May 21, 2024 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
31:42
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| First, I like to tell people this fun fact that the largest African-American immigrants live where? | ||
| Israel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not Ghana, not Nigeria, not South Africa. | |
| African-American immigrants who've left America went to Israel. | ||
| They have the largest African-American immigrant population in Israel. | ||
| With that being said, I'm very dedicated to the Black and Jewish relations and building bridges here in America between both communities because of the myths on both sides of who we are in the community. | ||
| And I happen to be both Black and Jewish, so I feel like I can do that. | ||
| But I have to explain a lot of the times to Black people when I come home to America and say I go to a hair salon to get my hair done and they say, well, where do you live? | ||
| And I say Israel. | ||
| And the first thing out of their mouth is, don't they hate Black people over there? | ||
| And then I'm thinking like, well, where did that narrative come from? | ||
| I'm Dave Rubin and joining me on The Rubin Report today is one of the co-hosts of The Quad, which is the Israeli version of The View. | ||
| Oh my, I have many questions. | ||
| Shira Solomon, welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| I'm so excited to be here. | ||
| I am very excited to have you, except I have to say, I don't know if you watch my show, I make an awful lot of fun of the ladies of The View, so I'm hoping that you're doing a slightly better version over there in Israel. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| We're also, you know, our show is called The Quad, so we're like taking out the squad. | ||
| So I think you like us. | ||
| I think you'll like me. | ||
| I actually have watched a couple episodes, and you also have Flor Hassanan, who I've had on the show a couple times, who is the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, and she is just a magical, magical character. | ||
| Yeah, she's a force to be reckoned with. | ||
| Apparently, last time I was at her house, and we interviewed her there a couple months ago, she was having Shabbat dinner that night, and she invited me, and you were there, so we would have crossed paths earlier, but here we are. | ||
| Let's start off with a little biography, because I I think for the average person watching this right now, they might be going, wait a minute, this is a woman who hosts a show in Israel. | ||
| I thought they were a white supremacist nation, something, something. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You're black, according to what I'm reading here. | ||
| What's going on here? | ||
| Give me a little bio. | ||
| What gave it away that I'm black, Dave? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| It's a lot. | ||
| It's a lot. | ||
| Well, that's what it says here. | ||
| I don't want to... | ||
| I don't look black to you? | ||
| Is that what you're saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't see color. | |
| Oh, you don't see color, yes. | ||
| No, give me the bio here, and then we'll dive into all the rest. | ||
| So my bio is, I live in Jerusalem. | ||
| Yes, I am a black Jew. | ||
| We do exist. | ||
| There's tons of black Jews that live in Israel. | ||
| I'm originally from California, one of nine. | ||
| We're five girls, four boys. | ||
| I'm the oldest girl, second oldest child. | ||
| I've been in Jerusalem for about two years now. | ||
| However, I did live in Israel prior. | ||
| So I lived there in 2016, and I studied at University of Haifa, and then I lived there again in Jerusalem in 2019. | ||
| The reason why I live in Israel and why I always wanted to go to Israel is because of the story of my grandmother. | ||
| My grandmother died at 48 years old, and we had the story that we were part of the Lost Tribes of Israel. | ||
| And when she died, I was about six, and she wanted to go to the Kotel so bad. | ||
| And she died of breast cancer, and she asked the doctors, can I go, can I travel to Israel before, you know, I pass? | ||
| And they said, I'm sorry, you're not strong enough to go. | ||
| So she really wanted her children to go. | ||
| She had five children. | ||
| My parents never went. | ||
| They were too busy raising nine children. | ||
| But I grew up with this story of, you must go to Israel. | ||
| So when I studied abroad, all my friends were going to Italy and Spain and France, and I'm like, I'm going to Israel! | ||
| And they're like, you're going to the Middle East? | ||
|
unidentified
