeli propagandists. I personally as a Palestinian who want people to really see their humanity and see the conditions that they're in to also question and be critical of accusations like that.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing then. Both sides accuse the other side of wanting genocide. There are also many Jews horrified, by the way, this war is being fought by Israel. We've seen many Jews at protests in the US. Of course, we get those callers. Do you think a unified peace movement would be possible between Israelis and Palestinians who march together for their respective sides to stop the horrific violence?

Hebh Jamal: I think, of course, it is possible. I think that if Israeli society specifically wants an end to an apartheid and occupation and says that they want to live side by side with Palestinians throughout the land, I think that is possible. That's exactly what Palestinians have been asking for. People are riled up by the concept of, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," but the purpose behind that is equality for all people living in one land. This is the hope is that people would actually want to live together and not see each other as the villain. I don't think I would ever dehumanize another civilian and I hope other people won't do the same.

Brian Lehrer: Although I'll follow up with one thing on that because that's what you just described is the Palestinian one-state solution. Israelis find that extremely threatening. They would say that from their side, they see their people as having suffered 2,000 years of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Israel is intended to be a safe space, a national home for an oppressed minority, a carve-out for an oppressed people, which could be seen as a progressive project, and not to diminish the Nakba from 1948 or what's happening today. Now, here are two historically oppressed peoples. Can some humanization of that on both sides not and from your point of view in the two-state solution that the caller was asking for?

Hebh Jamal: Brian, I think that if someone says that they feel threatened by another person, another type of person living near them, I find that incredibly racist. Why should you feel threatened if a Palestinian lives next to you or near you? Why do you have to instead go on extreme settlement--

Brian Lehrer: Well, I think they would say it's about being a minority. Not to defend the settlements in any way, but they would say it's about, yet again, having no choice but to be a minority in some country instead of having a Jewish state.

Hebh Jamal: I'll be clear on this. I think if a state exists and can only exist for the protection of one person, one type of people through internationally recognized apartheid and occupation, I'm sorry, but that state does not have any right to exist. It doesn't. A state that demands equality for all people regardless of religion, regardless of ethnicity, that is a state that I would proudly get behind.

Brian Lehrer: Hebh Jamal, Palestinian-American journalist and activist. Thank you very much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Good luck to you--

Hebh Jamal: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: We continue to get a variety of views on the situation in the Middle East. We will continue to do that on this show. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More in a minute.