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Why? | |
| And I'm like, because I've been taught that I need to go to Israel. | ||
| So I got there, and as soon as I landed, I just felt like I'm at home. | ||
| I hadn't even seen anything. | ||
| I hadn't got off the plane or anything. | ||
| It was just like my soul was home. | ||
| And then I moved to Haifa. | ||
| I studied at the University of Haifa, came back, graduated, started a master's program. | ||
| And I said, like, I don't want to be here. | ||
| Like, my soul belongs in Israel. | ||
| So I went back in 2019, then left in 2020. | ||
| COVID hit and I was planning to stay there, but I came back. | ||
| You know, the world shut down. | ||
| I didn't get vaccinated, so I couldn't go back into Israel, and I had to wait for them to, you know, lift all of these things. | ||
| I'm on Vax, too, so you're in good company. | ||
| Actually, no one in this place is Vax, so you're in good company. | ||
| Okay, so no judgment, though. | ||
|
unidentified
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You're okay, you're okay. | |
| I never know if I can say that or not. | ||
| Yeah, you can say it. | ||
| We're in Florida. | ||
| You can say whatever you want. | ||
| Okay, thank God. | ||
| So, and then I went back, and I've been there for two years now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right, so... | |
| What is that connection that you feel beyond your grandma? | ||
| You land, you feel something, it's now completely changed your life and you're here in America, obviously doing advocacy for Israel and telling your story and just being who you are, which obviously bucks a lot of the conventional wisdom as it comes to Israel. | ||
| So what do you think that connection is? | ||
| I think it was just, you know, I've traveled to a lot of countries and you go to these countries and you enjoy them, you enjoy their history, you enjoy that beauty. | ||
| And Israel, I have to say, it's not the most beautiful place in the world, right? | ||
| There's other beautiful places like Italy and things like that. | ||
| Something about Israel directs you to your purpose, and Jerusalem really directs you to God. | ||
| Like, if you're ever confused or you're lost in life, I always tell people, like, go to Jerusalem. | ||
| You don't have to be religious, you don't have to be Jewish, you can be Christian, Muslim, or, like, atheist, whatever, but you will feel drawn back to what's important. | ||
| It's not like when you go to, like, South Africa and you see poverty and then it makes you grateful for your materialism here in America. | ||
| It's different because there's like a direction it puts you in, like it lines you up with purpose. | ||
| So I just felt like my purpose was Israel. | ||
| Okay, so you've been now living in Israel for some time. | ||
| I definitely don't want to make this whole interview about October 7th, but obviously we need to discuss it because that's really what brought you and so many others to America and to places in Europe to tell the story and all that. | ||
| So can you tell us a little bit about that day and sort of how it changed you and the country? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| So, October 7th, I was in Tel Aviv. | ||
| That's significant because I keep Shabbat and I always spend Shabbat in Jerusalem, just because the atmosphere is holy. | ||
| It breeds that Shabbat atmosphere. | ||
| However, I had friends who said, let's go to Tel Aviv for the Shabbat, it's her birthday, we'll party after Shabbat's over, etc. | ||
| So it's funny, my mom called and she said, hey, I don't think you should go to Tel Aviv, I think you should stay in Jerusalem. | ||
| I said, no, like I already committed to going to Tel Aviv with my friends. | ||
| So that's important because people in Tel Aviv are used to having rockets launched at them. | ||
| They're used to knowing what to do when that happens. | ||
| Me, one, being an American, and two, living in Jerusalem, I haven't had that experience. | ||
| So we wake up the morning of October 7th. | ||
| I hear huge booms, right? | ||
| And this is obviously the Iron Dome intercepting the rockets, but I don't know that. | ||
| I'm like, is this construction? | ||
| Like, what is this? | ||
| You know, I'm in Tel Aviv. | ||
| Like, Tel Aviv never sleeps, so I don't know what's happening. | ||
| Then we go to the synagogue. | ||
| The rabbis start announcing we've been attacked. | ||
| And then they're saying they're cutting off heads in the street, and they're giving us all these gruesome details. | ||
| But we don't know if that's happening right next to us. | ||
| Like, I don't know where it's happening. | ||
| For people who don't know, when you keep Shabbat, you don't have your phone on you. | ||
| So now I'm in a panic because I don't know what to do. | ||
| I've never been in this position before. | ||
| Everyone's scattering. | ||
| There are soldiers who were at the synagogue. | ||
| They get their stuff. | ||
| They start leaving. | ||
| Cars are coming so they can go to the army bases, etc. | ||
| So I go back to the Airbnb we're staying at and I just sit. | ||
| I just sat all day just praying and like I don't know what to do. | ||
| And then as soon as Shabbat was over I turn on my phone and then I get a taxi. | ||
| And of course most of the taxi drivers in Israel are Arabs. | ||
| Yeah, wait, let me pause you for a second. | ||
| So you didn't even break Shabbat to just tell friends you were okay or to hear from other people? | ||
| Actually, I did. | ||
| I did open my phone. | ||
| I mean that with no judgment. | ||
| Either way, I just think it's an interesting piece of the puzzle. | ||
| No, I did open my phone to text my sister and tell her to tell everyone that I'm okay. | ||
| So, but I didn't, like, leave to go back to Jerusalem. | ||
| So, Shabbat is over. | ||
| We're in Shabbat, and I'm trying to order a taxi now, and every taxi driver has an Arab name. | ||
| Normally, I mean, I've been in Israel, yeah, in Israel for two years. | ||
| I'm not afraid of Arabs. | ||
| Like, we all live together peacefully and everything, but this time, like, Like, we don't know what's going on in the outside world. | ||
| Like, I literally thought, like, Hamas is, like, on our block. | ||
| Like, we don't know. | ||
| We don't have any, like, information. | ||
| So I'm just like, ignore, ignore, ignore. | ||
| I can't get a Jewish driver. | ||
| So I'm like, I have to get out of Tel Aviv because Tel Aviv is not safe. | ||
| So I just took the risk and got in the car with an Arab driver. | ||
| And he's talking to me and talking to me the whole time, just like about mundane things. | ||
| He's not even talking about what's happening. | ||
| And the pit in my stomach, I'm just like, oh my goodness. | ||
| And then he's pointing to me, oh my family lives in Abu Ghosh, oh my family lives here. | ||
| And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, is he going to drive me off to one of these arid villages? | ||
| I could barely respond. | ||
| It was like I was so rude to him just because I was so scared. | ||
| I make it home safely and for the next couple weeks I just don't leave the house. | ||
| I'm like in the house frozen. | ||
| I can't sleep in my bedroom. | ||
| I only sleep in the living room. | ||
| I don't know what's happening. | ||
| Now we're hearing sirens in Jerusalem, so we have to run to the bomb shelters every 10-20 minutes whenever they're going off. | ||
| And in the midst of all of that, the show The Quad launches. | ||
| So you launch a talk show. | ||
| I mean, there's so much here. | ||
| So you launch a talk show to deal sort of with all of the issues within Israel and outside of Israel and the geopolitical stuff and for four women of different walks of life and different ages and all of these things. | ||
| But before we get into all of that specifically, let's just talk about the skin color portion of this for a moment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I like how you worded that! | |
| Because it's utterly ridiculous if you know Israel, but for people outside that don't, there is now this meme out there on college campuses that somehow this is a white country, where if you were to go to Israel, if you just walk through Tel Aviv on an average day, in some cases you would have no idea you weren't in even, say, Jordan or Lebanon, because there are a huge amount of Arab Israelis there, but there are Sephardic and from Morocco and Iraq and Iran and blah blah blah blah. | ||
| However, there's this idea out there that somehow there are either no black Jews, or they don't exist, or if they do exist in Israel, they're not treated the same, or something related to all of that. | ||
| So can you talk about that for a little bit? | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| First, I like to tell people this fun fact, that the largest African American immigrants live where? | ||
| Israel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not Ghana, not Nigeria, not South Africa. | |
| African-American immigrants who've left America went to Israel. | ||
| They have the largest African-American immigrant population in Israel. | ||
| With that being said, I'm very dedicated to the Black and Jewish relations and building bridges here in America between both communities because of the myths on both sides of who we are in the community. | ||
| And I happen to be both Black and Jewish, so I feel like I can do that. | ||
| But I have to explain a lot of the times to Black people when I come home to America and say I go to a hair salon to get my hair done, and they say, well, where do you live? | ||
| And I say Israel. | ||
| And the first thing out of their mouth is, don't they hate Black people over there? | ||
| And then I'm thinking like, well, where did that narrative come from? | ||
| Like, how did you learn that? | ||
| Like, what made you conclude that in Israel they hate Black people? | ||
| So then I have to say, no, there's actually lots of Black people that live there. | ||
| And they go, really? | ||
| That look like us? | ||
| As dark as us? | ||
| And I'm like, yeah, darker than you. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And they're like, ah, so you feel safe. | ||
| And I'm like, I feel more than safe. | ||
| And they're like, and they like you? | ||
| And I'm like, yes. | ||
| And then they say, and do the men date you? | ||
| And I'm like, yes, they like dark skinned women. | ||
| And so I'm like, why do they have this ingrained in their mind? | ||
| And this is not by accident, right? | ||
| It's been programmed for them to think this way. | ||
| But yeah, people don't know that majority of Israel, 51% is Sephardic. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| They come from North Africa, they come from the Middle East. | ||
| And when they say it's like white colonizer people in the Middle East, I'm just laughing | ||
| because you barely see white people. | ||
| You barely see people who look like you, Dave. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You're not white. | ||
| I shouldn't even say you're white because you're Jewish, period. | ||
| We'll get to that thing later, but. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And on top of everything else, I mean, you haven't even mentioned the Ethiopians | ||
| and Israel literally brought thousands and thousands of Ethiopians under the cover of darkness | ||
| to become equal members of their society, Twice! | ||
| Operation Moses and Operation Solomon. | ||
| They went and they saved their people who were black. | ||
| I think the Jewish people, I think one thing that hurts us as a people is that we keep using Western civilization's terms to define ourselves. | ||
| We are just Jewish. | ||
| But then when we come over to America, we're the black Jew, we're the white Jew, we're the Ethiopian Jew, we're the Moroccan Jew. | ||
| No, these are the places we were exiled to. | ||
| Jews aren't white. | ||
| They're not descendants of Europe. | ||
| They're descendants of Judea and Samaria. | ||
| They are indigenous to Judea and Samaria. | ||
| What we look like has never mattered in the tour, what colors we come out as. | ||
| But then when we come here, we have to fit into their boxes for them to understand us. | ||
| And then we do it instead of just making them understand our Jewish terms and not bowing down to the terminology here in America. | ||
| What other confusions have you found as you've been in America and talking about Israel in general? | ||
| Maybe not even related to race or anything else, but there's an awful lot of confusion out there. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| Okay, so, well this one is related to race. | ||
| I was going to say that they think that Israel is this white country oppressing brown Palestinians. | ||
| Things like that, you know? | ||
| And so this is one of the narratives that I really have to fight against with the Black community because in large part, they put their support around the Palestinians because of color. | ||
| You should never put your support around anyone because of color. | ||
| You should put your support around someone because you believe in their ideals and their fights, not because of their color. | ||
| But with that being said, not all Palestinians are brown. | ||
| And so this color thing is the biggest thing I see with Israel. | ||
| Some other misconceptions are that they think Israel is kind of like a third world country. | ||
| They're kind of like, are you living poor there? | ||
| They think, I remember the first time I went to Israel in 2016, my godmother called me and she's like, do you have to cover your hair? | ||
| And I was like, no. | ||
| And she was like, you don't have to cover your hair. | ||
| And I was like, no, it's a democratic country. | ||
| You can cover your hair. | ||
| You don't have to cover your hair. | ||
| You can wear shorts. | ||
| People don't know that Israel has the biggest pride in the world in Tel Aviv. | ||
| They even have pride parade in Jerusalem. | ||
| So all of these things, they're just like a bit shocked because they hear Middle East and they just think ancient and all women are just oppressed. | ||
| And that's not the case for Israel. | ||
| Okay, so now it's a couple weeks after October 7th. | ||
| You start doing this show, you're talking about these issues, and you're seeing a media problem. | ||
| Well, I guess first, how has the media in Israel been as it relates? | ||
| Like, is your internal media as bad as our internal media? | ||
| And then we'll talk about how the international media treats Israel. | ||
| Our internal media is very different from what they report out to America. | ||
| I would say our internal media is not as bad. | ||
| I mean, you have like, you know, the leftist news and they're against Bibi and things like that. | ||
| What you see in the media like most of Israeli media and the people in Israel they're very very united right now and they're trying to I mean I know you guys are seeing the protests that are happening against the government and some are the families are upset because we want our hostages back and What are we going to do? | ||
| Are we going to have elections or are we not going to have elections? | ||
| But for the most part, what you see in Israel right now is a lot of unity and we're trying to stay positive and unified and not really like trying to rip each other's heads off. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Has that been sort of incredible to watch? | ||
| I mean, when I was there a couple months ago and I went to hostage square and I, I went to one of the rallies and I talked obviously to people. | ||
| I didn't ask about their politics, but it was clear to me people were all over the place politically, but everybody was united and like, well, we got to get the hostage back and we need to survive. | ||
| Like there's two big things here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| To see the unity. | ||
| I've never seen something like this in my life. | ||
| Prior to October 7th, and I still feel this way now, but prior I had this huge amount of Honor and gratefulness and thankfulness to be able to live in the land of Israel. | ||
| We think about Moses, which is like our biggest prophet in Judaism. | ||
| He didn't get to enter the land. | ||
| Like one of the Torah portions, that's my favorite Torah portion, is Moses saying to God, will you let me just go into Israel and come right back out? | ||
| I just want to see it and come right back out. | ||
| And God says, no, I'll let you see it from the mountain. | ||
| So Moses and many other big sages that we've had, Never got to enter into the land of Israel. | ||
| And so I see it as a privilege, like, we think, oh, we take our American passport and we just get to land, you know? | ||
| But no, there's so much more spiritually at the fact that we get to be there, we get to live there if we want. | ||
| And I still feel that way after October 7th. | ||
| It's increased even more because I got to see how Israelis unify, how they can literally put their issues to the side. | ||
| And like you said, we need to get our hostages back and we need to fight for ourselves and we need to survive. | ||
| And for months, I mean, now we see some protests happening, but for months, a lot of people just had that one track mind. | ||
| And there was no more infighting. | ||
| Like, everyone on the streets of Jerusalem. | ||
| Jerusalem, I describe like New York, right? | ||
| It's a city. | ||
| People are moving. | ||
| People don't stop and say hi to you like in Tel Aviv. | ||
| But everyone was like, Shabbat Shalom! | ||
| Shabbat Shalom! | ||
| Shabbat Shalom! | ||
| I'm like, why is everyone talking to me, you know? | ||
| Everyone's like, do you need a place? | ||
| Do you want to eat here? | ||
| Like, it was just so unified. | ||
| People were in the parks, filling the parks, having big potluck Shabbat lunches and everything. | ||
| It's beautiful to watch. | ||
| So how is that different than the outside image that so many people are seeing? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So I think on the outside, the diaspora of Jews on the outside are really, really scared. | ||
| Like I talked to my friends who live in San Diego and in New York, I came to New York in January, I went out with my friends, we're eating, we start talking about Israel, they start whispering. | ||
| And I'm like, I can't hear you, so I'm like talking louder because I'm like, I didn't catch on to why they were whispering until later. | ||
| I'm like, they are whispering because they are scared. | ||
| So for the outside world, they cannot be Jewish and proud, you know? | ||
| You told me here in Miami, it's like a safe haven, but when I was in New York and San Diego, that's not the feeling I'm getting from my community and my friends. | ||
| They're really scared to be Jewish, and if they're wearing their kippah, now they're putting a hat on. | ||
| They're not necessarily wearing their Maguindavid all the time, and they're very conscious of, like, who's around us and what can we say depending on who's around us. | ||
| And also, I think they're consuming lots of the news. | ||
| It kind of looks like the whole country is in war. | ||
| So people don't understand, like, you know, how can you go out into the Shuk and into Tel Aviv and all the bars are open and we're still, you know, having joy. | ||
| We're still moving on with our life. | ||
| Even when the Iranian missiles hit, the reason why I came home is because my parents were like, you got to come home now. | ||
| Iran just hit, like, you gotta come home. | ||
| And I didn't go home after October 7th, so I just didn't want to stress my dad out, so this is why I came to America. | ||
| But even after that, like, Israelis were like, we're gonna go to sleep. | ||
| Like, we're gonna go to sleep, and when we wake up in the morning, Israel will be here. | ||
| So Israelis have more of, like, a calmness and strength and resilience, and I think people who are watching it from the diaspora on the outside are, like, really scared for us. | ||
| What do you think the spiritual component of that is? | ||
| Because I've noticed, if I've noticed one thing with Jews in America since October 7th is I am seeing a kind of spiritual awakening that probably hasn't occurred for American Jews who've had it pretty good in a secular world here for several decades and feel that that might be slipping away. | ||
| Wow, that's such a big question. | ||
| I think about this often, like, I was talking to my rabbi and I was saying, like, you know, with Egypt, 80% of the Jewish people stayed in Egypt, only 20% left. | ||
| With Babylon, when Ezra went to rebuild the second temple, same thing. | ||
| They were like, no, we have a good life in Babylon. | ||
| 80% stayed, 20% returned back to Israel. | ||
| And I just feel like that the spiritual component is the assimilation. | ||
| And American Jews have unfortunately assimilated and they have adopted into the fake woke religion is what I call it. | ||
| And I think they're having this awakening of like, Oh, we're not a part of the fake woke religion. | ||
| We supported it, but we don't get to be a part of it. | ||
| We don't have the original sin of being white. | ||
| We don't get to have the tenets because we're a minority group, but we didn't fail enough according to the fake woke religion. | ||
| You have to fail to be a part of it. | ||
| And so, especially given that most American jury is liberal and on the left, they're really contending with their politics, with their identity, and all of these movements that they supported that they now see don't support them. | ||
| And they better wake up quick. | ||
| And they are waking up. | ||
| I mean, I'm definitely seeing some version of that. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| I feel like, I always say, especially since I'm focused on Black and Jewish relations, we can really learn from each other. | ||
| For the Black community, they can learn from Jews how to be communal, how to build communities, how to set aside your differences and have long-lasting, strong communities. | ||
| And from the Jewish community, they can learn from the black people of how to have pride. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I'm black and I'm proud. | ||
| Say it loud. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And here in America... I just can't do that thing with my neck. | |
| I'll get you off camera. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I wish I could. | |
| You got curls in there. | ||
| Do they grow out your tooth, bro? | ||
| We can work it out. | ||
| I'll get you everything you need. | ||
| But I think that pride that black people have, the Jewish community here in America needs to have that same pride, not hiding the fact that you're Jewish. | ||
| You know, now everyone's with their big McGee Davids, but You should have always been that way, you know what I mean? | ||
| Not blending in because, oh, I can blend in and people would just think I'm white and maybe if they don't recognize that my last name is Jewish, all of those things. | ||
| No, be proud to be a Jew, be proud of your Jewish identity, and strengthen your Jewish identity. | ||
| So I think the spiritual component has been assimilation, and it's nothing new that's happened to us since Egypt, Babylon, and wherever we go. | ||
| The assimilation really hurts our communities. | ||
| Are you finding it difficult to wake up? | ||
| Is one side more difficult to wake up regarding that? | ||
| Are you making more inroads in one community than another? | ||
| Actually, both have its challenges because with the Black community, they still see Jews as white. | ||
| And so when they see that your skin is white passing, they still associate it with colonialism, imperialism. | ||
| But that is not the sin of the Jewish people. | ||
| That is the sin of the European people. | ||
| And then with the Jewish community, because historically they have always supported the Black community, they can't see where in their part where the relationship had a breakdown. | ||
| So from their view, it's like, we've always supported you. | ||
| Why don't you support us? | ||
| And it's just been like this one-sided relationship and the relationship broke only because this one side. | ||
| So it's a bit hard for both to see like, where did we go wrong? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So what do you do about that? | ||
| I guess is the real question. | ||
| So I'm launching a new show called The Black and Jewish Podcast, and my mission really is to start with the podcast and open up these conversations. | ||
| I'll interview Black Jews, Jewish people, just so we can start conversing about our communities and what's happening in our communities, and Black people who are not Jewish. | ||
| You know, just to say, like, what do you think? | ||
| What do I think? | ||
| And start conversing. | ||
| But that's just to start. | ||
| My real mission is to take delegates to Israel. | ||
| I believe that the land of Israel can speak for herself, and I want delegations of Black people to go. | ||
| Historically, Black people only go to Israel on their Christian trip. | ||
| There's nothing wrong with that. | ||
| You want to come to the Holy Land and connect with Jesus. | ||
| But they're not connecting to modern Israel. | ||
| They're not connecting to Israelis. | ||
| They're not connecting to the startup nation of the world. | ||
| They're not learning Israeli slang when they leave Israel. | ||
| Like, you have to do more than just go to where Jesus walks. | ||
| And so I really believe, like, first opening up with the podcast and having the conversations, and then the delegation will really help both communities start to talk and then see one another. | ||
| What kind of pushback are you getting during all of this? | ||
| Because I have no doubt, probably comes from both sides. | ||
| I suspect one side a little bit more than the other. | ||
| But yeah, what's that like? | ||
| I have to say, the Jewish community has been very, very, very supportive. | ||
| But I get pushback from the Arabs. | ||
| It's so funny, right? | ||
| Like, they're so pro-Black, but then if you're not spouting out what they want you to spout, I'm all kinds of inwards. | ||
| The Black community has said, you know, how as a Black woman can you stand with the white colonizers? | ||
| They have said that I'm paid by the Zionists. | ||
| I'm still waiting for that check to clear, whatever it is, you know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah, I haven't gotten my check yet. | ||
| Yeah, I'm like, oh, okay. | ||
| Like, I love to do this either way, but if you want to pay me to do it, great! | ||
| And so mostly from the Black community is that they cannot believe as a Black woman that I could stand with Israel and speak on behalf of Israel. | ||
| And then the Arabs attack me because I talk about their history and their history with Black people and African people. | ||
| And, you know, Europe wasn't the biggest colonizers, like Arabs were. | ||
| Don't ever talk about Arab colonization and how they treated, you know, black people in their countries, etc. | ||
| If we're just going to make it about race, you know, it's not my focal point, but because you're attacking us about that, then I'm also going to attack you, you know, in that area. | ||
| So those are the biggest pushbacks. | ||
| But like I said earlier, I'm one of nine children. | ||
| Comments, like, don't sway me at all. | ||
| Like, I have tough parents. | ||
| Like, I fought with my siblings all my life. | ||
| Like, those things kind of just, like, roll off my shoulders. | ||
| What do you think sort of the day after the war looks like? | ||
| I mean, eventually there will be a day after, you know, whether, whether the hostages are back alive or at least they know what the end was or whatever it is. | ||
| There is a day after. | ||
| Right. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| How do you think it fundamentally changes Israel? | ||
| How do you think it changes the world in some respects? | ||
| Well, I think that Israelis prior to October 7th, whether people believe it or not, were very open to a two-state solution. | ||
| It was Palestinians who never wanted a two-state solution. | ||
| However, I do not think Israelis want a two-state solution at all. | ||
| So I don't know what that's going to look like. | ||
| A lot of people have this conspiracy theory that Israel is going to take back Gaza. | ||
| Israel doesn't want Gaza. | ||
| We gave up Gaza in 2005. | ||
| We don't want to rule those people. | ||
| So I don't know who will take over Gaza, but hopefully they have good leadership. | ||
| It's hard to think about the day after because we don't have our hostages back. | ||
| I did a video talking about all of these people calling for a ceasefire, and I'm like, why aren't you calling for bringing them home? | ||
| If we brought them home, then we could have a ceasefire. | ||
| Like, they have still 133 hostages. | ||
| And we don't even know how many of them are alive. | ||
| So, for one, I don't think there's going to be a two-state solution. | ||
| I personally don't support a two-state solution. | ||
| My stance is that, listen, the land of Israel was given to us by God. | ||
| We don't have ownership of it, so therefore we don't have the license to give away the land. | ||
| That's the Torah, so you can argue with the Torah, not me. | ||
| I want to see... Well, you could also, from putting aside the Torah for a second, you could also say to Egypt, OK, you take Gaza back then. | ||
| You guys had it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They don't want them. | ||
| They're not letting any of them in. | ||
| They don't want them at all. | ||
| Nobody wants them. | ||
| Jordan, their people over there don't want them. | ||
| And we know what Syria did to them and Lebanon doesn't want them. | ||
| And so I don't know what the solution will be. | ||
| I do know that people are floating around this idea of a one state solution. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you know? | ||
| I don't think that's going to happen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, no. | |
| Like, I don't think that's going to happen either. | ||
| I also don't support that. | ||
| So what do we do? | ||
| I mean, we need to move forward and the Palestinian people, they need to also have peace, but they have to want it. | ||
| They have to, you know, rise up against Hamas and the PLO and have good leadership. | ||
| We don't have, you know, some like Martin Luther King of the Palestinian people. | ||
| You know, we have the Green Prince, but he's not going back. | ||
| Well, they could go to Jordan, I suppose, where they're already more than half of the population and living under true apartheid there because they're living under the Hashemite kingdom. | ||
| But nobody wants to talk about that. | ||
| Nobody wants to talk about that. | ||
| And so I don't think we're ever going to be able to push them out of Gaza or the West Bank. | ||
| We will have to figure out how to live together peacefully. | ||
| But that's really going to have to come from their side, because I feel that Israel has done everything it can do in its power As of right now, to try and make us live next door to each other in a peaceful way. | ||
| But at this point, we have to continue to defend ourselves. | ||
| Like, they continue to attack us. | ||
| I hope this will be just the first of many conversations that we have. | ||
| I have no doubt that they will be either on camera or off camera. | ||
| But is there anything else that you want to say that kind of captures the country and your experience in the last, say, eight months? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Or your life, I guess. | ||
| Yeah, I want to encourage everyone to go to Israel. | ||
| See it for yourself, let the land speak for herself, and make your own judgments from there. | ||
| And if you're very passionate about Israel or Gaza, get informed before you start yelling on college campuses and raising Palestinian flags. | ||
| Actually get information because your voice matters and it has power and influence. | ||
| And so therefore you need to steward your voice well. | ||
| Future Prime Minister of Israel? | ||
| Maybe I'll marry one. |
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